Duby's Doctor (33 page)

“Mornin’ Shep, mornin’ Dave,” each lady
called in turn. They did not wave back.

The running shoes whhp-whhp-whhpped past the
ladies and on down the tree-arched road. The porch ladies rose from
their chairs and turned to watch the eye-candy-in-a-ball-cap move
away from them. When Shep and Dave rounded the next corner, out of
sight, all four ladies gathered their coffee cups, binoculars, and
(in at least one case) weapons. With contented sighs, Martha,
Wyneen, Bernice, and Charlotte went back into their respective
homes. Even with a shirt, today had been a good day.

~o~ ~o~ ~o~

An hour away from tiny Minokee, the bigger
town of Live Oak steamed like broccoli in a microwave: green, limp,
wet, hot, and fragrant. Summer was an infant according to the
calendar, but the time-and-temperature sign outside the bank said
baby had grown up fast. At barely nine in the morning it was
already over ninety degrees in the shade.

Of course, no shade existed (and, for the
moment, no air conditioning either) inside the cramped local office
of the Division of Motor Vehicles. Miranda Ogilvy might have
endured the heat better than most, with her skinny physique and
sleeveless cotton sundress, but she was sandwiched between a buxom
big-haired Hot Mama and a barrel-bellied, sweat-stained Good Ol’
Boy. After languishing in the stagnant line of bodies for nearly an
hour, Miranda’s toes had been crushed by the platform heels of Hot
Mama four times. Her heels had been bruised by the sharp-toed
cowboy boots of G.O.B. three times. Neither neighbor seemed aware
of Miranda, though she was pillowed between them like a slipped
disc in a miserable spinal column.

Silently Miranda forgave her heavy-footed
line-mates; it wasn’t their fault. Nobody ever noticed Miranda.

“Next!” bleated an agent whose red face
glistened between lank bangs and wrinkled shirt collar. Hot Mama
peeled her backside off the front of Miranda’s sundress, lifted her
platform heels off Miranda’s numb toes, and shuffled to the
counter.

Oblivious to Miranda’s presence, the crowd of
humanity behind her surged forward, led by G.O.B.’s pointy
shit-kickers. Miranda advanced two quick steps to avoid being
trampled. Now at the front of the line, she luxuriated in breathing
deeply since no one was plastered against her front from toes to
sternum.

Two yards down the counter to the right, the
previous customer departed, and Miranda leapt like a gazelle into
the vacant spot.

“Next!” an empty-eyed public servant bellowed
directly into Miranda’s face. The woman was shorter and wider than
Miranda and actually leaned to look around Miranda for the next
victim.

“I’m here,” Miranda said with a smile and a
timid wave.

The official started and then focused on the
front of Miranda’s sundress. “How can I help you?”

Miranda pushed an envelope and her driver’s
license across the counter. “I need to change the address on my
license, please.”

“You can do that by mail or on-line, y’know.”
The tone of voice said, It’s lunkheads like you that cause long
lines on hellish days like this!

“I tried,” said Miranda sweetly. “They said I
need a new picture taken.” She eased her driver’s license an inch
closer to the official, who looked down at it and frowned.

“Where’s your face?”

“Right there in that rectangle, see?”

“That’s not your face, it’s the back of your
head! You can’t have the back of your head on your driver’s
license!” She angled her shoulders as if to talk over her shoulder,
though she continued shouting directly into Miranda’s nose.
“Freddie, they can’t have the back of their head on their driver’s
license picture, right?”

The shoulders squared up toward Miranda once
more. “You gotta have your face in the picture, honey.” Her eyes
said, What are you trying to pull, sister?

“I know. They tried and tried. That’s the
best we could get. I’m sorry. I just don’t photograph well,” said
Miranda. Her eyes said, I’m a sincere, law-abiding citizen, really,
truly I am, and it’s not my fault your air conditioner is broken
and it’s two hundred degrees in here.

