She stepped up to Joe and put her hands on the tops of his shoulders. “We’re going to be tangled up with these people whether we want to be or not, aren’t we?” She meant the Scarletts.
“Yup,” Joe said, wrapping his arms around her waist.
“And you wouldn’t have it any other way, would you?”
He hesitated for a moment. That one came out of left field, but she knew him so well.
“I do want to find out what happened to Opal,” he said. “There’s something not right about it.”
“There’s something not right about the whole Scarlett clan,” she said. “They’ve got a hold on this valley that scares me. It doesn’t matter if you’re with Arlen or Hank, the fact is everyone feels obligated to be with one or the other. There’s no middle ground, no compromise.”
As she spoke, Sheridan came into the kitchen.
“You guys decide about Friday night?”
Joe and Marybeth looked at each other.
“What we’ve decided,” Marybeth said, “is that this valley is much too small.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” Sheridan asked, looking from her mother to her father, obviously embarrassed to see them holding one another next to the sink.
The night suddenly split wide open as Maxine awoke from her customary sleeping place in the doorway of Joe’s office and barked furiously at the front door, the fur on her neck and back bristled up like a feral hog’s. Joe, Marybeth, and Sheridan all turned to the door, and Lucy scrambled from the couch to join them.
“Maxine!” Joe commanded. “Maxine, stop it!”
But the dog kept barking, her barks echoing sharply through the house. She clearly thought somebody was outside.
“What is it?” Marybeth asked Lucy. “Was there a knock?”
“I thought I heard something hit the door,” Lucy said, looking away from the television. “It sounded like a little rock hit it.”
Joe slipped away and strode across the living room. It wouldn’t be that unusual to have a night visitor; people often showed up late to report an incident or turn themselves in. But that usually happened in the fall, during hunting season, not in the spring.
He clicked on the porch light and opened the door. No one. He stepped outside on the porch, Maxine on his heels. The only thing he could see, in the distance, was a pair of red taillights growing smaller on Bighorn Road traveling east, toward the mountains, away from town.
“What was it, honey?” Marybeth asked.
Joe shook his head. “Nobody here now, but it looks like someone was.”
“Dad,” Lucy said, coming outside with her sister, “there’s something on the door.”
“Oh My God,” Sheridan gasped, her hands covering her mouth. She recognized it.
So did Joe, and he was taken aback.
A small dead animal had been pinned to the front door by an old steak knife with a weathered grip. The creature was long and slim, ferretlike, with a black stripe down its back. It was a Miller’s weasel, a species once thought extinct. It was the animal that had led to Sheridan being terrorized years before, and Marybeth being shot.
And somebody who knew about both had stuck one to his front door.
11
THE NEXT MORNING JOE WENT FOR A RUN, FED THE horses, retrieved the newspaper, walked the girls out to the school bus (via the back door, so they wouldn’t have to see the Miller’s weasel on the front), and paced back and forth from the living room to the kitchen, waiting for eight A.M., when he called headquarters in Cheyenne and asked for Randy Pope. He was angry.
“The director is in a meeting,” Pope’s receptionist said, her tone clipped. Joe didn’t think he liked Pope’s receptionist; there was something off-putting and chilly about her.
“Can you please get him out of it?”
“Is this an emergency?”
Joe listened to Glen Campbell sing about the Wichita lineman while he held. The music was another addition since Pope had taken over, but the choice of songs belied not only another era, but another planet.
Pope came on. “Make it quick, Joe.”
“Someone killed a Miller’s weasel and stuck it to my front door last night,” Joe said. “I tried the emergency number there in Cheyenne last night and they told me you were not to be disturbed.”
“That’s right, Joe,” Pope said, an edge in his voice. “I was at a dinner at the governor’s mansion. It was a get- to-know-you dinner, and I informed dispatch I was not to be interrupted.”
Joe sighed. “Randy, if you’re going to be my supervisor and require me to get authorization from you for every move I make, you need to be available. Either that, or loosen up the reins and let me do my job.”
Marybeth passed by the doorway to his office holding the newspaper. She cocked an eyebrow, cautioning
