The Wild Turkey Tango (Jackrabbit Junction Humorous Mystery)

by Ann Charles

  Claire grinned. “So in addition to being married to a money launderer, you also wrangled wild turkeys? What other skeletons do you have in that closet?”

  After flipping Claire off, Ronnie bent over the turkey and draped Kate’s jacket over it.

  “Hey! That’s my favorite jacket.”

  “You’re the one who wanted to save the wild turkeys of the world.” Ronnie wrapped the jacket clear around the bird and then tied the sleeves in a knot to secure the wings. “Let’s load this bird up and get rid of it. We need to get back to that list Ruby gave us before all of the freshly dead turkeys at the store are taken. Claire, grab its feet.”

  “We’re not putting the thing in my new Jeep.”

  “Stop being a fusspot.”

  “It will poop all over my toolbox and carpet.”

  “If it does, Katie will clean it up when we get home.”

  “I already donated my favorite jacket. Can’t we tie it to the roof and drive slow until we get out of town?”

  Ronnie shook her head at them, her upper lip curled in disgust. “You two are such weenies. Suck it up and let’s get this turkey business done.”

  “Fine, I’ll pick up the damned bird,” Claire said. Grumbling under her breath, she opened the back of her Jeep and grabbed her brand spanking new expensive leather gloves. “This is insane, you know,” she told Kate a minute later as she carried the turkey to the back of her Jeep. “If you weren’t pregnant, I’d tie you up in your jacket and take you to a mental hospital.” She slammed the back of the Jeep closed and pulled off her gloves. “Okay, Mastermind,” she said to Ronnie. “Where to now?”

  “I caught the danged bird. It’s your turn to be the brains of the operation.”

  As far as Claire was concerned, catching it had been an example of not using their brains. Now they had a comatose bird in the back and risked getting charged with illegally hunting a turkey and who knew what other fine-incurring offenses if the Sheriff or any of his deputies pulled them over.

  She glared at Tweedledee and Tweedledum in turn. “Both of you get in the Jeep before the bird wakes up.”

  “Katie, you take the back,” Ronnie opened the door for her sister.

  “Why do I have to ride in back?”

  “To be closer to your rescued turkey. Besides, you’re pregnant.”

  “Both of those reasons are total bullshit,” Kate said, but climbed into the back seat anyway.

  Ronnie handed Kate her purse and slid onto the passenger seat. “So, where are we going?”

  “To Dirty Gerties.” Starting the Jeep, Claire reversed out of the alley. “Then the grocery store.”

  “Why are we taking the bird to a strip club?” Ronnie asked as she buckled her seatbelt. “You thinking about having it do the Chicken Dance on stage?”

  “A turkey wrangler and a comedian. Your talent appears to be limitless.”

  “I thought we needed to hurry over to the grocery store before the fresh turkeys are gone,” Kate said from the back.

  “Dirty Gerties is on the way to the store and stopping there takes care of the second item on our list.” Claire hit the gas and headed toward the strip club.

  “What’s the second item?” they both asked in unison.

  “To pick up an even bigger, not-so-fresh turkey.”

  Chapter Two

  Kate needed to use the ladies room. Unfortunately, her two older sisters had left her sitting in the parking lot of a strip club with a bossy order to “watch that turkey” while they disappeared inside to collect a fourth member for their turkey rescue party.

  Not that said turkey was doing anything other than sleeping off the concussion Ronnie undoubtedly had caused when she’d chased the poor bird into the brick wall. The last time Kate had checked, the turkey hadn’t moved a single feather. Her jacket still held it wrapped up in a sleeved hug.

  Opening her purse, she pulled out her cellphone to see if anyone had called or texted. By “anyone” she really meant Butch, who’d been busy working under the hood of a muscle car he’d just acquired from a car auction in El Paso. One would think owning a successful bar and grill like The Shaft, Jackrabbit Junction’s main watering hole, would be enough for one man, but not Butch Carter. Oh no, he’d rather get his hands dirty fixing up old cars.

