Turkey Ranch Road Rage (15 page)

I suppose now would be the appropriate time to point out that the “rush” to the land of superior educational opportunities in Kickapoo simply meant that by moving the family to the small town ten or fifteen miles away, their kid could actually get issued a jersey on a football team. In big city Redwater high schools, there were no average white guy slots. It was nothing new. The same thing had been going on when I was a teenager. To be fair, though, there were at least twice as many kids in the latest graduating class than there had been in mine twenty-five years ago. Still, it had not created a wild upward spiral in housing prices. Reality aside, we still had a guy who wanted my mother’s house, and was willing to threaten her and dodge bullets to get it. We also had a missing ranch owner who’d apparently been threatened too and was selling his land because of it.

I’d done a few articles on legitimate park development projects and conservation easement purchases several years ago and had a fair knowledge of the major groups funding such things. I didn’t know how the new imminent domain rules had changed that process, but middlemen had been used to purchase property for government purposes. If the park project were a city deal, they’d get what they wanted. But why not just take it rather than send a go-between to try to buy it? Getting shot by Lucille was one good reason.

“Something about this has bothered me from the beginning,” I said. “Actually a lot of things have. For one, what makes this couple thousand acres of mesquites and old salts flats more special than those on the other side of the highway, or on the other side of that? That one spot isn’t the only place where you can stand in hundred-and-twenty-degree heat and watch mesquite thorns grow.”

“Your hateful attitude about your home place is just uncalled for. I didn’t rear you like that, and it just makes me spitting mad to hear you condemning things around here. I don’t see why it’s so hard for you to believe that people are just dying to turn my life upside down to suit their own purposes. I suppose you just don’t give a hoot if my life gets ruined.”

Melodramatics aside, I did understand her distress, and shared it even. But it didn’t get me any closer to the why of it all. I’d admit that there were plenty of RV pads plopped in the middle of nowhere with nothing to do except park, plug in, sleep and dump the waste tank. Every space was filled on a lot of them, too, so what did I know? “You are absolutely right, Mother. It’s a perfectly wonderful place for an RV Park—flat, easy highway access, and the bluff where the Little house is located adds historic and visual interest. That part is unique and that must be the draw.”

“Well, it may very well be, but it doesn’t mean I have to go along with it. I do not have to agree to anything I don’t want to.”

A strange—or maybe not so strange—thought finally made its way to the foreground. I’ve been around enough to know that cutting a good ol’ boy deal at taxpayer expense was not a new thing. Maybe that’s all that was going on here. If so, wouldn’t Bob Little have to be in on it? None of it explained why they had to have Mother’s house too though. Maybe the park was a cover for something and they didn’t want Lucille watching what they were doing. Not that great motivation-wise, but a possibility. This was Texas after all. And somebody was out there with equipment and a drill rig for some reason. “I saw the pump jacks were going again behind the fence. Maybe this whole thing really is about oil.”

“Those oil wells have never quit pumping since we’ve lived here,” Lucille said. “They’re not big producers, just real steady.”

“Lucky for Bob Little, I guess. But if that’s true, why sell the land for a park and have to give up your steady producers? Does he retain mineral rights? Will the pumps keep pumping with the park there? Why drill for more if you’re selling?”

“Well, I don’t know about any of that, Jolene. I don’t meddle in other people’s business. But I do know that Bobby isn’t hurting for money. He still has some part in that plastic company over on the north side of Redwater that he started about the time you were born. Some big outfit from Pennsylvania’s been trying to buy him out though.”

“Hmmm,” I said. “Does he still work at it?”

“No, he hired good people to do that long ago. He goes in every now and then, and he studies the books, but he doesn’t have to do anything.” Lucille turned and stared out the window. “Not like when he started it. He was there day and night then.”

“That’s never good on a family.”

“Didn’t have one,” she said absently. “His wife had just died.”

“Oh.”

