Bad Company

by Virginia Swift

  “Well!” said Molly, looking at the two of them but addressing the nurse who was taking her blood pressure, “I nearly feel as if I’ve slept in my clothes myself. I wonder if you’d be kind enough to give me a sponge bath and to find my hairbrush before they bring my breakfast. I would also like to brush my teeth!” she concluded emphatically.

  “We’ll give you some privacy,” said Sally, hauling the still half-asleep Hawk to his feet.

  “Thank you,” said Molly. “My foot still hurts, but I’m feeling better this morning. You might as well go on home. Philip is due in by nine, and I expect Alice will be here before long.”

  Sally stretched, felt and heard the muscles cracking in her back. “Whatever you say.”

  “Go home, go home,” Molly insisted. “I’ll be fine. I remember what you told me last night, Josiah, and I’ll be thinking very seriously about what your news might mean for my plans. I am grateful to you both for staying the night, but there’s nothing more you can do for me.”

  The nurse unwrapped the blood pressure cuff, told Molly, “I’ll be right back with your bath,” and walked out of the room.

  “Now get out of here, I mean it!” Molly told them. “The last thing I want is for Alice to arrive and find you here. She’d never in a million years be able to understand why a couple of strangers would have spent the night here in the room with her mother.”

  Sally doubted if Alice could have understood why even a daughter would do such a thing.

  “I’ve always heard,” Hawk said as he drove them home, one hand kneading the back of his neck, “that people hate hospitals because they think they make you sick. Now I get it.”

  “I thought Molly looked a lot better this morning,” Sally said. “She had some color in her face, and she was obviously well enough to boss people around.”

  “She looked better than I feel,” Hawk said. “I need a bed real bad.”

  Sally didn’t even have the strength to agree. Her lips felt as if they’d been glued together, and she was sure someone had come in during the night and thrown a bucket of rock salt into her eyes. “The parade doesn’t start until noon,” she muttered. “We could sleep until eleven forty-five.”

  After her sojourn in the green chair, she could have slept until September. But she woke up at ten that Saturday morning. Maybe she was just too wasted to realize how bad off she was, after only four hours’ real sleep, but she felt refreshed and ready for the day. Perhaps it was one of those rare moments of instant karma: Spend a night in the hospital with somebody who needs you, and get back a little of what you need yourself. We all shine on.

  She was careful not to wake Hawk as she slipped out to shower, performed her coffee sacrament, glanced at the Boomerang. Herman Schwink got some great coverage as a local hero contending for the team-roping title. No mention of the Monette Bandy case, but then what was new there? The paper that Saturday morning was predictably dominated by big photos of bucking animals and flying cowboys, and advertising for fast food, Western wear, automotive supplies, and weekend entertainment.

  She had an hour and a half before heading off to join the parade contingent that was marching in memory of Monette, and in homage to Wyoming women. Plenty of time to check her email. She booted up her machine, and when the monkey had stopped screeching, she typed her password, logged into her mailbox, and was relieved to find a communique from Edna McCaffrey in Kathmandu.

  A message in a bottle.

  Edna, as always, was having amazing adventures, which she described in elegant, funny prose. Ordinarily Sally took time to relish Edna’s exploits in faraway lands—hell, the most exotic place Sally had been in the last five years was, well, Laramie. But today Sally hurried through a hair-raising story about a day hike that turned into two arduous days’ climbing, lost in the Himalayas, to find what she was looking for.

  “So you say that the redoubtable Sheldon Stover has shown up in Laramie, and installed himself in my house,” Edna wrote. “As I’m sure you’ve surmised, we weren’t close friends at the institute. But Sheldon has the appalling, yet somehow enviable gift of assuming, utterly without evidence, that he’s welcome anywhere. By all means, disabuse him of the notion, and get him out of my house. He’s craftier than he appears, so watch out— he’ll do everything he can to convince you that he’s harmless, and suddenly you’ll find yourself doing him one favor after another.”

