by Paula Boyd
"Are you in much pain?"
"Oh, it's started hurting a little, but I didn't want to take one of those pain pills until you got here. So much of that stuff makes me sick as a dog. I don't much want to take any at all. I was thinking I'd just take some aspirin."
"No, you probably shouldn't do that. Remember, aspirin is a blood thinner, and that's probably not what we want right now. Better stick to acetaminophen or the prescription."
She nodded and cradled her arm. "Well, I suppose I'll have one then."
I got her a pill and a glass of water from the bathroom. After she'd downed it, we went to the living room and I got her settled her in her favorite chair.
"Tell me about Jerry," she said. "Is he still in the intensive care?"
"Yeah, and will be for a while. He's pretty out of it, but I think he knew I was there."
"So he's going to be all right?"
"I hope so," I said, glancing toward the kitchen. "The police sure didn't take long investigating in there."
"Yes, they did try to hurry. Merline and Agnes kept telling them that it was just plain as day what happened and there was just no reason for me to have keep the place in such a mess, so they finally quit piddling around and left."
I wasn't thrilled that the police could be coerced into doing a shoddy forensics job, but the ladies were right. Trajectory of the bullet was about all there was to figure out--where was the shooter, how far away, what angle, etc. Jerry had taken the bullet with him to the hospital, so there was no time wasted looking for that. Still, they'd finished up amazingly quickly, and even more amazing was the fact that the kitchen looked good as new except for the plywood on the window.
"Mother, tell me you didn't get in there and do the cleaning."
She frowned a little. "Well, I did help, but Merline and Agnes did most of it. They weren't about to leave me here alone and they wanted something to do."
Against my better judgment, I had given in to Mother's idea that I should stay at the hospital with Jerry and Merline should come to the hospital and get her. Merline and Agnes showed up thrilled to be needed and planned to take Lucille to eat before they headed home. I doubted Lucille felt like a trip to Furr's Cafeteria, but the ladies assured me that they needed to keep her away from the house for a while longer while the police people finished up. I gave them my cell phone number and the trio went on their way, already debriefing Lucille as they walked out the door. "So the police haven't been gone long?"
"Oh, maybe an hour and a half, two at the most. Merline just left not ten minutes ago. She had her son come over and put plywood on the window. It had turned into an oven in here and the flies were just awful."
"Well, it sure cooled off pretty quickly," I said, refusing to think about what the buzzing little insects were up to.
"It has now, but for a while there I was sure thinking we'd just go stay at a motel tonight. Then again, I'm not letting some damn fool run me out of my home. Besides, I've been thinking."
"Thinking about what?"
"The gunshot." She pointed to the boarded-up bay window in the kitchen. "It's as plain as anything, but that goon Leroy Harper can't tell his head from a hole in the ground."
"I can't argue with you there, but I have a feeling you have a specific reason for saying so."
She nodded. "I've had plenty of time to think about this, Jolene, and I think Jerry getting shot was an accident."
"An accident such as some idiot was deer hunting in the neighborhood and drew a bead on Jerry?"
"No. More like the shooter was aiming at something else and hit Jerry by mistake."
I frowned. "That doesn't really make sense. Jerry's the sheriff. There are plenty of people who could be out to get him. For all we know, he could have been onto the person who killed BigJohn."
Lucille adjusted the sling, but the grimace on her face didn't ease. "I was the target, Jolene. If I hadn't stood up the very split second that I did, well, I'd be dead, plain and simple. And Jerry wouldn't have a scratch on him."
I replayed what I remembered of the incident--who was where, the shatter of the glass, the angle of the gouge on Mother's arm and the fact that she had been standing up when the shot blasted in. She was right. If she hadn't stood at that exact moment, the shot would have hit her square in the back of the head.
Shivers rippled through me. "Why?"
"The only thing I can think of is that the shooter believes I know something of BigJohn's business."
"Do you?"
"Good Lord, no. I learned early on that his monkey business was the last thing I wanted to talk about. Only way I knew what he was up to was mostly through other people or when my water got shut off."
"Well, apparently that's beside the point since somebody wants to kill you for what they think you know." I stood and walked toward the phone. "I've got to call the sheriff's department and tell them about this then we've got to get you out of here and to someplace safe."
Lucille shook her head and pointed an acrylic nail toward me. "Sit back down, Jolene. I'm not going anywhere. I'm not in any danger right now, not with that deputy outside."
"I saw the car when I pulled up, but I waved and he sure didn't get out and try to stop me from walking right in. Not my idea of a high security program."
"Oh, well, Jolene, everybody knows who you are. No point in causing a stir when it wasn't necessary."
Fine, I'd let that slide, but not much else. "I'm still calling the sheriff. This is serious and I'm not taking any chances."
"I've already tried that, Jolene. I've told three deputies plus the two police people who were here. A couple of them said they'd make a note of it, for all the good that will do, but they dismissed it as something they'd figure out when they got all their tests or measurements or whatever it was they were doing in my kitchen all day. Besides that, Leroy Harper has made it real clear that he's in charge of this case and we have to talk to him personally about everything, not that he has a brain in his head to hear it."
