In Plain Sight

together because she claimed they fed off each other and thrived in a place she called “Girlieville.”

Marybeth had just told her mother about the Miller’s weasel stuck to the front door and the elk heads on the fence the week before. Missy shook her head in disgust while she listened. Marybeth knew Missy’s ire was aimed at Joe as much as the incidents themselves. It was no coincidence that Missy and Joe were rarely in the same house together. She tried to time it that way. The two of them had been operating under a kind of uneasy truce borne of necessity: they had to live in the same county and there were children and grandchildren involved, so therefore they couldn’t avoid each other. But they did their best.

“SO WHERE ARE the elk heads?” Missy asked, raising her coffee cup and looking at Marybeth over the rim.

“Joe buried them somewhere out in the woods. I think he was ashamed of them.”

“My God. You can’t imagine some of the things people are saying in town,” Missy said. “They loved those elk. The people can’t understand how someone could just shoot them right under the nose of the local game warden.”

“Mom, Joe’s district is fifteen hundred square miles. He can’t be everywhere.”

“Still . . .” Missy said, sighing. That “still” seemed to hang in the air for quite some time, like an odor. Then Missy leaned forward conspiratorially. “I can’t help but think it has something to do with the situation on Thunderhead Ranch. Your husband must have done something to make one side or the other angry.”

Missy said your husband instead of using Joe’s name when she was making a point.

“My guess is he angered Hank,” Missy continued. “Hank would do something like that. I’ve heard he’s hired a bunch of thugs to do his dirty work. I know Arlen pretty well and he’s a good man at heart, a good man. He’s the majority floor leader in the Senate, for goodness sake! We serve together on the library board.”

“I know you do,” Marybeth said, looking away.

“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.