Jackrabbit Junction Jitters

by Ann Charles

  “If he had proof of this, why did the case go all the way to the state supreme court?”

  “My guess is that the Copper Snake was lining the pockets of the local court justices.”

  “Does this court document show who owned the Copper Snake at that time?”

  “Richard Rensberg Sr.”

  “Does he still own the company?”

  “No. He’s long dead.”

  “Then why does ‘Rensberg’ sound familiar?”

  “Because—”

  “I need to talk to you.” Gramps’s voice sounded loud, like he stood on the other side of the curtain. “Alone.”

  “Hold on a minute, Mac,” Claire whispered, as footfalls clomped across the store’s wooden floor. The clomping grew muffled on the carpet.

  “Sure, Harley,” Ruby said. “What’s got you all fired up, honey?”

  Claire covered the earpiece with her hand in case Mac decided to get chatty. Crawling across the carpet on her knees, she peeked around the edge of the bar.

  Gramps and Ruby stood in the middle of the rec room. Ruby’s purse still hung on her shoulder.

  “Care to explain these?” Gramps held up the letters.

  Claire winced, feeling like a Benedict Arnold.

  A red blotch warmed Ruby’s cheek as she eyed the envelopes. “No, I sure don’t.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me about them?” Gramps’s tone was gruff, abrasive.

  Ruby lifted her chin. “Don’t you scold me like one of your children, Harley.”

  “I’m not scolding. I’m just wondering why I had to learn about this from my daughter instead of my soon-to-be wife.”

  Hands on her hips now, Ruby frowned. “I bet Deborah loved playin’ show-and-tell with my dirty laundry.”

  “Well, at least she realized that I needed to be enlightened. Why were you hiding them from me?”

  “Because they aren’t your concern.”

  “Aren’t my concern?” Gramps’s shock resonated in his tone. “How can you say that? We’re about to trade rings.”

  “The Lucky Monk is my mine, Harley, not yours. I didn’t figure you needed to know about this.”

  “Yet you ran to your nephew for help. Do you know how that makes me feel?”

  “I don’t know. Why don’t you spell it out?”

  “Foolish and pissed off”

  Hold up! Mac had offered to help Ruby only after Claire found the letters and showed them to him. Why wasn’t Ruby clarifying that to Gramps?

  “Well, get over it,” Ruby said. “I didn’t want to burden you with this, especially with your daughter here.”

  “So what were you going to do? Wait until we were married and then burden me with paying for a lawyer?”

  Ruby took a step back, the red in her cheeks streaking down her neck. “Is that what Deborah’s been whisperin’ in your ear all afternoon? That I’m fixin’ to marry you for your money?”

  Gramps crossed his arms over his chest. “Are you?”

  “I can’t believe you’d even ask that, Harley Ford.”

  “What am I supposed to think?”

  “How about thinking that I’m tired of takin’ your handouts and wanted to try to fix this mess on my own without you throwing more of your money at it?”

  That shut up Gramps for several seconds. He reached for Ruby’s shoulder. “Listen, Ruby—”

  Ruby dodged out of his reach. “Don’t you ‘Listen, Ruby’ me, damn it. I meant what I said. This is none of your concern.” She ripped the envelopes out of his hand. “Three days before our wedding and you have the nerve to accuse me of marryin’ you for your money, you son-of-a-bitch.”

  Claire winced again, only this time for Gramps’s sake.

  “You should have told me about this,” he said in defense.

  “I’ll tell you what I damned well please when I want to.”

  “Mom?” Jess cruised into the rec room with her usual bouncy step, apparently clueless that she’d walked smack dab into a tornado. “Can I have twenty bucks? I want to buy a—”

  “No, you cannot!” Ruby shouted. “Now get back behind that register and earn your money like the rest of us have to.”

  Jess looked as if her mother had slapped her. Her eyes watered. “I’m your kid, Mother! Not your slave!” she stomped back into the store.

