by Paula Boyd
"Don’t laugh, Jerry. Stranger things have happened."
"He’s connected to no one."
I crossed my arms rather smugly. "That we know of--yet."
Now, it hadn’t actually occurred to me that Red might really be the killer. I just thought he was weird and therefore suspect of something. But being of unsound mind and a hair-trigger imagination, I’d grabbed the loose cannon and run with it.
This human behavior stuff is not my thing, however, and trying to put the illogical into a logical framework was giving me a severe headache. Or maybe I was just hungry. I glanced over to the counter where the four carefully packed white sacks were practically jumping up and down to get my attention. "How about a chicken basket? Mother ordered one for you and Deputy Max too."
"Well, Jolene, that was very thoughtful of your mother." Before I could remind him who’d forked over the cash to pay for the thoughtfulness, he said, "And you too. I think I might have to take you out to dinner to make up for it."
A shiver zipped through me, but I tried to hide the fact that he could affect me so easily. The last dinner we’d shared had been almost orgasmic--speaking strictly of taste buds. The steak had been out of this world, to be sure, but the company might have been what pushed the evening to the edge of perfection. On the next outing I expected the whole enchilada, so to speak.
"I’ll hold you to that offer," I said, smiling. "I’ll go find Mother if you want to call Max. We’d better eat this stuff before it gets cold."
Mother declined to join us, and Deputy Max had taken his sack and hustled back outside, acting very stern and official--as if that might somehow make up for taking us cake shopping.
When we finished our meal, Jerry checked his watch. "I need to make another quick call and I’d rather not use the cell phone."
"Sure, help yourself." I figured that he’d prefer to make his call private, so I wandered into the living room.
After a few minutes he joined me, looking highly uncomfortable and maybe even nervous--and Jerry is never visibly nervous. He subtly worked his lips this way and that, but no words came out.
Leaping upon the worst scenario I could imagine at the moment, my thoughts went directly to the ex-wife and children. "Problems at home?"
"No, everyone’s fine." He paused for a moment, staring at me, then through me. "I don’t know where to start." He blinked a few times and smiled. "Nothing’s ever easy for us, is it?"
Well, no, but what was the specific problem this time?
"I’d like to think we could have a normal date at some point…"
I didn’t much like the way he’d left the sentence hanging there, with a huge unspoken "but" attached. "I’d like to think so too, Jerry, but I have a feeling you’re going to tell me why that’s not going to happen."
Not any time soon, it seems."
Okay, enough with the bush beating. "Just tell me what the problem is, Jerry. Short concise declarative sentences would be good."
"I’m taking you to a hotel in Redwater."
"What!" The shriek was loud and piercing. Lucille Jackson appeared behind us, much like an apparition--a gasping outraged one. It was both a theatrical and hypocritical display, considering her own recent history. "Why, Jerry Don Parker! I can’t imagine you talking to my daughter like that."
He shook his head and came out of his daze enough to chuckle a little. "Let me rephrase. The Redwater Falls Police Department insists that I escort your daughter to the guarded hotel room they have arranged for her. Tonight."
Was he serious? Yes, he was definitely serious and the look on his face did not scream "romantic rendezvous at the Hilton." Great, just great.
"Truth is, Miz Jackson," Jerry continued, quite professionally, "The detectives on this case don’t have much to go on. The best chance they have of catching the killer is finding out the connections behind the people circled on those yearbook pages and working from there. One of the other people who might be a target is missing, so right now, Jolene and I are all they’ve got and they want to keep us safe."
"They’re getting you a room at the hotel too?" Lucille said, not missing a beat. "Next to Jolene’s, no doubt."
Huh? I, in my shock, had not made this obvious extrapolation, but Mother-Dearest’s mind is a steel trap when it comes to certain topics. Unfortunately, I had a strong feeling that this was not destined to be a personal Jerry and Jolene moment.
"I won’t know the final arrangements until we get there," Jerry said. "Safety is the first concern, but the detectives want to talk with us both tonight. We’ll have a deputy here with you, of course. There’s also a tow truck on the way to move Jolene’s car."
