Jackrabbit Junction Jitters Read Online Free PDF Page A

shoved it with her shoulder, the oak cool against her damp skin.
    The bookcase slid toward the door several inches, rocking
and teetering in the process. Claire caught an Eastman Kodak Brownie camera
mid-fall as it slid off a shelf. Placing the camera on Ruby’s desk, she returned
to the bookcase, dropped to her knees, and shoved with her shoulder again.
    A couple of grunts later, she’d gained almost a foot with
four to go. Sweat trickled from her hairline.
    The damned bookcase wasn’t going anywhere in a hurry unless
she gutted the books and collectibles lining its shelves. She leaned her head
against the wood, defeated.
    “What are you doing?” Jess’s voice interrupted her pity
party.
    Claire squeaked in surprise. She frowned at Jess, who stood
in the now-open doorway. Damn, she should’ve locked the door.
    “I’m just making sure this thing is stable,” she lied. “You
never know when an earthquake might rattle this place.”
    Jess’s eyebrows arched. “An earthquake? In Arizona?”
    “Sure. Fault lines can be found throughout this whole state.
Just ask Mac.” As a geotechnician, scientific crap like range-bounding faults
and topographic contours were Mac’s idea of breakfast chatter. “Earthquakes
happen all of the time. They’re just too weak to be felt.”
    Claire grabbed the trashcan and started sweeping the
crinkled papers and dust bunnies back into it while avoiding Jess’s gaze. “Did
you need me for something?”
    “Harley sent me down here. He says you’re supposed to get
your butt upstairs right now.”
    Claire curled her lip at Gramps’s bossiness. Picking up a
partially-wadded letter, she paused when she noticed the gold embossed heading.
    Leo
M. Scott, Attorney at Law
    1435
Chuckwalla Wash Dr.
    Tucson, AZ  85520
    The greeting was addressed to Mrs. Ruby Martino.
    Now what? The woman had been badgered by creditors ever
since Joe had died and left her in a landslide of debt without a shovel in
sight.
    “What are you looking at?” Jess bridged the distance between
them.
    “Nothing.” Claire shoved the wrinkled letter into her back
pocket. Jess had enough angst in her life with hormones kicking in, boys
snapping her bra, and the hardware store no longer carrying her favorite
sparkly lip gloss. She didn’t need to learn about sharp-toothed lawyers today.
    Claire motioned toward the door. “Let’s go.”
    Jess sighed. “Grownups suck. They’re always hiding stuff
from us teenagers.” She tromped toward the door.
    “We live to torture teens.”
    Jess paused in the doorway, looking at the bookcase. “Are
you going to put that back?”
    “Oh, yeah.” The letter had distracted her.
    As Claire gripped the side and prepared to lift, she glanced
at the wall behind the bookcase. Her breath caught, and not because of the
scorpion carcass lying on the carpet. A white metal door, three feet high by
three feet wide, had been fitted flush, hinges and all, into the wall.
    She leaned down and ran her palm down the smooth surface of
the door. Her heart thrummed in her ears. Knowing what she did about Joe’s
crooked wheeling and dealing, the goods from King Tut’s tomb could be on the
other side of that door.
    “What is it?” Jess’s question made her snap upright.
    “Just a scorpion carcass.”
    With Joe dead, Claire was pretty sure she was now the only
one who knew of the door’s existence. Jess didn’t need to be her partner in
crime. A hernia-inducing lift and tug later, Claire had the bookcase back in
place.
    “All right, let’s go see my mother.”
    Ruby’s rec room looked like an acid flashback of the 1970s.
Yellow cinderblock walls fenced in burnt-orange shag carpet worn flat in
traffic areas. The room still smelled of stale cigar smoke thanks to last night’s
Euchre game.
    Jess led the way into the room and plopped into one of the
two beanbags clustered in the far corner. Claire hesitated at the threshold,
wanting to test the water before jumping in with the shark.
    The head