Hot Enough to Kill Read online

  "Of course," Lucille said, "he'd have certainly turned out better if you had married him. Couldn't be much worse."

  Shoving aside the big ball of regrets that seemed to knot up my stomach whenever I thought about my choices concerning Jerry Don Parker, I tried to focus on the grown-up Jerry of today. Regardless of my mother's melodrama, she knew very well that Jerry hadn't exactly turned out too bad, to seriously understate the facts.

  He'd been the best looking guy in high school and he looked even better now. Not a dead ringer for the new James Bond, but close enough to send your basic female heart to fluttering. Texas accent rather than British, of course.

  Jerry had also earned a degree in criminal justice and worked in federal law enforcement for several years before returning to his hometown to raise his kids. I'd debate the merits of that last decision, but he hadn't asked my opinion in the matter. He'd had a perfect little blonde wife to handle that task. I felt my upper lip curl and I forced it down. I needed to save my childish behavior for my mother.

  "You know, Mother, if Jerry and I hadn't stayed friends through the years, he might have booked you on a whole list of offenses instead of just putting you away where you couldn't get into any more trouble."

  Lucille's chin lifted another notch. "I'm not in trouble, Missy. I haven't done a thing wrong, and he had no business nosing into my personal life. That's private and confidential, and I don't have to tell him one damn thing about what went on between me and BigJohn."

  "I'm afraid you do, Mother. Somebody killed your boyfriend. On purpose. He was murdered. That's a real bad thing. Understand?"

  "Don't get smart with me, young lady. I know what happened. I'm not senile."

  No, she surely wasn't, but I was definitely exhibiting some of the tell-tale symptoms. The all-night drive had done a fine job of convincing me that I was about twice as old as my forty-three years, and trying to keep up with Lucille had sent the age meter into triple digits. And it certainly didn't help that the one who should be traumatized by the ordeal looked positively perky, if seriously cranky. I opted to diffuse both our moods with a foray back to the underlying cause of both our troubles. "So who do you think killed him?"

  Lucille shrugged. "Probably that loony wife of his. She didn't want anything to do with him until he started going with me, and then here she comes a running back to town. She was just pea-green jealous of me, I tell you." She twisted a manicured acrylic nail into a curl of Frivolous Fawn. "I suppose anybody could understand why."

  I suppose so.

  Now, I had never seen BigJohn's wife, but there's no question that my mother is a very attractive woman. Kind of a cross between Rue McClanahan, Dolly Parton and Joan Collins. And she says exactly what's on her mind. "So you really think she'd be capable of such a thing?"

  She shrugged again. "It wouldn't surprise me. She probably had as good a reason as any of them."

  "Them?"

  "Well, there were a whole bunch of people hot over BigJohn's recent doings."

  I fluffed my shoulder-length hair off my neck to try to cool off then tucked an auburn-tinted curl behind my ear. "Like who?"

  Mother frowned. "Jolene, I do not know why you insist on poking your hair behind your ears. You've always been such a pretty girl, but you really should think about a little back-combing and some hair spray. Get some lift there on the top."

  I gritted my teeth and did not say that the beehive went out several decades ago, and furthermore, I thought I looked pretty decent, thank you very much. I happen to have enough natural curl in my hair that, with the right cut, it kind of does its own thing and usually turns out okay. I do not, in any way, shape or form need any more lift to my hair. In this climate, the humidity puffs it up and out in every direction.

  "And I bought you that big old tray of cosmetics for Christmas, but you don't ever use them. Why, if you'd just wear a little lipstick...."

  "I wear mascara," I said, realizing as I did that I'd let her drag me into a conversation I didn't want to have--ever. "Okay, Mother, you're right, I'd look much better if I permed and sprayed and painted, but I don't, so let's get back to the point. Who all was upset over the mayor's activities?"

