Jackrabbit Junction Jitters (19 page)

“Claire.” Kate breezed in through the propped open door.

With her hair styled in a sleek chignon, her skin lightly
tanned, her lips glossed, and her white tank top and pink mini-skirt freshly
ironed, Kate looked like she’d just finished shooting a L’Oréal commercial.

Claire felt like she’d been coughed up by a cat.

She lifted her toolbox. “What?”

“Buck called.”

A cricket chirped in Claire’s brain. “Buck who?”

“Buck. As in Buck’s Auto Oasis.”

A second cricket joined the first. Claire blinked.

Kate sighed as if she were trying to explain logarithm rules
to a couple of stoners. “The mechanic working on my car.”

Her sister must have been painting her nails with the
windows closed again, because this was the first Claire had heard of Buck.

“Anyway, I need you to drive me to Yuccaville.”

“No.” Claire had a hot date with the library computer today.
She scooped up her gloves and the snake.

“Gramps said you have to.”

“Fine, but we’re stopping by the library for an hour or two,
and I don’t want to hear any complaining.”

“Is it air conditioned?”

Claire nodded.

“Okay with me, but …” Kate suddenly found the paint peeling
off the doorjamb extremely interesting.

“But what?”

“Mom’s coming, too.”

* * *

“Kathryn, did you hear a single word I just said?” Deborah
waved her manicured pink nails in front of Kate’s face.

Pushing all conspiratorial thoughts about Butch from the
forefront of her mind, Kate dragged her gaze from the hypnotic white paint
lining the shoulder of the road.

Ruby’s old pickup bounced along, the tires thumping
rhythmically over the veins of tar patches crisscrossing the asphalt. Warm air
filled with the scent of hot tar and baked earth blew in through Kate’s open
window, tearing at her chignon, whistling in her ears.

According to the mile marker, they were five miles out from
Jackrabbit Junction. A storm raged in the east. Dark clouds converged over the
mountain range that rimmed the valley, the peaks tinted purple with shadows.

“Kathryn!”

“What?” Kate looked at her mother, who sat between Claire
and her.

“I asked when Porter was picking you up this evening.”

Crap! Amidst all her plotting on how to catch Butch
red-handed, she’d forgotten all about her dinner date with Porter.

She checked her watch. “He’s probably waiting for me at Ruby’s
as we speak.”

“I told you we should have left the library a half-hour
earlier,” Deborah said to Claire, who drove with white-knuckled intensity. “At
least we wouldn’t have been kicked out then. I still can’t get over the way you
shoved that poor old lady off the computer. I’ve never been so mortified.”

Claire nailed Deborah with a sideways glare. “She was
hogging the one computer with an Internet connection.”

Kate smiled to herself, remembering the look of shock on her
sister’s face when Ma Kettle had told Claire to shove her time limit up her ass
and spin on it.

“Like I told that bully of a librarian,” Claire continued, “The
old bat’s time had been up for twenty minutes. And I didn’t shove her. I guided
her firmly by the arm. She faked that stumbling bit.”

“You’re just lucky she hit you with her purse instead of her
cane.” Deborah touched the bruise on Claire’s cheekbone.

“Would you stop touching it!” Claire winced away from
Deborah’s fingertips. “I thought we all agreed not to talk until we got back to
the R.V. park.”

She cranked up the radio volume. Willie Nelson sang about a
good-hearted woman falling for a guy who liked to party a little too much.

Kate grimaced. That seemed to be the story of her life.

Deborah turned down the volume. “I never agreed to anything.
You ordered us not to talk, which was very rude considering that I bought you
two very nice dresses this afternoon. Of course, they aren’t Christian Dior or
Donna Karan, but what can you expect for such a ragamuffin town?”

Kate chuckled under her breath at the memory of Claire
standing in front of the dressing room mirror while Deborah and the sales lady
fluttered around her like Cinderella’s seamstress birds.

“The cherry jubilee dress and the matching straw hat covered
with fake fruit is my all-time favorite,” Kate said.

“You look so pretty in that one.” Deborah clapped.

