High-Caliber Concealer (11 page)

“You mean they take their source of income
seriously?” retorted Nikki, who had a dim view of things impeding
the max velocity of any of her vehicles.

“Whatever. Just keep it at twenty-five, OK?”
Jackson climbed into his truck and Nikki dropped down into the
Impala.

Kaniksu Falls was in the northeastern most
part of Washington State, nestled in one of the bends of the
Columbia River and flanked on two sides by the Colville National
Forest and the Colville Indian Reservation to the south. When it
came to bigger towns to go to, Canada was closer than the nearest
American neighbor. It was therefore not entirely surprising that
Nikki’s father had been Canadian. Nell, Nikki’s mother, hadn’t been
the only Kaniksu Falls teenager to venture across the border, where
the drinking age was still nineteen, and come home with a Canadian
boyfriend.

The town itself was a typical small town
layout—main street, with a grid system branching out on either
side. The high school lay on the edge of town with tiny little
suburbs even further out and then, like electrons circling the
nucleus of an atom, the farms and ranches were the last sign of
humans before the expanse of forest took over.

Nikki stared at the shops as she drove by,
all closed by 8:00
p.m
. Only bars and
restaurants stayed open later than that, and most of the
restaurants were closed by ten. There wasn’t even a McDonalds in
town. The burger joint was literally called “Fast Food” and it
wasn’t being ironically Americana in style, it had just existed in
the same beat-up drive-in location since 1963.

Nothing seemed to have changed since Nell
had packed them up and left for Seattle—since Nikki’s father had
abandoned them. The grocery store, the hair salon, the Beauty Belle
(where all the girls got their prom dresses), the bookstore (with
new and used books!)—it all looked the same. Maybe slightly smaller
and dirtier. Jackson stopped at a stoplight, and they waited on the
empty streets for the light to change. Nikki could hear the whisper
of music from Jackson’s stereo over the sound of their motors. She
stared around the intersection at the Antique Mall (commonly
referred to as “the garage sale place”), the Mexican restaurant—
previously a Shari’s, Nikki guessed by the octagonal shape—the gas
station, and the auto-body shop, trying to drum up some feeling of
nostalgia. When she had visited during college there had always
been the twinge of what might have been, the life she might have
lived if her father and Jackson hadn’t left. Now she found herself
pondering how anyone lived without a twenty-four hour grocery store
and Chinese delivery on speed dial. Did no one ever need to eat at
2:00
a.m.
? Did they just cook their own
food? No one should cook at 2:00
a.m.
You
were either drunk, sleep deprived, or getting off work at that
hour. None of those were fit states to be operating an
appliance.

As Nikki contemplated the problems of late
night noshing, a figure turned the corner down the street and
walked along the sidewalk. Nikki squinted in disbelief. He wore the
same filthy Carhartt’s, the same disgusting ball cap. It really was
Milt from the bar. But the sheriff had taken him to jail, hadn’t
he? As she watched, Milt opened the door to the darkened auto-body
shop and went inside.

The light turned green and Jackson’s truck
was already trundling across the intersection. Nikki hesitated,
uncertain. Should she honk? Let Jackson go while she… She did what?
Went and beat up Milt again? Nikki bit her lip and pushed the gas
pedal, following Jackson. It wasn’t any of her business if the
sheriff didn’t want to arrest people. She should let it go.

But she found herself stewing on it as she
followed Jackson’s truck up into the foothills, past the shark
eating a mailbox boat, and onto the Connelly farm.

Jackson turned the truck around in the
circular driveway and waved, but didn’t stop, as he headed back
down to the road. Nikki turned off the Impala and sat frowning for
a long moment in the car. Then she shook her head, grabbed her bag
and headed to the front door. Her grandmother’s Ford SUV was still
warm to the touch, which meant she hadn’t been home for very long.
Nikki rang the door bell and waited.

“Who is it?” asked her grandmother, from the
other side of the door.

“It’s Nikki, Grandma,” said Nikki, not quite
yelling to project through the door.

“Oh, good,” said Peg, and Nikki heard the
clunk of the deadbolt and a rattle of a chain latch being undone.
Nikki didn’t remember there having been a chain latch
previously.

