Queen Read Free

had ever dated, she'd done it quietly and chosen someone other than a local. And he, like every other man in town, had hated her for the slight.
    "What can I do for you?" he asked, picking up the meek and then smirking as he looked back at her. "Or should say… what did you have to do for this?"
    Queen smiled.
    Tilman shivered in his shoes. The smile wasn't friendly, and he suspected that his raunchy humor had gone awry.
    "I want two hundred dollars in cash, and the rest in Traveler's checks," she said, ignoring the rude innuendo.
    Tilman's eyebrows shot upward. "What would you be wanting with traveler's checks?"
    "Traveling," she answered. Along with the expression on her face, it was enough to shut him up.
    A few minutes later she exited the bank with an envelope in hand and headed for the gas station that doubled as a bus stop to buy a ticket. An hour later she was in her room, shoving the last of her clothes into a hag. By this time tomorrow she should be somewhere in Arkansas, maybe even Oklahoma. She had no notion of how long it took to get to Arizona, and she didn't care. All she knew was, she was going to ride until she found a place where the sun rose on a clear blue sky and the scent of smoky air and coal dust was nothing more than an ugly memory.
    There was one thing she'd left unfinished, however. She didn't relish the thought of facing Morton Whitelaw again, but it had to be done. She picked up the document from her bed. This would be her last trip to Whitelaw's Bar.
    Morton glanced up when Queen appeared at the doorway. Looking at him always made her think of weasels—his small, dark, close-set eyes; his sharp, beaky nose; his teeth stained from too many years of chewing tobacco.
    "What do you want?" he growled, and slung a grimy towel across his shoulder that he'd been using to wipe glasses. He hitched his pants over his sagging belly and ran his fingers through his thin, graying hair.
    "I don't want anything," she said. "I came to give you the bill of sale. I'll be gone by six A.M. tomorrow. Until then, leave me the hell alone, Whitelaw. Don't think just because I'm alone in that house tonight that I'm easy game. I'd hate to think I was the cause of my father having to spend eternity with you laid out beside him on the hill behind the gas station."
    Morton blanched at mention of the cemetery and then turned red in anger. "Why you think any man in his right mind would want you is beyond me, you bitch. You're mean as a snake and cranky to boot. Men like to bed women, not females with an attitude."
    Queen smiled and tossed the bill of sale on the floor between them much in the same manner that Whitelaw had tossed their money in the alley a few nights before.
    "Just remember what I said, Morton. Don't set foot on the property until I'm gone or you'll be sorry."
    She left as quickly as she'd come. For a few moments Morton stared at the paper on the floor, half expecting it to detonate. The sudden silence of the bar mocked his fears, and in a flurry of curses he grabbed the paper and stuffed it into his pocket. He couldn't wait for tomorrow to get here. The first thing he was going to do was tear that damned house down. He'd been needing more parking space for years.
    He'd already forgotten that it was his own greed that had cost him so dearly. The years he'd spent trying to buy Johnny Houston out for ten thousand dollars had come and gone. And when the gambler who'd spent most of his life at the table in the back of his bar had died unexpectedly, he'd planned on the daughters being so devastated that he would get the place for half the price. When they were at their lowest, that's what he'd offered.
    Their fury had been shocking. Just as shocking as Diamond Houston's threat to give the entire house and lot to a fanatic bunch of Bible thumpers. He knew as well as she that it would mean the end of his business. They'd preach him out of house and home in months. He'd been forced to pay three times what he'd offered