Книга - Ralphie’s Wives

Ralphie's Wives
Christine Rimmer


Ralphie Styles had a way with women–lots of women.Country-singer-turned-bartender Phoebe Jacks ought to know–she'd been married to him–before he'd moved on to her best friend. And then her other best friend. But you just couldn't stay mad at Ralphie. Or could you? When he's killed in a suspicious hit-and-run, pregnant wife #4 is suddenly a widow–and a suspect.It's up to Ralphie's best friend from out of town, P.I. Rio Navarro, and Phoebe to see that the old charmer's killer is brought to justice. But Ralphie never mentioned his pal Rio was so attractive–or that he might just be the stand-up guy Ralphie never could be….







Ralphie’s Wives

Christine Rimmer






www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)


For Rebecca Reynolds


CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

COMING NEXT MONTH




ACKNOWLEDGMENTS


This book was an adventure for me, from start to finish. And so many people reached out helping hands along the way.

To my sister-in-law Millie Stratton and my niece, Lily Dunning—thank you so much for sharing your stories of the Prairie Lady Music Hall. Those lucky enough to remember the Prairie Lady will see echoes of her in the Prairie Queen. To Susan Mallery, thanks always for the endless support and unflagging encouragement. To my plot group, I so couldn’t have done it without you. And to Susan Crosby, who read the first draft and suggested some great fixes—you’re the best.

For a variety of information about the OCPD and the workings of law enforcement in Oklahoma City, I am eternally grateful to Captain Jeffrey Becker of the OCPD and to Maggie Price. For last-minute medical counseling, thank you, Darlene Graham. And for help with my somewhat rusty Spanish, thanks to Leslie Crosby. All errors and omissions, medical and procedural, are completely my own.




PROLOGUE


Remember. If it has tires or testicles, you’re going to have trouble with it.

—from The Prairie Queen’s Guide to Life, by Goddess Jacks

AT A LITTLE AFTER 4:00 a.m. on April fifteenth, Ralphie Styles lay spread-eagled in the middle of an Oklahoma City street, face up, dizzy and bleeding. That was right after the beat-up red van rolled over him and drove off.

He heard a groaning sound and then, a moment later, realized the sound was coming from his own mouth. He stared up at the night sky and tried to move his legs. Nothing.

He tried his arms: no luck. His hand. No. A damn finger…

Wasn’t happening. Zero response from the various extremities. The control tower was operating on its own.

The good news was that he felt absolutely no pain.

Or maybe that was the bad news….

He listened. Heard water dripping nearby and a siren, far off, fading to nothing—not coming for him. He smelled asphalt and he tasted his own blood in his mouth.

Darla, he thought, the blood in his mouth mingling with his stunned awareness of her betrayal, making a taste like rusted iron. He remembered. All of it. Every day, every hour, every moment he’d had with her: Darla Jo Snider, who was now Darla Jo Styles.

Ralphie had known a lot of women in his fifty-eight years of life. Known them and loved them. It was his greatest natural talent: to love a woman and love her well. When Ralphie loved a woman, he loved her all the way and over the moon. When Ralphie loved a woman, she was the only one—for a while, at least. And when it was over, well, he went on loving her. Just in a different way.

Darla, though. Darla was…special. No. That wasn’t it. They were all special, every woman he had loved. But Darla? Well, with Darla, Ralphie had been certain that he’d found her at last—found the woman he’d always been looking for, the one he’d hold on to for the rest of his life, the one from whom he would never stray.

A tiny smile tipped the torn edges of what was left of his mouth. He’d been right about Darla. Oh, yes, he had. Because in spite of everything, he still loved her. He couldn’t help himself. And since the rest of his life was beginning to look a lot shorter than anticipated, it was pretty damn likely he’d be loving Darla Jo when he died.

Ralphie stared up at the faint, faraway stars and managed to whisper her name to the night. “Darla Jo.” And he felt pain then, though that particular pain did not reside in any of the broken parts of his body.

It seemed so wrong, for this to be happening. He hadn’t even mailed in his tax return yet. And damn, he could use a smoke. Just one more. For the road…

Ralphie swallowed blood. Everything was kind of slowing down. And he was floating, not exactly able to care much that he was lying in the middle of the street in the darkness before dawn—all alone, bleeding, his arms and legs limp and unresponsive as slabs of raw meat. Yeah. A dead man. No doubt about it. He knew with growing certainty that he wasn’t going to be around to put this current problem to rights. And what would the cops have to go on? His killer was clever. His killer just might get away clean.

But then again…

There was Rio. Mustn’t forget Rio. A good man, Rio. The best—and what about Phoebe?

Phoebe Jacks was Ralphie’s first wife and his current business partner. She’d be in the mix, too. Phoebe was something. You didn’t mess with Phoebe—or with anyone she called a friend.

Ralphie smiled his torn smile again. Yeah. Rio and Phoebe would take care of it. They wouldn’t stop until they got to the bottom of it. And since Ralphie had never gotten around to changing his will as he’d kept promising Darla he would, if this was the end for him, Rio would be his only true heir. Rio would be partners with Phoebe.

That was good. That was the one thing that had worked out just right, after all. Ralphie wished he could be there when Rio and Phoebe came face-to-face for the first time. That would be something. Yeah. Something to see. Sparks would fly….

What was that sound?

Music.

Ralphie sighed. Beautiful, the music. Heartbreaking.

It had started far away and it was coming closer. A Bruce Springsteen ballad from the early nineties, “If I Should Fall Behind.” A woman was singing it….

Phoebe. Oh, yeah. Phoebe was singing that beautiful song, her husky voice so rich and true.

The music swelled in volume and then a vision burst wide open, bright as day, before him.

He saw the Prairie Queens: Phoebe, Cimarron Rose and Tiffany, onstage in their glory before it all went to hell, before Phoebe divorced him and the band broke up. Cimarron Rose on the keyboards, Tiff on bass guitar. Phoebe, who played lead, stood at the mike, the lights catching bright gleams in her long dark hair, green eyes shining as she strummed and sang so slow and sweet.

Phoebe’s face changed and she was Darla, singing just for him. Darla, wearing a long, white dress, her stomach jutting high and proud with the baby she was carrying, a halo of golden light around her angel’s face.

“Darla Jo,” he whispered to the darkness and the distant stars. “It doesn’t matter. All your lies. Or what you did. I love you. I’ll always love you. And I’ll wait for you where I’m goin’. I swear I will.”

The song faded. The vision melted away. Ralphie Styles let his eyelids droop shut.

He never opened them again.




CHAPTER ONE


If life is a waste of time, and time is a waste of life, then let’s all get wasted together and have the time of our lives.

—from The Prairie Queen’s Guide to Life, by Goddess Jacks

AT THREE IN THE AFTERNOON on her thirtieth birthday, Phoebe Jacks stood behind the bar wearing strappy sandals with four-inch heels and a black sundress printed with roses. She was polishing a beer glass. Phoebe found polishing the glassware calming, and she needed a calming activity right then. Her ex-husband, Ralphie Styles, had screwed her over royally—from the grave, no less.

Oh, yeah, she thought, blowing a coil of dark hair out of her eyes, happy birthday to me.

“And what I want to know is, who the hell is Rio Navarro?” Cimarron Rose Bertucci, one of Phoebe’s two best friends since birth—and Ralphie’s second wife—pounded the old oak bar with her fist. She did it hard enough that the jumbo margarita in front of her bounced. Luckily, Rose’s drink was half-empty, so not a drop was spilled.

Phoebe set down the freshly polished glass. Ralphie had mentioned Navarro’s name now and then, in passing, over the years. “Some old friend of Ralphie’s,” she said. “Not from Oklahoma. Lives in California, I think.”

On the stool to the right of Rose, Tiffany Sweeney, Phoebe’s other lifelong best friend—and Ralphie’s third wife—was shaking her blond head. “Not even from Oklahoma.” Tiff did not approve. “Who is he? What does he do?”

“Well, I guess I’ll be findin’ out soon enough.” Phoebe grabbed another glass and set to work bringing out the shine.

“That’s Ralphie for you,” muttered Tiffany. “Never met a heart or a promise he couldn’t break.”

Rose shook a finger and made a tutting sound. “You know how he was. Such a sweetheart, really. He always meant well.”

Tiff’s blue eyes grew suspiciously misty. “Yeah. Yeah, I know…” She blinked away the emotion and turned to Phoebe again. “And Pheeb, who says you’ll ever even have to deal with your new partner? Ralphie knew a whole lot of shady types. Most likely Navarro’s one of those. I wouldn’t be the least surprised if that cheesy lawyer of Ralphie’s hasn’t got a clue how to find the guy.”

Phoebe sighed. “I called the lawyer yesterday when I got my copy of the will in the mail. The lawyer told me he sent Navarro his copy by FedEx a week ago. It was delivered and Navarro signed for it.”

“Doesn’t mean a thing,” Tiff insisted. “Take it from me. Mr. Rio Navarro is some grifter or cowhand who never stands still long enough to sign for his mail. His drunk girlfriend probably signed for it and then promptly passed out. It’s probably waiting at the bottom of a tall stack of unpaid bills, totally ignored. Don’t expect to meet your new partner any time soon.”

Rose took another gulp of her drink. “Leave it to Ralphie,” she muttered, the words both tender and exasperated.

Ralphie Styles had died broke, but he’d always had a need to leave a legacy behind. As a result, over the years he’d compiled a detailed will in which he doled out every piece of junk he owned. Rose and Tiffany had both received bequests. Rose got a wall clock shaped like a cat. Tiffany was now the proud owner of a gold-plated keychain with the finish wearing off. Both items apparently had special meaning. At lunch a little earlier that day, Rose had got a sad, faraway smile on her face when she’d mentioned that clock. Tiff’s eyes had gleamed when she’d spoken of the keychain. Tiff said Ralphie always used to carry it, when she and Ralphie were in love.

To Phoebe, Ralphie had left all the old Prairie Queen publicity stills that decorated the olive-green and brick walls of the bar he and Phoebe had jointly owned since their divorce eight years ago. In those decade-old pictures, Rose, Tiff and Phoebe smiled wide for the camera. They’d been on their way then, with gigs all over town and a record contract in the works. Ralphie had been their manager.

Phoebe herself had collected those photographs, framed them and hung them on the walls. Only Ralphie would will a girl something that already belonged to her.

And oddly enough, that he’d left her own pictures to her had touched her, made her feel all soft and dewy-eyed, like Tiff with her keychain, like Rose with her clock. As if by willing her what she already owned, Ralphie was somehow reminding her of all that had been—of the passionate, wonderful, long-ago love the two of them had shared, of what a great time they’d had.

As to Ralphie’s half of the bar itself, which now belonged to the mysterious Rio Navarro, well, Phoebe knew she should have got it in writing one of those dozen or so times that Ralphie had told her how it would all be hers when he was gone. Those times were mostly when Ralphie needed money. He’d hit her up for a loan and remind her of how it would all shake out in the end, that one day Ralphie’s Place would be hers and hers alone. He’d died owing her over twenty thousand dollars.

Phoebe polished another glass.

Yeah, she of all people should have known better than to take Ralphie Styles at his word.

Phoebe had been nineteen when she eloped with him. He’d been forty-seven: the legendary Ralphie Styles. In love with her. At last. That he was finally seeing her as a woman had meant everything to Phoebe. She’d known him all her life, been in love with him since she was old enough to speak the word and mean it. He’d never married anyone until he’d married her. She’d thought that made her different than the rest.

It hadn’t. He’d broken her heart they way he did all the others—broken her heart and then, over time, become her true friend.

And no. Phoebe couldn’t say she was all that surprised to learn that she had a new partner. It was her new partner being some stranger from out of state that made her want to break a few glasses instead of polishing them. Since three weeks ago, when Ralphie had got himself nailed in a hit-and-run, Phoebe had been more or less expecting to end up in business with his fourth wife, Darla Jo.

And speaking of Darla Jo…

Back at the table in the corner that Ralphie had always called his “office,” Darla Jo was nursing a plain tonic, hunched over her very pregnant stomach, sobbing her little heart out. She’d received her copy of the will yesterday, too, same as Phoebe, Rose and Tiff. Devastated to learn that some stranger was getting Ralphie’s half of the bar when she was his wife and it ought to have gone to her, Darla had called Phoebe and sobbed in her ear. Phoebe hadn’t been able to stop herself from inviting Darla along for her birthday lunch with the Queens.

After lunch, they’d all come on over to the bar. It was Tuesday, which was usually slow, so they’d figured they would have the place pretty much to themselves. Darla’s brother, Boone, who’d been working the day shift for almost five months now, had already been there when they arrived.

