The Great Jackalope Stampede (45 page)

In her experience, college boys wanted to do a lot more than kissing. Hell, even high school boys got bored with the light touching according to Claire and Katie. They had both explored the opposite sex more in depth from the start compared to Ronnie, who had waited until college to jump into sex. After saying goodbye to her virginity, she’d had two milquetoast monogamous relationships in her twenties before meeting and settling down with Lyle. Maybe if she’d been a little more curious about men before getting married, like Claire and Katie had been, she might not have been fooled so easily by Lyle’s charm.

She folded a pair of Claire’s jeans. On the other hand, her marriage had taught her some important lessons. The next time she got involved with a man—IF there was a next time—she would not be so naïve. The home video of her satisfying her own needs in what she thought was the privacy of her bedroom flashed through her head, lighting a fire in her chest all over again. Not so damned stupid either. If the sex sucked from the get-go, she was out the door.

“He asked me to come visit him in Tucson after they finish at the dig site.” Jessica sat up and crossed her legs pretzel-like, looking every bit of her sixteen young years. “Do you think Mom will let me go?”

Hell no.
“I don’t know. You’ll have to ask.”

“She probably won’t. I don’t think she likes him much. But Dad might let me go.” Jessica sighed. “Wouldn’t it be awesome if I could go see him at the next dig site Dr. García has lined up for them during my spring break? It’s somewhere down in Mexico in April, I think.” She blew a bubble. “A week in the jungle would be so romantic.”

Romantic? A Mexican jungle full of mosquitoes and snakes and who knew what other icky things? Ronnie would rather spend a week alone on a lifeboat with her mother and a German U-boat commander.

“He said most of the crew will be going down there, even the volunteers. Hey, I could sign up to be a …”

Carrying the stack of Claire’s jeans and shorts over to the closet, Ronnie nodded her head, tuning out Jessica’s voice. Claire kept a stash of clothes at the R.V. park now permanently. Ronnie debated on emptying out her luggage and settling in, too. Jessica hadn’t made her choice about staying with her mom yet, but Ronnie was getting sick of living out of her suitcase.

Screw it, she thought, and pulled out her luggage, dumping it on the bed next to Jessica.

“Now that you don’t have a job or a husband,” Jessica said, “you should volunteer to work on a dig site. You may not make any money, but you get to travel and eat for free. You could be like those two old ladies who keep bugging me to help.”

Ronnie thought about walloping Jessica upside the head to see if it stopped the stupid shit from pouring out of her mouth. Instead, she unzipped her bag, shaking out a blouse and hanging it in the closet. That one would need ironing again. “Jessica, I highly doubt they are doing this for free.”

“They are.”

Ronnie paused. Traveling around to different dig sites would be the perfect opportunity for a woman on the run. She wondered how much education and experience was necessary to be hired to help chart their finds and do whatever other busy work was required. Would she be qualified?

“There must be a little money in it for them, Jessica.”

“I don’t think so. My boyfriend said they were down in Mexico at some Maya site before they came up here. He said they are like a traveling circus group that way.”

Ronnie pulled out one of her knit skirts, brushing off a layer of dust that had somehow gotten inside her suitcase. The desert had to get its dirty fingerprints on everything down here. “Even traveling circus groups make a little money.”

“He said they pay their own way, insisting the university uses their funding on the students and dig site stuff. It’s even their own camper. The only thing the university pays for is their campsite.”

How could those two afford to travel all over the place without making a dime for their efforts? Had they come from money? Were they widows living on their dead husbands’ retirement funds?

It was too bad Lyle hadn’t kicked the bucket. Although that life insurance he claimed to have was probably just another work of fiction. Oh, wait, she wasn’t even his real wife, so the money wouldn’t have gone to her anyway. Damn, so much for putting a contract on his head while he was serving time.

