by Paula Boyd
Rather than explore the obvious—that my mother and I were well known throughout the law enforcement community—I focused on the important. “What is going on here and how does it involve my daughter?”
The officer just stood there, shaking his head. “Rick’s gonna be real sorry he missed this. He took over as chief in Tyler a couple of months ago. We’ll have to call and tell him the game’s over. Man, wish I could remember who had this week in the pool. I lost out back in March, but we had bets down through June. I think Cutter has this week, no, maybe he lost out last week.”
“Young man,” Lucille bellowed. “I do not know what you’re rambling on about but you had better be telling me what’s happened here right now or you’ll wish you had.”
“Ditto,” I said, only I understood exactly what the rambling had been about. The Redwater Falls police officers had placed bets on when I, and apparently my mother, would show up again, specifically at the scene of a crime. Made me wonder a lot of things, but the only thing worth wondering aloud was whether it could be any kind of crime scene or just one involving a homicide. “Officer,” I said as calmly as possible. “Exactly what kind of crime are you investigating in my daughter’s room?”
No sooner had the words left my mouth than a white Suburban with an official seal on the door pulled into the lot to answer my question.
The county medical examiner had just arrived.
Chapter
Eight
Being questioned by, and providing statements to, law enforcement officials is tedious business, particularly when you don’t have a clue what is or has been going on. Lucille, on the other hand, knew plenty but was being deliberately obtuse as usual. This skill does come in handy for wearing down the interrogator, however, so by the time they started quizzing me, they weren’t even sure why they wanted to or what was even worth asking. Lucille has that effect on people. Even professionals.
We did eventually get confirmation that Sarah was all right and still in the company of Sheriff Parker. That lifted a great weight from my shoulders, but there were a few knots left in my stomach. After talking to the police officers, I had little in the way of facts to work with, but the questions they asked me had sent up fields of red flags. They’d asked about drugs, medications, plastic tubing, glass jars and a metal detector. I kept asking them if they were sure they had the right room, even though Lucille had specifically pointed it out. And what in the hell did all that stuff have to do with anything, especially my daughter? Nothing good that I could think of, and it seemed like a pretty good reason to panic.
“Jolene,” Lucille said, interrupting my launch sequence to hysteria. “Officer Pete says we can leave now.”
I shook my head a bit and ran my fingers through my hair, reconnecting to reality, such as it was. “Did you hear what he said?”
“Yes, Jolene, I did. Now, let’s go.”
“Drugs, Mother. Tubing and jars and other strange things. In Sarah’s room.”
“Yes, Jolene, I heard him and I heard you. But we’re done here. We need to leave.”
I guess I was still standing there kind of stunned, but when I heard her say “do you want me to drive?” I snapped right out of it. “Fine. Let’s go. But you will be talking.”
When we got back into the Buick, Lucille handed me her cell phone. “It’s all ready to go. Just punch the talk button and it’ll dial Jerry Don’s number again. Maybe he’ll answer this time. We need to find out what’s really going on.”
Yes, we certainly did. “Starting with where my daughter is and has been seems a pretty high priority.”
“Well, at least we know she’s safe because she’s with Jerry Don.” She said the right words, but there was no mistaking the worry in her voice. She waved at the phone in my hand. “Hurry up. Call him.”
I dialed the phone as directed even though I knew it wasn’t likely that Jerry could talk to me at the moment. However, as the ringing clicked over to voicemail, I was glad I’d called because just hearing his recorded voice made me feel a little better. “Jerry, it’s Jolene. Mother and I are at the New Falls Motel. I think there’s been—”
Lucille snatched the phone out of my hands. “You call back real soon, Jerry Don.”
I glared once again at my mother. “Nice, Mother, real nice.”
“No need in getting all mushy. It’s my phone number that comes up.”
“What did you do that for?”
“There’s no point in leaving some long message. The only thing we care about is that Sarah is okay, and we’ll find that out when he calls back.”
