by Ann Charles
The drive dead-ended at a shed with a rusty, corrugated steel roof that creaked with each draft of air. A coat of green paint had been slapped on the walls—somewhat recently, Kate guessed, judging from the dried paint splashed on the ground edging the building. On the door, a padlock that was identical to the one securing the gate kept the public out.
Kate turned to Butch, who leaned against the front quarter panel of his truck and watched her with an amused expression that made her feel like she’d been caught stepping out for the morning paper in her robe and curlers.
“So that’s the shed where Claire and Sophy had their showdown?”
“Yep. Do you want to go inside?”
He had the keys to the shed as well? Kate grew more suspicious with each grasshopper that bounced past. “Is Joe’s old car still stored in there?”
“Nope. Just a handful of tools. It’s mostly empty.”
“I’ll pass then. Do you have the keys to the house, too?” She tried to sound flippant, but her voice held a slight tremor in spite of her efforts.
“Uh-huh, but I can’t let you inside. You can peek in the windows, if you’d like.”
Kate shook her head. “That’s okay.” Sweat beaded on her lower back.
“You ready to go?”
“Sure.” She scuttled back to his truck. As Butch turned the ignition key, she wiped her damp palms on her thighs. “So, why do you have the keys to this place?” She hoped she sounded inquisitive instead of accusing.
“I’m taking care of it while the owner is away.”
Why hadn’t Sophy sold the place? The woman wasn’t likely to be back here for a long time, if at all, from what Claire had been told.
Kate waited while Butch turned the pickup around. She adjusted the vents so the blast of air hit her in the chest. “Did you know Sophy well?”
“Sure.” He coasted down the drive. “Jackrabbit Junction isn’t exactly a sprawling metropolis. It doesn’t take long to meet all sixty-seven inhabitants.”
“Was she friendly with you?”
“She was friendly with most everyone, especially if you were a functioning male.” He smirked. “If you know what I mean.”
Dear Lord! The idea of Butch sleeping with Sophy had never crossed Kate’s mind—until now. Her stomach dropped at the thought. She watched a lone poppy bobbing in the wind outside her window. “I didn’t realize you’d, uh, been intimate with her.”
Butch coughed out a loud laugh. “Sex with Sophy? Hell, I’ve never been that desperate.”
Removing her hiking boot from her mouth, she grimaced at him. “Sorry. I thought … Gramps told me Sophy is ‘a looker’.”
“She is easy on the eyes, especially considering she’s pushing sixty and has lived in the desert all of her life.” Butch parked the pickup just outside the gate. “But that doesn’t mean I want to take her to bed. She’s not exactly my type.”
“What kind of woman is your type?” The question slipped off her tongue like it’d been slathered with butter.
Her forehead heated as Butch stared at her.
“Kate Morgan, are you asking what I think you’re asking?”
The wicked gleam in his gaze made Kate’s body hum. She knew better than to get mixed up with yet another man who had a barred window and a urine-stained cot in his future, but that didn’t stop her from fantasizing.
“I’m not sure.” Her voice came out husky sounding.
Butch reached across the cab and captured the tail end of one of her blonde tresses in his fingers.
“Kate,” he whispered.
“Yes?” she whispered back, her limbs heavy with anticipation. The spicy smell of his aftershave drifted over her, making her hungry for more than just sweet-nothings.
“How was your date with Porter the other night?”
She blinked, trying to make sense of his words. “How do you know I went out with Porter?”
“Ruby’s daughter was on the front porch this morning when I came to pick you up.”
Damned Jess and her mouth!
“It wasn’t really a date. Porter is just a friend.”
Butch raised his brows. “So you give goodnight kisses to all of your male friends?”
Shit! Kate had thought she’d seen some movement from the upstairs curtains after waving Porter off. She was going to nail two-by-six boards over Jess’s window.
“No, of course not. Porter is just …” she paused in the midst of explaining that Porter was just a mark that she was playing for Claire’s sake. Claire would kick her ass if Kate leaked any more secrets.
