The Great Jackalope Stampede (36 page)

“Maybe.” Her answer made everyone except Jess frown in her direction. “What time does the movie start?”

“Eight fifteen, I think.”

“That’s too late for you to be going to a movie on a school night,” Ruby said, beating the hell out of Claire’s eggs in the pan. Today’s special: Eggs—Murdered with a splash of blood and a side of butchered pig.

Claire walked around Mac and gave him a hug from behind, wondering how Manny’s couch in the Airstream had treated him last night. Mac certainly looked well-rested and smelled desert fresh with his hair still damp from the shower. Unlike Claire, who had yet to rinse off the dried beer mess from last night. Silly drunken knucklehead. That was the last time she’d let Ronnie help behind the bar when she was four gin and tonics to the wind.

“Morning, Slugger.” He scooted back and pulled her down on his lap, getting handy under the table until Claire elbowed him. She shot him a warning glance, nodding toward Jess.

Mac shrugged and tried to look down her skull-and-crossbones T-shirt.

“Dad said I could spend the night in his hotel room,” Jess continued. “He has two beds in there, and if I bring a set of clothes, he said he can take me to school in the morning.”

“Oh, he did, did he?” Ruby said through gritted teeth. “He’s fixin’ to be a real standup daddy these days, isn’t he?”

“Yeah.” Jess seemed oblivious to the sound of Claire’s eggs being brutally slashed and slain via blunt force trauma. “That would save us driving back here after the movie and give me an extra half hour to sleep in tomorrow morning before school starts.” Jess slurped on her orange juice. “Can I go, Mom? I promise to go to bed right after the movie is over. Please, please, please?”

“Why don’t we ask Harley what he thinks.” Ruby smacked Gramps’s newspaper with her deadly spatula.

“I’ll finish my homework this morning while working in the store,” Jess added to try to sweeten the deal.

“If Claire goes,” Gramps said from behind the paper, “then Jess can go. But Claire needs to bring her home tonight.”

“But—” Jess started.

Gramps lowered the paper. “Jessica, it’s Sunday. You know the rules about curfew on a school night. If I were you, I’d keep my mouth shut and appreciate that your mother is letting you go when you have a full week of school in front of you.”

Ruby was back to hacking into the eggs, apparently not happy with Gramps’s answer.

Ah, good times with the family, Claire thought and wrapped her arm around Mac’s neck, wiggling her eyebrows at him. “What do you say, McStudly? You want to go watch some vampire zombies tonight with Jess and me and her pop?”

“Please, Mac,” Jess pressed her palms together, begging.

His muscles tightened under Claire and not in the way she preferred. He avoided looking at Jess and picked up his fork. “I’ll think about it.”

Claire kissed him on the smooth-shaven cheek. “How’d you sleep?” While they were discussing sleeping arrangements last night at The Shaft, Manny had offered his couch to Mac along with a promise not to bring any women home, whereas Chester had watched Arlene’s hips as she walked away and given no guarantees.

“Good. I didn’t even hear Manny come in.” Under the table, Mac’s hand crept up her thigh until she clamped her hand down on his fingers.

Mac
, she mouthed, trying to frown, but ruining it when she broke into a grin.

What?
He feigned innocence yet shifted his hips deliberately under her derriere.

“Hey,” Jess said, giving them her version of the stink eye. “If you guys are going to spend the movie sucking face, I’d rather stay home and paint my nails.” She looked over at her mom’s back. “They’re always making out when you guys aren’t looking.”

“As long as they aren’t doing it in my car again,” Gramps said, “I don’t give a rat’s patootie.”

Claire’s cheeks warmed, remembering how close they had come to being caught in the midst of car sex by Gramps and his buddies—twice. She was not going to go for a hat trick on that one. Manny had plans to bring his digital camera along for the next peep show if she did. She knew that old dirty bird well enough to believe him when he said he would post the pictures on the internet, too.

