High-Caliber Concealer (12 page)

She could see that Peg was stunned, but true
to her character, she simply sniffed and struggled to look
unimpressed. “I guess you’re not kidding,” said Peg. “What are you
carrying?”

Nikki pulled out her gun and handed it to
her grandmother. “A SIG Sauer P239. It’ll shoot 9mm or your .357
rounds.”

“Your mother doesn’t know you carry this,
does she?”

“Does she know about yours?”

Peg looked guilty. “I think she believes I
got rid of it. I just don’t talk about it.” She turned Nikki’s gun
over in her hand. “I don’t know about these kind of guns. I like
the revolver. Fewer parts. And I can take it apart and clean it and
put it back together without screwing it up.”

“I can take this one apart without screwing
it up,” said Nikki. “But I know what you mean. I’ll show you how
later if you want. Do you want to shoot it?”

“Heck, yeah!”

Peg fired off carefully aimed shots, while
Nikki reloaded bullets into her empty magazine.

“It’s kind of fun!” said Peg handing it
back. “But more kicky than mine.”

“Yours is heavier,” said Nikki. “The lighter
the gun, the more you have to rely on your hands to control the
recoil.”

“Huh. Where’d you learn to shoot?”

“Um, my work offers courses on shooting,”
said Nikki. Which was true. True-ish anyway. “We travel a lot and
they want us to be safe and prepared for any situation.”

“I thought you were a project coordinator
for a make-up company,” said Peg, looking puzzled.

“For the Carrie Mae Charity Foundation,
yes,” said Nikki.

“Need a lot of guns working for charity
work, do you?” Peg looked skeptical.

“Charity goes to the people in need,” said
Nikki. “And frequently the people in need live in dangerous
situations. Carrie Mae likes its ladies to be well-groomed,
well-spoken, and well-prepared.”

“Sort of a Boy Scout philosophy, I guess,”
said Peg. “Let’s shoot some more. I want to see how you do with
mine.”

It was close to noon by the time they quit
and Nikki sank into the cloth seats of her grandmother’s Ford,
happily cranking the air conditioning.

“I love the Impala,” she said, flapping her
hands into the breeze from the vent, trying to channel more air to
her skin. “But I do miss modern air-conditioning.”

“When did you get that car? I can’t say that
I would have picked it out for you.”

“I wouldn’t have picked it out for me
either,” said Nikki. “It belonged to a co-worker of mine who died.
She really loved that car, and I didn’t have the heart to let it go
out to auction.”

“Oh, that’s too bad. How’d she die?”

The thumping blades of the helicopter were
close and Nikki glanced over her shoulder. The helicopter was
holding steady at road level, with Ellen leaning out the door,
aiming her rifle past Nikki at Val. She didn’t hear the gunshot,
but she saw Val jerk and fall over the railing. Nikki ran forward,
catching Val’s hand as it slipped from the edge of the bridge.

“Val!” yelled Nikki.

Val’s hand was sliding from her grasp, it
was wet with blood. Nikki leaned further over the railing, feeling
a precarious shift in balance. Val looked up, her naturally pale
face even paler. Behind her, Nikki could hear the helicopter
settling onto the bridge.

“I take it back, Nikki.”

“What? Val, hold on!”

“I take it back. I’m not sorry I bought you
shoes.”

“I lost those shoes! It doesn’t matter! None
of it matters!” Nikki was screaming now. “Just hold on to my
hand!”

Val looked down at the water. Nikki could
hear the pounding of feet on the bridge behind her.

Val looked up into Nikki’s face and smiled.
Then she let go.

“Val!” screamed Nikki as her friend tumbled
into the turgid water of Chao Phraya.

Nikki paused, absorbing the memory like a
blow, before answering her grandmother. Talking about Val Robinson,
her first partner at Carrie Mae, had gotten easier, but she still
never quite knew what to say. Ellen shot her, and then I dropped
her off a bridge? That wasn’t going to go over well.

“She drowned,” said Nikki.
You know, eventually, if the fall from the bridge or the
bullet wound didn’t kill her first.

“Wow, that’s too bad. Was it an
accident?”

“Well, no one drowns on purpose,” said
Nikki.

“I don’t know—could have been suicide.”

