Skeleton Canyon

CHAPTER TWO

Joa

“How’s it going?” Joa

“Okay,” Je

“Do you want some help?”

“No, Mom,” Je

“All right, then,” Joa

Feeling slightly useless, Joa

“See there?” she said, addressing her husband Andy and counting on the drone of the cooler to cover her voice. After all, Andy had been dead since the previous fall, the victim of a Colombian drug lord’s hired assassin, but Joa

She paused, as if to give Andy an opportunity to respond, but of course, being dead, he had nothing to say.

“What I can’t figure out,” she continued, “is if this is the way things are supposed to be, why do I feel so awful about it?”

Since Andy’s death, his daughter, Je

Closing her eyes, Joa

For a Friday evening it was still surprisingly quiet in the Blue Moon Saloon and Lounge in Old Bisbee’s Brewery Gulch. So to this shift, Angie Kellogg, the bartender, had had little to do other than making sure her two regulars-the toothless Archie McBride and hard-of-hearing Willy Haskins-were supplied with beer and an occasional vodka chaser.

The two were both retired underground miners. They loved to regale Angie with tales of Bisbee’s glory days, of how things used to be when payday weekends in Brewery Gulch had been nothing but boozing and brawling good times. In nine months of working at the Blue Moon, Angie had come to have a genuine affection for the two old men. Even half drunk, they always treated her with a degree of old-fashioned gentlemanly respect and never failed to apologize when one of them made an inadvertent slip and used what they considered a bad word in front of her. Even when they reached a point where she had to cut them off, they hardly ever gave her a hard time about it. Instead, they’d just get up and leave.

“No problem. We’re eighty-sixed, old buddy. Little lady’s jus’ doin’ her job,” the more sober of the two would say to the other as they fell off their bar stools and headed for the door. “See you tomorrow.”

Angie would nod and wave. “See you,” she’d say. And after they left, she would stand there marveling at the fact that she liked them and they liked her. In her previous life as an East L.A. hooker, those kinds of easygoing relationships had never been possible. But here in Bisbee, Arizona, they were. Not only was she friends with those two harmless but kindhearted drunks, Angie also counted among her pals the local sheriff, Joa

There were times on those days while Angie was pushing Ruth’s dual but half-empty stroller up and down the sidewalks of Tombstone Canyon that she almost had to pinch herself to believe it was real. Day after day, month after month, she was begi

Joa

Living in Bisbee, people like Maria

The outside door swung open, and a tall, gangly man walked partway into the bar. He was still holding the door open and peering around uncertainly when a gust of dry wind blew in behind him. His straight, straw-colored hair stood on end. Self-consciously, he tried to smooth it with one hand, but it didn’t work very well.

At the end of the bar, Archie and Willy stopped their constant bickering long enough to turn and examine the new arrival. The Blue Moon survived on a clientele of regulars. Only the most intrepid of tourists ventured this far up Brewery Gulch. Obviously the stranger wasn’t a regular, but he didn’t have the look of an ordinary tourist, either. Ta

“So what have we got here?” Willy demanded loudly. “Some kind of Boy Scout?”

Angie shot Willy a withering look. “You hush, Willy, or you’re out of here.” She turned back to the newcomer with a welcoming smile. “What can I get you?”

“I’m looking for someone,” the man said with what sounded like an English accent. “Her name’s Angie. Is that you?”

Years of wariness asserted themselves. Angie’s smile cooled. Tony Vargas was long dead, but that didn’t mean one of his old associates wouldn’t come looking for her someday. Still, this lanky, loose-jointed blond giant of a man didn’t look like anyone the swarthy Tony Vargas would have counted among his acquaintances.

“That’s me,” Angie replied. “What do you want’?”

Instead of moving forward, the man stood where he was it stared at her, saying nothing.