Car? Tow truck? Taking my car--my ever-ready wheels to freedom? "Now, wait a minute. I want my car with me."
"It’ll be taken care of, Jolene. You'll get a new tire and they'll put the car in the impound lot. We don’t want anyone tracking you through the Tahoe. Next time they might hit more than rubber."
I was still mulling that over when Mother chimed in with her own two cents’ worth.
"All right," Lucille said crisply. "I suppose I’ll go along with this little scheme of yours, but don’t be thinking you’re going to pull a fast one on me. No, sir." Lucille shook a long-nailed finger at Jerry. "I know what you’re up to."
Jerry looked at me, then back at Mother. "I’m not up to anything, Miz Jackson."
"You can’t fool me," Lucille said, still wagging the purple nail at him. "I know good and well it’s time for Max to go off shift." She shook her head and tapped her foot. "Either you pay him overtime to stay with me or you send somebody else decent. I don’t want those Harper boys out here ever again. I’m not listening to Leroy. Or feeding him. Same goes for that ill-mannered brother of his. That Larry won’t be spitting his nasty tobacco juice in my grass ever again, and he’s surely not bringing his slobbering self into my house!"
Jerry nodded, his features relaxing perceptibly. "Yes, Ma’am. Leroy’s off duty tonight and Larry’s not working for us right now anyway. He got a job gauging."
Being a gauger is a plum job, driving from one oil patch to the next, dipping a pole down into a holding tank and seeing where the oil hits on the stick. A real thinker like Larry Harper might remember to both write down the oil level and remove the stick from the tank a good seven out of ten times on average.
"Now, Jerry Don," Lucille said, jabbing a finger at him again for emphasis. "I want to know who you’re planning on sending out here to stay with me."
As if on cue, the doorbell rang. Mother glanced at Jerry, her eyes narrowing. Jerry headed toward the door, but not fast enough. Lucille darted around him and grabbed the latch.
The door creaked open.
Mother screamed.
I didn’t have a clear view to see who was standing outside the door, and reflexively, I glanced around the room for Mother’s purse. I have found that knowing its whereabouts comes in handy in situations rife with fear and shrieking. Not seeing the black bag, I was torn between rushing into the fray or calling the sheriff’s office for help.
"Fritz Harper!" Lucille choked out. "Fritz Harper is a deputy!" She’d recovered her voice and it was escalating in both volume and speed. "You sent him out here to guard me?"
The name definitely rang a bell. I think everybody in the school knew the name of the Harper boys’ father for one reason or another. I knew because Fritz always put ads in the football programs and yearbooks to support the school. Other people knew because they had to call him when Leroy or Larry did something stupid, which was often.
Since this was obviously not the crisis Lucille had made it out to be, I flipped off my panic switch and wandered up to get a firsthand view of the confrontation.
Lucille stood with her nose pressed against the outer storm door, her eyes narrowed into mean little slits. She huffed and puffed, fogging the glass with every snort.
Jerry wedged an arm between Lucille and the glass door. "Now, Miz Jackson, Fritz is a fine deputy. He’s d
one us a good job. You know he sold his farm a while back, and, well, he wanted something to keep him busy so he went to work for us. He’s a good man, as good a man as I’ve ever known."
Fritz might be a good man, but you couldn’t change the fact that he had rather un-admirably sired Leroy and Larry. I peeked around Mother to get a look at the senior Harper. I was expecting an older version of Leroy, and what I saw surprised me.
Fritz was about six feet tall with sandy-blond hair smoothed neatly back from his face. Standing there straight as a pole in his deputy uniform, he looked quite distinguished. Not fleshy like Leroy, but not spindly either, Fritz looked in very good shape for a man his age, which I guessed to be about sixty-five.
And my mother was having a hissy fit. My, my, but her vehemence about having a handsome--and significantly younger--man at the door was a bit of a curiosity.
"Now, Lucille," Fritz called through the glass. "If we could just have a private moment, I can clear up that little misunderstanding we had a while back."