“He said they live up in Sedona in a huge, fancy house they are having totally remodeled while they travel.” Jessica lay back and stared up at the Skunkmobile’s ceiling. “I wish we had a fancy house in Sedona. I hear it’s really cool up there.”

Ronnie had heard that, too. It was also expensive as hell according to that real estate channel her mother kept watching on Ruby’s television. The housing prices were some of the highest in the state.

She unzipped the flap of the inside pocket in her luggage where she kept her jewelry. Opening her purse, she fished out the bracelets that Aunt Millie had refused this morning.

“What’s that?” Jessica asked, rolling over to get a closer look at Ronnie’s jewelry. “Can I see them?”

“Sure. There are more in that pocket. Have at it.”

Scooping up a stack of her shirts, she took them over to the closet and made room for them next to Claire’s stuff.

“Ew!” Jessica said. “Why do you have an eyeball in with your stuff?”

Crap. Ronnie had spaced on that darn eyeball. She took it from Jessica and palmed it. “It’s a good luck charm,” she lied.

“That’s just weird.”

“So is a dead rabbit’s foot.”

“My boyfriend has a lucky beer bottle cap on his key chain.”

Ronnie was liking this boy less and less the more Jessica talked. She rolled the eyeball around in her palm, warming up the glass, noticing a ridge on the surface.

“He asked me to wear his college ring.” Jessica slid on Ronnie’s zirconia studded ring Lyle had given her after coming home from a business trip to Florida. “But I told him that my mom would totally freak out if I did.”

Jessica was probably right. A ring meant commitment.

She rubbed the pad of her thumb over the ridge on the eyeball again, noticing something scratchy on it.

“Is this a real diamond?” Jessica asked.

“No.” Ronnie opened her palm and took a closer look at the eyeball. The ridge was chipped.

“It sure looks real.”

“I know.” Ronnie had certainly been duped by Lyle and his fancy ring.

She scraped her fingernail along the ridge. Claire was wrong. She’d thought they were glass eyeballs. But would a glass eyeball have a scratchy ridge like this? Ronnie remembered one of those Antique Roadshow episodes she had watched with her mom about an antique doll. Hadn’t the buyer told that lady the best doll eyes were made of blown glass?

This must be made of something else. The workmanship on it was not as detailed as the doll’s on that show. The irises looked pretty real, but there were no red veins.

“What are you doing?” Jessica sat up and moved next to Ronnie.

“Trying to figure out what this is made of.”

“Where did you get it?”

“It was given to me as a gift.” Sort of.

“If you aren’t too stuck on it, you could break it open.”

She stared at Jessica’s freckled face. What would Claire say when she found out Ronnie had broken the eyeball? Maybe she need never know. Ronnie could always go get another one from the box under the khaki ladies’ camper without Claire ever knowing.

Besides, after hearing that the camper had been down in Mexico recently, Ronnie had an idea about the eyeball. During all of those years stuck in a lonely marriage, she had often watched romantic movies while left on her own for much too long. One of her favorites was
Romancing the Stone
, with Michael Douglas acting as her inspiration for her one-on-one moments with Raphael, her now-famous vibrating pal.

“Grab that hammer out of Claire’s tool belt,” she told Jessica, moving over to the desk. She knocked the pile of clean underwear and socks onto the floor.

Jessica handed her the hammer. “You’re really going to smash it?”

“Sure. Why not?” The ridge on the eyeball kept it from rolling off the desk. Ronnie shielded her eyes with her left arm and swung with her right.

There was a crunching sound that was definitely not glass shattering.

Ronnie stared down at the smashed eyeball. “Damn,” she whispered. “Would you look at that.”

Jessica reached out and knocked aside the pieces of ceramic. “Is
that
a real diamond?”

Picking up the tiny, cool stone and holding it up to the light coming through the bedroom window, Ronnie frowned. “God, I hope not. Because if it is, we’ve got a big problem.”

* * *

Claire had a big problem.

