Turkey Ranch Road Rage by Paula Boyd Read Free Book Online

wary.
    “Jerry says it’s okay as long as I’m off the clock and don’t take pictures of crime scenes. Besides, Lucille’s already paid her fine and paid to replace the radiator, including labor charges, so it wasn’t like she was really an inmate.”
    Was that so? Sheriff Blackmail and I would be discussing many things at length. Jerry Don Parker’s propensity for letting Lucille off the hook for all her crap wasn’t helping anyone, especially me. I didn’t come down here for my health. It never helps my health to come down here. I get headaches, I shake and twitch, and I feel like I’m going to throw up. A lot. And that’s before I’ve even seen my mother. The ludicrousness of this particular situation triggered all the above and was even pushing me toward bitchy, which is shocking, I know. Whatever the case, it was long past the time for some scared straight tactics—for both of them, all of them.
    “So, what you’re really saying, Leroy, is that the caption and byline under the picture you want published in the paper would go something like this: ‘Deputy Sheriff Leroy Harper photographs park protester Lucille Jackson pretending to be locked in the Bowman County Jail. Ms. Jackson had been arrested earlier in the day for shooting a county maintenance truck that was mowing grass on the right-of-way near the planned park site. When released by the sheriff’s department, she refused to leave the jail where Harper befriended her. Over a cup of coffee and the evening news, they devised this photo shoot to bring attention to Lucille’s plight and to give new meaning to serve and protect.’ Or something like that.”
    He frowned, beads of sweat popping out on his brow. He shifted from foot to foot and scratched his head, all apparently important steps in his thinking process. “That doesn’t sound good at all.”
    You think? I just shrugged at him. It was his call.
    After a little more mental processing and fidgeting, the latter still being indicative of the former, Deputy Leroy Harper snatched up his camera case and headed toward his truck. “Tell Miz Jackson I’ll get back to her.”
    “I’ll do that.”
    * * *
    As it turned out, there was no need for Leroy to rush off to avoid his boss since Jerry Don Parker did not arrive as arranged at nine-thirty. He also didn’t arrive at ten-thirty, and he did not call either. By the time eleven rolled around, I was not a happy camper, to borrow an unfortunate phrase. By noon, I was vacillating between seriously worried and seriously pissed.
    Mother had been on the phone a good part of the morning, making strategy calls to Merline and Agnes, but she assured me that both Jerry and Leroy had her cell phone number. They also had mine. In fact, the entire Bowman County Sheriff’s department had every number available for both of us, and had used them all on a number of occasions. They knew how to reach us.
    I had wasted most of my time sitting out on the front porch or staring over the back fence. I had several vivid memories rooted in that mesquite field, mostly ones where I found myself lying in a patch of red hot dirt and thorny goatheads after my pony “Dino-mite” flung me off and left me for dead. My dad loved me, really he did, but buying a horse named after an explosive material for a girl with the riding skills of a rock is a recipe for disaster. The next horse was no better, but he was bigger—a lot bigger. He was about sixteen hands tall and named Echo, probably because once he took off all you heard was the echo of his hoof beats across the prairie. I covered a lot of ground on or because of ol’ Echo. And it wasn’t all mesquite patches or perfectly flat either. There were a few real trees amongst the scrub. Echo loved those. He could scrape me off on a low hanging branch without ever breaking stride. He was good at finding ravines too. Well, maybe it had only been a drainage ditch, but he’d jumped it multiple times, leaping through the air like a