by Ann Charles
“Henry?”
Something growled from under the thicket.
“Henry!” Mac walked toward the bushes. “Come here, boy.”
Hisses came from the brush.
Crap! Somebody’s cat was about to tear Henry a new ass. Mac squatted, spreading the low branches, looking for a patch of white beagle fur.
The growling stopped, replaced by a rhythmic thumping.
Thumping? Mac frowned; cats didn’t thump. Pack rats thumped their tails. Skunks thumped their feet.
He rose and took several steps back. “Henry?”
Suddenly, something small and black bolted toward him from the bush. Henry chased it, hot on its tail—its long black tail with a white stripe running down the center of it.
Mac leapt aside.
The skunk veered, raced past the lawn table, and dashed up the Winnebago’s steps. Henry followed it through the door and into the darkness beyond.
“Oh, shit!” Mac whispered, frozen. He heard a crash.
The lights came on, thanks to the Clapper.
Henry barked.
The skunk growled, thumping again.
Another crash. The lights went out.
A series of thumps and hisses and barks followed, the light flicking on and off. The Winnebago flashed and pinged like an oversized pinball machine.
“What in the hell?” Mac heard Claire yell. The sound of her voice snapped him out of his paralysis. He sprinted to the door.
The light went out again.
Henry howled and Claire screamed.
* * *
Sunday, August 15th
Jess sat behind the General Store counter, twirling her hair. “I can still smell that skunk on you.”
Claire stuffed half a Twinkie in her mouth to keep from biting Jess’s head off. The sponge cake was tasteless on her tongue. Her sense of smell still suffered from olfactory fatigue.
She swallowed the lump of dough. “Spray some more perfume.”
“Where’s Mac?”
Claire pulled another handful of Milky Way candy bars from the box and lined them up on the shelf. “You just asked me that a half hour ago and nothing has changed since then.”
“I can’t remember your answer. I think that skunk smell has zapped my brain.”
Only Ruby and Claire knew that Mac had gone up to the mine today. Ruby didn’t want Jess knowing because she’d undoubtedly let it leak to Gramps.
Tossing the empty cardboard box toward the trash can, Claire ripped open a box of Baby Ruth bars. “He’s gone to Bisbee again today.”
“Oh, that’s right—to see an old friend.”
Worried Jess might be onto her, Claire glanced at the girl. Jess’s head bobbed to some tune beating in her brain while she stared into a small mirror, puckering her glossed lips repeatedly. “I hope Mom buys me that mini-skirt we saw in the store window yesterday.”
Nope, not a single suspicious thought in that head.
Claire stacked Baby Ruths on the shelf and wondered if Ruby had slit her wrists yet. Since the skunk spray had saturated everything in the R.V., including Kate and Deborah’s clothes, Ruby had volunteered to take the two women shopping this morning, unaware that taming hungry lions would have been less dangerous.
Unfortunately, being a Sunday, the only store open in Yuccaville was a secondhand one, and Claire doubted they’d find any Ralph Lauren, Abercrombie & Fitch, or Ann Taylor labels hanging on the racks.
Luckily for Claire, she had the spare painting clothes she could wear until Mac returned next weekend with reinforcements. She just needed to find another dress for the wedding, but she had a week to do that.
The bells over the door jingled. Claire winced in anticipation of a skunk-smell comment from another customer.
“Ah, my two favorite chicas.” Manny closed the door behind him, his smile wide—suspiciously so.
“What are you doing in here?” Claire finished stacking Baby Ruths and tossed the box aside. “You’re supposed to be helping Gramps and Chester gut the Winnebago.”
After being reminded of all the times during the war that Gramps had saved their asses, Chester and Manny had grudgingly been manipulated to help.
“Woo wee!” Jess spritzed Manny with perfume as he approached the counter. “And I thought Claire was stinky.”
Gramps had driven the R.V. to the back of the park next to the tool shed. His insurance company was going to give him some money to pay for a detailed detoxification, but he wanted to gut the Winnebago to remove as much of the stench as possible before driving it to the closest detailer he could find—in Tucson.