Now Boone sat with Darla, his chair scooted close to her. He had his arm wrapped around her and his sandy-colored head bent close to hers.

“It’s okay, sweetheart.” Boone tried to soothe her by rubbing her back a little. “Darla, come on, it’ll be all right.” But Darla Jo only wailed all the louder. She was inconsolable.

The two women at the bar glanced toward the back table and shook their heads some more.

“Sad,” said Tiff. “No. Worse than sad. Downright depressing.”

Softly, so the two in back wouldn’t hear, Rose stated the obvious. “It’s tough to lose a husband when you’re twenty-one and pregnant with no job skills to speak of.”

“Yeah,” said Tiff. “But that girl has been cryin’ every day for three weeks now. It can’t be good for the baby. She needs to lighten up a little.”

Phoebe spoke then, quietly, bending close to her lifelong friends. “She loved him and now she just can’t deal with the fact that he’s gone. It’s tearing her up inside.”

The other two looked at her, looks that displayed the endless wisdom acquired once a girl approaches thirty and has had plenty of opportunity to witness—and participate in—what goes on between women and men.

At last Rose said low, “Pheeb, darlin’. She may be brokenhearted. But she’s also flat broke. Ralphie left her nothing. No money, no life insurance, no bar. I’d say at least half of all this endless bawlin’ is about a total lack of c-a-s-h.”

Tiffany burped—but delicately. “Oh. ’Scuse me.” She hunched to the bar and whispered so Ralphie’s sobbing child bride wouldn’t hear, “Well, she did get the double-wide, didn’t she? Not that it’s paid for, or anything.”

“Pardon me.” Rose kept her voice low and faked a snooty accent. “That is no double-wide. It is a manufactured home.” She slapped a hand on the bar. “Music. Now.” Sliding off her stool, Rose straightened her jean jacket—causing the rhinestone appliqués on it to glitter wildly in the dim light—and sauntered to the jukebox. Draping her lush self over the side of it, she punched out a few tunes. First off was Creed: “My Sacrifice.”

“Oh, God.” Tiff whined. “Did you have to?”

But Rose only grinned and strutted back to her stool, black salsa skirt swaying. Just as she was settling in, the unmistakable roaring rumble of a Harley-Davidson motorcycle rattled the wide window across from the bar.

Phoebe glanced up from polishing yet another glass as a big guy with shoulder-length crow-black hair rolled a gleaming two-wheeled hunk of chrome and steel off the street and into one of the spaces out front. The afternoon sun glinted off his black sunglasses. Phoebe had to squint against the glare.

The girls at the bar had also turned to look.

“Oh, my, my,” said Cimarron Rose. She pretended to fan herself.

“Nice Harley,” added Tiff out of the side of her mouth.

Rose loudly cleared her throat. “But back to the task at hand…” They both faced the bar again and lifted their glasses. Rose proposed the toast. “Ralphie. He was one of a kind and that is no lie.”

“Ralphie,” Tiff echoed after her, eyes glittering with moisture again. They drank in unison as Darla sobbed all the harder and, beyond the window, the black-haired hunk, in faded denim, a black T-shirt and a black leather vest, got off the Harley. He kicked down the stand with his big black boot. And then, for a moment, he just stood there, muscular arms hanging loose at his sides, staring at the front window as if he could see Phoebe in there behind the bar, staring right back at him. He couldn’t, of course. It was darker inside than out and the window was tinted. But still, a shiver like a dribble of ice water slid down her spine and a sizzle of heat flared low in her belly.

“Darlin’ Phoebe, another round,” said Tiffany.

Phoebe set to work on two more margaritas, glancing up as the big guy came strolling in.

Rose had got it right. My, my, my…

The stranger in question claimed a stool at the end of the bar and took off those black sunglasses. Tossing them down by the ashtray, he sent a glance Phoebe’s way.

“Be right with you.” She gave him a nod and he nodded back. Phoebe served the Queens and then moved on over to stand opposite him.

“Shot of Cuervo.” He had a deep, kind of velvety voice. With a little sandpaper roughness around the edges. “Beer back.” He laid down a twenty and as he did that she looked at his hands. Big hands.

She glanced up and their gazes caught. My, my, my. Eyes as black as his hair. And a mouth that made her think of deep, wet kisses….

Inside Phoebe’s head, alarm bells started ringing.

Don’t you even think about it, girl.

Phoebe had made plenty of mistakes in her thirty years, but she liked to think she’d learned from them. There had been other men in her life since Ralphie, every one of them big and wild and dangerous.

No way. Not again.

She broke the eye contact and concentrated on setting the guy up, free-pouring the tequila with a flourish, plunking the salt in front of him along with the fresh wedge of lime, tipping a beer glass under the tap, topping it off with a perfect inch of head.

“Enjoy,” she said, flashing him one dead-on glance, not letting the look linger.

“Thanks.”

Down the bar, Tiff complained, “Enough of this Creed shit.”

“Baby, your wish is my command,” said Rose.

Right on cue, the song ended and Rose stuck a fist in the air as though she’d been personally responsible. Phoebe moved back to her post near her friends and the Queens laughed together as the jukebox whirred and a much mellower Dave Matthews tune came on.

At Ralphie’s table, Boone was helping the still-sobbing Darla Jo to her feet. She sagged against him and he tightened his hold on her. Swaying together like a pair of bomb victims staggering away from a deadly explosion, they started for the door at the end of the bar that led through the storeroom to the employee parking area in back.

“Mind if I see she gets home all right?” Boone asked, steadying Darla as she stumbled.

“Go ahead,” Phoebe said. “Take the day. I can handle things here till Bernard shows up.”

“Happy birthday, Pheeb,” Darla Jo said in a tiny, broken voice, leaning heavily on Boone. Her honey-brown hair hung lank around her pale baby-doll face.

It caused an ache in Phoebe’s heart to see her hurting so much. “Thanks, sweetie. Take it easy, okay?”

“Take care, Darla Jo,” said Rose.

And Tiffany added, “Later, hon.”

They all watched, wearing solemn expressions, as Boone guided Ralphie’s pregnant widow to the swinging door and on through.

“Ralphie, Ralphie,” Rose pondered aloud, casting her gaze heavenward, once the door swung shut behind Darla Jo and Boone. “Ralphie, what were you thinkin’?”

Tiffany was nodding, looking severe, her famous dimples nowhere in sight. “You are so right, Rose. He never should have gotten the poor little thing pregnant. Almost sixty years old, and he didn’t have the sense to put a raincoat on that big thing of his.”

“Sense? Ralphie?” Rose made a scoffing sound low in her throat. “Now, there are two words never meant to be spoken in the same sentence.” They all nodded at that, even Phoebe. Then Rose’s face softened. “Think about it, though. That baby will be the only child that wild man ever had.”

Tiffany corrected her. “Well, that we know of.”

Tiff did have a point. Chances were Ralphie had other children somewhere. Ralphie had loved women. And women had loved him. It didn’t matter that he was too skinny and too old and his nose was too big for his face. When he turned those lazy-lidded eyes on a girl, she would fall hard and fast and not give a good damn that the landing was bound to be rough.

Back when Phoebe and Ralphie were married, both Tiff and Rose had been in love with him, too. Though she knew her friends would never betray her, Phoebe had resented them for not being able to keep themselves from wanting her husband. Secretly, she’d feared that the day would come when Ralphie started falling out of love with her, the way he had with all the others before her. She’d dreaded that the unthinkable just might happen: she’d find him doing the wild thing with Rose or Tiff.

As it turned out, Ralphie did fall out of love with her. And into bed with someone else. Not Rose or Tiff, though. Thank God. In her pain and rage at his doing her that way, she’d divorced him and taken her half of the bar in the settlement. She’d dropped out of the band, and Rose and Tiff hadn’t had the heart to carry on without her.

For a while, Phoebe had hated Ralphie Styles with a passion as powerful as her love had been. But her hatred didn’t last. She just couldn’t stay mad at him forever. He’d give you the shirt off his back if you needed it. Only later would you find out it was a shirt he’d borrowed from someone else.

You just had to love him, even when you weren’t in love with him anymore. Besides, once a couple of years had gone by, Phoebe really was over him in the romantic sense and truly immune to the passionate insanity he could inspire.

Rose and Tiff weren’t immune to him, though. They’d each married him—Rose first, Tiff later; short marriages that ended the same way his marriage to Phoebe had: in heartbreak and divorce. Eventually, both Rose and Tiff had forgiven him. And in time, each found herself calling him a friend.

Down the bar, the big biker caught Phoebe’s eye and raised his empty shot glass. She went on over there and served him up another round, her throat kind of tight suddenly with all the memories swirling around in her brain. That time, when she set the beer in front of him, she gave the guy a longer look. He looked back. Another shiver went through her—one that crackled with heat all the way down to where it went liquid and spread out into a warm pool low in her belly.

No, she thought.

But deep inside someone was sighing out an endless string of yesses—yesses, she reminded herself, she would do nothing about.

It was a bad day, that was all. A day that had her polishing every glass in the place and imagining what it might be like to celebrate turning thirty by doing something dangerous with a guy she’d just met—a guy who’d spoken exactly six words to her so far: Shot of Cuervo. Beer back. Thanks.

No doubt about it. Soulful eyes. Lots of muscles. Coal-black hair and a couple of shots. These were the beginnings of a truly deep and meaningful relationship.

When she returned to the Queens, they’d moved on to the subject of Ralphie’s suspicious demise.

“I’m sorry,” said Rose. “But I do believe we are dealing with foul play here.” Whoever had run Ralphie over and then fled the scene had yet to be apprehended.

“Well, duh,” said Tiff. “A hit-and-run is foul play by definition.” She sipped her margarita, frowning. “Isn’t it?”

“A hit-and-run is foul play by accident,” Rose clarified. “And I don’t believe Ralphie’s death was any accident. I am talking about someone finally getting fed up with Ralphie in a murderous way. I am talking premeditation. You hear what I’m saying? And it’s not like it’s never been done before. Remember that woman up in Tulsa last year? Got into her SUV, drove to where her husband was doing the nasty with his girlfriend, and ran the bastard down when he and the other woman came out of their favorite motel. Ran him down and then backed up over him, slammed it into drive and ran over him again.”

“I don’t think that was in Tulsa,” said Tiff. “It was on Law and Order, wasn’t it?”

Rose gave her a look. “Not the point—and think about it. As long as nobody sees you and you don’t blow it and leave the guy alive to identify you, a hit-and-run would be better than a bullet or rat poison or a stabbing to the heart.” She paused to gaze deeply into her jumbo margarita glass. Glancing up again, she added, “Yeah, you’d need a way to get rid of the car….”

“Well,” said Tiff. “Somebody did find a way to get rid of the car. Or to hide it. Or somethin’. They got rid of it after the fact. They don’t want to face the consequences of their actions. That doesn’t mean it was preplanned or anything.”

“Oh, yeah,” said Rose. “I think it was.”

Phoebe, who’d heard all this before, just wished they would stop. But they didn’t.

Tiffany insisted, “Some drunk, that’s all. Or some soccer mom on her cell phone.”

“Ha,” said Rose. “That’s a stretch. A soccer mom driving around in the Paseo in the middle of the night, calling…who?”

“I’m only trying to get you to see,” said Tiff in her most patient and reasonable tone, “that we basically know nothing beyond the fact that someone hit him and then drove away.”

“Huh. Pardon me. We know he was in the Paseo, on foot, after midnight.” The Paseo, the old Spanish district, with its stucco buildings and clay-tile roofs, was best known for its thriving artists’ community. Ralphie was no artist. He didn’t live in the Paseo, have friends there or do business there that the Queens knew of. “I ask you,” said Rose. “What was he doing there?”

Tiffany blew out a hard breath. “I’m only saying, why assume it had to be murder?”

Rose had her margarita glass in her hand again. She took a big gulp and set it down hard. “Because it was Ralphie who got killed, that’s why. We all know how he was. Everybody loved him—except for when they hated him.”

Phoebe had heard enough. More than enough. She grabbed the cast-aluminum ice scooper from the top of the ice machine, pulled open the slanted steel ice machine door, braced her free arm on the rim and stuck the scooper in there. Taking a wide stance for balance on her pointy little heels, she used the scooper to beat at the ice. It had been clumping for a few days now, which meant the machine was leaking. She’d need to call a repairman.

Haven’t done that in a while, she thought as she pounded away. Not since Ralphie came back to the city—to stay, this time, he’d told her—and started in with Darla Jo.

“Tiff, you are in denial,” she heard Rose insist.

