Turkey Ranch Road Rage (2 page)

I wasn’t sure which of these details was most amusing, the fact that she’d called the media or that they’d let her keep a phone to do it with. “Well, Jerry, it sounds like you’ve got a real problem there.”

“She’s your mother,” he snapped back, adding an accusatory tone to be sure I got the message.

“I was switched at birth.”

“Jolene…”

“Look, Jerry, what do you want me to say? Just treat her like you would any other vicious criminal who’d done the same thing and move along.”

“It’s not that simple.” He sighed, heavily. “Your mother and her friends have been writing letters to a whole lot of people, such as every member of the city councils of both Redwater Falls and Kickapoo.”

“Okay, nothing illegal about that.”

“These were threatening letters,” he said. “Some have appeared in the Redwater paper.”

Public threats. Yes, that was bad, likely very bad, but I couldn’t acknowledge it or I’d find myself heading south before I could even utter the words “please God, not again.” “Well, Jerry, I think that’s great that she’s trying to do things to get somebody to pay attention to that park problem. Granted, shooting a county maintenance truck was a bad call, but the rest seems perfectly legal and civic-minded even. Did I mention that I also have American Express?”

“In her letters,” he said, deftly avoiding my attempts to buy my way out of this mess,“ she promised, and I quote, ‘to take out every last scum sucker involved in such a stupid idea’.”

Oh boy. My stomach gurgled and I reached for a couple of antacid tablets. I lie to myself, saying I keep the bottle on my desk because the calcium is good for me and I am dutiful about watching my health. The truth is my consumption of stomach mints is tied less to concerns about healthy bones and more to phone calls to, from or about my mother. I crunched up the tablets then washed them down with a swig of Dr Pepper. This, of course, created an instant volcanic eruption of foam, which went both up and down my available airways. I covered the receiver with my hand while I swallowed, sputtered and coughed, listening to Jerry detail my mother’s most recent activist activities. As he talked, I automatically grabbed the bottle again and ingested another three hundred percent of my daily-recommended dosage of calcium carbonate. I did not swig anything during or after, but I choked just the same.

“Furthermore,” he continued, “she said that her daughter was a ‘hot shot’ reporter in Denver with connections and that heads were going to roll. She said Jolene Jackson knew people and she wouldn’t let a ‘bunch of thugs’ ruin her mother’s home. She hinted at mob ties and hit men as well. I can fax you the articles if you’d like.”

No, I would not like. Not even a little. Hit men? Rolling heads? Damn. The scar on my arm began to twitch then escalated to throbbing spasms. It had been about eight months since a would-be killer’s bullet had ripped through the flesh and bone just below my shoulder. The wound had healed remarkable well, considering, but it still provided a major punch of physical pain to go along with flashbacks and panic attacks that even thinking of having to go back to Kickapoo, Texas brought on. Like now.

As a last ditch effort, I decided to look for a situational loophole, one that would keep me seven hundred miles away from the reality of it, whatever “it” was this time. I rubbed my arm and took deep calming breaths. I could do this; I just needed more to work with. “Just exactly how is this park going to ruin my mother’s home?”

“She thinks they’re going to put the campers right behind her house.”

“Well, are they?”

“I guess it’s possible. The land goes all the way to her house, Jolene, you know that.”

Meaning, yes. That familiar sick feeling balled up in my stomach and the sound of gunshots exploded inside my head. There are no words to describe how badly I did not want to go to Texas or deal with anymore lunatics, which in my experience were generally well-armed lunatics. And the first pistol-packing lunatic to deal with was my mother. I could easily envision Lucille Jackson leaning over her back fence, blowing holes in Airstreams and Winnebagoes. I could see it, but I sure couldn’t stop it. Palpitations thumped an irregular cadence on my breastbone. “My mother is going to do whatever she pleases whether I’m there or not,” I said as firmly and unemotionally as I could. “You know that.”

