by Paula Boyd
I had a very bad feeling about that question. I went with the obvious, knowing full well it wasn’t. “Bob Little?”
“Besides him.”
The van jerked to a stop. Somehow, we were now in Kickapoo, parked beside my mother’s house, facing the Little property. I was pretty sure this was my hint at the answer and there was a part of me that wasn’t even surprised. “Why would my mother own mineral rights on Bob Little’s property?”
Bobcat shook his head and flipped his ponytail back over his shoulder. “Goddamn, you really don’t know shit.”
Lily screeched and clutched the steering wheel, looking like she wanted to bang her head against it. I could relate.
“If you’d just asked,” I said, my voice rising in pitch and volume, “I could have told you that in the parking lot at the Dairy Queen and saved all the pointless drama!”
“Oh, hell.” Bobcat picked up his phone and dialed. “Buttercup, when you’re finished, you and Lucille come on over to the Dairy Queen in Kickapoo. Well, good. Yes a half an hour will be fine.” After he’d hung up from leaving the message, he glared at me and growled, “I don’t want to hear any shit about Ethel.”
At least we agreed on that. “Okay, I don’t get it. If you wanted me staring out behind my mother’s house, why didn’t you just meet me here to begin with?”
“I figured it would be easier to separate you and Lucille if Ethel was there and she wasn’t likely to get invited over for tea by your mother.” He shrugged. “Beside, you were already headed to Bowman City.”
I had been, of course, but how did he know that? Rather than ask, I unclipped my phone from my jeans and dialed my mother. He didn’t try to stop me. But she didn’t answer either so I also left a message that included the words “call me” at least three times. Since it seemed like Lucille and I were both about to be released from captivity, I relaxed a little, but I was more confused than ever.
Bobcat pointed across to a row of tall mesquite trees. “Bob Little had a string of wells that came in big in the fifties. He hit ‘em hard for about ten years. There’s one over there.”
I knew the area he was talking about. At one time you could see some of the pump jacks and tanks from the house. “I’d planned to walk the property last night but it didn’t work out. I have no idea what’s there, I haven’t stepped foot on the place in twenty-five years.”
As we sat there, the van still running, I glanced to the mirror at Lily. She was staring straight ahead again, a digital camera in her hands, taking pictures. While Lily snapped away, I tried to remember what I could about anything to do with oil, Bob Little, the property or my deceitful mother. There were some fuzzy areas in my memory banks that seemed like they might be important if only I could drag them out into the light. But I couldn’t.
“He had some other stuff going on in the Seventies,” Bobcat said. “Remember anything about that? A bunch of trucks, dozers, lights at night, anything like that?”
“Look,” I said, trying to sound as sincere as I was. “I don’t know much of anything about anything. It’s news to me that my mother is in any way connected to the Little Ranch at all. As for what might have happened in the seventies, well, my focus was elsewhere. I can tell you what dress I wore to what banquet, I can describe my black velvet platform shoes in exquisite detail and I can tell you my favorite kind of hot rollers and why, but they could have plowed up that whole ranch during that time and I wouldn’t have even noticed.”
Bobcat shook his head. “Nobody has their head that far up their ass.”
“Clearly you have never been a teenage girl nor had to live with one.”
Bobcat scowled. “You have to remember something besides just bullshit.”
“Well, I don’t,” I said, waving my hands in frustration. “Clearly you know what you want me to remember, so just tell me and I’ll see what I can come up with.”
“If I tell you then it ain’t remembering, now is it?” He stared out the window for several long minutes then shook his head again and said, “You’d be wise to keep your daughter stashed wherever she is.”
Prickles raced up my spine. They knew about Sarah. “Why? Is she in danger? She doesn’t know anything either.”
“Just keep her off the streets for a while.” He waved a hand to Lily to drive on. “Wouldn’t hurt you to do the same. Lucille too.”
“You think somebody’s after us? Is it the same people who killed Tiger?”
Lily sucked in her breath and slammed on the brakes. “What do you know about that? Tell me!”