"Well," Lucille said, her voice soft as melting butter. "I just don’t see how that’s at all possible, Fritz Harper, since you’re not setting foot in my house under any circumstances."
Jerry looked over his shoulder at me. It was a helpless pleading look.
"Hey," I said, backing up and out of the way. "I didn’t make the staff assignments. And furthermore, I’m not in charge of my mother. Arrest her if you need to. That’s about all that seems to work."
"Miz Jackson," Jerry said, trying to gently pry her away from the door. "I’m afraid I don’t have much choice but to have Deputy Harper here. If you’ll step back and allow him to come inside, I think we can clear up any problems you might have. I’ll personally vouch for Mr. Harper’s integrity. He’s just here to do his job."
Lucille tipped her head slightly and stepped back as commanded. Unfortunately, it was only so she could grab the heavy wooden door and slam it in Fritz’s face. "I don’t believe that’s possible, Sheriff." She turned and casually walked into the kitchen and began clearing the table.
Jerry sighed heavily, gave me a look that implied I should do something about my mother, then reopened the door and walked outside to talk to his deputy.
I obligingly took myself to the kitchen and began the interrogation. "Okay, Mother, what’s the deal?"
Fire was fairly shooting from her eyes and she was still huffing like an enraged dragon. "That Fritz Harper is just an ass, that’s what the deal is."
Well, it was a start, but not very enlightening. "What exactly did he do?"
"I just don’t think I can speak about it," she said, viciously stuffing the chicken basket wrappers into the trash can. She huffed and gnashed her teeth for a few seconds, then said, "If you must know, it was about a year ago. That Fritz Harper walked right up to me in the Dairy Queen and told me my time of grieving for your father was up and he would be taking me out on a date the following Saturday night." She took a ragged breath. "Can you imagine? The nerve of that man to step right up in front of all my friends and say such a thing!"
Actually, I could and it sounded kind of romantic. Besides, best I could tell Fritz Harper appeared to meet all of Lucille’s essential criteria; meaning he was alive, didn’t use a walker, was nice-looking and was self-supporting besides. The only negative--and one can’t deny it was a big one--was that his last name was Harper. Even so, it seemed the deck was stacked in his favor and she should have jumped at the chance to have him guard her, available and able men being in short supply these days.
"So, you didn’t want to go out with him?"
Her mouth dropped open and she gaped at me for a few seconds then snapped her jaw shut. "Of all people, Jolene, I would have thought you’d understand." She spun around and headed for her bedroom.
Damn. Why can’t I get these things right? I thought about the situation for a few minutes, decided I really did understand and knocked on her door. She didn’t answer. I knew she heard me anyway. "If he hadn’t embarrassed you, would you have gone out with him?"
Thump. Bang. Ching.
It sounded suspiciously like various items were being thrown against the wall. Tsk, tsk. "Is that a yes?"
The door swung open and Lucille gave me a really mean look like this was all my fault. Wasn’t it always?
"He’s not like his boys, Jolene. They took after their mother, and it’s a pity. Fritz is a decent man, but he surely doesn’t know a single solitary thing about asking a lady out. If I’d have started going out with him then, well, just imagine what everybody would have said. Him snapping his fingers and me trotting after him like some fool dog." She huffed again for emphasis. "I don’t care how good-looking he is, I’ll not have anybody thinking I’m a pushover."
As if that were a concern. So, now that I knew what the problem was, all I had to do was give her a graceful way of letting Deputy Fritz stick around and redeem himself. I could do that. "The thing is, Mother..." I tried to look very understanding. "I’m not sure that we have too many choices right now. If those Redwater detectives say I have to go to the hotel, well, gosh, I guess I do."
"Oh, save it, Jolene." She snatched up a pillow and a clothes hanger from the floor. "This is just something Jerry Don worked out so you two could go spend some time together without everybody talking about it, not that folks won’t still talk."
My shoulders stiffened and my chin might have jutted out just a little. "If I want to spend the night with Jerry I don’t need to work out anything with anybody but Jerry, and I for darn sure don’t need the Redwater Police Department supervising the event."
