Ralphie's Wives

No, she thought.

But deep inside someone was sighing out an endless string of yesses—yesses, she reminded herself, she would do nothing about.

It was a bad day, that was all. A day that had her polishing every glass in the place and imagining what it might be like to celebrate turning thirty by doing something dangerous with a guy she’d just met—a guy who’d spoken exactly six words to her so far: Shot of Cuervo. Beer back. Thanks.

No doubt about it. Soulful eyes. Lots of muscles. Coal-black hair and a couple of shots. These were the beginnings of a truly deep and meaningful relationship.

When she returned to the Queens, they’d moved on to the subject of Ralphie’s suspicious demise.

“I’m sorry,” said Rose. “But I do believe we are dealing with foul play here.” Whoever had run Ralphie over and then fled the scene had yet to be apprehended.

“Well, duh,” said Tiff. “A hit-and-run is foul play by definition.” She sipped her margarita, frowning. “Isn’t it?”

“A hit-and-run is foul play by accident,” Rose clarified. “And I don’t believe Ralphie’s death was any accident. I am talking about someone finally getting fed up with Ralphie in a murderous way. I am talking premeditation. You hear what I’m saying? And it’s not like it’s never been done before. Remember that woman up in Tulsa last year? Got into her SUV, drove to where her husband was doing the nasty with his girlfriend, and ran the bastard down when he and the other woman came out of their favorite motel. Ran him down and then backed up over him, slammed it into drive and ran over him again.”

“I don’t think that was in Tulsa,” said Tiff. “It was on Law and Order, wasn’t it?”

Rose gave her a look. “Not the point—and think about it. As long as nobody sees you and you don’t blow it and leave the guy alive to identify you, a hit-and-run would be better than a bullet or rat poison or a stabbing to the heart.” She paused to gaze deeply into her jumbo margarita glass. Glancing up again, she added, “Yeah, you’d need a way to get rid of the car….”

“Well,” said Tiff. “Somebody did find a way to get rid of the car. Or to hide it. Or somethin’. They got rid of it after the fact. They don’t want to face the consequences of their actions. That doesn’t mean it was preplanned or anything.”

“Oh, yeah,” said Rose. “I think it was.”

Phoebe, who’d heard all this before, just wished they would stop. But they didn’t.

Tiffany insisted, “Some drunk, that’s all. Or some soccer mom on her cell phone.”

“Ha,” said Rose. “That’s a stretch. A soccer mom driving around in the Paseo in the middle of the night, calling…who?”

“I’m only trying to get you to see,” said Tiff in her most patient and reasonable tone, “that we basically know nothing beyond the fact that someone hit him and then drove away.”

“Huh. Pardon me. We know he was in the Paseo, on foot, after midnight.” The Paseo, the old Spanish district, with its stucco buildings and clay-tile roofs, was best known for its thriving artists’ community. Ralphie was no artist. He didn’t live in the Paseo, have friends there or do business there that the Queens knew of. “I ask you,” said Rose. “What was he doing there?”

Tiffany blew out a hard breath. “I’m only saying, why assume it had to be murder?”

Rose had her margarita glass in her hand again. She took a big gulp and set it down hard. “Because it was Ralphie who got killed, that’s why. We all know how he was. Everybody loved him—except for when they hated him.”

Phoebe had heard enough. More than enough. She grabbed the cast-aluminum ice scooper from the top of the ice machine, pulled open the slanted steel ice machine door, braced her free arm on the rim and stuck the scooper in there. Taking a wide stance for balance on her pointy little heels, she used the scooper to beat at the ice. It had been clumping for a few days now, which meant the machine was leaking. She’d need to call a repairman.

Haven’t done that in a while, she thought as she pounded away. Not since Ralphie came back to the city—to stay, this time, he’d told her—and started in with Darla Jo.

“Tiff, you are in denial,” she heard Rose insist.

“I’m in denial….?”

