Читать книгу Ralphie's Wives - Christine Rimmer - Страница 8

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.”