Jackrabbit Junction Jitters (39 page)

“Now she has it in her head that I’m out to run her life
when all I’m trying to do is steer her in the right direction,” Deborah
continued.

Filling his coffee cup to the rim, Mac rolled his eyes. “Maybe
she doesn’t need anyone steering her anywhere. She is old enough to make her
own decisions, you know.”

He gulped several swallows of the black liquid.

“Mornin’, Mac.” Jess bounced into the kitchen, bopping to
some tune only she could hear. “You forgot your pants,” she added, giggling as
she opened the fridge, and grabbed the pitcher of orange juice.

“Claire always has and always will need guidance.” Deborah
frowned at Jess as the teenager twirled around with the glass pitcher in her
hand. “She floats on the wind, drifting here and there, unable to settle down
and make something of her life.”

Mac took another gulp of coffee to bide some time and form a
reply that didn’t involve swearing or shouting. How could she be so oblivious
of how insulting she was to her own flesh and blood?

“Until you came along, I was making progress on getting
Claire to toe the line.”

Mac slammed his cup down on the counter harder than he’d
intended, coffee sloshing over the rim onto the yellow Formica top. “Whose line,
Deborah? Yours?”

Her chin lifted. “Of course. I know what’s best for her.”

“Isn’t it time you stop trying to live vicariously through
your daughters and focus on fixing your own mess?”

Deborah’s eyes widened, her cheeks reddening even more.

Jess placed the orange juice on the table and dropped into a
kitchen chair, watching the jousting match.

“Fixing my mess? I don’t know what you mean.”

Mac crossed his arms. “Really? Oh, right, that’s because you’ve
been so set on interfering with everyone else’s business around here, trying to
control everything down to who shares whose bed, and making everyone miserable
in the process.”

“Control everything …” Deborah repeated, sputtering. Her
breath came in huffs, the tendons standing out in her neck above the strand of
pink pearls resting on her collarbone. “You’re one to talk, Mr. Garner! Claire
said the only reason you told her you love her is because
you
want to
control her.”

“What?” Mac took a step back. Deborah’s words hit him like a
sucker-punch below the navel. She had to be making that up. “I don’t believe
Claire really said that.”

Her face pinched, Deborah snorted. “Well, she did, and that
makes you a hypocrite.”

Speechless, Mac stared into Deborah’s kohl-lined eyes. Claire
wouldn’t have said that, would she? No. Or would she? And if so, why would she
run and tell her mother, of all people, her feelings rather than come to him?
It didn’t make sense.

He shoved away from the counter. “Stay away from me,
Deborah.”

Fists clenched, he strode out of the kitchen, away from the
frosty bitch.

“I’m not done talking to you!” Deborah followed on his heels
as he headed for the bathroom.

“Yes, you are!” Mac kept his head down. He hastened his
pace, grateful for the lock on the bathroom door.

“What are you going to do about Claire?” she asked.

“I can’t see where that is any of your business.”

“Of course it’s my business, especially when her bad
influence is affecting Kate’s future.”

Mac walked into the bathroom and slammed the door shut
behind him, twisting the lock on the knob.

“If anyone back home catches wind of this,” Deborah hollered
through the door, “Kate’s chance of landing a job as a principal at a good
school is history.”

What? The woman was talking in tongues. Mac unlocked the
door and yanked it open. “What in the hell are you talking about now?”

“I’m talking about my daughters spending the night in jail all
because Claire coerced Kate to break into that bartender’s house.”

Mac blinked several times, speechless yet again.

Then he slammed the door in Deborah’s face.

The world had gone mad.

* * *

Claire raced down the basement steps. After Kate’s admission
to their mom of total responsibility for their rendezvous at Butch’s place,
Claire wasn’t going to wait around to see what else her mom might try to blame
on her instead.

After the last twelve hours of jail cell merriment, followed
by Chester and Manny’s slammer-jam, comedy road show, and then Deborah’s dance
of the ass-flogging fairies, Claire wanted to hide under Joe’s desk for the
rest of the day.

She shoved open the office door and stopped short at the
sight of Mac sitting behind the desk, pouring over a map that spilled across
the desktop.

He looked up. The frown wrinkling his brow deepened.

