Ralphie's Wives

“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.”