“Well, we have to do something,” Jerry grumbled. “It’s getting ugly around here, and your mother is the instigator of most of it. Her spacey group has already been pegged as a bunch of militants because of their threats, which is bad enough, but then the environmentalists showed up and started talking animal rights. Well, that upset some church ladies, who were real quick to tell them that God had given man, not animals, dominion over the land. Obliged to enforce this holy directive, they began vigorously protesting the protesters, and well, it became rather complicated. Surely you saw it on the news.”

No, surely I had not. The knots in my stomach wrenched a little tighter. “Look, Jerry, I haven’t watched the news, I haven’t read the paper, and more importantly I haven’t talked to my mother in almost two weeks. I don’t know anything about what’s going on down there.”

“Well, Jolene, it’s like this. I’ve got several mobs of people with picket signs marching outside my window right this minute.” He paused and took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “Half of them are waving Bibles and the other half are dressed up like horned toads.”

Huh? Apparently I needed a sign myself so I’d know what the hell he was talking about. “Horned toads? Horny toads? Those spiked frog-lizard things we used to torture as children?”

“Exactly.”

“Why, dare I ask, are people wearing lizard suits outside the county jail?”

“I told you, they’re protesting. I have to give them credit though,” he said, the dark cloud lifting from his voice, lightening it to almost a chuckle. “They know how to set a stage. A pretty girl in a cage wearing body paint and foam lizard parts is hard to ignore.” He coughed a little, probably getting all choked up just thinking about it. “She’s attracting a lot of attention.”

Obviously. “I’m guessing she’s one of your environmentalist protesters.”

“It appears that way.”

As I wondered about the naked lizard impersonator, Jerry went on to give me the gory details of the militant wildlife group my mother had embraced along with a few highlights of their tactics. I’d never heard of AAC (All Animals Count), but it sounded like a standard “save the wildlife by burning down the condos” kind of group. I couldn’t imagine my mother giving a rat’s rear about the plight of a spiked lizard, but I could very well imagine that she’d go Rambo over something a little more personal, like campers behind the azaleas.

Indeed, I could see my militia-minded mother quite clearly, her hair pristinely coifed, eyebrows and lips freshly painted, clusters of purple balls dangling from her earlobes, her glittery bespangled sweatshirt crisscrossed with bandoliers, and an automatic weapon in each hand, the purple nail polish of her trigger fingers providing a lovely contrast to the gray-green gunmetal. Laugh if you will, but Lucille Jackson is a card-carrying member of the NRA, has both a concealed weapon and a legal permit for the same, is fond of laser sights and has a lifetime membership to the Redwater Falls Gun Club. In fact, I would only be mildly surprised to learn that she has a box of AK-47s stuffed under her bed, and the surprising part would be that they were under her bed rather than on a display rack above it.

Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating a little, but only a little. I don’t really know what all the woman is capable of. I’ve found out more about my mother in the last few months than in the entire rest of my life combined. It has made me both jaded and wary. During this same time period I have also learned to trust my gut. So, regardless of what my guilt-trained mind might say—like, “you really should go, she’s your mother”—my wiser inner warning system screamed “Are you stupid!”

When Jerry finished regaling me with things I’d rather not know, I reiterated my position on the situation. “I said I’d pay her fine, Jerry, or whatever, but there is no reason for me to drive down there to do it. My VISA number is—”

“You don’t have a choice.”

“Oh, yes, I do,” I said, the scar tissue in my upper arm twitched and throbbed. “I’m not the woman’s babysitter or her legal guardian.”

“You will be if I get her declared incapable of caring for herself.”

A cold chill swept up my spine. Would he do that? Could he do that? Or, was he just threatening me to get his own way, assuming I wouldn’t know one way or another, which I did not. “You can’t do that.”

“I can. I don’t want to, but I can.”

“Blackmail does not endear you to me, Sheriff Parker.”

“Oh, now, Jolene,” he said, his voice softening to a cajoling rumble, dipping into that tone that makes my brain turn to mush. “Once you get here everything will settle right down. If your mother isn’t stirring up the AAC people, they’ll leave and everything will get back to normal in no time.”

“Fat chance,” I grumbled.

