Calamity Jayne Heads West (23 page)

“So, any questions, class?” I asked, in summation.

“Just one,” Taylor said, raising her hand as if in school.

“Miss Turner?”

“Why does this stuff keep happening to you?” she asked.

I shrugged. “Only the Good Lord knows and He ain’t tellin’,” I said. “Maybe it’s a gift. You know. Likewith Cadence, the spiritual advisor. Okay, so maybe that’s not the best example. How about Psychic Sylvia? You can’t deny she has a gift. She was on
Montel
a month ago and told this lady she was soon going to be abundantly blessed with the fruits of her labor and she just found out she’s pregnant. With triplets! Pretty amazing, huh?”

Sophie and Taylor exchanged looks.

“So, what does the latest clue say?” Sophie asked. “Maybe between the three of us we can figure it out.”

I carefully unrolled the latest scroll and read it out loud. “ ‘Brother, sister, man, wife. Home and hearth are intertwined. Twin sorrows. Twin joys. Mirror im-ages connected by sport. Reflections and wishes. Your reward awaits you here.’ ” I reread it. “Okay, gotta con-fess. I got nothin’,” I said. “You, Taylor?”

My sister shook her head. “But remember, if we’re operating under the theory that these clues are for someone familiar with the area, then we probably wouldn’t know some of them,” Taylor said. “It was pure dumb luck we knew the first two. And let’s face it, they were no-brainers.”

Speak for yourself, Einstein.

“So, Soph, anything jump out at you?” I asked.

“Read it once more,” Sophie said, and I complied. “There’s a little drawing in the corner here, too,” I said. “Like a stick figure of an animal or something,” I added.

“Let me see,” Sophie said, and I gave the clue to Tay-lor who held it out so Sophie could look at it.

“Crude drawing,” she said. “Home and hearth inter-twined. Mirror images connected by sport. Oh, my gosh! I think I know where it’s talking about!” she screamed. “I think it’s Riordan Mansion!”

Taylor and I looked at each other.

“Riordan what?”

“It’s a huge old mansion built by two brothers just after the turn of the century,” she said, her words matching her driving: fast and furious. “The two log-ging baron brothers married two sisters and built this spectacular mansion. The two halves of the house are almost mirror images. The two separate living spaces are connected to each other by this huge, magnificent billiard room the two families shared.”

I stared at Sophie. “Brother, sister, man, wife. Home and hearth are intertwined. Sophie, I think you could be right!” I yelled, my voice getting high-pitched and squeaky like it does when I discover the Easter Bunny has left a basket of Cadbury Crème eggs on Easter morning. “But what’s this about ‘twin sorrows’?” I asked.

“I seem to recall something about both families tragically losing a child on the same day due to polio,” Sophie said. “It’s been a while since I’ve been to the mansion.”

“Is it open now?” I asked. Sophie nodded.

“Should be. They have tours on the hour.”

“Okay, so all we have to do is figure out where to look for the next clue once we get there,” I said.

“That’s the easy part,” Sophie said. “Reflections and wishes. Your reward awaits you here. There’s a stone fountain on the grounds. There are hidden animal drawings in the fountain, that’s where that crudely drawn sketch comes in.”

“So all we have to do is get to this Riordan Mansion and snoop around the fountain. Sounds simple enough.”

“Doesn’t it, though?” Taylor said. “There is one more thing we probably need to do before we hunt down that next clue,” she added.

I frowned. “What’s that?” I asked.

“Ditch the dark Toyota that’s been tailing us since we left the IMAX,” Taylor said, and I glanced back.

From what I could see, it looked like the same vehi-cle I’d hung on to for dear life at the Snowbowl that morning. And that meant the same masked marauder.

“Any ideas?” I asked.

“I could try to lose him,” Sophie said, and I shook my head.

“I don’t know, Soph. The guy kind of struck me as pretty determined. At least that’s what it felt like when I was hanging on to his mirror and being pulled along like some human experiment in fric-tion,” I said.