  Lucille huffed and patted her own hair, probably wondering how she could have produced such a daughter. After another glare in my direction, she said, "Just about everybody in town was mad at him. Every single member of the city council, the mayor pro tem and a goodly number of citizens who had their water shut off in some snafu down at city hall, not to mention the secretary who had to answer all those irate calls. I'll tell you, I was so mad I could've choked the life right out of him with my bare hands over that. I didn't have a drop of water in my house for two whole days!"

  I started to mention--again--that she shouldn't be spouting off her murderous thoughts regarding the dead mayor, but she was already ticking off other suspects.

  "And then there's that Dee-Wayne Schuman. Why, he stood right up at a city council meeting and called BigJohn a son of a bitch, which he is, because he stopped all the house building out north of town on account of permits or something. He'd also been trying to push the city limits out around some houses to boost the tax rolls. And I never said he was a good mayor."

  "Sounds like he's alienated just about everybody."

  "What goes around, comes around, I always say. BigJohn wasn't nearly as smart as he looked."

  Now there was a scary thought. BigJohn Bennett had been a decent-looking man, in a Lyndon Johnson sort of way, but he in no way resembled a Mensa candidate. Still, he'd been the hot catch of the senior crowd, which was most likely the reason my mother had hooked up with him in the first place. Showing her pals that she still "has it" never strays far from her mind. I shudder to think what she might have done if he hadn't wanted her. Lucille does not take rejection gracefully, trust me.

  The thought jabbed at me again. I couldn't make myself believe that my mother would shoot her boyfriend, no matter how mad she got, but I couldn't short-circuit the nagging "what if" that kept looping through my mind. The fact of the matter was that Lucille wasn't acting entirely like herself, and she for darn sure wasn't distressed about the murder of a man she'd practically been living with--her words. She'd made a fairly nice fuss about the sheriff, the jail and the abuse she'd suffered, but it wasn't a classic Lucille performance. Furthermore, she hadn't said a single word in maybe three minutes--really weird.

  I glanced at her from the corner of my eye, trying to get a hint of what was going on with her. Tears along with the silence I would have understood. In the normal scheme of things, a woman who had suddenly and violently lost a friend--much less a boyfriend--would have been crying by now. But she wasn't. She was just staring out the window at nothing. Her eyes were squinted against either the Texas sun or the workings inside her head. Unfortunately, I feared the latter. Feared it with good reason. I knew this woman. And I knew this place.

  In Kickapoo, Texas, things could always get worse--and would. After all, I had just washed the car.

  Chapter 2

  When Mother called about the shooting, I'd been grateful I wasn't tied to a real job. The Denver area newspapers and I have an understanding that I'll send them a feature story when it suits me and they'll send me a minuscule check on a similar schedule. I have a slightly better arrangement with a couple of magazines, but none of it requires that I call in sick or fill out a form for vacation time.

  And the kids aren't a panic-inducing travel issue anymore either--usually. Being reduced to nothing but a long distance ATM machine for the college-interred offspring does have its good points.

  So, unfettered and feeling a surge of importance that someone really needed me, as opposed to say, my PIN number, I'd saddled up the white horse--or more accurately, the blue Tahoe--and came charging down from the Rockies to rescue my mother.

  For the first few hours of the journey, I felt really noble, heroic even. Lady Knight Jo Jackson on her journey to aid the fair queen in her hour of need. It was a
large leap, but it kept me driving.

  My grandiose self-image began to wilt around one a.m. when I, the would-be knight in shining armor, had to stop for my fourth Big Gulp of Dr. Pepper and stoically threw it on my face instead of drinking it so I could stay awake.

  About the time I hit Amarillo--and the serious heat--I was thoroughly disenchanted with the whole notion of charging anything except the cost of a room at the nearest Hilton.

  Two hours later, when I checked my messages on the cell phone and learned of my mother's incarceration, I chucked the cavalier attitude completely and went into survival mode. Embracing my dark mood, I told my sensible self good-bye and moved fully into my Kickapoo mindset.

  Being of sound and logical mind in Kickapoo, Texas is neither understood nor appreciated. It is a scientific fact that if you stay too long your brain begins to feel like it's being sucked right out of your head. I'd learned this the hard way after returning from an enlightening four years at the University of Texas at Austin.