  As soon as Jess crossed the threshold, Ruby zeroed in on Gramps. “I’ll tell you somethin’ else, Harley Ford. Since you like listening to Deborah so much, she can bend your ear all night long while you share the spare room with her, because you’re not sleeping in my bed tonight! Or tomorrow night for that matter. Maybe ever!”

  Ruby strode off down the hall, slamming her bedroom door behind her.

  “There are too many goddamned hens in this chicken coup,” Gramps told the walls and crashed out the back door, following his fiancée’s lead and slamming it in his wake.

  Claire sat there on tingling knees that were working on going numb, her eyes wide, the phone still in her hand.

  “Claire!” Mac’s said loud enough to travel through the hand she had cupped over the earpiece.

  She started to lift the receiver to her ear and froze at the sound of footfalls approaching again. As she watched, Deborah slipped through the curtain, her smile stretched from ear to ear as she headed toward the stair. Claire could hear her mom humming all the way across the room.

  Sitting back on her heels, Claire’s gut boiled. It appeared she hadn’t been the only ringside ticket holder for Gramps and Ruby’s fight.

  “Claire, what’s going on?”

  “Sorry,” she whispered into the phone just in case anyone else was in earshot. “Gramps and Ruby were just in here.”

  “What happened?”

  Claire dropped onto her butt and leaned her head back against the bar. “Shit just hit the fan.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Thursday, August 19th

  “Lunch time,” Ruby said to Kate, who sat behind the counter, working on a crossword puzzle while minding the store for the last hour while Ruby paid bills.

  Her young grandmother-to-be carried a plate with two grilled cheese sandwiches on it. Kate was beginning to understand why Claire claimed life at the R.V. park made her clothes shrink. The smell of grilled bread and melting cheese had Kate drooling like a teething baby.

  With Claire and Jess running errands in Yuccaville, and Gramps driving the stink-mobile to Tucson to be de-skunked while Deborah followed in Mabel, it was the first alone-time Kate and Ruby had had in days.

  “I forgot to ask,” Ruby said, grabbing a bag of pretzels from a shelf. She placed the plate and the pretzels on the counter in front of Kate. “How was your date yesterday?”

  “Which date?”

  “You must be a popular girl,” Ruby’s grin took any malice out of her comment. “I meant the date with Butch.”

  “It was … interesting.”

  So much so that she’d spent most of her evening with Porter thinking about the blue-eyed bar owner.

  “Interesting, huh?” Ruby walked over to the cooler and opened the door. “What’ll ya have?”

  “Diet, please.”

  The cooler door closed with a thump. “I’d think with a good-lookin’ guy like Butch, the date would be more than just ‘interesting.’”

  “It’s not like that. We’re just friends.” At least that’s what Kate kept telling herself every time her imagination started removing his clothing.

  “That’s too bad.” Ruby set the soda on the counter. “Butch isn’t only easy on the eyes; he’s also a real wiz-bang when it comes to running a business. He turned The Shaft from a stagnant watering hole into a desert oasis.”

  Maybe Ruby could answer some of the questions Kate was too afraid to ask Butch. “How long have you known him?”

  Ripping open the bag of pretzels, Ruby pursed her lips. “Let’s see, it must be going on five years now. He’s owned The Shaft ever since I moved to Jackrabbit Junction.”

  “Do you kno
w where he’s from?”

  “Nope. Joe once mentioned something about Butch tumblin’ into town on a breeze and catchin’ on a fence, but not where he’d tumbled from.”

  Kate took a handful of pretzels from the open bag Ruby held out. “Do you know anyone around here named Valentine?”

  “Can’t say that I do. But there’s a girl named Valerie who works at the hair salon in Yuccaville where I took your mother.”

  Kate shoved a couple of salty pretzels in her mouth, crunching loudly in her head. “Has Butch ever worked for the Copper Snake Mining Company?”

  “I don’t think so. Morning ‘til night most days, his truck sits in The Shaft’s parking lot. It wasn’t until Wheeler’s Diner went out of business a few months ago that he hired himself a full-time cook.”

  The bells over the front door jingled as Kate took a bite of her sandwich.

  “We’re back,” Jess sang as she be-bopped through the doorway and across the wooden floor. She pulled a folded piece of paper from her back pocket and handed it to Kate.