  This morning while he was shaving, he’d thrown out the idea of her running The Shaft in his stead. She’d been in the midst of brushing her teeth so her answer had been raised eyebrows of surprise in the bathroom mirror. His ringing phone had saved her from commenting further. If he was serious, she needed some time to think about her answer. While she enjoyed working at The Shaft most days, especially when Butch was there with her, she was uncertain whether she was up to the task of being in charge. She had a definite fear of falling on her face and letting Butch down. She rested her hand on her stomach. Not to mention the changes and adventures their baby would be adding to her world a half year from now.

  She shoved the cellphone back into her purse. It clinked against the derringer. She pulled out the little gun, turning it this way and that in the sunlight shining through the back window of the Jeep. Why would Joe Martino have such a little gun? From the way Ruby had described him and his love for greasy food, the man’s meaty fingers wouldn’t have fit around the trigger whereas Kate’s slim finger slid around it just fine.

  Her bladder panged again, threatening to overflow. She looked out at Dirty Gerties nondescript white brick building. The doors were still closed, nobody in sight. Leaning back, she tugged at the waistband of her jeans, giving her bladder more room. Those guys needed to hurry their asses up. They’d better not be inside knocking back a few drinks while she sat out here almost peeing her pants with an unconscious turkey for company.

  She shifted in the seat and undid her seatbelt, trying to ease the pressure in her midsection even more. Maybe if she stretched out a little. She slid across the seat and turned sideways, resting her right hand with the derringer across the seatback. The handgun was too small to make her look cool holding it. Ronnie was right. It seemed more like a toy.

  “Why such a tiny gun, Joe?” she asked aloud.

  Holding the derringer up again, she inspected the mother-of-pearl inlay on the handle. With the sun shining on it, she could see carved designs that she hadn’t noticed before when looking at it down in the shadow-filled basement office.

  A choked gobble came from behind her seat.

  Kate squawked, too, almost peeing her pants. She leaned over the back of the seat slowly, her hands shielding her in case the turkey had somehow freed itself and decided to attack.

  It lay unmoving on the floor where Claire had put it in the back of the Jeep. The jacket’s sleeves were still wrapped around it.

  What in the heck had she heard? The bird’s ghost? Had it passed over into the turkey afterlife?

  She reached down with the derringer. Holding her breath, she poked the bird’s breast with the gun barrels.

  Nothing moved.

  Hmm. Maybe she’d imagined …

  The turkey sprang to life in a loud gobble-squawk, its head twisting this way and that. Before Kate could snap out of her frozen state of surprise, it strained upward and pecked her wrist.

  “Yowch!” When Kate yanked her hand back, her finger hit the trigger of the derringer.

  A gunshot exploded inside the vehicle.

  Five minutes later …

  “You have got to be freaking kidding me!” Claire stood behind her Jeep. She frowned at the bullet hole now gracing the thick black vinyl next to the back window of the soft top. “You shot my new Jeep!”

  “It was an accident,” her younger sister insisted. Kate reached out and poked her pinkie finger into the hole.

  “Don’t do that. You’re going to make the hole even bigger.” Claire pulled Kate’s hand back and then leaned closer to inspect the damage. “Shit. Mac is probably going to get those deep vertical lines in his forehead when he sees this.”

  “It’s a tiny hole. He
won’t even notice it.”

  “He will too.” Her boyfriend didn’t miss much, especially when it came to anything related to Claire and her sisters.

  “I’ll see if Butch can get it patched up.”

  “Do you really want the father of your unborn child to know you were playing with a loaded gun?”

  “I wasn’t playing with it. I told you it was an accident.” When Claire continued to stare her sister down, she added, “It’s the turkey’s fault.”

  “Oh, it’s a turkey’s fault all right, the turkey that goes by the name of Crazy Kate.” Claire pointed at the gun that now lay next to the turkey in the back of her Jeep. “I thought you said that damned gun wasn’t loaded.”

  “I didn’t think it was.” Kate kept shifting from one foot to the other. “I certainly didn’t put any bullets in it.”