“I needed a break from the frontlines.” Manny pointed at the guestbook leaning between the cash register and the wall. “Will you hand me that book, por favor?”
Her nose pinched shut, Jess dropped the book onto the counter. She hopped off the chair and walked over to the curtain, putting some distance between her and Manny. “Maybe you should look at it outside.”
“I’ll just be un segundo.” Manny flipped through the pages.
Claire moved up beside him. “What are you doing?”
“Finding out the name of my future wife.”
As if she hadn’t heard that line before from Don Juan Sr. Claire leaned against the counter. “How’s Gramps doing?”
While she hadn’t lured the skunk into the Winnebago, she couldn’t help feeling guilty about the whole smelly incident. Gramps loved that R.V., almost as much as he did Mabel.
“I don’t know. I couldn’t see him through the tears in my eyes.” Manny trailed his finger down one of the pages. “Aha!” He grabbed the pen next to the cash register and wrote Rebecca Hawthorne on his palm.
Claire grinned. “When is the wedding?”
“Soon, mi amor.” He stood back, blowing the ink dry on his hand. The book pages fluttered closed, leaving the inside front cover showing. “I just need to introduce myself first.”
With a bounce in his step, he disappeared out the door.
“Ick.” Jess slipped back behind the counter and sprayed more perfume. “You guys all need a bath.”
After last night, what Claire needed was a long vacation far from the desert.
Mac had tried to save her from the skunk, but by the time he’d clambered into the R.V., the skunk had darted back outside, and Claire and Henry were temporarily blinded from the spray. He led them both outside to a lawn chair and left Claire holding Henry’s leash while he ran back to Ruby’s to get some help.
Alone in the watery shadows, Claire’s sinuses had drained and drained. When the cavalry arrived, the liquid exorcism began. First a vinegar scrub down, then a cold water rinse from the hose. By her third bath, her skin was beyond pruned—closer to raisined. It had taken an hour for the shakes to stop.
Henry hadn’t faired much better. The little shit now sat in the shade tied to one of the front porch posts, quarantined until Gramps got back from tearing apart the R.V.
Claire blinked out of her reverie to find Jess doodling on the front page of the guest book.
“What are you doing? That’s going to tick off your mom.” She pulled the book away and looked down at the sideways eights Jess had been drawing.
“Just drawing the symbol for infinity. I learned about infinity in math last year.”
Claire chewed on her lower lip. She’d seen that symbol somewhere lately—in this very store.
“Besides, somebody else wrote on the page first.” Jess blew a bubble and let it pop in Claire’s ear.
Claire stared down at the word “infinity” written in the bottom left corner of the first page. She recognized Joe’s writing. After all of the documents she’d sifted through in his office, she knew his squiggles better than her own.
“Mom should just be happy I’m practicing my math skills.”
Why would Joe write that word in the guest book? From what Claire had learned about Joe over the last few months, doodling was not his style. Her gut told her that there was a meaning behind the word, mayb
e even a purpose.
“Do you think it will come off with an eraser?” Jess pulled the book back toward her, uncovering the campground map taped to the counter below it.
Then Claire saw it. Right there, in the middle of the map, like a flashing neon Vegas marquee—the infinity symbol, in the tent-camping only section. The drive that connected each of the eight campsites looked like a sideways eight, only the corners weren’t quite as round.
“Oh, crap. This eraser is all dried out.” Jess tossed her pencil aside. “Now I’ve smudged the page.”
Claire rubbed her jaw. That must be why Joe labeled those sites with an I instead of an A or B. I for infinity.
“What’s so important about infinity?” Claire asked aloud.
“Infinity isn’t a real number, but could be considered part of an extended real number line,” Jess recited, as if reading from a dictionary.
Claire looked up at Jess. The last part of what the girl said replayed in her head: part of an extended real number line.
She slapped her palms on the counter. “That’s it!”
Jess squawked in surprise. The pencil and guestbook went flying into the wall behind her.
