C. Box - Out of Range

"I have a drink."

"Then have another." She turned around. "Ed, will you please get my friend a bourbon and water?"

Ed looked up. He was taller than Joe, his broad face impassive, his eyes challenging. Joe had obviously broken up a story Ed was telling Stella before the pantsuit incident, and he resented it.

"Ed once skied down the face of the Grand," she told Joe, her eyes widening. "Only twelve people have ever done it."

"Eleven," Ed corrected.

"Ed makes a dozen," she said, and Joe realized she was poking fun at the bartender, but Ed didn't get it. Instead, he puffed out his chest while he poured, straining the buttons on his shirt.

"That's pretty impressive," Joe said, but his mind was still on Don and Pete Illoway, how close he'd come to getting Ennis to blurt something.

She added, "He's got pictures he'll show you. He showed them to me within five minutes of meeting him."

Now you're pushing it, Joe thought. But Ed was easily flattered. He made the drink and handed it to her. "Here you go, Mrs. Ennis."

"And don't forget the bourbon and water for Joe here," she said.

"Yeah," Ed grunted.

Joe and Stella exchanged glances. She was repressing a smile. Gesturing toward the sliding glass doors, she asked, "Have you ever seen the sun set on the Tetons?"

"Oh," Joe mused, "about a dozen times so far."

"Hmpf."

"But I need some air. Thanks for the drink, Ed," Joe said, leading Stella toward the sliding glass doors.

"Make sure he didn't spit in it," she laughed. "Ed's sweet on me."

"Aren't we all?"

"It's my gift to boys," she said, smiling, flirting, but shooting a look at Joe that had just a little bit of fear in it.

The deck was clear of guests because they were all in the great room meeting the vice president. Joe and Stella walked to the corner of the deck, out of the light. Joe followed the trail of her scent through the thin outdoor sweet smell of sage and pine.

"It's a little cold," she said, putting her drink on the railing and hugging herself with her arms. "Don't you want to meet the vice president?"

"Maybe later," Joe said.

"We're going whitewater rafting tomorrow," Stella said. "It will probably be the last time we're able to do it this year before the snow starts flying. The original plan was to take the VP as our guest so Don could sell him on the idea of buying a place in Beargrass, but the Secret Service saw the stretch of river this afternoon and all of the places somebody could shoot at him-not to mention the class four rapids-and put a kibosh on the whole idea. Would you like to come with us instead?"

"That's a nice offer," Joe said, "but I'll pass."

"You should come along anyway. It's the last trip of the year. And maybe the last time for me for a long time," she said ominously.

"What do you mean?"

He could see her eyes glisten in the light of the stars. "Don's about to replace me for a newer model," she said. "I can just tell. The other day he looked at me across the table and said, 'Did you know you have some gray hairs?' He said it in the same tone he uses when he looks at the odometer and says, 'Ninety thousand miles.' That means we'll have a new car within the week.

"He doesn't have her in the wings yet," she said, "but it won't take him long. Don always wants the best, and, well,

I'm getting up there in years. His trophy isn't so shiny anymore. I always knew it would happen. That's why he had the prenup, after all. I knew it would be a short ride. But I was determined that it would be a short, fun ride. With lots of white-water rafting."

Joe looked away, into the darkness of the trees beyond the deck. He could see very little, but he felt something inside him, a kind of warm surge. "Why are you telling me this?" he asked.

"Who else can I tell?" she asked. "Ed? Pete Illoway? One of the trophy wives in there? My mother would just say, 'I warned you about him.'"

"But you never left him," Joe said. "Instead, you had a fling with Will Jensen. I think maybe you like all of this"- he gestured to the house-"a little more than you want to admit."

"That's cruel, Joe," she said in a flat voice.

"Yeah," he said, "it is. But I'm not in a very charitable mood right now. I'm missing my wife and my family more than I can tell you. I can't wait to get back to them. Marybeth is my best friend. When I'm with you, I feel like I'm cheating on her. And I hate feeling that way. I'm no substitute for Will, Stella. That's just one of the things I've figured out tonight."

Joe stood in silence, not wanting to look at her. He knew she was crying, and it bothered him. But he couldn't embrace her, not yet.

"Stella?"

She roughly wiped away the tears on her cheeks and looked up at him.

"Why did you murder Will Jensen?"

"Oh, God," she said, as if he'd slapped her. Her eyes were wide now. She looked scared.

"I know it was you," he said. "I knew it was someone, by the way the gun was fired. Then tonight, before I came out here, I figured out that Will had been drugged, and how it was done. I didn't know it was you who killed him until I talked to some old guy walking his dog. He said he saw you enter Will's house that night after he talked to Will. The neighbor didn't hear the shot, but when he looked out on the street after midnight, your car was gone."

She hugged herself tighter and rocked a little. The surge he had felt inside earlier got hotter. His arms and chest were tingling, and he was finding it difficult to concentrate. Something was happening to him.

"Don't hate me, Joe," she said finally. "I loved that man. I loved the fact that he was real, that he was ordinary. He was a good man, like you."

Joe's legs were getting weak. He leaned against the railing so he wouldn't sway.

"I didn't know they were drugging him. I didn't know until this morning, when you told me at breakfast that the doctor found traces of drugs in you. Then I did some checking with my doctor. He said that drugs like Valium and Xanax can make someone who is already depressed turn suicidal, especially if the victim doesn't know he's being drugged. The doctor told me someone else had been asking about the effects of these drugs earlier in the year- my husband. Don wanted to know what they would do to a person. Don told the doctor he suspected an employee, but obviously he had another purpose in mind. All I knew was that Will was getting worse, and acting out. He was humiliating himself. People were starting to make fun of him. He lost his family and he was about to lose his job, and it broke my heart. He was such a good man.

"When we were up at the state cabin," she said, "he was normal again for a day. He felt guilty being there with me, but he was normal. I thought I had broken through to him. Then he started to shake and get sick. I now know he was suffering withdrawal from the drugs, but he didn't know that and neither did I."

Joe felt hot fingers reach up through his neck, pictured his brain being gripped like a softball. He tried to focus on Stella's words, but they kept slipping out of his grasp.

"When I found him that night he was in terrible shape," she said, sniffing back tears. "His gun was on the table and he couldn't even move. He had thrown up on himself. I guess he thought if he ate all that meat he would flush something out of his system, but it didn't work. My heart was aching for him. He told me I was the only person he loved, but he couldn't take it anymore. I begged him to let me take him to the hospital, but he wouldn't go. He was pathetic, this fine, decent man. This man so unlike the men I had always known."

Joe grabbed the railing with both hands to steady himself, looking out into the darkness. His eyes burned, Stella's words suddenly loud, pounding against his head.

"Twice, he tried to put the gun in his mouth, but he was too far gone. I was crying hysterically, but I got the gun from him and I told him I loved him and I did it for him," she said, the words coming out in a rush. "If I'd known the reason he was in that condition was because my husband … that Don was shoving Will out of his way and getting back at me at the same time …"