by Ann Charles
Deborah trailed him into the kitchen, her gaze steadily northward, two rosy spots dotting her cheeks. Chiggers were less irritating.
“Well, you should care.” Deborah’s said. “You’re the one who told her you love her.”
Mac froze, coffee pot in mid-air. Christ! Had Claire bought a one-page ad in the Yuccaville Yodeler? Everyone around here knew that he’d told her how he felt.
“Now she has it in her head that I’m out to run her life when all I’m trying to do is steer her in the right direction,” Deborah continued.
Filling his coffee cup to the rim, Mac rolled his eyes. “Maybe she doesn’t need anyone steering her anywhere. She is old enough to make her own decisions, you know.”
He gulped several swallows of the black liquid.
“Mornin’, Mac.” Jess bounced into the kitchen, bopping to some tune only she could hear. “You forgot your pants,” she added, giggling as she opened the fridge, and grabbed the pitcher of orange juice.
“Claire always has and always will need guidance.” Deborah frowned at Jess as the teenager twirled around with the glass pitcher in her hand. “She floats on the wind, drifting here and there, unable to settle down and make something of her life.”
Mac took another gulp of coffee to bide some time and form a reply that didn’t involve swearing or shouting. How could she be so oblivious of how insulting she was to her own flesh and blood?
“Until you came along, I was making progress on getting Claire to toe the line.”
Mac slammed his cup down on the counter harder than he’d intended, coffee sloshing over the rim onto the yellow Formica top. “Whose line, Deborah? Yours?”
Her chin lifted. “Of course. I know what’s best for her.”
“Isn’t it time you stop trying to live vicariously through your daughters and focus on fixing your own mess?”
Deborah’s eyes widened, her cheeks reddening even more.
Jess placed the orange juice on the table and dropped into a kitchen chair, watching the jousting match.
“Fixing my mess? I don’t know what you mean.”
Mac crossed his arms. “Really? Oh, right, that’s because you’ve been so set on interfering with everyone else’s business around here, trying to control everything down to who shares whose bed, and making everyone miserable in the process.”
“Control everything …” Deborah repeated, sputtering. Her breath came in huffs, the tendons standing out in her neck above the strand of pink pearls resting on her collarbone. “You’re one to talk, Mr. Garner! Claire said the only reason you told her you love her is because you want to control her.”
“What?” Mac took a step back. Deborah’s words hit him like a sucker-punch below the navel. She had to be making that up. “I don’t believe Claire really said that.”
Her face pinched, Deborah snorted. “Well, she did, and that makes you a hypocrite.”
Speechless, Mac stared into Deborah’s kohl-lined eyes. Claire wouldn’t have said that, would she? No. Or would she? And if so, why would she run and tell her mother, of all people, her feelings rather than come to him? It didn’t make sense.
He shoved away from the counter. “Stay away from me, Deborah.”
Fists clenched, he strode out of the kitchen, away from the frosty bitch.
“I’m not done talking to you!” Deborah followed on his heels as he headed for the bathroom.
“Yes, you are!” Mac kept his head down. He hastened his pace, grateful for the lock on the bathroom door.
“What are you going to do about Claire?” she asked.
“I can’t see where that is any of your business.”
“Of course it’s my business, especially when her bad influence is affecting Kate’s future.”
Mac walked into the bathroom and slammed the door shut behind him, twisting the lock on the knob.
“If anyone back home catches wind of this,” Deborah hollered through the door, “Kate’s chance of landing a job as a principal at a good school is history.”
What? The woman was talking in tongues. Mac unlocked the door and yanked it open. “What in the hell are you talking about now?”
“I’m talking about my daughters spending the night in jail all because Claire coerced Kate to break into that bartender’s house.”
Mac blinked several times, speechless yet again.
Then he slammed the door in Deborah’s face.
The world had gone mad.
* * *
Claire raced down the basement steps. After Kate’s admission to their mom of total responsibility for their rendezvous at Butch’s place, Claire wasn’t going to wait around to see what else her mom might try to blame on her instead.