“It wasn’t,” said Nikki. “She just got
careless.” She tried to smother the bitterness in her tone, but
didn’t succeed. Val’s betrayal still stung and she couldn’t quite
shake the feeling that she should have been able to talk Val into
coming back to Carrie Mae. No one else shared that view. They all
said that killing Val had been the only solution, but on sleepless
nights Nikki found herself replaying the incidents in Bangkok,
trying to figure out what she could have done differently.

“So you keep her car to remind you not to be
careless, too?” asked Peg, and Nikki froze in her seat. She could
feel a trickle of sweat roll down into her cleavage.

“Shh,” said Nikki. “No one’s supposed to
know that.”

Peg laughed, then she put out her hand and
patted Nikki’s knee. “We all got secrets, honey. But believe me,
they’re never as big as we think they are. Because, and don’t take
this the wrong way, generally speaking, no one cares about us as
much as we ourselves do. If you don’t want to talk about this Val
woman, that’s fine. I won’t push it. But really, whatever you’re
not saying probably isn’t that big a deal. It’s not like you killed
her.”

“Right,” said Nikki.
It
was really more of a joint effort.
“Speaking of things that
weren’t my fault, I should probably tell you something before you
hear about it around town.” Nikki briefly filled her grandmother in
on the events at the Kessel Run. “And then less than an hour later,
I saw one of the guys walking down the street!”

“That sounds like Merv,” said Peg, shaking
her head. “Thinks a sheriff’s badge gives him the right to run
things however he wants.”

“You don’t like him?” asked Nikki.

Peg shrugged. “Not really, and I trust him
only about as far as I can throw him. He keeps offering to buy my
farm. Frankly, I’d rather let the vultures at the bank have it than
sell it to him.”

“Is bankruptcy a possibility?” asked Nikki,
startled.

“Eh, no more than any other year,” said Peg.
“It’s farming. You know, you just get along and hope the crops come
in and if they do, it all works out, and if they don’t then you
have to get creative. But my advice is to stay out of the sheriff’s
way. Nothing good can come from hanging around him.”

“I didn’t intend to hang around him last
time,” said Nikki.

“Well, then you’d better stay out of bar
fights,” said Peg, tartly.

“It wasn’t a bar fight,” protested Nikki.
“At least not much of one. They were drunk and stupid.”

“Well, it’s a good thing Jackson was there
then, in case things had gotten dangerous.”

“Uh, yeah,” said Nikki feeling annoyed. She
had downplayed the bar fight quite a bit, but she didn’t think
she’d made it sound like she needed help.

“He’s such a sweet boy. I don’t know why
your mother never liked him.”

“He’s from Kaniksu Falls,” said Nikki with a
shrug. “She never likes anyone from Kaniksu Falls.”

Peg grunted, but didn’t refute her
statement.

Nikki exited the shower, wrapped herself in
a towel, and went back to her room. After her parents were married
they had spent a year traveling the country in a VW microbus. When
Nell had gotten pregnant, they had returned to her parents’ house
and lived there until her father’s abrupt departure. In retrospect,
Nikki wondered what her grandparents had thought of her
free-spirited father. Peg generally avoided talking about him at
all. Given her firm, “if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say
anything at all,” philosophy, that didn’t bode well for her
opinions on him. She didn’t remember her grandfather saying
anything other than “stupid” before stomping off to the barn.

Not much had changed in the years since
Nikki had last visited. Her room was still painted the bright pink
with purple butterflies that she had favored when she was nine.
Given that the Carrie Mae logo was a purple butterfly, Nikki found
the décor comforting.

She shuffled through the racks of clothes.
Peg had labeled each piece according to its original owner, with a
guess at the year. She pulled out a pair of blue shorts with a
double row of buttons up the front. It was labeled, 1933? Mama
Connelly? Mama Connelly was her grandfather’s mother. The shorts
were paired with a sleeveless satin shirt sporting a collar and a
long looping bow. Nikki remembered seeing pictures of Mama
Connelly. She’d been shaped like a potato and mostly wore an
expression of stern disapproval. Nikki couldn’t imagine her ever
wearing short shorts and a sleeveless shirt. She glanced out the
window. Her grandmother was still down in the orchard checking on
the harvest. So she pulled on her underwear and bra and then
slipped into Mama Connelly’s outfit.

