by Paula Boyd
Lucille nodded and sipped her soda, running her nails along the sides of the glass to wipe off the beads of condensation. "I'll tell him everything this time, where I parked, where I walked, when I left, even the ugly shade of lipstick that woman was wearing. Everything."
I gave her a look that said "you better," and made the call to Jerry.
Jerry wasn't smiling even a little when he arrived back at the house, and I didn't attempt to explain or excuse anything. We both knew where the source of the trouble was.
While he grilled Mother--yet again--I supervised Earl, King of Locksmiths, who was quite friendly and chatted nonstop as he swapped out the locks and added new slide bolts on all the doors. He made a great pitch for a burglary alarm system that dialed right into a security company that would then dispatch the appropriate personnel or police and fire services to the scene. I tried to sound appropriately impressed, then terribly disappointed that I had to decline his fine offer. I didn't bother mentioning that by the time his big city security types arrived, the burglar could be in Oklahoma with the loot, never mind the fact that the local pulse dialing telephones would most likely send the high-tech burglary system into electronic spasms.
As Earl chatted away, I mumbled "Oh, really" and "wow" at various intervals, but kept my ears tuned to the conversation in the kitchen. As best I could tell, Mother was finally telling Jerry the whole story, which I presumed was also the whole truth.
Earl finished the last lock with a big, hearty chuckle and grin. I figured out just why he was laughing when I looked at the bill. I wrote out a check and Earl scuttled off with enough money to make the payments on his bass boat for at least three months.
I checked my watch: 7:30 p.m. There was still time for a nice dinner with Jerry. I walked into the kitchen and leaned against the door frame. "How's it going?"
Jerry looked up, the strain of interviewing Lucille graphed across his face. "I think we're about finished."
He tactfully didn't mention that they would have been finished eons ago if my mother had told the truth the first time around, or even the second. Jerry really is a nice guy--and incredibly patient. A trait I sorely lack.
I was sincerely hoping that my mother's statement hadn't triggered some official business for Jerry because I had really been looking forward to going out to dinner with him. Okay, I'd been looking forward to going anywhere with him, but dinner sounded good, too. Before I could say a word, however, Lucille stood and walked to the refrigerator.
"Jolene," she said, pulling a pitcher of tea from the fridge. "Why don't you run on and take a shower. I know you've been driving all night, but a nice cool shower will perk you right up. I'll keep Jerry Don company until you get dressed, then you two can go out for that nice quiet dinner you talked about. Do you both good. I'll just have a sandwich here. Would you like a glass of iced tea while you wait, Sheriff?"
Jerry nodded to Lucille. "Yes, ma'am, I believe I would."
For some reason I felt like I'd been set up, even though we'd already planned to go to dinner. I glanced at my mother and then at Jerry, feeling like I should give him a chance to get off my mother's hook. "Listen, Jerry, if you need to work or you're tired, we can have dinner another time."
"Hurry up, Jolene," he said, that soft Texas drawl rolling across the kitchen like an electric-charged thunderstorm. "I can't even remember the last time I had a bite to eat."
Chapter 4
We laughed and talked all through dinner, chatted about old times, old spouses, kids, football games and steamy rides home after the games. We didn't talk about the specific details of those nights, but it was pretty clear we were both thinking about them.
The food was fabulous, the filet mignon so tender I'd cut it with a butter knife. And I'd had a beer, which is one beer too many for me. One little bottle of Coors Light and I was having way too good of a time. It was all the beer's fault, too. It had nothing at all to do with Jerry. Nothing at all to do with the fact that I thought Jerry Don Parker looked better than any man I'd ever seen, including Mel Gibson, Tom Cruise and any male on the cover of a romance novel. "The first time wasn't so great, you know."
He chuckled then took a sip of his beer. "I think I got the hang of it pretty quickly."
I laughed. "Yes, you certainly did."
Silence reigned for too long and I let my tongue start wagging before my brain started paying attention. "I guess you were a pro by the time Rhonda came around." Well, now, I hadn't really meant for that to slip out. Admitting that your bitter little twenty-five-year-old grudges were alive and well wasn't real great dinner conversation. I was trying to think of a tactful way to unsay what I'd just said, but it wasn't coming.