I caught Sophie’s expression in the mirror. From the lip biting, she seemed to be considering some-thing carefully.

“There is a place we can go and leave my car,” she said, very slowly. “And I know someone there who’ll let me borrow theirs,” she added.

“Is it a guy named Tristan?” I asked with a slight raise of one eyebrow.

“Oh, great. It’s Tristan now,” Taylor said. “Why am I always out of the loop?”

“It sounds like a good plan, Sophie,” I said. “What do you think, Taylor?”

My little sis turned a cold shoulder on me. “Why ask me? I don’t even know who Tristan is,” she snapped.

Ouch! The Black Dahlia has thorns! “Let’s see. It’s daring, reckless, and rife with risk,” I said. Which, ac-cording to Rick Townsend, exemplified my personal-ity profile. “I say we do it. One for all and all for one, just like the Three Musketeers. Right, ladies?”

The response was underwhelming.

“So, just where are we planning to make this little switcharoo?” I asked Sophie.

She smiled. Or maybe it was a grimace. In the rearview mirror, who could tell?

“Bountiful Babes,” Sophie said.

“ ’Scuze me?”

“Bountiful Babes. It’s a club for discriminating men who appreciate the . . . full-figured woman,” Sophie explained.

“You’re so gonna have to spoon-feed me on this one, Soph,” I said, “because I’m just not quite there.”

“Fat! All right?” Sophie hollered so loud I jumped. “Chubby. Plump. Hefty. Obese. Rotund. Stout. Chunky. Fat! You know. What you call ‘porkers’ back in Iowa! Okay?”

I sat back, my spine pressed against the car seat. “Oh,” was all I could think of to say. Well, for all of twelve seconds. Then: “So, how do you know about this heavy-duty hot spot again?” I asked, my query fol-lowed by a long, silent pause.

“I know the place,” Sophie finally said, “because I work there.”

“Oh.”

I processed that information. “Oh,” I said again once I got the data to compute. And my program-ming told me this was one chubby, plump, hefty, obese, rotund, stout, chunky, porker of a mess I’d got-ten myself into.

Again.

Note: Fat puns used solely for effect.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Sophie drove us to a section of Flagstaff I was unfamil-iar with. A handful of colorful nightspots and sports bars dotted the landscape, along with several restau-rants and dance clubs. Sophie pulled into an alley be-hind one of the establishments and parked. I blinked. Long and low, the building resembled the Thunder Rolls Bowling Alley at home.

“This is it?” I asked.

Sophie nodded. “This is where we go in,” she said. “Any sign of the Toyota?”

Taylor nodded. “It’s still there. I saw him park on the street near the entrance to the alley.”

“Good. Then he should get a bird’s-eye view of us entering,” she said, amazingly at ease with this cloak and dagger stuff. “Ready? Let’s hit it, girls.”

I shook my head. Bountiful and bitchin’. What a combo.

We entered at the end of a long hallway. In the back-ground I detected your basic bump and grind music that signaled it was time for the late matinee.

Taylor and I followed Sophie down the hall like two trained pups. Taylor kept her eyes riveted on Sophie’s back. Me? I cast a curious eye into each room as we passed—purely for professional purposes only, you un-derstand. Hey, reporters observe and then report, guys. I was strictly honing my observational skills.

We walked through a thick door at the end of the hallway. Here the music bitch-slapped us like a cymbal clash in the face. There was a long bar to the left, but what appeared in my peripheral vision to the right snared my attention like the after-Christmas seventy-five- percent-off Christmas candy sales at Wally’s World. On a stage approximately five feet off the ground, a dancer clung to a pole—well, what looked like a pole if said pole was the width of a wooden post. Not only was the pole supersized, the dancer was, too.