“Stayin’ home to paint your nails sounds like a good idea to me,” Ruby piped in. “I bought ya some new pink polish when I was at Creekside Hardware store the other day.”

Cutting off a square of his omelet, Mac held his forkful of eggs and meat out for Claire. She took him up on the bite, moaning in her throat over the maple cured bacon mixed with melted cheddar cheese. Next to that, her murdered eggs were going to taste like ketchup covered cardboard.

Mac’s hazel eyes were glued to her mouth, watching her chew and then lick her lips. His Adam’s apple bobbed. “Claire,” he paused to clear his throat, “I need you up at the mine with me today.”

Really? That was weird. Last time she had wanted him to take her up there, he had talked her out of it. “I don’t know if I can. We’re doing the final touches on the drywall. I hope to get a layer of primer on some of the walls before I clean up for the movie tonight.”

“I can help you with the drywall and painting,” Mac offered. “Then we can go take a look at things up at the mine.”

Did he mean the Lucky Monk? Where the archaeology crew was snooping around? Maybe he had remembered something suspicious during the night that he needed to tell her in private.

“No.” Gramps’s paper rustled as he folded it and tossed it on the table in front of Mac. “I’ll finish up the sanding and help her with the painting so she can go with you. The new restroom is
my
project.”

Sensing an upcoming pissing match and not wanting to hang around for either male to mark her as his territory, Claire hopped off Mac’s lap and made for the rec room. “I need to talk to Mom quick before breakfast. I’ll be right back.”

She was halfway across the rec room when Ruby called her name.

“Claire, hon. Could you hold up a sec?”

She paused with her foot on the first step and waited for Ruby to join her.

Wiping her hands on a dish towel, Ruby glanced behind her before asking, “Will you do me a favor?”

“Of course,” Claire said, wondering if this were going to be about Jess and her dad or Gramps or all three. “What is it?”

“Your momma’s birthday is comin’ up.”

Oh, shit, that was right. Her mother took to getting older like a cat to a bath. There was always lots of hissing, growling, screeching, bristling hair, and biting—and then her actual birthday arrived.

“Will you order her favorite cake from the grocery store in Yuccaville when you head into town? I’d make the cake from scratch, but she probably would suspect me of fillin’ it with a laxative.” Ruby’s lips curved upward. “And I just might, too, if she was in one of her pissy moods while I was makin’ it.”

Claire squeezed Ruby’s shoulder. “Sure. I’ll order her favorite. That should make her happy for a whole two seconds.”

“Thanks, sweetie.” Ruby glanced once more at the kitchen. “I’d appreciate it if y’all kept quiet about this. Your grandfather thinks I’m a fool for throwin’ her a party.”

Gramps knew his daughter well. He was probably right, but Ruby’s heart was too big for her own good. Claire would join in on the birthday fun, even if she had to get vaccinated for the rabies virus after the party was over.

“My lips are sealed,” Claire said and took the stairs two at a time.

She hesitated outside of her mom’s bedroom door, listening for any sounds coming from inside. Her mother had been very happy last night when Chester and Manny had pretty much carried her out of The Shaft. The sight of her wide smile was as rare as a giant squid sighting, and Claire could not help but gawk as the old boys had fun making her mom laugh.

However, in the light of morning, Claire was ninety-nine percent certain that the Deborah who was crashed on the other side of this door was not nearly as sugar tempered. All Claire needed to do was get a couple of answers about who her mother might have seen down in the office and find out if she had discovered any pieces of extraordinary value in Joe’s collection that Claire had missed. Pieces that Claire should be concerned about someone not-so-nice coming to take back. Then she would head out to start spying on the archaeology crew in between sanding drywall and rolling on primer. Something weird was going on there, especially with those creepy glass eyeballs under the khaki twins’s camper. A box full of eyeballs was no blood-covered weapon, but hiding them like that was definitely not normal behavior.

Claire lifted her knuckles to knock and heard a long, shuddering moan come from the other side of the door. It almost sounded pain-filled. Yep, Deborah was hungover. Rather than provoke her mother with knocking, she grabbed the knob and turned it, quietly pushing the door open.