After the last twelve hours of jail cell merriment, followed by Chester and Manny’s slammer-jam, comedy road show, and then Deborah’s dance of the ass-flogging fairies, Claire wanted to hide under Joe’s desk for the rest of the day.
She shoved open the office door and stopped short at the sight of Mac sitting behind the desk, pouring over a map that spilled across the desktop.
He looked up. The frown wrinkling his brow deepened.
“Hi, stranger.” Claire’s shoulders relaxed at the sight of him. She’d missed him, and if he didn’t mind her prison-issued, Pepé Le Pew eau de perfume, she’d like to show him just how happy she was to see him.
He leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest. “So, is it true that everybody in the whole cell block was dancing to the jailhouse rock? Or were Kate and you the only jailbirds wiggling your tail feathers last night?”
“Cute. You should go on tour with Manny and Chester.”
She closed the door and sauntered over to the desk in her best attempt at a sexy stroll down the catwalk.
The map on the desk caught her eye. “Is that the Lucky Monk mine?” She cocked her head to the side as she stared down at the map.
“It sure is.” A frown still creased his forehead as he stared up at her.
Claire wiped the back of her hand across her mouth, wondering if she had MoonPie crumbs on her face.
“What?” She took a step back from the map. “Why are you giving me that look?”
“What look would that be?”
“Your old-time-western, gun-slinging outlaw, ‘I’m-pissed-as-hell’ glare. Landing in jail wasn’t my fault, you know.”
“Really?”
She nodded. “Kate tricked me into taking her to Butch’s house. She’s the one who broke the window in Butch’s garage.” Claire crammed her hands in her back pockets. “Sure, if you want to get technical, I was the one who actually broke into Butch’s greenhouse. But I had to, or Kate was going to ruin the door jamb with a screwdriver.”
Mac’s lips twitched, but the thunderclouds still hovered over his eyebrows. “You spending the night in jail is not what has me ‘pissed as hell’ with you right now.”
“Oh.” Claire chewed the inside of her lip, replaying the last twenty-four hours to figure out what she’d done wrong. Then she remembered the incident on the way to the tool shed yesterday while trying to fix that damned toilet.
“If this is about the little accident I had with your cell phone, your warranty probably covers theft.”
Mac sat forward. “Accident?”
“Yep, an accident.” She tried to chuckle, but it came out sounding like a hyena. “What was I supposed to do? I needed to get into the shed and that damned rattler wouldn’t budge. If only my aim had been a little better.”
“You threw my GPS-enabled cell phone at a snake?”
Claire nodded. “The Twinkies were too soft to do any damage. How was I to know the snake would actually eat the thing? I told you not to get one of those super slim phones. It was only a matter of time until somebody lost it.”
“Or somebody fed it to a snake.”
“Exactly.” Moving back to the map, she pointed at a section he’d circled in pencil. “What’s this?”
“It’s where I found the dead man,” Ma
c said, matter-of-factly. “The phone is not why I’m pissed at you, Claire.”
“What dead man?” She gaped at him, wondering if she’d heard him right.
A vein next to his eye pulsed. “Some things are meant to remain private.”
Shit. She sighed. Kate must have run her mouth about Joe and his Kodak moments.
Claire had spent several hours during her long night behind bars trying to tie those pictures in with Joe’s other not-so-legal hobby and had come up with zilch. If whatever waited in that post office box didn’t offer some answers to all of her questions, she’d be hanging up her magnifying glass and trench coat and taking up crocheting.
“I didn’t mean for anyone to see the naked pictures of Joe and all of those women. I promise; nobody is going to say a thing to Ruby about them.” Especially not her. Ruby had had her heart broken enough times by Joe over the last year.
Mac sat frowning for a moment in silence. “What naked pictures?”
Crap. “You mean you don’t know about the pictures?”
“Not a clue, until now.”