  Chester Thomas joined them, his gray hair and matching beard stubble looking extra bristly. Must be one of the dancers at Dirty Gerties had gotten him all excited, or maybe it was the owner, to whom he seemed to give a lot of extra attention these days. “Ronnie says you need my help out here with some sexy bird you picked up with a meaty set of breasts and cute tail feathers.”

  In spite of the bullet hole in her ride, Claire grinned at her sister’s trickery. That was a sure-fire way of getting Chester’s attention. “Where is Ronnie?”

  “She needed to use the latrine.”

  “So do I,” Kate said. “I’ll be right back.”

  As soon as Kate left, Chester turned to Claire. “Where’s this sexy bird?”

  Claire looked pointedly toward the back of the Jeep.

  It took Chester a full three seconds of ogling to soak up the truth of the matter. “What in the hell are you girls doing with a wild turkey?”

  “Kate decided to rescue it.”

  “It’s not dead?” When Claire shook her head, he asked, “Where did you find it?”

  “It was running around town. Kate tracked it down, Ronnie wrangled it, and now I’m stuck hauling it.”

  He rubbed his hand over his stubbly jaw. “What are you going to do with it?”

  “Kate wants to take it out in the desert and set it free.”

  “That might be a death sentence. Water isn’t exactly sitting around in puddles out here. Why does it look dead?”

  “Kate just shot at it by accident with the derringer.” She pointed to where the small gun now lay next to the turkey, where Claire had insisted Kate leave the weapon so she didn’t shoot anything else. “She thinks it passed out from fear when it heard the gun blast.”

  “I thought I heard a gunshot over the dance music, but I figured it was just a pickup backfiring.” He palmed the derringer. “Where’d she get the pea shooter?”

  “Joe’s safe. Kate insists she didn’t load the gun, so he must have kept one in the chamber.” When Claire thought of the times she’d gotten into that safe and moved the gun around, it made her stomach clench. All of this time it had been loaded. Jeez, they were lucky nobody had gotten shot, including the damned turkey.

  Chester opened the chamber and dumped the casing out onto the ground, then peered down the barrels. “It’s empty now.” He picked up the tattered box of cartridges Kate had taken out of her purse and set it next to the derringer. “Pregnant women bursting with hormones should not be allowed to touch firearms.” He opened the box and dumped a few of the cartridges out on the carpet next to the turkey. “Arizona should make that into a law.”

  Normally, her feminist side bucked at such talk, but in Kate’s case, Claire agreed one hundred percent. “What are you doing?”

  “Just checking out this little palm pistol.” He grabbed a cartridge and stuck the bullet into one of the two barrels. “Step back, I’m going to see how true she shoots.”

  “You’re what?” Claire reached for the gun. “You can’t shoot it here. That’s illegal.”

  “Who’s gonna tell? Around here, folks don’t think twice about loud bangs what with the mine blowing up the hillsides every other night.” He took a couple of steps toward the wide open dirt lot next to them and aimed at the ground.

  Claire plugged her ears and pinched her eyelids closed. She waited for the bang of the gun, which would undoubtedly be followed by the Sheriff department’s sirens.

  She stood like that for about five seconds but nothing happened. She unplugged her ears and opened her eyes. Chester had the derringer open again and was frowning down at the small barrels.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, keeping her distance.

  “It didn’t fire.” He walked back to her. “Hold this.” He handed her the unspent cartridge and grabbed a few more from the box.

  Loading another round in the chamber, he aimed and pulled the trigger.

  Nothing happened.

  He emptied the gun, reloaded, and tried twice more. Both times ended with a click, nothing more.

  “Hell, none of these rounds are lighting up.” He took several more and went through the same routine. By the time he finished, with still no shots fired, Ronnie and Kate had returned.

  “What’s going on?” Kate asked.

  Ronnie’s gaze moved from the collection of cartridges in Claire’s hand to where Chester was unloading another one. “Is he actually trying to shoot the gun?”

  “Yep.”

  “Damned rounds are all duds.” Chester returned and set the gun down, pointing it away from them. “Where did you get this box of rounds, Katie?”

  “Next to the derringer in the safe.”

  “They were there the first time I opened the safe,” Claire added.

  He held one of the cartridges up in the light, squinting at it. “Doesn’t make any sense that they’d all be duds.”

