Spring Tide (12 page)

“You bet. How about the churrasco sampler? And a couple of fried plantains.”

He nodded and ducked back through the window. “Rosa,” he called, “give me a sampler. And make it spicy. It’s for Jackie.” He popped back through the window.

“Dad said he’s making homemade ice cream for Grandpa’s birthday tomorrow.”

“Really? What kind?”

“Strawberry.”

“Great.” His smile drooped. “If we go.”

“Why wouldn’t you? Is the baby sick?”

“No. It’s just Mom. She’s constantly bugging us to put a jar of her jerky in the truck. She won’t give it up and I’m tired of hearing about it. I’ve told her a hundred times Rosa has this thing about nothing goes on the truck but her own cooking. No exceptions.”

“You know how Mom is about her jerky.”

“Yeah. Impossible!”

Their mother had launched her jerky-making enterprise less than a year ago, and had done so with immense energy and enthusiasm. It wasn’t her first business venture. Most of the others had fallen flat, but this one actually seemed to be working out. Ida had approached it seriously, getting the proper permits, keeping accurate books, aggressively marketing her product. As a result, there was a jar of Ida’s World-Famous Beef Jerky on the counters of restaurants, bars, drugstores, grocery stores, the hair salon, the feed store and just about every other establishment within a twenty-mile radius, including the Delta Veterinary Hospital where Jackie’s clients sometimes purchased the jerky as treats for their pets. Jackie kept that fact to herself, as she thought it might make Ida indignant.

One thing Ida was good at was bullying people into doing what she wanted. Jackie sometimes wondered if she hadn’t also blackmailed a few people into selling her product, knowing everyone’s secrets as she did. Apparently she had no secrets to hold over Rosa because she had so far failed to win her over.

“Now she’s implying that if I was a good son,” Ben said, “if I loved my mother, I wouldn’t turn down such a small request.” He lowered his voice. “If it was up to me, I’d do it. Just to keep the peace. But Rosa won’t budge. Both of those two, they’re stubborn as hell.”

Rosa appeared beside him with a paper plate. “Who’s stubborn as hell?” she asked in her mild Latin accent. The look she gave him with her dark, languorous eyes made it clear she knew he was talking about her. She handed the plate to Jackie with a smile. “Here you go, Jackie.”

After leaving the truck, Jackie walked into the bait shop, pulling a chunk of spicy grilled beef off a wooden skewer with her teeth. Her mother sat behind the checkout counter reading a gossip magazine. She looked up as the door chime rang.

“Hi, Mom,” Jackie said. “Where’s Dad?”

“He’s gone to town to get some turkey livers. He wants to surprise Grandpa for his birthday. He spent all morning phoning all over creation looking for a store that carries them and finally found this little Asian grocery in Walnut Grove.”

“Turkey livers?” Jackie made a face.

“He’s not gonna eat ’em! It’s for bait.”

“I know. Still, you’re going to ruin my lunch.”

“What are you eating?”

Jackie held up a meat skewer. “Charrusco. Want a bite?”

Ida sat up straight on her stool with a sudden look of interest. “Are they out there?”

Before Jackie could answer, her mother was on her feet and coming around the counter. Jackie nearly gasped out loud when she saw her mother’s shorts, black with a skeleton design in white—tailbone, pelvis, hip bones and femurs cut off at the bottom hem of the shorts.

Ida ran to look out the window, let out an excited grunt and scurried back to the counter where she scooped up the jar of Ida’s World-Famous Beef Jerky. Then she was out the door in a flash.

Jackie stole one more bite before putting down her plate to follow. Her mother stood at the window of the truck, her chin just reaching the ledge. Ben and Rosa crowded each other at the window, leaning out to observe her. Ida placed the jar of jerky on the edge of their counter with both hands and held it there.

“You can put it right here,” she was saying. “It won’t bother anybody.”

“No!” Rosa shrieked, shoving Ben out of the way as she leaned out the window and tried to push the jar off the ledge with one hand. But Ida had a firm grip on it, so it stayed where it was.

Jackie stopped on the porch steps of the bait shop, debating her next move. She didn’t want to get involved in this family feud, but it was starting to look like it might get carried away and someone had to be the voice of reason. Ben, she knew, would have a hard time coming between his wife and mother.

Rosa gave up trying to push the jar off the ledge and disappeared from the window only to reappear from the side of the truck, stomping toward Ida in her white apron. Ida clutched her jar protectively to her chest.

“I’ve told you before,” Rosa said angrily, “only food authentic to the
República Federativa do Brasil
goes on my truck. Only food I cook myself goes on my truck. Why don’t you understand that?”

“What harm could it do?” Ida asked. “It might even bring in some new customers. Maybe not everybody likes Brazilian food.”

“What?” Rosa stood with her hands on her hips, her face scrunched into an intimidating scowl. “Are you kidding me? If they don’t like Brazilian food, they’re not going to come to Rosa’s Churrascaria. Are they?”

Ida shrugged. “They might come for the jerky.”

Rosa let out a cry of frustration and glanced at her husband, who was still hanging out the service window, looking worried. He offered nothing.

“This is my truck,” Rosa declared. “I make the rules. No beef jerky! No jerky of any kind.”

Ida sputtered defiantly. “And this is my parking lot,” she countered.

Uh-oh
, Jackie thought. This was heading in a bad direction. She started toward them.

“No jerky,” Ida proclaimed, “no taco truck on my property.”

“Mom,” Ben protested, “we’ve been parking here every Saturday for three years.”

