Killer Moves: The 4th Jolene Jackson Mystery (Jolene Jackson Mysteries) (3 page)

Chapter 4

After a long shower and a quick breakfast of eggs and toast, graciously provided by Agnes, I went over the list of what I needed to do before the end of the day. It was neither a short nor fun-filled list. The un-fun part included finding a place to unload and store my stuff, making an appointment with the attorney and, yes, going to see my mother.

That last item was sure to end badly since I was not “breaking her out of jail” anytime soon, which was why I hadn’t intended to go see her the minute I set foot in Texas. However, if Agnes knew I was here, so did everyone else—and had ratted me out to Lucille. If I didn’t get to the rehab center pronto, I’d be hearing about it—loudly.

Clearly, my grand plan to have a few days to myself before anyone knew I was in town had failed about ten seconds after I pulled into the driveway. If I’d actually let myself think through the situation, I would have realized that would happen. But then again, if I’d let myself think about any part of this deal for very long, I’d probably still be huddled in a corner somewhere, sucking my thumb and mumbling, “I don’t want to and you can’t make me.” Instead, I gave denial and delusion free reign and I just kept telling myself everything was going to be fine…just fine.

Of course, we all know by this point that nothing is ever really “fine” in Kickapoo, Texas, and especially not for me. I’ve tried a lot of things to help me deal with insanity of it all and nothing does. The St. John’s wort pills that were supposed to help keep me calm in dealing with my mother’s murdered-boyfriend crisis and the subsequent mayhem that followed didn’t do squat. I popped those pills like lemon drops, but not once did anybody ever accuse me of being calm.

After my second bullet-ridden adventure down here, It occurred to me that prior to my mother becoming insane, the only time I’d needed pills of any kind had been in the years preceding my divorce from Danny. I’d been taking sam-E for my moods, antihistamines to sleep and high-octane antacid pills so I didn’t choke to death from bile lurching up into my throat when I was semi-comatose. Once Danny vanished, so did the need for all the drugs—instantly and overnight—not kidding. Unfortunately, none of the situations I had to face here were going to vanish that easily, and more likely, the problems would be multiplying like rabbits.

I shook off a shudder and started to add “stop at drugstore” to the list, but I just couldn’t do it. Not this time. This time, Jolene Jackson was not going to fall into that trap. This time, Jolene was going to be in control of her emotions and her person at all times and all by herself, thank you very much. And she wasn’t going to put up with any crap from anybody. Not from her mother and not her new attorneys. And furthermore, she was going to support her assertion that she didn’t need any medication by immediately ceasing to refer to herself in the third person. Geez.

Maybe I really was crazy. I went back to my list and wrote, “Call attorney” one more time. I hadn’t tried crazy on him yet—it might work. Although, I suppose he already thought I was insane, since a few seconds after he informed me I was the sole heir to the grand and well-funded estate, I’d tried to give it back. The team of lawyers there with him, supposedly representing the various business deals left in the lurch by Bob’s untimely death, had not found my responses amusing and had made it abundantly clear that I had no other choice—no good ones anyway.

If I refused to accept, the extensive estate—and all its extensive warts—everything went wholly and directly to my children. Since both were over eighteen, I couldn’t refuse on their behalf either. I know because I’d tried. So, rather than let their academic aspirations—and perhaps morals—be compromised by the mess, I took it on. Which meant, at some point, I was going to have to deal with all the fine properties I’d been bequeathed, including the one I least wanted to. I tentatively added “go see ranch house” to the list. I probably wouldn’t make it there today, but I assumed the attorney would give me the keys to the castle so I could go whenever I got the nerve.

That whole situation felt weird in every way possible. And as much as I hated to admit it, I almost wished Lucille could go with me. “Oh my God,” I said, out loud and to myself. “I haven’t been in Texas even a half a day and I've already completely lost my mind.”

I grabbed the phone, fished around in my billfold for the attorney’s card. Perhaps if I told him it was a matter of life and death—my rapid loss of brain function certainly supported that theory—he might try a little harder to find a loophole to get me un-inherited, like maybe giving it all away. Why couldn’t I just donate everything to a legitimate nonprofit organization with a real mission and let some overseer board somewhere deal with it? The place would make a great “scared straight” kind of boot camp for troubled teens. It certainly scared the crap out of me.

