Marybeth thought Cam was a little more prickly than necessary. But she had never seen him this excited before.
“Our ... difficulties may be over soon,” Marie said as much to herself as to Cam or Marybeth. Cam beamed at her, then turned his full-force grin on Marybeth. As suddenly as a lightbulb going out, Cam’s face fell into a mask of seriousness.
“But we need to keep this absolutely quiet,” he said gravely. “It’s got to be kept in the strictest professional confidence.”
Marybeth nodded. The sale of property of this magnitude would electrify the valley, she knew. Other realtors would try to poach the secret buyer and try to get him to look at other ranches that might have more appeal or fewer wells. Property owners on the fence about selling may suddenly decide to try the market.
“It’ll be hard to keep this a secret,” Marie grinned. “But we can do it.” “Marybeth?” Cam asked.
“I’ll tell my husband,” she said, meeting their eyes. “We don’t keep secrets from each other. But it will go no further than that.”
When neither of the Logues spoke, Marybeth felt compelled to explain. “He tells me things that go on in his job that need to be kept confidential, and I do that. I’ve never breached Joe’s confidence, and he wouldn’t breach mine. Besides,” she said, “he doesn’t talk much as it is.”
Marie snorted a laugh and turned in her chair to Cam. “You remember meeting Joe, don’t you? At that back-to-school night? I think the only thing he said all evening when Marybeth introduced us was ‘Pleasure.’ That’s it. One word in three hours.”
“Okay then,” Cam said, clapping his hands once as if to dispel the hint of suspicion that had entered the room.
Marybeth glanced at her watch.
“Oh my goodness, I’ve got to go. The girls are out of school.”
Marie said, “Feel free to have Lucy come over to our house with Jessica. Hailey Bond is already coming. Those three have a great time together.”
“But . . .”
“Don’t worry. I’ll bring Lucy home later. Around five or five-thirty, right?” Marybeth nodded, and left them both in their giddy state.
As she left the office, pulling on her jacket, she noticed a man sitting in the reception area reading a magazine from the stack on the side table. He was lanky and in his sixties, with round, steel-framed glasses.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Do you need to see somebody?” Marie worked as the receptionist as well as the office manager, and she had obviously not been available.
The man looked up. He wore heavy boots, faded jeans, and a khaki work shirt. On his lap was a thick manila file. He had an experienced and kindly manner.
“I’m here to see Mr. Logue, but don’t worry, I didn’t have an appointment.”
Marie overheard the conversation and entered the room.
“I’ll let him know you’re here,” Marie said. She was bursting with cheerfulness, Marybeth thought, and for good reason.
Lucy Pickett and Jessica Logue were waiting at the pickup spot with Sheridan when Marybeth arrived. The playground was empty except for a few students on the swings. Marybeth felt guilty for being late.
Marybeth swung her minivan to the curb and the three girls piled in. Lucy and Jessica tossed their backpacks on the floor and immediately started telling Marybeth about their day in overlapping bursts, while Sheridan settled into the backseat alone and rolled her eyes. Lucy and Jessica were inseparable in a way that Sheridan never had been with another girl. Lucy and Jessica loved to dress up, do each other’s hair, talk on the telephone, and play together. They even looked alike, as much like sisters as Lucy and Sheridan did.
“Jessica, your mom suggested you and Lucy play at your house this afternoon instead of ours,” Marybeth said, pulling out into the road. “She’ll bring Lucy home later.”
“I hope dropping them off won’t take too long,” Sheridan interjected from the back. “I’ve got a falconry lesson in a little while.”
Marybeth nodded, again feeling guilty that she was late. Sheridan had been learning falconry from Nate Romanowski, a loner and Joe’s friend. He lived in a cabin on the bank of the Twelve Sleep River.
“It’ll just take a minute,” Marybeth said. “I’m sorry I’m running late.” “You seem to be running late a lot these days,” Sheridan said under her breath but loud enough that Marybeth heard her. Both Lucy and Jessica immediately stopped talking and waited for what they hoped would be an argument.
“Please don’t use that tone with me, Sheridan,” Marybeth said evenly, locking eyes with Sheridan in the rearview mirror. “We can discuss this later.” Sheridan broke the gaze and shrugged. Marybeth noticed that Lucy and Jessica had huddled together and shrunk out of view, no doubt trying not to giggle.
The Logue home was one of Saddlestring’s fading treasures; a classic Victorian, one of the original homes built at the edge of town near the river by an 1890s cattle baron. The faded house was hard to see behind the mature cottonwoods that towered around it. In addition to the old, magnificent house there was wooded acreage and a few outbuildings, including a carriage house. The house had sat vacant for fifteen years, in disrepair, until the Logues bought it last winter. Marie had walked Marybeth through the place recently, apologizing endlessly for its condition. Only two rooms had been modernized so far, the kitchen and a bathroom. The rest looked as it had in the mid-1980s, when the longtime county clerk of Twelve Sleep County died there in his seventy-eighth year. The rumor was that the county clerk used to store records in the house and the buildings and charge the county for rent.
Maybe now, Marybeth thought as she watched Lucy and Jessica skip away, Cam and Marie would have the means to accelerate the remodeling on the great old house.
“Mom?” Sheridan said from the backseat. “She’s getting bigger. You don’t have to wait until she gets in the house before we leave.”
“I’m just not used to this yet Sheridan,” Marybeth said. “You two have so many things going on these days. I struggle with letting you go.”
“Mom, my falconry lesson?”
As Marybeth pulled away and turned left on Centennial Street toward Bighorn Road, her phone chirped. It was Joe, telling her about the call he had overheard concerning mutilated cows. He told her he would likely be late for dinner.
Dinner, Marybeth thought, the guilt rushing back. She had forgotten to plan dinner.
5
The hawkins ranch was a checkerboard of private land and state and federal leases spread across the lee side of the foothills, and Joe had to cross through seven barbed-wire fence gates to get to it. Most of the ranch was blanketed with tall sagebrush and scrub oak, buffalo grass and biscuit root, except for several large fingers of heavy timber that reached down from the mountains through saddle-slope draws.
Joe pulled into the ranch yard, a packed-gravel courtyard surrounded by structures. The Hawkins place was an old-line working outfit, unlike many of the hobby ranches that were taking over the state. The largest buildings in the yard were vast metal Quonset huts that served as vehicle sheds, barns, and equipment storage. A maze of wooden-slat corrals bordered the small, white-framed ranch house. There were no adornments of any kind anywhere; nothing to suggest anything other than what the place was—the business center for a large-scale beef-and-hay operation.
Joe turned toward the small house and saw Mrs. Hawkins step out on an unpainted porch and gesture sternly to the mountains. There was no need to stop and visit, Joe thought, and he drove through the middle of the ranch yard until his wheels fell into the long-established ruts of a dirt road that pointed straight toward the timber five miles away. Ahead of him in the ruts were the fresh tread tracks of several vehicles.