I started the car and pulled out of the parking lot, heading back to Kickapoo. “Yes, we will, and then he’s going to know all about your charade. What he does with you because of it, is yours to worry about.”
Lucille huffed and picked up the phone, put it back in her purse then dug out a tube of lipstick. She flipped open the visor mirror and expertly painted her lips with an ample coat of a purplish pink. After blotting with a tissue, she said, “I do not know what everybody sees in that actress who has the big lips, like they’re something special, sexy even. And those tattoos, she’s got. Well, why in the world would anybody want to do that to themselves? Women especially. You can kind of overlook it in men because they really don’t have any better sense, but I just really thought women were smarter than to do that.”
No, I did not respond. Even when she isn’t trying to distract me from her lies and schemes, these kinds of conversations with Lucille are painful. Actually, all kinds of conversations with Lucille are painful.
“I don’t know what it is with women and tattoos these days. Even young girls are sneaking off and getting them. Agnes’ granddaughter Jennifer, you remember her mother Darlene, she was a few years younger than you in school. Well, anyway, the girl had a big ol’ butterfly needled into her ankle. I thought Agnes was just going to die. And did you know that when Agnes said something to her about it, Darlene said she’d let her do it, and worse still, Darlene and her daughter had gotten holes punched in their navels at the same time. Darlene! At her age, doing something like that. Can you imagine?”
Actually, I could. Getting your belly button pierced after a divorce was a pretty darned common way of reminding yourself you weren’t dead. I wouldn’t be enlightening the Queen of Judgment about why I understood, however. “It is just pitiful what this world has come to,” I said in the best Lucille imitation I could muster. “Pitiful.”
She eyed me suspiciously, wondering if I was being sarcastic, which I was. “I am probably the only woman around who hasn’t pierced her ears for the sake of beauty,” she said, jiggling her long dangly clip-ons. “But I suppose if people want to mutilate their bodies, that’s their business. Just like the man back there in the motel room. My Lord, from the way they were talking he must have been decorated up like one of those natives in the National Geographic.”
I snapped my head around toward my mother. “What?”
“The National Geogra—”
“Mother…”
“Well, I was feeling a little overheated and confused after talking to Officer Pete, so while he was interrogating you I went to look for a shady place to sit down. There was hardly any place at all that wasn’t just out in the blazing sun, and there was no good place to sit at all, so I kept moving around until I finally got up under the porch, which is actually the sidewalk for the second floor. It was shade though, so I just leaned up against the side of the building and rested a bit, fanning myself as best I could. I’d hardly gotten my breath when some old grouchy woman came out shooed me off. I tried to explain that I was just resting, trying to avoid a heat stroke while I waited for you. I tried to move to suit her, but she sure didn’t seem to want me anywhere near that open door.”
I sighed. “Just tell me what you heard.”
“There was a dead man in the room. They were guessing at how he might have died, but they couldn’t tell right off.”
I took in this information with
a sense of surreal detachment. The medical examiner’s arrival on the scene had indicated a corpse, but somehow the implications of all that hadn’t really sunk in. That seemed to be one of the coping strategies I’d acquired for dealing with things around here. I just took in the facts, no matter how incredulous, ludicrous or unbelievable they might be, and dealt with what I had to in the moment. So, in the current moment, rather than speculate on why Sarah’s room was the crime scene, I speculated on the cause of death of the man in the room. Having a heart attack while breaking and entering seemed kind of a stretch as did just happening to overdose on drugs while busy committing a crime, which seemed the angle the police were pursing according to what they had quizzed me about. “So, what about the drugs and jars and tubing? Did you hear anything about that?”
“Lots of prescription bottles,” Lucille said. “I heard that much.” She clasped her hands in her lap and actually looked a little worried. “And I heard them talking about him being real skinny. Said he’d probably looked dead before he died. He had a pony tail and tattoos all over.”
