Hot Enough to Kill (35 page)

He worked his mouth up and down, still holding his. "I done told you--"

"Leroy," I interrupted. "We've all made some mistakes, but first things first." I stood in the bait room, arms crossed, staring at the sopping wet blob of man clutching his rear end. "It sickens me to say this, but take off your pants."

He didn't leer at me; his eyes just bugged out then narrowed into a mean little glare. "The hell I will."

With his eyes rolling back and forth, his mouth quivering, and his tan uniform stuck to his blubber, he looked a lot like his nemesis--the fish, not me.

I sighed heavily and uncrossed my arms. "Believe me, Leroy, if I thought there was any other way around this, I'd leap upon the idea like fire ants on a floating log. But I can't, so suck it up, and let's get this filthy business over with."

Mother settled herself down in a folding chair by the wall, crossed her legs, and settled Leroy's gun in her lap. I could tell she wasn't as comfortable with Leroy's weapon as she was her "Little Lady," but she didn't seem that uncomfortable either. Of course, her purse was still handy. After whacking Leroy with it, she'd set it on the chair next to her in case she needed it again. "May as well do what she says, Leroy. Those catfish spines are poisonous, you know. You're liable to die if she doesn't get you fixed up here real soon."

I didn't know if that was true or not--but I felt obligated to see what kind of damage we were dealing with, considering that once again my mother was the perpetrator of the incident. I glanced around the room and saw a big fillet knife hanging on the wall over the cleaning sink. I pointed in the general direction of the wicked-looking thing. "I could get them off for you, if you're not able. I'm pretty good with knives. Hardly ever slip."

He scowled, grumbled and unbuckled his pants, then turned around and pointed his rather hefty posterior in my direction. He didn't drop the pants much, but enough that I could see a strip of pasty-white skin with a thickening red scratch that led downward into unpleasant territory.

I was wishing--real hard--for one of those surgical drape things that only has the part you need to see cut out, and the part you wished never had to see covered up. "Like it or not, Leroy, and I promise you I don't," I muttered, "I'm gonna have to follow this scratch down and see how bad it is. You hang on to the left side of your trousers and I'll sneak a peek."

In theory, it was a good idea, but the actual execution left a lot to be desired. I got to see way more of Leroy Harper than any human should ever have to. "Lucky you," I said. "It's a cut. Pretty bad one, even, but not a puncture wound. I was sure afraid you'd fallen right on top of a spine. Stay right here and don't move. I'll go find something to put on the wound."

I scurried to the other room and grabbed all the medical supplies on the shelf, which means I got a hydrogen peroxide--I would have preferred alcohol or some other stinging product--and a box of bandages.

Walking back into the bait room, I heard my mother say, "You know, Leroy, with that big old butt of yours, you could have a right nice bulldog tattoo. I mean the kind with the big old jowls that sort of snarls when you move just right. Or, one of those pretty ladies with the big boobs, whatever suited your fancy. Plenty of room to work back there, you could have you a real nice picture of something."

I cleared my throat and it was not trivial gesture. I was trying not to throw up. And no, I did not want to know when, how or why my mother had developed her interest in tattoos. I walked on in like I hadn't heard a single nauseating word. "This won't take but a minute, Leroy. Later, you might want to get some antibiotic cream and put on it, but you should be just fine."

I set about my work, trying to keep my mind on the task rather than the territory. On the positive side, his clothes were drying up pretty quickly. Other than being almost finished with the patch job, it was the only other positive thing I could think of. "So, Leroy, just how much trouble are we in?"

"You're both in big trouble, Jolene. More now," he said, wincing as I smacked a bandage in place just a little harder than I should have. "What you two done is serious. Real serious."

That was no great news flash. Unlike Leroy, I could spell both felony and jail time. But since doing so didn't sound like much fun, all we had to do was keep Leroy from telling on us. "Well, Leroy, if you look at it from my point of view, we didn't know that you weren't involved with whoever is trying to kill us, therefore, self-defense comes in to play, and all that. And, most importantly, you don’t want anybody knowing about any of this anymore than we do."

