Hot Enough to Kill (34 page)

"Oh, wait a minute," I yelled belatedly, since Giff had powered up his window and sped off down the road. "We could have used that car, Mother."

"I don't need his stupid old car," she said, then she spun on her heel and marched into the swamp-cooled dimness of Bud's Beer and Bait.

As I watched an escape opportunity disappear around the corner on four inflated tires, I tried to think of a better option than begging Bud to go into the taxi business. I suppose I could give Mother the go-ahead to pull her Glock on him and we could force him to drive us to town. The idea had some merit so I headed into the bait house to offer the option.

When I stepped inside, I saw that Mother was already in the midst of an animated conversation with Bud, so I wandered down the snack food aisle, which was also the only food aisle. Within minutes, Lucille came marching back to where I stood admiring a rack of potato chips.

"Bud's gonna drive us to town, Jolene," she said, sounding none too pleased. "I ought to just highjack him and be done with it."

I shrugged. "Go ahead. What's one more felony?"

"Are you being sarcastic again?"

"Only a little."

"Well, then, I guess I'll do just that if it comes to it. But right now I told him our car broke down and we needed a way into town. I told him you'd pay him for his trouble so he seemed willing enough. Of course, for two hundred dollars he ought to be dancing a jig as well as driving us."

Two hundred dollars was nothing. Nothing at all. And I was quite happy to pay for a ride into town. Technically, BigJohn and Dewayne's stash of money would pay, but I wasn't in the mood to pick nits. "You know, we've got plenty of money. Can't we just buy his car or something?"

"He won't sell us his car I've already tried. Offered him twice what that junk heap is worth."

Ah, there was the problem. Bud's profit margin is more in the 300 percent range. "So does he have somebody to run the store for him or are we going to have to pay him to close up shop, too?"

"He's called someone to come in, but it's going to take them a few minutes to get here. He said we could just get ourselves a Coke and have a seat back in the bait house where it's real cool. It shouldn't be long."

Waiting around made me seriously nervous, but kidnapping Bud and/or hijacking his car didn't evoke calm and serene feelings either. I'd give it a few minutes and see what happened. If worse came to worst, I'd turn Lucille and her Little Lady loose on him and we'd get to Redwater Falls just fine. Still, if there was a chance at doing things without committing another felony, I tended to lean in that direction.

I walked on into the back room, where the smell of fish was overwhelming, but not putrid, just fishy. Sparsely furnished with a few chairs lining one wall and a wooden workbench lining another, the room was rustic, to say the least. Bud had nailed up assorted fishing paraphernalia along with a few semi-professionally mounted fish, but the main attractions in the small room were the bait tanks.

Four big long metal troughs, two back-to-back, took up the center of the room. Each had various sized compartments to house the different sizes or minnows, crawdads, frogs or whatever was used for bait these days. Each trough had a bubbler and some sort of circulating pump to keep the water cool and fresh. The tanks were dark inside, so I couldn't see much, only a glimpse of movement every now and then. I'd always been fascinated by these tanks as a kid and could stare down in the water for what seemed like hours. I moved up closer to the tank and did just that. I still kind of liked it.

As my eyes adjusted to looking into the water, I saw it. Lying on the bottom of one tank, not moving at all, was what looked like a big-headed green club with whiskers: a catfish--a really big catfish. Bud had most likely nabbed this prize on his own person al trot line and put it on display for his pals to see. It was the traditional sportsman-type thing to do around here. That, and hanging the head on a fence post--don't ask me why.

Mister Whiskers looked plenty unhappy in that trough, and with good reason, but I didn't want him blaming me for his incarceration on death row. Catfish are highly skilled at self-defense, which I always took as being downright mean. They'd just as soon stab you with their long spines as look at you. I was worried that the back fin on this big rascal would stick right up out of the water if he were so inclined to fluff it up, so I moved myself along to the next tank.

The second I stepped up, a swarm of little fish shimmered to the far side of the tank, the living mass shifting as a single unit. I moved to the middle and watched them, lined up like fat toothpicks, wiggling this way and that, yet staying in one place, doing what little fish do. My mood improved a little and I lost myself in the perfection of the minnows, moving together as one.