After a few seconds she turned back around and shook her finger at me. “You just don’t know what all he’s been through. They tricked him like they tried to trick me, only worse. He won’t talk about it much, thinks he’s protecting me, but that’s what’s going on.”

She’d apparently moved back to the drama at the ranch but I was still visiting the plastic factory. I remembered hearing something about a parts company back when. Twenty-five years ago there weren’t many big factory type places around and a bunch of the guys and a few girls went to work there right out of high school, assembly line work, as best I could recall. It was good money, twice what they could make anywhere else. “I sure never knew that Bob Little owned that big plastics factory. The main building was blue metal as I recall, kind of northwest of Redwater, right? What was the name of that place?”

“Oh, it’s one of those funny foreign words that the college kids use funny symbols for on their tee shirts.” Lucille’s brow wrinkled as she thought on it. “Kind of like Ortega, you know, like that Mexican man who used to work for Jimmie Sue’s dad back when he had that track for training race horses.”

“Neither the race horses, Jimmie Sue nor the worker to whose name she was slandering had any relevance to the actual topic of interest so I ignored the attempted rabbit trail. “You mean Omega.”

“Yes, that was it. See it did sound like Ortega. Just an ‘m’ instead of the ‘rt.’ Omega Plastics. That’s what it was called.”

I knew it hadn’t been called Little Plastic Parts Company. That, I would have remembered. “You know, I find it very interesting that Rancher Bob, our missing in action owner of the would-be park land, is also a manufacturing mogul. Between the oil and cows and plastic parts, the guy’s got to be loaded with money. Maybe somebody kidnapped him or killed him for it. Wouldn’t be the first time that sort of thing happened.”

“That’s ridiculous.” She snatched her purse and settled it in her lap.” It’s just about that stupid park, that’s all.”

“It’s also about a dead man, the missing man and my daughter’s circumstantial ties to both.”

“Well, don’t you go jumping to any conclusions.” She clutched her purse tightly and fiddled with the handles, twisting the straps this way and that. “You don’t know nearly as much as you think you do.”

And that, I feared, was the most truthful thing she’d said all day.

Chapter
Nine

By the time we finally reached Bowman City, I had ferreted out a boatload of pointless trivia and one possibly important fact. Namely that Tiger, along with his ever-present sidekick and supporting female flower team, had nearly gotten into a fistfight with Saide at the courthouse rally. I couldn’t imagine the little guy that had hidden behind the Korean import doing much physical sparring, but Lucille had assured me he was “red as a beet” and shaking his “gnarly little fist” at Tiger, who, she pointed out, could have broken that “spindly little white neck of his like a chicken bone” if he’d had a mind to. He’d apparently planned to do exactly that until somehow things started exploding and paint started flying.

I made a mental sigh. I couldn’t even replay Lucille’s tales without them being one long string of run-on thoughts. Anyway, if nothing else, it was probably worth knowing that Tiger’s “hippie goons” looked ready to “peench” the weasel’s little head off. Pushing aside the vernacular and imagery from Mother’s theatrical ruminations, I took a good look at the town square in front of us.

The courtyard of the Bowman County building was trampled down in large round spots, like inept aliens had missed the cornfield and settled on the courthouse lawn instead. Spatters of fluorescent green and pink paint dotted the crushed grass and three black sooty spots lined the sidewalk. Not major league damage, but more than just a minor irritation too. As we walked to the door, I couldn’t help but wonder how much reclamation work had to be done to get it back to even this condition.

Inside the hallowed courthouse halls we didn’t exactly find a “field of dreams” either. In fact, we racked up two strikes right off the bat without even trying. The “no Jerry” was an obvious and didn’t count. But since we needed inside information from pliable sources, the “no Leroy” and “no Fritz” most assuredly did. The fact that there was another Harper on duty did not up batting average even a little. It did, however, upset my stomach.

