Turkey Ranch Road Rage (18 page)

I saw him eyeing the meal I’d barely touched so I handed it to him. I figured the more bread and gravy he ate, the less he’d want to do. It sure worked that way for me.

He grinned and he settled the box in his lap. “I love this shit.”

“In the late sixties,” Lily said, her voice quivering, “early seventies, what do you remember?”

She meant me, of course, and this was a test I knew I would never pass. “The Monkees, Barbie dolls and ponies.” I knew this was not what they wanted to hear, but I didn’t have anything better. “I was a kid.”

The box lunch in Bobcat’s hand shook and crinkled under his grip. His eyes narrowed and the side of his mouth twitched. “What about the goddamn war? You telling me you don’t remember anything about that?”

So much for the gravy and grease lethargy plan. “Well, yes, of course, but they’re little kid memories. I was, what, eight?”

And then, like a color slide slipping into the tray of an old projector, I saw an overstocked shop filled with black leather jackets, psychedelic PEACE tee shirts and strange paraphernalia inside glass cases. Sweet-smelling incense mingled with the leather and there were belts everywhere. It was the only place in Redwater you could get POW bracelets. Lucille hadn’t wanted to, but I’d begged, and once she got there… The next slide in the mental tray blazed onto the screen and I could see my mother in the store, wistfully fondling a fringed leather motorcycle jacket and telling me she used to have one along with matching leather pants. When we got home she showed me a 1950s era photo of her and Dad, sitting on a Harley in matching full leather outfits. Dad held the handlebars, his boots planted wide to balance the bike, a cigarette dangling from his lips. Mother sported a trendy leather cap set on her head at a jaunty angle with a stylish scarf tossed over her shoulder. Her arms were wrapped around his waist with a sultry come hither look plastered on her face. And I only now remembered it. “I really do not know the woman who says she is my mother.”

Lily muttered something that seemed in agreement with my assessment. I couldn’t make out any of the words, but the tone told me none were complimentary.

While I’d taken my side trip down memory lane, Bobcat had apparently escaped his own mental flashbacks and now seemed okay, relatively speaking. “What do you know about that land behind your mother’s house?”

“You mean the land they want to build the park on?”

Lily slammed her water bottle into the console’s cup holder. “You can’t be this dense.”

Oh, yes I can and I am. “Look, I’m not trying to be secretive or cagey or anything else. I simply have no idea what you’re asking me or what you really want to know. That land was just a place for me to get dumped off a horse and have to walk home from.”

“You better jog your memory,” Bobcat said between bites of my half-eaten lunch. “It’s pretty goddamned important.”

Lily glanced in the mirror then kept looking at me, far longer than seemed prudent for the driver of a vehicle speeding down the highway at 70 miles per hour. “Your dad died about three years ago, right?”

If changing topics to keep me disoriented was her goal, she was succeeding admirably. “Yes, he died the day before Thanksgiving, three years ago.”

Bobcat scooped up the last of my fries. “Heard Lucille didn’t take it too well.”

That would be one way to put it.

My dad had dropped dead of a heart attack early that morning, and by the time I arrived that afternoon, Lucille was pretty much a zombie. As an only child, that left all the decision making, arranging, scheduling and general business of things entirely to me. I eventually found out that her condition was not just a normal state of shock. Before I got there, some idiot doctor had loaded her up with the latest “FDA-approved” designer anxiety drug to help her deal with the shock and grief of her husband dying in front of her.

What neither the doctor nor the drug rep/pusher knew, presumably, was that the maker of the pills—a best-left-unnamed-because-I-don’t-want-to-die pharmaceutical giant—had conveniently overlooked a few pertinent details about how the drug actually worked in order to get it on the market. Specifically, third party testing showed that the drug made rats chew off their own feet and/or hurl themselves into walls. It also made my mother semi-comatose. At first. Then, as she “adjusted to the medication,” paranoia set in, followed by panic attacks, severe ones, and she became afraid to leave the house. She thought she was having heart attacks, thus prompting the brilliant doctor to up the dosage of the offending drug and then added heart, diuretic and sleeping pills to counteract the side effects, presumably. It nearly killed her, and it took me a year of coaxing, convincing and threats to get her off all that crap. “She had a hard time, yes.”