With long blond hair tumbling down over fleshy shoulders, the queen-sized performer wore a red and black jacquard bustier with a lace-up back that had to accommodate a cup size in the triple letter category, black garters, and a matching G-string. An abundance of white flesh spilled out over the garment’s frame, re-sembling the “over-the-top” poppy seed muffins my gammy made several months back. Talk about your cups runneth over. Yikes!

Sophie headed straight for the bar and Taylor fol-lowed, leaving me behind to marvel at how fluid the dancer’s moves were, despite the fact that she proba-bly tipped the scale at two hundred-plus pounds. She grabbed the pole with two hands and vaulted onto it. Gripping it with both legs, she twisted and twirled around the pole to the blaring music, her ample thighs intimately hugging the pole. Suddenly she pulled herself up the pole, gripped it with her ankles and let go with her hands to descend ever so slowly up-side down. I stared, impressed with the strength andskill required to not only perform the moves but to do them in perfect sync with the music.

“Holy dancing queen!” I said. “Would you look at that!”

I felt a tug at my elbow. “Come on, Tressa,” Taylor whispered. “I think you’ve seen enough. Remember what happened the last time we were in a similar es-tablishment.” I did. Still, Bountiful Babes seemed pretty tame com-pared to Big Burl’s back home.

We watched the performance for several more min-utes until Sophie joined us.

“That’s Tiny Dancer,” Sophie said, and I looked at her.

“Tiny Dancer?”

Sophie nodded. “That’s her stage name. Pretty good, isn’t she?”

This time I nodded. I’d be lucky if I could manage a quarter of the moves she’d just performed so fluidly. And that upside-down number? Even with rock-solid thighs honed from years on the back of a horse, I’d probably look more like an inebriated firefighter than an exotic dancer. And likely end up snapping my spine.

“She’s awesome,” I said. “How does she do that?”

“Tons of practice,” Sophie said, and I remembered her earlier remark about working here.

“You don’t meant to say . . . ,” I stammered. “Can you really . . . ? Do you . . . ? Are you . . . ?”

“Don’t get your knickers in a knot, cous,” Sophie said. “I mainly serve drinks. But I have strutted my stuff a time or two on amateur night,” she added. “It’s great exercise, and it’s nice to be ogled by men out of appreciation rather than revulsion for a change. And from what I hear, I’m not half bad.”

Whoa. I looked at Sophie and then at the stage. This was so not what I was expecting to hear.

“So this is what you’ve been hiding,” I said. “And how you can afford designer bags and shoes?”

She shrugged. “Our clientele is generous, so the tips are great. Our club is the only one that caters to men who truly believe big is beautiful and can express their appreciation without being ridiculed,” she said.

I watched as Tiny Dancer finished her performance and the dozen or so patrons applauded and expressed their approval with lucre. I found myself thinking a G-string that size could hold a heck of a lot of green-backs. Tiny Dancer accepted their tokens and exited stage left.

“Come on,” Sophie said. “I’ll introduce you to Ellie. She’s a sweetheart.”

We followed Sophie back the way we came in and stopped at a door to our left.

“Knock, knock,” Sophie said with a tap on the door. “You decent, El?” she asked.

“I hope to hell not,” I heard, followed by a chuckle. “Come on in, Sugar ‘n’ Spice Girl.”

Taylor and I exchanged looks.

“My stage name,” Sophie said with a shrug.

“Catchy,” I said.

“I thought so, too,” Sophie remarked. She motioned us into a long room that resembled a beauty salon with four stations, sans the sinks. Bright lights illuminated each makeup station. Tiny Dancer a.k.a. Ellie sat in front of a mirror blotting her face with a tissue. I admit it. I gawked. She seemed so comfortable with her body I felt ashamed that I wasn’t more at ease with my own perceived physical shortcomings and imperfections.

“Hey, girlfriend, what you doing here today? I thou-ght you took a week off,” El said.

Sophie nodded. “I did but I need a favor,” she said, introducing us and explaining that she needed to bor-row Ellie’s car to run an errand.