“Sweetie!” exclaimed Peg throwing open the
door. “You’re here!” Nikki was promptly smothered in a hug, but was
dimly aware that Peg was holding something heavy in one hand as it
clunked against her back during the hug. “I didn’t think you were
flying in until tomorrow. How did you get here?” She peered out
into the driveway.

“I drove a little faster than I thought I
would,” said Nikki. “Grandma, why do you have a gun?”

“Oh, this?” Peg looked in surprise at the
.357 revolver in her hand. “Well, I’m old, dear, and I live all by
myself. It pays to be on the safe side. You see all those crazies
on the news these days. I’ll take you down to the quarry tomorrow
and teach you how to shoot it. I’m a firm believer that if there’s
a gun in the house, everyone should know how to use it. But you
said you were flying! You didn’t really drive all the way, did
you?”

“You said I was flying,” said Nikki,
stepping inside and shutting the front door. Peg locked the
deadbolt, the door handle, and slid the chain into place. “I said I
was driving.”

“I don’t think that’s safe.”

“And yet, here I am, safe and sound,” said
Nikki. “Now where’s the pie?”

Peg laughed. “It’s in the kitchen. How did
you know there would be pie?”

“It’s peach season,” said Nikki, with a
shrug. “Of course there’s pie.”

“Well, come into the kitchen,” said Peg.
“And I’ll cut you a slice, while I confess a little something.”

“Grandma, you didn’t shoot someone, did you?
Because I’m not burying any bodies until after pie.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I haven’t shot anyone
in years.”

Peg led the way into the kitchen. The yellow
and red tile counter and backsplash hadn’t been changed since her
grandfather built it, but the floor was new.

“You took out the linoleum!” exclaimed
Nikki.

“Yeah, I had a raccoon under the house and
when Jorge went to get it out, the little bugger knocked one of the
water pipes loose and flooded the whole kitchen. I had to replace
it. I like this floor,” she tapped the new wooden boards with her
house slipper, “but I kind of miss the linoleum. It was a lot
warmer on the toes.”

“So what did you need to confess?” asked
Nikki as she pulled down two plates from the cupboard.

“Well,” said Peg, tucking her gun into the
kitchen junk drawer, and picking up a knife from the wooden block.
“I didn’t really think you were arriving until tomorrow afternoon.
There’s ice cream in the freezer or whip cream in the fridge, hon.
Your pick.” Peg deftly sliced the pie and levered it onto the
plates. “So I didn’t really get a chance to clean out your
room.”

“What, you didn’t get a chance to dust?”
asked Nikki, covering her pie with whip cream.

“It’s a little bit more than dusty,” said
Peg, wiping peach off the knife and looking extremely guilty.

“How much is a little bit?” asked Nikki.

“Well…” said Peg.

Nikki grabbed a fork and her plate and
marched up the stairs to the second door on the left and swung it
open.

“Grandma! What is all this stuff?”

“It’s the attic,” said Peg. “When the pipe
burst, we didn’t know originally where it was coming from so I had
to pull everything out of the attic for the plumber to crawl around
in. And once I had all the boxes and trunks down I started going
through everything. That rack on the left is my mother’s clothes.
There are also some of mine from when I was a girl and I cared
about such things. The ones in the middle are your mother’s. She
always was a clothes horse. There’s a few of your baby things in
the back. And the ones on the right are my grandmother’s. I’ve been
cleaning them up and pressing them. Once I know what I’ve got, I
plan to sell them on the internet.”

Nikki blinked at the treasure trove of
vintage clothing. She could barely see the bed, its crisp sheets
and comfy quilt beckoning through the racks and boxes of
clothes.

“It’s probably a good thing you came alone,”
said Peg, looking into the room. “I don’t think we could wedge
anyone else in there with you. That boyfriend of yours isn’t
coming, is he?”

“No,” said Nikki. “He’s on an assignment for
work. I’m on my own for awhile.”

“Well, that’s good, I guess.”

Nikki couldn’t tell if she was pleased or
disappointed.

Nikki bounced down the stairs wearing tennis
shoes, khaki shorts, and a short-sleeve, lightweight button-up that
hid her gun nicely. She’d been tempted to try out a few of the
vintage looks hanging around the room, but had realized they
probably wouldn’t conceal any firearms. She sat down at the
breakfast table, making sure not to catch her holster on the chair.
The first few months she’d worn a gun, she’d felt like it had
knocked into everything and she’d had to severely adjust her
wardrobe to shirts that would drape nicely. These days she barely
noticed she had it on.