Phoebe pounded harder, glaring into the globs and clumps of ice as she attacked them with the scooper, every blow beating back the voices behind her.

She pulverized that ice and in her mind’s eye, he took form.

Ralphie…

She could just see him, see that road map of a face with the laugh lines etched deep as craters on either side of his fleshy mouth, see the wild hair he dyed a reddish-black not found in nature, which in the past few years was thinning so high at the temples, the bare spots threatened to meet at the top of his head.

He’d always been handy with machines. “Step aside,” he would say when the equipment started acting up. “Let Ralphie work his magic—and hand me that wrench over there, will you, babe?”

Phoebe beat the ice harder. She wanted to smash every clump to a sliver, crush it all into powder.

“Phoebe, hon.” It was Rose. Phoebe slammed the scoop into the ice one more time. Rose shouted, “Hey!”

Squinting hard to hold back the gathering tears, Phoebe pulled her head out of the ice machine and sent a glare over her shoulder at the Queens.

Rose told her tenderly, “Honey, put that scoop down.”

Phoebe tossed the scoop into the machine, slammed the door and whirled to face her friends. “I am sick of hearin’ about it.”

“Sorry,” said Rose.

“Not another word,” vowed Tiffany.

Phoebe wrapped her arms around herself and looked down at her high-heeled sandals. They were red as the roses on her dress. Red was a power color—she’d heard that somewhere. Lately, since Ralphie’s death, Phoebe felt like she needed all the power she could get.

Tiff said weakly, “Aw, Pheeb. Come on.”

Phoebe squeezed her arms tighter around her middle, lifted her head and jerked her sagging shoulders back. “I miss that sorry sleazeball, I truly do.” Her throat locked up. She had to whisper the rest. “I just can’t believe he went and got himself killed.”

There was a silence, except for Gwen Stefani bopping on the jukebox, singing that “Hollaback Girl” song.

Rose got that soft-eyed, mother-hen look. “Oh, honey…”

Phoebe pressed her lips together and tightly shook her head. “Uh-uh.” She put out a hand. “I am not going to lose it. I am going to be fine.” There’d been enough crying. Darla Jo had done plenty of that for all of them.

“It’s okay,” Tiffany said in a careful voice. “Sometimes a girl can’t help herself. She just needs a good cry.”

But Phoebe wasn’t going to cry. Not now. Not today. She gulped to clear the tightness from her throat, pressed her fingers under her eyes to ease the burning ache of tears unshed and drew herself up tall again. “So. ’Nother round?”

But the fun was over and they all knew it. Phoebe looked from Tiff to Rose and back to Tiff. They both wore that shiny-eyed, tears-on-the-way look. One more drink and things would get seriously weepy.

Tiff, who’d driven Rose, pushed her half-full glass Rose’s way. “Finish that if you want it. I need a quick minute and then we’re outta here.” She got up and went to the ladies’ room, past the stage and down the hall.

Rose looked into the depths of Tiffany’s unfinished drink and then up at Phoebe. “I took the whole day off. Come on over to my place for a while. Give yourself a damn break for a change. It is your birthday.”

Phoebe considered, but decided against it. “Thanks. No.” She swept out an arm, indicating the mostly empty room and the lone biker down at the end of the bar. He wasn’t looking their way. Instead, he stared straight ahead at the rows of bottles on the mirrored back wall, as if pondering the mysteries of the universe. “Who’ll handle all these customers if I take off?”

Rose forced a chuckle, then asked doubtfully, “You sure?”

“Positive. And Bernard’ll be in at six.” Bernard, one of Phoebe’s two full-time bartenders besides herself, had the closing shift that day. “If things stay slow, I’ll go home when he gets here. Put my feet up. Call my mother. Floss my teeth…”

Rose groaned. “Pheeb, you need to watch yourself.”

“Oh? And why’s that?”

“Lately, your life is becoming downright boring.”

