it was a crime scene. Which meant he’d have to try to find a cheap motel to stay in.
And he still needed to talk to Marybeth.
Nine
As Joe drove back toward Jackson, a Porsche Boxster convertible passed him like a shot, the blond haired woman driver slicing in front of him to avoid an oncoming RV as Joe tapped his brakes to let her in. She shot a “Tata!” type wave in appreciation and passed the next car in line. The Porsche had Teton County plates, so she was a local. A local maniac, Joe thought, watching her weave through traffic ahead. As the lights of town appeared, his stomach grumbled. He hadn’t eaten all day.
Joe sat alone in a raucous Mexican restaurant filled with tourists and locals out on Friday night. He blanched at the prices on the menu, knowing that the meal would exceed his state per diem. But because it was already late and he was starved, he didn’t rise and leave. Instead, he ordered a Jim Beam and water from the helpful waiter who had introduced himself as “Adrian from Connecticut.”
He smiled when he found himself contemplating bean burritos and rice.
“The vegetarian plate?” Adrian asked, swooping in from somewhere behind him.
Joe shook his head. “Nope. I’m a flesheater.”
“Oh my,” Adrian said, crumpling up his nose.
Joe ordered another drink during dinner while he cleaned his plate and jotted down details from the ALN callout in his notebook.
As he finished and leaned back, full and feeling the effects of the bourbon on an empty stomach, Adrian arrived with another drink.
“I didn’t order this,” Joe said.
“Compliments of the Ennises,” the waiter said with a flourish. “They’re at the bar.”
Joe leaned to the side so he could see between the tables.
The bar was in an adjoining room, darker than the dining room, through a rounded, Spanish style doorway. A couple sat on stools with their backs to the opening. As he looked at them, they swiveled around.
The man was short, compact, with a stern, wideopen face and short silver hair. He wore a jacket over well tailored clothing. He looked like the kind of man who charged through a room, head bowed, shoulders hunched, expecting everyone to get the hell out of the way. The woman was ivory pale, with piercing dark eyes and full, darklipsticked lips. She was well dressed, in a thick turtleneck sweater with a black skirt, black hose, and black highheeled shoes with straps over her ankles. Because she rested her feet on the bottom rail of the stool, he could see the pale orbs of her knees where the hose tightened against them in the darkness. Her thick hair was haloed from a neon beer sign. Joe raised the new drink and mouthed, “Thank you.”
The man nodded back, businesslike. She smiled, slightly, and turned back to the bar. Then something happened that surprised Joe. She looked back over her shoulder at him, directly at him, fullon at him, and brushed aside a thick bolt of auburn hair, before turning away again. He felt a stirring inside.
“Who are they?” Joe asked Adrian from Connecticut the next time he came by.
Adrian made an exaggerated step back. “You don’t know Don and Stella Ennis? My goodness.”
“I’m new here.”
“Then you need to meet them,” Adrian said. “I don’t even know where to begin.”
After paying the tab, which exceeded his per diem by eight dollars and made him feel guilty, Joe went into the bar. Don and Stella Ennis were no longer on their stools. He checked the booths at the side of the bar, wanting to thank them but reluctant to disturb their late dinner. He couldn’t find them.
Joe asked the bartender, “Did the Ennises leave?”
The bartender, like Adrian, widened his eyes when he heard the name. “Are you the new game warden?”
“Yes.”
“Mr. Ennis left you this.” He pushed a fresh drink across the bar and handed Joe a business card. It read:
don ennis Developer, Beargrass Village Joe flipped the card over and found a handwritten message.
“Welcome to town,” it said. “I worked with Will. I’ll be in touch.”
Joe took a sip of the drink, then pocketed the card and went outside. The night air, crisp and sharp, washed over him as he walked to his truck. He couldn’t stop thinking about what had just happened. Had she really been looking at him that way? Had he really been looking back?
Yes, he thought, on both counts.
He needed to call Marybeth, but wanted his head to clear first. And he couldn’t bring himself to call her while the image of Stella still lingered so clearly in his mind.
Before finding a motel, Joe used a street map ripped from a telephone book to locate Will Jensen’s home. It was on one of the old, narrow treelined streets near the base of Snow King Mountain, in a neighborhood created forty years before Jackson became the resort it was. Joe remembered the house vaguely from his single visit, and he parked his pickup on the street and looked at it in its dark stillness. Will’s truck was still in the driveway. A massive old cottonwood, leaves already turned and crisp, obscured half the roof. The windows were black squares, dead like the eyes of the head mounts in the office building.
Joe reluctantly climbed out of his truck and crossed the street. He tried to open Will’s truck door but found it locked. He peered inside, could see nothing in the darkness.
The only light was a faint blue vapor light on the corner and the hard stars and scythe of the moon. The keys for the truck, he assumed, would be somewhere in the office building, or with the sheriff, and he would get them tomorrow.