“It’s going to get harder,” Lily said. “A lot harder.”

Bobcat wadded up the second box and stowed the trash. “Who owns the mineral rights to the Little Ranch?”

I had a very bad feeling about that question. I went with the obvious, knowing full well it wasn’t. “Bob Little?”

“Besides him.”

The van jerked to a stop. Somehow, we were now in Kickapoo, parked beside my mother’s house, facing the Little property. I was pretty sure this was my hint at the answer and there was a part of me that wasn’t even surprised. “Why would my mother own mineral rights on Bob Little’s property?”

Bobcat shook his head and flipped his ponytail back over his shoulder. “Goddamn, you really don’t know shit.”

Lily screeched and clutched the steering wheel, looking like she wanted to bang her head against it. I could relate.

“If you’d just asked,” I said, my voice rising in pitch and volume, “I could have told you that in the parking lot at the Dairy Queen and saved all the pointless drama!”

“Oh, hell.” Bobcat picked up his phone and dialed. “Buttercup, when you’re finished, you and Lucille come on over to the Dairy Queen in Kickapoo. Well, good. Yes a half an hour will be fine.” After he’d hung up from leaving the message, he glared at me and growled, “I don’t want to hear any shit about Ethel.”

At least we agreed on that. “Okay, I don’t get it. If you wanted me staring out behind my mother’s house, why didn’t you just meet me here to begin with?”

“I figured it would be easier to separate you and Lucille if Ethel was there and she wasn’t likely to get invited over for tea by your mother.” He shrugged. “Beside, you were already headed to Bowman City.”

I had been, of course, but how did he know that? Rather than ask, I unclipped my phone from my jeans and dialed my mother. He didn’t try to stop me. But she didn’t answer either so I also left a message that included the words “call me” at least three times. Since it seemed like Lucille and I were both about to be released from captivity, I relaxed a little, but I was more confused than ever.

Bobcat pointed across to a row of tall mesquite trees. “Bob Little had a string of wells that came in big in the fifties. He hit ‘em hard for about ten years. There’s one over there.”

I knew the area he was talking about. At one time you could see some of the pump jacks and tanks from the house. “I’d planned to walk the property last night but it didn’t work out. I have no idea what’s there, I haven’t stepped foot on the place in twenty-five years.”

As we sat there, the van still running, I glanced to the mirror at Lily. She was staring straight ahead again, a digital camera in her hands, taking pictures. While Lily snapped away, I tried to remember what I could about anything to do with oil, Bob Little, the property or my deceitful mother. There were some fuzzy areas in my memory banks that seemed like they might be important if only I could drag them out into the light. But I couldn’t.

“He had some other stuff going on in the Seventies,” Bobcat said. “Remember anything about that? A bunch of trucks, dozers, lights at night, anything like that?”

“Look,” I said, trying to sound as sincere as I was. “I don’t know much of anything about anything. It’s news to me that my mother is in any way connected to the Little Ranch at all. As for what might have happened in the seventies, well, my focus was elsewhere. I can tell you what dress I wore to what banquet, I can describe my black velvet platform shoes in exquisite detail and I can tell you my favorite kind of hot rollers and why, but they could have plowed up that whole ranch during that time and I wouldn’t have even noticed.”

Bobcat shook his head. “Nobody has their head that far up their ass.”

“Clearly you have never been a teenage girl nor had to live with one.”

Bobcat scowled. “You have to remember something besides just bullshit.”

“Well, I don’t,” I said, waving my hands in frustration. “Clearly you know what you want me to remember, so just tell me and I’ll see what I can come up with.”

“If I tell you then it ain’t remembering, now is it?” He stared out the window for several long minutes then shook his head again and said, “You’d be wise to keep your daughter stashed wherever she is.”