“I’m in denial….?”

Phoebe pounded harder, glaring into the globs and clumps of ice as she attacked them with the scooper, every blow beating back the voices behind her.

She pulverized that ice and in her mind’s eye, he took form.

Ralphie…

She could just see him, see that road map of a face with the laugh lines etched deep as craters on either side of his fleshy mouth, see the wild hair he dyed a reddish-black not found in nature, which in the past few years was thinning so high at the temples, the bare spots threatened to meet at the top of his head.

He’d always been handy with machines. “Step aside,” he would say when the equipment started acting up. “Let Ralphie work his magic—and hand me that wrench over there, will you, babe?”

Phoebe beat the ice harder. She wanted to smash every clump to a sliver, crush it all into powder.

“Phoebe, hon.” It was Rose. Phoebe slammed the scoop into the ice one more time. Rose shouted, “Hey!”

Squinting hard to hold back the gathering tears, Phoebe pulled her head out of the ice machine and sent a glare over her shoulder at the Queens.

Rose told her tenderly, “Honey, put that scoop down.”

Phoebe tossed the scoop into the machine, slammed the door and whirled to face her friends. “I am sick of hearin’ about it.”

“Sorry,” said Rose.

“Not another word,” vowed Tiffany.

Phoebe wrapped her arms around herself and looked down at her high-heeled sandals. They were red as the roses on her dress. Red was a power color—she’d heard that somewhere. Lately, since Ralphie’s death, Phoebe felt like she needed all the power she could get.

Tiff said weakly, “Aw, Pheeb. Come on.”

Phoebe squeezed her arms tighter around her middle, lifted her head and jerked her sagging shoulders back. “I miss that sorry sleazeball, I truly do.” Her throat locked up. She had to whisper the rest. “I just can’t believe he went and got himself killed.”

There was a silence, except for Gwen Stefani bopping on the jukebox, singing that “Hollaback Girl” song.

Rose got that soft-eyed, mother-hen look. “Oh, honey…”

Phoebe pressed her lips together and tightly shook her head. “Uh-uh.” She put out a hand. “I am not going to lose it. I am going to be fine.” There’d been enough crying. Darla Jo had done plenty of that for all of them.

“It’s okay,” Tiffany said in a careful voice. “Sometimes a girl can’t help herself. She just needs a good cry.”

But Phoebe wasn’t going to cry. Not now. Not today. She gulped to clear the tightness from her throat, pressed her fingers under her eyes to ease the burning ache of tears unshed and drew herself up tall again. “So. ’Nother round?”

But the fun was over and they all knew it. Phoebe looked from Tiff to Rose and back to Tiff. They both wore that shiny-eyed, tears-on-the-way look. One more drink and things would get seriously weepy.

Tiff, who’d driven Rose, pushed her half-full glass Rose’s way. “Finish that if you want it. I need a quick minute and then we’re outta here.” She got up and went to the ladies’ room, past the stage and down the hall.

Rose looked into the depths of Tiffany’s unfinished drink and then up at Phoebe. “I took the whole day off. Come on over to my place for a while. Give yourself a damn break for a change. It is your birthday.”

Phoebe considered, but decided against it. “Thanks. No.” She swept out an arm, indicating the mostly empty room and the lone biker down at the end of the bar. He wasn’t looking their way. Instead, he stared straight ahead at the rows of bottles on the mirrored back wall, as if pondering the mysteries of the universe. “Who’ll handle all these customers if I take off?”

Rose forced a chuckle, then asked doubtfully, “You sure?”

“Positive. And Bernard’ll be in at six.” Bernard, one of Phoebe’s two full-time bartenders besides herself, had the closing shift that day. “If things stay slow, I’ll go home when he gets here. Put my feet up. Call my mother. Floss my teeth…”

Rose groaned. “Pheeb, you need to watch yourself.”

“Oh? And why’s that?”

“Lately, your life is becoming downright boring.”

“And you know what? I like it that way.”

“But a girl needs a thrill now and then.”

“I’ve had enough thrills to last me a lifetime—and then some.”

Peruvian earrings dancing against her white neck under the soft waves of her blond hair, Tiffany emerged from the back hallway. “Y’ all ready to go?”

Rose took a long pull off Tiff’s abandoned drink and set the glass down with finality. “Ready.”

Phoebe followed them to the door, answered their duet of goodbyes and happy birthdays, and moved to the wide window to watch them as they got into Tiff’s ancient, perfectly maintained Volvo sedan, which Ralphie had presented to her two years ago when her rattletrap compact car finally gave up the ghost. They hooked their seat belts and Tiff backed onto the street.

The gorgeous old car slid out—and slammed to a stop as a Mustang came roaring down Western and almost plowed into it. Honking ensued, from both vehicles. The guy in the Mustang swung around the Volvo, yelling something rude as he went by. Rose stuck her arm out the passenger window, middle finger raised high.

Phoebe shook her head. Rose had the attitude, always had.

The Volvo rolled forward, made the light onto Thirty-Sixth Street and disappeared the same way the Mustang had gone. Phoebe leaned her forehead against the cool glass of the window and shut her burning eyes.

She missed the Queens already, though five minutes ago she couldn’t wait to see them gone. The song on the jukebox ended. It whirred for a moment and then it was quiet.

Quiet enough to hear the rubber hit the road out on Western and the faint cries of four starlings on a wire above the furniture store across the street. She could even hear the damn ice machine dripping, back there behind the bar. And the balls of her feet were sore. She lifted her left foot and slid off her sandal. Heaven. She took off the other one. The cool, scuffed boards of the floor felt so good against her bare feet. Sandals in hand, she turned for the bar.

The biker had turned, too. He sat facing her, watching her through those black, black eyes.

Phoebe let a naughty little thrill shimmer through her—and then shrugged and swung the sandals over her shoulder to dangle by a finger. “Don’t tell me. You’re the new health inspector.” It was a bad joke and it fell flat.

He shrugged. “Not me.”

“Ready for another shot?”

“Two’s my limit.”

“Smart man.”

They shared a look. It lasted a second or two longer than it should have. Then he tipped his dark head at the empty stool beside him.

Better not, she thought. But what do you know? Her bare feet ambled on over there anyway, carrying her with them. She hopped up on the stool, facing out as he was, tugging lightly on her skirt so it didn’t slide too far up her thighs.

Dropping the sandals to the floor, she eased around his way and stuck out her hand. “I’m Phoebe Jacks.”

After a slight hesitation, he took it. His big, warm, rough hand swallowed hers and she felt that thrill again, that heated excitement searing upward along her arm, spreading all through her.

Lust at first sight, she thought, trying to be philosophical, reminding herself, again, that it was just a bad day for her and she would not follow through on her urge to rip off her sundress and jump into his lap. Maybe once upon a time she would have. But not anymore. She was older and wiser now. She’d lived through a marriage to Ralphie and after that, through a definite weakness for bad boys in black leather. She was done with all that now.

They shook.

She prompted, “And you are?”

“Rio,” he said. “Rio Navarro.”

Phoebe’s heart stopped dead, and then started racing. Carefully, she pulled her hand away. “My new partner.” Her tone was level. Absolutely calm. Just as if she were polishing the glassware.

“That’s right.”

“Ralphie’s dead,” she said, as if he didn’t already know.

“So I heard.”

She looked at Rio Navarro and she wondered how this—how any of it—could possibly have happened. Ralphie gone forever. Darla crying all the time. This black-eyed, sexy stranger showing up out of nowhere on her birthday and turning out to be the man who owned half of her livelihood.

It was too much, all of it, just too damn much.

“Excuse me,” she said, and had to pause to gulp hard. “I’ll be back in a minute.” Phoebe jumped from the stool, scooped up her sandals and raced around the end of bar, headed for the swinging door that led to the prep and storage areas in back.

Though it took every ounce of pride and self-respect she possessed, she didn’t burst into tears until after the door swung shut behind her.




CHAPTER TWO


A Prairie Queen has a sparkling comeback for every bad pick-up line.

Example: Man: Haven’t I seen you someplace before?

Prairie Queen: Yes, that’s why I don’t go there anymore.”

—from The Prairie Queen’s Guide to Life, by Goddess Jacks

RIO WAITED FOUR AND A half minutes for Ralphie’s former wife to reappear through the swinging door with the round window in the top of it.

When she did, her eyes and nose were red. She’d also put on some flat-heeled black shoes. She pushed through that door with her dark head high and marched right over to him—keeping to her side of the bar so that the long oak surface stood between them.

She met Rio’s eyes dead on, no sniffling, and he thought of what Ralphie had always said of her: Phoebe’s a stand-up gal. A rock. “Sorry about that.”

“No problem.” He knew she wouldn’t want his concern, but he found himself leaning closer and asking anyway, “You okay?”

“I am just fine.” Each word was strong and final, even with the Oklahoma lilt adding a twang to the vowels. Her gaze shifted away, and then back. “So. You come all the way from California on that big bike out there?”

“That’s right.”

“You travel light.”

“I’ve got a pack and a helmet. I left them at the motel.”

She kind of squinted at him, leaning in. He got a whiff of her perfume. Tempting. Like the rest of her. Then she backed off again and braced a hand on the bar. “Not meanin’ to insult you or anything, but I wonder if you wouldn’t mind showing me some ID.”

Her request didn’t surprise him. When you met someone through Ralphie Styles, it was always a good idea to ask for ID. “Right here.” He eased his wallet from an inside pocket of his leather vest and flipped it open, holding it across the bar to her so she could get a look at his driver’s license.

She craned her dark head close to examine it. He stared at the vulnerable crown of her head and breathed in more of the seductive smell of her. When she straightened, he still saw doubt in those red-rimmed green eyes. “I’ll bet a good forger could make one of those look just like the real thing.”

Rio turned it around so his private investigator’s ID in the opposite window was right-side up. She peered at that one for even longer than she had his driver’s license. Finally, with a weary little sigh, she waved it away. He tucked the wallet back inside his vest.

“So. You’re a private detective?”

He nodded. “I also work for a bail bondsman now and then, bringing home the bad guys.”

She looked at him sideways. “Like a bounty hunter?”

“You got it.”

“Well,” she said, “and now you’re half owner of my bar.” She put a slight extra emphasis on the word my. Her mouth had a pursed look. “We missed you at the funeral.” A definite dig.

“When was it?”

She blinked and her mouth loosened, even trembled a little. “You didn’t know.”

“Not till last week, when I got the will and the letter telling me that Ralphie was dead.”

“I’m sorry.” He saw real regret in her eyes then. “Ralphie didn’t talk a lot about his friends from out of town. But he did mention you, now and then. I guess I should have thought to try and get a hold of you.”

Rio had never cared much for funerals anyway. “Not a big deal.”

“Well, the times he talked about you, he said good things.”

Okay, he was curious. “Like what?”

She waved a hand. “General things. How he could always count on you. Once, when he took off for California, he said something about staying with you. How you were like family. How someday he was going to talk you into coming to Oklahoma, at least for a visit. And then, when he and Darla decided to get married, he said something about inviting you to the wedding.”

Ralphie had invited him. “He gave me a call. Would have made it if I could.” There had been that job in Mexico. He hadn’t wanted to pass that one up. Rio found himself wishing what men always wished when it was too late: that he’d chosen his friend over paying the rent.

She said, “You knew Ralphie a long time, huh?”

Sadness scraped at the back of his throat. He swallowed it down. “Yeah. We went way back.”

Her eyes got a little wetter. She cleared her throat. “He died on tax day, do you believe that?”

He shook his head. “Ralphie. Always filed his taxes…”

She was smiling, a misty kind of smile. “He hated to do it, but he’d say—”

“‘I’ve seen a lot of highflyers brought low,’” He faked Ralphie’s whisky-and-nicotine drawl. “‘And all because they didn’t bother to do their time with a 1099.’”

She turned slightly away, swiped at her eyes, and then faced him again. “I keep expecting to look up and see him comin’ through that door, heading straight for the jukebox.”

“Let me guess. ‘Home Sweet Oklahoma.’”

“That would be the one.” It came out tight. Emotion under strict rein. She swallowed. “Ralphie did love his Leon Russell. No matter where his big dreams took him, he always came home to Oklahoma.”

“Which is why Woody Guthrie would do in a pinch.”

“So true.” Her eyes shone at him, full of memories and the growing awareness that Rio had a few memories of his own.

There was a silence. In it were all the things Rio might have said, but didn’t. Bad idea, he thought, to let himself go tripping too far down memory lane. He’d just met this woman. No need to make a business meeting into a wake.

Ralphie’s ex let her gaze drop to the bar. “So what are your plans?” She was getting down to it.