“Criminy! Then why are you mad at me? And what do you mean you found a dead man? Freshly dead?” The image of Flint’s pointer popped into her brain. “Or is it a skeleton?” she whispered, leaning over the map, her pulse speeding up.
“It’s mostly a skeleton.” Mac stood and rolled up the map.
Claire stepped back as though her hands had been smacked.
“Okay, spill.” She’d been hit with enough of his frowns this morning.
“You told your mother that I said ‘I love you.’”
“Oh, right, that.” Claire grimaced.
“Yes, that.” He tapped the rolled-up map against the desktop. “Why did you tell her?”
“I didn’t exactly ‘tell’ her.”
He lifted an eyebrow.
“Not on purpose, anyway.”
“Damn it, Claire.” He yanked open one of the desk drawers and pulled out a rubber band. “Is nothing I say in the bedroom sacred to you? Everyone in this whole fucking house knows now.”
“Not everyone,” Claire lied before she could bite her tongue. If only Mac would just start yelling or throwing things like the rest of her family. This quiet, calm rage made her feel off kilter, like a moose on ice.
“Oh, really? Who hasn’t heard the news?”
Claire gulped, choking on her lie. “Ummm, Henry.”
“That’s not funny.”
“Mac, I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, I am, too.” He snapped the rubberband around the map. “Sorry I ever told you how I felt. I should have known you’d make a joke of it, just like everything else in life that makes you uncomfortable.” He walked past her.
What? Wait! “Where you going?” She caught his arm.
“Anywhere but here.” He pulled free and grabbed the doorknob, then paused, his head lowered. “I’ve been thinking. Maybe you should move out for a while.”
Dumbstruck, Claire stood there trying to find her breath while a tornado ripped through her. He was kidding, right?
“I’d hate for you to continue suffering under my controlling personality.” He glanced back at her, his jaw taut. “I’m sure Ruby would like to have your help here full-time now that she has a husband to occupy her time.”
He opened the door.
“Hi, Mac.” Jess stood at the foot of the steps, her hand in the air, ready to knock.
“Hey, Jess.” He ruffled her hair, but the gesture looked stiff.
Jess peered around Mac. “Claire, Porter’s here to see you.”
“Me?” Claire’s voice squeaked. “Don’t you mean Kate?”
Mac stepped to the side to allow Jess into the room.
“Nope. Just you.”
Claire stared at Mac’s back as he started up the steps. What did he mean by his “controlling personality”? He was the first guy to come into her life who hadn’t tried to slip a collar and leash on her and chain her to one place.
“You must be great at snogging,” Jess continued, totally clueless, “because ever since you kissed Porter, he doesn’t want anything to do with Kate. I want to learn how to kiss like that.”
Alarms blared in Claire’s ears. Mac stopped halfway up the steps, his body visibly flinching. Then he shook his head and climbed out of sight, two steps at a time.
Jess danced over to Claire. The kid’s cheeks glowed, her eyes wide. “I found the money,” she whispered.
“Money?” Claire echoed, still shell-shocked from Mac’s suggestion. Did he really want her to move out?
“Yeah, my money. You know, the dough Ruby was hiding.”
Blindly, she stared down at Jess. Claire’s heart twisted, her stomach cramping. She didn’t want to live somewhere else.
“I’m thinking that I’ll leave before Mom gets back. It’ll be easier that way.”
Stumbling sideways, Claire dropped into Joe’s chair. Nobody had warned her that the sky would be falling today. She needed a cigarette. No, make that a pack of them.
“But first—” Jess started.
“Claire!” Chester yelled from the top of the steps.
She jerked back to the present. “What?”
“Get your ass up here! That toilet in the men’s room is overflowing again, and some old geezer slipped on the floor and hurt his hip.”
“God dammit!” Claire slammed her fist on the desktop.
Chapter Twenty
“Are you sure you don’t want to go to the hospital, Manny?” Claire asked.
“Sí, querida.” Manny smiled at her as Porter towed him out from between the toilet and wall partition where he’d ended up wedged after he fell. “It’s just a bruise. I’ll be back to sowing my wild oats in no time.”