“Porter is just what?” Butch pressed, letting go of her hair and running his finger down her arm, stroking the inside of her wrist.
“He’s just, uh …” she scrambled to come up with an answer, but Butch’s touch had turned her brain to a consistency somewhere between coarse grits and cornmeal mush.
“Yes?” Butch leaned closer, his warm breath bouncing off her cheek as she stared straight ahead.
Kate gulped down a coconut-sized lump in her throat. All she had to do was turn her head and kiss him to find out what he tasted like.
“He’s just what?”
“Using me.”
His finger stilled. “He’s using you? Why?”
“I think he has a thing for Claire.” She tried to be slightly vague in her response to give her wiggle room if it got thrown back at her later.
“So he’s using you to get closer to Claire?”
“Possibly. He’s trying to make her jealous.”
“But isn’t she with Mac?”
“Mostly, and it’s breaking poor Porter’s heart.”
“Mostly? How can you be ‘mostly’ with … Wait, wasn’t she dancing with Porter the other night at the bar?”
“I believe she might possibly have been.” Uh, oh, this little white lie was mushrooming.
“Does Claire know Porter is interested in her?”
Kate hesitated, fanning herself, weighing the possible fall out of however she answered. “Not completely.”
Her forehead practically on fire, she lunged for the door handle, wanting to put some space between her and Butch before she combusted and melted a big hole in his pickup seat.
“I’ll get the gate,” she hollered on her flight out the door.
Cursing at her inability to control her hormones, she kicked aside the rock, pulled the gate closed, and locked the padlock. She needed to come up with another interrogation strategy. Her plan to seduce answers out of Butch kept backfiring in her face.
Butch’s grin greeted her as she climbed into the pickup. “Cute blondes with pink cheeks,” he said as he shifted into gear.
“What about them?” Kate flipped the air conditioning on high and directed the middle two vents toward her face. She glanced in the mirror on the back of her visor and winced. She looked like a red-faced spider monkey.
“They’re my type.” He punched the gas, spewing gravel in their wake. “Buckle up. Things are going to get bumpy from here on out.”
* * *
“What are you going to do about her?” Claire asked Gramps.
She leaned back in Ruby’s leather office chair, which squeaked out its two cents on the subject of Gramps swallowing his pride and crawling back to Ruby on his hands and knees.
“I don’t know.” Gramps paced in front of her. “What do you think? Roses? Chocolate? Jewelry?” He paused to eye the mummified hand sitting on the desktop. “Where do you think Joe got this thing?”
Claire shrugged and took a bite of one of the molasses cookies Ruby had baked earlier in the morning. Gramps needed to fix this mess before Claire grew too big for her britches from all of Ruby’s stress-fueled baking.
“I’m still working on that,” she told him.
“How old do you think it is?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Come on, girl. After all of the college classes you’ve wasted money on you must have an educated guess or two.”
“Well, Mr
. Wise Ass, I have been reading about some of the ancient cultures around this area and I do have some thoughts on the subject—but nothing concrete.”
Gramps stared at her. “And?”
“I’m almost positive it’s older than the Hohokam and Mogollon cultures.”
“You’re speaking to a layman, Professor.”
“Sorry. I’m talking B.C. era here.”
“What makes you think that?”
“The early A.D. cultures cremated their dead. I’m still working on this stick figure piece, though.” She pointed at the sculpture. “Between the library’s Internet time limit and Jess doing my leg work, the research is slow. But yesterday she grabbed some books on ancient cultures that I’m hoping will shed light on the figure or that handmade bag.”
A crooked grin formed on Gramps’s lips. “They still won’t let you in the library, huh?”
“I’m on six months’ probation.”
“You’d better not get Jess in any trouble.”
“How can surfing the Internet get Jess into any trouble?”
“Just talking to you most days can land any poor sucker ass-deep in a rat’s nest.”
“Thanks for the kudos, Gramps. You just better hope I’m not in charge of what words are carved on your tombstone.”