“Lily, just drive. She doesn’t know anything you don’t.”
After a few long seconds of staring at nothing, Lily turned the van around and pulled out onto the street.
Bobcat stared out the window as we headed to the Kickapoo DQ.
After a few seconds of silence, I said, “Would you tell me why you think we’re in danger?”
“I already did.”
“Any chance you’d explain that and save me some grief?”
“Nope.”
Chapter
Twelve
As we rolled into the hometown Dairy Queen parking lot, Bobcat said, “Looks like your mother beat us here.”
I followed his gaze to Lucille’s Buick. “Looks like it. I guess if you want to chat you know how to find me.”
Bobcat leaned over me and opened the van’s door then motioned me out. “Yeah, we know.”
I barely had my feet on the gravel when the van took off, Bobcat slamming the door as they fled. When I turned toward the DQ door, I knew why they were in such a hurry to escape. Ethel Fossy had darted out the front door and was racing after the van, arms waving. My mother was on Ethel’s heels, speed walking with as much dignity and grace as one can across a gravel parking lot in front of a semi-fast food restaurant next to a busy US highway in gold glittered shoes.
“Ethel, you idiot,” Lucille yelled. “You get back here. Quit chasing after that man like some dog in heat.”
Ethel stopped in her tracks and spun around. “How dare you! I’m not—” She crimped her lips together and glared at Lucille. After a last longing glance in the direction the van had fled, Ethel let out a heavy sigh then obediently marched back into the Dairy Queen.
What was going on here? What had I just witnessed? My mother was directing Ethel like the best of beauty queen coaches. Wait a minute! Then it hit me. Ethel was no longer wearing a tank top or hip huggers. She was wearing nice slacks and a tailored blazer, and not one hint of blue eye shadow, although her cheeks were tastefully blushed and her lashes looked thickened and lengthened.
Apparently, while I’d been touring the county with Bobcat and Lily, my mother had whisked her long-time nemesis and avowed mortal enemy away from the Bowman City DQ for a brainwashing and a makeover. Was that really Ethel? And my mother? I’d seen it with my own eyes and even I didn’t believe it.
Lucille shoved my shoulder, pushing me along behind Ethel. “Quit standing there with your mouth open catching flies. I’ve had to reorder my chicken basket and it’s probably getting cold. Come on.”
I didn’t wait for her to grab my arm and drag me inside, but I didn’t necessarily go willingly either. I had some questions for my mother, not the least of which was why she’d run off and left me at the DQ to be kidnapped.
I did not get to ask those questions, however, because I couldn’t get a word in edgewise. I was also trapped on the inside of the booth against the window and therefore had to endure a conversation that no one should have to. Completely oblivious to my presence, Lucille and Ethel enthusiastically debated the pros and cons of chemical peels, Botox and facelifts, old and new trends in lingerie, and having younger men for lovers, for which they both agreed condoms were a real good idea.
I’m not kidding. I sincerely wish I were. But I am not.
It seemed like it took six hours for my mother to eat her food—and catch Ethel up on the new world order. In reality, my torture lasted only about twenty minutes, but it
was twenty minutes of pure hell, and I’d have rather been back in the van with a gun pointed at me. Yes, really. The stress of the day was taking its toll, and as soon as Ethel’s personal trainer put the last French fry into her mouth, I gave her a full body nudge. “All done. Let’s go.”
Ethel jumped a little, either startled because she’d forgotten I was there or that I could and would speak.
Lucille glared and scowled and huffed and all the typical things my mother does when she is seriously annoyed with me.
I didn’t care. Somewhere in the last few seconds I’d gone from fairly oblivious to seriously annoyed myself. I hurriedly stacked the trash on the red plastic tray, grabbed my cup and nudged her again. “Let me out. I’ve had all the fun I can stand.” She didn’t move immediately and that just added fuel to the fire that had already been lit. “I’ve got to go, Mother, really I do. Right now. Move.”
Ethel sucked in an indignant breath. “Are you going to let her talk to you like that?”