  Edna went on to say that once Sheldon was gone, the house might as well stay empty, since she and Tom planned to return in three weeks. She appreciated Sally’s willingness to keep an eye on the place and to try to revive some of the plantings. And then she wrote, “It just occurred to me that you didn’t say why Sheldon suddenly turned up in town. I remember that he mentioned, when we were at Princeton, that in the seventies he’d had a back-to-the-land period, and bought some undeveloped property up in the Laramie Range. I do hope he isn’t entertaining some fantasy of building himself a little cabin and becoming a twenty-first-century Thoreau! The thought of Sheldon Stover camping out in our neighborhood inspires a dreadful image: an October blizzard howling, a banging on the front door, and a snow-crusted Sheldon, blowing in with the weather and a steamer trunk, asking if he can crash at our place until he gets the roof on . . . sometime next spring. Brr . . .”

  Sheldon owned land in the Laramies?

  Sally scowled.

  What the hell was his game?

  She answered Edna’s message, saying she’d take care of everything, and inquiring whether Edna happened to know precisely where Sheldon’s property was. It would be the next day at the earliest before she got the answer from Kathmandu, given the time change. But in her heart, Sally already knew.

  Hawk had wondered aloud why Marsh Carhart would haul Sheldon in on the land swap job. The investment group Nattie and Dwayne and Marsh Carhart were working for obviously had money to burn. But for Molly Wood to give up Wood’s Hole, it seemed money wouldn’t be enough. The deal had to include a piece of land Molly could call home, in a place she loved. Sally’d be willing to bet her Mustang that Sheldon Stover owned the pretty spot at Happy Jack, where crossbills twittered, and the wind sighed in the pines, and beavers frolicked and labored in their thriving pond, and poison spread, inexorably and invisibly, deep beneath the whispering grass and the sparkling water.

  The question, to paraphrase the Senate Select Committee questioning the Watergate conspirators, was this: What did Sheldon know, and when did he know it?

  “That little bastard,” said Hawk, when Sally woke him with a cup of coffee, a hard copy of Edna’s email message, and her suspicions. “I’m getting out of this bed and going right over to Edna and Tom’s house and nail him to the wall. It’s time we found out exactly what’s going on here.”

  “I just called over there,” Sally told Hawk. “There was no answer. I let him know yesterday, in very clear terms, that he had to be out today—I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s split.” And left them a huge mess to clean up, no doubt.

  “But if he’s a partner in this deal, don’t you think he’d hang around at least long enough to make sure the ink was dry? What if you went over to Edna’s and took a look, and I popped by the hospital?”

  “Bad idea,” Sally said. “What would you do—drag Sheldon out of there and thump on him until he pulled out of the swap? You’d embarrass Molly, and at this point, I don’t think there’s anything you could do if she’s determined to sign off. She might well decide that the money’s too good to pass up. She could just write off the Happy Jack parcel as a place to maybe build a little summer cabin, forget about living up there, get a big house in town.”

  “Or she could leave it as is, with the beavers in charge on the surface, and the toxins way down below. We can’t tell her anything more that might change her mind. But what about Sheldon?” Hawk replied. “Even assuming that the Happy Jack parcel is Sheldon’s land, it’s still possible that he’s not aware of the pollution from the tie plant. Maybe he’s got a conscience.”

&n
bsp; Sally just looked at Hawk. “You’re right. I should just clobber him,” Hawk said, swinging his legs out from under the covers.

  “Hang on a second,” Sally said. “Okay. It’s possible he doesn’t know about the groundwater contamination—after all, if the land is his, he hasn’t ever done anything with it. He and Carhart go back a ways—maybe Marsh remembered that Sheldon had the land and Marsh brought him into the deal, but hasn’t bothered to mention the tie plant. Suppose that’s the case, and Sheldon has no idea that the land he’s selling off is lousy with toxic waste. He just thinks he’s gotten in on a good deal, and figures he stands to make out big as a partner in the Wood’s Hole development. Or hey, maybe, since he’s in the Insurgency, he thinks he can make toxic waste disappear simply by refusing to believe it’s there. And in the meantime, gentleman scholar that he is, he rationalizes making out like a bandit by doing his participant-observer experimental ethnography. I bet he’s got some really loopy ideas about the part he is or isn’t playing in some complicated transaction between the global and the local. It makes you see land speculation in a whole new light.”

