The first message on Joe’s phone was from Marybeth, asking him to pick up April at the western-wear store on his way home. The second and third were from Biff Burton and Bill Haley from other corners of the state.
Burton’s message read: Lisa Greene-Dempsey. Calls herself “LGD.” Don’t know a damned thing about her or where she came from.
Haley’s said: Lisa Greene-Dempsey. The Gov has really lost it this time. Twenty-two weeks to my retirement. Counting the hours.
So Bill Haley knew of her, Joe thought. He planned to give the other game warden a call later that evening.
The fourth was from Lisa Greene-Dempsey herself, although the number was listed as “unknown.” It read: LGD here, Joe. I’m on my way up w/ Gov. Rulon. I look forward to meeting one of our colorful wardens. Call me.
“Colorful?” Joe said aloud.
He hesitated, then punched CALL. He was relieved that he got her voicemail. Her phone was out of range because she was likely in the state plane with the governor, flying up from Cheyenne. He haltingly said he looked forward to meeting her as well, and closed the phone.
Joe pulled into an empty space on Main in front of Welton’s Western Wear, one of the oldest retail stores in operation in Saddlestring. Because it was dark outside but all the lights were on inside despite the WE’RE CLOSED, PARTNER sign, the big display windows allowed anyone passing by to look over the jeans, boots, hats, and long-sleeved shirt display and into the store itself with the clarity of an aquarium.
He saw April right away, perched behind the counter, beaming at a couple of local boys on the other side. The boys were dressed identically in the unofficial uniform of Wyoming: T-shirts, baseball caps, faded jeans, belts with big buckles, and athletic shoes or scuffed boots. One of the boys said something, and April threw her head and hair back and laughed in what Joe thought was a provocative way. The boy who didn’t tell the joke punched the other one hard in the chest, so it wasn’t tough to figure out who the jibe had been aimed at.
Daisy spied April and whined, and her tail whumped the back of the truck seat.
“Okay, April,” Joe said, “come on,” hoping April would look out and see him waiting. He didn’t want to have to go inside and roust her and possibly create a situation with the two boys.
Joe knew why two teenage boys would be in the store after hours, and it didn’t have anything to do with perusing the Cinch shirts or Ariat boots. April was a stunner. She wore a short skirt with a tooled belt, tall red cowboy boots, and a top too tight to be subtle. And when she tossed her hair back that way. . Joe didn’t like it.
The week before, another boy who looked the same as these two had driven his pickup to their house to take April out to a movie. Joe had taken the boy aside and whispered in his ear: “I have a rifle, a shovel, and ten acres of land, son.” The boy had her back by ten.
Joe tapped on his horn, and the three teenagers inside glanced out. Joe flashed the boys with his cab-mounted spotlight and watched them recoil. April rolled her eyes and shooed them away, then gestured to Joe to wait for a moment while she closed down the store.
As the two boys walked past Joe’s truck, they looked over at him sheepishly.
“Naw, I haven’t met her,” Bill Haley told Joe, who was waiting for April to lock up and come out of the store. The cell connection between the two game wardens was scratchy and poor. “I’ve just heard things.”
“What things?”
“That she’s a do-gooder with grand ideas about, and I quote, ‘dragging the agency into the twenty-first century.’”
Joe paused. “That might not be all bad, Bill.”
“Hell, Joe,” Haley said, “I’m still struggling with the twentieth century.”
Joe laughed.
“Seriously,” Haley said, “I hear she considers herself progressive. She thinks the agency is a good-old-boy network, and she wants to shake things up.”
Joe shrugged. “We could use a little shaking up from time to time.”
“Maybe, but I’m too old and set in my ways for that. I’ve been around a while and I remember a couple of other bomb-thrower directors in the past. You weren’t around when there was a move to rename us ‘conservation officers’ or, worse, ‘resource managers.’ Back then, I just figured I could outlast them, and I did. This time, I’m tired and I just want out. Those types are wearing me down, Joe. I’m an old goddamned game warden and a good one, and that’s all I ever wanted to be.”
“Gotcha,” Joe said. “Where did the governor even find her?”
“I heard it was his wife,” Haley said slyly. “The First Lady has lots of friends in the smart set, I hear. The Gov owes her a couple, from what I understand.”
“Hmph.”
Joe wasn’t as plugged in to the gossip in Cheyenne as Bill Haley was, but he did recall phoning the governor’s office once and having the telephone answered by Stella Ennis, who had once tempted Joe himself. Stella had been named chief of staff, and she claimed she was sitting on the governor’s lap at the time. Stella compounded the problem when a reporter from the Casper Star-Tribune asked her about her qualifications to be chief of staff and she answered, “Have you seen these lips?”
It was a joke, but according to rumor, the response didn’t go over well with the First Lady.
“All I know,” Haley said, “is it’s time for me to move on and leave it to you younger guys. Things are changing, and I’m not changing with them.”
“I’m not that young,” Joe said, and as he did, April sashayed across the sidewalk and swung into the passenger seat.
“No kidding,” April said, listening in. “You’re practically fossilized.”
Joe shushed her, and said good-bye to Bill Haley.
As they passed the impressive hulk of the Saddlestring Hotel on the corner on the way to Bighorn Road, Joe said, “There it is.”
April grunted something, preoccupied with text messages on her phone.
April’s transformation from a moody, sullen, almost scary teenager into a bouncy and fashionable cowgirl had come so suddenly Joe and Marybeth were still reeling from it. It was almost as if she were trying on a new persona, Joe thought, like taking a new April for a test drive to see if she liked her. He was cautiously optimistic it might stick. Better a cowgirl than a Goth or Emo, Marybeth told him, pointing out that it had been two months since their foster daughter had worn all black or painted her mouth and nails the same color.
It could be worse: much worse, she’d said.
Joe had agreed, and still did. But the trouble with cowgirls, he knew, was the cowboys who came with them.
It was full dark and sultry when Joe pulled into his driveway and turned off his engine.
“Who’s here?” April asked, gesturing toward the ten-year-old Ford Explorer parked in front of the house. It was parked next to Hannah’s dented sedan.
“That’s Pam Roberson’s rig,” Joe said.
“What’s she doing here so late?”
Joe said, “There’s a lot going on with her husband.”
Joe heard talking from the kitchen table as he entered the house and took off his hat and boots in the mudroom. Daisy scrambled between his legs to engage Tube in a welcome-back wrestle-off in the middle of the front room, and Joe unclipped his Glock and placed it near his crown-down Stetson on the top shelf.