As Lucille herself had pointed out, tattoos were common these days, however, ponytails were not, except with old hippie guys, some bikers and mullet holdouts. Combine those details with being skinny and dead, and it kind of pointed to a crackhead or a meth addict. “Did you hear anything else?”
She shook her head. “No, but I think it might have been Tiger.”
“Tiger?” Now that she mentioned it, skinny guys with tattoos and ponytails also generally described the two guys of AAC. But what would a sixty-ish possible cult leader and probable chicken feed bomber be doing in Sarah’s room—with bottles of prescription medications? Frankly, a random break-in would be easier to believe—and deal with. I smelled a rat. Several of them even. “So, Mother, if it was really Tiger, why would your protest partner be in the room you rented for your granddaughter? With drugs and jars and tubing?”
Lucille’s eyes darted to me then back to the landscape. She sensed a trap, but she was nowhere near ready to chew off her leg to get out of it, i.e. telling the truth. “Well, I don’t know that I could rightly say. And I don’t know for certain it was him, I was just speculating. I don’t know what all is going on here anymore than you do. I was just trying to help by getting all the information that I could, and now here you are making me feel like I’m on trial or something.”
You know, she’s good. Somehow her scheming and lying had just become my fault, and she was being wrongfully picked on when she had just been doing her best to help. Amazing. It also was dawning on me that Lucille was not nearly as upset about this as one would expect a concerned and appropriately guilt-ridden grandmother to be. “In case you hadn’t noticed, Mother, a man was apparently murdered in your granddaughter’s motel room while, at the same time, coincidentally, she was being hauled away from a different crime scene by the sheriff. Since neither of those situations could have occurred without your efforts and machinations, it seems to me you ought to be feeling a little remorse about now.”
Her jaw dropped open in indignation.
I held up my hand. “Do not bother telling me how awful I’m being to you and how none of this is your fault. In fact, unless you’re ready to confess, do not say anything at all right now.”
I needed time to think. Obviously, Lucille was lying. I believed that she had rented the room, maybe even for Sarah at first, but for whatever reason Tiger had been staying there. Which meant, Sarah hadn’t. And that brought up a whole new line of questions, such as where had she been staying and why. Still, if Jerry had indeed taken Sarah to the motel, he would know about the dead guy. Therefore, the next obvious law enforcement thing to do would be to take her for official questioning on that incident, which meant that he would have gone to the nearby police station in Redwater. I had to keep reminding myself that Jerry didn’t know Sarah was my daughter and wouldn’t be doing anything that wasn’t by the book. But if that were true, what official business had prompted him to take her to the motel in the first place? It was just one more thing that didn’t make sense. I slowed down, waited for a break in traffic and made a U-turn. “I’m headed to the police station. You have about five minutes to convince me why I shouldn’t haul you in to tell your stories to somebody there.”
“Well, it wouldn’t do a darned bit of good, Miz Smarty Pants, because there is nothing to tell.”
“There’s plenty to tell, not the least of which is why a room rented by you, supposedly for your granddaughter, has a dead man in it. And if she wasn’t staying in it, where was she and why the intrigue? If, by some miracle you answered those questions, we could move on to why Sarah was at the Little Ranch this morning.”
“Well, now there’s no call to get all snippy about it. It’s all very easy to explain.” She cut her eyes to me but kept talking, fast. “I did rent the room, as I believe I said, but I just let Sarah handle things how she thought best. I specifically told her not to tell me in case I was questioned about anything since it was none of anybody’s business what she did or didn’t do.”
She meant me, of course. “So what was Tiger doing there?”
“I suppose Sarah felt sorry for him. I think the others may be staying close by.”
So, why, I wondered, did she bring me here? No sooner had my brain asked the question than I had my answer. Because she knew Sarah wouldn’t be here and it would satisfy me and she could keep her secrets, whatever they were, secret. “Okay, now that you’ve given me a grand non-answer about all that, why don’t you try your hand at why Sarah was at Bob Little’s place?”