"Well that's just peachy," I groused. "All the way around." Nasty thoughts about incompetent rednecks and backwoods police work flitted through my mind, but I tried to push them away. Leroy was just being Leroy, and hopefully the forensics people from the Redwater Police Department were just trying to get their job done fast and were ignoring Leroy like everyone else. Hope does spring eternal at times, however, I was less than willing to bet my mother's life on it. "What do you think we should do?"
Lucille sighed. "I'd like to think I can carry on with my life as usual, but I'm not an idiot. If I go traipsing off to the Dairy Queen or the Senior Center as I usually do, I'll be a sitting duck."
"Which is why we need to get you out of this place." Getting me out of this place wasn't such a bad idea either.
"I won't be run out of my home, Jolene. We do need to do something though. I suggest you call your old friend down at the Times and get a reporter on this."
"So do you want me to tell him about the shootings or the idiot pretending to be sheriff?"
"Both." Lucille adjusted the sling on her arm and tried to hide another wince. "As I recall, Jolene, this sort of thing is just your cup of tea."
"I like lime in my tea, not bullets. And just because I caused a stir with an article twenty-something years ago doesn't mean it will work this time, not that it worked that great then either. As you'll recall, it took them two years to fire the perverted principal."
"And nothing much has changed around here, so I suppose we'd better get started. I left you the newspaper's number over by the phone."
Gary Gammons and I had interned together at a newspaper in Austin during our final college days. We were both applying for jobs half-heartedly, and after my interview in Redwater Falls took a turn for my breasts, I told the editor I had a good friend who was a great reporter and would probably fit right in. That wasn't exactly true since Gary wasn't a leering sexist, but the position did have potential and Gary had jumped on it. And he was still there, but in an upper ma
nagement position. "I haven't talked to Gary in fifteen years--at least."
Lucille shrugged. "Doesn't matter. He was crazy about you, too. Always telling me how you were the prettiest--"
"Dammit," I said, pushing myself up and stalking to the phone. "Not every male in the county was crazy about me, Mother."
"Well, a whole bunch of them were. You may not have noticed, but they certainly were. You call Gary. I just know he'll help."
I did call Gary--but not just because my mother said so--and I discovered that he is apparently a really big fish in the local media pond, which translates to darned hard to get hold of. After a few transfers and evolving explanations, I finally reached his voice mail.
Now, to be fair, Redwater Falls is technologically superior to Kickapoo in more ways than tone dialing and real voice mail. I myself can confirm that there are two actual computer stores in Redwater. One sells only DOS machines with "Winders," to quote the salesman. I was tempted to engage him in the Mac/IBM debate but it seemed pointless, particularly since he thought Mac was the name of the salesman at the second computer store in town. But educating the "Winders" man would have been easier than getting Gary Gammons to help me out and investigate the gunfire in Kickapoo. Primarily because Gary was in a foreign country, and I mean a real foreign country as opposed to, say, Kansas. In case you didn't know, the Republic of Texas is alive and well--just ask any Texan. And the particular Texan I needed to talk to was on a two-week honeymoon with his new wife in Mexico.
"It's his third," Lucille said as I explained the latest sorry state of affairs. "So I suppose he didn't want anything in the paper about it. He didn't stay with the first one any time at all. I think he was married to a girl from Nocona after that. Lasted five or six years. Haven't heard much about this one."
While it was semi-interesting to learn the life stories of my old friends, I needed a new plan on how to deal with the current unpleasant situation, namely someone wanting to kill my mother. "I could call one of the staff reporters, tell them I know Gary, see what happens."
"They've already written their little ho-hum story about BigJohn, and I suspect there will be a small piece in this afternoon's paper about Jerry. The high temperature for the day will get more attention, I'll tell you for sure. It's hot enough to kill out there today and nobody's going to want to be out in it snooping around about some crazy what-if."
She was most likely right. When it got into the triple digits and stayed there for weeks, people tended to get cranky--and complacent. The level of water in the lakes and how many kilowatts the electric company was supplying were about the best you could hope for in the local lead articles. In short, chasing down a story about a crazy shooter would require someone to remove himself from in front of his refrigerated air conditioner unit and knock on doors; therefore, it wasn't likely to happen. Of course, I could be a little jaded in my assessment.
Lucille leaned back in her recliner. "There's just no help for it, I suppose. We'll have to do the investigating ourselves. If we stick together, we can watch out for people with guns lurking in the bushes and find out who's after us all in one whack."
"Uh, huh, and just exactly what do you mean, by 'we'?"
Chapter 7
After a few more ineffective phone calls and another brief chat with my mother, it didn't take me long to confirm that "we" meant "me", and sticking together meant Lucille telling me what to do and me doing it.
We were still glaring at one another across the kitchen table regarding the chain of command when I decided to pretend I'd won and get on with the business of deciding what I was going to do next. Besides, it was probably for the best anyway--the part about Lucille not getting physically involved, not the part about telling me what to do.
No matter what age you happen to be, having your mother boss you around can cause resentment, rebellion and ridiculous behavior--or in my case, all three. I have, at various times, gone to great lengths to prove that I don't have to do what my mother says. In my youth, those instances generally coincided with the times I was also compelled to prove my stupidity. I am older and wiser now--at least one would hope--and recognized that regardless of whose idea it was, we needed to try to figure out what we could. So, I flipped open a notepad to a clean page and began my own interrogation.
