Ralphie's Wives

“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.