"Afternoon, ladies."

A gravelly voice shattered my complacency--Leroy. What was he doing here? Had Bud-the-Baitmaster called him? I glanced around and didn't see Bud, not that it mattered much. I should have opted for the felony kidnapping since there was no getting away now. I couldn't see a darn thing we could do, so that's what I did--nothing. Just kept staring at the little fish, wishing I were anywhere but here. Well, maybe not anywhere. The morgue was not on my gotta-go-there list.

"Leroy Harper," Lucille said, not at all reticent about speaking. "I've had my fill of you and I've a mind to call some fancy civil rights people and tell them what all you've done. Harassment's against the law, and you darn well know it."

"What's against the law, Miz Jackson," he said huffily, "is running from the acting Bowman County Sheriff, not to mention shooting at him and trying to kill him."

From the sound of his voice, I could tell that Leroy had positioned himself somewhere behind me and in front of my mother. I could both feel his presence and smell it. Leroy was sweating like a pig, so to speak.

"I can't very well overlook your shooting at me, no sir-ee. You're gonna have to answer for that." He chuckled, but it sounded more like a bullfrog coughing. "And I'll be taking that gun now, Miz Jackson. You're liable to hurt somebody with that thing."

"Wrong thing to say, Leroy," I muttered. I could feel my mother's tension pulsing across the room like a force field. She was going to blow--big. Nobody, but nobody, touched her Little Lady. I turned around in time to see her getting a good grip on the purse. "Oh, shit."

The purse hit Leroy square on the side of the head and he spun around like a big, fat top then flopped butt-first into the trough with the big old catfish.

The tank erupted into a churning splashing frenzy. Leroy screeched loudly and leaped up out of the tank, grabbing his backside with both hands. "Something bit me! Something bit me!" he screeched, lurching around the room rubbing and cursing.

I didn't suspect he'd actually been bit. More likely, Mr. Catfish had taken exception to the company in his tank and had put his spines at full mast.

Leroy continued to scream and hop and curse and drip and curse and scream.

Mother grabbed me by the arm. "Come on, Jolene. We'll take his car."

I glanced at the hopping, howling Leroy. "Good idea. Should I ask him for the keys or do you want to?"

While my mother considered her choices, Leroy yelled louder, and I could have sworn I heard a couple of "how could you do this to me" whines amidst the howls.

"Shut up, Leroy," I said, out of patience with everyone and everything.

What to do, what to do.... Then it came to me. Being my mother's daughter, I grabbed his gun, which if he'd had any sense he'd have already pulled on us, and promptly handed it to my mother who likes being in charge of such things. "I really don't want you to shoot him," I said to Mother, although I was looking at Leroy. "Unless you have to." Then to Leroy, "Okay, hand over the keys to the car, Mister Acting Sheriff. Mother and I feel the need to go for a little ride."

"You can't take my cruiser, Jolene," he sputtered, still howling in intermittent bursts. "This one's on loan while mine's being fixed." He shot my mother a wicked glare. "If I get this one messed up, I'm done for."

"Give us those keys, Leroy, and don't even be thinking about trying anything stupid," Mother said, a scary twinkle in her eyes, "if you can help it."

As Leroy moaned and sputtered some more, I glanced around to see if anyone else was in the store. Apparently not. Bud was long gone, and I could only hope he was calling in some official police types, good guys in white hats would be my preference, not that we could wait around for them to arrive. "The keys, Leroy."

He tried to wedge his fat fingers into the wet and stressed fabric of his trousers, but with little success. "This is all your fault, Jolene. Every durn bit of it. I try to help you and look where it gets me. My backside is burning like fire and I'm probably bleeding like a stuck pig. All on account of I came out here to help you."

"Help me? I don't consider letting you kill me to be of much help, particularly to me."

"Kill you? Why that's the dumbest thing I ever heard of. I'm the acting sheriff and I take that real serious. I've been doing nothing but working night and day trying to keep you safe and find out who murdered BigJohn and who shot at all of us. I'm doing my darnedest to put a stop to these shootings, and I'd just appreciate it if you'd quit being so hateful to me about it."