She was stuck in the bottom of a mine shaft with a dead woman floating face down in the water next to her. At least she was pretty sure she was dead. The beam of light shining down from the flashlight Mac was still dangling overhead shed plenty of light for Claire to see that there was no sign of life in her body.

“Claire?” Mac yelled down, his voice tense. “Claire, are you okay?”

She coughed, sputtering in the mineral laden water. “I think so,” she called and dog-paddled over to where the ladder rose out of the water.

Her whole body trembling, she placed her feet on a rung and willed her legs to hold her weight. She climbed out of the cold pool, which turned out to be only about ten feet deep judging from the length of time it took her to reach the surface again after shoving off from the bottom.

“What happened?” Mac asked.

“She fell on me and knocked me into the water.”

The body floated toward her, like it wanted to come, too. Claire didn’t want to touch it, but she had to be sure the woman was dead. Catching the wrist, she pulled it up and checked for life. The woman’s hand flopped limp, her skin cold to the touch. There was no pulse.

Tremors racked Claire, her own pulse fluttering on wings of panic. She sucked in several breaths, swallowing the fear climbing up from her chest.

“Are you swimming in the water or can you climb out on the ladder?”

“I’m on the ladder.”

She poked the woman’s body in the ribcage, double-checking for any reaction. It floated over to the wall, bounced off, and came back toward her. She climbed several more rungs up the ladder to get away from it.

“You have to stay out of the water or hypothermia will send you into shock.”

“Good to know. Exactly how long were you thinking I was going to hang out down here, because I’m thinking I need to get the hell out of here
now
!”

“I have to run to my pickup.”

“I’m sorry, but I could swear you just said you have to leave me stuck down here with a dead body and go down to your truck.” Claire used the toe of her tennis shoe to push the body away from her again.

“Are you sure she’s dead?”

“She’s been floating face-down since we popped up.”

“Can you turn her over?”

Can I turn her over?
“I’m not flipping goddamned pancakes down here!”

“Claire.” His voice was steady, strong. “You have to keep calm.”

She sighed. It came out ragged. “I can try to turn her, but it’s fucking cold down here.” She climbed back down the ladder, close enough to snag the body with her foot. Latching one arm around a rung, she grabbed the wet, khaki vest and tried to lift the woman to turn her face up. Claire’s wet arm slipped, almost dumping her back in the water on top of the body.

“I can’t do it, Mac,” she hollered up.

He didn’t reply.

“I can’t see my own lips, but twenty bucks says they are pretty freaking blue right now. If I go back in that water, I’m not sure I’ll make it out again.” Maybe she was exaggerating a little, but she wasn’t going to go swimming with a corpse unless there was a really damned good reason.

“Okay. Try to conserve your body heat.”

“Throw down my spare parka, please.” She took a deep breath, trying to slow her shivers. “Can’t you use the rope the flashlight is hanging from to get me out of here?”

“There’s no way it will hold your weight.”

“Is that a crack about my MoonPie addiction?”

“No, Slugger. You know how much I love your curves.”

“Good save. Get me out of here and I’ll reward you with the best sex you’ve ever had.”

“Even the kinky stuff?” She could hear the laughter in his voice.

“Especially the kinky stuff.”

“Damn. I’ll be back before you can change your mind. Stay put.”

“Where in the hell do you think I’m gonna go?” she called up, but he didn’t reply.

Mac was gone.

She was alone with a dead woman.

Claire stood there shivering, watching the body, waiting for the woman to turn into some sort of zombie and start reaching up the ladder for her feet.

When that didn’t happen, she spent a couple of minutes having a grand ol’ pity party. When the party ended, she climbed up closer to the flashlight, snagging it, and struggled with Mac’s knot. Her cold fingertips were stinging by the time it finally came free.

After inspecting the broken ladder above her and figuring out the safest path through the tangled mess, Claire shined the light down into the pool. Enough time had passed that the ripples had dissipated, leaving still, mostly clear water with a few murky spots.