“Paper! I need paper.” Claire grabbed a spare campground map. “Even better.”
Jess coughed out her gum into her palm. “You need help. I almost choked!”
“Sorry about that.” Claire circled the eight site numbers. “Stay here. I’ll be right back.” She dashed toward the curtain.
“Where are you going?” Jess yelled after her.
Claire took the basement steps two at a time, nearly falling down the last three. She hit the lights. The bookcase was still pulled away from the wall. She hadn’t had a chance to put the office back in order since yesterday morning.
Kneeling on the shag carpet, Claire held up the map. Her hand shook as she read the numbers aloud and punched them into the keypad. “5, 3, 8, 2, 9, 1, 7, 4.”
Nothing happened.
“Shit.” Hitting the Clear button, she reversed the numbers.
A clicking sound came from the door.
Her breath caught.
The safe door popped open.
Chapter Nine
Miles away from Claire and Harley’s Winnebago, deep in the belly of Wiggle Toe Mountain, Mac could still smell that damned skunk. Short of snorting vinegar, he figured nothing but time would erase the stench from his olfactory memory.
The air in the Lucky Monk mine felt cool and heavy. The light on his hard hat cast elongated shadows that wavered and danced with every step. Blackness pursued him, hot on his heels, always hovering out of the corner of his eyes.
Pebbles crunching under his boots, he navigated the stone tunnels. Every hundred feet or so, he stopped to study Joe’s maps and make notes of changes.
The morning had been productive. Several hundred feet back in a side tunnel, the throat of a shaft had been encrusted with ocean-blue chalcanthite, a mineral usually found near the surface of copper deposits. The aggregates glittered like a crystal choker under Mac’s flashlight beam.
He plucked a few small samples and doused them with water from his canteen. They dissolved quickly in his palm, turning the small pool murky blue—and poisonous to the last drop.
Further back, a vein of copper on one wall was nearly invisible under a mosaic of quartz mixed with chrysocolla, an opaque greenish-blue mineral that crooked dealers sold as actual turquoise to naïve tourists at the rock and gem show in Tucson.
Now, as Mac continued along the main adit to another unmapped side tunnel he’d found yesterday afternoon, he wondered how Joe had gotten his hands on the Lucky Monk and the other three mines. Had he purchased them legally? Won them in a card game? Inherited them from a long lost uncle?
Mac understood why Joe had wanted them, especially with the racket the guy had been running. The mines offered an excellent hiding place for stolen goods, and the old wagon trails leading up to two of them were wide enough for a four-wheel drive truck to navigate.
But who had owned them before Joe? The original prospectors? Their descendants? And how had the mines evaded the hands of the Copper Snake Mining Company all these years?
Following the adit as it curved to the right, Mac took a sip of water from his canteen. Shadowy amorphous figures slunk back against the walls as he passed, reminding him of the Mine Monk spirit from European folktales he’d read about years ago.
The miners of old Europe were a superstitious lot, which didn’t surprise Mac considering they’d used fire to light their way deep into the earth where pockets of methane gas often accumulated. The explosions would either kill them outright or leave them buried, sealed up tight in a pitch-black tomb with suffocation as their only way out.
Stories abounded of ghostly spirits of the earth, the tale of the Mine Monk being one of these. Sometimes benevolent, sometimes not, the monk would make an appearance in black robes, its face hooded. Mac assumed the prospector who filed the original claim for the Lucky Monk mine had heard his fair share of ghost stories.
The tunnel veered to the right; Mac followed. Ten feet in front of him, a paper cup lay on its side on the stone floor.
Litter was nothing new to the underground world. Back before Budweiser cans and plastic Evian bottles, there had been soda pop tabs and Necco Wafer wrappers, rusted tin cans with serrated lids and hand-sewn leather gloves, broken shovel handles and dented ore carts.
Mac squatted next to the coffee cup. The fact that someone had tossed it on the floor of Ruby’s mine wasn’t what made his hands clammy. What had his heart knocking was that the cup hadn’t been here last night when he’d walked along this section of the adit.
