C Box - In Plain Sight

Arlen signed off, dropped the phone in his pocket, and stood up. His face had drained of color.

“Meade Davis is outside,” Arlen said, referring to the lawyer Opal was rumored to have worked with to develop an updated will. “He just got back from Arizona today and he says everybody he meets tells him we’ve been looking for him. He said someone broke into his office while he was away and stole a bunch of records. But he says he’s got some news for me.” Arlen was clearly excited.

Marybeth said, “You’d better go meet with him, then. Maybe we’ll actually see a resolution to the dispute. Please let me know how it goes.”

“I will,” Arlen said, acting more nervous than Marybeth had ever seen him.

When he left her office his Stetson and barn coat were still on her couch, so she knew he would be back.

She stood up and watched him through blinds. He bounded outside and approached the dusty black Lincoln Continental that belonged to Meade Davis. Davis got out. He was portly, avuncular, with thinning hair and a white mustache and a quick smile. Arlen and Davis were of the same generation. Marybeth watched Davis shake Arlen’s hand, then place his other hand on it as well, as if offering condolences. Then he shook his head from side to side, and Arlen looked momentarily distraught.

It looked to Marybeth as if Davis was delivering bad news. Marybeth was surprised, but not as surprised, it seemed, as Arlen.

But Arlen quickly recovered. He spun Davis around, threw an arm over his shoulder, and they started walking away, Arlen bending his head toward Davis, putting his face in Davis’s ear, his jaw working, talking up a storm.

AN HOUR LATER, Arlen burst through her door. His eyes blazed.

“There was a secret will,” Arlen said excitedly. “Meade Davis drew it up last fall. Mother gave me the entire ranch, as I knew she would. Hank gets nothing.”

Marybeth was taken aback. But when she watched them it had looked like…

“Congratulations are in order, I guess.”

“You can say that again,” Arlen said, beaming.

“When I saw you outside, it looked as though Davis was telling you something awful. You looked unhappy with what he said.”

Arlen stared back at Marybeth as if frozen against a wall by a spotlight. He regrouped quickly, and fully, threw back his head and laughed too loudly for the room. “When he told me his office had been broken into and the will stolen, I thought Hank had beaten me once and for all. That’s probably what you saw. Then I realized that if Meade testifies to what it said, and what Mother’s wishes were, it’s as good as finding the will in the first place! You must have seen me before I figured that out.”

“That must be it,” she said, rising and holding out her hand. “Again, congratulations.” She said it not so much for Arlen but for the rest of the valley.

AFTER THE DINNER DISHES WERE CLEARED AWAY, Marybeth and her mother, Missy Vankueren-Longbrake, sat down at the kitchen table with cups of coffee. Joe had called from somewhere in the mountains to say he would be late and he would have to miss dinner because someone had reported a poacher allegedly firing at a herd of deer. Marybeth found it suspicious that the night her mother came to visit was the night Joe happened to be late.

Missy had retained her previous name and added the “Longbrake” after marrying local rancher Bud Longbrake six months before, saying she liked the way it sounded all together. Sort of patrician, she explained.

Sheridan and Lucy were in their room, ostensibly doing their homework. Missy favored Lucy, and Lucy played her grandmother like a musical instrument. Sheridan seemed to hold both of them in disdain when they were 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?”