Nodding in approval, Bobo hustled Willy and Archie back inside. “Looks like the next round’s on the house,” he told the two old men. Willy Haskins and Archie McBride nodded in happy unison.
Bobo laughed and shook his head. “In six years, that’s the first time you two boys ever agreed with one another about anything. Keep your mouths shut when the time comes, and I’ll buy you another.”
Moments later, the door swung open and a man stuck his head inside and looked around, then he walked up to the bar and ordered a shot of tequila. “Did a woman just come by here?” he asked.
Bobo Jenkins pushed the man’s drink across the bar, smiling sadly. “No such luck, Bud. You missing one? They’ve just had some excitement up at the hotel. Maybe’s she’s up there.”
The stranger paid for his drink then egged it. “She’s not there,” he said. “I already looked.”
A toothless, gaunt old man was sitting next him on the bar. “You say you lost your woman?” he asked loudly. “Me, too. I lost my wife a couple years back, and when I come in here and told Willy, you wanna know what this old geezer tole me? He says, ‘Hey Archie, did you remember to look under the refrigerator?”
At that both old men, the speaker and his equally aged counterpart at the end of the bar, burst into loud uproarious laughter. “You get it?” he asked, holding his sides and wiping the tears from his eyes. “Maybe you’d better look in the same place.”
“Yeah,” the other drunk added. “Have another drink. Maybe she’ll show up.”
Slamming his shot glass down on the bar, the man got up and stalked out. Willy and Archie were still laughing. Bobo Jenkins wasn’t. He’d been a bartender long enough to recognize danger when he saw it. He felt a trickle of cold sweat run down the back of his neck, but he made no effort to wipe it away.
Bobo walked over to the window and flipped over the closed sign, then he walked back to the bar. “I’m closing up, boys,” he said. “It’s motel time.”
“Wait a minute,” Archie said. “You promised us a drink.”
“I promised you a drink if you kept your mouths shut,” Bobo corrected.
Willy howled in outrage. “Why, Bobo Jenkins, you’re a no-good lousy welsher.”
Bobo shook his head. “I promised you a drink for keeping quiet. What I got was a damn stand-up comedy routine. So here’s what I’m gonna do. Tonight, I’m shuttin’ her down. You two are eighty-sixed. Come tomorrow, though, you boys show up at the regular time, and the entire evening’s on me.”
“No shit?” Archie asked hopefully. “You mean it?”
Bobo Jenkins nodded. “You bet your ass I do. Now you two get the hell out of here. And if you meet that bastard out on the street, you keep quiet or the deal’s off. You dig?”
“Mum’s the word,” Willy said, climbing down from his stool and staggering toward the door. “Mum is definitely the word.”
And Bobo Jenkins knew he had found the secret formula that would keep those two old codgers quiet no matter what.
TWENTY
Bobo and Joanna’s joint assessment was that it the cut on Angie’s foot required a doctor’s immediate attention. Carrying her as effortlessly as if she were a doll, Bobo packed her out the door and across the street to the tiny lot where he kept his mint-condition El Camino. After placing Angie in the truck he hurried back to Joanna who was having difficulty working the troublesome lock on the Blue Moon’s front door.
“Who the hell is that bad-ass bastard?” Bobo asked under his breath, as he took the key from Joanna’s fingers and quickly finished locking the door himself.
“She thinks the man chasing her is the one who killed Andy,” Joanna replied. “And he won’t stop at anything to keep her from going to the cops.”
“But why’s he after you?”
Joanna shrugged. “I’m with her.”
They headed for the car where a still-frightened Angie sat huddled in the middle of the seat with her bleeding foot wrapped tightly in a thick swathe of towels. Bobo Jenkins was large enough that, with three people crammed together on the bench seat, it was all they could do to close the doors.
“I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t bleed on the carpet,” Bobo said with a nod to Angie as he turned the key in the ignition. Angie looked up at him warily and tried to move closer to Joanna.
“Hey,” Bobo said. “That was just a joke, trying to lighten things up. You go right ahead and bleed all you want.”
Joanna recognized the old-time Bobo humor. He had always been the class clown, and evidently nothing had changed. When Joanna laughed, so did Angie. It didn’t change a thing about their situation, but it did relieve the suffocating tension.
“What are we going to do?” Angie asked.
“Once you’re under a doctor’s care, I’m going to go see Walter McFadden,” Joanna told her.
“The sheriff?”
“That’s right.”
“Are you going to tell him about me?”
“I’ve got to, Angie. It’s too dangerous otherwise. There’s no telling what they might do.”
“They?” Bobo asked attentively.
“At least two,” Joanna returned. “The one you met, Tony.”
“‘Tony Vargas,” Angie supplied.
“And a DEA agent named Adam York.”
“Thanks for telling me,” Bobo muttered. “It’s nice to know who the hell’s on what side.”
Most of the police officers in the City of Bisbee were still congregated around the Copper Queen Hotel, trying to locate two missing female guests who had disappeared in the aftermath of a minor fire. As a consequence, Bobo Jenkins sped through town at sixty or so miles per hour with no one pulling him over or raising an eyebrow. They made the three-mile drive from Old Bisbee to the Warren district in record-breaking time while Joanna quickly brought Bobo Jenkins up to speed on what had been going on.
‘When they ask who you are,” Joanna cautioned Angie as they pulled up to the emergency entrance, “give them some kind of phony name, and one that isn’t Tammy Sue Ferris, either. Tell them you’re Andy’s cousin from Tulsa or Enid, Oklahoma, and that you’re in town for the funeral. Got that?”
Angie Kellogg nodded. “Okay,” she said.
Stopping the car directly in front of the entrance, Bobo again picked Angie up and bodily carried her inside. Joanna followed. Once the emergency room nurses had taken charge of Angie and rolled her away on a gurney, Bobo and Joanna were left waiting in the empty lobby.
“Lend me your car, Bobo,” Joanna said quietly.
“So you can go see McFadden?”
Joanna nodded. “I’ll come with you,” Bobo offered.
“No, you stay here and keep an eye on her. If Tony somehow figures out she’s here, I’m still afraid he might try something.”
“In the middle of a hospital?” Bobo asked. “What is he, crazy or something?”
“Andy’s being in a hospital didn’t stop him before,” she replied.
“Jeez!” Bobo exclaimed, then he frowned. “He wouldn’t try to get to you through Jenny, would he?”
Joanna felt as though she’d taken a pounding blow to the midsection. “I never thought of that.”
“Where is she?”
“At home, out at the ranch, with my mother.”
“I’d get her out of there quick if I were you,” Bobo warned. “Have them go someplace else until this all gets straightened out.”
Joanna nodded even as she was turning in a frantic search for a telephone. She found a pay phone near the lobby. Bobo Jenkins supplied the necessary quarter. Joanna breathed a sigh of relief when Eleanor answered the hone.
“Where in the world are you?” Eleanor demanded. “It’s late. I need to get home pretty soon.”