Gramps waved her off and returned to pacing. “So, how am I going to get Ruby to marry me?”
Claire caressed the soft leather of one of the custom-made cowboy boots Gramps had found a half-hour ago (along with a box of expensive cigars) while searching under Ruby’s bed for Henry’s squeaky wiener chew toy. Claire and Harley had come to the same conclusion about the boots and cigars: wedding gifts from Ruby.
“I think you need to start with talking to her. Go somewhere Mom won’t find you and try to interfere. Where’s Ruby right now?”
“She’s running the store.” Gramps snapped his fingers. “I know. I could borrow Carerra’s Airstream for a bit, have him on surveillance duty.”
“Good idea.”
“Better yet, you take your mother to the airport in Tucson and ship her out of here.”
Claire would rather eat a cow pie. “Mom’s afraid to fly.”
She didn’t know why he didn’t just put his foot down and kick her mom’s ass out of Arizona.
“That’s just a ploy so she doesn’t have to travel alone. I’ll call the airlines, see if they have any flights to Rapid City today, and book her a seat.”
Claire figured this idea had about as much of a chance of flying as a one-winged rhino. However, if it would save the wedding, it was worth a try. But she’d be damned if she was going to catch and transport her mother with her sharp talons on her own. “Is Kate back yet?”
“No, but she should be in an hour or so.”
“Wait until she’s here before you say anything to Ruby. Between Kate and me, we can figure out a way to convince Mom to climb on that plane alone.”
“Just tell Deborah I meant what I said last night.” Gramps snapped his fingers again. “That gives me another idea.”
The sound of footfalls on the steps made both of them look at each other.
Claire mouthed, “Mom,” and pretended to zip her lips closed. She dropped the boot in her lap and leaned forward to hide it from view.
Gramps tiptoed out of view from the crack under the door.
Someone knocked lightly on the door.
“Claire?” The door muffled Jess’s voice.
Whew! Just Jess. “Yeah?”
“Can I come in? I need to talk to you.”
Claire raised her eyebrows at Gramps.
“We’ll reconnoiter in an hour.” He pulled open the door.
Jess jumped at the sight of Gramps standing in the doorway. “Oh! Um, hi, Harley. Can I talk to Claire alone for a moment?”
“Sure, kid.” Gramps ruffled Jess’s hair as they switched places.
After shutting the door with a quiet click, Jess leaned against it, her gaze glued to her pink toenails.
Claire slipped the boot next to the other one in the box, then kicked it under the desk.
Lacing her fingers, she rested her arms on the desktop and waited for Jess to speak. When the girl remained silent for several seconds, Claire prodded her. “What’s up, Jess?”
It wasn’t like Jess to be so quiet.
“Mom told me you didn’t tell her my secret.” Jess’s eyes still drilled holes into her toes. “She said she got a call from my dad a couple of weeks ago, and he read her the letter I sent him—the one where I told him I’m moving up there this fall.”
Claire winced. “Wow. That really sucks.”
“Yeah. I can’t believe Mom’s known all of this time and never yelled at me about it.”
Claire could. Ruby was no idiot. She had to handle Jess like old TNT. One wrong word and Jess would blow the roof off the place.
Over the last fifteen years, Jess’s dad had made an ugly habit of stepping on Jess’s heart. From the start, he hadn’t wanted to take responsibility for Jess and only paid child support after Ruby dragged the courts into the ring for a tag-team match and put a Full Nelson on his sorry ass. Now that he had a whole new family, including a couple of kids, he’d added razor wire to the wall he’d built to keep Jess out of his life.
“I’m sorry, Jess.” Claire pushed back from the desk.
Jess shrugged. “It’s no big deal. He just got confused and thought I wanted to live with him again, but I don’t. I’m just going to live in the same town.”
Claire took a breath, releasing it slowly out her mouth. The girl refused to see the truth, and it wasn’t Claire’s job to take off her blinders. “Are you still searching for the money?”
“Yeah. Why? Have you found it?”
