Jackrabbit Junction Jitters

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Dear Reader,

I wrote the first draft of
Jackrabbit
Junction Jitters
in 2006, after my son was born. Because I couldn’t
finagle a trip to Arizona at that time, I did the next best thing and read
books about Southeastern Arizona geology, fauna, and flora. I scoured the
internet for write-ups about the area from other travelers. I watched movies
set around Tucson.

The result was a very long sequel to
Dance of the
Winnebagos
with a few too many details about rocks, animals, and plants.
But it was written. And then it was shelved after publishers rejected the first
book in this series time and again. When was I going to learn that mixing my
genres would not land me a publisher?

Apparently, I was too hard-headed to accept that because at
this point in my writing career I wrote the first in my award-winning Deadwood Mystery
series,
Nearly Departed in Deadwood
, which mixes mystery, romance, humor,
and paranormal.

Last fall, Corvallis Press published
Dance of the
Winnebagos
, the first book in the Jackrabbit Junction Mystery series. I was
thrilled for many reasons, especially since I knew that Claire’s second book in
the series would see the light of day. So, off the “shelf” came the book in
your hands.

As I began to read through and make edits on this story, I
realized that what the book and I both needed was a trip to Southeastern
Arizona to really soak up the setting and give the book a desert polish. Well,
that’s the excuse I gave to my family when I was talking them into going with
me on a road trip “to the desert.”

Fourteen days and five-thousand miles later, we returned
home from our Arizona ‘research’ trip, covered in dust and filled with
wonderful memories of cacti and sunshine, wild flowers and tamales, frybread
and canyon-filled landscapes. I had stood at the location where I’d placed my
fictional town, Jackrabbit Junction. I had looked over the huge open pit mine
that I’d used as a basis for the Copper Snake Mining Company. I had found the
ravine where Ruby’s Dancing Winnebagos R.V. Park was located. Finally, I could
hear and smell and see the setting for this story and could smile wide at the
knowledge that all of my previous research had paid off—I’d gotten it right.

Now, it’s finally your turn to read Claire’s continuing
story and return to the Southeastern Arizona desert, where the Grackles
chatter, the coyotes howl, and the monsoons thunder.

As always, beware of deadly critters, including over-bearing
mothers whose good intentions are delivered via razor-sharp tongues.

Welcome back to Jackrabbit Junction!

www.anncharles.com

To my sisters …

For taking care of me and teaching me so much.

For helping me learn how to lose and still have fun.

For sharing life’s highs and lows.

For guiding me through motherhood and more.

For keeping me laughing through it all.

I’m lucky to have so many wonderful women in my
life.

Wednesday, August 11th

Jackrabbit Junction, Arizona

Sometimes life tossed Claire Morgan a bone—other days it walloped
her upside the head with it. Today was turning into a real knockout, the flat
tire on the old Ford pickup the final bonk on her noggin.

Claire dragged her ass out of the passenger side of the
truck, joining her grandfather who stood grimacing at a front tire
that appeared to have melted under the desert’s sun.

“What do you mean we have to hoof it, Gramps?” she asked. “Can’t
you just throw on the spare so we can get out of here before the storm hits?”

She fanned her T-shirt and squinted through her sunglasses
at the cumulus cloud puffing like a microwaved marshmallow as it raced toward
her. Lightning lit the inside of the cloud in paparazzi-style.

Harley Ford reached for the grocery bags in the pickup bed. “The
spare is flat.”

Of course it was. Claire swiped at the sweat dripping down
the side of her face. The August sun and gravy-thick humidity had liquefied her
modicum of makeup hours ago.

Across the valley, just past the dusty pit-stop of
Jackrabbit Junction, a towering vortex of dirt churned. Gusts of sun-baked
air whooshed past her, pelting her cheeks with invisible grains of sand,
garnishing the barbed-wire fence with plastic bags and tumbleweeds trying to
escape from impending doom.

