Read Turkey Ranch Road Rage Online
Authors: Paula Boyd
Tags: #mystery, #mayhem, #Paula Boyd, #horny toad, #Jolene, #Lucille, #Texas
“Well, it wouldn’t do a darned bit of good, Miz Smarty Pants, because there is nothing to tell.”
“There’s plenty to tell, not the least of which is why a room rented by you, supposedly for your granddaughter, has a dead man in it. And if she wasn’t staying in it, where was she and why the intrigue? If, by some miracle you answered those questions, we could move on to why Sarah was at the Little Ranch this morning.”
“Well, now there’s no call to get all snippy about it. It’s all very easy to explain.” She cut her eyes to me but kept talking, fast. “I did rent the room, as I believe I said, but I just let Sarah handle things how she thought best. I specifically told her not to tell me in case I was questioned about anything since it was none of anybody’s business what she did or didn’t do.”
She meant me, of course. “So what was Tiger doing there?”
“I suppose Sarah felt sorry for him. I think the others may be staying close by.”
So, why, I wondered, did she bring me here? No sooner had my brain asked the question than I had my answer. Because she knew Sarah wouldn’t be here and it would satisfy me and she could keep her secrets, whatever they were, secret. “Okay, now that you’ve given me a grand non-answer about all that, why don’t you try your hand at why Sarah was at Bob Little’s place?”
“See, see how you’re being, that’s why I can’t tell you things. You just go berserk and have one of your fits and turn on me like a skunk with rabies.”
I gripped the steering wheel with both hands and growled, “Out with it.”
She huffed and twisted her mouth this way and that then said, “Oh, all right, it was just a quick visit, that’s all. Merline and Agnes were going to talk to Bob before the protest and Sarah went along with them. Bob really took to Sarah; they just hit it off first thing so it seemed like a good idea for her to go up there too, him being at his wits end over all the trouble. Those park people had him to the point he was afraid not to sell. We just needed to know if anything had changed before the rally. If things had gone like they were supposed to, Sarah would have been long gone before we got there, especially since you made us late.”
Right. Not taking that bait. “So, the three of them went up to talk to Bob Little but he wasn’t there. Something was wrong at the house—the proverbial signs of foul play—so they called the sheriff. Is that it?”
“Well, I guess so, Jolene. Nobody called and gave me the details. You heard the same things I did standing outside the gate there, but, yes, I’d suppose that was what happened.”
“And yet no one but my daughter came down the hill with the sheriff. I find that odd, don’t you? Were Merline and Agnes still up there? Have they called to tell you anything?”
“I have not talked to either one of them.” She studied her fingernails. “I am sure they’ll call when they can.”
“Okay, Mother, here’s what we’re going to do. I’m heading to the police station to see if Jerry’s truck is there. Even if it isn’t, I’m dropping you off to go inside and see if Sarah is there. He could have left her with a detective.”
“Seems like a waste of time to me, but I suppose we can do that if you insist.”
“I do.”
It took less than ten minutes to drive to the police department, circle the place three times and determine that Jerry wasn’t there and neither was a decent parking place. I stopped in a loading zone while Lucille ran inside to ask about Sarah.
“Well,” she said, climbing back in the car. “That was certainly pointless. I waited and waited at the front desk while they called everybody under the sun, including the janitor, to finally decide that Sarah wasn’t there. Then,” she hissed, “they had the nerve to tell me to go to Bowman County if I had business with the sheriff. That’s what our tax dollars pay for.” She shook her head and clucked her tongue. “Protect and serve, my hind foot.”
“You told them your name, didn’t you?”
“Well, yes, they made me.” Her mouth dropped open and she sucked in an indignant breath. “You don’t think they were lying to me because of their stupid game, do you?”
Harassing her, yes, lying no. I shook my head. “No, and you should probably be grateful they didn’t hold you for questioning, considering. But, they do have a point. I bet there’s somebody in Bowman City who’ll tell us where the sheriff is, and if Sarah is with him.”