Jerry cocked his head a little, curved one corner of his lip up in a sad grin and shook his head. "I never slept with Rhonda, Jolene. I told you that about a hundred times. You just didn't want to believe it."
Even through the beer haze, I couldn't deny that. He'd told me nothing had happened between them, but I hadn't believed him. All I could hear was Rhonda's blow-by-blow of their so-called date, running over and over in my head. I'd thrown up--literally. And then I'd done the worst possible thing I could have. I pushed Jerry away and accepted a journalism scholarship to UT to get away from it all, none of which I really wanted to do.
Within a day, for reasons that mental health professionals would no doubt tie somehow to my mother, I'd completely changed the course of my life. And I'd never allowed myself to talk about it ever again. Until now. And oddly, I probably knew that it hadn't really been about Rhonda even back then, not that it still didn't infuriate me. "She lied to me, didn't she? God, why didn't I realize what a lying little--"
"We were seventeen, Jo. We all made mistakes."
Some of us made a few more mistakes than others of us. "I came out to find you, and that little twit she ran around with told me that you and Rhonda had gone to get a Coke and then were going parking. I should have just smacked her."
He shook his head. "Rhonda needed a ride home after the game and you were busy doing something, I don't even remember what, but I figured I had time to run her to her house and get back to the school before you were ready to leave. But you were gone when I came back. I didn't see you for two days, and well...."
"By that time, I had ruined both our lives," I said, rather morosely. This was not exactly how I'd envisioned our romp down memory lane.
"Look, Jo, I don't blame you for any of that. We were kids. And frankly, what was between us was so intense that it scared me. Sometimes it seemed so overwhelming I didn't know if I could handle it. Maybe that was why I didn't really argue all that much about you going to Austin. I think I wanted some space to see what it was between us, if it was between every guy and girl, or just us."
"Just us," I muttered, but I didn't want to get all maudlin about it so went back to safer ground: anger. "So Rhonda and her little friend set you up?"
"I think Rhonda wanted to get back at you more than she wanted to be with me, although she was perfectly willing to show me her charms. I always felt sorry for her."
My hackles went up instantly. He felt sorry for her? If I saw the woman right this minute, I knew I'd still feel like strangling her, but only after I'd clawed her lying little tongue out of her lying fat mouth.
"She had a rough time," Jerry continued, thankfully unaware of the evil ideas running through my head. "Family life wasn't so good for her, you know, probably worse than any of us could have guessed. And besides all that, she was just trying to find her way, like we all were. She just took a real hard path."
That right there is exactly why I loved--and was often severely annoyed by--Jerry Don Parker. Even as a kid, he could always look beyond the incident to the person, the life shaped by other things, and, well, he just saw things differently. Me, I didn't give a shit about her family sob stories. I just wanted to beat the little twit to a bloody pulp for trying to steal my boyfriend. I probably would have too, if not for Jerry. Looking back, the whole thin
g was almost funny--almost.
But he was right. We were just kids. I smiled, a lazy one-beer-induced grin. "I'm not sure, but I think I'm older and wiser now."
He smiled. "Does that mean you won't hang out the window on the way home and yell obscenities at any female I've ever spoken to?"
I laughed, but it was a little forced as visions of drooling little high school girls romped and squealed in my brain. "Find me one, and let's give it a try."
He chuckled. "Maybe next time, when I'm not in uniform, and you're not exhausted from driving all night plus dealing with your mother all day."
"Okay, fine, spoil all my fun." I reached for my wallet to pay the check, but Jerry stopped me, his big tanned hand resting on mine. "It's already taken care of, Jolene."
The touch of his skin against mine was about as sharp a sensation as I could experience at the moment. Words weren't forming quickly either. "Thank you, but next time it's my treat."
He just smiled and stood, then wrapped his arm around my shoulders and guided me to the car. He opened the car door for me and I had the good sense not to object.
