Page 11 of Clara Knows Best

“Where are you going?” Dr. Wilder asked.

Jesse was putting on his jacket. He caught the set of keys the Colonel tossed to him, opened the front door, and said wearily, “The last place on earth I want to go—karaoke night.”

The night was in full swing when Jesse parked Dr. Wilder’s Maserati behind the Gila Monster. The Supercuts and AT&T Store were dark and shuttered, but people lingered, smoking and socializing, on the sidewalk outside the popular dive bar and in the parking lot it shared with a kitschy diner.

He didn’t know the bouncer or the bartender, but then, he’d been gone a long time. He ordered a beer and searched the crowd for Clara. After a minute or two, he started to feel like maybe he hadn’t been gone that long after all—everyone looked vaguely familiar, and his brain began providing names for faces he’d long forgotten about.

He caught sight of Clara’s flowy green pants in a group of rowdy, giggly young women near the microphone, and steeled himself for a lot of bad music.

“Jesse?” a voice said uncertainly, and he turned to see a man and woman around his own age. “Jesse Flores. Thought that was you!”

“Skip,” he said in surprise, recognizing one of his high school buddies. “How you doin’, man?”

Skip introduced his wife, Pearl, and the three of them made small talk for several minutes. Then his old friend asked him shrewdly if he was there to keep an eye on Clara.

“Not really,” Jesse answered. “Not officially, anyway.”

“We heard about what happened here last month,” Pearl said. “So scary for her.”

“You remember my little cousin Jordan?” Skip asked him. “He’s a cop now. He responded to the fight at the bar and it was still going on when he got here. He said DeWitt was pretty out of it, you know?”

“Do I know DeWitt?” Jesse asked him. “Was he around in the old days?”

“Nah, he’s new. Jordan said he used to work oil rigs out of Houston. His grandpa left him a house here. Hey, that’s him. Surprised he’d show.”

Jesse watched the door, half-expecting the bouncer to deny entrance to the troublemaker. But DeWitt Petty came in, looked around, and headed toward the bar.

He was a good-looking guy—built like a linebacker. Jesse looked at Skip, who shrugged.

“Excuse me a minute,” Jesse said to his companions.

Petty didn’t look at him until he was standing right next to him.

“DeWitt, right? DeWitt Petty?”

“That’s right,” he said, his expression guarded.

“Jesse Flores.”

Petty nodded politely.

“I’m a friend of Clara’s,” Jesse added, watching the other man’s reaction. “The woman you assaulted last month.”

“I didn’t assault her, man. I just put my hand on her arm. I wasn’t being violent, I didn’t want to hurt her. She knows that. That’s why she didn’t press charges.”

Jesse did not like the way Petty sounded so sure that Clara understood his intentions. Either Clara did like the guy more than she was letting on, or he was delusional. And delusional was dangerous.

“She turned you down, didn’t she?”

“Sure. Timing hasn’t been right yet.”

Jesse nodded vaguely and returned to Skip and Pearl. For the rest of the night he watched DeWitt Petty watching Clara.

Clara’s last song was “Take Me Home, Country Roads” but the crowd chimed in so enthusiastically that she was nearly drowned out. After every number she had drawn heavily on her margarita, which proved to be bottomless, and Jesse was pretty sure she’d had the equivalent of several shots of tequila in a few hours’ time.

Skip and Pearl had since gone home, but Petty had stayed, cheering after every song she sang (but never for any of the other singers). He started toward Clara now, so Jesse did, too, and Jesse got to her first.

“Hey,” he greeted her, sliding a supportive arm around her waist as she swayed.

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