  “They weren’t.” Kate pointed at the bullet hole she’d made in the Jeep’s soft top. “Do bullets have expiration dates?”

  “Joe’s only been dead a couple of years,” Claire reminded her.

  “Maybe he had them for a lot longer.”

  “Or maybe they’re as old as the gun.” Ronnie leaned closer to the bullet hole, aiming her finger at it.

  Claire grabbed her by the wrist. “Keep your fingers to yourself.”

  “You sound like Mom,” Kate said.

  “It’s just a tiny hole. Katie told me inside that she didn’t mean to do it.”

  “How much did she pay you to take her side?” Claire asked Ronnie.

  “She promised a five-er.”

  “Wow, you’re cheap.”

  “There’s something wrong with these rounds,” Chester said.

  “They’re duds, I know. I was standing here while you were trying to shoot up the place, remember?”

  “I mean something else.” He walked over to Claire and held up a cartridge for her to inspect.

  “It looks like a bullet to me.”

  “Check out the base of the tip.”

  She scratched her chin. “I’m relatively new to bullets, Chester. What am I looking for here?”

  “The gap between the case and the bullet.”

  “What about it?”

  “This one is loose, see?” He pulled, widening the gap between them. “I’d pull harder, but my damned arthritis makes it hard to pinch.”

  “You don’t seem to have trouble with pinching when it comes to the girls at Dirty Gerties.”

  “That’s called willpower,” he said with a wink.

  Claire took the cartridge from him and pulled. The bullet popped right off in her fingers.

  She’d expected gun powder to spill out. Instead, a little piece of rolled up paper fell onto the ground.

  Ronnie reached down and grabbed it before the wind got hold of it and carried it away to the weed-filled lot. She unrolled the tiny piece of paper.

  “Does it say anything?” Claire asked, moving close to take a look.

  “Yes.”

  “What?” Kate joined them.

  Ronnie frowned up at Chester and then Kate, her focus landing on Claire last. “It says, X mar
ks the spot.”

  “It sounds like some kind of pirate game,” Kate said, excitement making her voice breathy.

  “Ah, hell,” Claire muttered, rubbing her hand over her eyes. “Here we go again.”

  Chapter Three

  Claire opened several more cartridges, handing each piece of paper with the exact same words to Kate to hold.

  “They’re like fortune cookie bullets,” Kate said.

  Ronnie cocked her head to the side. “Why do they all say the same thing?”

  “Who cares?” Kate cupped her hands when a breeze tried to blow the papers free. “What treasure do you think is underneath the X?”

  Claire smirked. She’d been there and done that with Joe and his hide-and-seek games enough times to know it couldn’t be as simple as finding a spot on a map. “There is no treasure under the X.”

  Ronnie stuffed the bullets and casings she’d collected back into the cartridge box. “You sound pretty certain about that.”

  “I’m ninety-nine percent sure.”

  “Why?”

  “Because X never marks the spot,” Chester horned in between Kate and Ronnie. “Haven’t you learned anything from Indiana Jones?”

  “I wasn’t the TV addict. That was Claire.”

  “Indiana Jones is from a movie, numbskull,” Claire told Ronnie. “Not TV.”

  “A movie that they now play on TV stations, right, buttinski?”

  “Enough, you two,” Kate stepped between them.

  Ronnie traded Chester the box of empty cartridges for the derringer. “You can keep track of these, Katie can keep the fortunes, and I’ll keep the derringer in the front seat away from you and our deranged turkey lover.” She stuffed the tiny gun into her back pocket.

  Chester slipped the box into the side pocket of his cargo pants. “That’s a bad place to keep a gun.”

  “So is Katie’s hands,” she replied. “And yours.”

  Kate stuffed the tiny papers into her purse. “Claire, how can you be so sure there’s no treasure?”

  “Because Joe’s treasure hunts are never as simple as an X on a map.” Nope, Joe was a master pirate. And here all of this time she’d figured that box of cartridges went with the derringer. Now she was beginning to suspect they might be related to two different skims he’d made during his time as a thief of thieves.