The first thing you noticed about Larry Harper was the wad of tobacco hanging down from his lip. Yes, down from beneath his upper lip. The black-brown blob that perched atop his front teeth caused his upper lip to puff out until it almost touched his nose. It was not pretty. He also had a more traditional wad in his left cheek, which made him look like a lopsided pocket gopher. I couldn’t begin to guess how much nicotine was coursing through his veins. The best we could hope for was that it was enough for him to connect the dots in his inherently deficient and seriously addicted brain.

Lucille had different concerns. “Don’t you even think about spitting in front of me, Lawrence Harper,” she said, skipping past the usual introductory pleasantries to avoid as much grossness as possible. “I’ve told your father just what I think about that nasty business of yours. If he’d been the one to walk in here instead of me, well, I think you know just what that would mean.”

Apparently Larry did because he shoved his little Styrofoam spit cup under the desk and swallowed. The pained grimace on his face indicated this was not a preferred activity.

“And what are you doing here anyway?” Lucille continued. “You got yourself fired again didn’t you? How hard can it be to shove a little stick in a tank and write down how much oil it shows? What’d you get caught at this time?” She pointed a manicured nail. “You were sleeping on the job again, weren’t you?”

The flurry of questions continued unanswered, but the probable scenario was that Larry had gotten fired from his gauging job on the justifiable grounds of stupidity, and his father—mother’s current beau—had gotten him back on at the sheriff’s department. It was not a win-win scenario for anyone, except maybe the oil company.

Larry turned his back to us and stuck his pudgy—and still oil-stained—fingers into his mouth, presumably to remove the contraband. When he turned back it wasn’t actually much of an improvement, but his cheek and lip were less unnaturally puffy. “You gonna tell my daddy about this?” he asked Lucille.

“Depends,” Mother Shrewdness said. “Where is your father?”

“Oh, he and Leroy are out on a call. Nothing exciting, just a fender bender.”

“What about Sheriff Parker? Where is he?”

“He’s—”Larry Harper began to twitch and wiggle like he had bugs crawling on him, which he probably did. “He’s not here.”

“Well, I darn well know he’s not here, Lawrence. Everybody knows there’s been a murder out at a motel and he’s taken a witness in for questioning to help out the Redwater Po-lice.”

Larry frowned a bit while he puzzled with that information, fearing he was expected to comment about it in some way, which, of course, he was.

Now, I do realize that it appears that I was just standing around doing nothing while my mother was taking the lead in the interrogation, and that is indeed an accurate assessment. Mother Experience seemed to have a far better plan for handling Larry Harper than I did and I saw no good reason to interfere. Technically, one might call her technique blackmail. I didn’t much care what anybody called it as long as it helped me find my daughter. And Jerry.

“Now, Lawrence, I very well know Jerry Don has been back over this way and I know you know where he went after he did because he said he would call in and let the office know where he was going when he decided what he was going to do. Now, you better hurry up and tell us just exactly where we can find him so neither one of us gets into trouble.”

The words had come fast and furious, and the supposed point was in there somewhere if you could keep up, which Larry couldn’t. “I think I’m gonna get in trouble no matter what I do,” Larry said with accidental understanding.

“Where is Sheriff Parker?” Lucille asked again, only straight to the point.

“It’s confidential.”

Lucille nodded. “I can keep things confidential too, Lawrence. Or I can tell what I know to people who aren’t gonna like it and let the chips fall where they may, and those are mighty big chips. Did you ever get that last landlord you had the run-in with paid back?”

Larry moaned, the exact circumstances of his rock-and-a-hard-place situation finally sinking in. “So if I don’t tell you where the sheriff went, you’ll tell Daddy about the chew. That’s it, ain’t it? I know it is, and then I’ll be out of the house and fired all in one kick in the teeth, and it’s none of his goddamned business what I do anyway.” He scowled at Lucille. “Yours either.”

Lucille slapped her long-nailed hand to her chest theatrically. “Why Larry Harper I don’t know what on earth you’re talking about. I never said any such thing about one having anything to do with the other.” She paused and gave him a look that said exactly the opposite. “But my memory does come and go.” She leaned over the counter toward him. “Now where is Jerry Don?”