Turkey Ranch Road Rage (35 page)

Oh, I wasn’t thinking about anything. I am not the jealous type and we all know it. “She sure thought it was her lucky day,” I said smiling and waggling my eyebrows. “She wants you bad.”

“You don’t remember her, do you?”

“Not at all.”

“She was in the band.”

I ran down the band roster until something clicked, or actually smacked. “Oh, Cynthia. She played clarinet. I sort of remember her. Always smacking her lips and playing with her reeds.”

“That’s the one.”

“Do I just inspire global hate or does she have a specific reason for her scorn?”

“I don’t know, but envy and jealousy would be my guess. You excelled at everything and were pretty confident about it.” Jerry coughed to cover a chuckle. “You could have been a little intimidating at times.”

Me? I always felt intimidated. I never knew I’d been dishing it out. Yet another topic requiring further introspection. In the meantime, however, I’d found the site I needed and had zoomed down from space to the area around my mother’s house. The clarity was exceptional. “Here it is. Now that I’m convinced it’s a toxic waste dump, it looks even worse than it did this morning.”

Jerry walked up behind me and leaned over my shoulder. “It definitely does not look good.”

“That can’t be all from normal production and salt and stuff, can it?”

“I’m sure some of it’s normal. But that’s a huge area, actually several huge areas. Not anything like I’ve ever seen before.” He leaned closer. “It’s hard to tell how much might be on your mother’s property, but some of it certainly is.”

“I can’t believe that she’d condone deliberate contamination. She’s a deceitful and borderline insane, but she wouldn’t actively participate in that kind of thing, would she?”

“Probably not, but she’s done plenty of things I wouldn’t have guessed she would,” he said, stepping away. “She’s definitely hiding something.”

He certainly had a point there, and I had the unpleasant feeling that we had only scratched the surface of what she’d been willing to do and was now willing to keep us from finding out about. “So where do we start?”

“I’ll set you up over here to search property records. The county map shows ownership. Look for mineral rights or other assignments on each parcel. After that, we’ll try to cross check names and numbers with Railroad Commission records.”

“Okay,” I said, hitting the print button. “I’ll get a few views printed off so we can compare them with maps again. What are you going to do?”

“I have a hunch or two I want to check out. Shouldn’t take long.”

Records searches are tedious business and Jerry’s estimate of an hour seemed highly optimistic. I hoped that was all the time we had to spend because otherwise it looked like we could be at it all night. I started searching through the ledgers, files and films as Jerry had directed. I had file numbers that were supposed to make things easier to find, but that upside down and backwards part of microfiche-ing is just confusing. I had finally worked out a system on how to find research and document the information on each parcel when Jerry interrupted.

“Jolene, you better come take a look at this for yourself.”

I walked over to where he sat and looked at the screen. A familiar name jumped out at me. “Lucille Janette Aston.” He was looking at marriage records. “Oh, my God,” I said, seeing but not believing the official record. “She was married to Bob Little?”

“Right out of high school I would guess,” Jerry said. “Cindy left instructions on how to access the vital records databases. We have birth, death, marriage and divorce records at our fingertips in one way or another. For all her faults, she’s good at this part of her job.”

I wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about praising the tramp for much of anything, but said, “Yes, I’ll give her that. She’s doing her part to make these little skeletons just zoom out of my family closet at warp speed.”

“The only thing this confirms is that your mother made a mistake as a teenager. Nothing more.” When I started stuttering and sputtering, he added, “It doesn’t mean she had an affair with him later.”

“It doesn’t mean she didn’t.”

“Step back from it for a minute and let’s get some more facts. Go over to those old index file drawers over there and see if there are any divorce records filed here. Look up both names and get any corresponding file numbers.”

“Fine. And you may as well find out how many more husbands she had before she married my father.”

One part of my brain continued background stewing while the other did as directed and found the facts. As Jerry had suggested, the marriage had lasted less than a year. There were no children and there were no itemized property settlement documents although there were several pages of legalese that referenced a separate private settlement, which was not attached. Odds were pretty good that the 160-acre parcel of land was part of it. The city lots had been bought years later, no doubt because of their prime location next to the secret ranchland. I wondered if Dad ever even knew about it.

We learned that Lucille had not married anyone else before latching on to my father. Bob had married a woman named Glenda Hicks several years before. No record of divorce, however. I never remembered seeing him with a woman. Couldn’t remember any kids. Then again, I was having enough trouble keeping up with the revelations of the moment much less what happened forty years ago.

In the last thirty-six hours, my head had collected a semi-truck load of details, not to mention a significant amount of nitrous oxide and duct tape, and the warning light was flashing on my overloaded circuits. Maybe more memories would work their way up through the fog tomorrow. Tonight, however, I was fading fast. I glanced down at my watch. It was after ten. Considering everything, it was a minor miracle I wasn’t comatose. “I am just about to drop, Jerry. I don’t think I can take much more tonight.”

“Me either, Jolene.” He pulled his phone from the case on his belt. “I’m going to call Fritz to make sure he doesn’t let Lucille out of his sight. Technically, she’s no guiltier than she was when we left her with him, but it sure seems like she will be.”

“Now you sound like me,” I said, trying to chuckle and failing.

“I know you’re exhausted, but could you check one more thing while I make some calls? Then we can go.”

I didn’t want to, I promise you. “Sure.”

Jerry stood up from where he’d been sitting at the computer. “See if there’s a death record for Glenda Hicks Little. There are pull-down menus on the left side under the main topics.”