“Hi, stranger.” Claire’s shoulders relaxed at the sight of
him. She’d missed him, and if he didn’t mind her prison-issued, Pepé Le Pew eau
de perfume, she’d like to show him just how happy she was to see him.

He leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest. “So, is
it true that everybody in the whole cell block was dancing to the jailhouse rock?
Or were Kate and you the only jailbirds wiggling your tail feathers last night?”

“Cute. You should go on tour with Manny and Chester.”

She closed the door and sauntered over to the desk in her
best attempt at a sexy stroll down the catwalk.

The map on the desk caught her eye. “Is that the Lucky Monk
mine?” She cocked her head to the side as she stared down at the map.

“It sure is.” A frown still creased his forehead as he
stared up at her.

Claire wiped the back of her hand across her mouth,
wondering if she had MoonPie crumbs on her face.

“What?” She took a step back from the map. “Why are you
giving me that look?”

“What look would that be?”

“Your old-time-western, gun-slinging outlaw, ‘I’m-pissed-as-hell’
glare. Landing in jail wasn’t my fault, you know.”

“Really?”

She nodded. “Kate tricked me into taking her to Butch’s
house. She’s the one who broke the window in Butch’s garage.” Claire crammed
her hands in her back pockets. “Sure, if you want to get technical, I was the
one who actually broke into Butch’s greenhouse. But I had to, or Kate was going
to ruin the door jamb with a screwdriver.”

Mac’s lips twitched, but the thunderclouds still hovered
over his eyebrows. “You spending the night in jail is not what has me ‘pissed
as hell’ with you right now.”

“Oh.” Claire chewed the inside of her lip, replaying the
last twenty-four hours to figure out what she’d done wrong. Then she remembered
the incident on the way to the tool shed yesterday while trying to fix that
damned toilet.

“If this is about the little accident I had with your cell
phone, your warranty probably covers theft.”

Mac sat forward. “Accident?”

“Yep, an accident.” She tried to chuckle, but it came out
sounding like a hyena. “What was I supposed to do? I needed to get into the
shed and that damned rattler wouldn’t budge. If only my aim had been a little
better.”

“You threw my GPS-enabled cell phone at a snake?”

Claire nodded. “The Twinkies were too soft to do any damage.
How was I to know the snake would actually eat the thing? I told you not to get
one of those super slim phones. It was only a matter of time until somebody
lost it.”

“Or somebody fed it to a snake.”

“Exactly.” Moving back to the map, she pointed at a section
he’d circled in pencil. “What’s this?”

“It’s where I found the dead man,” Mac said,
matter-of-factly. “The phone is not why I’m pissed at you, Claire.”

“What dead man?” She gaped at him, wondering if she’d heard
him right.

A vein next to his eye pulsed. “Some things are meant to
remain private.”

Shit. She sighed. Kate must have run her mouth about Joe and
his Kodak moments.

Claire had spent several hours during her long night behind
bars trying to tie those pictures in with Joe’s other not-so-legal hobby and
had come up with zilch. If whatever waited in that post office box didn’t offer
some answers to all of her questions, she’d be hanging up her magnifying glass
and trench coat and taking up crocheting.

“I didn’t mean for anyone to see the naked pictures of Joe
and all of those women. I promise; nobody is going to say a thing to Ruby about
them.” Especially not her. Ruby had had her heart broken enough times by Joe
over the last year.

Mac sat frowning for a moment in silence. “What naked
pictures?”

Crap. “You mean you don’t know about the pictures?”

“Not a clue, until now.”

“Criminy! Then why are you mad at me? And what do you mean
you found a dead man? Freshly dead?” The image of Flint’s
pointer
popped
into her brain. “Or is it a skeleton?” she whispered, leaning over the map, her
pulse speeding up.

“It’s mostly a skeleton.” Mac stood and rolled up the map.

Claire stepped back as though her hands had been smacked.

“Okay, spill.” She’d been hit with enough of his frowns this
morning.

“You told your mother that I said ‘I love you.’”

“Oh, right, that.” Claire grimaced.

“Yes, that.” He tapped the rolled-up map against the
desktop. “Why did you tell her?”

“I didn’t exactly ‘tell’ her.”

He lifted an eyebrow.

“Not on purpose, anyway.”

“Damn it, Claire.” He yanked open one of the desk drawers
and pulled out a rubber band. “Is nothing I say in the bedroom sacred to you?
Everyone in this whole fucking house knows now.”

