“Do you mean Joe Martino?” Coop asked.
“Bingo.” Mac skirted deep tire ruts in the road. “Now the question is what have you heard about Joe?”
“Natalie mentioned he had a checkered past.” Coop shifted in his seat, glancing Mac’s way. “She also told me about the other problem you’re dealing with down here.”
Butch guffawed. “Which one? We’re flush with trouble most days, especially since baby hormones took over Kate’s brain and she morphed into a modern-day Pancho Villa, leading her sisters in a rebellion against law and order.”
Mac chuckled. “We should call her Panch-ita Bandida.”
“I like that,” Butch said. “Rolls off the tongue easy and sounds sexy, like ‘Testarossa’ or ‘Maserati.’ ”
“You have cars on the brain.” Mac slowed to ease over a rough patch of road.
“I know, and that’s another problem.”
What problem was that? Something to do with Kate? The baby? Something else? As far as he knew from Claire, Kate had no issues with Butch’s newest business venture.
“I’ve always been partial to AC Cobras myself,” Coop said. “Natalie did mention that Kate isn’t usually this … uhh, spirited.”
Coop appeared to be choosing his words carefully. Mac checked the mirror to see how Coop’s statement went over with Kate’s other half.
Butch was grinning. “Spirited? That’s one way of putting it.”
“How would you say it?” Mac asked.
Butch shrugged. “She’s a bad mama jama.”
“ ‘Just as fine as she can be,’ ” Mac finished the chorus to Carl Carlton’s classic R&B hit. “Now I’m going to be singing that song all of the way up to the mine, damn it.”
Butch laughed. “Don’t sing it in front of Kate. She might hurt you. She keeps threatening to remove my baby-making tackle if I don’t stop.”
They bumped along for a moment listening to Deep Purple sing “Hush” on the stereo.
Mac tapped his fingers on the steering wheel to the beat, his thoughts returning to Claire and this crazy posse matter. He didn’t entirely believe her comment the other day that the posse was just some nostalgic fun, a flashback of a club they’d formed as kids. Mac knew her too well. She wasn’t one to sit back and wait for trouble to come to her. That was more Ronnie’s style. Although lately, Ronnie was acting differently, more aggressive, snapping her teeth at the end of her chain rather than cowering in her doghouse.
Something was up, and with Natalie in the mix, Mac wondered what the three might be scheming on the side. Kate was their distraction, sidetracking Grady and Butch with her bouts of temporary insanity while the rest of the posse worked behind the scenes. But to what end?
He looked Coop’s way, remembering what he’d said earlier. “What other problem did Natalie tell you about?”
“This diamond killer business.”
Mac slowed over a teeth-rattling patch of washboard road. “How much did she tell you?”
Had Natalie spilled about the whole sordid mess, from Claire finding those glass eyeballs to all of the dead bodies left in the killer’s wake? Well, all except for Tank, who managed to live to tell the tale.
“Enough to know Claire and her sister are in deep shit, especially after what Grady mentioned last night about the attempt on the tow truck driver’s life in Yuccaville.”
A volley of curses came from the back seat. “Kate is set on finding the damned killer before her sisters are crossed off his hit list.” Butch leaned forward. “You know, I’ve tossed around the idea of paying Grady to lock up Kate in a jail cell to keep her out of trouble until they catch that asshole. Her tendency to ride tornadoes bareback these days keeps making my heart redline. It’s only a matter of time before my engine seizes.”
Mac smirked. “I suggested the same thing to Grady recently for Claire and Ronnie, too.”
“Are there really diamonds?” Coop asked.
Mac and Butch’s gazes locked in the rearview mirror. There were, and they were currently stored in the safe in Butch’s house because that was one of the securest places in the county thanks to Butch’s state of the art alarm system.
A deep V formed on Butch’s forehead. “There are.”
“Locked up safe in ‘evidence’ somewhere?”
“More or less,” Butch answered.
According to Grady, until the killer was caught and the case wrapped up, he had to follow procedure when it came to what to do with the diamonds, whatever that meant.
“Sounds like Grady has his hands full.” Coop’s grim expression reflected Mac’s feelings on the whole problem.
“You could say that,” Butch said. “He’d tell you that since the Morgan sisters moved to town, he’s developed a heart condition.”
Considering the messes Grady continued to have to deal with thanks to Ronnie’s ex-husband, Mac figured a “heart condition” was putting it nicely.
“You didn’t answer my question,” Coop said.
Mac sent him a raised brow as he eased through another dry wash that cut through the road.
“What’s the story with your aunt’s mine?”
“Joe kept it a secret from her for some reason.” Mac scowled. Not for the first time, he wondered how many secrets Joe had taken to the grave with him, and if his aunt would ever be free of the dead man’s web of deceit. “We found out about this mine recently only because Joe’s first wife told my aunt about it.”
Butch gripped the seat as Mac maneuvered over a rocky section in the road. “Joe’s first wife, Sophy, is in prison south of Tucson for killing Joe’s cousin years ago,” he told Coop. “And for attempting to kill Claire.”
Coop turned to Mac. “Your Claire?”
Mac nodded. “Last spring, Claire figured out Sophy was up to something shady and refused to remove her teeth from Sophy’s ass.”
Butch chuckled. “Claire’s a badger. She’ll fight at the drop of a hat. Kate aspires to be like her.”
Mac groaned. “One Claire Morgan is enough for these parts.”
“Now you sound like Grady.”
“What happened between Claire and Joe’s ex?” Coop pressed.
“Claire started
