Hot Enough to Kill
Hot Enough to Kill
The First Jolene Jackson Mystery
by
Paula Boyd
KINDLE EDITION
* * * * *
REVISED EDITION PUBLISHED BY:
Diomo Books for Kindle on Mobipocket
Hot Enough to Kill
The First Jolene Jackson Mystery
Original Copyright © 1999 by Diomo Books
Revised Edition Copyright © 2011 by Diomo Books
Original Cover Art by Layna Boyd, Copyright © 2001
Digital Publication December 2011
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, locales or events are the products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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I generally find myself back in the thriving metropolis of Kickapoo, Texas for reasons that are either beyond my control or my good sense--sometimes both. I've come back to my hometown for holidays, so-called vacations and entirely too many funerals. The only thread of commonality in these events is that I am guaranteed to experience some level of unpleasantness. It's one of those facts of nature, like washing your car so it will rain. I show up in Kickapoo and bad things are sure to follow. Only this time, the first bad thing had already happened. Somebody had shot my 72-year-old mother's boyfriend. Shot him dead. On purpose.
Now, before I explain the whos and what-fors of the murder, you need to know a few things about my mother. Lucille Jackson takes no guff off anybody. Those are her words, not mine.
No longer auburn-haired, she's still a striking woman and credits her current "natural blonde" look to a weekly dousing of a rinse called "Frivolous Fawn." But don't think I'm comparing the woman to a gentle deer frolicking in a meadow. Unless Bambi's developed a fondness for whimsical costume jewelry and wild purple pantsuits, it just doesn't work. A better visual might be a cosmetically enhanced pterodactyl with a glitter-covered chip on her shoulder and a real bad attitude. Of course I could be letting my latent childhood hostilities taint my assessment.
And to be fair, my mother holds an equally unflattering opinion of me, something along the lines of "ungrateful and man-less daughter intent on squandering her looks and journalism degree by hiding in the mountains of Colorado" covers most of the bases. We do, however, love one another in our own ways.
When my dad died of a heart attack two years ago, it took Mother a good while to come out of her shock. When she did, she did it in a big way. Or at least a scandalous one. She started dating the mayor. Unfortunately, the mayor still had a wife.
Now, the truth is, the mayor and his spouse hadn't lived together in years and hadn't even liked each other when they had. This is all beside the point, of course, because no matter how you sliced it, my mother's boyfriend had still been legally married to another woman. I was so proud.
Lucille, the queen of rationalization, did not share my dismay. She found Mr. Mayor's nebulous marital state to be perfectly acceptable because she didn't ever want to remarry anyway. Closer to the point, there apparently weren't many hot hunks pushing seventy to choose from in Kickapoo, Texas, population 1,024, or rather 1,023 living souls and one dead mayor.
Which brings me right back to the reason I'm sweltering in 112-degree heat--and that's inside the building--waiting for my mother to come sauntering out of the county jail so I can take her home. It's not your typical family reunion spot, but Lucille is anything but typical. That said, you can understand why I wasn't particularly surprised that I heard her before I saw her. Lucille commands attention, one way or another.
"I don't know what lies you've been told, Jolene," Mother said, bursting through the door to the county lock-up waiting area. She sashayed past a deputy, past me and toward the exit, her heels clicking out an ominous beat. "These people know good and well that I didn't kill BigJohn, not that he didn't need a what-for, the old goat." With her nose stuck up in the air and a black patent leather purse swinging from her elbow, Lucille marched out of the Bowman County courthouse and toward my dark blue Chevy Tahoe.
I dutifully followed, wondering exactly how best to handle this somewhat ticklish situation. No clear plan emerged, so I figured I ought to try to be the good and attentive daughter she'd always wished for. I clicked up the latches, opened her door, then hurried around to the driver's side to start the car--and the blessed air conditioner. I wriggled inside, hoping to keep the thin fabric of my shorts between me and the Texas-fried leather seat. The skin on the backs of my thighs sizzled as it bonded to the seat, but I started the car and said not a word, knowing Lucille would not appreciate my ugly thoughts about either the heat or her predicament. I also knew she'd spill her guts about the whole sordid mayor affair soon enough without any coaxing.