First of all, nothing about Kickapoo, Texas resembled my idea of normal. Ever. Second of all, what sounded mildly eccentric over the phone had a nasty habit of transmuting into wildly deranged when you had to face it in person. And thirdly, but not leastly, my mother was not only in the middle of the current mayhem, she was the ringleader of it.

For not the first time, or the fiftieth time for that matter, I wondered exactly why I’d been born to Lucille Jackson. What grave past-life crime had I committed to warrant this kind of punishment? Some soul-searching theories propose that we choose the circumstances of our birth and parents so as to overcome particular challenges in this lifetime. That these specific circumstances will help us evolve into more enlightened beings. It’s kind of a neat theory until you really think about it. I mean really think about it. I asked for this?

Since there wasn’t a New Age theory yet devised that could explain my mother and make me like it, I was rethinking my stance on the whole Satan-is-out-to-get-you thing when Jerry cleared his throat to remind me he was still on the line. “So when do you think you’ll get here?”

Before I could come up with a clever variation of “when Hell freezes over,” I heard a series of loud pops, like the rat-a-tat-tat of a string of firecrackers. Or bullets. Then, a thundering boom followed by what sounded like one of my favorite four letter expletives sputtering from the usually sterile-mouthed sheriff. “Get down here, Jolene.” Boom. “Now!”

Click.

The phone had gone dead so I tossed the receiver into the cradle, wondering exactly what I’d just heard. A worried sheriff for sure, but what else? Bullets? Bombs?

Not in Kickapoo.

Of course, in Kickapoo.

After running the myriad possibilities through my ever-ready mental visual system, I determined that any slim chance of avoiding a trip to Texas had exploded right along with that loud boom on the other end of the phone. The only remaining question was how to get there. I usually drive. I always drive. I’m about an hour and a half from Denver International, and Kickapoo is two and a half hours from the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport. Add in wait times and car rental time and I can be at the Texas border. So why was I even thinking about flying? And what were the odds that I could get on a plane at my convenience that wouldn’t require me to take out a second mortgage?

Since I had to log on to the Internet anyway to send the article—and assure that Dr Pepper money would be forthcoming—I decided to investigate one of the online ticket getters.

I’ll spare you the lengthy details of the process, but if you’ve never bid for a plane ticket online, do not do so unless you really want to buy the ticket. Who’d have guessed my $168 random roundtrip figure would actually get me a seat on a jet to Dallas at the last minute? Not me, that’s for sure. Thanks to my eager fingers and ever-willing credit card number, I had about five hours to get myself seated and buckled aboard a southbound plane. Translated to real time, I had maybe an hour to get my house in order, throw some clothes in a bag and get out the door.

Yes, I am insane, and it is clearly an inherited trait.

Chapter
Two

Thanks to the friendly skies and a peppy rented Toyota—which cost more than what I’d get for that one lousy article—I arrived at the Bowman County jail a few minutes before ten that night.

The courthouse, where the Sheriff’s Department resides, was dark, but I made my way around to the back. The main door was indeed open, but the secondary door where Jerry let himself in and out was locked, probably always was, now that I thought about it. Still, if I could avoid explaining myself to whoever was manning the front desk, all the better. I knocked, hard, until I saw a figure moving toward the small window. I wasn’t even a little surprised to see Deputy Leroy Harper eyeing me through the square re-enforced glass in the door. I waved and tried to smile.

Leroy pushed open the door, nearly knocking me down. “What in the hell are you doing here?”

I didn’t take offense as he sounded shocked, not homicidal as in previous episodes. Furthermore, I had asked myself that same question so many times that it had kind of lost its impact. “I didn’t have a choice, Leroy. You have my mother. Remember?”

He shooed me inside and slammed the vault-like door behind me. “Well, yeah, Jerry told us you were coming, but I don’t know how you got here this fast.” He paused, propping his hands on his hips, which is no easy feat considering the width of his waistline. “Jerry called you not nine hours ago. You’d had to drive a hunnerd the whole way. That’s speeding, even in Colorado and New Mexico. How many tickets did you get? I’m not fixin’ any tickets. No can do.”