Stalling, he asked for clarification he didn’t need. “You mean about this place?”

She nodded, drawing herself up, suggesting grimly, “Thinking you want to get into the bar business?”

He should have answered simply, no. But things were starting to seem a long way from simple. “You’re leading up to offering to buy me out, right?”

She raised her slim hands and pressed her fingertips gently to the tear-puffy skin under her eyes. Her bare shoulders gleamed, pearly, in the dim light from above. “Yeah.” She let her hands drop. “Yeah, I am.”

It was exactly what he’d hoped she might say—or it had been. Until he’d heard those friends of hers discussing the way Ralphie had checked out.

And then there was the little problem of Ralphie’s very pregnant bride.

Things weren’t adding up. If the dead man had been anyone else, Rio probably would have just let it go. But Ralphie Styles, with all his faults, had been the best friend Rio Navarro ever had. Rio was ten when they’d met, Ralphie in his mid thirties. Rio still remembered the first advice Ralphie Styles had ever given him.

“Keep your head up, kid. And never let any sumbitch see you sweat.”

The woman across the bar prompted, “So what do you think?”

Rio ordered his mind back to the present—and stalled some more. “You got the cash to buy me out?”

“Not right now. But I can get it eventually. In the meantime, you’d get Ralphie’s share, half of what we make here—after operating expenses.”

“I’ll need some time to think it over.”

“Think what over? What do you want with a half-interest in an Oklahoma City bar? Let me buy you out.”

He let a few beats elapse before replying, “I think I’ll just keep my options open for a while. If that’s all right with you.”

She was getting that strung-tight look again, the one she’d been wearing just before she fled to the back room. “It’s not all right with me. None of it. Not a thing. And excuse me, but did you know?”

He sat back a fraction. “About?”

“About this bar. That you were getting his half of it when—” she had to swallow before she could finish “—Ralphie was gone?”

Her eyes pleaded with him. She didn’t really want the truth. He gave it to her anyway. “I knew.”

She had to clear her throat again. “Ralphie told you he was leaving his half to you?”

“Yeah.”

“How long ago was that?”

“Three years.”

She shut those misty eyes and sucked in a deep breath through her nose. He watched the roses on her dress rise high and recede.

Same old Ralphie, Rio thought. Ralphie had a bad habit of promising people things that didn’t belong to him. And if something did belong to him, he’d promise it to everyone.

When Ralphie’s ex looked at him again, her pretty mouth was set in an angry line and she seemed to have run out of questions—for the moment, anyway.

Rio decided to try getting a few answers of his own. “That was the widow, right? The little pregnant one who left with…” He didn’t know the guy’s name, so he gave her a chance to provide it.

She did. “Boone is Darla Jo’s brother. He works here, for me.”

“And Darla is exactly how pregnant?”

The woman across the bar made a small, angry sound and her green eyes flashed warnings. “Darla Jo was pregnant before she and Ralphie got married, if that’s what you’re getting at. Does that shock you or something?”

“Not a lot shocks me.”

“Is that a fact?”

“Yeah. It’s a fact.”

“So why even ask?”

“Just curious. Just…putting a few things together.”

“Well, you know what? I’m a little curious myself. I can’t help wonderin’ why you didn’t have the courtesy to introduce yourself when you first walked in here.” She tipped her head at the twenty he’d laid on the bar. “Why’d you have to fake me out with the paying customer routine?”

“Sorry,” he said, though he wasn’t. “I wanted to wait. Talk to you alone.”

“How thoughtful.” She gave the word a whole new meaning. Not a good one.

He couldn’t resist turning the knife a little. “And then there were all the interesting things your friends had to say about the way Ralphie died.”

She made another of those tight, disgusted noises. “Listening to other people’s conversations. Didn’t your mama ever tell you that eavesdroppin’ is rude?”

“Gets ingrained, in my line of work.”

She waved her hand as if batting away a pesky fly. “Well, it’s all just talk, anyway, what Rose said.”

He gave her the lifted eyebrow. “You have to admit she made some valid points.”

For that he got a long, tired sigh. “Listen. It’s been three weeks since it happened and the police don’t have a thing—and don’t give me that look. They did their job. They interviewed everyone in sight. And whenever I called them and asked what was going on, they were great about it, real considerate and helpful. But they’ve got nothing, not without the car that ran him down or a single witness or anything left where it happened that might give them a clue. A hit-and-run. That’s all we know. And like Tiff said, that’s probably all it was. An accident.”

“Phoebe.” He called her by her name for the first time and found he liked the feel of it in his mouth. “Do you think there’s more to it?”

She simmered where she stood. “It doesn’t matter what I think. It’s pretty damn clear by now that we’re never going to know for sure.”

“You mean you don’t want to know? Or maybe you just don’t care…”

She gave him a long beat of frozen silence. Then, with slow purpose, she leaned in close. He smelled that faint perfume again. And liked it. Too much. She spoke low, her voice gone to velvet—velvet over tempered steel. “You can be a real asshole. You know that, Mr. Private Detective?”

“Do you want to know the truth or not?”

“You also ask too many questions.”

“Questions tend to bring answers. I like answers.”

A stare-down ensued. He won. Más o menos.

She broke the eye contact. Shoving off the bar, she stomped on down to where her friends had sat and started cleaning up after them.

Every movement deft and quick, she cleared off the soggy cocktail napkins and the squeezed-out sections of lime. She dumped the half-empty drinks, tossing them into the steel sink behind the bar. Once the debris was swept away, she grabbed a wet towel to swab it all down, the sleek muscles in her bare arms flexing as she scrubbed.

As he watched her, Rio considered her various reactions since he’d walked through the door. What did they add up to? Grief? Guilt? Fury at Ralphie’s final betrayal of leaving half of her business to a guy she’d never met? Frustration at not even knowing who had run Ralphie down?

When she’d said goodbye to the childlike, big-bellied widow, he’d heard a definite softness in her voice. Motherly almost. Protective. What was that about?

Rio consulted his instincts. They told him that Phoebe Jacks was okay, that if Ralphie had been murdered, she wouldn’t have—couldn’t have—had anything to do with it. But instincts could lie. And his were probably a little skewed in her case.

Scratch that.

More than probably.

He liked her—as Ralphie had always been so damn sure he would. He liked her coffee-brown hair, piled loosely on her head, getting free in little wispy strands that curled around her cheeks. He liked her pearly skin, her slanted green eyes and straight, no-nonsense black eyebrows. And then there was the way she’d refused to cry in front of him. And that sexy little black dress splashed with red roses that tied behind her neck and left her upper back and shoulders bare.

He’d like to see the parts of her the roses covered. He’d like that a lot.

Even if she did have a scrotum-shrinking way about her when she was ticked off.

Once she got the bar cleared, she trotted out to the table in the back where the loudly grieving widow had sat with her brother. She scooped up the glass the widow had left and wiped away the water ring beneath it. She straightened the chairs, holding the ladderbacks with one hand, kicking them under the table so the chair legs screeched against the floor.

She flew back behind the bar and dumped the glass, folded the wet towel into a neat little square. Rio waited for her to look at him again.

Before she did, the door to the street swung open and three guys in short-sleeved dress shirts, red ties and cheap slacks came in. Obviously regulars. Phoebe greeted them by name, pushed an ashtray toward the balding one in the center, and served them without having to ask what they’d have.

The balding one lit a cigarette and told her she was looking good. She flashed him a smile of acknowledgment—with zero invitation in it.

Then she marched down to stand opposite Rio again. “Anything else?”

He was being dismissed. Leaning toward her, he pitched his voice low so the locals wouldn’t hear. “Happy birthday.”

“Thanks,” she replied good and loud in a tone that said, Get lost.

“And one more thing. For now.” His bike was too attention-getting. He needed something a little quieter and less eye-catching to get around in while he tried to find out what the police hadn’t. “I’ll need to rent a car.”

“Call Hertz.”

“I’ll do that. And when I do, I want to put my bike someplace safe. Is there a garage or a loading area in back, something with a lock on the door?”

The guys in cheap slacks were watching. Rio caught the eye of the smoker and held it. After a count of five or so, all three looked away. A few seconds later the skinny one on the far end started in with some story about buying surround-sound for his digital TV.

Phoebe fumed at him a little, and then she gave in. “Just a minute.” She headed off through the door with the porthole in it and banged back through seconds later.

“There’s a garage around back.” She slapped a key down on the bar a few inches from his shades. “Take the alley on the side of the building.”

“Thanks.”

“Why thank me? That garage is half yours. And pick up your money.” She nodded at his twenty. “Didn’t Ralphie tell you? An owner never pays.”

He left the twenty where it lay. “Got a pencil?”

She huffed about it, but she did step over to the cash register, where she yanked a Bic from a happy face mug full of pens. She came back and handed it over.

He took a business card from another pocket of his vest and wrote the name of his motel and the number to his cell on the back. “In case you need to get in touch with me.” He slid the card her way.

“Great,” she said, meaning it wasn’t. And then, huffing some more, she returned to the register and got a card from the little plastic stand next to the mug full of pens. “Here’s my cell.” She scribbled on the back. “And my home number, too. Also, there’s an alarm inside the roll-up door in back. You’ll need the combination.” She scribbled some more, then passed the card to him. The front had a line drawing of the exterior of the bar with the bar’s address, phone number and Phoebe Jacks, proprietor in the lower right hand corner.

“Thanks.”

She gave an elaborate shrug of those smooth shoulders. “If I didn’t give it to you, you’d find it all out anyway, right?”

“See you later, Phoebe.” He stood from the stool and put on his shades. “It’s been educational.”

Phoebe watched him go. He had an excellent butt on him. But then, she could have guessed that by looking at the front of him. She wanted to despise the guy, though she knew she really didn’t. It was Ralphie she was mad at.

But not really even Ralphie. Uh-uh. When she thought of Ralphie, she only wanted to flee to the back again and indulge in a Darla Jo–sized crying jag.

That wasn’t an option. She had a bar to run. Tonight, just maybe, she could get away early. She could go home, throw herself across her bed and sob to her heart’s content.

Outside, Rio straddled his bike and started it up. The powerful engine rumbled and then roared.

Pointedly ignoring the twenty that still waited on the bar, Phoebe turned to her customers. “Everybody doing okay?”

“You like a man on a big bike?” asked Dewey, puffing on his cancer stick. “I can get myself one of those.”

Andy, to Dewey’s left, piped up. “Phoebe darlin’, for you, I will join the Hells Angels.”

“Now, I don’t know,” said Purvis, to Dewey’s right. “I’m not sure we approve of you goin’ out with a Hells Angel.”

Phoebe reached for the rack over her head and pulled down a wineglass. She grabbed a dry towel. “Purvis, that is no Hells Angel. And I’m not going out with him.” She put a strong emphasis on the not, partly because she personally needed to hear herself say it.

“But you said he could park that Harley-Davidson around back. And you gave him your phone number.” Dewey looked deeply wounded. “You never would give it to me.”

She said it again. “I’m not going out with him.”

“Well, then why’d you give him your number?” Andy demanded.

Phoebe polished that wineglass for all she was worth. “That’s my new partner.”

There was a moment of awestruck, disbelieving silence.

Andy broke it. “You’re shittin’ us.”

“No,” Phoebe said. “Unfortunately, I’m not.”




CHAPTER THREE


A Prairie Queen knows that most of a woman’s problems start with men. Think about it: MENtal illness, MENstrual cramps, MENtal breakdown, MENopause…

—from The Prairie Queen’s Guide to Life by Goddess Jacks

IF RIO HAD KNOWN HE WOULD have a job to do when he got to Oklahoma City, he would have come better prepared.

After he left the bar, he went to work. He made some calls. He got a haircut and bought a few clothes. Then he tracked down the accident report through the usual channels, paying a visit to police headquarters downtown, digging up the case number first, then trotting over to records to pick up the report.

After a quick study of the report, he talked to an OCPD public information officer. He left police headquarters and made a few more calls. Then he shopped some more. Got himself quality binoculars, a high mega-pixel digital camera and a video camera, also digital. He also needed a decent computer with high-speed Internet—and his motel had no Internet access, so he’d have to find one that did.

All in good time.

That night, he stretched out on the hard bed in his current motel room with the accident report and a map of Oklahoma City, and zeroed in on his target area, a ten-block radius from the spot where Ralphie had been hit. Most likely, the police would have covered that ground already, cruising the neighborhood, possibly even going door-to-door, looking for witnesses. But Rio would do it again. A lot of people didn’t like talking to the police, for any number of reasons. They would talk to a friend, though. And when he put his mind to it, Rio Navarro was very good at making friends.