Determined to be objective and thorough, I wrote down almost everything my mother said. I carefully noted all the names of the players in the various mayoral issues and their specific reasons for despising BigJohn. I made a similar list for my mother's enemies. It was no surprise to anyone that even with Kickapoo being a really small town, not a single name showed up on both lists. Things are never that easy for me anyway.
I also quizzed Mother about who might want to do Jerry harm and why. After we eliminated all the obvious criminal elements that unnaturally inhabited the area, Mother had an epiphany of sorts.
"Why, Jolene," she said, a real twinge of awe in her voice. "I never thought about it until just now. That bullet could have been meant for Jerry."
I did not see the light along with her. "So said Leroy the Slug."
"Leroy's an idiot who can't see past the end of his bulbous old nose," Lucille said, turning her own slim nose up at the very idea. "All he thought about was that Jerry got shot so somebody must have meant to shoot him. I doubt it's that simple."
I doubted it, too, although I didn't have any great alternative theories. However, from the studious look on my mother's face, I figured she did, or she was busy concocting one.
Lucille clicked the nails of her good hand on the table. "What if someone got jealous that you and Jerry were seeing each other again?"
I groaned. "That's pretty unlikely. Hardly anybody even knows I'm here, and exactly none of those care."
"Everybody knows you're here, Jolene. Word spreads fast at the Dairy Queen. Why, once when Merline let it slip that she'd not be averse to visiting with a certain new widower, the phone was ringing before she even got home. Besides all that, you went to dinner with Jerry Don. Why, that right there could have sent somebody into a tizzy."
"Because I went to dinner with him? It's not like we went to a motel and put 'Jerry and Jolene are in room one twenty-two' on the sign by the highway."
Lucille raised an artfully drawn eyebrow. "Did you go to a motel?" "No, Mother, we did not. I was being sarcastic."
"Well, I wouldn't put it past you. I knew what all you and Jerry Don were up to, don't think I didn't."
Personally, I didn't want to think about that on any level whatsoever. "That somebody shot Jerry because of me is too ridiculous to consider, even in Kickapoo, Texas." I realized my mistake at about the same time the words left my mouth.
Right on cue, Lucille's eyes flashed and her mouth tightened into two thin lines. One did not disparage Lucille's hometown or the great state of Texas--ever. More to the point, I needed her cooperation, not the cold shoulder treatment that such a remark would earn me. I like to think I've learned a thing or two in my forty-three years, but if I have, none of them are related to dealing with my mother.
Lucille didn't cross her arms, most likely because the sling prevented it, but she sure looked like she wanted to. "I am certainly sorry that you find all of us here to be such imbeciles," she said, her hackles up and bristling. "I was, however, smart enough to raise you."
That was the start of a very bad downhill slide that I'd traversed on numerous occasions, and never once had I been able to backpedal fast enough to make things right with my mother--never. Therefore, I knew better than to even try. The best I could hope for was a distraction. "You know, Mother, you do have a point. But what if it wasn't one of my old boyfriends that wanted Jerry out of the way, but one of his would-be girlfriends? He's here all the time. He's a good-looking man. He's got to have women following him all over the place."
Lucille sniffed and twirled a curl of Frivolous Fawn. "That was exactly what I was trying to tell you, if you'd been so kind as to have let me finish." She stuck her nose up in the
air. "It would seem to me, senile though you think I am, that his ex-wife would be the most likely suspect."
"Amy?" I said, a little too incredulously. I ignored Mother's creased brow and pressed on. "Amy Parker hardly seems like a homicidal maniac. I met her at the hospital, you know. I suppose she could have some personality disorder that makes her go nuts and try to kill people, but when I talked to her, she seemed really sweet." Sweet is a highly desirable trait in Kickapoo, but it didn't look like it held any sway with my mother in this particular situation.
Lucille's nose twitched up another notch. "She may have seemed sweet to you, missy, but you don't know half as much as you think you do."
No, apparently I did not. But I did know things would be going a whole lot better if I'd remembered to bring along my eggshells to walk on. In truth, this non-meeting of the minds usually happened within the first ten minutes of being with my mother, so the fact that I'd made it a full day and a half was something to be proud of. That we'd spent most of that time discussing murder motives or medical care for shooting victims, namely Lucille, was beside the point.
"Okay, you're right," I said sincerely. "I'm not nearly as smart as I think I am." It wasn't so much an agreement with her as an accurate assessment. If I was smart, I'd be somewhere else--like another state. "But if I were, what would I know?"
"For your information, Jerry Don left his wife nearly two years ago," Lucille said huffily. "She didn't make it easy for him to get a divorce, though, I'll tell you that for sure."
Besides the fact that Jerry and Amy's marital history was none of my business, I'd found that, over the years, the less I knew about Jerry's love life, the more charitable--and supportive--I could be. Nevertheless, Lucille had baited up a fat worm of curiosity and I was compelled to bite. "So what's the rumor, another woman?"