He cocked his head around to look over his shoulder at me as he mulled over the how the self-defense thing might play out, or more likely, how he was going to get himself out of this mess without looking stupid in front of his department and the whole county. "You ain't suppose to have to defend yourself from the sheriff," he said. "Everybody knows that."

Ah, he was waffling. "That's usually true, Leroy, but in this case we thought the sheriff was the bad guy. Look at what all had happened? How were we to know you weren't?"

As he frowned and scowled to assist his thinking, I slapped on another bandage and did some thinking of my own. Whatever had been going on behind the scenes, I couldn't guess, but one thing was very clear: Jerry cared. I got a little warm fuzzy feeling, but it faded pretty fast when I realized that while he had cared enough to try to keep us safe, he was also back with his ex-wife. Couldn't go there right now or I'd be a puddle, so I focused back on Leroy. He really was to blame for some of the confusion, maybe most of it. I stuck on the last bandage. "Seriously, Leroy, this is really just a silly misunderstanding. If you'd been honest about what you were doing and why, we wouldn't have run like rabbits."

"And shot up my car."

Yeah, there was that. "We're just lucky it didn't turn out worse than it did--or both of us."

He grumbled, but I could tell he was beginning to see the merit in my arguments. With the patch job finished, He pulled up his pants, zippered and buckled then turned toward us. "That woman," he said, pointing at Lucille, "has hit me in the head with her purse more times than I can remember, and she's shot at me. That's a little more than a misunderstanding."

Lucille shook her head and tsk-tsked him like he was a two-year-old. "Now, Leroy, you shot at me first, remember? How's that going to look in a your report?"

Leroy frowned. "I was just trying to get your attention. You were really trying to shoot me."

"No, I just wanted you to back off and leave us alone. I was just trying to get your attention just like you said you were trying to get ours. I believe, under the circumstances, it was a sound plan."

I didn't believe it was too sound, but Leroy the not-so-bright was thinking it over--or thinking over how the story would sound when he told it to Jerry. In my opinion, none of it pointed to brilliance of anyone involved, and I wasn't too excited about having to confess my role in the farce. I was debating how to make my actions sound perfectly plausible when I heard something in the other room.

The entry door at the front of the store creaked open then banged closed. Either somebody needed some bait awfully bad or Bud had returned.

I glanced toward the front room, but I couldn't see anyone for the rows of overpriced canned goods.

"Somebody's coming," Leroy whispered then glanced at Lucille. "Give me my gun back."

"Are you going to arrest us?" I said, sounding suspiciously like a blackmailer.

"In all the years I've known you, Jolene," he said, still rubbing his bandaged bottom, "you never ever been nice to me."

Geez, I'd just doctored his butt, how much nicer could I be? "Okay, Leroy, I'm sorry. I guess it's just part of my nature, but I'm trying to do better. From here on out, I promise to be a complete angel to you. Swear."

Personally, I couldn't hear a single tonality that remotely resembled honesty, but Leroy was nodding thoughtfully. He hitched up his pants and puffed out his chest. "I am feeling better."

I smiled, hoping he'd forget that he wouldn't have been feeling bad at all if my mother hadn't knocked him into the fish tank. I did not ask how his head felt.

"Give me my gun," he said again. Lucille did and he holstered it right up. "But one more misstep out of either of you and the deal's off." He turned toward the front room. "I'll go talk to Bud."

I grinned, widely, not even realizing we'd made a deal. Mother and I were getting off the hook, so to speak, and things were looking up, cheery even. Why, it was almost worth having to doctor Leroy's butt.

Chapter
19

I stepped toward Lucille. "I think I'll go up front and have a word with Bud myself," I said, thinking about how he'd cut the taxi deal then fled. "What is it with these people?"

"Oh, my Lord!" Lucille said, eyes wide.

I followed her gaze and saw Leroy walking back into the bait room, holding his hands high in the air--and he was not preparing to give me a double high-five. Dewayne Schuman stood behind him with a rifle muzzle pressed against his back.