After a predictable show of climbing into "that monster truck," as she called it, Lucille settled herself into the passenger side and pointed all the air conditioner vents toward her face.
"Good heavens, I'm glad to be free," she said, patting her piled-high hair. "Nobody knows what I've been through. What took you so long to get here? Those no-account deputies wouldn't listen to a thing I said. Asking their silly questions over and over, and then talking to me like I was some dirty criminal when I didn't say just what they wanted to hear." She huffed and clucked her tongue. "I did get my own room, though."
"Your own room?"
"Well, I don't think the whole world needs to know that Lucille Jackson was put in a jail cell. Me, in jail! Why the very nerve of those people!"
Technically, I was one of the "nervy" people since I'd agreed that Lucille should wait with the deputies until I arrived. It had seemed the best thing to do at the time, although I wasn't going to confess my part in her captivity or try to explain my good intentions. That sort of thing has never worked, trust me.
And while we're busy setting the record straight, Lucille had spent her time in an office, not a jail cell, and had apparently been quite content to use the department's telephone and call her friends while she waited for her only child to pick her up. That was the official version. I couldn't wait to hear my mother's interpretation.
Lucille reached into her purse and dug out a tissue. After a good blow and sniff, she said, "It was the silliest thing, really. I was up at the Dairy Queen, minding my own business, having a nice glass of iced tea with Agnes Riddles and Merline Campbell, and the next thing I knew these two big old goons had jerked me out of my chair and tossed me into the back of their patrol car like some dirty criminal. It was just a crying shame, I tell you, treating me like that. Why that Jerry Don Parker wouldn't even be sheriff if it weren't for your father, God rest his soul. And what does he do to repay me? Why, he sends his big old goons out to haul me in like some thug, and right in front of the whole town."
The town was small, but not small enough for the entire populace to fit inside the Dairy Queen, particularly one with a maximum capacity sign that read 56. There were additional corrections I could make to her story, but decided to just hit the high points. "Those goons, as you call them, said you refused to talk to them and that you threatened to 'kick both of their butts'--that was a quote--if they laid a hand on you."
"Humph," Lucille snorted. "They were manhandling me and I don't put up with that from anybody."
When I didn't respond immediately, she tipped up her nose and stared out the window, suddenly enthralled by the landscape--or lack thereof.
The fourteen-mile stretch of melting asphalt from Bowman City to Kickapoo is about as straight and flat as they come, and the scenery amounts to scrub mesquite trees with more thorns than leaves. Breaking up the monotony, or adding to it, depending upon your perspective, are oil wells--lots of them--pumping like big, lethargic chickens playing perpetual tug-of-war with skinny worms of iron cable. Beautiful, really. Just makes you want to pull off the road and set up a tripod. And did I mention it's at least 125 degrees in the shade with triple-digit humidity?
But on the bright side, there are a lot of really nice folks living around here, give you the shirts off their backs and all that. Unfortunately, in the midst of these fine, upstanding, salt-of-the-earth folks lurked a rather nasty killer.
I could feel a vortex forming around me, building, ready to suck me into the madness. In my high school and college years, before I figured out I wasn't cut out to be a reporter, a story about small-town intrigue and one dead mayor would have had me doing handstands. I'd have plunged in with no holds barred to get to the truth, and would have whipped out a dandy article. But not now, and especially not with my mother hanging over my shoulder. I am smarter than that, thank you very much. According to Lucille, I can't even find the right hair color (Clairol's Light Ash Brown, if you're wondering), so I certainly couldn't be counted on to ferret out a killer in the highly sophisticated locale of Kickapoo, Texas.
Nope, I was not about to get myself involved in this mess. I'd stay just long enough to be sure mother kept herself out of trouble. Then it would be back to the mountains and sanity for me. I'd call the kids (grown, but still my kids), tell them how much I missed them, meet them in Boulder for a nice dinner, casually mention the little problem with their grandmother and that would be that. Done and forgotten.
Then, as if my nineteen-year-old son were sitting right beside me, I heard, "Gee, Mom, I can't believe you're going to just abandon Gran, leave her down there all by herself with a murderer." The twenty-year- old daughter's voice was equally clear with "Gran wouldn't turn her back on you, Mom, no matter what you did."