“And you know what? I like it that way.”

“But a girl needs a thrill now and then.”

“I’ve had enough thrills to last me a lifetime—and then some.”

Peruvian earrings dancing against her white neck under the soft waves of her blond hair, Tiffany emerged from the back hallway. “Y’ all ready to go?”

Rose took a long pull off Tiff’s abandoned drink and set the glass down with finality. “Ready.”

Phoebe followed them to the door, answered their duet of goodbyes and happy birthdays, and moved to the wide window to watch them as they got into Tiff’s ancient, perfectly maintained Volvo sedan, which Ralphie had presented to her two years ago when her rattletrap compact car finally gave up the ghost. They hooked their seat belts and Tiff backed onto the street.

The gorgeous old car slid out—and slammed to a stop as a Mustang came roaring down Western and almost plowed into it. Honking ensued, from both vehicles. The guy in the Mustang swung around the Volvo, yelling something rude as he went by. Rose stuck her arm out the passenger window, middle finger raised high.

Phoebe shook her head. Rose had the attitude, always had.

The Volvo rolled forward, made the light onto Thirty-Sixth Street and disappeared the same way the Mustang had gone. Phoebe leaned her forehead against the cool glass of the window and shut her burning eyes.

She missed the Queens already, though five minutes ago she couldn’t wait to see them gone. The song on the jukebox ended. It whirred for a moment and then it was quiet.

Quiet enough to hear the rubber hit the road out on Western and the faint cries of four starlings on a wire above the furniture store across the street. She could even hear the damn ice machine dripping, back there behind the bar. And the balls of her feet were sore. She lifted her left foot and slid off her sandal. Heaven. She took off the other one. The cool, scuffed boards of the floor felt so good against her bare feet. Sandals in hand, she turned for the bar.

The biker had turned, too. He sat facing her, watching her through those black, black eyes.

Phoebe let a naughty little thrill shimmer through her—and then shrugged and swung the sandals over her shoulder to dangle by a finger. “Don’t tell me. You’re the new health inspector.” It was a bad joke and it fell flat.

He shrugged. “Not me.”

“Ready for another shot?”

“Two’s my limit.”

“Smart man.”

They shared a look. It lasted a second or two longer than it should have. Then he tipped his dark head at the empty stool beside him.

Better not, she thought. But what do you know? Her bare feet ambled on over there anyway, carrying her with them. She hopped up on the stool, facing out as he was, tugging lightly on her skirt so it didn’t slide too far up her thighs.

Dropping the sandals to the floor, she eased around his way and stuck out her hand. “I’m Phoebe Jacks.”

After a slight hesitation, he took it. His big, warm, rough hand swallowed hers and she felt that thrill again, that heated excitement searing upward along her arm, spreading all through her.

Lust at first sight, she thought, trying to be philosophical, reminding herself, again, that it was just a bad day for her and she would not follow through on her urge to rip off her sundress and jump into his lap. Maybe once upon a time she would have. But not anymore. She was older and wiser now. She’d lived through a marriage to Ralphie and after that, through a definite weakness for bad boys in black leather. She was done with all that now.

They shook.

She prompted, “And you are?”

“Rio,” he said. “Rio Navarro.”

Phoebe’s heart stopped dead, and then started racing. Carefully, she pulled her hand away. “My new partner.” Her tone was level. Absolutely calm. Just as if she were polishing the glassware.

“That’s right.”

“Ralphie’s dead,” she said, as if he didn’t already know.

“So I heard.”

She looked at Rio Navarro and she wondered how this—how any of it—could possibly have happened. Ralphie gone forever. Darla crying all the time. This black-eyed, sexy stranger showing up out of nowhere on her birthday and turning out to be the man who owned half of her livelihood.

It was too much, all of it, just too damn much.

“Excuse me,” she said, and had to pause to gulp hard. “I’ll be back in a minute.” Phoebe jumped from the stool, scooped up her sandals and raced around the end of bar, headed for the swinging door that led to the prep and storage areas in back.

