Ralphie's Wives

“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?”