And speaking of friends…

He needed one. Or at least, an ally. Not for doing the scene and the neighborhood around it. For that, he could dig up some recommendations and hire an assistant, a pro. But for getting information out of Ralphie’s friends and associates, he could use the help of an insider.

He already had his insider picked out. Phoebe Jacks.

The dead man himself recommended her. Ralphie had always said that Phoebe was a smart woman, a woman a man could count on. Plus, Rio had his own sense of her from that afternoon. She had pride. And cojones; she sure hadn’t taken any crap off him. Also, he kind of liked the way she’d attacked that ice machine.

And then there was what she’d said a moment later, the anger and the pain in it: I miss that sorry sleazeball, I truly do….

Yeah, Ralphie’s death had really gotten to her.

Rio wasn’t kidding himself. His sense of his new business partner had a little more to do with his dick than it should have.

Too bad. His dick aside, she struck him as the perfect choice.

Next step on the Phoebe front would be to make her see that she wanted answers, too.



DUE TO ALL THE UPHEAVAL in her mind and heart, Phoebe had managed to forget that the second Tuesday of every month was open-mike night. Open-mike night brought in the wannabe musicians and singers with their Sears keyboards and cheap acoustic guitars. The wannabes brought all their friends. It wasn’t a call-brand crowd. No pricey flavored martinis. They drank well liquor and a lot of beer. But cheap drinks added up if you sold enough of them. And on open-mike night, Ralphie’s Place was packed.

At seven, when the two extra cocktail waitresses and the second bartender came strolling in, Phoebe remembered what the night held in store. No way would she be going home early. Her crying jag would have to wait.

She worked without a break straight through till closing time and didn’t pull into the driveway of her little house in Mesta Park until almost 3:00 a.m.

By then, she was too tired to cry. She dropped her dress on the floor and crawled into bed without even bothering to brush her teeth.

The phone woke her at eight: her mother, Goddess Jacks.

“Listen to this. ‘Five tips for a woman. Number one. Find a man who helps you around the house and has a job. Number two. Get yourself a guy who makes you laugh. Number three. Don’t forget that a man you choose should be one you can count on, who doesn’t lie to you. Number four. You need a man who loves you and spoils you. Number five. It is important that these four men do not know each other.’” Goddess let out a musical laugh full of wicked delight. “So. You think?”

Phoebe thought her mother ought to try and remember not to call her before ten. She said, bleakly, “I love it.”

“Oh, hon. It’s going to be so good.”

Goddess Jacks was writing a self-help book: The Prairie Queen’s Guide to Life. Originally, she’d titled it The Prairie Goddess’s Guide to Life, after herself, since she was the one giving the advice. But then she’d decided that goddess, with an apostrophe and an s at the end, didn’t sound right. She’d settled on queen, in honor of Phoebe, Rose and Tiff—and the Prairie Queen Music Hall, long defunct and torn down.

“I’ve got more.” Goddess was on a roll. Phoebe tried to remind herself that at least the call wasn’t about one of her mother’s visions. Goddess had visions all the time. She swore she had second sight. Goddess said, “A good friend will come and bail you out of jail, but a true friend will be sitting next to you in that cell saying, ‘Damn. That was fun!’”

“Mom.”

Goddess accused, “You are not laughing.”

“I got in at three.”

“Don’t whine, hon. Whinin’ makes those ugly little lines between your eyebrows—though I do know what’s got you down. It’s that will, isn’t it?” Goddess had received her copy the same day as Phoebe, Darla and the other Queens—and probably everyone else in central Oklahoma. “I still can’t believe he left me that foosball table. How could he have known I always wanted one of those? He was a genius that way, now wasn’t he?” Goddess paused to indulge in a long, sentimental sigh. “Ralphie. More faults than Swiss cheese has holes. But didn’t he always just know what a woman might want? Now, if I can only find somewhere to put the dang thing—and I know, I know. Figuring out where to put a foosball table doesn’t exactly stack up against discovering you’ve got a partner you’ve never even met. Any news on this Rio Navarro character?”

It was not a question Phoebe wanted to be asked.

Her mother, using her psychic powers no doubt, read Phoebe’s silence correctly. “He showed up. Oh, my. What’s he like?”

Black hair, black eyes, lots of muscles and a great ass. “He’s okay. I guess. He got in from California yesterday. On a Harley.”

“Ooooo. Black leather jacket? Tight jeans? Interestin’ tattoos? Chains hangin’ off him?”

“Get a grip, Mama.”

“Your new partner got a job out there in California?”

“He’s a private investigator.”

“Hmm. Not exactly your average nine-to-five. But still refreshing. A friend of Ralphie’s who works. What’s he going to do—about the bar?”

“He hasn’t decided yet.”

“I do hate a man who can’t make up his mind.”

“Yeah. Me, too.”

“Hon, you do sound down.”

“I’m fine,” she lied.

“You’re lyin’. You have a nice birthday lunch with Tiff and Rose?” Not giving Phoebe any chance to answer, Goddess kept right on, “Thirty years old. I can hardly believe it. My baby is thirty years old…”

“Happens to everyone eventually.”

“That it does. And you’re still all broke up, aren’t you? You haven’t made peace with the fact that Ralphie is gone.” Phoebe decided not to reply to that. After a pause long enough to drive a fifth wheel and a horse trailer through, her mother said, “I am picking up nothing about that hit-and-run. But you wait. The spirits always come through. In fact, I’ve been thinking that we all need to make ourselves more open to communications from—” her mother’s voice cut out and Phoebe heard a beep on the line “—the grave. After all, the spirits can’t be heard if nobody’s listening and—”

“Mom, I have to go. I’ve got another call.”

Goddess harrumphed. “And if you think I believe that, I’ve got some swampland to sell you. You can build you some condos on it.”

“’Bye.” Phoebe punched the call-waiting button. “Hello.”

“Just checking to see if you gave me your real number.”

Already, she recognized his voice. Probably a bad sign. “Rio.”

“Too early for you?”

“Yeah. But don’t let that stop you. It never stopped my mother.”

“Goddess. Now, there’s a name for you.”

She tightened her grip on the handset. “How did you know my mother’s name?”

“Ralphie told me. It’s not the kind of name a man forgets. Ralphie also said he knew your mother from back in the seventies. And that he knew you and his other ex-wives back then, too, when you three were only kids.”

“Ralphie talked too much.”

“True. Rose and Tiffany. Your friends from the bar yesterday. Right?”

“What about them?”

“You know what. They’re the ex-wives I just mentioned. And I’ve been nosing around a little….”

“Nosing around, where?”

“Various places.”

“Oh, I’ll just bet—and why have you been nosing around?” she asked, as if she didn’t already know.

“Information is power.”

“Hold the phone. Let me write that down.”

“Don’t be crabby, Reina.” His voice changed when he said the unfamiliar word, became softer, more musical.

“What’s that, Spanish?”

He made a sound in the affirmative. “Reina. Queen.”

She started to tell him not to call her that, but couldn’t quite do it. Why not? It was a question she refused to analyze. She said, “I’d be a lot less crabby if you’d agree to sell me your half of my bar.”

“Help me get what I want. Then we’ll see about the bar.”

“And you want?”

“Take a wild guess.”

She didn’t have to guess. She knew. She muttered, “Answers.”

“Got it on the first try. And my take is that you really cared for the old SOB. I can’t figure out why you don’t want answers, too—unless you already have them.”

She tried to whip up a little outrage, but it just wasn’t happening. Wearily, she accused, “Meaning that you think I had something to do with what happened to him.”

“My instincts tell me you’re not involved.”

She ladled on the sarcasm. “I am so relieved to hear that.”

“But I do wonder…” He let the sentence wander off. She waited, refusing to prompt him. He went on at last. “Maybe there’s someone you feel you have to protect.”

“Why would I be protecting some drunk driver I never met?”

“You wouldn’t. If it was some drunk who hit him. But what if it wasn’t?” Before she could respond to that one, he said, “He was killed by a flat-fronted, high vehicle—an SUV, a full-sized van or a big pickup.”

“And you know this…how?”

“Accident description. Force applied above the body’s center of gravity. Forward projection—the body is flattened against the high front of the vehicle, accelerated to the speed of the vehicle, then thrown to the roadway ahead of the vehicle. In Ralphie’s case, the vehicle went right over him after hitting him.”

Phoebe’s stomach was suddenly queasy. She shut her eyes—and saw Ralphie’s lined, leathery face; his too-charming scam artist’s smile. Her eyes popped open—wide—and she argued, “They never found the vehicle, so there’s no way to know for sure what it was.”

“But they do know what I just explained to you. And they got paint transfer. Off the body. Red paint. I had a little talk with someone down at the OCPD. Paint analysis here takes four to six months. The FBI does it. Did you know that from one tiny flake of paint, it’s possible to get the make and model of just about any vehicle?”

“So in six months, they’ll know what to look for.”

“I don’t want to wait that long. Do you?”

Phoebe had a powerful urge to disconnect the call, throw the phone across the room and pull the sheet over her head.

And then what? Cry until she couldn’t cry anymore? Sleep?

Wake up, go to work, wait six months to find out whether it was a van or a pickup that had killed Ralphie Styles?

Rio said, “Come on, Phoebe. You’re not the little widow, wailing away at a back table as if turning on the waterworks is going to get you somewhere. You’re a strong woman who knows that if something’s not getting done, it’s time to roll up your sleeves and do it yourself.”

“The little widow has a name. Darla Jo. And you don’t know a thing about who I am.”

There was a silence on the line. For a moment, Phoebe thought he had hung up on her.

No such luck. “I could use a cup of coffee.”

Phoebe speared her fingers through her sleep-scrambled hair and growled at the phone.

“I heard that.”

“I’m not meeting you for coffee.”

“Fine. I’ll come there.”

“Forget it. I’m not givin’ you my address.”

“I’ve already got it.” Now, why didn’t that surprise her? “Ten minutes.”

That time he did hang up—before she could tell him to go to hell and stay there. She yanked the phone away from her ear and glared at it, then slammed it down on the nightstand.

And then she got up, pulled on some old jeans and a wrinkled Oklahoma State University T-shirt, and went to put the coffee on.



PHOEBE OPENED THE DOOR scowling. Rio saw the unwilling smile tug at her mouth as she took in his freshly cut hair, his cheap suit and square-framed glasses. “You look like Clark Kent.” She looked like the unmade bed she’d probably just crawled out of. It was a good look for her. Rumpled and sexy. Made him want to reach for her and rumple her up some more.

He kept his hands at his sides. “You’d be surprised the way people open up to a harmless-looking guy in a bad suit.”

“I’ll bet.” She craned her head toward her driveway where his Softail gleamed in the morning sun. “Maybe you ought to rethink that Harley, though. Puts a real dent in the mild-mannered image.”

“I’m on it. I’ll pick up a car this morning. A beige sedan. When I’m working, I like a full-sized car. A nice, dependable model. With a big engine. A guy never knows when he’ll need to get away fast.”

“In your case, I completely understand.” She moved back.

He took that to mean she was letting him in and stepped over the threshold directly into her living room, which was painted a buttery-yellow with white trim. The furniture was simple, Pottery Barn meets fifties retro. One of those square fifties couches, lamps that looked like spaceships, a blond wood coffee table in a kidney shape. A plain sisal rug on the hardwood floor. It was nice. Very little clutter.

“Come on back to the kitchen. I’ll see about that coffee you just had to have.” She turned to lead the way.

He didn’t follow. A framed black-and-white photograph over the television had caught his eye. He stepped a little closer.

It was an old building, two stories, stone below, clapboard above, the upper story jutting on round pillars above the lower, leaving a natural porch beneath. A sign in old-time script crowned the upper story. He read, “The Prairie Queen.”

She turned back to him. Her mouth, pinched at first, softened. “It was a music hall. An Oklahoma legend in its day. I was born there.” He waited as she decided whether to say any more, though he already knew the basic facts. Finally, she went on, “My mother and father and a bunch of their friends pooled what money they had and bought the building in the early seventies. They renovated it, doing all the work themselves, using salvaged materials. For a while, the Queen was a going concern. She drew bands from all over—some big names, too. That was where Ralphie came in. He showed up, calling himself a promoter, after the Queen had been in operation for a few months. He helped my parents and their friends book the bands. He was pretty good at it, too.”

“You said you were born in the building?” That part was news.

She hitched her chin up. “Yes, I was. There were rooms in back where everyone lived. No money for hospitals. Later, after the Queen closed down, my dad did pretty well for himself, buying old houses, fixing them up and reselling them. But in the days of the Prairie Queen, he and my mother were as broke as the rest of them. Tiff and Rose were born in the Queen, too.”