  All aglow with youthful idealism, the cold hard truth hit me right smack in the chest while I was dutifully applying for a job at my hometown newspaper. The editor never noticed the A's on my transcript, but he did notice my breasts and offered me the job on the spot. His enthusiasm lit up his face as brilliantly as a neon sign flashing "dirty old man." I ran far and fast, and I only come back to this part of the world when I have to. And this time, I definitely had to.

  So, here I am, back in my old room, too tired to sleep and too wired to stop thinking about the past, the present and the screwball mingling of the two.

  Somehow it always feels like I'm stepping back in time when I come here. Maybe it has something to do with walking into a 1920's farmhouse and being hit with 1970's décor that throws me off center. Or maybe it's the fact that the farmhouse sits not on a farm but on four city lots at the fringes of a town that isn't more than a blink in the road. Or it could be much simpler: Mother's house, Mother's rules.

  I ran my hand over my old, scratchy blue velvet headboard then stared at the spongy, glitter-flecked ceiling overhead, the kind that sends clumps of white stuff down when you touch it, the kind that a kid can imagine all sort of shapes or monsters in. My room. But not. A kid's room. The kid I had been--and still felt like whenever I was here. No matter how old I get, when I'm in this house, I will always be the child. And I don't care what anybody says, feeling like you're twelve again is not a dream come true. Then again, neither is having to be the adult and collect your mother from the county jail.

  I stretched out on the bed and tried to think of something besides bad old memories or bad new memories in the making. The fact that Mother was out of jail and technically off the hook was fine as far as it went. Problem was it didn't go very far. Even in my sleep-deprived state, I was very well aware that my mother knew something about last night's murder that I didn't. Call it intuition or call it history repeating itself, but I had a very firm hunch that my mother wasn't telling me everything there was to tell about the mayor and/or his murder.

  Lucille's "if you don't ask, I don't tell" policy had always been a sore spot with my father and me, primarily because it was only a one-way street--Lucille's. What she was hiding this time and how bad it might be were the logical extrapolations, but outlining the possibilities was beyond my abilities at the moment.

  What I did know was that Mayor John "BigJohn" Bennett had been shot in the chest with a shotgun while sitting in his den, reclining in his easy chair, feet propped up, television tuned to the station with the preacher who never sleeps. The shot shattered a window and still hit its mark. Messy, but effective. I knew these interesting tidbits because, well, Jerry Don Parker really is a good friend.

  Since we parted ways in high school about twenty-five years ago, Jerry's managed to forgive me for a lot of things, childish things, like throwing a bottle at him for leaning entirely too far into Rhonda Davenport's car, kissing half the football team to make him jealous and, most especially, for not marrying him. Actually, he never held any of it against me--ever. He even came to my wedding--and smiled. It was more than I ever did for him, and I've always regretted it.

  But now, things were different. For one, we were both divorced--eight years for me, eight months for Jerry. That we both finally wound up single again at the same time did not go unnoticed by either of us. We didn't get too starry-eyed though, having to discuss murder, mayhem and my mother's release from captivity.

  I rubbed my hands across my eyes and yawned, wondering for about the fifty-third time what Lucille was hiding from her only child. I couldn't put my finger on it, but something was wrong with the whole scenario--wrong beyond the fact that a man had been sent to the great beyond by a shotgun. This was Kickapoo, Texas, after all.

  And then, that funny feeling that had been nagging at me since last night gelled into a hard, thick ball.

  With more energy than I thought I possessed, I jumped up off the bed and ran to the back bedroom.

  My adrenaline zinging, I swung open the closet door, shoved aside the off-season clothes and saw exactly what I'd feared: a crescent-shaped indention in the carpet where my dad's shotgun had always been.

  "Mother!"

  * * * *

  "Yes, Jolene, I suppose I could have mentioned it, but I didn't see the point in confusing things. The gun is around here somewhere. I probably just moved it and forgot where I put it."

