Ralphie's Wives

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.