  “Thanks.” The sparkle in Jess’s eyes gave Kate the sense that the kid had come through with the private investigator work Kate had hired her to do at the Yuccaville library. Jess better have, anyway—she’d charged ten bucks for her services.

  Claire came through the door just in time to see Jess pass Kate the note. Her sister stared at the paper, eyes narrowing. With suspicion plastered across her furrowed brow, she looked up at Kate and kicked the door closed.

  “What’s that?”

  Kate stuffed the paper in her back pocket. “I asked Jess to look up the phone numbers on the Internet for several insurance companies.” She lied without skipping a beat.

  “I thought you weren’t going to mess with that until after the wedding.”

  “I changed my mind.” Kate shoved the rest of her sandwich in her mouth, sparing Claire a cheesy-toothed smile while opening her pop.

  “You want some?” Ruby offered to share the other half of her sandwich.

  “No, thanks. We grabbed some lunch in town.” Claire leaned against the counter. “How was your date last night, Kate?”

  “Enlightening,” Kate lied again.

  She’d spent more enthralling evenings watching infomercials for albums full of sappy love songs from the seventies. Porter had spent the evening talking about two things—writing and Porter. He’d make an ideal Stepford husband.

  “Did you ask him the questions I wrote down for you?”

  Kate bristled. “No, I did not.”

  “Damn it, Kate.” Claire’s tone was full of exasperation.

  “Don’t you start in with me.” Kate chomped on a couple more pretzels, barely tasting them. “I’m sick and tired of you pimping me out to that man. If you want to ask him questions, you go out with him.”

  Jess tossed a Milky Way bar on the counter. “You can pimp me out. I’ll ask any question you want for twenty bucks.”

  Ruby’s nostrils flared. “You’ll do no such thing.”

  “I can’t go out on an actual date with him until I turn sixteen.” Jess blatantly ignored her mother’s glare. “But you could invite him here for supper. Just give me ten minutes with the guy and I’ll have all of the answers you need.”

  “Jessica Lynn, what did I just tell you?”

  With a loud sigh, Jessica turned to her mother. “Did you or did you not tell me last night that I have to work for my money just like everyone else?”

  Ruby crossed her arms over her chest, her lips pressed tight.

  “Now, if you’ll excuse me, Mother, I’m in the process of making a deal with Claire.” Jess pulled a dollar bill out of her pocket and placed it on the counter next to the candy bar.

  Kate wasn’t sure if she should take the kid’s money or let Jess keep it for bus fare out of town.

  Ruby snatched up Jess’s candy bar and money. “That’s it, you’re grounded. Go to your room.”

  Whirling, Jess cried, “Gimme that back! That’s my hard-earned babysitting money. You can’t take it from me.”

  “You wanna bet?”

  “That’s stealing!”

  “No, that’s called charging you a dollar for my white shirt, which you wore without my permission and then ruined by washing it with your red shorts.”

  Jess’s eyes widened, then her face crinkled into a sneer. “I hate you!”

  “Join the club.” Ruby stuffed the candy bar in her shirt pocket. “There are two of you now.”

  With a war cry Geronimo would have admired, Jess ran from the room. She clomped up the steps and across the upper hall, sounding like a herd of moose sporting wooden clogs.

  “Sorry about that.” Ruby’s voice sounded strained.

  Kate patted Ruby on the shoulder.

  “When are you going to see Porter again?” Claire asked Kate.

  It was none of her business. “We didn’t make any plans.”

  “Come on, Kate. How am I going to find out anything about him if you are too chicken-shit to ask?”

  “Why don’t you take him out to dinner and ask him yourself.”

  “Maybe I will. He still thinks Mac and I are splitsville, right?”

  “Uh, yeah.” Kate swallowed the lump of pretzel mush that suddenly seemed extra dry and thick. She hadn’t expected Claire to take her up on her advice.

  “Fine, I’ll see if he’s available tonight.”

  “You know, on second thought.” Kate avoided eye contact. “That’s probably not a good idea.”