Chester snorted. “What wild oats? Your crop has been frozen in a mid-winter blizzard for the last twenty years.”
As Manny limped out of the stall, using Porter’s arm for support, Claire backed out of the way, her hands ready to help.
Jess sat on the counter between the two sinks. “Phew!” She pinched her nostrils closed. “It sure stinks in here.”
Porter glanced at Jess. “Will you get the door, Jessica?” Sweat spotted his gray T-shirt.
In spite of the fan sucking in air through the open window, humidity had transformed the room into a Turkish bathhouse. Outside, the noontime sun scorched the topsoil into a hot, crusty coating. A doozy of a monsoon loomed on the southwestern horizon, its tell-tale bloated clouds swelled before the eye. Helios had thrown Southeastern Arizona in a microwave and hit High.
Sweat rolled down Claire’s spine, tickling. “Take him to Ruby’s,” she told Porter. “He can wash up in her tub.”
Porter nodded as he led Manny toward the door. “You feel up to a short hike?”
“Sure. Just don’t go too fast. We’ll be passing by Rebecca’s R.V. on the way, and she may feel like playing Florence Nightingale if she sees I’m injured.”
Claire chuckled under her breath. For the first time since she’d raced into the men’s room and found Manny on the floor next to the toilet with his pants soaked from the water spilling over the rim, the worry squeezing Claire’s lungs loosened its hold.
Chester moved up beside Manny, offering his shoulder as another crutch. When Manny waved him off, Chester’s eyes narrowed. “Quit being such a hard ass, Carrera.”
“You just want to steal the show and play the superhero in front of those two stacked señoritas parked next door.”
“Just use my shoulder, you rotten geezer.”
As Manny touched Chester’s shoulder, he wrinkled his nose. “You’re all sweaty.”
“Yeah, well, you smell like piss,” Chester said as they shuffled toward Jess and the open door.
“Maybe I can convince Rebecca to come along and sponge me off.”
Chester’s laughter trailed after the three stooges as they escaped into the blistering sunshine.
After sending Jess to the supply room for a mop and bucket, Claire sc
anned the flooded floor. She gave up. The toilet had won. She waded through the mess, slipped into the stall, and shut off the water supply at the valve.
The only thing left to do was post an Out of Order sign on the stall door and call in a professional. But she’d leave the latter task to Ruby, who’d phoned last night and told Deborah she’d be home in two days, in time for Jess’s sixteenth birthday. Claire couldn’t wait to hand back the reins.
The clatter of the mop bucket on the concrete floor announced Jess’s return. “I grabbed the bleach, too,” she said as Claire exited the stall.
“Thanks.” Grabbing the mop, Claire set to work pushing the excess water toward the floor drain in the center of the room. The reward of an ice cold Corona with a hint of lime juice drove her onward while sweat poured down her arms and dripped from the tip of her nose.
Jess’s chatter about all of the nail polish and lip gloss she planned to buy with “her” money droned into a high-pitched hum while Claire tried to figure out what had pushed Mac over the edge. There had to be more to it than just Deborah knowing he’d uttered those three words.
She gritted her teeth. What had possessed her mother to raise that subject with Mac anyway? It’s not like they were even on speaking terms most days.
“… that gold you found?” Jess’s question cut through Claire’s ruminating.
“What?” Claire stood up straight and stretched her back.
“I asked what you’re gonna to do with that gold you found.”
“Give it to your mom.”
Her stomach churned a bit at that thought since it would probably involve showing Ruby where Jess found the gold and lying by omission about Joe’s porn pictures.
“That’s good, I guess. Mom could sure use the money to keep this place going.”
Now was as good a time as any to call Jess’s bluff. Claire leaned on the mop handle. “What do you care if she keeps this place going or not? You’re not going to be around anymore after tomorrow, right?”
“Tomorrow?” The word came out sounding like a croak, as if Jess had swallowed a bullfrog.
“You said you plan on leaving before Ruby gets home.”