Or what about giving it to Greenpeace? That would be a hoot for about fifty different reasons, none of which were because it would bring either green or peace to the region, although both were desperately needed. On the plus side, if there were any horny toads left in existence, the enviro-militia would have no problem hauling out the big guns to protect them. “Ha!” The dichotomy of that thought was mildly amusing, this being Texas and all, but the half-hearted chuckle that escaped my lips was really just a nervous reflex. The reality of what my life was about to become terrified me, which was why I was still grasping at straws to find a way out. So, I called the attorney.

“Good morning, Vanderhorn Carpenter Vanderhorn Smith, Sheila speaking, how may I help you?”

Wow, say that three times fast. “Good morning, Sheila, this is Jolene Jackson and I”

“Jolene? Jolene Jackson?”

Oh, geez, really? “Yes, this is Jolene.” I paused for effect. “Jolene Jackson.” Yes, I was being a smartass.

Apparently though, I was the only one who noticed, because within seconds, the law office’s primary attorney, one Edmond G. Vanderhorn, III, Esquire, came on the line to speak to me, personally, immediately and enthusiastically. “Jolene!” he said chummily, calling me by my first name and thankfully not repeating it. “Good to hear from you. Ready to get this thing going?”

No, I was not, but we exchanged pleasantries—or unpleasantries—anyway.

Vanderhorn was much cheerier than in our earlier communications, possibly because he thought I had accepted my mission. I admired his confidence and optimism, but I certainly didn’t share it. His big-bucks spin did not convince me I should be dancing a jig as if I’d won the lottery. Best I could tell, what I’d won was a front row seat in hell.

Still, despite playing the devil in my personal nightmare, Vanderhorn seemed nice enough. He’d been Bob Little’s lawyer for decades and really did seem sincere about wanting to do what he could to help me with the details of the estate—just not getting me free of them. He insisted I call him Ed since we were apparently going to be spending a lot of time together. He also insisted I get to his office as soon as possible so we could get started immediately.

I did have to wonder, though, why an attorney who could command $400 an hour—in Redwater Falls, no less—would instantly drop everything and be available to meet with me at whatever time I named. Granted, this was going to be a long and arduous process and would require a great deal of his professional and billable time to resolve… Yes, I’d just answered my own question and it had probably cost me a couple hundred bucks.

* * * * *

The double garage beside Lucille’s house had a room that extended across the entire back. The first part of the storage area had been my dad’s old workshop, and the rest had been my playhouse. I unlocked the door, stepped inside and flipped on the old light switch. A single bulb in the low ceiling flooded the area with light. My dad’s workbench was pretty much as he’d left it. I blinked back tears.

I really missed my daddy—biology realities didn’t change that. Still, he’d been a part of the big lie too—the writing and rewriting of my history—and that made me angry. I’d had no say in any of it, and yet I somehow felt guilty for all of it. There was no logic in it, and I wasn’t going to magically discover any in the garage, so I packed up those tail-chasing thoughts and focused on unloading the car.

It went faster than I’d expected, and after a second quick shower, I was on my way to even more unhappy reality unraveling in Redwater Falls.

On the short trek out of the neighborhood and onto the highway, I kept thinking about the property. In fact, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. And even before I could really see the intersection with Turkey Ranch Road, my foot was on the brake, slowing down to turn. I don’t know why—I had a long list of reasons not to—but something pushed me forward. And within seconds, I was nearing the gate of “The Big House.”

I’d decided on the new moniker for the house on the hill while in the shower. I couldn’t keep calling it Bob Little’s house and I wasn’t ready to call it mine yet either, not to mention that the backhanded prison implication was amusing. Besides, at nearly 6,000 square feet, the place was plenty big in my book so the name fit. It was also a better choice than the runner up, which was “creepy house filled with stuff from dead people I didn’t know.”