“Sure thing, Spice,” Ellie said. “No sweat. I’m on ’til ten, anyway. It’s parked out front. What’s the deal?”

“You recall the fan that followed you around last summer?” Sophie asked, and Tiny Dancer nodded.

“Do I ever! Every time I looked in my rearview mir-ror I swear the little dick was there. He had it bad. Fi-nally took my boyfriend hiding in the backseat while I drove around and then jumping out to threaten the wiener to get him to stop. Poor little guy peed in his pants,” Ellie said. “My boyfriend’s a third-round draft pick for the Arizona Cardinals,” she explained for my benefit and Taylor’s.

“Actually our guy is after Tressa here,” Sophie said, pointing to me. Tiny Dancer raised a meticulously constructed eyebrow. “You’re Tressa, right?” she said, addressing Taylor, who shook her head and pointed to me.

“She’s Tressa.”

Ellie looked at me. “You look like you got a set of sturdy thighs,” she said. “You ever do any dancing?” she asked.

“Does around the truth count?” I said, with a you-gotta-be-joking snort.

Ellie smiled. “You got ’tude,” she said. “You could go a long way in this business.”

“I could?” I blinked, trying to picture me dressed in a black bustier, garters, and black boots, with a long, shiny pole between my legs. Calamity Jayne. Have love handles, will dance.

“You’d need to gain some l.b.’s,” Tiny Dancer said. “And do something about that hair.”

I put a hand to my head. “It’s also got ‘tude’,” I said, with a long-suffering sigh.

Ellie and Sophie exchanged keys and hugs, and we hurried out the front door and over to a black Lexus. Automobile envy hit me hard. Shaking your groovething, it seemed, was quite lucrative. Even if you had a Pillsbury doughgirl body type.

Sweet.

This time I hopped in front, giving Taylor the back-seat. We buckled up and Sophie pulled out. It was only about a fifteen-minute drive to the Riordan Mansion. My mouth flew open as I caught my first peek of the rambling, rustic log home. Talk about your Pon-derosas. I expected to see Hoss or Little Joe rush out to greet me—Adam often being away from the ranch due to contract disputes, according to Gram.

“What a rocking ranch house!” I said, exiting the car and staring at the sprawling structure. “I could see me living in a place like this. Can’t you, Taylor?” I asked my sister. “Can’t you picture me as the lady of the manor?”

She walked over to me, holding her head as she moved. “Yeah. Sure. I see it now,” she said, putting one hand up. “You standing out front of your country home in your bib overalls, a lasso above your head. A contemporary cowgirl. Grant Wood heads west. A real “American Gothic.” Now, can we get this hunt under-way? I’ve got a killer headache.”

“Well, excuse me for wanting to take in a little local color on the way,” I complained. “Sheesh.” I turned to Sophie. “So, where is this fountain?” I asked and So-phie’s brows became one.

“It’s been a while since I’ve been here, but I think it’s around the corner of the house over there,” So-phie pointed out.

“Good thing it’s early in the season or we’d probably have tourists up the yin yang to contend with,” I said, jogging down the path near the house. “If the clue culprit operates true to form, we should find some-thing taped to the fountain,” I said. I turned to Sophie who huffed and puffed on one side of me and Taylorwho flanked me on the other. “Isn’t this fun? Three cousins tracking down clues in a puzzle worthy of Holmes,” I said.

“Holmes? Who? Katie?” Taylor asked.

Reearr! Someone was crabby.

Sophie grabbed my arm. “Slow down! Slow down! We don’t want to attract a lot of undue attention. If we come galloping up like a loco posse from Hicksville, USA, we might as well be wearing bandanas over our noses and mouths and holding six-guns yelling ‘This is a stickup!’ ” she said. “Just take it nice and easy. Catch your breath. Get a grip. And remember, Calamity, I’ve got to live here long after you’ve left and gone back to raising hell in the Heartland.”