“See, see how you’re being, that’s why I can’t tell you things. You just go berserk and have one of your fits and turn on me like a skunk with rabies.”
I gripped the steering wheel with both hands and growled, “Out with it.”
She huffed and twisted her mouth this way and that then said, “Oh, all right, it was just a quick visit, that’s all. Merline and Agnes were going to talk to Bob before the protest and Sarah went along with them. Bob really took to Sarah; they just hit it off first thing so it seemed like a good idea for her to go up there too, him being at his wits end over all the trouble. Those park people had him to the point he was afraid not to sell. We just needed to know if anything had changed before the rally. If things had gone like they were supposed to, Sarah would have been long gone before we got there, especially since you made us late.”
Right. Not taking that bait. “So, the three of them went up to talk to Bob Little but he wasn’t there. Something was wrong at the house—the proverbial signs of foul play—so they called the sheriff. Is that it?”
“Well, I guess so, Jolene. Nobody called and gave me the details. You heard the same things I did standing outside the gate there, but, yes, I’d suppose that was what happened.”
“And yet no one but my daughter came down the hill with the sheriff. I find that odd, don’t you? Were Merline and Agnes still up there? Have they called to tell you anything?”
“I have not talked to either one of them.” She studied her fingernails. “I am sure they’ll call when they can.”
“Okay, Mother, here’s what we’re going to do. I’m heading to the police station to see if Jerry’s truck is there. Even if it isn’t, I’m dropping you off to go inside and see if Sarah is there. He could have left her with a detective.”
“Seems like a waste of time to me, but I suppose we can do that if you insist.”
“I do.”
It took less than ten minutes to drive to the police department, circle the place three times and determine that Jerry wasn’t there and neither was a decent parking place. I stopped in a loading zone while Lucille ran inside to ask about Sarah.
“Well,” she said, climbing back in the car. “That was certainly pointless. I waited and waited at the front desk while they called everybody under the sun, including the janitor, to finally decide that Sarah wasn’t there. Then,” she hissed, “they had the nerve to tell me to go to Bowman C
ounty if I had business with the sheriff. That’s what our tax dollars pay for.” She shook her head and clucked her tongue. “Protect and serve, my hind foot.”
“You told them your name, didn’t you?”
“Well, yes, they made me.” Her mouth dropped open and she sucked in an indignant breath. “You don’t think they were lying to me because of their stupid game, do you?”
Harassing her, yes, lying no. I shook my head. “No, and you should probably be grateful they didn’t hold you for questioning, considering. But, they do have a point. I bet there’s somebody in Bowman City who’ll tell us where the sheriff is, and if Sarah is with him.”
Lucille thought about that for a moment. She was still keeping up a good front, but she’d lost some of her confidence that all was right with the world and that her orchestrated charade was still intact. “I suppose I could call Fritz, if you want me to, and ask him.”
I’d already thought of that myself, and I was a little surprised at her volunteering to call. Even so, I figured a personal visit had a better chance of success. “Nah, let’s surprise them.”
“If any of those Harpers know anything, I’ll get it out of them,” Lucille said confidently. “They know better than to try to lie to me.”
I took a left and headed toward the new overpass that would connect us to the old Bowman City highway. After we were headed out of town, I set the cruise and said, “Now then, why don’t you tell me the rest of the story. Actually, just start from the very beginning. The very beginning. How did you find out there was a park being built in the first place?”
Lucille reached down for her purse again, unzipped it and fiddled around for a few seconds then pulled out a pink tissue. She opened her palm and I realized she’d nabbed the tube of lipstick again. She flipped open the mirror and drew on another layer of color she didn’t need. She dabbed the tissue then rolled her lips together again. “There was a story in the paper. I guess that was how I first found out about it, although Demon Seed showed up about the same time, so I’m not really sure. That was all bad enough, but what really stirred things up was those hippies showing up.”