She started to sputter, clamped her lips, huffed a little then said,
"Well, I still don’t think it’s right that you get to run off with Jerry and leave me out here alone with that hard-headed assuming jackass."
Not right? Oh, please. She was practically drooling over the idea. "I don’t see that you have a choice. But if you really want, I can go see if Max can--"
"No," she snapped. "Max needs to get home to his wife." She shook her head and tsk-tsked. "I suppose Fritz can stay. But you go out there and make it real clear that I’m only tolerating him as a favor to you."
"Right, a favor to me, got it. If it weren’t for your deep devotion to your daughter’s well-being and extreme concern for her safety you’d--"
"Don’t overdo it, Jolene," she snapped. "Just get out there and get it over with."
"Fine, I will, but don’t be thinking just because you’ve got Fritz Harper right where you want him that I am in the same situation. Regardless of what you might think, this little outing isn’t going to be fun and games for me." Nothing here ever is.
I found Jerry and Mr. Harper standing in the middle of the living room discussing something, but they both clammed up instantly when I walked in. "Mr. Harper, as you know, there are certainly things to be worked out between you and my mother. She agreed to have you stay here, but only as a favor to me. If my safety weren’t involved, well..." Yeah, it was getting a little deep even for me. "You get the idea."
Fritz chuckled a little and grinned. "Me and Lucille will work things out, don’t you worry. No offense, Miz Jackson, but your mother flies off the handle a little too easy sometimes."
"Fritz Harper, how dare you!" Lucille said, stomping into the room. "Like I told Jolene..."
She continued on telling him this, that and the other thing, so Jerry and I slipped back into the kitchen.
"Let’s get going while we still have the chance," Jerry said.
I wasn’t that anxious to spend the evening on police work, but at the moment it seemed far more appealing than watching Lucille and Fritz play cat and mouse. With a quick nod of agreement, I zipped into the bedroom, grabbed my duffel bag, made a quick sashay into the bathroom for the essential toiletries and was out of the house in a minute flat. Jerry had the car running when I got there. Neither of us said a word as Jerry drove away from Mother’s house and onto the Redwater Falls highway.
Sittin
g still for a few minutes in the car made me realize how tired I actually was. I'd been slapped in the face by the past twice at the grocery store, found a bullet in my tire, battled for and then endured a birthday party at the DQ and that was just getting started. To say the least, it made for a long and weary day. "Do I really have to talk to Rick and company tonight?"
Jerry reached down beside the console, pulled out a yellow yearbook and tossed it in my lap. "Not if you come up with something good to keep him busy until morning."
"Sorry, Jerry, but I’m not looking at this in the car. Besides the fact that I just don’t want to, I’ll throw up. Literally."
"Oh, yeah. Motion sickness."
"Yet another of my childhood problems I haven’t outgrown."
He laughed. "Why do I get the feeling I’m on that list as well."
"Number one slot."
"I think that’s okay, Jolene. Really I do."
I liked the way that sounded, but I knew better than to dwell on any amorous possibilities. We had business to attend to first. "How about the photography club thing, did Rick check on that?"
"Nothing in Calvin’s bank account suggests blackmail payments, particularly twenty-five years of them, but he’s trying to find out if Calvin kept up the hobby or sold his photos in art shows. May take awhile."
"And might not mean anything anyway."
Jerry nodded. "It's possible that one of Calvin's photos from high school turned out to have something incriminating in it for someone, so he keeps it."
"Now, twenty-five years later, something happens that makes him decide to use the photo."
"He tries, but it gets him killed instead."
"That makes some sense," I said. "The people circled might or might not have known about Calvin’s photo, but we would all know what it meant if we saw it."
Jerry tapped his thumbs on the steering wheel. "Although, if the killer has the photo, assuming there is one, why kill the rest of us?"
This scenario was working itself into a corner; I could feel it. "Maybe he doesn’t own it anymore or maybe he thinks there might be another copy?"
"Too many maybes," Jerry said. "But I think we’re on the right track. We’ll sit down at the hotel and brainstorm everything we can think of."
