Читать книгу Ralphie's Wives - Christine Rimmer - Страница 9

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.”