The squatty official pursed her lips, glared
at the driver’s license, scowled at Miranda’s collarbone—nobody
ever looked Miranda in the face—and after several deep breaths
said, “You got proof of the new address? Power bill, phone bill,
water bill, mail addressed to you?”

“My first power bill,” Miranda said, sliding
the envelope further across the counter.

The official squinted at the address on the
correspondence.

“Minokee? Does anybody still live in
Minokee?” Then, over the shoulder again, “Freddie, is folks still
livin’ in Minokee?” Then, to Miranda, “You really moved to
Minokee?”

“Yes, ma’am, I sure did.”

“From where?”

“Miami.”

A satisfied nod at Miranda’s bodice buttons.
Explains a lot, said the eyes. “Step over there in front of the
blue screen,” the official ordered.

Miranda wove her way across the room to stand
in front of the screen and face the digital camera.

Minutes passed. Miranda’s official approached
the camera from the other side of the counter, carrying Miranda’s
papers, then stood looking about the room. “Ogilvy!” she shrieked.
“Miriam Ogilvy!”

From three feet in front of the camera
Miranda waved and smiled. “Right here. It’s Miranda. Miranda
Ogilvy.”

“Whatever,” said the official. “Look right
here.” She tapped a spot on the front of the camera. With her other
hand she swatted at a fly trying to roost on the camera lens.

The fly buzzed straight at Miranda’s face,
Miranda reacted instinctively, and the result was a high-tech
digital photograph of the top of Miranda’s head with her two hands
flailing above it like moose antlers.

“Crap,” said the official when the new
license rolled out of the laminator. She showed the moose photo to
Miranda.

“It’s better than the old one,” Miranda said
encouragingly.

The harried official looked at the photo and
at the melting masses still waiting in the long, long, long line of
customers.

“You’re right,” she said, handing Miranda the
new license together with the supporting papers. “Have a nice
day.”

“Thank—” Miranda almost said.

“Next!” the woman blared as if nobody was
standing right in front of her.

I guess nobody is, thought Miranda and
murmured a “Thank you” that nobody heard.

End of Sample Chapter

of

FINDING MIRANDA

by

Iris Chacon

Enjoy these

sample chapters

of

SYLVIE'S COWBOY

Sparks fly – often literally – when a Penthouse
Princess is forced to move to the rustic ranch of a Crabby Cowboy.
They clash in every way over everything, sometimes hilariously.

It would be funnier, however, if they weren’t in
danger from unknown murderous thieves.

Will they live long enough to learn to live
together?

CHAPTER ONE – THE RANCH

Rural Florida, Outside Clewiston

Two Days Before the Explosion

A dove gray Mercedes Benz limousine bumped
along a winding, rutted dirt road through palmetto bushes, spindly
pines, and scrub oaks to stop at an open gate with a rusty cattle
gap. On a plank above the gate someone had burned "McGurk Ranch" in
simple block letters.

Harry Pace, lean, tanned, and dark-haired
with silvering temples, slid out of the limo’s back seat. He
gestured to the driver to stay put, and walked over the cattle gap,
through the gate.

Harry had walked farther than any sane person
wanted to in the sticky Florida heat when at last he soundlessly
approached the front door of the ranch’s modest house. He gripped
the doorknob. It was locked. He sidled to his left and peered in a
window. Nobody inside. From behind the house, he heard someone
whistling "Your Cheatin' Heart." Harry smiled to himself and moved
in the direction of the music.

In the second-story loft of a hay barn,
Walter McGurk was forking hay out the open hay door, sailing it
into a battered red pickup truck parked below. The truck's doors
were inexplicably yellow. Walt whistled as he worked.

Walt made a heavy job look easy with his
strong, athletic build. Sweaty shirt sleeves rolled up to his
elbows revealed ropes of muscle undulating in his sun-darkened
forearms as he lifted and tossed the hay. His jeans were tight and
faded from many washings. His tooled leather belt held a large
hunting knife in a weathered cowhide sheath. He wore battered,
scuffed cowboy boots.