“Taco truck?” Rosa looked like she was about to blow. Her eyes bulged out and her lips were set into a thin, hard line. “Does this look like a taco truck to you? Do you see a taco anywhere?”

“Move it!” Ida ordered.

“Mom, calm down,” Ben suggested gently.

“Me? You tell your wife to calm down. All I’m asking is that you put your mother’s little jar of jerky right here.”  She reached up and put the jar on the ledge again.

Just as Rosa moved to knock it off, Jackie interceded and grabbed it. “Maybe you should go back in the shop, Mom,” she suggested.

“I’m not budging until these people move their truck off my property.”

“Fine!” Rosa proclaimed, then stomped around to the cab of the truck and started the engine.

Hanging out the window, Ben threw up his hands, looking distraught and apologetic as the truck tore out of the parking lot, flinging up gravel.

Ida’s look of defiance remained intact as the truck headed down the highway into town. She turned to Jackie and said, “And you aren’t allowed to eat at that taco truck anymore!”

Jackie opened her mouth to argue, but thought the better of it.

Ida pulled the jerky jar roughly from her hands, then marched into the bait shop, the little pelvic bones on her rear end swishing fiercely to and fro.

“Captain Shoemaker wants to see you Monday, Byers,” Sergeant Miller told Stef over the phone. “Nine a.m. sharp.”

There was nothing in his voice to tell her whether this was good or bad news.

“What’s it about?” she asked, though she was positive she knew.

“IA has finished their investigation,” he reported.

“And?” she prompted.

“That’s what the captain wants to talk to you about. See you Monday.”

After he hung up, Stef called her mother. As the phone rang, Deuce tramped in, head hanging down, his gloomy, bandaged face peering out from a white cone. He couldn’t have looked more dejected. After having discovered that normal movement around the house was dangerous because the cone kept banging into things, he now walked plodding and tentatively everywhere he went. Both of them couldn’t wait for the day they could remove what Deuce most certainly thought of as a punishment.

When her mother answered the phone, she explained about her Monday morning appointment.

“Okay if I spend the night Sunday?” she asked.

“Of course,” her mother replied. “I can make lasagna.”

“You know I love your lasagna.”

“Are you nervous, Stephanie? What do you think they’re going to say?”

“I’m expecting to be exonerated. I can’t think of any reason I wouldn’t be. It was obviously an accident.”

“No, I’m sure you will be. I don’t even see why they had to go through all this. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“It’s routine, Mom. Anytime an officer shoots a firearm, there’s an investigation. In this case, a man was killed. Two men were killed. Very serious.”

“Yes, it was very serious. I know, but why do they treat you like a criminal? Interrogating you. Putting you on suspension.”

“It’s not suspension. It’s paid administrative leave. And nobody’s treating me like a criminal. It’s just routine.”

“I’ll be so glad when this nightmare is over and things get back to normal. You can get back to work, get on with your life. I know you’ll feel so much better when you’re back on the job and not just sitting around brooding.”

“Mom, about that—” Stef hesitated. “We can talk about it when I see you Sunday.”

“Okay.” Her voice revealed concern. “How are you doing, Stephanie? Feeling better? Was vacationing out in the boondocks a good idea?”

“Yeah. It was. It’s kind of a strange place, like it’s a million miles away from home. It’s quiet here. That’s what I was looking for.”

“I still don’t know why you gave up your apartment. You knew you wouldn’t be on leave for more than a few months. Now you’re going to have to find a new place just as you’re starting back to work. But you know you can stay here as long as you need to. We can move those boxes out of your old room. It’s no problem.”

Her mother, like everyone, had been treating her with special care. Even if she didn’t understand exactly what Stef was going through, she did understand it was traumatic and painful. Her mother thought she was staying with a friend. Just getting away for a while to clear her head. Stef hadn’t told her the bigger plan because she didn’t want to disappoint her. Her mother had always been so proud of her daughter the police officer. And no matter how old she got, she always felt like she was in big trouble when she disappointed her mother. She suspected it had something to do with the fact that her mother was the only person who ever used her full name: Stephanie. Even her brothers had adapted to “Stef.” But her mother had refused to use the nickname. That old gripe went way back.

“Stephanie’s such a pretty name,” she’d complain. Stef had given up “Stephanie” by the age of eleven. Photos of herself at that age depicted a skinny, knobby-kneed girl in shorts and T-shirt, wearing a cowboy hat and holster, spinning a toy six-shooter on her finger. “Sheriff Stef,” she’d introduce herself in a growling voice. Her brother, Bruce, who was older and therefore in charge, would correct her. “You’re not Sheriff Stef. You’re Deputy Stef. I’m the sheriff. You can’t have two sheriffs.”

“Why not?” she’d whine.

“You just can’t.”

Their younger brother, Jay, by virtue of being the youngest and therefore weakest, would usually have to be the crook and end up tied to a chair.

She’d let them call her Deputy Stef to appease Bruce, but in her mind, she was still Sheriff Stef. She would have thought it impossible to be Sheriff Stephanie. Why not? she wondered now. Too girly? A girl could be a sheriff. But maybe she didn’t realize that then. Or maybe it wasn’t too girly. Maybe it just sounded too fragile, more like a victim than a heroine. Like Sheriff Annabelle. Wrong image.

“Have you heard from Erin?” her mother asked.

“No. Not since she left. I don’t expect to hear from her.”

“I think it was so cruel of her to break up with you at a time like this.”