Lucille turned and glared at me again. However, she was between the proverbial rock and a hard place. If she snapped back at me as she so dearly wanted to do, she’d save face with Ethel and might win the battle. But my last straw had clearly snapped and that made me a loose cannon, which gave her zero chance of winning the war. She gritted her teeth, slid to the end of the booth and stood. She huffed and sputtered, still wanting very badly to give me a what-for. But since all eyes were already on us, she was more concerned with avoiding the equivalent of an international incident at the Dairy Queen.
I had no such concerns. I might have been in some level of shock for the last twenty minutes, but I was remembering clearly now, and what I remembered was that Ethel Fossy had not only verbally abused us in public every chance she got, she’d started vicious rumors, sent threatening hate mail and was consistently and vocally self-righteous and judgmental. Just because Mary Kay Yoda had given her a few tips on makeup, hair and clothing, it didn’t change the fact that her protégé from the dark side would still happily burn me at the stake given the opportunity.
I slid out of the booth, grabbed the tray of trash and looked down at Bony Butt. “Well, Ethel, this whole extreme makeover thing you’ve got going is pretty impressive, I’ll give you that. But there’s still that old saying about leopards and spots and such. Then again, a Bobcat may trump leopards and spots, and you could have really turned over a new leaf, or at least nailed an old hippie.”
Lucille groaned. “Oh, my Lord, Jolene.”
Ethel’s face turned so red that the expertly applied blush and highlights completely disappeared. “What do you mean by that?”
“I’m not casting stones. Hooking up with Bobcat has clearly done you a world of good. Makes you feel alive again, doesn’t it?”
“Oh, my Lord,” Lucille repeated, darting her eyes around the room to quantify witnesses.
“And finding yourself a godly man too,” I continued. “Why, I’d say he uses the word ‘god’ at least twice in every sentence.”
Mother grabbed me by the arm and dragged me to the door. “Why do you say these things?”
It was a rhetorical question; she had no intention of me answering. I fully intended to, of course, but Ethel raced up beside us and cut off whatever clever remark might have fallen out of my mouth.
“Are you going to let her get away with that?” Ethel said, her voice elevated with indignation and outrage. “If she was my daughter, she wouldn’t be getting away with that.”
Lucille grabbed the red tray out of my hands and set it on top of the trash can and shoved me toward the door. “Don’t pay her any mind, Ethel. She’s still real tired from her trip, jet lag and all that.”
“I just never dreamed this was what you had to put up with.”
“Well, Ethel,” I said, “there just wasn’t time to do it your way. If I had to say it behind your back and then wait for it to make the rounds on the gossip mill, well, it could take days or at least an hour.”
“What an awful thing to say! I do not gossip!” Ethel gaped and worked her jaw up and down. “You’re right, Lucille, after all you’ve done for her and she still doesn’t care at all about other people’s feelings. It is just like a knife to the heart.”
I shoved open the door and walked out.
Mother scurried out of the restaurant behind me, huffing and clucking as she followed me to the car. She clicked open the locks, opened the passenger door and flung herself inside. After I was seated, she tossed me the keys and said, “There’s no reason for you to be snippy. These situations are delicate and I just said what I had to in order to get Ethel to open up to me.” She gripped the handles of her purse and huffed. “You obviously do not understand a single thing about psychology or finesse in communication.”
“Obviously.” I stuck the key in the ignition and started the engine. “But I apparently excel at heart knifing.” I laughed, not because it was all that funny, but because it was funny enough to give me a way to release some tension other than yelling or crying. I laughed again.
“I don’t see what’s so funny.”
“Of course you don’t. You’ve had a grand time today. Your morning started out perfectly with a cup of coffee and a shooting.”
She sucked in an indignant breath then muttered, “He had it coming.”
“For most folks, that would have been a full day of fun in and of itself, but no, you were only getting started.” I ignored her scowl. “After a stimulating experience at the Little Ranch, Grannie Columbo was off to outsmart the cops at the motel room with the dead guy.”