Her grandmother set a bowl of oatmeal down
in front of her and pushed a Tupperware container of cut peaches at
her. Nikki took both without a word, respecting her grandmother’s
preferred morning mode. After Jane’s Czechoslovakian Incident, she
had finally learned that nothing good ever came of speaking to a
non-morning person before ten. Nikki finished her breakfast, washed
her bowl and then went out on the porch to wait for Peg’s brain to
switch back on.

The farm looked mostly like she remembered.
Donna, her grandmother’s geriatric gray mare, dozed in the near
paddock, one leg cocked, chewing reflexively on some grass. The
barn needed painting. There was activity in the peach orchard
beyond the paddock. A man on an ATV pulled a trailer full of picked
peaches at a snail’s pace through the trees and down toward the
barn.

“That’ll be Jorge,” said Peg coming out onto
the porch. “He is always so careful when he drives. He never
bruises a single peach. His nephew, on the other hand, drives like
a crazy man. Might as well make jam by the time he’s done.”

“Did Jorge ever get his work visa settled?”
asked Nikki, remembering the drama from last Christmas.

“Sort of,” said Peg pulling a face. “So much
damn paperwork these days. This country is fed by the efforts of
migrant workers. I fail to understand why we make it so difficult
to get work visas.” She waved at Jorge, who waved back.

“Because politicians aren’t farmers and
farmers are too busy to be politicians,” said Nikki, repeating one
of her grandfather’s stock phrases, which made Peg laugh.

“He was so right. Well, what’s your plan for
the day? Are you up for shooting at the quarry?”

“Sure,” said Nikki. “Sounds good.”

“Good. We should get going before the sun
gets too high. I’ll get the gun and bullets, meet you at the car in
ten.”

Nikki nodded and went to add some extra
bullets to her own purse before arriving at the car.

The quarry was an old gravel mine cut into
the side of a hill, revealing the hard strata of geologic time.
While the mine had been closed for years the road up to it showed
that it was clearly still in use and the twinkle of shiny brass
among the rocks showed that Peg wasn’t the only one who used it for
an informal gun range.

Nikki frowned as she kicked over a rock and
dislodged a mid-sized casing. A few feet away, a discarded Wolf
39mm ammunition box fluttered in the breeze, pinned in place by a
dead branch.

“Something the matter?” asked Peg, taking
her gun bag out of the car.

“What kind of guns do people like to shoot
up here? Assault rifles?”

“I suppose,” said Peg, with a shrug. “People
have all sorts of things in their gun safes. That’s why home
invasions aren’t too much of a problem around here.”

“Hmm,” said Nikki, looking at the spray
pattern of spent AK-47 ammo. “Yes, but I thought full-auto was
illegal here.”

“Just because it ain’t legal, don’t mean
people don’t do it,” said Peg. “What are you looking at over
there?”

“Nothing,” said Nikki looking up with a
smile. Peg looked unconvinced, but carried some tin cans out to a
board that had been placed between two rocks. The board had the
sad, chewed look of anything at the wrong end of a gun range. “OK,”
said Peg, coming back and opening the bag. “This is what is known
as a revolver.”

“Grandma,” said Nikki, trying to stem the
tide of “Guns for Dummies” that was flowing at her.

“And that’s because it’s got this little
cylinder here that revolves, and that is where you place the
bullets.”

“Grandma.”

“Now you’ve got to pay attention,” said Peg.
“It’s important to know this stuff if you’re going to be in the
house with a gun.”

“Yes, but—” said Nikki.

“No buts,” said Peg. “I hope California
hasn’t turned you into some sort of hippie, gun control idiot.”

In response, Nikki flipped up the tail of
her shirt and pulled out her SIG Sauer. Walking down the line, she
capped the cans one after another. When the slide locked back she
dropped the empty and inserted a fresh magazine from her pocket.
She stepped back, made sure the situation was secure, and then
re-holstered.

“Actually,” she said, turning back to Peg,
“I firmly believe in gun control, just, you know, for other
people.”