“And you three are like sisters.”

“That’s right.” Defiant. Proud. Then she shrugged. “They called themselves a commune, my parents and their friends. But the commune didn’t last. The doors closed in seventy-eight. They tore the building down about fifteen years ago. There’s a strip mall there now.”

“And you named your band after the music hall.”

She fell back a step. “Ralphie told you about the band.” Rio nodded. Her dark brows drew together. “Did he also tell you he was our manager?”

“Yeah.”

She gave him a long look and then huffed out a breath. “Well, the band had a shorter lifespan than the music hall.”

“Ralphie’s fault.”

She glared. “You want that coffee or not?” She turned away again, started walking.

“Wait,” Rio said. She stopped, but didn’t face him. He spoke to her back. “Ralphie told me. How he screwed around on you. He always said when he lost you, he lost one of the best.”

She did turn then. Slowly. “He didn’t lose me. I’m still right here.”

Rio held to his point. “You know what I’m saying. He lost you…as a woman. And he always regretted that.”

She folded her arms across her middle. Classic body language: listening, maybe. Receptive? Not in the least. “It doesn’t matter. That was a long time ago—and Ralphie was who he was.”

“So true. Just when you’d think he couldn’t make things any worse, leave it to Ralphie. He’d find a way. Take your friends. First he betrays you. And then he marries your friends, one right after the other.”

“I was long over him by then. And he loved them both.”

“Like I said. One right after the other.”

If looks could kill, he’d have been fried to a cinder. She demanded, “What are you getting at?”

“That Ralphie trusted me. Maybe you should, too.”

“I haven’t even figured out who you are yet. Yesterday you came in on a Harley. Today you’re Clark Kent. Which one’s the real you?”

“Both. Neither.”

“Thank you for clarifyin’.”

Before she could whirl away again, he said, “I was a kid when I met Ralphie. He…loved my mother and she loved him. He was the father I never had, took an interest when no one else gave a damn. Yeah, he screwed up a lot. I know what he was. I’ve always known. Where I grew up, you face the truth or you don’t last too long. But he had heart. He taught me to respect myself and how to get along. I loved him. I owe him. In spite of all the crap he put you through, I think you loved him, too. Work with me.”

She pressed those soft lips together—and let her arms drop to her sides. He was making progress. She wasn’t ready to throw in with him yet—but she wasn’t saying no anymore, either. She turned.

He didn’t try to stop her that time. Instead, he followed her to a sunny sea-blue kitchen at the back of the house, where she flung out a hand in the direction of the red chrome and Formica dinette. “Have a seat.”

He pulled out one of the red vinyl chairs and dropped into it. She served him in silence, pouring his coffee into a big yellow-green mug, setting out the sugar and a little red pitcher of milk. Then she got herself a mug, too, and sat down opposite him.

More silence. Outside, he heard a lawn mower start up. They both sipped, eyes meeting, then shifting away.

Eventually, he tried a compliment. “Nice place.”

She doled out a grudging, “Thanks.” There was more sipping. She set down her mug. “You really think you could find out what happened?”

“No promises. I could work my ass off on this and still come up blank. But it’s possible—and that it is possible is enough for me. I need to know I did everything I could.”

“Yeah,” she said, resting her forearms on the table, wrapping her hands around her mug, her expression both grim and determined. She stared down into the mug for a moment, as if looking for the answer to a question she didn’t know how to ask. Then she glanced up. “What would I have to do, if I helped you?”

“You could start with a list—everyone you know who knew Ralphie. And how they knew him. Special focus on anyone who had issues with him, anyone he cheated or messed over, anyone he owed money to.”

She tapped the mug on the table and a low sound escaped her. “That’s a long list. My own name would be on it.”

He allowed a soft chuckle. “Hell. Mine, too.”

“So I’d give you this list…”

“And we’d take it from there. You’d answer my questions. All of them, to the best of your knowledge. Provide addresses and phone numbers if you have them, so I don’t have to waste time tracking people down. Back me up, say you know me and I can be trusted, if someone wants to know why I showed up on their doorstep and started asking about things they didn’t want to go into.”

The silence stretched long again. At last, she said, “All right. I can do that.” She got up, topped off her mug and held out the pot to him.

He shoved his cup her way. “Thanks.” She gave him more and then carried the pot to the counter. When she slipped back into her seat, he said, “Tell me about Darla Jo.”

She stiffened right up on him. “I thought I was supposed to start with a list.”

“That’s right. You also agreed to answer my questions.”

She slumped in her chair, looked down at her lap, then slanted a suspicious glance up at him. “Why the big interest in Darla?”

“You’re protective of her. Why?”

There was some huffing, but in the end, she answered him. “I just know she would never do anything to hurt Ralphie. She loved him. Truly.”

“You sound pretty sure about that.”

“I am sure. You should have seen them together. They were crazy about each other. She made him quit smoking. A woman who would run a man down wouldn’t make him stop smoking first. And there were times, especially lately, in the past two or three months, when I would see her looking at him—when he wasn’t looking at her. Pure adoration. No woman could fake that kind of a look. And why would she bother to try, if the guy wasn’t even looking her way?”

Rio was thinking that what she’d just told him was probably more about Phoebe than it was about Ralphie and Darla Jo. Against his own better judgment, he found himself taking a stab at helping her see that. “It’s important to you, is that it? To believe that Ralphie Styles was finally in love for real and forever? That Darla Jo loved him back? That they were having a baby, making themselves a happy little family?”

She sat up straighter. “You go ahead. Put it down, what they had. Tell yourself it wasn’t real. But it was real. He loved her and she loved him. I know it.” She speared her fingers through her tangled brown hair, raking it back off her flushed face. Then she grabbed her mug again—and plunked it down without drinking from it. “No. I’m never going to believe that Darla had anything to do with Ralphie getting run over in the middle of the night. Never. Not in a hundred million years.”

Rio saw there was a point he hadn’t quite made clear to her. He said, keeping it low and even, “You don’t have to believe it. You don’t have to do anything. You can run your bar and wait. Get together with Ralphie’s other ex-wives and argue about what might have happened. Maybe someone will talk who hasn’t yet. Maybe the OCPD will come up with something. Maybe I will. And maybe we’ll just never know.” Taking care not to let the chair scrape the floor, he pushed it back and stood. “Thanks for the coffee.”

He knew he had her when she stopped him before he could take a single step. “Sit back down.”

He allowed a solid five seconds to elapse before obeying. Then he dropped to his seat again and laid out the ground rules. “You’ll have to talk to me. Nothing held back. About anyone.” The demand was a little over the top. He’d take less, if that was all he could get. A lot less. But there was no reason Phoebe Jacks had to know that—at least, not at the moment.

“Fine. Okay.”

“About Darla…”

“Okay.”

“How did Ralphie meet her?”

“She came in the bar looking for work last September.”

“Ralphie met her at the bar?”

Phoebe nodded. “Darla was just twenty-one, fresh out of some tiny town in Arkansas. She met Ralphie the night she started working. He was gone on her at first sight. It took her longer. But not that long. Within a few weeks, she’d moved in with him. They got married last December, though I guess you know that, since he invited you to the wedding.”

Rio took a small spiral notebook and a pen out of his breast pocket. He flipped the notebook open and jotted down the major points. “The brother?”

“Boone’s twenty-six. He’s Darla’s half brother. Same mom, different dads.”

“Last name?”

“Gallagher.” She spelled it out for him. “Darla’s name was Snider—with an i.”

Rio nodded. “Go ahead. About the brother.”

“He’d been living down in Texas. Came up for the wedding and decided to stay in town. I hired him. He’s a good worker, dependable.”

“Did they fill out applications before they went to work for you?”

“Yeah.”

“They give you social security numbers?”

“Of course.”

“That’ll help. A lot. I’ll want to have a look at those.”

“An employment application is strictly confidential.”

“Think of it this way….”

Her sweet mouth turned down at the corners. “I don’t like the sound of this.”

He almost smiled. But not quite. “You use the information on an application to check your people out, right?”

She qualified, “I can check them out, if I think checking them out is necessary.”

“Because you’re their employer.”

She put it together. “Oh. And now, so are you.”

“Which means I have every right to run a few checks on Darla Jo and her half brother Boone.”

She leaned in, craning that smooth white neck across the table, her sleep-wild hair swinging forward, brushing the tabletop. “I just want to know. Why are you after them?”

He set down the notebook. “I’m not after them.”

“You know what I mean. Why are you suspicious of them?”

Rio considered evading some more. But to get information, you had to be prepared sometimes to give a little back. “I’m not suspicious of either of them. I am a little curious about Darla.”

“Why?”

He went ahead and laid it on her. “That baby she’s having? It’s not Ralphie’s.”

Outrage sparked in her eyes. “How do you know that?”

“Ralphie told me.”

She blinked. “Ralphie told you that Darla was havin’ some other man’s baby?”

“No. He told me I was the son he could never have. Ralphie Styles was sterile.”




CHAPTER FOUR


More on the subject of sparkling comebacks.

Man: I want to wake up with you beside me. How do you like your eggs in the morning?

Prairie Queen: Unfertilized.

—from The Prairie Queen’s Guide to Life by Goddess Jacks

“STERILE.” PHOEBE repeated the word. It tasted dry in her mouth. And also impossible. A word without meaning in relationship to Ralphie Styles. “No…”

The man across the table from her didn’t speak. He didn’t have to. Those black eyes said it all. She saw sympathy in them at that moment—sympathy that went well with the ugly suit and the glasses. With the rest of him? Not so much.

Then again, why shouldn’t a big, dangerous macho-type guy be capable of showing a little sympathy? It could happen. Maybe not in Phoebe’s own personal experience up till now.

But there was always a first time.

And the sympathy in Rio Navarro’s eyes wasn’t the question, anyway. The question was: Could Ralphie have been sterile?

And more to the point, if he was, shouldn’t Phoebe have been the first to know?

Phoebe had been Ralphie’s wife for three years. Once, for all the wrong reasons—because she knew she was losing him, because she needed a way to bind him to her—she’d begged him for a baby.

“Now, babe…” A rueful, tender smile had curved those big, soft lips of his when he’d answered her. “It’s not the time and you know it.”

“No. I don’t know it.”

“Come on. Ease off. Maybe later, huh?”

“When?”

“Can’t say. But don’t you worry. We’ll both know when it’s right….”

She’d known him well enough, even then, at a still-starry-eyed twenty-two, to get the message: The time would never be right; Ralphie would never have a baby with her.

Not for one second had it occurred to her that maybe he couldn’t.

But there had been a whole lot of women in his life. And, until Darla Jo, he’d failed to father a single baby or even get a woman pregnant that Phoebe had ever heard of—and she was staring into her coffee cup again, feeling a definite reluctance to meet Rio’s waiting eyes.

“Phoebe.” He said it softly, coaxingly.

So she looked at him, making her lips a flat line, narrowing her eyes a little, sending the clear message that just because he said something didn’t make it true. “How, exactly, do you know he was sterile?”

Beneath that cheap suit, one hard shoulder lifted a fraction in a hint of a shrug. He took off those absurd square-framed glasses and hung them from the breast pocket of his jacket. “I told you. He said so.”

She canted forward, sharply. “Why would he tell you if he never told me?”

He eyed her with wariness. “You about to go off on me here?”

“Just answer the question.”

Carefully, he suggested, “Come on, Phoebe. What does it matter, who he told—or why?”

She tightened her fingers around her coffee mug. It mattered. Probably more than it should have. “Ralphie lied all the time. He was a master at it. He made lyin’ the next thing to an art form.”

Rio shook his head. “All right. It’s no secret that Ralphie never put a lot of emphasis on honesty. But a man doesn’t lie about something like that, not without a damn good reason.”

What he said made sense. Too much sense. She swore under her breath. And then she slumped back in her chair, lifted her arms and scraped her hair back hard off her forehead with both hands.

The movement had her braless breasts poking hard at the thin fabric of her old T-shirt. Rio looked. She caught him at it. One black eyebrow canted up, but he didn’t say anything. Neither did she. She was too busy feeling hurt and defiant. Too wrapped up in ignoring the sudden sluicing of heat, down low, where it had no damn business being, and remembering…

Ralphie. That evening in early December. Sitting across from her in the same chair where Rio sat now….

Her stove had gone on the blink again and Ralphie had come over to fix it. As always, within ten minutes, he had it working like new. She’d offered him a beer and he sat down and got out his Marlboros. Squinting through the curling smoke, he’d announced, “This is it. My last pack of smokes.”