He picked up the cup and peeked through the small opening in the lid. A sip of brown liquid still sloshed in the bottom.
Someone had been in the Lucky Monk last night.
Kids trespassed in mines often, especially if the entrances were partially blocked off with “No Trespassing” signs. But kids left broken beer bottles and cigarette butts, not coffee cups.
Maybe it was the Mine Monk.
Mac stood, suddenly feeling like he was in the crosshairs of a scope. He squinted into the thick shadows in front of him, searching for movement, his ears straining to pick up any sound besides his own breathing.
The hairs on the back of his neck prickled. He whirled around, looking back the way he’d come. The darkness at the edge of his vision teased him with glimpses of shifting shapes.
Déjà vu had him wiping his palms on his jeans.
Unlike Claire, his imagination rarely took flight, his preferred modus operandi based on rational, logical planning rather than radical theories or suspicious notions. But after being hunted by a crazed killer through the stone corridors of Socrates Pit and being deliberately entombed in Two Jakes last spring, his pulse often danced the jitterbug when he traipsed through these oversized worm holes.
Mac glanced down at his watch. He’d planned on scouting around in the Lucky Monk for a few more hours, but the sudden craving for sunshine, fresh air, even humidity, changed his mind.
He left the cup where he’d found it and hiked toward the entrance. Speeding up to a jog as he rounded the corner, he expected to hear the sound of boots clapping on the stone floor behind him at any moment.
* * *
The safe door swung open.
Claire dropped onto her butt, legs crossed, and stared at the three shelves lined with violet felt material. She scooted closer, not wanting to touch anything until she’d had a chance to thoroughly inspect how Joe had left the contents. She’d learned over the summer, after watching a season’s worth of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, that sometimes placement was as telling as the evidence itself.
A derringer laid on the left side of the top shelf, its stubby nose buried in a miniature holster. A leather strap wide enough to encircle a calf or bicep wove through two slits in the holster. A box of .22 caliber cartridges sat on the other side of the strap, taking up most of the remai
ning shelf space.
So, in addition to a double-barreled shotgun and a .357 Magnum Ruby kept stashed in her closet, Joe had also had a derringer. Was the tiny pistol just an antique or had he actually carried it? Used it?
She’d always pictured Joe’s fingers as fat and stubby, like thick Jimmy Dean sausage links, covered with greasy potato chip crumbs—fingers that couldn’t remove such a tiny gun from its elf-sized holster without shooting off a pinkie or a toe in the process.
A pocket watch monopolized the middle shelf, centered as if on display under a spotlight along with the other crown jewels in the Tower of London. The polished gold casing beckoned Claire to pick it up and rub her fingers over the smooth face. Clasping her hands together, she resisted the urge to touch and leaned closer, breathing all over it.
Tiny flowers and ovals rimmed the gold case, raised on the surface rather than carved into the metal. The pastel painting on the cover had pale green trees dotting the landscape. Small indistinguishable buildings rose in the distance. A carriage seemed to be the focal point, with two dark horses hitched to it. Crowds of people filled the foreground—a depiction of a fair or some festival possibly. Whatever the subject matter, the piece shone with nineteenth century European elegance.
Claire chewed on her thumb. Maybe she should show it to her mother.
Deborah glued herself to the television every time Antiques Roadshow was on PBS. She’d recorded volumes and volumes of it. Her obsession with the program had been one of the many reasons Claire’s father had walked the plank.
Or, maybe Claire should take the watch to Tucson to have it examined, find out the details on its age and value.
Then again, just bringing the piece out into the open could endanger Ruby’s welfare, even her life, along with Jess and Gramps’s. If Joe had stolen the watch, the police or FBI might come down hard on Ruby, seize her assets, tear her house apart looking for other stolen goods.
Worse, though, would be if word of the pocket watch reached one of Joe’s ex-business partners—someone with a grudge or an unpaid debt. Someone who didn’t waste time with badges when it came to shooting.