Leroy's eyes blinked rapidly and he looked a little green around the gills. Under the circumstances, I couldn't blame him. Dewayne prodded him along with the gun, backing Leroy up against the catfish tank. The acting sheriff looked as worried about the fish as the gun.

"Sorry about this, Leroy," Dewayne said rather congenially. "But them two took my money and I aim to get it back. BigJohn owed it to me. We had a deal." He scowled for a minute then added, "It's my money and I want it. I’m getting out of here and making a clean start. I give him an invoice just before he got killed and he never paid me. I know you got the money and I want it."

"You should have waited for him to pay you before you killed him," I said, watching his face to see how he'd react to that accusation this time around. No, it didn't make sense, but neither did anything else. "Would have made things a lot easier."

Dewayne scratched his gorilla head with his free hand. "I done told you I didn't kill BigJohn. We were partners. I was making good money. Why would I want to mess that up?"

Yes, well, he wouldn't. Dewayne wasn't our killer any more than Leroy was, and neither of them had a clue about anything. "Okay, fine. If I give you your stash of illegal money--and we all know it is--you'll go away and leave us all alone, yes?"

Dewayne bobbed his big head enthusiastically. "Would've left you alone earlier if you and your mother there hadn't been so pushy. I thought about what to do for a long time. I didn't want to cause trouble, but I'm already in a pot load of it anyway. I was heading back out to the cabin when I saw your car here. I just gotta have that money."

"Should have shot you when I had the chance," Lucille muttered, her hand slipping over toward her purse. "And I want to know why Giff was chasing you around the lake out by my cabin."

"Gifford? Never saw him today." He watched Mother as if he were going to say something, probably "give me that Glock that you've got in that purse," or something to that effect. He also hadn't asked for Leroy's gun. Only a minor oversight I feared; Mother was the one he needed to watch. Apparently, he was remembering that as well.

Before his thoughts gelled too much, I decided to get him thinking of other things. "Did you know Gifford Geller was here when we rolled in, and I do mean rolled in since you slit all four tires?"

He turned back toward me--and away from Mother. "What?"

"Giff said he'd been trying to catch up with you, followed you around the lake for a while."

"Well, I durn sure never saw him." Ape-man shook his scraggly head. "And I didn't touch your car, woman. I got better things to do than fool with your tires. You and that mother of yours get the craziest ideas."

The thought turned his attention back to Mother, and I figured he was about one thought away from remembering what it was he should be watching Lucille for. "All right, fine. I'll get the money," I said. "Let's go out to my car. You can leave from there. Go to Mexico, go to France, I don't care, but leave us alone."

He nodded and motioned me toward the front room with the tip of his rifle.

As I marched past Leroy toward my mother, that familiar sick feeling swooped down upon me once again. Lucille was digging in her purse. I didn't know whether to tell her to sit still, keep walking or prepare for the worst. Knowing my mother as I have come to, I prepared for the worst. And the worst that I could think of was that she'd try to shoot Dewayne, and thus me in the process. Or else we'd just have an old-fashioned Wild West shootout.

Right on cue, I caught a flash of red from the corner of my eye. A little glowing dot began to dance around on the front of Dewayne's shirt then work its way down his arm. Laser sight. Gun. Shit.

Without really thinking, I jumped away from Dewayne and back toward Leroy, ramming my shoulder into him, sending us both sprawling across the floor.

Dewayne swung around toward us. A gunshot boomed. Dewayne screamed. Something clattered on the floor.

"Oh, my," said my mother, completely unflustered and innocence oozing from her lips. "I didn't realize this little thing was loaded."

Like hell, I thought, scrambling across the floor for Dewayne's gun. I nabbed the rifle while Leroy lumbered to his feet, pulling his own recently returned weapon. It wasn't really necessary, considering Mother and I both had guns pointed at Dewayne, who was rolling around on the floor, clutching his hand and shrieking. I turned to Mother. "Were those hollow points?"

"Oh, no," she said, wiping down the gun with the corner of her blouse. "I just used regular loads. I felt bad about doing too much damage to the big old dumbbell. Those hollow points would have just exploded his hand. This way, he's only got a hole. I do expect I hit a few bones though."