Phoebe had to laugh at that one. “Ralphie, you’ve quit more times than any man I know.”

“This time’s for real, babe. Darla asked me to.” He sucked that coffin nail hard, tipped his head back and tapped his cheek. Five perfect rings rose toward the ceiling, quivering a little on the still air before they slowly faded to nothing. He gave Phoebe that charming, naughty-boy smile. “I’m marryin’ her, babe. She’s the one.”

Phoebe felt so happy for him that night. She saw in his face that this one would be different. She knew it, deep down, no matter what anyone else said. She reached across and laid her hand over his long, skinny one, all ropy with veins. “Go for it.”

“Oh, I most definitely am.”

Later, when Ralphie was leaving, he told her he was inviting Rio Navarro to the wedding. “Damn, I hope he comes. I been trying for half my life and most of his to get his ass to Oklahoma. I want him to meet you.”

She’d seen the matchmaking light in those watery blue eyes and she’d almost warned him not to even go there. But no. Let Ralphie imagine his two longtime friends falling hard and fast for each other, the way he had for Darla. What could it hurt for him to scheme on that? It wouldn’t cost her any money, the way most of Ralphie’s big plans did….

Phoebe blinked and shook her head, and ordered her mind back to today, to the large man in the bad suit sitting across from her—and to Darla, about to have a baby that might not be Ralphie’s, after all.

She let her arms drop to her sides. “So what now?”

He rose and circled the table to set his mug on the counter. “You make that list. And I’ll go have a talk with Darla Jo. See if I can find out who the real father of that baby is—and if maybe he had a problem with Ralphie claiming his child.”

She was on her feet before he finished that sentence. “No.” He stuck his hands in the pockets of his ugly slacks—and waited for her to explain herself. “Just let me do it, okay? Let me talk to Darla.”

He studied her for a few seconds more. “That’s not how I operate,” he finally said.

“Maybe not. But we’re working together on this, remember? And she knows me. She trusts me. She’s a lot more likely to tell me her secrets than a stranger.”

His look took her measure. “You have to decide, Reina. Which you want more. The truth, or holding on to your romantic fantasy about Ralphie and his little widow.”

She realized she was biting her lower lip—and made herself stop. “I don’t think it’s a fantasy. But if it turns out that’s all it is, fine. I do want the truth. I want it more. I want it most of all.”



OUTSIDE, THE MUGGY morning had turned cloudy. When Rio left Phoebe, he rode his bike to Ralphie’s Place and took the alley around to the back as per Phoebe’s instructions of the day before. Behind the bar, he found a small loading area. A big green Dumpster stood against the building next to a wide roll-up aluminum door with a bolt-type lock. When he stuck the key Phoebe had given him into the lock, an alarm began beeping a warning from inside. The door slid upward with one easy shove and the alarm box was right there, on the wall inside, next to the door. He whipped out the card Phoebe had given him and punched in the code.

Silence. A low-wattage overhead light had come on. It cast a dim glow over a combination garage and storage area. Boxes and crates lined the bare brick walls and a red Chevy van, dinged and dented and probably about twenty years old, was parked nose-in on the left.

A red van.

A steel door a few feet from the front of the van would take him into the back rooms of the bar—if the key to the garage fit the lock, which Rio had a pretty good feeling it would.

First things first. Rio wheeled his bike in and parked it next to the van.

Then he gave the area a cursory check, reading the labels on the boxes, peering into an old microwave that had been left on top of a crate. He checked out the van, which was full-size with a flat front—the kind of vehicle—and the color—that had put an end to Ralphie Styles.

Inside, the van smelled of dust, with a faint hint of dampness. The rear seats had been removed and lint-spotted gray shag carpeting covered the floor.

In front, a dream catcher hung from the rearview mirror and a half-empty Aquafina bottle waited in the cup holder between the seats. Rio sat in the captain-style driver’s seat, leaned across to the passenger side and popped open the glove compartment: insurance up to date; registered to Phoebe Isabel Jacks.

He got out and went around and looked at the grill. It was original, he’d lay heavy odds on that. Original and intact. Around the edges of it you could make out the van’s original colors: silver and maroon. But the red paint job wasn’t new, just badly done, the shine faded out, dinged and rusting in spots. Rio got down on the concrete floor and looked under the front end. No surprises there. The undercarriage, like the grill, was worn but undamaged.

Whatever had smashed Ralphie flat, it wasn’t Phoebe’s old red van.

Rio got to his feet, brushed off his slacks, and moved on to the steel door that would take him into the bar. He was just sticking the key in the lock when he heard the soft whir of an engine and the crunching of tires on bits of gravel in the loading area behind him.

Pocketing the key, he put on his Clark Kent glasses, turned and strode between the van and his Softail. He stopped in plain view, just beyond the garage door.

The car was a yellow Camaro. Boone Gallagher unfolded his long frame from the low front seat. He had his left hand on the window of his open door, in plain sight. His right arm was down at his side, the hand not visible, tucked around behind him.

“Who the hell are you?” Gallagher demanded.

Rio raised both hands high and wide and put on his most harmless, ineffectual expression. “Rio Navarro. Phoebe gave me a key, said I could store my bike here.” He tipped his head back, in the direction of the Softail behind him.

Gallagher’s frown deepened, but his lean body relaxed a little. “Navarro. You the one Ralphie Styles left half this bar to?”

“That’s me.”

Gallagher bent slightly toward his car. When he straightened, he brought his right hand up: empty. He’d either decided he didn’t need his weapon, after all—or there was no gun. Rio figured the former, but in his line of work a man learned to suspect the worst. “No offense, man,” said Boone. “Things have been kind of tense around here lately, if you know what I mean.”

“I understand.”

“So I need to see a little ID.”

Rio almost smiled. Yesterday, Phoebe. Today, Darla Jo’s brother. They all had to see a little ID. “No offense taken. I’ll just ease it out. Slowly.”

“Yeah. Slowly.” Gallagher remained covered by the door of his car. “Good idea.”

Rio produced his wallet, flipped it to his driver’s license, and passed it over the driver’s door window to Boone, who grunted at the proof, and then flipped it down and studied Rio’s P.I. card.

Finally, with another grunt, he stepped free of the car door, shoving it shut, and gave Rio back his wallet. “Didn’t mean to be unsociable. I saw the garage wide open and you standin’ there and—”

“No need to explain.”

Boone tipped his red-brown head to the side and smiled in a cautiously friendly way. “Hey. I seen that bike before….”

Rio gave him an easy shrug. “I stopped in for a shot of tequila. Yesterday, around three or so. I met Phoebe then.”

Boone was frowning again. “I was here. I don’t remember you.”

“I got a haircut since, and I cleaned up a little.”

Boone nodded. Slowly. “Yeah. Okay.” He grinned. “My sister hates your damn guts even though she’s never met you, in case you didn’t know.” Rio decided he’d be wiser to say nothing to that. Boone held out his hand. “I’m Boone, Darla’s brother. Darla was Ralphie’s—”

“Wife. Yeah, I know.”

Boone’s grip was firm and dry. “You’re a P.I., huh? From Los Angel-eez.”

“That’s right.”

“Well, come on inside. I’ll brew us a pot of coffee and you can tell me about all the movie stars you know.”



RALPHIE AND DARLA’S marital bliss had begun and ended in a trailer park south of Northwest Tenth, a few blocks east of Meridian. Phoebe pulled into the park an hour after she showed Rio the door. The whole drive over there, she had a nervous feeling in her stomach and a heaviness in her heart. The sign at the entrance did bring a grin, though: Rose Rock Suburban Estates.

“Come on out to my estate,” Ralphie used to say with a wink.

Through the gray day, a misty rain was falling. It dripped from the sign, dribbled like slow tears from her windshield. Phoebe cruised past single-and double-wides in a rainbow of colors, each with its own little carport jutting off the side, shading small squares of patio with plastic lawn chairs and cast-iron smoker barbecues.

Ralphie’s trailer, down at the end and around the corner, was one of the nicer ones. White, with blue shutters, striped awnings and a small redwood deck, it boasted a cheerful row of dwarf nandinas behind a low brick border in front.

Things were looking a little ragged, though, since Ralphie’s death. A couple of potted daisies on the deck steps, thriving the last time Phoebe had come by, had dried up and died. The grass, once pristine, was scraggly and uncut, dotted with dandelion flowers. Phoebe shook her head at that. She’d talk to Boone, see if he could make a little time to mow the yard for his sister.

Darla’s three-year-old red Sebring convertible, bought a few months ago in one of Ralphie’s deals, sat alone beneath the two-car carport. They’d repoed Ralphie’s V-series Cadillac, hauled it away from that street in the Paseo where he’d left it the night he died. After the police had gotten through with it, the dealership had claimed it. As usual, Ralphie was behind on his payments.

Ralphie had always driven Cadillacs. He’d cruised through life in style behind the wheels of an endless series of Fleetwoods, Eldorados, Sevilles and sedan DeVilles.

Beyond the carport, at the end of the driveway, stood a cute shed shaped like a miniature barn. It was blue and white to match the trailer.

Phoebe pulled in under the carport, sliding out of the sluggish rain and into Ralphie’s empty space. She got out and shut the door quietly, and then stood for a moment, breathing in the warm, wet May air and wishing that being there didn’t make her feel as depressed as the dead daisies on the deck steps.



DARLA PULLED OPEN THE door as Phoebe raised her hand to knock. Ralphie’s widow wore a red lace flyaway baby-doll top with matching bikini panties. Her tangled hair hung limp around her tear-puffy face and her giant stomach, the navel distended, poked out between the open sides of the lacy pajama top. “Hey,” she said in a tiny, lost voice.

“Oh, honey,” whispered Phoebe on a heavy sigh.

Darla pushed open the glass storm door, grabbed Phoebe’s wrist and hauled her over the threshold. The storm door shut by itself. Darla shoved the inner door closed. “Pheeb…” With a sound midway between a moan and cry, Darla threw herself at Phoebe, who gathered her in and held her, rocking her, stroking her dirty hair, breathing in the slightly sour smell of her skin, amazed that her distended belly felt every bit as hard as it looked.

Phoebe whispered sweet lies meant to soothe. “It’s okay. It’ll be okay….” Darla held on tight and sobbed against her shoulder until the baby kicked Phoebe a good one and she pulled back. “Wow.” She laid her palm right over the spot where she’d felt the kick as Darla continued to sniffle and moan. “She’s a strong one….”

Darla hiccupped, a sound of pure misery. “It’s a he. I just know it. And he does that all time.”

Phoebe dropped her purse on the floor and reached for her hand. “Come on.”

Darla’s lip quivered. “What? Where?”

“A bath. And then breakfast.”



THE TUB HAD A RING OF greasy dirt in it and the small square of bathroom floor was littered with used tissues and wrinkled clothes. Phoebe quickly swept the clutter away and found a can of cleanser under the sink. She dropped to her knees, gave the tub a quick scrub and a cursory rinse and then put in the plug and ran the water, sprinkling in some bath beads to make it more inviting.

Darla sank into the froth of bubbles with a tiny sob and a surrendering sigh. Phoebe bathed her, washing her back and shampooing her hair. Darla cried softly through it all, murmuring now and then, “Oh, I don’t know. I just don’t know how I’m gonna go on….”

Once Phoebe had her washed up, she left her long enough to find a pair of reasonably clean maternity cargoes, a top and some underwear. She got Darla out of the tub, dried her off.

Darla stood before the steamy bathroom mirror, naked. “Oh, I just don’t know….” She traced a heart on the mirror, wrote her name and Ralphie’s, dotting the i with another tiny heart, the way she always did.

Phoebe looked at that sad, tiny heart and heard Ralphie’s voice in her mind. “Now, there’s a woman made for love. Even dots her i’s with little hearts…”

Darla turned from the mirror, big eyes stark with loss and pain. “Oh, Pheeb…”

“I’ll be in the kitchen,” Phoebe said firmly. “Get dressed and get in there.”

The kitchen was worse than the bathroom. A tower of dirty dishes filled the sink. More dishes littered the counter and the table. Every burner on the stove had a pot on it and each pot contained something old and dried and unrecognizable. Phoebe cleared herself enough space to cook in. She found a box of oatmeal and a can of Eagle Brand milk in the nearly empty cupboard.

Twenty minutes later, she set a steaming bowl of oats in front of Darla, picked up the can of milk and poured some over the oats, then shoved the sugar bowl in closer. “Eat.”

Darla sniffed and scowled at the bowl. “I hate oatmeal. And that weird canned milk is gross. Ralphie used to eat that. Yuck…” Her face crumpled. “Ralphie. Oh, Ralphie…” The waterworks started in again.