Prickles raced up my spine. They knew about Sarah. “Why? Is she in danger? She doesn’t know anything either.”

“Just keep her off the streets for a while.” He waved a hand to Lily to drive on. “Wouldn’t hurt you to do the same. Lucille too.”

“You think somebody’s after us? Is it the same people who killed Tiger?”

Lily sucked in her breath and slammed on the brakes. “What do you know about that? Tell me!”

“Lily, just drive. She doesn’t know anything you don’t.”

After a few long seconds of staring at nothing, Lily turned the van around and pulled out onto the street.

Bobcat stared out the window as we headed to the Kickapoo DQ.

After a few seconds of silence, I said, “Would you tell me why you think we’re in danger?”

“I already did.”

“Any chance you’d explain that and save me some grief?”

“Nope.”

Chapter
Twelve

As we rolled into the hometown Dairy Queen parking lot, Bobcat said, “Looks like your mother beat us here.”

I followed his gaze to Lucille’s Buick. “Looks like it. I guess if you want to chat you know how to find me.”

Bobcat leaned over me and opened the van’s door then motioned me out. “Yeah, we know.”

I barely had my feet on the gravel when the van took off, Bobcat slamming the door as they fled. When I turned toward the DQ door, I knew why they were in such a hurry to escape. Ethel Fossy had darted out the front door and was racing after the van, arms waving. My mother was on Ethel’s heels, speed walking with as much dignity and grace as one can across a gravel parking lot in front of a semi-fast food restaurant next to a busy US highway in gold glittered shoes.

“Ethel, you idiot,” Lucille yelled. “You get back here. Quit chasing after that man like some dog in heat.”

Ethel stopped in her tracks and spun around. “How dare you! I’m not—” She crimped her lips together and glared at Lucille. After a last longing glance in the direction the van had fled, Ethel let out a heavy sigh then obediently marched back into the Dairy Queen.

What was going on here? What had I just witnessed? My mother was directing Ethel like the best of beauty queen coaches. Wait a minute! Then it hit me. Ethel was no longer wearing a tank top or hip huggers. She was wearing nice slacks and a tailored blazer, and not one hint of blue eye shadow, although her cheeks were tastefully blushed and her lashes looked thickened and lengthened.

Apparently, while I’d been touring the county with Bobcat and Lily, my mother had whisked her long-time nemesis and avowed mortal enemy away from the Bowman City DQ for a brainwashing and a makeover. Was that really Ethel? And my mother? I’d seen it with my own eyes and even I didn’t believe it.

Lucille shoved my shoulder, pushing me along behind Ethel. “Quit standing there with your mouth open catching flies. I’ve had to reorder my chicken basket and it’s probably getting cold. Come on.”

I didn’t wait for her to grab my arm and drag me inside, but I didn’t necessarily go willingly either. I had some questions for my mother, not the least of which was why she’d run off and left me at the DQ to be kidnapped.

I did not get to ask those questions, however, because I couldn’t get a word in edgewise. I was also trapped on the inside of the booth against the window and therefore had to endure a conversation that no one should have to. Completely oblivious to my presence, Lucille and Ethel enthusiastically debated the pros and cons of chemical peels, Botox and facelifts, old and new trends in lingerie, and having younger men for lovers, for which they both agreed condoms were a real good idea.

I’m not kidding. I sincerely wish I were. But I am not.

It seemed like it took six hours for my mother to eat her food—and catch Ethel up on the new world order. In reality, my torture lasted only about twenty minutes, but it was twenty minutes of pure hell, and I’d have rather been back in the van with a gun pointed at me. Yes, really. The stress of the day was taking its toll, and as soon as Ethel’s personal trainer put the last French fry into her mouth, I gave her a full body nudge. “All done. Let’s go.”

Ethel jumped a little, either startled because she’d forgotten I was there or that I could and would speak.

Lucille glared and scowled and huffed and all the typical things my mother does when she is seriously annoyed with me.