Harry approached the barn, shielding himself
from view beneath a huge avocado tree. When he eased around the
tree, a big, ugly dog growled from beneath the red-and-yellow
pickup. In the loft overhead, Walt jerked toward the sound and
spotted Harry instantly.

"What do you want?" Walt growled, echoing the
dog.

"What does any man want when his partners are
stealing him blind?" asked Harry, stepping out from beneath the
avocado shade.

Walt spun and hurled his pitchfork like a
javelin. It thwacked into the ground a hair's breadth from Harry's
boots. Only Harry's eyes moved.

"You ain't stupid enough to be talkin' about
me," said Walt. "I ain’t a thief. Fact, I'm the only half of this
partnership that ever does an honest day's work. So, what do you
want?"

Walt used the hayloft's rope and pulley to
swing Tarzan-like to the ground. He paced to the truck, drying his
face and wiping perspiration out of his hat with a bandana from his
pocket. Walt opened the truck’s passenger door and helped himself
to water from an Igloo cooler.

Harry walked around the grounded pitchfork to
join Walt at the truck. Walt filled a paper cup with water from the
Igloo, but when Harry reached for it, Walt offered it instead to
the ill-tempered dog lying under the truck. Unperturbed, Harry got
his own cup of water. Then he turned his back on Walt and toyed
with a heavy avocado drooping from a branch.

"Spit it out, will ya?" said Walt, helping
himself to water from the paper cup he had shared with the dog.
"Butch and me got things to do."

Harry didn't turn around. "I was gonna ask
you to help me when I make my play to get back what they stole,"
Harry said to the avocado. "But it occurs to me you're probably
gettin' too old and too slow."

Behind Harry, Walt bent to reach beneath his
jeans and pull a pistol out of an ankle holster.

"I’m twenty years younger than you, old
timer, and I can still chop my own guacamole," said Walt.

Harry snapped the avocado from the tree. The
branch recoiled, bucking and swinging. Harry feinted one way, then
reversed direction, turned, and threw the avocado high. It soared
like a miniature green football far over Walt's head.

Walt fired three quick shots, each one
chopping a piece off the airborne avocado.

Avocado chunks rained down and littered the
grass. Harry walked through them, turning them over with the toe of
his boot. Walt slid the pistol back into his own boot. Harry gave
him a satisfied nod.

"I want you to take care of Sylvie," Harry
said.

Walt shook his head. "I ain't up to spoiling
your daughter for ya. You done too well already on that, if ya ask
me."

Harry gave him a hard look. "Don't spoil
her," he said. "Take care of her."

"You take care of her. Ain’t seen her in
nearly ten years. You and I both know she’d be happy if she never
saw me again.”

"I’ll be busy,” said Harry. “Gonna give some
big city thieves a dose of their own medicine."

"And if they don't want to swallow it?"

Harry turned to leave, speaking almost to
himself as he retraced the route to the limo. "Then we'll find out
whether I'm gettin' too old and too slow."

Butch rose from beneath the truck, and Walt
absently rubbed the dog's ears as he watched Harry go. Walt's brow
furrowed, and there was both anger and worry in his voice when he
shouted, "I got a good life here, Harry. Don't you mess it up for
me, y'hear?! Harry?! I mean it, now."

Harry kept walking. He never looked back.

"Shoot!" said Walt in disgust. He splattered
a hunk of avocado with a kick and snatched up the pitchfork to
return to work. Harry was gone. Whatever would happen, would
happen.

A cellular phone rang inside the truck. Walt
walked over, leaned in, and plucked the phone from its holster on
the dashboard.

"McGurk," he said into the phone. He
listened, then responded, "Was that tonight? ... No, no problem. I
just forgot is all. ... Clarice, people forget. It don't mean they
don't love people. They just forget. I'll pick you up at seven. ...
Fine. 'Bye."

He slammed the phone back into its holster
and gave Butch an exasperated look. "I think what we need is one
more fancy-planning, crazy-talkin', lipstick-wearin' tower of
estrogen in our lives right now, don't you?"