“No.”
Jess’s shoulders slumped even lower. “Anyway, I came down here to tell you that I’m sorry I yelled at you and told everyone your secrets. That was really stupid of me. I should have known you wouldn’t blab.”
“No worries, kid.”
“If there is any way I can make it up to you, let me know. I’ll even do your research for free from here on out.”
That was big of Jess, considering she was scrambling for every penny these days. “Cool. Thanks.”
“Just don’t tell Kate. I charged her double the research fee you paid.”
Claire grinned. “I’ll keep my lips sealed if you fill me in about what was on that paper you slipped Kate yesterday after we returned from Yuccaville.”
“Oh, that?” Jess meandered over to the bookcase and pulled out one of Joe’s first editions. “Nothing major. She had me look up Butch in the Yuccaville Yodeler archives. The only thing I could find was a picture of Joe and him.”
“Together?”
Jess nodded, flipping through the book pages, glancing up at Claire. “They teamed up for some kind of fishing contest and won. At least I think that’s why they were holding up all of those dead fish. It was pretty gross.”
Working to keep her face unreadable, Claire smiled blandly. She hadn’t thought about Butch being buddies with Joe, but with Butch being in Jackrabbit Junction for close to a decade, it made sense.
Although Kate probably looked at the picture, added two and two together, and came up with nine again. She just didn’t have good instincts. She never had.
Kate needed to stick to questioning Porter. He was the rotten apple in this bin. Jess’s search for him on the Internet yesterday had turned up absolutely nothing, as in: We did not find results for Porter Banks.
That in itself made Claire’s shooting hand twitchy. Something wasn’t quite right about Porter, and it wasn’t just that his teeth were too white.
“What’s this?” Jess asked, turning the book upside down.
“What’s what?” Claire joined Jess in front of the bookcase, catching the fruity scent of the kid’s perfume—or gum.
“This.” Jess held the book out to Claire.
Claire stared down at the faded, messy pencil scrawls jotted on a y
ellow Post-it, her brow tightening. Those were Joe’s chicken scratches. She’d scrounged through enough bits and pieces of paperwork in his office to know his sloppy slant.
She flipped to the spine … Treasure Island. Her eyes narrowed. This was the book Jess had caught Porter reading.
Turning back to the page with the writing, Claire moved over to the desk and clicked on the lamp. She noted the page number in case it played some significance before pulling the Post-it free, leaving the first edition’s page unmarred.
“What does it say?” Jess whispered when Claire handed the book back to her.
“Claire?” Ruby called from the top of the stair.
Jess froze, giving Claire a “we’re-busted” look.
Cracking open the office door, Claire answered, “Yeah?”
“That damned toilet is floodin’ again. I know you’re busy, but can you run on over there and fix it? I don’t want anybody slipping and breaking a hip.”
“I’m on my way.” Claire pocketed the piece of paper. She’d have to decipher Joe’s hieroglyphics later.
She made a shushing gesture at Jess.
After crossing her heart, Jess followed Claire up the steps.
* * *
Mac opened the General Store’s front door and stepped into the cool interior.
His aunt looked up from the paperback she’d had her nose buried in and smiled wide. “Hey, darlin’. Boy-howdy, am I glad to see you.”
Skirting the counter, she hugged him tight, like he had just returned from the moon. She smelled sweet, like cookies, which explained the white dust on her shoulder.
“Where is everybody?” he asked as she stepped back.
His lunch meeting had been rescheduled at the last minute, so he’d jetted out of work early only to get bogged down in typical Friday traffic, which had thinned to a trickle as soon as he reached the city limits.
As he’d sped over the asphalt toward Jackrabbit Junction, his thoughts had bounced around, from Ruby’s predicament with the Lucky Monk mine to his own sticky situation with Claire, which included dealing with her mother.
“Oh, here and there.” Ruby said, flippantly.
Mac’s stomach growled loud enough to draw his aunt’s gaze. In his haste to get back to Claire, he’d skipped lunch.