“I’m not wearing that dress, Mother.”

“You are, too. Stop being such a fuss-budget about this.”

“It makes me look like Carmen Miranda wrapped in a tablecloth.”
Claire’s lips thinned. “Mac is going to laugh his ass off when he sees me in
it.”

“Well, if that’s true, then he obviously got his fashion
sense from his aunt. That woman would wear burlap for the Queen’s visit. Have
you seen the dress she plans to wear for her wedding? It’s pale yellow, for
heaven’s sake. That alone is reason enough for getting this wedding called off.”

A muscle in Claire’s jaw twitched.

“Mother,” Kate warned.

“And if that isn’t bad enough, you should see the dress
Jessica pick—”

Claire boosted the radio volume again, drowning out Deborah
with Willie Nelson.

Deborah frowned, reaching for the volume, but Claire kept
her fingers clamped on the knob and shot Deborah a glare hot enough to fuse the
pearls in her chandelier earrings.

Neither of them could hear Kate’s laughter over the twangy
guitar riffs blaring from the speakers.

As the barbed-wire fence posts passed, Kate shifted in her
seat. The back of her thighs were damp where her skin touched the vinyl-covered
cushions, her skirt undoubtedly seat-wrinkled beyond repair for tonight’s date.

She sighed, homesick for her Volvo with its air conditioning
and plush leather seats. But judging from Buck the Mechanic’s grim predictions,
she had another week at least before she’d be reunited with her baby.

Claire slowed the pickup as they approached the road to Ruby’s
place.

Kate stared out the window at The Shaft.

Was Butch inside planning his next move? She needed to talk
to Claire about what she’d found out yesterday, drill her sister with some
questions about the bartender’s personal life. But Claire’s friendship with
Butch made Kate hesitate.

After Mac had left last night, Jessica had glued herself to
Claire’s side. Between the Euchre tournament and crowded sleeping arrangements,
Kate hadn’t been able to catch her sister alone. If only Porter weren’t at Ruby’s
waiting for her, she could take a walk with Claire and test the water.

As Willie’s song came to an end, Kate leaned forward. “Claire,
I need to ask you something.”

There was one thing she wanted to confirm, something that
shouldn’t raise any hairs on her sister’s neck.

Claire turned down the radio.

“What is Butch the bartender’s last name?”

Her sister took her eyes off the road long enough to shoot
Kate a questioning frown. “Carter. Butch Carter. Didn’t you get his name when
you traded paint?”

“I was too busy panicking, remember?”

“And lying,” Deborah added, her lips pinched.

Kate contemplated guiding her mother firmly by the arm right
off the nearest cliff.

She looked back out her window, staring at the glittering
bits of broken glass that littered the ditch.

“Butch Carter” was also the name typed on the copy of the
police report she’d picked up today, as well as written on one of the
clipboards hanging in Buck the mechanic’s office, along with Butch’s address
and phone number. Lucky for her there was only one body shop in all of
Yuccaville.

So who was Valentine? Was Butch carrying a fake I.D.? More
importantly, why would Butch be carrying a fake I.D.?

Did it have something to do with the Copper Snake Mining
Company? An alias he used when performing crooked business deals?

She should have followed Butch yesterday afternoon and
eavesdropped on his phone call with his lawyer.

“What’s with your sudden interest in Butch?” Claire’s
question jarred Kate out of her Miss Marple fantasy.

Now was not the time to explain. “I was just curious.”

“I call bullshit.”

Deborah slapped Claire’s hand. “Watch your mouth. That’s the
exact type of filthy talk I was speaking to you about in the dressing room.
Gentlemen don’t like potty mouths.”

“How do you know what men like, Mom?” Claire downshifted as they
approached the bridge into the R.V. park. “You’ve been out of the circuit for
almost forty years now. For all you know, guys like women who cuss like crab
fishermen and braid their armpit hair. Look at that guy Kate was dating last
year.”

“Let’s not,” Kate said.

“He wanted Kate to—”

“Claire!”

“Didn’t you tell Mom?”