“Maybe we should just wait this out,” she said. “Sit in the
cab and watch the storm pass.”

Monsoon season in southeastern Arizona offered trial and
tribulation in biblical fashion: floods, sandstorms, and lightning. Throw some
locusts into the mix, and it would be a plagues of Moses tailgate party.

Gramps passed her one of the grocery bags. “Next you’ll want
to hold hands and sing campfire songs.”

“Is that how you wooed Ruby?” Claire grinned, referring to
her soon-to-be step-grandmother. “Serenaded her with ‘Kumbayah’ and ‘Do Your
Ears Hang Low’ until she agreed to marry you?”

Thunder rumbled across the valley, sounding an early
warning. A violet curtain of rain draped from the colossal cloud, veiling the
mayhem behind it.

“My love life is off-limits to you this visit, wiseass,”
Gramps grumbled. “Go roll up your window and grab your stuff. It’s not even a
mile to the R.V. park. Besides, I have something to tell you, and I’d rather
not be within arm’s-length when you hear it.” He raced toward the Dancing
Winnebagos R.V. Park as fast as a seventy-year-old with a trick-hip could skedaddle.

Claire frowned after the ornery goat. The last time he’d
spread some joy with one of his announcements, she’d needed a six-pack of Dos Equis
and a box of MoonPies to find her happy place.

This called for an emergency fix. She leaned into the cab
and popped open the glove box. Scrounging through the nest of ink pens and
fast-food napkins, she grunted in satisfaction when her fingers touched the
pack of menthols she’d stashed.

Her flip-flops slapped the asphalt as she followed him, the
back of his green shirt patchy with sweat by the time she caught up. “All
right, Gramps. Let me have it.”

His forehead wrinkled in a disapproving scowl at the lit
cigarette dangling from her lips. “I thought you’d quit.”

“I did.” But that was before her love life had been sucked
into a huge, panic-inducing maelstrom. “This is just a figment of your
imagination, so stop stalling and spill.”

“Remember I told you somebody broke into Ruby’s place
through the office window last month?”

“What?” She stopped in the middle of the road, momentarily
forgetting about the thunder, the wind, and the sore spot between her toes
where her plastic thongs rubbed.

Ruby’s office was practically a museum, full of expensive
antiques collected not-so-legally by her first husband Joe. Years ago he’d
overdosed on potato chips, Marlboro cigarettes, and stress and had been taking
a dirt nap ever since.

To Claire’s knowledge, only four people had any inkling of
the treasures hidden in Ruby’s basement, and two of them were about to be
drenched with Mother Nature’s dirty bathwater.

“I remember you mailed me a new key, no explanation
included.” She couldn’t believe he was just now telling her this.

Gramps glanced over his shoulder. “You’d better move your butt,
girl, before a bolt of lightning zaps it.”

She jogged up next to him. The wind whistled around them. “What
got stolen?”

Personally, she would’ve grabbed the first edition copy of
Moby
Dick
. No,
Treasure Island
.

“Nothing.”

That made no sense. “Anything get destroyed?”

“Nope.”

“Then why did they break in?”

“We’ve been wondering that ever since it happened.”

She took a drag from her cigarette, savoring the cool, cough-drop
taste before blowing smoke into the wind. “What makes you so certain it was a break-in?”

“Crowbar dents in the window sill and a busted lock.”

“Did you call Deputy Sheriff Droopy?”

“Yep. Ruby insisted since Jess lives there, too.”

On the threshold of her sixteenth birthday, Ruby’s daughter
Jess was at that know-it-all, boy-crazy age that caused her mother to fluctuate
between loving her unconditionally and wanting to ship her to the nearest
convent.

“But since nothing’s missing,” Gramps continued, “the deputy’s
hands are tied.”

“His hands aren’t tied. They’re super-glued to a
cheeseburger.”

“Don’t start again, Claire.”

She had trouble biting her tongue when it came to the
sheriff’s choice for a second-in-command. “You think the burglar was after the
money?”