Lucille thought about that for a moment. She was still keeping up a good front, but she’d lost some of her confidence that all was right with the world and that her orchestrated charade was still intact. “I suppose I could call Fritz, if you want me to, and ask him.”
I’d already thought of that myself, and I was a little surprised at her volunteering to call. Even so, I figured a personal visit had a better chance of success. “Nah, let’s surprise them.”
“If any of those Harpers know anything, I’ll get it out of them,” Lucille said confidently. “They know better than to try to lie to me.”
I took a left and headed toward the new overpass that would connect us to the old Bowman City highway. After we were headed out of town, I set the cruise and said, “Now then, why don’t you tell me the rest of the story. Actually, just start from the very beginning. The very beginning. How did you find out there was a park being built in the first place?”
Lucille reached down for her purse again, unzipped it and fiddled around for a few seconds then pulled out a pink tissue. She opened her palm and I realized she’d nabbed the tube of lipstick again. She flipped open the mirror and drew on another layer of color she didn’t need. She dabbed the tissue then rolled her lips together again. “There was a story in the paper. I guess that was how I first found out about it, although Demon Seed showed up about the same time, so I’m not really sure. That was all bad enough, but what really stirred things up was those hippies showing up.”
“Tiger and Company.”
“Yes,” she said, settling back in her seat. “I got a little curious. I mean, they just sort of appeared out of the blue, the bunch of them loaded up in two vans with camper trailers, which was kind of odd since that was the very thing we were trying to stop. Of course, having one at the rally was kind of handy.” She paused briefly to breathe, or maybe remind herself what she didn’t want to tell. “Anyway, they were saying they were here to stop the park, which was certainly what I wanted to do, as did anybody with a lick of sense, so I talked to them. They took to me right off, but there was just something fishy about the whole deal. So I took it upon myself to see what they were up to. They had Colorado license plates on their vans and said they were from Boulder. Well, with Sarah living in the very same place and all, I called and had her do some checking up on them.”
Keep in mind that from where I live, I can be where Sarah lives in Boulder almost as quickly as I can be in downtown Denver. And, let’s not forget that I am a reporter of sorts. Not that it mattered, of course. She wouldn’t have called me if I was on the same block until it was absolutely the last possible option or she was in jail. And even then, she hadn’t called me. Jerry had. “Oh, I understand, Mother. Why on earth would you call a professional journalist who does research for a living when you can have a busy college student without a clue handle it? Makes perfect sense to me.”
“See there. That hateful attitude is exactly why I didn’t ask you to do anything and why I don’t tell you things. The entire park would have been built before you quit telling me why I didn’t need to know what I wanted to know, and I darned well knew I wanted to know it. Besides that, you’d have probably scared them off before they did me any good at all.”
Ah, they might smell fishy, but they were potential worker bees and she wasn’t going to take any chances of me messing up her plans with little details like facts. The bullet-induced scar in my shoulder began to twitch again. So did the muscle between my eye and cheekbone. “Do continue.”
“Well,” she said, oblivious to anything outside her own head, “it turns out that AAC just has a post office box up in Colorado. They have a phone number, but you can only leave a message. They don’t answer the phone. Ever. Even the phones they used to call back show up blocked, cell phones too, and they won’t give you their numbers. Got real snooty about it with me. Said it was for safety.” She harrumphed and crossed her arms. “I didn’t think it was very safe for me not being able to get hold of them if we were going to work together. Know-it-alls, all of them. And it doesn’t seem to me any of it was very safe for Tiger either, now was it?”
“Apparently not.”
I hadn’t actually tried to contact any environmental subversives lately, but you wouldn’t really expect them to be listed in the phone book or have an office on Main Street. Then again, you never know. These are strange times. “Okay, A-A-C. Your buddy group is called Ack?”
“Now that’s just ridiculous. Who in the world would call their group Ack? It’s said exactly like it looks, A-A-C. All Animals Count.”
Nothing my mother was involved in of late was exactly as it looked. And while I’d originally thought Lucille might have been set up by the AAC, I now wasn’t so sure who was using whom. Mother Shrewdness is not dumb, and we have established her talents at manipulation and even blackmail, although she is prickly about such things being pointed out. “So, Sarah didn’t find out anything else about them?”