Then she strutted down the hall to the
full-length mirror and did a turn. She pinned a damp curl down over
her ear and pursed her lips in the closest approximation to a
cupid’s bow that she could get without make-up.

“I need Keds and a scarf for my hair,” she
said to her reflection, only to hear her grandmother’s laugh on the
stairs.

“Look at you!” exclaimed Peg. “So art
deco.”

“Hey, Grandma,” said Nikki, blushing at
being caught playing dress up. “Mama Connelly didn’t really wear
this, did she?”

“Well, I have a hard time imagining it,”
said Peg, “because the woman was shaped like a fireplug when I knew
her. But it definitely wasn’t my mother’s—totally wrong size—and I
can’t think of who else it would have belonged to. Anyway, go grab
your Keds and head scarf and let’s go into town. I have an
appointment at the beauty shop.”

“I’ll change,” said Nikki.

“No, don’t. We’ll stop and take some
pictures. I need them for when I sell the clothes and you’re much
better than the sewing dummy, which was my next option.”

“Grandma, are you really going to sell the
clothes on the internet? You do realize that’s not as easy as it
sounds, right?”

“Yeah, I know,” said Peg. “But I got a
Dreamer who’s going to help me.”

“A dreamer?” Nikki repeated, but Peg was
already heading down the stairs.

“Where are we going to take pictures?” asked
Nikki when they were in the car. Photography had been her
grandmother’s hobby for years and her nervous forays onto the
internet were reserved for email and photography chat rooms.

“Bill Hanna has a model-A in his barn. I
called while you were putting on your make-up and he said he’d
leave it unlocked for us. I’ve shot there before. It’s got good
reflected light this time of day. We’ll pick up a few shots and
then head into town.”

“Do you know anyone with a 1950s Buick?
Maybe tomorrow, I can wear the striped sundress.”

Peg looked at her with shining eyes. “I know
someone with a 1956 Chevy truck. And you’ve got that crazy car. I
bet we could do a whole batch of matching cars and outfits.”

“Oh, Grandma, I don’t know,” said Nikki,
doubtful of the elaborate plan Peg was forming.

“No, it’s going to be great. I’m going to
call my web kid, though. This may change the website design.”

“Website design? There’s a website?”

“I told you. I’ve got Eric to help me. He’s
going to build a website as part of a school project. He’s one of
the Dreamer kids. Jorge knows him.”

“What’s a dreamer?”

“One of the kids who qualifies for the
Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act. Washington
has a lot of them. He’s going to Wazzu and is doing an independent
study over the summer on website programming. I’m his project.”

“Oh,” said Nikki. “I had no idea.”

“See what you miss by not visiting more
often?”

“I guess so.”

The photo shoot with the Model-A was indeed
quick. Peg clearly knew the location and the car and whipped
through her shots with ease.

“I didn’t even need a filter,” said Peg,
shaking her head, as she reviewed her shots on the way back to the
car. “With the air so smokey from the Colville Complex everything
looks soft and hazy.” She opened the car door, still staring into
the camera, “You know, maybe I could round up a couple of more
girls. That way you don’t have to do all the outfits this
week.”

“Yes,” agreed Nikki, perhaps with more force
than necessary.

“I’ll ask Leona down at the beauty shop.
She’ll have some good ideas of who to ask. What do you want for
dinner, by the way? We should go to the grocery store after the
beauty shop.”

“I can do that while you get your hair cut,”
said Nikki, who didn’t think she could face the gossip hounds at
the salon, particularly not in her great-grandmother’s athletic
apparel.

“Get whatever you want,” said Peg, as she
hopped out in front of the salon. “We don’t have anything but pie
fixings.” Nikki nodded as she climbed into the driver’s seat. Her
grandmother had been seeing Leona for as long as Nikki could
remember, but then so had half the town. Of Scandinavian descent,
Leona stood almost six feet tall in her stocking feet, but no one,
possibly not even her husband, had ever seen her in stocking feet.
She wore four-inch heels to every event. Between her natural
height, the heels, and her trademark bouffant, going to the Curl Me
Crazy was like having your hair cut by a Wagnerian Valkyrie. Nikki
didn’t like to admit that as a child she’d had more than one
nightmare about getting her hair cut and now that she was old
enough to make her own hair decisions, she didn’t think that there
was a force on earth that could drag her back in.