Jerry has always been a gentleman--a tall, handsome, old-fashioned gentleman. Only he wasn't a relic of the past, more a blending of Old West marshal and New Age thinker, although I doubted he'd offer the same description of himself. Regular guy would be his words.
He started the car, then turned to me and grinned. "They've put up mercury vapor floodlights at all our old oil field parking spots."
"So where does the latest crop of lusty teenagers hang out?"
"There's a nice spot down by the creek. Willow bushes hide a car pretty good."
The image was instant and I couldn't help but remember my own times--with Jerry--in a car in the dark. "I hope you're not too hard on the kids."
He laughed. "I have to admit I've had a little fun scaring them every now and then. Making the rounds on the back roads always reminds me of you."
"Yeah, like you never went parking with anyone else."
"Never." He grinned. "At least never where I went with you."
Thinking about Jerry Don Parker doing anything with any female other than me only served to turn me into a sniping jealous beast, and I'd done enough of that for one night. I glanced at the dash just as the red LED lights flashed to one minute after 11, my old curfew. "Oops, guess I'm late again."
"Then I suppose we should make the most of it." He touched his fingers to my chin and leaned forward, brushing his lips against mine. "It's been too long, Jolene."
Oh, yes, God, hadn't it. My little heart was thumping like a 15-year-old's on a first date. He had no idea how much I enjoyed being with him, had always. And I felt like such a fool for walking away from him before. I wasn't likely to be feeling any better this time around either, considering the circumstances. As much--and it was very much--as I wanted to fling myself at Jerry and have my way with him, I didn't like the possible repercussions. The headline "Sheriff Arrests Lover's Mother," or something to that effect, was not what I wanted to ever see. I reached up and ran my palm along his cheek, letting the stubble scratch against my fingers. "I'd like nothing better than to find a nice little room somewhere and pick up where we left off...."
"But?"
"But you have a job to do, and it may very well entail arresting my mother for one thing or another. She's trying awfully hard."
He sighed and leaned back. "Lucille is a character, but she's harmless. Still, you're right. Until this case is tied up, the most we'd better share is dinner."
Jumped on that one like a drowning rat, hadn't he? Not even a little argument for the possibilities. He was fresh from a divorce and I hadn't been in a steady relationship in years, which translates to no sex for either of us, at least me. And in my beer-stained mind, it seemed perfectly logical that we should just take care of both our problems and be done with it.
But it wasn't really what I wanted. Sex had a nasty way of literally screwing things up at times. And I was pretty sure that I'd rather have Jerry Don Parker as a lifetime friend than a onetime lover. Not certain, mind you, just pretty sure.
"Well, my friend," I said, emphasizing my resolve to myself and trying not to be bitter, spiteful or just plain sick over the whole deal, "I guess we'd better head home then."
"After this is over, Jolene, you owe me a real date."
"Then do us both a favor and get it over with quickly."
"I'll do what I can," he said, none too optimistically. "But we don't have the staff to handle something like this. We're getting some help from Redwater on the forensics but it looks like it's going to be a slow one."
Okay, fine, I was up for a change in topics. "You didn't find Mother's key, did you?"
"No."
"From what I've gathered, there weren't many people in the county who had a fondness for Mayor Bennett."
"Which is why I'll be spending the day in Kickapoo again tomorrow interviewing."
"Interviewing, you say." I grinned. "I could help you out. I didn't get that journalism degree for nothing." Actually, it had been for nothing, but hopefully Jerry didn't know that. Rather than get a job as a reporter or glamorous TV anchor like my mother wanted, I'd started a little card company with a friend and had lots of fun. Sales were only fair, but somehow or other one of the major companies found out about us and we wound up selling out for big bucks, relatively speaking.
Danny, my ex, was kind enough--or guilt-ridden enough--to leave me my own money in the divorce. And likewise, I was kind enough to leave him breathing so he could continue acting like a fool with his twenty-something-year-old. But that's another story.
"The media here isn't known for being overly zealous," Jerry said, turning into the drive. "But we don't get many murders, and certainly not ones that involve public officials and scandals."