  Claire tapped her fingers on the counter. “Why not?”

  “Well, I might have let something slip last night that might make him a little closed-mouth around you.”

  “Damn it, Kate. What did you tell him?”

  “Claire, I swear it was an accident.” Kate had been so distracted by her thoughts of Butch and a little too loose-lipped from all of the wine Porter kept pouring into her glass, that she’d spoken before realizing what was tumbling over her tongue.

  “What did you say?”

  “Nothing much really. Just that—”

  The phone rang.

  “I’ll get it,” Ruby said, but Kate lunged for the receiver.

  “Dancing Winnebagos R.V. Park, Kate speaking.” She paused, listening, trying to ignore Claire’s glower. “Yeah, sure.” She held the phone out to her sister. “It’s Mac.”

  “I’ll take it in the rec room.” As she backed toward the curtain, Claire pointed at Kate. “We’re not finished.”

  Kate stuck out her tongue. “Catch me if you can.”

  * * *

  Claire cupped the receiver. “You’re calling early.”

  “I’m on my way to a project site about fifty miles south of Tucson.” Mac’s voice crackled through the phone. The canned sounds of traffic and his pickup engine ran interference. “I probably won’t make it home before dark, and I doubt I’ll feel like doing much more than showering and crashing, so I thought I’d take a minute to fill you in on the latest news.”

  There was something about his tone that made her stomach clench. “What’s wrong?”

  “Is Ruby within hearing distance?”

  “Hold on.” Claire walked across the rec room with the cordless phone and stepped out the back door, closing it quietly behind her. “Okay. What’s going on?”

  The smell of barbecued meat wafted under her nose. She shielded her eyes from the sun. Who could cook in this heat?

  “I heard back from the Cholla County Recorder’s office this morning. There’s no proof in their files showing Joe ever owned the Lucky Monk mine.”

  “What do you mean by proof?”

  “Claims or patents in his name.”

  “How is a patent different from a claim?”

  “A mining claim gives the right to mine on federal land. A land patent gives outright ownership of mineral-laden land.”

  “I thought Ruby owned the land the mines are on, not the federal government.”

  “So did I, but now I’m not so sure.”


  “Shit.” Claire fanned her T-shirt. The lack of a breeze made it hard to think.

  On the southwestern horizon, cotton-like cumulus clouds roiled and swelled, cooking up another earth-shaking round of afternoon thunderstorms.

  “Exactly,” Mac said.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know. I guess I need to start by going through Joe’s old files. See if I can find anything proving he owned the Lucky Monk. The problem is that Ruby has that stuff stashed away somewhere, and I’m going to have to ask her where.”

  “How are you going to do that without explaining why?”

  “Lie, probably. I hate to, but with her wedding just days away, she doesn’t need to worry about this stuff.”

  “So you’ll dump the truth on her when she comes back from her honeymoon?”

  “Hey, I don’t like this any more than you do, but there’s still time to get to the bottom of this without troubling her.”

  “What if you can’t find anything in Joe’s files?”

  “I don’t know.” Mac sounded tired. “Probably contact the ADMMR and try to trace the history of the mine from its inception.”

  “What’s the ADMMR?”

  “Arizona Department of Mines and Mineral Resources—the agency that governs all mining activity on BLM land.”

  “BLM as in the Bureau of Land Management?”

  “Exactly. The ADMMR has extensive files on mining in Arizona. It would be like finding a toothpick in a bin of tumbleweeds, but I’m running out of options.” Mac’s voice grew fuzzy with static. “There are some permit offices I can check with as well, but since Joe never actually performed any mining operations on his property, I doubt I’ll have any luck on that score.”

  Claire held the phone tight against her ear. “What about the other three mines?” she yelled above the static.

  “Claims and patents … crackle … on file under Ruby’s name … fizz … each of them … sizzle … county recorder’s office.”

  “Mac, you’re breaking up.” A drop of sweat trickled down her spine. “What if you can’t prove the mine belongs to Ruby?”

  “We’re up … hiss … creek.”

  Sudden quiet filled her ear.