Phoebe grabbed a Kleenex from the box on the table and shoved it Darla’s way. Grudgingly, Darla accepted it. She dabbed at her eyes and blew her nose.

“Eat,” Phoebe repeated, more firmly than before. She dropped into the chair across from Darla and waited, keeping her expression stern. Eventually, Darla ladled on some sugar, picked up the spoon Phoebe had washed for her, and dug in.

As she ate, Phoebe lectured. “It’s enough, Darla Jo. And you know it, too. I know how much you loved Ralphie. But there’s grieving and there’s grieving and you have let this get way out of hand. I’ll send someone over this afternoon to help you clean up this place.” She figured she could get Bernard or Tiff to help out. If not, she’d come back herself. “Whoever I send will take you to the store so you can buy groceries.”

“I’m broke. You know I am. The man I love died on me—and he left me nothin’.”

So Phoebe got up, got her purse and laid two fifties on the table. “You’re buying food. Today.”

Darla slid a glance at the money, then muttered sulkily, “Thanks.”

“No thanks are needed. You clean up this place and get yourself some food and show up at the bar tomorrow afternoon.”

“Why?”

“I’ll put you back on the payroll. We’ll find something you can do.”

Darla shot her a calculating look. “Give me Ralphie’s share.” Her voice went wheedling. “Pheeb. Please. He woulda wanted me to have it. He promised it to me….”

“I can’t. You know that. Ralphie’s share belongs to Rio Navarro.”

Darla’s spoon clattered into the half-empty oatmeal bowl. She threw up both hands. “Rio Navarro was not supposed to get my half of that bar. It was all a big mistake that he got it, and you know it was—and you know what else? That Rio Navarro, he couldn’t even be bothered to come to our wedding, you know that? We invited him, and he didn’t show. Ralphie said he could never talk that guy into coming to Oklahoma. He’ll probably never come. The time will go by and he’ll never show up and it won’t even matter, if you give Ralphie’s half to me. Nobody’s gonna care. And I’ll have something to get by on, me and the baby. I’ll—”

“Darla—”

“Uh-uh. Don’t say different. You know I’m right. That Navarro guy is never even coming around.” She picked up her spoon again, flicked a hank of hair back over her shoulder and wheedled some more. “So come on. You can just split the till with me, at least until you hear from that Navarro guy and he—” Phoebe put up a hand. Darla stuck out her lower lip. “What?”

“Have I got your attention?”

“Stop ragging on me, okay? Just say it. What?”

“I’ve heard from Rio.”

Darla paused—but not for long. “Well, until he gets into town, you could—”

“He is here in town.”

“That bastard. No.”

“Yeah. You’re going to have to give up your plans for the bar, Darla. You’re going to have to accept the fact that Ralphie’s half went to Rio and move on.”

“Real easy for you to say. You got your half….”

Phoebe refused to reply to that. She sat very still and she looked at Darla in a steady, unblinking way.

Darla gave it up. “Okay. I’m sorry. That was a mean thing to say to you and you didn’t deserve it. I love you, Pheeb. You’re the best friend I ever had next to Ralphie and I’m grateful you’re lookin’ after me.”

Phoebe said softly, “Finish your breakfast.” Obediently, Darla scooped up another spoonful of oatmeal and poked it into her mouth. Phoebe waited until she’d eaten it all. Then Phoebe picked up the bowl and carried it to the sink. She ran water in it and put the can of milk in the fridge while Darla sat at the table, slumped over her big tummy, staring out the window beside the back door. Phoebe went to her and put her hands on those sad, sagging shoulders. “Come on. Let’s go sit on the sofa.”

Darla dragged herself upright and plodded along behind Phoebe into the other room, where she plopped down on the ugly brown corduroy sofa. Phoebe sat beside her and wrapped an arm around her. Drawing the younger woman close, Phoebe guided Darla’s still-damp head to rest on her shoulder. She stroked Darla’s arm.

Darla snuggled in. “Thanks for comin’ over. And you’re right, what you said. It looks like crap around here and I need to pull myself together.”

Phoebe made a low noise of agreement and then spoke gently, “Darla?”

“Umm?”

“The baby…”

“Umm?”

“It’s not Ralphie’s, is it?”

With a soft little sigh, Darla snuggled in closer still. “Oh, Pheeb…”

“Is it?”

Darla answered at last in a dreamy voice. “Strictly speakin’? No, it ain’t.”




CHAPTER FIVE


The gene pool could use a little chlorine.

—from The Prairie Queen’s Guide to Life by Goddess Jacks

DARLA KEPT HER HEAD on Phoebe’s shoulder and continued, in that same dreamy voice. “It was…a one-night thing, you know? I met this guy in a bar before I even came to the city. I never got his number and I ain’t seen him since and I never would’ve had sex with him if I’d’a known that in a few days I would be meeting the man I would love until death.” She rested her hand with its chewed-down nails on her bulging stomach. “Ralphie knew the baby wasn’t his. I told him. I always told him everything. He didn’t care. He said the baby would be our baby and that was that. He said we’d tell everyone he was the daddy—because he was going to be our baby’s daddy in all the ways that really count. And Pheeb?”

Phoebe rubbed Darla’s shoulder and stared blankly at their shadowed reflections in Ralphie’s big-screen TV across from the sofa. The last thing she’d expected was a straightforward confession. The baby was not Ralphie’s. Impossible—and apparently, true.

“Pheeb?” Darla asked again.

Phoebe smoothed Darla’s hair. “What, honey?”

“As far as I’m concerned, this is Ralphie’s baby.” A thread of steel had found its way into Darla’s voice. The sudden determination surprised Phoebe as much as the confession had. Darla might beg you or con you. She had a certain frail, needy charm about her, a charm that was sexy and innocent and too wise all at once, a charm that could knock certain types of men right off their feet. But determined? Uh-uh. No way, not ever. Darla lifted her head. Phoebe met those red-rimmed brown eyes. “I told you because I love you,” Darla said. “And Ralphie loved you. I know I can trust you to understand, and not to tell another soul.”

Phoebe nodded, keeping her expression fittingly solemn, knowing that she would betray Darla’s confidence to Rio the first chance she got.



“AND YOU BELIEVE HER about the real father being a one-night stand,” Rio said.

They were sitting in Phoebe’s kitchen. It was eleven-fifteen at night. “I do,” said Phoebe, thinking that those were the words a woman says on her wedding day, the words of a witness swearing an oath….

“¿Por qué?”

She blinked. “What?”

He gave her one of his patient looks, eyes soft, mouth firm. “Why do you believe her?”

“I just do.”

“Blind faith. It’s hardly an argument.”

“No. It’s more than blind faith.”

Rio eyed her sideways, clearly doubtful. “How?”

“It…makes sense, that’s all.”

“Why?”

“If there was some other guy in the picture, he would have come around by now.”

“Not necessarily. And maybe he has come around, but nobody told you about it. He’s come around—and killed Ralphie while he was at it.” Before she got a chance to argue, he asked, “Did Ralphie seem happy to you, about the baby?”

“Oh, yeah. Ecstatic. He built a crib, helped Darla fix up the baby’s bedroom. He was into it. And I wasn’t surprised. When he came home last August, he told me he was through with the footloose life. He only wanted to stay home and be happy. Then he met Darla, married her, settled down with her. And if he was shootin’ blanks, well, being the father of Darla’s kid would have been a way for him to have a baby he could call his own, to have it all—Darla and a kid and the settled-down life he’d finally realized he wanted.”

Rio leaned both big arms on the table. Sleek, hard muscles bulged beneath the sleeves of his black T-shirt. Gone were the cheap suit and geeky glasses of that morning. Tonight, he was all in black. Ready to creep around in the dark, snooping into other people’s secrets. “Okay,” he said. “For now.”

She eyed him sideways. “And by that you’re telling me…?”

“At this point I’ll buy Darla’s story.” Phoebe felt relieved for Darla’s sake. And yeah, she knew she was too protective of Darla. But so what? Ralphie would have wanted her to be. Rio added, “I ran into Boone this morning at the bar when I dropped off my bike.”

“So he told me. He said he thought you were ripping us off.”

“We got past that, Boone and me.”

“He said he took you in the bar and gave you some coffee and a microwaved cinnamon roll.”

“That’s right. I tried to get the guy talking about himself.”

“Learn anything?”

“Nothing you didn’t already tell me. He and Darla are from Arkansas. Boone moved to Texas a couple of years ago—and then came here for Darla’s wedding. He liked Oklahoma so much, he stayed on.”

“He knew you were pumping him for information.”

“The ones who are hiding things always do.”

In the center of the table stood a red napkin holder and red Fiestaware salt and pepper shakers. With great care, Phoebe straightened the napkin holder and lined up the salt and pepper beside it. “Boone also told me that he thought your glasses were fake and he had a sneaking suspicion you might be up to no good, nosing around into stuff that’s none of your business. He said you asked way too many questions.”

“Busted.” Rio chuckled low, an intimate sound, one that shivered down through Phoebe like a physical caress. “And what did you say to Boone when he told you all that?”

“I reminded him that, as of Ralphie’s death, you’re my business partner. I said I gave you a key and he should keep in mind that you’re now his boss as much Ralphie ever was.”

“How much is that?”

“Seriously? Not a lot. Over the years, Ralphie pretty much left the running of the bar to me. He was gone so much anyway and he always had some deal going that demanded all his attention. Whenever it was time to count up the cash, though, he’d get his hand out fast.”

“Nice work if you can get it.”

“So I told him, more than once.”

Those dark eyes held a teasing light. “Before Boone showed up, I was about to go inside and have a long, in-depth look around.”

“Why shouldn’t you? It’s half yours.”

“I’m glad you see it that way.”

“And what else did you do today, besides parking your bike and having coffee with Boone?”

“I got a car. I changed hotels.” He shoved one of his cards across the table, face down. On the back was the name of a residence hotel over on Northwest Expressway, including a room and phone number. “I hooked up with an associate who’ll help me go door to door, interviewing people around the area where Ralphie got hit.” He pushed another card her way, one for a local detective agency: Red Wolf Investigations. He pointed at the name in the lower right-hand corner. “Mac Tenkiller. In case he comes looking for me, you can trust him.”

“Thanks.” She glanced up from the card and into his eyes. They stared at each other, unspeaking. It was no hardship for Phoebe, staring at Rio. He looked good and she felt…what? The word came to her: safe. She felt safe around him. Safe and all shook up, both at the same time. Already she was getting used to seeing him at her kitchen table. Before you knew it, if she didn’t watch herself, she’d be offering to tie on an apron and whip him up a little something special.

He asked, “Did you have time to make that list of people who knew Ralphie?”

“I made a list. I can’t say it’s complete. Ralphie knew a lot of folks.”

“Give me what you’ve got.”

“Hold on.” She rose. “I’ll get it.”

Phoebe’s house had three bedrooms and a bath all in a row on the east side of the house. The living areas—front room, dining room and kitchen—were lined up on the west side. She used the middle bedroom, accessed through a bath and through the central dining area, as a home office. In the office, she scooped up the manila envelope she’d left on her desk and whirled to return to the kitchen.

Rio was right there, in the door to the dining room. She gasped at the sight of him.

“Didn’t mean to scare you.” He lounged against the door frame, hard arms crossed over his deep chest.

“I had a cat like you once,” she grumbled, whacking his chest with the envelope. “His name was Shadow. Big and black, with a real attitude. I never knew when he’d come creeping up on me. I’d turn around and there he’d be. Watching me with a smirk on his face.”

Rio took the envelope. “So I remind you of your gatito….”

Phoebe realized she liked it when he spoke Spanish. It was a beautiful language, soft and musical, and it sounded real nice coming out of that sexy mouth of his—not that she was telling him that. “My what?”

“Your kitten.”

“Shadow was no kitten.”

“Gato, then. That’s good, right? A woman loves her cat.”

“You wish. I finally had to tie a bell around that cat’s neck so I’d know when he was nearby. He died a little over a year ago. Now and then, I think I see him, in the corner of my eye. But he is gone, gone, gone.” Just like you’ll be, soon enough.

“Hey,” Rio said again, too gently. He touched her chin. The contact was electric, sending little bolts of excitement zipping all through her.

She met his eyes and tried to pretend he didn’t thrill her in the least. “I put copies of Darla’s and Boone’s employment applications in there. Bernard’s, too.”

“Great.”

She wanted him to understand…what? She wasn’t quite sure. She said quietly, “I do want to know, Rio. I want to know how Ralphie died. Since we talked this morning, I’m only more certain about my priorities here.”





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