Jackrabbit Junction Jitters (16 page)

Henry hadn’t faired much better. The little shit now sat in
the shade tied to one of the front porch posts, quarantined until Gramps got
back from tearing apart the R.V.

Claire blinked out of her reverie to find Jess doodling on
the front page of the guest book.

“What are you doing? That’s going to tick off your mom.” She
pulled the book away and looked down at the sideways eights Jess had been
drawing.

“Just drawing the symbol for infinity. I learned about infinity
in math last year.”

Claire chewed on her lower lip. She’d seen that symbol
somewhere lately—in this very store.

“Besides, somebody else wrote on the page first.” Jess blew
a bubble and let it pop in Claire’s ear.

Claire stared down at the word “infinity” written in the
bottom left corner of the first page. She recognized Joe’s writing. After all
of the documents she’d sifted through in his office, she knew his squiggles
better than her own.

“Mom should just be happy I’m practicing my math skills.”

Why would Joe write that word in the guest book? From what
Claire had learned about Joe over the last few months, doodling was not his
style. Her gut told her that there was a meaning behind the word, maybe even a
purpose.

“Do you think it will come off with an eraser?” Jess pulled
the book back toward her, uncovering the campground map taped to the counter
below it.

Then Claire saw it. Right there, in the middle of the map,
like a flashing neon Vegas marquee—the infinity symbol, in the tent-camping
only section. The drive that connected each of the eight campsites looked like
a sideways eight, only the corners weren’t quite as round.

“Oh, crap. This eraser is all dried out.” Jess tossed her
pencil aside. “Now I’ve smudged the page.”

Claire rubbed her jaw. That must be why Joe labeled those
sites with an I instead of an A or B. I for infinity.

“What’s so important about infinity?” Claire asked aloud.

“Infinity isn’t a real number, but could be considered part
of an
extended real number line
,” Jess recited, as if reading from a
dictionary.

Claire looked up at Jess. The last part of what the girl
said replayed in her head: part of an extended real number line.

She slapped her palms on the counter. “That’s it!”

Jess squawked in surprise. The pencil and guestbook went
flying into the wall behind her.

“Paper! I need paper.” Claire grabbed a spare campground
map. “Even better.”

Jess coughed out her gum into her palm. “You need help. I
almost choked!”

“Sorry about that.” Claire circled the eight site numbers. “Stay
here. I’ll be right back.” She dashed toward the curtain.

“Where are you going?” Jess yelled after her.

Claire took the basement steps two at a time, nearly falling
down the last three. She hit the lights. The bookcase was still pulled away
from the wall. She hadn’t had a chance to put the office back in order since
yesterday morning.

Kneeling on the shag carpet, Claire held up the map. Her
hand shook as she read the numbers aloud and punched them into the keypad. “5,
3, 8, 2, 9, 1, 7, 4.”

Nothing happened.

“Shit.” Hitting the Clear button, she reversed the numbers.

A clicking sound came from the door.

Her breath caught.

The safe door popped open.

Miles away from Claire and Harley’s Winnebago, deep in the
belly of Wiggle Toe Mountain, Mac could still smell that damned skunk. Short of
snorting vinegar, he figured nothing but time would erase the stench from his
olfactory memory.

The air in the Lucky Monk mine felt cool and heavy. The
light on his hard hat cast elongated shadows that wavered and danced with every
step. Blackness pursued him, hot on his heels, always hovering out of the
corner of his eyes.

Pebbles crunching under his boots, he navigated the stone
tunnels. Every hundred feet or so, he stopped to study Joe’s maps and make
notes of changes.

The morning had been productive. Several hundred feet back
in a side tunnel, the throat of a shaft had been encrusted with ocean-blue
chalcanthite, a mineral usually found near the surface of copper deposits. The
aggregates glittered like a crystal choker under Mac’s flashlight beam.

He plucked a few small samples and doused them with water
from his canteen. They dissolved quickly in his palm, turning the small pool
murky blue—and poisonous to the last drop.

Further back, a vein of copper on one wall was nearly
invisible under a mosaic of quartz mixed with chrysocolla, an opaque
greenish-blue mineral that crooked dealers sold as actual turquoise to naïve
tourists at the rock and gem show in Tucson.

Now, as Mac continued along the main adit to another
unmapped side tunnel he’d found yesterday afternoon, he wondered how Joe had
gotten his hands on the Lucky Monk and the other three mines. Had he purchased
them legally? Won them in a card game? Inherited them from a long lost uncle?

Mac understood why Joe had wanted them, especially with the
racket the guy had been running. The mines offered an excellent hiding place for
stolen goods, and the old wagon trails leading up to two of them were wide
enough for a four-wheel drive truck to navigate.

But who had owned them before Joe? The original prospectors?
Their descendants? And how had the mines evaded the hands of the Copper Snake
Mining Company all these years?

Following the adit as it curved to the right, Mac took a sip
of water from his canteen. Shadowy amorphous figures slunk back against the
walls as he passed, reminding him of the Mine Monk spirit from European folktales
he’d read about years ago.

The miners of old Europe were a superstitious lot, which
didn’t surprise Mac considering they’d used fire to light their way deep into
the earth where pockets of methane gas often accumulated. The explosions would
either kill them outright or leave them buried, sealed up tight in a
pitch-black tomb with suffocation as their only way out.

Stories abounded of ghostly spirits of the earth, the tale
of the Mine Monk being one of these. Sometimes benevolent, sometimes not, the
monk would make an appearance in black robes, its face hooded. Mac assumed the
prospector who filed the original claim for the Lucky Monk mine had heard his
fair share of ghost stories.

The tunnel veered to the right; Mac followed. Ten feet in
front of him, a paper cup lay on its side on the stone floor.