Lucille shook her head. “No, just that they champion causes for animals and somehow they’d heard about the horny toads and the campers, and wanted to be involved.”
“I see,” I said, although I didn’t. I couldn’t cite statistics on it, but I had to wonder how many horny toads were even left in the state since the ants from Hell arrived and began their unhindered carnage. I’d guess that the lizards had a way better chance at dodging travel trailers than fire ant swarms. “Okay, clear something up for me here. Is this a private park or one that will be owned by the city or county or other government group?”
Lucille shook her head, looking genuinely confused. “I really don’t know, Jolene, I really don’t. It seems like they make it sound one way or the other, depending on what they’re trying to get away with. I thought the city of Kickapoo was involved somehow for a while, but now I just don’t know. None of it makes good sense.”
“Neither does Sarah coming down here if she’d already found out all she could in Boulder.”
Lucille fiddled with her seat belt then inspected her nails again. “Mostly, we just wanted to visit. It had been way too long since we’d spent any time together at all.”
“Uh huh. Which is why you put her in a motel in Redwater Falls. Togetherness. And why she wasn’t really staying there and you pretend you don’t know where she was staying. More togetherness and visiting opportunities.”
“Well, now, that was just what we needed to do under the circumstances. You make it out like there was some big conspiracy plan.”
“Because there was. There is. And the sooner you fess up about it the better because this room you so generously provided to her—or somebody—is now a crime scene, remember?”
She frowned for a minute, opened her mouth to defend herself then began to nod enthusiastically. “Well, you know, that’s exactly right. I have just had enough of all this myself. And you are right. It was a conspiracy. A conspiracy to steal my house!” She metaphorically jumped up on her high horse, leaping over all the details she didn’t want to address. Technically, she just sat up straighter in the seat and wagged her finger. “Did you know what that little weasel Damon Saide said to me when he showed up on my doorstep?”
I presumed she meant the first time, not the time she shot at him. But it could have been both times, or every time, for all I knew.
“The lying little turd told me he was stealing my house for the good of the community and it was my civic duty to let him. Said he could get my house one way or another anyway. You just wouldn’t believe the things he was saying, trying to scare me into giving in, treating me like I was senile.” Lucille had worked herself up into a good little fit of indignant outrage. “Thought he could run roughshod right over me and then have me tell him thank you for it.” Lucille looked like she could bite the heads off rats and never blink. “Well, I guess he found out otherwise.”
To say the least.
She had deftly avoided my question, of course, and I was neither shocked nor dismayed nor even peeved at this point. What I was, however, was seeing things with a different light. Imminent Domain. Thanks to a whole bunch of new—and not well-publicized—laws, it was now easier than ever for the government to take away the rights of private citizens. Actually, they’d already taken plenty, just not many people had noticed. I sure didn’t want to be the one to tell her, but these days, pretty much any government entity could indeed take property for whatever reason it deemed to be for the good of the community, even for private development. People were fighting it all around the country, but most folks were oblivious to the issue.
Actually, people were happily oblivious to a lot of significant issues. As long as they could refinance their mortgages, put gas in their cars and keep American Idol coming in on the TV they really didn’t care to know the truth about a lot of things, such as UFOs, weather manipulation, injected RFID chips, three spontaneously collapsing buildings in New York City and two more wars for profit. Willful ignorance is the biggest conspiracy of all. But I digress. “Did you ever tell me who this Saide guy worked for? Was it the city?”
“I don’t know who put the little twerp up to his dirty work and I do not care. He’s an idiot and I threw his stupid little card right back in his stupid little face. He’s got to be in cahoots with somebody. He’s sure not smart enough to think very big on his own.” Lucille glared out the window, tapping her foot as flat land and mesquite trees whizzed past. “For all I know, the little weasel just wanted to steal my house first and then resell it to the park people so he could make himself a big fat profit. Houses like mine are going for big money these days, what with all the Redwater people trying to get into the Kickapoo School District.”