“You can’t be blaming me for all that.”
I raised a hand to stop her. “And just because the town’s morality watchdog has rediscovered life in the immoral fast line doesn’t mean you have to conduct a fashion intervention to support it.”
She gave me a look that said she hadn’t exactly thought of it that way then muttered something under her breath that included “hateful” and “pitiful.”
“I, on the other hand,” I said, raising my voice appropriately for drama, “was dragged along for the ride of shock and fear, none of which would have been necessary had you told me the truth from the beginning. My icing on the day’s cake was being kidnapped at gunpoint by two psychos after you abandoned me in the parking lot of the Dairy Queen. But not to worry, I’m fine.”
“Oh, good grief, Jolene, I can very well see that you’re just fine,” she snapped, jumping back on the defensive and sweeping away any pesky twinge of guilt that might have occurred. “You’re certainly cranky and hateful, but you’re fine. As for Bobcat, he’s got a foul mouth, but he’s harmless.”
“No, he’s a jumpy guy with posttraumatic stress disorder and a gun.”
She waved a dismissive hand. “Well, I knew you wanted to talk to him alone and see what you could find out behind my back anyway, not that he knows anything.”
I looked at her for a few long moments, thinking that she hadn’t always been this way. However, that was only true to a point. Lucille had always been Lucille—she’d just kept it under wraps and within the socially acceptable boundaries. Now, she had no such restrictions and she was doing exactly what she wanted to do and didn’t care what anybody thought about it. In theory, I admired that attitude. In practice, it left a lot to be desired for me.
Lucille dug around in her purse and huffed. “Well, I have just had enough of all this. I believe it’s time we went home.”
“Finally, we agree on something.”
Mother Compassion scowled at me as she held up her phone and hit a speed dial number. “Agnes, where are you? . . .Okay, well, good. Would you go to the Dairy Queen and get Ethel and take her home? . . . Yes, that Ethel. . . . Well, it’s a very long story and I don’t have time to explain, but she darn well looks better than she did. I have done my Christian service for the next year, maybe five, I’ll tell you that for sure. . . . Well, I know you aren’t going to like it, Agnes. I surely didn’t like it either, but I’m in a bind a
nd I need your help. . . . Yes, I’ll tell you all about it later. I’m with Jolene right now and she’s having one of her snits so I can’t talk. . . . Yes, okay, I know I owe you. Bye.”
I did not say one word, not one, just put the car in drive and drove. We’d barely made it out of the DQ lot when we met a sheriff’s vehicle. It passed us then whipped around, lit up the blue flashing lights and headed after us.
Even though I knew better, my automatic reaction was to look down at the Buick’s speedometer. For the record, I was going twelve miles per hour. I pulled over to the shoulder and the car pulled up behind us, without the lights.
“What’s wrong?” Lucille said. “What’d you do?”
Before I could respond at all, Sheriff Jerry Don Parker was opening my door.
“Well, it’s about darned time,” Lucille said, snapping back around in her seat. “I’ve got some questions and I want some answers.”
“Miz Jackson,” Jerry said, nodding to Lucille over my shoulder. Then, he looked back at me. “I’d like to talk to you alone.”
The way he made that sound made me real sure that I would like it too.
“I don’t suppose you could take your hands off her long enough to tell me what’s going on around here,” Lucille snarled. “We’ve got dead people, and missing people, and crazy people, and I’d like some answers.”
“We’ll just be a minute or two,” he said, ignoring her demands and slamming the door.
And there, in the span of a very few seconds, my whole outlook on life had changed. The cavalry—i.e. Jerry—had arrived and freed the little peptides in my brain that had been pinned down by enemy fire. The tension that had me ready to snap melted into a glorious rush of endorphins and every cell in my body felt it.
Jerry led me back to the Expedition and opened the passenger door, blocking us from most of the viewing public passing along on the highway, but most especially from my mother. “We have got to find a way to do better than this,” he said, wrapping his arms around me. “But, I’ll take what I can get.”