“I most certainly did not.” There were some things mothers
should never know. Kate caught sight of Porter’s shiny blue truck in front of
the General Store.

“Chicken.” Claire grinned at Kate before turning back to
Deborah. “Anyway, my point is that maybe instead of working so hard on changing
us, you should consider changing yourself.”

“Now you’re talking nonsense.” Deborah collected her purse
from the floor as Claire slowed to a stop. “Men haven’t changed that much. I’m
not a complete recluse, you know. I’m hip with the times. I watch television.”

“Golden Girls went off the air in the nineties, Mom, and
Antiques Roadshow doesn’t count.” Switching off the engine, Claire stared at
Kate. “Now what’s the deal with you and Butch?”

“Nothing.” Sweat broke out on Kate’s upper lip. “I just ran
into him outside the restroom yesterday at the bar.”

“And?”

“There is no ‘and.’”

Claire’s brown eyes narrowed, searching Kate’s face. “You
like him, don’t you?”

“What? No, of course not.” Kate unbuckled her seat belt and
shoved open her door. “No, absolutely not.”

Well, maybe just the way he filled out his jeans and
T-shirt, but that was all. Oh, and his eyes.

“Why would Kathryn be interested in a bartender when she has
Porter, a handsome gentleman and successful writer, asking her out to dinner?”

Butch’s forearms and biceps weren’t so bad either, Kate
thought, as she stepped to the ground.

“Butch isn’t just a bartender, Mom.” Claire pushed open her
door. “He owns The Shaft.”

He what? Kate eyed Claire. That explained how a bartender in
a flea-bitten town could afford a brand new pickup. It also shed new light on
Butch’s potential as a prime suspect.

“Besides, Kate’s never been into handsome and successful
men. She’s usually drawn to the dark side of the force.”

Kate shot Claire a shut-your-big-mouth glare. “Leave it
alone, Claire.”

“And Butch isn’t exactly ‘dark,’ unless you consider that he
works nights most of the time in a shadow-filled bar.”

“Now is not the time to discuss this,” Kate sang in a
sing-song voice, helping her mother out of the pickup cab.

Claire leaned against the steering wheel, chewing on her
thumb, watching Kate as if Hydra’s nine heads were sprouting from her neck. “You
must think Butch is into something shady, otherwise, you wouldn’t have been
daydreaming about him all of the way home.”

“I wasn’t daydreaming, I was pondering.”

“Pondering what?” Deborah asked, both feet now on the
ground.

“Just something I saw yesterday.”

Claire climbed from the truck and walked around the front
fender. “Keep talking.”

“Something I noticed in his wallet.”

Claire’s brows drew together. “Why were you digging in Butch’s
wallet?”

“I wasn’t. He was.”

A drop of sweat ran down Kate’s back. She shaded her eyes.
Her sunglasses were merely a fashion accessory in this sunshine.

“When he was fishing out my insurance card, which he’d
forgotten to return, I saw a fake I.D. with the name ‘Valentine’ on it.”

“Why would Butch have a fake I.D.?”

The disbelief in Claire’s voice didn’t surprise Kate. She’d
been right to hesitate. Clearly, she’d need to find more proof before Claire
would jump on board with her theory about the bar owner’s part in Ruby’s
dilemma.

The screen door opened and Porter walked out. He touched the
brim of his hat in their direction. “Good evening, ladies. Is that you, Mrs.
Morgan? I swear, in this light, y’all look like sisters.”

Deborah giggled, tee-heed, and tittered all at once.

Kate glanced at Claire, who rolled her eyes so hard she
looked possessed for a split second.

Facing Porter, Kate pasted a smile on her lips as he
descended the steps. In his ostrich-skin boots, black jeans, tan shirt, and
white hat, he looked good enough to dip in chocolate sauce and lick clean.

So why wasn’t she feeling hungry anymore?

* * *

Claire crept barefoot down the basement steps, carrying the
two books Kate had checked out for her at the library while their mother had
chewed Claire’s ass raw in the pickup. She skipped the third step from the
bottom, which usually creaked under her weight.