Mac coughed on a laugh.
Claire rolled her eyes at her grandfather’s choice of words. “Why is Mom crying?”
“From what I can understand through her sniveling and sobbing, it has something to do with your father and her getting older.”
Dear Lord on a surfboard! Not again. “Where are Kate and Ronnie?”
“Kate claimed to have a bout of morning sickness,” Chester answered. “She ran off and locked herself in the bathroom.”
Gramps’s smirk showed what he thought of that lame excuse, which Claire mirrored. “Ronnie is manning the register in the General Store and says she is too stressed about being chopped into pieces to deal with Deborah’s theatrical antics today. That leaves you with your multiple college psychology classes. Go put them to some good use for once.”
“This is pure horse pucky. All of you!” Claire declared. She pushed past Gramps and Chester, storming upstairs to play shrink yet again.
An hour later, she beat the hell out of a nail that wouldn’t let go of a board on the back deck.
“Whoa there, John Henry,” Natalie said from the other end of what remained of the deck. “What’d that poor nail ever do to you?”
“It won’t come out, so I’m going to pound the damned thing all of the way to Hell.”
Natalie laughed as she dropped to her knees between the old, dry-rotted joists that Gramps insisted they try to keep. Their grandfather’s hoarding had reached an all-new level when it came to this stupid deck.
Claire picked up the reciprocating saw. She glanced around to make sure none of the old boys had returned from their beer and piss break. The coast was as clear as it was going to be. The saw cut through the stubborn nail like butter. She released the trigger and set the saw aside, blowing out a breath. If only solving the rest of her problems were that easy.
A cool mid-morning breeze ruffled her hair as she scoped out the campground, looking for anything fishy or out of place. The RV park was about two-thirds full, with the majority of campers ringing the edges. Campers were coming and going to the laundry building, restrooms, and General Store. Some Claire recognized, mostly because they’d been here a week or more. Those she didn’t, she watched under the lowered brim of her Mighty Mouse baseball cap. Any one of the campers could be the killer, walking around freely, blending in with the crowd.
“What was up with your mom earlier?” Natalie asked from where she kneeled between the joists.
“She got an invitation to her high school reunion. The organizers mistakenly included Dad’s name on the invite.”
“And that turned her into a crying mess?’
More like an alcohol-slinging drunk. “I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but Mom and Kate are running neck and neck for top nut around here.”
Earlier, Deborah had “fixed” herself by the time Claire had reached the kitchen, as in used a screwdriver—the orange juice and vodka sort—to loosen up and calm down. When Claire had suggested that her mother seek mental help outside of a liquor bottle, Deborah had scoffed and then hiccupped. “You’re one to talk, Miss-Can’t-Commit.”
What her mother’s drinking had to do with Claire’s anxieties about possibly one day maybe tying the knot with Mac was beyond her, but it had pissed Claire off enough to call her mother a lush under her breath.
Only it had come out louder than she’d meant, and Deborah had heard it. Her mother’s response was to walk over, take Claire’s hand in hers, and dump the rest of the screwdriver in her palm. “There,” she snapped, slamming the glass down on the kitchen counter. “Are you happy now, daughter dearest?”
By that point, Gramps and Chester had managed to get their butts back upstairs and join them in the kitchen, which was good because it took both of them to keep Claire from wrestling her mother to the floor and giving her a big, fat noogie to show her how freaking happy she was at the moment.
“Hey!” Natalie’s voice interrupted Claire’s daydream involving her knuckles rubbing her mom’s drunken head. “You know this junction box you wanted me to check out down here?”
“Yeah, what about it?”
“I think I figured out why the light switch wired to it doesn’t work.”
“Why’s that?” Claire skirted a pile of boards and several exposed joists that jutted out like ribs at the end of the old deck’s skeleton. She joined her cousin at the junction box that had been hidden away under the deck boards for at least two decades of sunshine and winter rains, judging from the amount of dry rot.
“Well, for one thing, the wires are capped off.”
Why would someone have disconnected the outlet entirely? Had it been a fire hazard? Ruby’s place was old enough that the wiring in some parts was still knob-and-tube, a leftover from the 1930s when the main house was built. Claire wouldn’t have been surprised if the previous owner had disabled this outer junction box to be safe.
“For another thing,” Natalie continued. “There’s a camera in here instead of a receptacle.”
“A what?”
Natalie held up a small camera, one of those black metal types from the 1970s.
“Let me see that.”
She handed it over.
Claire frowned down at the camera. “Why would there be a camera in there?”
“Is there still film in it?”
“As far as I can tell, yes.” She handed the camera back to Natalie. “Ah, shit. I hope this isn’t another one of Joe’s puzzles.”
“You mean you don’t want to go on another one of his treasure hunts?”
“More like treasure nightmares.”
Hunting for Joe’s hidden gems was hazardous to Claire’s health. Since moving to Jackrabbit Junction and obsessing over one treasure after another, she’d been shot at, nearly drowned, forced down into a mine shaft filled with freezing water, and cold-cocked with the butt of a shotgun. With a brutal killer in her rearview mirror and coming up fast, she wasn’t in the mood to experiment with new forms of near-death activities.
“Why would Joe go through such measures to