I sat down and studied the website, found the correct category then followed the requisite links to a search engine. It took a couple of tries with variations on the name, but I had Glenda’s death certificate on the screen faster than I would have ever guessed.

He clicked off the phone and shoved it back in its case. “Find it?”

“Yes. And now I know why I didn’t remember her. She died the same year I was born. I never met her.”

“What’s the cause of death?”

“Complications of childbirth. Guess that explains why Bob Little has no children either. We didn’t find where he remarried, right?”

“Right,” Jerry said, staring intently at the screen.

“Something wrong?”

“I was just thinking.”

“You think Glenda’s death has something to do with what’s going on now?” I turned and looked up at him. “You don’t think Bob Little killed her and she’s buried in one of those toxic waste pits, do you?”

He stood and shook his head. “You’re tired. I wish I could tell you that a nice soft pillow was in your immediate future, but I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Your mother is not at Fritz’s house.” He waved aside my sputtering commentary. “Don’t bother. She apparently ‘ran home to get a few things.’ But he was just sure she’d be back any minute.” He sighed. “The man knows better.”

I groaned at the reality of what that meant, but my heart still went out to Fritz. He might be a “tough ol’ coot” by reputation, but he was in way over his head with Lucille. “How long has she been gone?”

“She probably left the second after we did. And no, she’s not answering her cell phone or her home phone either. Let’s wrap this up and—” Jerry cocked his head to the side as if he’d heard something.

Chapter
Twenty-Four

The hairs on the back of my neck stood up like porcupine quills and a shiver jerked across my shoulders and down my back. “I heard something too.”

Jerry looked toward the door. “Stay here. I’ll go check it out.”

Oh, no, he wasn’t leaving me here alone. “Jerry…”

“Fine,” he groaned, “but stay behind me.”

A few hall lights were still on, just as they had been when we’d arrived. Nothing had changed, and yet everything felt different. We made our way quietly down the hall back toward the main records office. Something was not right. With every step, the ominous feeling became thicker and heavier. By the time we got to the tall counter, I could already imagine Cindy’s ravaged body sprawled out, shot, stabbed or perhaps strangled. I knew it was coming, I just knew it.

As I looked over the counter toward the back offices, sure enough, there it was. Oh, God. On the floor by the office where we’d last seen her. Frizzy brown hair sprawled across the yellow asbestos floor tiles. One naked arm was outstretched above her head as if she’d been reaching for something and had just given up. “Oh, God, Jerry, I can’t look.”

As soon as the words left my mouth, I heard a shriek. And it wasn’t mine.

The arm moved and so did the frizzy hair.

Another shriek. Mine that time.

“What the hell!” came a disturbed voice. A few seconds later, an unfortunately familiar head popped out from around the cubicle—Larry Harper.

“I’m on break, Jerry, swear to God,” the probationary deputy said, obviously lacking both couth and clothing. “I was just leaving to get back down to the office. It’s been real quiet. Donnell’s got things under control. Cindy thought she heard something so I came to check it out.” He shrugged his fleshy shoulders. “One thing just led to another.”

You know, I would have never believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my very own eyes. I’ve heard stories about such things, but I truly did not believe they actually happened. I am sure that shock and disbelief were pasted on my face.

“This is what I have to deal with,” Jerry muttered. “Or worse.”

Cindy had somehow managed to semi-collect herself from the floor and hung her make-up smeared face out the door as well. She was obviously going for “see what you missed” look to Jerry, but nobody was envious. Nobody.

“Get dressed and get out of here,” Jerry barked. “Both of you. I’ll expect you both here in the morning at 8 am to finish up what I don’t have time to deal with tonight.”

“I’m not on shift then…” Larry started to protest, but the look on Jerry’s face stopped him cold. “Okay, well, yeah. I’ll be here. But just tell me now, am I fired?”

Jerry glared at him. “Eight o’clock, Larry. And you better hope I’m in a better mood than I am right now. Fired is the least of your worries.” Then to Cindy—and it was not an amused look. “I’ll lock the front door with my master key when we’re done here. And don’t even think about getting paid for this. I will deal with you in the morning as well. Now both of you, out.”

He hadn’t said it loudly, but they were zipping around like he was shooting bullets under their feet. A good trick considering they both looked drunk.

After they had stumbled out—and not well dressed I might add—I asked the obvious. “Are you going to fire them?”

He sighed. “If I told you they would be hard to replace with anything better, would you believe me?”

The old adage of good help being hard to find was a pathetic understatement these days. “Sadly, I would.”

Click. A door closed somewhere down the hall where we had just been.

Jerry turned to me and gave me the universal “don’t make a peep” signal. I didn’t, although it sure felt like my heart had burst into a thundering rumba for all to hear. He motioned for me to follow him.

As we walked along the office wall, another door clicked closed. Jerry swung around the corner and burst through the employee access door into the hallway.

There was no way out on this end of the hallway except an alarmed emergency exit that was placarded to make sure even an idiot knew that bells, whistles and the National Guard would result if they pushed the bar on the door.

That left only the rooms where we had been and the restrooms as potential hiding places.

We headed to the restrooms. The entrance was a standard indented area with a water fountain in the center and a door on each side. Women on the left, men on the right.

Jerry motioned me back behind the wall on the men’s side. I had a full view of the women’s doorway and could see a light shining from beneath. Jerry flipped down the doorstop with his boot and kicked the door open in one quick move.

The door slammed back against the wall and stayed open.

He bent down and looked around the doorway, leading with his gun. He must have seen something because he was inside the room in a flash and I heard a stall door bang open.