Uh oh. This was beginning to have a prickly ring of truth to it. And while I value honor and truth above all else, this was blowing some big holes in my conspiracy theory, which promised to leave me with no theory at all about any of this mess. "Okay, Leroy, if you're so innocent, why did you try to trick us into going to Jerry's house?"

"All I was doing was trying to get you and your mother to a safe place like I was told. Then you run off and start shooting at me."

"You shot first," contributed Lucille from her spot by the bait room door.

"I was just trying to get your attention. I was afraid I couldn't catch up to you, and I didn't think you even knew I was back there trying to catch you. Next thing I know, she," he bobbed his head in Lucille's direction, "is hanging herself out the window and shooting at me. For real. And with a laser sight. Scared the holy shit out me, if you don't mind me saying so. And then, she blew a hole right through the radiator. She could've killed me!"

Well, yes, there was that. "But since you didn't die, you immediately called your uncle and told him about it."

"Well, hell, yes. I needed help, and I didn't want it blabbed around the department that I'd let two women shoot up my car and then leave me stranded on the side of the road. I'd have looked like a fool. Besides Uncle Fletch lives not far from where I was. He came and got me."

Oh, boy. This was not sounding good. Not good at all. "So you don't have some warrant out for our arrest?" I asked, cautiously. I was leaning heavily on the side of believing Leroy, specifically that he hadn't intended to kill us at all. And that meant we were in big trouble for a number of reasons. Aside from the obvious felonious ramifications, there was a worse problem. If Leroy wasn't the one who'd been trying to kill us, who was?

He scowled at me. "I should'a just called your crimes into dispatch and had a whole patrol out after you. That's what I ought to have done. Might've made me look stupid, but you'd a been locked up long ago and I wouldn't have half my back end ripped off and my gun taken off of me. I'm never gonna live this down. Never."

I thought he was being a little melodramatic, but there was no denying that he was making sense. And when I looked at his side of things through his "need to prove myself" lens, the ego ramblings and idiotic behaviors started looking like just that. Furthermore, there was one little phrase he'd said a while back that had raised a large red flag, one that was now ready to whip around and slap me in the face. He'd said "like I was told," and there was only person who would have done that. Jerry had given him orders to make sure we were safe. I was certain Sheriff Parker hadn't said, "Be sure they don't know what you're doing and act like an arrogant ass while you're at it," but that was apparently what Leroy heard.

Oh, this was so not good. "So, yesterday, " I said, my interpretations of various events reshuffling themselves in my brain, "when you tried to get us to go inside Jerry's house, you were just trying to protect us?"

"Hell, yes," he boomed, still grimacing and squirming in pain. "I was supposed to keep you there until this thing got wrapped up. Jerry Don told me he didn't care whose nephew I was, if anything happened to you two I'd be back in the oil field fixing pipeline." Leroy looked at me and scowled. "You wouldn't have listened to me no matter what I did and I knew it, so I tried to get you to do what you needed to however I could. Now look what's happened."

Yes, look. Leroy wasn't going to kill us, or at least he hadn't been going to, although the way he was scowling and clutching his backside now tipped the odds back in that direction. But he wasn't going to do us any harm, not if Jerry had threatened him with being demoted to the salt mines, or salt flats, as happens to be the case. I searched my brain for all available options and came up with only one. We had to make nice with Leroy and get him to take us to Redwater Falls, preferably not in handcuffs, where Mother and I would readily cooperate with the authorities, or at least Detective Rick.

"Okay, Leroy, it seems we've had a little misunderstanding," I said, ridiculously understating the situation. "But nobody really knows all the pesky details, so let's just call a truce and figure out what to do next." I watched Leroy dancing around, trying to pretend he wasn't in pain. I can't stand seeing anyone hurt, and while it was going to pain me greatly, I was going to have to tend Leroy's wounds. "Okay--"

"If you hadn't been such an idiot, Leroy," Lucille interrupted, "none of this would have ever happened." She still had his gun, but was now holding it down in front of her. She'd realized the truth just as I had and was also looking for a way out. "Why, you ought to be ashamed. Terrifying an old woman like that. Why I thought you were out to kill us both dead. You could have given me a heart attack. How would you have been feeling then, scaring me death?"