The big iron entry gate was open, just as it had been before when I’d stood by the road with Lucille. Unlike then, there were no crowds, TV cameras or emergency equipment. The foreboding feeling, however, was still sort of the same. And yet, as I drove under the massive namesake archway onto the sprawling estate, I couldn’t help but find the incongruity amusing. I was going to The Big House at The Little Ranch. It was good for a laugh, forced as it was. More importantly, it was a nice distraction from the building apprehensive about following through with my impromptu visit.

The driveway up to the house was two lanes of asphalt that was bigger and better than the county road at the bottom of the gate. It was smooth and black, and from the smell, freshly sealed. It ran along the right edge of the plateau as it meandered upward.

Clusters of big trees covered the interior area, along with lush landscaped beds of shrubs and flowers. The rest of the grounds looked like a manicured golf course. Some serious bucks had been spent creating this, not to mention maintaining it. I felt like I’d stepped out of the real world into a hidden oasis—a private estate seen by few—oh, wait, I had.

Now that I thought about it, I suppose I’d been expecting a rundown retro-themed nightmare—a 1970’s dilapidated flattop house surrounded by overgrown mesquites and scraggly weeds. I couldn’t see the house yet, but if the “yard” was any indication, I’d been totally wrong. About everything. In fact, the higher I climbed, the more the whole place felt, well, sort of palatial, like a grand castle on a rocky cliff—flatland Texas-style, of course.

The road curved around to the left at the top of the hill, presumably toward the house. The increasing rise in elevation gave me an expansive view of the surrounding area to the north along the highway and a growing view west toward Kickapoo. I couldn’t see anything to the south, but if the ranch boundaries were what I could see on this side, the place was beyond huge.

To my right, acres and acres of fenced pastureland, complete with livestock, stretched all the way to the highway. In front of me, toward Mother’s house, were fields with of scrub mesquites with large patches of bare red dirt. Dozens of pump jacks and clusters of storage tanks dotted the area. I couldn’t see any of the large white splotches that showed up on the aerial photos—the salt flats I remembered from my youth—but they were there somewhere. They hadn’t magically disappeared from the surface any more than the toxic waste had vanished from beneath it.

However, that was the least of my worries at the moment, because racing up to me was an ATV. And the man driving it had a shotgun pointed at my face.

“Oh, shit!” I slammed on the brakes and raised my hands above my head. I didn’t know if he could see me behind the windshield, but I gave a shaky little pageant wave and theatrically mouthed an obligatory, “Don’t shoot!” I’m pretty sure I said other desperately appropriate things too, none of which he could have possibly heard.

Something must have worked, though, because he lowered the gun and propped the butt end on his thigh as he sped toward me. Jerking to a stop a few feet from my door, he killed the four-wheeler, tucked the shotgun under his arm and motioned for me to roll down the window.

With a racing heart and unsteady hands, I did. “I’m Jolene. Jolene Jackson.” Yes, I said it that way on purpose to save him the time and trouble. “I’m…”

“I know who you are. Saw your Colorado plates. You weren’t supposed to be here today.”

Apparently, there were a lot of people keeping up with my whereabouts and schedule, including the old guy in the straw cowboy hat and plaid shirt in front of me I’d never met before. “I was on my way to town to meet with Mister Vanderhorn and thought I’d stop by here first.”

“Coulda been your last stop too,” he said, staring me in the eye. “Ed gave orders that no one is allowed up here without his approval.”

“Yes, well, I…”

“Except you, of course.” He took a drag on a cigarette that had been dangling from his lips then crushed it against his boot. He flicked the butt into a cup on the ATV. “You own the place.”

Having been preoccupied with the 12-gauge in his hands, I hadn’t noticed the cancer stick in his mouth or the thick mustache above it. I had noticed the glare in his eyes, which hadn’t changed. To say that he was making me uneasy severely understates the situation. I hoped he just had a quirky personality and was really a heart-of-gold curmudgeonly type that would soon be my best friend like in the movies. However, his narrowed eyes and irritated growl as he stowed the weapon in its special rack by his seat indicated otherwise. He was seriously pissed off and I wasn’t sure if it was due to my mere presence or that he hadn’t gotten to use the gun. Yes, both was my guess too.