  "Don't even start singing that song," I said, as sarcastically as I could manage, considering the incredulity muddling my brain. "Your memory is better than mine and we both know it. Where's the damn shotgun?"

  Lucille straightened her shoulders. "Now, there's no call for such language. If I knew where the gun was, I'd tell you. You don't have to curse at me."

  I rolled my eyes and paced again. My mother could say any four-letter word she pleased, but I couldn't. Just like old times. If I didn't have worse problems I'd have pointed it out to her. However, I did have worse problems. "When did you notice the gun missing?"

  She shifted in her chair. "I guess it was a couple of weeks ago. I didn't think much about it." She paused and glared at me. "I am getting older, Jolene, and it isn't impossible that I moved it and forgot about it."

  She was right. I've done exactly what she described on more than one occasion, and I'm three decades shy of seventy-two. Still, I knew my mother. "You've already torn the house apart looking for it, haven't you?"

  Lucille tightened her lips, which was as good as a booming "yes" in Lucillese. "The gun's not here," she said, rather tersely. "And I have no idea what happened to it. Nobody's been here except Merline, Agnes, and..."

  "BigJohn?" I finished for her, lilting my voice upward as if I actually needed her to answer the question, which of course I did not.

  "Well, he never went snooping in my closets. And I know he didn't take the gun. Why would he?"

  Yeah, why? It made no sense that I could see either, but then that was just par for the course. "I have to call Jerry."

  "Well, you don't have to," she said in a superior tone, "but you will. I suppose I should have told you." She shook her head and clicked her nails on the Formica butcher block dining table. "This is certainly going to cause a stir."

  I started to make some smart-ass comment like "you think?" but instead grabbed the phone and wagged the receiver at her. "I ought to make you call him. He knew you weren't telling him everything, just like I did."

  I punched my finger into the rotary dial hole over the number one and began the tedious process of contacting the Bowman County sheriff's department via long distance and pulse dialing.

  When Jerry Don Parker's husky Texas drawl resonated over the phone lines, I completely forgot why I'd called. I was not proud of the fact that at forty-three-years-old, I could still be frozen to the spot with my tongue tied in a knot simply by the sound of his voice. I think I might have managed to mumble "It's Jo" or something equally clever, while I mentally slapped myself into acting semi-mature.

&nbs
p; "Hey, Jo," he said, voice rumbling in ways it just ought not. "Where are we going for lunch or do I have to wait and find a fancy place for dinner?"

  Food. Just the thing to clear the brain. Fancy dinner. He remembered.

  In my younger days, I had a reputation for being a lot of things, none of them cheap. I did eventually rebel from the beauty queen mentality, but I never lost my love of nice things. Besides, I spent too many years at McDonald's when the kids were little, and this was steak country. Visions of a thick, juicy filet mignon danced in my head and my mouth watered in sympathy, but I pushed aside my fantasies as best I could and said, "I'm afraid we might have to postpone our personal business for a while."

  "Aw, Jo, what has your mother done now?"

  As I said, Jerry is quite astute. "She hasn't done anything specific, at least that I know of, but I do have a problem. After my dad died, Mother insisted I take all of Dad's guns home with me to Colorado. I took most of them, but not all. I left one."

  He groaned again. "Tell me it wasn't a shotgun."

  "JC Higgins twelve gauge."

  "Damn."

  "It gets better."

  "I can't wait to hear how," he said, none too cheerily.

  "It's missing."

  He let out a very long and weary sigh. "I'll be right there."

  I had a good half-hour before Jerry could get from Bowman City to Kickapoo, so I hopped in the car and headed to the local gathering place and official information dissemination center, AKA The Dairy Queen. If Lucille wasn't going to be forthcoming with her knowledge, perhaps some of the fine folks at the DQ would. What I wanted to find out, I wasn't exactly sure, but I did want to get a feel for mood in the community. If I happened to stumble on a few little juicy details regarding my mother or the mayor, well, so be it. I could feel the reporter in me clawing its way up, but I tried to ignore it. I wasn't going to get involved, really, I was just going to ask a few questions and see if I got the same story Lucille was telling.