  “Please,” said Hawk. “This is all getting a little post-modern for me. Recall that this is, after all, a real estate deal, and Nattie Langham will get her seven percent, or whatever. That ought to bring this conversation back down to earth.”

  Sally pressed her lips together, blew out a puff of air. “Do you think Dwayne and Nattie know about the tie plant?”

  Hawk took a big swallow of his coffee. “It’s not up to us to tell them. Molly asked me to look at the land—they didn’t. How deep into this thing do you want to get?”

  Sally put her hand to her forehead and closed her eyes. “How deep are we?”

  “You’ve got me,” said Hawk as the telephone rang, “but if that’s Delice, and she’s managed to find out that the deal’s about to go down, then likely we’re both in over our heads.”

  But it wasn’t Delice. When Sally answered the phone, at first all she heard was silence. And then, faint and scratchy, music. Old-fashioned, twangy country guitar. Thumping percussion. A woman’s voice, unmistakable. Kitty Wells. Singing “Honky-Tonk Angels.”

  The music faded. And then a whisper. “You better watch out, angel. Maybe you ought to stay home today.”

  Click. Dial tone.

  Sally stared at the phone, frozen. Hawk took the receiver from her and hung up. “Who was that?” he asked quietly.

  “I-I don’t know,” she stammered. “Kitty Wells.”

  Hawk grabbed her by the shoulders. “Did someone threaten you? What did they say?”

  Sally swallowed. “I’d say it was a threat.” As she explained, the phone rang again. Hawk snatched it up instantly. “Yeah. Oh hi, Maude. Yes, we’ll be over there in a little while. We had a kind of a late night last night . . . No, we’re fine ...Yes, see you soon. Goodbye.” He hung up. Then said, “Shit!”

  “What’s wrong now?” Sally asked, her voice shrill.

  “If Maude hadn’t called just then, we could have dialed star six-nine and found out where the previous call came from.”

  But Sally was already calling Dickie and Mary’s house.

  Mary answered, excitement in her voice. “Oh hey, Sally. I’m just on my way out the door, heading for the parade. Dickie’s already down there. They’ve got him riding a golden palomino at the head of the memorial float group. Then after us come some twirlers with flaming batons, and then the Shriners. This is going to sound weird, but this way of remembering my niece seems right to me.”

  Somehow, Sally found her voice. “Could you tell Dickie I’ve got to talk to him right away? I’ll be down there as soon as I can, looking for him. Tell him it’s urgent.”

  “Yeah, sure. Are you okay?” Mary asked.

  “I’m fine. Just a little shook. Listen, do you know if Scotty Atkins is down there too?”

  “Couldn’t say. I know Dickie’s put a lot of his people on parade duty, but not everybody. Do you want Dickie’s cell phone number?”

  “No,” said Sally. “I’ll just look for him there.”

  Chapter 25

  Big Esther

  Spectators lined Third Street, Laramie’s main thoroughfare, waiting for the procession to commence. Early birds, many of them elderly, had set up lawn chairs in the gutters, and hundreds of people were gathering to jam the sidewalks. Small children sat on their parents’ shoulders; teenagers and grown-ups jostled for the best view they could get. Boots and hats and shorts and fanny packs, everyone chattering excitedly. Vendors strolled in the blocked-off street, hawking keychains and T-shirts and ice cream bars, souvenir pins and hatbands and not-quite-hot pretzels.

  The parade marchers, riders, floats, and bands were mustering in the big parking lot at the Lifeway, by now pure bedlam. Folks parading on foot: marching bands from the high school and the university, a passel of assorted drill teams (one of them composed of a dozen blinking six-year-olds made up to look like mini–Dolly Partons), the military color guard and three ROTC units (Army, Air Force, Marines), maybe twenty different banner-waving community organizations, from the Head Start program (more bewildered little kiddies) to the Lions Club (some of them looked a little sketchy too—evidently up early, celebrating) and the LDS church (new hat, big smiles). Maude Stark, in blue slacks, a white collared shirt, and a bright red blazer, was supervising the distribution of signs and banners to the marchers who were there to remember Monette.