“I feel so loved,” I said, with a hand to my heart as I grudgingly slowed my pace to match Sophie’s strides.

“There it is!” my cousin said. “There it is!”

I couldn’t help but feel a certain amount of smug-ness at the excitement in her voice. I followed her pointing finger and frowned when I saw a couple gaz-ing into each other’s eyes like two lovesick pups.

“Sit rep. Two lovebirds. Stone birdbath. Six o’clock,” I reported, feeling very:
Bond, Jane Bond
.

Sophie and Taylor looked at each other and shook their heads. I shrugged. Party poopers.

“Okay, so what’s the plan?” Taylor asked. I frowned.

“Plan? Plan? We don’t need no stinkin’ plan!” I said.

Sophie and Taylor looked at me.

“Okay, okay, you want a plan. Fine. Why don’t we just divide the fountain in thirds and each of us check out our respective sections for anything unusual, and we’ll know we’re done when we butt heads,” I suggested.

“Okay. And what if we find something? What do we do about the lovers?” Sophie asked.

“Drown them in the fountain, of course,” I said, thinking the situation was spiraling out of control ifpeople were looking to me for strategy. “You take the female, I’ll handle the gent.”

Taylor started tapping one toe, which is never a good sign.

“Okay, okay, just injecting some humor into an oth-erwise stressful situation,” I said. “And the answer is . . . first we run ’em off, then we search.”

“How are we going to do that?” Sophie asked. “They seem content where they are.”

And they did. It looked like they were trying to swal-low each other’s tongues.

“We could go over and get in a big argument. You know. A catfight,” I suggested. “That would send them packing.”

“And right to the security guy, as well,” Sophie said.

I tried again: “How about one of us begins a conver-sation with them? You know. Spoil the mood.”

“I vote you as the candidate most likely to succeed in the mood-spoiling category,” Sophie said. “And you are also better at BS on the fly than Taylor or me. Be-sides, I have to—”

“I know. I know,” I interrupted, waving a hand. “You have to live here. Fine. I’ll do it. But while I have the amorous couple occupied, you two start nosing around.”

We agreed that I should go first so it wouldn’t be ob-vious that we were together. At least that’s what I took Sophie’s “not be seen together” comment to mean. I straightened my braid, squared my shoulders and once more into the breach I ventured.

I approached the fountain. The clinching couple continued to clasp. Ah, romance. Ain’t it grand?

I motioned to Sophie and Taylor to begin their ex-amination of the fountain while the lovers only had eyes for each other. Sophie took the higher points of the fountain while Taylor got down on her hands andknees to examine its base. I gave them high marks for their technique.

I watched the woo-some twosome exchange a cou-ple more kisses. They must’ve picked up on my pe-rusal, as the woman’s eyes opened and her gaze fell on me. She broke off the kiss, put a hand to her mouth and took a step back from her boyfriend.

“Hey,” I said, waving a hand and smiling. “Nice day.”

The dark-haired woman’s companion turned in my direction. “Oh, er, hullo,” the fortyish fellow said.

“Hi. I’m Tressa,” I said, putting out a hand, deciding to take a page out of Nick Townsend’s
How to Irritate
Without Breaking a Sweat
manual. “This is a fantastic place. Do you come here often? Have you seen Ben Cartwright around?” I asked, with a cute little guffaw. I shook my head. “Naw, he’s probably off finding an-other beautiful young wife to bring home to the Pon-derosa so she can up and die on him before they can celebrate their first anniversary.” I snorted. “Arizona is awesome. Have you been to Oak Creek Canyon? It’s really cool, too, even though I did get mugged there. Have you ever been to Numbers? It’s a really hot night spot. They have five-minute speed dates. My cousin got her designer handbag lifted there. Have you been to the Grand Canyon yet? We just went to the IMAX theater. My sister got sick. She didn’t actually hurl in the theater itself, but it was a close call.”