“There is no such thing as a river fee!” Tommy yelled.
“There is on my ranch,” Opal said, arching her eyebrows.
And with that, he rushed her, grabbed her by the collar with one hand and by the belt with the other, and swung her through the air and into the river.
“Damn, she was light,” Tommy said. “Like there wasn’t really anything to her, just clothes and a scowl. It was like tossing my nieces and nephews around the pool or something. She didn’t even struggle. I think that was the last thing she expected, to be thrown into the river like that.”
Tommy said he watched her floating away in the river. She was treading water, and howling at him saying, “Next time, Tommy Wayman, you’ll have to pay me a hundred dollars a trip!”
“Nuts to you, Opal,” he called after her. He said he watched her bob in the river, heard her curse at him, until she was carried around a bend two hundred yards from where he stood. He never once thought she didn’t simply swim to shore, he said later. He never even considered that she had drowned. That part of the river was too shallow and slow. And she was too mean to die, he said, which was something Joe had also heard from Reed.
No, Tommy said, he never saw her climb out on shore after he got back in his boat and floated downriver.
No, he never saw her body wedged in debris or trapped under the surface by an undertow. Besides, he said, in April the river was barely moving. The dangerous currents would come later, when the snow started to melt and the speed and volume of the river would increase two to three times.
No, he didn’t feel any need to turn himself in at the time because, well, Opal deserved to be thrown in the river.
“I’m surprised that river didn’t spit her right out,” Tommy said to Joe and Robey.
Proud of his feat, he’d immediately bragged about it to his wife, Nancy, not knowing that she had spent the entire day at home fuming over photos she had found: Tommy with his arms around attractive female clients and one shot in particular—a group of flight attendants in the boat who bared their breasts to the camera with Tommy at the oars—grinning like an idiot. She was angry enough that after he fell asleep in his lounge chair with a beer, she called the sheriff’s office and reported what Tommy had said. Nancy felt horrible about it now, though, since at the time she had no idea that Opal was missing.
So what had happened to Opal Scarlett’s body? Or had Opal simply climbed out, had an epiphany of some kind, gotten in her Caddy, and driven away?
JOE PARKED IN front of the garage, stirred Maxine awake, and entered the house through the mudroom.
The Picketts lived in a small state-owned two-story house eight miles out of Saddlestring. Joe was thankful for darkness, so he wouldn’t have to see how tired the place was looking, how it appeared to sag at the roofline, how the window frames and doors were out of plumb. It sat back from the road behind a white fence that once again needed painting. There was a detached garage filled with Joe’s snowmobile, gear, and supposedly the van, but the vehicle space was now occupied by his upturned drift boat needing repair. Behind the house was a loafing shed and corral for their two horses, Toby and Doc.
The house was quiet and everyone was in bed. He left his battered briefcase on the desk in his home office off the mudroom. He left his blinking message light and unopened mail for later.
Joe thought of how things had changed for them in the past year. Marybeth’s business, MBP Management, had taken off. She now managed eight Saddlestring companies, doing their accounting, inventory management, employee scheduling, federal and state compliance. The owners had gratefully ceded control to her, and told their colleagues at morning coffee at the Burg-O-Pardner how much easier their lives had become since hiring her. She had filled a void none of them knew existed when she showed up with her laptop, spreadsheets, and no-nonsense practicality. She even had affiliate offices in Sheridan and Cody, manned by women much like herself who were mothers who knew what time management and prioritization really meant and could walk into a small business, dissect it, and make it run like, well, a business. Her income to the family now exceeded what Joe brought in as a state employee for the Game and Fish Department. The money helped.
College funds for Sheridan and Lucy had been opened. All four burners worked on the stove. They had a new mini-van, and a television that revealed, for the first time, that most actors’ faces were not actually shades of green.
They had discussed the fact that MBP Management had quickly reached the point in business where Marybeth would need to make the choice to maintain what she had or expand. Maintenance, Marybeth explained, was the first step to stagnation, something she saw all the time with the businesses she managed. But expansion—hiring employees, finding bigger office space, changing her role from hands-on consultant to full-time executive of the business itself—was not what she thought she wanted to do. She enjoyed working with her clients, and expanding would mean more time away from the family and additional strain on the marriage. It was a difficult decision that faced them, she said, and one they needed to make together. Joe just wanted her to be happy, and said he’d support her in whatever she chose to do.
Before going upstairs to bed with his wife, Joe tiptoed into Lucy’s room and kissed her good night (she rolled over and said “um”), then rapped lightly on Sheridan’s door because he saw a band of light underneath it.
“Come in,” she said.
Joe stuck his head inside. Sheridan was reading in bed, wearing her glasses instead of her contacts. She smiled at her father, but then arched her eyebrows in a “do you need something?” way.
“How are you doing?” he asked.
“Fine. I feel sorry for Julie, though.”
Joe said, “Me too. I feel terrible about taking her out there. I hope she’ll be okay.”
Sheridan nodded.
“Has she ever told you about the situation out there?” Joe asked. “What the deal is with her father and her uncles?”
Sheridan shook her head. “I don’t think she really knows what is going on. I thought she’d call tonight, but she didn’t.”
Joe told Sheridan how the fight continued in the sheriff’s office, and that Tommy Wayman confessed to throwing Opal in the river.
“That’s just crazy,” she said.
“I’m curious about the Scarlett brothers,” Joe said. “How well do you know them? Does Julie talk about them much?”
Sheridan looked suspicious. “Some,” she said. “And I’ve met them all. Her dad, Hank. Uncle Arlen and Uncle Wyatt.”
“What do you think of them?”
“Dad, I don’t feel comfortable being your spy. Julie is my best friend.”
Joe held up his hand. “Okay, not now. I understand. But I’ll probably want to talk with you about them later, okay?”
Sheridan said, “Good night, Dad.”
MARYBETH WAS ASLEEP in bed with her table lamp on and a book opened on her chest. She was breathing deeply, so Joe tried not to wake her as he padded across the room. He changed out of his red uniform shirt and Wranglers and pulled on old University of Wyoming Cowboys sweats. Before he went back downstairs, he marked the page and closed Marybeth’s book, putting it aside. He hesitated as he reached to shut off her lamp, and took a moment to look at her. In sleep, her face was soft and relaxed, and there was the hint of a smile on her mouth. She was a beautiful woman, better than he deserved. She’d been so busy lately that she was dead tired at night. It had been over two weeks since they’d made love, and Joe scratched tonight off his list as well.
He missed the time they used to have together, before her company took off and before the girls required nonstop shuttling among school, home, and activities. And with his schedule and the problems at work, he knew he wasn’t helping the situation much.