  People on horseback: the Jubilee Days Committee, of course, on matching mounts (Sally looked for Dwayne, but didn’t see him yet). The Gem City Jewels equestrian team, teenage girls who’d been riding since they were old enough to get boosted into the saddle, pranced on gorgeously groomed and beribboned horses. The more adventurous politicians were riding too, not all of them looking exactly comfortable. And of course the rodeo cowboys and cowgirls sat their saddles and controlled their horses without making a big thing of it. A lot of milling, mixing, and shouting.

  Add to that the automobile paraders. The rodeo queen and her court were arranging themselves up on the backs of classic convertibles. The nonequestrian politicians (the president of the university, for example) rode in vehicles ranging from stock trucks to spanking new SUVs: all American-made, Sally noticed. Then there were the classics, a contingent of antique autos sponsored by various Laramie businesses, and of course the Shriners in their miniature Corvettes. “Check out Burt and John Boy,” Hawk said to Sally, pointing at two exultant, fez-wearing figures practicing their figure-eights far down the parking lot, in front of a cell phone store.

  The floats, maybe twenty strong, were lined up out on Third. It didn’t take Sally long to pick out the float that Brit and her crew were still finishing. The big thing at the back end of the flatbed turned out to be a twelve-foot-high replica of the figure of Esther Hobart Morris, a Wyoming pioneer woman credited in the state’s mythology as “the Mother of Women’s Rights.” In real life Mrs. Morris herself had been six feet tall—no shrimp, and certainly no trembling flower of the prairie. She was most famous as the first woman justice of the peace in American history (probably not true), and it was said that one of her earliest judicial acts was to slap her feckless husband in the clink for public drunkenness (that, apparently, was fact). This particular rendition of Mrs. Morris was modeled after bronze statues that stood in front of the state capitol in Cheyenne and in the U.S. Capitol building, neither of which approached the size of the present crepe-paper, two-by-four, and chicken-wire assemblage. Sally was compelled to admit that from where she stood, Brit’s behemoth looked somewhat more like Mrs. Butter-worth than the sainted Mrs. Morris.

  Sally watched as Herman Schwink, clad in his best black Stetson, razor-creased jeans, and starched snap-button shirt, worked his way around the bottom of the creation, banging nails into the wooden platform. She sincerely hoped they weren’t having terrible problems anchoring the thing down. It didn’t look all that stable.

  Delice, meanwhile, was helping attach a l
ong banner to the side of the flatbed. “Welcome to Wyoming,” it said, “Where the Men Are Strong, and the Women Are Equal.”

  Sally couldn’t help smiling. And then she came to her senses, and with some desperation sought out Dickie Langham.

  He was there in the parking lot, having a little trouble managing the palomino stallion that somebody—his wife, anyway—had decided would make him the image of the dashing Western lawman. Dickie had grown up in town, spent far too much of his wasted youth mounted not on animals but on bar stools. In short, he wasn’t the world’s best horseman (not that Sally was an expert!), but he was making a game effort. Jerry Jeff, aware of his uncle’s limitations in the saddle, was holding the stallion’s head, stroking its nose, and speaking sweet words into its twitching ear.

  When Sally caught up with him, Dickie did his best to listen attentively, despite the fact that the horse was bouncing under him and JJ kept having to yank on the damn animal’s head. The sheriff’s mouth grew grim as she told him about the phone call. “This comes at an unfortunate time, Mustang,” he said. “As you can see, most of my personnel are gonna have their hands full today. This parade route is crawling with cops, if that’s any reassurance. I don’t know if you’d feel safer going home, but in some ways you might be better off down here. That guy might have been trying to bluff you, and if he came after you at your place, we’d have a hard time getting people over there. You’ll forgive me if I’m not inclined to approve of the idea of Hawk hanging around as an armed bodyguard.”

  Dickie paused. “The guy who called presumably also did the number on your underwear. So as far as we know, he goes in for private harassment, not grand public gestures. I don’t much like this, but I’m going to suggest that you go get a sign and march right along next to me. I’ve got a good seat up here on old Trigger,” he said, patting the horse’s neck in what he clearly hoped was a soothing manner, “and a good view of the crowd. I’ll let my guys know to be on the lookout for anybody acting in a suspicious manner,” he finished, slipping a radio off his belt.