Though it took every ounce of pride and self-respect she possessed, she didn’t burst into tears until after the door swung shut behind her.

CHAPTER TWO

A Prairie Queen has a sparkling comeback for every bad pick-up line.

Example: Man: Haven’t I seen you someplace before?

Prairie Queen: Yes, that’s why I don’t go there anymore.”

—from The Prairie Queen’s Guide to Life, by Goddess Jacks

RIO WAITED FOUR AND A half minutes for Ralphie’s former wife to reappear through the swinging door with the round window in the top of it.

When she did, her eyes and nose were red. She’d also put on some flat-heeled black shoes. She pushed through that door with her dark head high and marched right over to him—keeping to her side of the bar so that the long oak surface stood between them.

She met Rio’s eyes dead on, no sniffling, and he thought of what Ralphie had always said of her: Phoebe’s a stand-up gal. A rock. “Sorry about that.”

“No problem.” He knew she wouldn’t want his concern, but he found himself leaning closer and asking anyway, “You okay?”

“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?”

He sat back a fraction. “About?”

“About this bar. That you were getting his half of it when—” she had to swallow before she could finish “—Ralphie was gone?”

Her eyes pleaded with him. She didn’t really want the truth. He gave it to her anyway. “I knew.”

She had to clear her throat again. “Ralphie told you he was leaving his half to you?”

“Yeah.”

“How long ago was that?”

“Three years.”

She shut those misty eyes and sucked in a deep breath through her nose. He watched the roses on her dress rise high and recede.

Same old Ralphie, Rio thought. Ralphie had a bad habit of promising people things that didn’t belong to him. And if something did belong to him, he’d promise it to everyone.

When Ralphie’s ex looked at him again, her pretty mouth was set in an angry line and she seemed to have run out of questions—for the moment, anyway.

Rio decided to try getting a few answers of his own. “That was the widow, right? The little pregnant one who left with…” He didn’t know the guy’s name, so he gave her a chance to provide it.

She did. “Boone is Darla Jo’s brother. He works here, for me.”

“And Darla is exactly how pregnant?”

The woman across the bar made a small, angry sound and her green eyes flashed warnings. “Darla Jo was pregnant before she and Ralphie got married, if that’s what you’re getting at. Does that shock you or something?”

“Not a lot shocks me.”

“Is that a fact?”

“Yeah. It’s a fact.”

“So why even ask?”

“Just curious. Just…putting a few things together.”

“Well, you know what? I’m a little curious myself. I can’t help wonderin’ why you didn’t have the courtesy to introduce yourself when you first walked in here.” She tipped her head at the twenty he’d laid on the bar. “Why’d you have to fake me out with the paying customer routine?”

“Sorry,” he said, though he wasn’t. “I wanted to wait. Talk to you alone.”

“How thoughtful.” She gave the word a whole new meaning. Not a good one.

He couldn’t resist turning the knife a little. “And then there were all the interesting things your friends had to say about the way Ralphie died.”

She made another of those tight, disgusted noises. “Listening to other people’s conversations. Didn’t your mama ever tell you that eavesdroppin’ is rude?”

“Gets ingrained, in my line of work.”

She waved her hand as if batting away a pesky fly. “Well, it’s all just talk, anyway, what Rose said.”

He gave her the lifted eyebrow. “You have to admit she made some valid points.”

For that he got a long, tired sigh. “Listen. It’s been three weeks since it happened and the police don’t have a thing—and don’t give me that look. They did their job. They interviewed everyone in sight. And whenever I called them and asked what was going on, they were great about it, real considerate and helpful. But they’ve got nothing, not without the car that ran him down or a single witness or anything left where it happened that might give them a clue. A hit-and-run. That’s all we know. And like Tiff said, that’s probably all it was. An accident.”

“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…”