“You don’t have to say it like that. I’ve had several long conversations with Arlen.”
“Mom, Joe and I have been here for six years and we can’t figure out all the history in this valley with the Scarletts. No one can who hasn’t grown up here. There’s just so much to know. Yet you’ve been here two and a half years and you’re an expert?”
Missy raised her eyebrows and narrowed her eyes. She had a glass doll-like face that belied her age. It tightened with arrogance. Marybeth hoped she hadn’t inherited that particular look.
“Some of us have the ability to get to the bottom of things quickly.” Her eyes flicked in the direction of Joe’s tiny office, then her voice turned to ice: “Some of us don’t.”
SHERIDAN INTERRUPTED THEM when she brought her math book and work sheet out of her room and asked Marybeth to help her with a problem.
“Don’t ask me,” Missy said, raising her coffee cup to her lips with two hands. “Math is like Greek to me.”
“That’s why I didn’t,” Sheridan said brusquely.
SHERIDAN RETURNED TO her room with her homework and closed the door. There was a long pause as Marybeth felt her mother assessing her, wearing the most profound and concerned expression. It was a look Marybeth knew always preceded some kind of dire statement. It was another look Marybeth hoped she didn’t share.
“I’m just thinking about the children when I say this,” Missy said, “so don’t take it wrong.”
Marybeth braced herself. She knew what was coming by the tone.
“But given what’s been happening here, with the dead animals and the severed heads and all, and the fact that whoever is doing this seems to be able to come and go as he pleases, I would strongly suggest—for the sake of your children and my grandchildren—that you pack up and move out to the ranch with me for a while.”
Marybeth said nothing.
Missy put down her cup, leaned across the table, and stroked Marybeth’s hand. “Honey, I don’t want to have to say this, but you’re putting your children in danger staying here. Obviously, there isn’t much your husband can do to stop it. Whoever is doing this has no qualms about coming right to your home, literally, and doing these things. What if they get worse? What if whoever is doing this gets worse? Can you live with that?”
Marybeth sighed, started to speak, then didn’t. Her mother had a point, and one she’d considered herself.
“I’ve got a five-bedroom ranch house,” Missy said, “meaning we’ve got four empty rooms. You and the girls would be safer there.”
“What about Joe?”
Missy made a face as if she’d been squirted in the eye with a lemon. “Your husband would be welcome, of course,” she said without enthusiasm.
Marybeth nodded, thinking it over.
“You deserve better. My granddaughters deserve better.”
“I thought this was about our safety,” Marybeth said.
“Well that too,” Missy sniffed.
MISSY LOOKED AT her watch and prepared to go. “Thanks for dinner, honey,” she said, pulling on her jacket. “Please think seriously about what we spoke about. I’ll talk to Bud to make sure it works with him.”
“You haven’t discussed it with him?”
Missy smiled and batted her eyes coquettishly. “It’s not a problem, dear. Bud doesn’t argue with me.”
“Right.”
“Right.”
Marybeth nodded. She planned to raise the issue with Joe when he got home that night. It should be about an hour or so, she figured.
Sheridan and Lucy were now in their pajamas and they came out so Grandmother Missy could kiss them good night. Lucy was dutiful; Sheridan shot a glance at her mom about the good-bye ritual that Marybeth pretended she didn’t catch. Missy turned to go.
Marybeth was behind her mother and snapped on the porch light as Missy opened the front door.
Missy froze on the porch.
“Marybeth, who is out there?” she asked.
Marybeth felt her legs almost go limp. Oh, no, she thought. What now? The way her mother asked . . .
She looked over her mother’s shoulder. The porch light reflected back from the lenses of a pair of dark headlights as well as the windshield of a vehicle parked and pointed at the house in the dark.
“Someone’s just sitting there,” Missy said, backing up into Marybeth, “staring at us.”
“Come back in the house,” Marybeth said, stepping aside, thinking of the loaded lever-action Winchester rifle in the closet in Joe’s office.
When she looked at the profile of the vehicle in the darkness, she recognized the squared-off roofline and the toothy grille.
“Oh my,” Marybeth said, pushing past her mother onto the pathway that led through the lawn toward the gate.
She heard Sheridan come to the door behind her and say, “Who is it out there?”
“Nate!” Marybeth said over her shoulder.
“That’s not Nate’s Jeep.”
And it wasn’t, Marybeth realized as she went out through the gate and practically skipped to the driver’s-side window. It wasn’t Nate at all, and in an instant her fear returned, canceling out the surprisingly strong burst of elation. Instead of Nate Romanowski, a man she couldn’t see well slumped against the window from the inside, his cheek pressed against the glass in a smear of drool.
Marybeth felt foolish for jumping to conclusions. She rapped against the driver’s-side window with one knuckle.
Tommy Wayman sat up with a start, then turned and looked at her, his eyes wide for a moment until he seemed to recognize where he was, who she was.
She opened the door. “Tommy, are you all right? Why are you here?”
“Is Joe here?” the river guide gushed. She could smell the fetid smell of alcohol. As he spoke he moved in his seat and Marybeth could hear empty bottles clink at his feet.
“No,” she said, stepping back.
“I saw her,” Tommy said, his eyes comically widening, as if he’d suddenly remembered why he came in the first place and everything was just rushing back to him as he sat there. “I fucking saw her today!”
“Who?” Marybeth said coolly. “And please watch your language at my home.”
“Opal Scarlett!” Tommy hissed.
“What?”
“Opal. I saw Opal.”
“I doubt that,” Marybeth said to Tommy, then turned back to the grouping of her mother, Sheridan, and Lucy on the porch looking out. “It’s all right,” Marybeth said. “It’s Tommy Wayman. He’s drunk.”
Missy gestured “whew!” by wiping her brow dramatically.
“I really did see her,” Tommy said, reaching out and grasping Marybeth’s arm, imploring her with his eyes. “I need to tell Joe! I need to tell the world she’s alive!”
“You can wait for him out here or in his office,” Marybeth said, hoping Tommy would chose the former. “He should be home anytime now. I’ll call and tell him you’re here.”
“Tell him who I saw!”
Marybeth went back into the yard. This was the kind of thing she hated, these late-night adventures with drunken men who wanted to talk to Joe. Add this to the fact that someone was harassing them, and Missy’s idea about moving to the ranch sounded better all the time.
“Watch out for that guy,” Marybeth heard Sheridan telling Missy. “He throws old ladies in the river.”
“I’m not an old lady,” Missy said icily.
As Marybeth passed her daughter, trying not to smile at the exchange, Sheridan leaned toward her mother and said under her breath, “Nate, huh?”
Marybeth was grateful it was dark, because she knew she was blushing.
20
“SO YOU CLAIM YOU SAW HER EXACTLY WHERE?” Robey Hersig asked Tommy Wayman, who was drinking his second cup of coffee.
“I told you three times,” Tommy said, raising his mug with two hands but not successfully disguising how they trembled. “At that big bend of the river before you get to the old landing. Closer to Hank’s side of the ranch than Arlen’s. She was just standing there in the reeds looking at me as I floated by. Scared me half to death.”