“Mom? Are you okay?”

She stepped over the threshold and froze at the sight of a bare, hairy male ass smack dab in the middle of the bed. The smell of liquor and sex and something sweet slapped her in the face. Her gaze darted to the bottle of tequila on the nightstand next to a red and white aerosol can of whipped cream and a can of refried beans with a spoon sticking out of it. Her tongue recoiled to the back of her throat.

Holy fuck!

Manny rolled onto his side, the morning sunlight shining through the curtains and spotlighting him. Her mother popped up next to him like a whack-a-mole. She grasped the sheet and pulled it up over her naked chest. “Claire,” she gasped. “You should have knocked!”

“OH! MY! GOD!” Claire yelled, stumbling backward out into the hall.

“
Hijo de puta
,” Manny cursed, starting to stand up. The sheet slid down below his navel. Way below, the image burning into the backs of her eyes.

With a screech, Claire grabbed the doorknob and yanked the door closed. The scene she had witnessed replayed in her head in high definition. The memory of the smells and that can of refried beans made her stomach heave and buck. She covered her mouth.

“Oh, shit, no!” She stumbled down the hall to the bathroom and upchucked her blueberry pastry into the sink.

* * *

Ronnie stumbled out of the Skunkmobile, shielding herself from the mid-morning sunlight. She needed Manny’s sombrero to block the UV rays that were passing right through her cheap sunglasses and stabbing her behind the eyes with sharp sticks.

She kept her head down as she passed in front of the archaeology crew’s campers. Several of them were sitting outside at a cluster of picnic tables, sorting, sifting, and brushing off their finds or pieces or whatever they called them. She wondered why they weren’t up at the mine, but then remembered it was Sunday, their sort-of day off. Most of them still made the climb to the mine on Sundays from what she had witnessed in the past, but some stayed at the R.V. park and enjoyed a more relaxed schedule.

The two ladies whose camper had the box of eyeballs tucked under the back bumper were lounging in lawn chairs under their awning. One of them waved at Ronnie. Ronnie waved back, wondering if either or both of them knew the box was there, or if someone else had stuck it there for safe hiding, like what she had done with the watch. In their matching khakis, photographer vests, and safari hats, they seemed friendly enough to be selling Girl Scout cookies. Could Claire be right in suspecting them of something dark and menacing?

The smell of sausage cooking at one of the fire grates made her nauseated. She had overmedicated with gin last night. During the wee hours, her stomach had waged a rebellion, but this morning she had managed to keep it all down with the help of some antacids on top of a glass of baking soda and water. By no means was she up for a breakfast buffet though. Even a dry piece of bread made her mouth water like she was about to imitate Mount St. Helens.

It was a good thing Grady had left when he had. If he’d stayed, she might have done something she really regretted,
besides
making a super huge ass of herself by almost kissing him. The lack of his star and uniform had thrown her off. She needed to remember that he was the law, cast from the same mold as those who had torn her world to shreds, smirking all the while.

After Grady had disappeared, she had returned to the bar and allowed Claire to refill her glass. That last one was the clincher, finally pushing her beyond the ability to think at any level deeper than a mud puddle. It floated her away from all thoughts of her mother’s forked tongue, her ex-husband’s lies, and Sheriff Harrison’s all-knowing eyes.

The dry grass crunched under her feet as she detoured off the gravel road and cut through a few empty campsites toward the front of the General Store. Sun dappled shadows danced under the old cottonwoods as a comfortable breeze rippled through the R.V. park.

At some point last night, she remembered dancing with a cowboy who had looked vaguely familiar at the time. Actually, it was more like she had stumbled about, tripping over her own boots, while he held her up. She couldn’t quite remember his face, only that his breath smelled minty and his eyes were light, light green. Oh, and he kept giving her weird advice about how to take better care of herself. The oddest thing was a warning that he made her repeat several times: “Watch out for the husky and the polar bear.”