She wasn’t surprised one iota by Coop’s comment. Kate seemed to live from one potential assault charge to the next these days. Claire was, however, a tad stunned by the number of scars visible on Coop’s stomach and ribs. Snips and snails! Had someone rolled him up in barbed wire and left him out to dangle in the wind? If those scars and the holes in his T-shirt were anything to go by, he must have really crappy luck.
She looked toward Natalie. Her cousin was ogling the detective in plain sight. From Claire’s vantage point, it appeared the walls of Natalie’s sabbatical were crumbling all around her. She bumped Natalie’s shoulder as she walked past, nudging her back to work before the girl openly drooled and looked the fool.
“Who drove my Jeep home?” Claire asked, picking up a forty-pound bag of dry concrete and lugging it over to the wheelbarrow.
“I did,” Chester said, cracking open a can of beer. “And I don’t think your sister was ‘parking’ alone out there in the middle of nowhere, if you get my gist.”
Claire aimed a glare at him. “What do you mean?”
“When I climbed behind the wheel, the passenger seat was lying all the way back, there were boot scuffs on the dash, and handprints going every which way on your passenger-side window.”
Harvey snickered. “Sounds like somebody was runnin’ the bases in the passenger seat. Could ya tell if they hit a home run?”
“Nope, but it didn’t smell like sex, only coconut, thanks to the air freshener.”
“Oh jeez.” Claire scowled at Natalie. “If Ronnie and Grady had sex in my Jeep I’m going to smother her with a pillow and save the diamond killer the trouble.”
“You really think the sheriff of Cholla County would play back seat bingo in your Jeep?” Natalie asked.
“Make that front seat bingo,” Chester corrected.
“Well, I should smile,” Harvey said.
Chester hooted and toasted beers with Harvey.
“ ‘I should smile’? What does that even mean?” Claire asked the two clowns.
“Don’t ask,” Coop said, taking a swig of water.
“Did you tell Claire what happened this morning?” Chester asked Natalie.
“You’ve been sitting there on your keister since she walked outside. Have you heard me tell her?”
“Careful, Coop,” Harvey called to his nephew. “Natalie’s gettin’ bucksnortin’ mean as the day wears on. Get too close and she might tear you a new one.”
Coop lowered the bottle of water, eyeing Natalie. “You think I should take the bull by the horns, Uncle Willis?”
“I’ll take you by the horns,” Natalie mumbled, turning away with pink cheeks. She sliced open the bag of concrete Claire had delivered and dumped it into the wheelbarrow.
“There’s a whole lotta horniness going on around here,” Chester said and elbowed Harvey. “We need to get in on some of it.”
The two chuckleheads cackled and snorted.
Claire groaned. There were some things she hadn’t missed while she was in Tucson with Mac. The peanut gallery was one of them. Her mother was the other.
She walked over to the pile of gravel that had been delivered last week and started filling the other wheelbarrow with it. “What happened this morning?” she asked Natalie as she shoveled.
“Kate dragged me out of bed at the crack of dawn and made me go to Yuccaville with her.”
“Us, too,” Chester said.
“You two volunteered,” Natalie reminded him.
“I was misinformed and told we were going on a liquor run,” Harvey said.
“Did you or did you not come back with a big bottle of bourbon?”
Chester crushed his empty beer can. “It’s the least Kate could do after shooting poor Harvey with her Taser gun.”
Claire lowered the shovel. “She shot you?”
“Woo-wee, did she!” Harvey hooted. “I haven’t felt so much juice flowin’ through me since I spent a weekend in Reno with a workin’ girl named Dr. Anesthesia.”
“Don’t you mean ‘Anastasia’?” Natalie asked.
“Here we go,” Coop said, jamming his shovel in the dirt.
“That mighta been her real name,” Harvey said. “But when she was on the clock, she liked to play doctor and hook these little electrode doodads onto yer pointy parts to jumpstart ya into action, if ya know what I mean.” He winked.
“Harvey,” Natalie said, mixing a groan in with his name. “I swear, you should write a book about your past.”
“Don’t encourage him,” Coop said.
Claire rolled the wheelbarrow of gravel past her cousin. “Why did Kate shoot Harvey? Was he poking fun at blondes?”
Kate’s tolerance level for blonde jokes these days was hovering between Extremely Unstable and Downright Explosive.
“It was an accident,” Chester said between cigar puffs.
“Kate was showing the boys her new Taser gun while we were sitting at a red light,” Natalie explained. “When the light turned green, the jerk in the pickup behind us laid on his horn. Kate jumped, accidentally squeezing the trigger.”
“Why did she have her Taser gun out in the first place?” Claire dumped the gravel in the hole.
Natalie scoffed. “Because the light in her brain keeps shorting out.”
“She wanted us to go hunting,” Chester said.
“She did?” Harvey huffed. “I don’t remember that.”
“Well, she shot you right after she said it,” Natalie told him, stirring water into the concrete mix.
“I remember talkin’ ’bout Dirty Gerties and the tale about Tank,” he said. “But then I have a scratch in my vinyl record and skip to the diner part.”
Natalie shot Claire a worried glance. “You heard about Tank, right?”
Claire nodded, setting the concrete tube form in the hole. Kate’s voicemails had been wordy on that subject.
“Where’s Ronnie this afternoon?” The airwaves had been silent on her older sister’s whereabouts.
“Last we knew, she was sleeping in the back office at The Mule Train Diner,” Natalie said.
“Grady’s sister’s joint?”
Natalie nodded. “Grady didn’t want her staying alone at his place while he helped with the investigation, and she was exhausted after being up all night.”
“Poor Grady, he must be dead on his feet, too.”
“Probably, but cops never sleep.” Natalie’s lips thinned. “Isn’t
