C. Box - Cold Wind

“This grouse,” Hand swooned, sitting back and letting his eyes roll back into his head while a half-eaten thigh jutted out of his mouth like a fat cigar, “may be one of the most succulent dishes I’ve ever had. And I’ve eaten well all over the world, as you know.”

“It is good,” Missy said from the other end of the table. Her face beamed, and she seemed oddly relaxed. Marybeth obviously thought the same thing, and she had trouble hiding her agitation.

“Fresh grouse,” Hand said, “is like fine wine. You can taste the pine nuts and the sage they eat in the meat itself, as if master chefs infused it. Few culinary artists in the world can come close to replicating the savory flavor of freshly roasted grouse no matter how many fancy sauces they cover the fowl with, or what they stuff it with.”

“All these years,” Missy said, talking softly and directly to Hand as if Joe and Marybeth weren’t in the room, “I didn’t know how wonderful these birds could be. There they were, just flying around the place. I didn’t even know they were grouse . I thought they were just fat little birds.”

Hand laughed and shook his woolly head. He was charmed by her, or doing a very good impression of it.

“It’s like this dining room,” Missy said. “Earl never wanted to eat in here. He said it was too dark and he never liked to linger over fine food and wine. To Earl, food was just fuel. But it’s lovely, isn’t it? A lovely room to eat wonderful fresh grouse in.”

“Mom,” Marybeth said sharply, “are you okay?”

“I’m wonderful , honey,” Missy said, inflecting a slight Southern accent Joe had never heard before. He noted how the lilt made Hand smile in appreciation, as if she’d triggered something from his youth just the two of them understood.

Joe felt his scalp crawl. She was flirting with him.

“Marcus shot them,” Missy said. “He brought them to me this afternoon and said they would be as magnificent as they turned out to be.”

“I find upland shooting relaxing,” Hand said, still looking at Missy. “I take my Purdey side-by-side shotgun with me everywhere I go, just in case. Hunting and shooting helps me clear my mind and focus only on the things that matter.”

Missy turned her head slightly to hide her blush and her smile.

Joe said, “Grouse season doesn’t open for two weeks.”

“Excuse me?” Hand said.

“You’re poaching.”

It was suddenly very silent in the room. In his peripheral vision, Joe could see Jose Maria step backwards from Missy’s side into a dark corner.

“Those are my birds,” Missy said. “They’re on my ranch.”

“Nope,” Joe said. “They’re wild and managed by the state.”

“I didn’t realize we lived in Communist China,” Missy said.

Joe shrugged.

“Marybeth,” Missy said, an edge in her voice, “your husband is a kill-buzz.”

“That would be ‘buzzkill,’ ” Joe corrected. To Hand, he said, “I’ll drop off the citation later. Don’t worry. You can afford the fine.”

Marcus Hand grinned at Joe, but his eyes couldn’t completely hide his anger and resentment.

The rest of dinner proceeded awkwardly. Joe pretended not to notice. The grouse was delicious. Marybeth and Missy filled the vacuum with small talk about the girls, the library, the weather. Anything but the case.

Marcus Hand studied his wineglasses and filled them often. Joe could hear the rest of Hand’s Jackson Hole legal team in the small dining area beyond the door. He thought there must be six or seven people eating dinner in the other room, like the kids’ table at Thanksgiving. He doubted they were being treated to grouse.

As Jose Maria brought out small dishes of vanilla ice cream with bourbon sauce, Joe turned to Missy.

“How involved were you with The Earl’s wind project?”

Missy’s smile turned hard. “Why do you ask?”

“It’s one of the biggest in the state and it cost tens of millions to build,” Joe said. “It’s not like a new corral. I’m sure it was discussed.”

“What about it?” she asked, looking down the length of the table for her lawyer to step in. Since he was wrapped up with opening another bottle of rare red wine he’d found in the cellar, he didn’t respond. Neither did Marybeth.

“You asked me to help investigate the murder,” Joe said to Missy. “I’m on thin ice as it is, since I’m technically on the other team. So if I’m going to help at all, I need to have some things cleared up. I can’t be flying blind.”

“I thought that was your specialty,” she said. Then she noted Marybeth glaring at her and quickly added, “Not that I don’t appreciate what you’re doing, Joe. I know you’ve been spending quite a bit of extra time establishing that I had nothing to do with this.”

Missy filled the end of her spoon with a tiny bit of ice cream and stabbed the tip of her tongue at it. Her eyes closed slightly as she did, like her more delicate version of Hand’s food swooning. She seemed to know it would get his attention. It worked and he looked up, saw her, and appeared enchanted.

“He wants to know how involved I was in Earl’s business dealings,” she said.

“Why is it important?” Hand asked Joe.

“Because I talked to Bob Lee on the next place,” Joe said, thumbing over his shoulder in the general direction of the Lee Ranch. “He said The Earl approached him two years ago to buy his holdings outright, but Bob wouldn’t sell it all. So Earl negotiated a price for just the adjoining ridge. Bob didn’t mind selling that, since it was worthless for livestock or hay, and he thought he’d get the best of Earl since the price was twice what it had been appraised for. Then less than a week after the closing, Earl met some guy from Cheyenne and bought his company-Rope the Wind.”

Joe let that sink in. He checked Missy for a reaction, but she wore her best porcelain mask.

“Now Bob realizes the windy ridge was all Earl ever really wanted,” Joe said.

Missy said, “You are asking me about things that happened before we were married.”

“Right about the time you started sneaking around with him behind Bud Longbrake’s back,” Joe said. “I thought maybe he’d talked to you about his entry into the wind business.”

Her eyes became cold and hard, and she barely moved her mouth when she said, “We had other things to talk about.”

Joe nodded and said, “Rope the Wind was an established company at the time, from what Bob Lee told me. They’d gotten going before the current administration came into power and created the big boom in renewable energy. But apparently Earl could look ahead and see it coming, so he put everything into place before it did. He bought the company since they were up and running and he could move fast.”

Hand said, “Earl Alden was a kind of genius that way. He bought up depressed Iowa farms before the Feds started handing out ethanol subsidies, and it sounds like he had the same instinct when it came to wind.

“That’s something I’ve learned about the genius of Earl Alden,” Hand said, nodding his head, “and one of the three common categories of wealthy clients I’ve served over the years. The people who exist in a stratosphere outside of ours, although one could say thanks to them I’m now in it,” he chuckled. “But I digress. I’ve learned over the years there are three kinds of rich men, and only three. The first are those who had their wealth given to them. Those types generally get in trouble because they haven’t earned their wealth, although they certainly enjoy it. It gives them a skewed kind of entitlement, and they often step over the line because they think the rules don’t apply to them, alas. I’ve been hired by many of them. Even if they avoid prison-which they do thanks to me-they eventually spiral out. Many of them have such self-loathing that it’s contagious.”