“Not everyone,” Claire lied before she could bite her
tongue. If only Mac would just start yelling or throwing things like the rest
of her family. This quiet, calm rage made her feel off kilter, like a moose on
ice.

“Oh, really? Who hasn’t heard the news?”

Claire gulped, choking on her lie. “Ummm, Henry.”

“That’s not funny.”

“Mac, I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, I am, too.” He snapped the rubberband around the map.
“Sorry I ever told you how I felt. I should have known you’d make a joke of it,
just like everything else in life that makes you uncomfortable.” He walked past
her.

What? Wait! “Where you going?” She caught his arm.

“Anywhere but here.” He pulled free and grabbed the
doorknob, then paused, his head lowered. “I’ve been thinking. Maybe you should
move out for a while.”

Dumbstruck, Claire stood there trying to find her breath
while a tornado ripped through her. He was kidding, right?

“I’d hate for you to continue suffering under my controlling
personality.” He glanced back at her, his jaw taut. “I’m sure Ruby would like
to have your help here full-time now that she has a husband to occupy her time.”

He opened the door.

“Hi, Mac.” Jess stood at the foot of the steps, her hand in
the air, ready to knock.

“Hey, Jess.” He ruffled her hair, but the gesture looked
stiff.

Jess peered around Mac. “Claire, Porter’s here to see you.”

“Me?” Claire’s voice squeaked. “Don’t you mean Kate?”

Mac stepped to the side to allow Jess into the room.

“Nope. Just you.”

Claire stared at Mac’s back as he started up the steps. What
did he mean by his “controlling personality”? He was the first guy to come into
her life who hadn’t tried to slip a collar and leash on her and chain her to
one place.

“You must be great at snogging,” Jess continued, totally
clueless, “because ever since you kissed Porter, he doesn’t want anything to do
with Kate. I want to learn how to kiss like that.”

Alarms blared in Claire’s ears. Mac stopped halfway up the steps,
his body visibly flinching. Then he shook his head and climbed out of sight,
two steps at a time.

Jess danced over to Claire. The kid’s cheeks glowed, her
eyes wide. “I found the money,” she whispered.

“Money?” Claire echoed, still shell-shocked from Mac’s
suggestion. Did he really want her to move out?

“Yeah, my money. You know, the dough Ruby was hiding.”

Blindly, she stared down at Jess. Claire’s heart twisted,
her stomach cramping. She didn’t want to live somewhere else.

“I’m thinking that I’ll leave before Mom gets back. It’ll be
easier that way.”

Stumbling sideways, Claire dropped into Joe’s chair. Nobody
had warned her that the sky would be falling today. She needed a cigarette. No,
make that a pack of them.

“But first—” Jess started.

“Claire!” Chester yelled from the top of the steps.

She jerked back to the present. “What?”

“Get your ass up here! That toilet in the men’s room is
overflowing again, and some old geezer slipped on the floor and hurt his hip.”

“God dammit!” Claire slammed her fist on the desktop.

“Are you sure you don’t want to go to the hospital, Manny?”
Claire asked.

“Sí, querida.”
Manny smiled at her as Porter towed
him out from between the toilet and wall partition where he’d ended up wedged
after he fell. “It’s just a bruise. I’ll be back to sowing my wild oats in no
time.”

Chester snorted. “What wild oats? Your crop has been frozen
in a mid-winter blizzard for the last twenty years.”

As Manny limped out of the stall, using Porter’s arm for
support, Claire backed out of the way, her hands ready to help.

Jess sat on the counter between the two sinks. “Phew!” She
pinched her nostrils closed. “It sure stinks in here.”

Porter glanced at Jess. “Will you get the door, Jessica?”
Sweat spotted his gray T-shirt.

In spite of the fan sucking in air through the open window,
humidity had transformed the room into a Turkish bathhouse. Outside, the
noontime sun scorched the topsoil into a hot, crusty coating. A doozy of a
monsoon loomed on the southwestern horizon, its tell-tale bloated clouds swelled
before the eye. Helios had thrown Southeastern Arizona in a microwave and hit
High.

Sweat rolled down Claire’s spine, tickling. “Take him to
Ruby’s,” she told Porter. “He can wash up in her tub.”