Jackrabbit Junction Jitters (42 page)

She scanned the print, finding the news about the Copper
Snake Mining Company now trading on the New York Stock Exchange, along with
details on the company’s profits for the last few quarters, all quite boring
after Joe’s X-rated exhibit.

Another piece of paper showed the lovely Bianca Rensberg
sitting in front of a handful of little kids, reading a Dr. Seuss book as they
stared up at her.

The next article covered the history of the Copper Snake
Mining Company, with a picture of three generations of Rensbergs standing in
front of the company’s office building. Richard the second was there, along
with the young boy from the parade picture. An old man with a handlebar
moustache stood next to them—the first Richard Rensberg, according to the
caption.

Claire stuffed the papers back in the package, noticing
something squishy in the bottom of it. She fingered past the papers, touched
something satiny, and weeded it out.

Red panties.

“Ew!” She dropped them like they were alive and wriggling.

As she squatted next to them, she’d realized she’d seen
those panties before in one of the pictures—Joe had been removing them from the
blonde with his teeth.

Shuddering, she used a pair of scissors to lift the satin
undies for a closer inspection without touching them. Joe must have kept them
as some kind of memento, the sick bastard.

“There you are,” Porter said from the end of the aisle.

Claire squeaked in surprise, teetered off balance, and fell
onto her ass. Luckily, her back blocked the panties from Porter’s view.

She managed to stuff them back in the package before he saw
them. “I thought you were going to wait in the pickup.”

“You’ve been gone for ten minutes. I came to see what
happened to you.” Porter eyed the package. “Did you find what you were looking
for?”

She’d found way more than that.

“Uh, yeah.” She glanced toward the front of the store. “I’m
ready if you are.”

She wanted to get back to Ruby’s and lock herself in Joe’s
office while she took a closer look at the package’s contents. Why had it been
locked up in a post office box for years?

Porter nodded at the package she held against her chest. “You
want me to carry that for you?”

“No!” She clutched it tighter, then smiled, every centimeter
of it as fake as her mother’s hair color. “I mean, no thanks. It’s not heavy.”

As Claire crossed the parking lot under the wilting heat,
movement across the street in The Shaft’s parking lot caught her attention. She
watched as Butch crawled out of his pickup with a briefcase in hand. He walked
around the back bumper and opened the passenger door.

A brunette in a pair of pink cowboy boots, Daisy Duke
shorts, and a white halter top crawled out of the cab. A wide smile on her
face, she draped her arm around Butch’s waist. Side by side they strolled
around the back of the bar.

Who in the hell was that? A girlfriend?

Poor Kate. This was going to burn, no matter how much she
denied her feelings for Butch.

“Claire?” Porter hesitated at his door.

Shrugging off the veil of bewilderment, she reached for the
pickup’s door handle.

She had a mystery to figure out, a boyfriend to win back,
and an R.V. park to run. This was no time to get mired in another one of Kate’s
messes.

“Let’s go.”

* * *

Mac’s stomach growled as he stood at the base of the rock
pile, catching his breath. The beef jerky he’d gobbled up a short time ago had
barely eased the panging in his gut. But until he knew for certain that he
would be seeing the sun again, he needed to save his food.

He glanced at his watch—three-thirty.

Sweat soaked his T-shirt, the wet cotton clinging to his
skin. He’d busted through the rubble a half hour ago, and then cleared a
V-sized slit along the left wall wide enough to slip through.

It was time to find out why there was air movement on the
other side, and why someone had boarded up this section of the tunnel.

He squeezed through the slit, slipped his pack over his
shoulders, and shifted his duffel to his left hand. Adjusting the Smith and
Wesson in his waistband, he inched along the tunnel, which narrowed quickly.
Less effort had gone into carving out this part of the tunnel for some reason.

The ceiling suddenly lowered ahead, forcing him to hunch.
Around the next bend was another bend, and then another, until he lost count.

His lower back began to throb from stooping, his shoulders
scraped walls closing in on him. His stomach growled with enough gusto to wake
the dead man sleeping off eternity behind him.

Mac rounded yet another bend and slowed as the walls and
ceiling drew together ahead, leaving just a narrow rectangle carved out of the
rock. The tunnel breathed around him, the air still musty, but alive with dust
particles.

