Ralphie's Wives

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.”