I knew that one of those scandals was my mother, but I didn't take offense. Lucille Jackson was actually proud of her quasi-flagrant reputation. She'd succeeded in stirring up a sleepy little town with nothing more to gossip about than who dozed through Sunday services. "I take it that means I need to keep my nose out of things."
"Your mother's in the middle of this. I'm not sure you could be objective."
He was right, I probably couldn't, but that didn't mean I wasn't getting a really big desire to help. "Mother said something about a problem with the water being cut off in a lot of homes. Did you know about that?"
He turned off the car and nodded. "Yes, but it doesn't seem quite enough to kill somebody over."
"I don't suppose that homebuilder whose project was shut down would be mad enough to kill either, but the new city permit thing sounded strange."
He shifted in the seat and turned toward me. "I hadn't heard about that one."
"Well, maybe you better quiz my mother again. She's got plenty to say about BigJohn's dealings. I think she said the guy's name was Dee-Wayne something or other. I assume that would be spelled kind of like Duh-Wayne with an 'e,' but I can't be sure. He's some homebuilder who moved here from I-way Park, which I also assume is Iowa Park, but I can't be sure of that either."
"You ought not make fun of your mother, Jolene. She means well." He paused for a second then added, "Most of the time."
I didn't bother reminding him how well-meaning my mother could be. He'd already been up close and personal with Mother's purse, not to mention having to question her three times to extract some sliver of the truth. I spared him an accounting of Mother's crimes and said, "Stop by in the morning for coffee. I'm sure Lucille will cheerfully give you a whole list of people who might have been happy to see BigJohn dead."
"Including your mother. I can't ignore her, Jolene, no matter what you and I think."
No, he couldn't, particularly with Lucille blabbing to anybody who'd listen that she was glad BigJohn was gone for good. "As I said before, I haven't seen any tears, but it might be that she's just putting on a front, not wanting anybody to think she cared about him at all. It does make sense. She'd look p
retty silly crying over a man who left her to go back to his 'dumb plain vanilla wife', her words. And as you know, Lucille Jackson does not look silly for anyone."
He nodded. "But it would sure be easier on everyone concerned if she'd just be a straight shooter about the situation."
Yeah, wouldn't it. "You know how she is, Jerry. Nothing much has changed, other than to get worse. My dear grandmother once said that as we age, we become caricatures of ourselves. Things that are little personality quirks in your twenties and thirties become serious eccentricities later down the road. Scary thought, but I think she was right. I'll probably make my mother look like a sedate pussycat when I'm seventy."
"Hope I'm there to see it," he said softly.
He'd done it again. Whether it was his soft rumbling drawl or the unmistakable ring of sincerity in his voice, I can't say, but something sent a warm sizzle zipping through me. It took a minute before I felt capable of speaking without my voice cracking. "Guess I'd better go in."
"I'll stop by around nine," he said, looking toward the door. "I don't figure you're any more inclined to early mornings now than you were way back when."
Less so, but I didn't say it. I'm generally quite chipper by ten o'clock, but nine is iffy. Nevertheless, I didn't want him to think I was a complete slug. "Sounds great. See you at nine."
He started to get out of the car, but I reached over and put my hand on his arm. "Please don't walk me to the door, Jerry."
"Afraid I'll kiss you again?"
I opened the door and scooted out. "Maybe I'm afraid you won't." I closed the door and hurried inside.
He waited until I turned out the porch light before he left. I watched the tail lights fade in the distance, wondering what to make of Jerry Don Parker--and what to make of myself. This was his world, not mine, and I still wouldn't stay in Kickapoo, Texas, for anything, not even him.
Closing the door quietly, I turned out the lamps Mother had left on for me and headed to my old bedroom. I flipped on the light and walked to the closet. After a little digging around, I pulled an old gray hat box from the top shelf. I hadn't opened it in years, but I knew what was in there as surely as I knew my own name. I sat down on the edge of the bed and removed the lid. Inside were the remains of a homecoming mum.