He slipped off his pack and slid along the walls, the rocks
scratching him as he inched between them.

A strip of blackness loomed ahead, so dark his light didn’t
even pierce it. He took a deep breath and stepped into the darkness.

Only the darkness turned out to be a cavernous room, so large
that it swallowed his light. Pulling his flashlight from his pocket, he shined
it across the room.

Rudimentary paintings covered the opposite wall halfway to
the ceiling.

Rocks clattered behind him. He turned, his light pointed at
the floor where he expected to see a critter.

Instead, he found a pair of dusty black cowboy boots.

He jerked his flashlight upward, and coughed in surprise. “What
in the hell are
you
doing here?”

Then pain exploded from the side of his head and someone flicked
off the lights.

Kate chanced a glance away from the wet road in front of her
to frown across the old Ford’s front seat at her sister. “What did you just
mumble?”

“I didn’t mumble,” Claire yelled to Kate over the hammering
of rain on the pickup’s metal roof. “I said I still think this is a bad idea.”

Kate’s grip on the steering wheel tightened as she fought
the urge to reach over and flick Claire’s ear.

It was the second time Claire had voiced her lack of support
for Kate’s plan since they’d left Ruby’s not five minutes earlier.

“And as I told you the first time you said that,” Kate
yelled back, “I’ll be careful. Contrary to what everyone around here thinks, I’m
a perfectly good driver.”

Dime-sized raindrops smacked against the windshield,
blurring the road and surrounding valley under the afternoon gloom. The monsoon
that had been brewing on the horizon since before lunch had finally graced
Jackrabbit Junction with its presence a half hour ago, dispensing rations of
billowing winds, fierce lightning, and curtains of rain that had soaked
everything below. With the dark clouds blocking out the sun, it looked more
like twilight than just four o’clock.

“I’m not talking about your driving. I’m talking about you
bursting in on Butch right now. Maybe you should sleep on this.”

“You, of all people, think I should sleep on this? Aren’t
you the same girl who on a whim streaked buck-naked across our high school
stage during
The Taming of the Shrew?
”

“I was making a political statement about women’s rights.
Quit trying to change the subject. This is a different situation. There’s
something you don’t know about Butch.”

Kate did a double-take. “You’ve got to be kidding me. Now
you’re going to start spouting conspiracy theories about Butch? So, what is it?
He’s a secret agent for the CIA? He has some itchy, infectious rash? He wears
women’s underwear?”

“You really need to work on your sarcasm.” Claire shifted in
her seat, nosing closer to the window.

“Kiss my ass.”

“And on your comebacks, too.” Claire smacked down Kate’s middle
finger. “Anyway, this afternoon, when I was leaving the hardware store, I saw
Butch pull into The Shaft’s parking lot.”

Claire paused and pointed at something in front of them. “There’s
the road up ahead. Take a left there.”

Kate tapped the brakes and eased the Ford onto the dirt road—now
mostly mud with a spattering of gravel.

“Finish your story about Butch.”

“He wasn’t alone.” Claire flipped up the hood of her yellow
checkered raincoat.

Kate drummed her fingers on the steering wheel while she
waited for the other shoe to drop. “Well, who was with him?”

“A woman.”

“Old or young?” Maybe his mom was paying a visit.

“She was wearing a pair of Daisy Duke shorts, a halter top,
and pink cowboy boots.”

“Oh.” Kate’s sails fluttered and flapped.

“Exactly.” Claire pressed her nose to the windshield again. “There’s
Mac’s truck, off to the right.”

Rolling onto the edge of the road, Kate braked.

Claire grabbed the flashlight she’d brought along and tucked
it inside her raincoat. “If you go to the next dirt road and turn right, it
will take you back around to the main road. Watch out for flooding on your way
back to town. It can be deeper than it looks. You don’t want to get caught in a
fast-moving current, dragged into a dry wash, and end up floating down to the
Gila River.”

“Okay.”

“If something runs out in front of you, don’t slam on the
brakes. This old tin can doesn’t have ABS or power steering.”

“Gotcha.” Kate had already realized those facts.

“And if it stalls when you—”

“Claire! Go already. Leave the nagging, older-sister routine
to Ronnie.”