Litter was nothing new to the underground world. Back before
Budweiser cans and plastic Evian bottles, there had been soda pop tabs and
Necco Wafer wrappers, rusted tin cans with serrated lids and hand-sewn leather
gloves, broken shovel handles and dented ore carts.

Mac squatted next to the coffee cup. The fact that someone
had tossed it on the floor of Ruby’s mine wasn’t what made his hands clammy.
What had his heart knocking was that the cup hadn’t been here last night when
he’d walked along this section of the adit.

He picked up the cup and peeked through the small opening in
the lid. A sip of brown liquid still sloshed in the bottom.

Someone had been in the Lucky Monk last night.

Kids trespassed in mines often, especially if the entrances
were partially blocked off with “No Trespassing” signs. But kids left broken
beer bottles and cigarette butts, not coffee cups.

Maybe it was the Mine Monk.

Mac stood, suddenly feeling like he was in the crosshairs of
a scope. He squinted into the thick shadows in front of him, searching for
movement, his ears straining to pick up any sound besides his own breathing.

The hairs on the back of his neck prickled. He whirled
around, looking back the way he’d come. The darkness at the edge of his vision
teased him with glimpses of shifting shapes.

Déjà vu had him wiping his palms on his jeans.

Unlike Claire, his imagination rarely took flight, his
preferred modus operandi based on rational, logical planning rather than
radical theories or suspicious notions. But after being hunted by a crazed
killer through the stone corridors of Socrates Pit and being deliberately
entombed in Two Jakes last spring, his pulse often danced the jitterbug when he
traipsed through these oversized worm holes.

Mac glanced down at his watch. He’d planned on scouting
around in the Lucky Monk for a few more hours, but the sudden craving for
sunshine, fresh air, even humidity, changed his mind.

He left the cup where he’d found it and hiked toward the
entrance. Speeding up to a jog as he rounded the corner, he expected to hear
the sound of boots clapping on the stone floor behind him at any moment.

* * *

The safe door swung open.

Claire dropped onto her butt, legs crossed, and stared at
the three shelves lined with violet felt material. She scooted closer, not
wanting to touch anything until she’d had a chance to thoroughly inspect how
Joe had left the contents. She’d learned over the summer, after watching a
season’s worth of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, that sometimes placement was
as telling as the evidence itself.

A derringer laid on the left side of the top shelf, its
stubby nose buried in a miniature holster. A leather strap wide enough to
encircle a calf or bicep wove through two slits in the holster. A box of .22
caliber cartridges sat on the other side of the strap, taking up most of the
remaining shelf space.

So, in addition to a double-barreled shotgun and a .357
Magnum Ruby kept stashed in her closet, Joe had also had a derringer. Was the
tiny pistol just an antique or had he actually carried it? Used it?

She’d always pictured Joe’s fingers as fat and stubby, like
thick Jimmy Dean sausage links, covered with greasy potato chip crumbs—fingers
that couldn’t remove such a tiny gun from its elf-sized holster without
shooting off a pinkie or a toe in the process.

A pocket watch monopolized the middle shelf, centered as if
on display under a spotlight along with the other crown jewels in the Tower of
London. The polished gold casing beckoned Claire to pick it up and rub her
fingers over the smooth face. Clasping her hands together, she resisted the
urge to touch and leaned closer, breathing all over it.

Tiny flowers and ovals rimmed the gold case, raised on the
surface rather than carved into the metal. The pastel painting on the cover had
pale green trees dotting the landscape. Small indistinguishable buildings rose
in the distance. A carriage seemed to be the focal point, with two dark horses
hitched to it. Crowds of people filled the foreground—a depiction of a fair or
some festival possibly. Whatever the subject matter, the piece shone with
nineteenth century European elegance.

Claire chewed on her thumb. Maybe she should show it to her
mother.

Deborah glued herself to the television every time Antiques
Roadshow was on PBS. She’d recorded volumes and volumes of it. Her obsession
with the program had been one of the many reasons Claire’s father had walked
the plank.

Or, maybe Claire should take the watch to Tucson to have it
examined, find out the details on its age and value.

Then again, just bringing the piece out into the open could
endanger Ruby’s welfare, even her life, along with Jess and Gramps’s. If Joe
had stolen the watch, the police or FBI might come down hard on Ruby, seize her
assets, tear her house apart looking for other stolen goods.

Worse, though, would be if word of the pocket watch reached
one of Joe’s ex-business partners—someone with a grudge or an unpaid debt. Someone
who didn’t waste time with badges when it came to shooting.

On second thought, Claire would talk to Mac and Ruby. Let
them weigh the risks.

Staring at the watch, she could see why someone would break
into Ruby’s place to steal it. Its beauty alone would certainly lure eager
fingers, even without the added value of its legacy.

A bag with a red and black angular design woven into the
natural-looking fibers filled the bottom shelf from side to side, its width
crammed into the space. Claire had seen similar, but more detailed and
sophisticated, versions of the design on some Anasazi and Mogollon pottery at
the Arizona State Museum.

The office door hinges creaked behind her.

“Claire?” Jess whispered.

Claire tried to slam the safe door closed before Jess could
take full inventory of the pieces inside, but the locking bolts still stuck
out, so the door bounced back open.

The bag fell onto the floor before Claire could catch it.
She pushed the door shut again and held it there this time while frowning at
Jess. “I told you to stay put. Who’s watching the store?”

“Nobody. It’s been dead all morning.”

“Jess, your mom said—”

“I locked the door and taped up a note that we’ll be back in
five minutes. For all they know, I had to use the bathroom.” Jess squatted next
to Claire and pointed toward the bag. “What’s that? Some old toy?”