“Fine.” Claire reached for the door handle. “See if I help
you the next time you come to me with gum in your hair.”

“You were the one who threw it there in the first place.”

“Good luck, wacko.”

“Same to you, knucklehead.”

After slamming the door shut, Claire jogged over to Mac’s
truck. She squatted next to the back wheel-well, reached under the bed, and
pulled out a little black key box. She waved at Kate, then unlocked the
passenger door and slipped inside.

Kate shifted into gear. Bumping her way along, she rolled
back toward Jackrabbit Junction, The Shaft, and the man she planned to beg to
give her another chance. Somehow, she’d managed to fall for one of the good
guys, which hadn’t happened since her gradeschool crush on Rambo. Now if she
could just convince Butch that she wasn’t some nutcase.

The windshield wipers cheeped and thumped as the rain slowed
to a drizzle. Kate cracked her window, inhaling the scent of wet dirt mixed
with noxious whiffs of what Claire said was wet greasewood trees. The cool
breeze teased her hair, lifting her spirits in spite of Miss Pink Cowboy Boots.

As Kate swung into The Shaft’s parking lot, her stomach
barrelrolled at the sight of Butch’s pickup. She needed a stiff shot of Jack
Daniel’s to up her courage a notch. Ignoring the chicken clucking inside her
head, she parked and raced across the lot before she had time to change her
mind.

Gary nodded at her from behind the bar. The neon beer lights
hanging in the windows reflected in his glasses. “What can I get ya?”

She peeled her tongue from the top of her mouth. “I need to
speak with Butch.”

“He’s busy right now.”

He’d better not be busy bonking Miss Pink Boots.

Kate flashed Gary one of her top-five, most charming smiles—the
one she usually reserved for traffic cops and highway patrolmen. “This will
only take a minute.”

Or ten. Maybe twenty, if Butch was in a better mood than
this morning.

“Sorry. He said he didn’t want to be disturbed. Why don’t
you come back later this evening?”

“Hey, sweetie.” A long-legged, redhead sidled up to the bar,
her dry goods almost spilling out of her low-cut tank-top.

Gary’s glasses practically fogged over. “Hi, Mindy. I didn’t
know you were back in town. What can I get for you?”

Kate didn’t wait to hear the redhead’s answer. While Gary’s
eyes were glued to Mindy’s headlights, Kate dashed through the door into the
kitchen. The cook paid her no mind while he cleaned the grill and whistled
along with Marty Robbins’s tune about falling in love with a Mexican girl from
El Paso.

The door to Butch’s office was closed, but the knob turned
easily in her hand. Head held high, Kate marched into the room, only to falter
at the sight of a jaw-dropping brunette sitting behind Butch’s desk.

“Oh!” Kate gritted her teeth. Claire forgot to mention that
Butch’s arm candy made Charlie’s Angels look like last week’s meatloaf. “I was
looking for Butch.”

“You found him,” Butch said from behind her. “Kate, say
hello to Lana. Lana, this is Kate.”

Lana’s grin accentuated her killer cheekbones. “Ah, the
infamous Kate. It’s good to meet you.”

Infamous?
Kate wrestled with the urge to run
screaming from the room.

“You, too,” she said to Lana, remembering the woman’s name
from the phone call Butch had taken the other day.

She took a deep breath and faced Butch. “I’m sorry to
interrupt, but could I have a moment of your time?” She glanced at Lana out of
the corner of her eye. “Alone.”

Butch’s face didn’t give away anything. “I’m kind of busy.”

“Let me get out of your way.” Lana stood. “I could use a
beer.” Pink cowboy boots clomped across Butch’s carpet. “Come and find me when
you’re finished, Valentine.”

Valentine? No
Butch
for Miss Lana and her sexy boots.
Kate’s teeth were going to be nubs if she ground them any harder.

She waited until the door clicked closed. “Why didn’t you
ever tell me your real name?”

Butch shrugged. “It didn’t seem important.” He sat on the
corner of his desk. His gaze traveled down over the front of her rain speckled
shirt and red jeans, his eyes telling no secrets when they met hers again. “To
what do I owe the honor of your presence this afternoon, Kate?”

Now that she stood in front of him, her well-practiced
speech lodged in her throat. “I came to … umm … apologize.”