C Box - In Plain Sight

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.

Sheridan and Lucy were now in their pajamas and they came out so Grandmother Missy could kiss them good night. Lucy was dutiful; Sheridan shot a glance at her mom about the good-bye ritual that Marybeth pretended she didn’t catch. Missy turned to go.

Marybeth was behind her mother and snapped on the porch light as Missy opened the front door.

Missy froze on the porch.

“Marybeth, who is out there?” she asked.

Marybeth felt her legs almost go limp. Oh, no, she thought. What now? The way her mother asked…

She looked over her mother’s shoulder. The porch light reflected back from the lenses of a pair of dark headlights as well as the windshield of a vehicle parked and pointed at the house in the dark.

“Someone’s just sitting there,” Missy said, backing up into Marybeth, “staring at us.”

“Come back in the house,” Marybeth said, stepping aside, thinking of the loaded lever-action Winchester rifle in the closet in Joe’s office.

When she looked at the profile of the vehicle in the darkness, she recognized the squared-off roofline and the toothy grille.

“Oh my,” Marybeth said, pushing past her mother onto the pathway that led through the lawn toward the gate.

She heard Sheridan come to the door behind her and say, “Who is it out there?”

“Nate!” Marybeth said over her shoulder.

“That’s not Nate’s Jeep.”

And it wasn’t, Marybeth realized as she went out through the gate and practically skipped to the driver’s-side window. It wasn’t Nate at all, and in an instant her fear returned, canceling out the surprisingly strong burst of elation. Instead of Nate Romanowski, a man she couldn’t see well slumped against the window from the inside, his cheek pressed against the glass in a smear of drool.

Marybeth felt foolish for jumping to conclusions. She rapped against the driver’s-side window with one knuckle.

Tommy Wayman sat up with a start, then turned and looked at her, his eyes wide for a moment until he seemed to recognize where he was, who she was.

She opened the door. “Tommy, are you all right? Why are you here?”

“Is Joe here?” the river guide gushed. She could smell the fetid smell of alcohol. As he spoke he moved in his seat and Marybeth could hear empty bottles clink at his feet.

“No,” she said, stepping back.

“I saw her,” Tommy said, his eyes comically widening, as if he’d suddenly remembered why he came in the first place and everything was just rushing back to him as he sat there. “I fucking saw her today!”

“Who?” Marybeth said coolly. “And please watch your language at my home.”

“Opal Scarlett!” Tommy hissed.

“What?”

“Opal. I saw Opal. ”

“I doubt that,” Marybeth said to Tommy, then turned back to the grouping of her mother, Sheridan, and Lucy on the porch looking out. “It’s all right,” Marybeth said. “It’s Tommy Wayman. He’s drunk.”

Missy gestured “whew!” by wiping her brow dramatically.

“I really did see her,” Tommy said, reaching out and grasping Marybeth’s arm, imploring her with his eyes. “I need to tell Joe! I need to tell the world she’s alive!”

“You can wait for him out here or in his office,” Marybeth said, hoping Tommy would chose the former. “He should be home anytime now. I’ll call and tell him you’re here.”

“Tell him who I saw!”

Marybeth went back into the yard. This was the kind of thing she hated, these late-night adventures with drunken men who wanted to talk to Joe. Add this to the fact that someone was harassing them, and Missy’s idea about moving to the ranch sounded better all the time.

“Watch out for that guy,” Marybeth heard Sheridan telling Missy. “He throws old ladies in the river.”

“I’m not an old lady,” Missy said icily.

As Marybeth passed her daughter, trying not to smile at the exchange, Sheridan leaned toward her mother and said under her breath, “Nate, huh?”

Marybeth was grateful it was dark, because she knew she was blushing.

“SO YOU CLAIM YOU SAW HER EXACTLY WHERE ?” Robey Hersig asked Tommy Wayman, who was drinking his second cup of coffee.

“I told you three times,” Tommy said, raising his mug with two hands but not successfully disguising how they trembled. “At that big bend of the river before you get to the old landing. Closer to Hank’s side of the ranch than Arlen’s. She was just standing there in the reeds looking at me as I floated by. Scared me half to death.”

Joe had been home an hour. When he heard what Tommy had to say, he called Robey and Sheriff McLanahan. McLanahan claimed he needed his “beauty sleep” and sent Deputy Reed, who was preferable anyway. The three of them sat around Joe’s kitchen table because there were too many big bodies to fit in his office. Marybeth went upstairs to read and the girls were in bed. Tommy was at the head of the table, nursing black coffee. He had asked Joe for a little shot of hooch in the coffee to “cut the bitterness,” but Joe had refused.

“She said something to you,” Robey asked. “What was it she said?”

“No,” Tommy said, shaking his head, starting to get angry at the repetition of the questions. “I said I thought she was telling me something, but I couldn’t hear the words over the sound of the river.”

Reed checked his notebook. “Earlier, you said she smiled at you. Are you serious? Is that really what you meant, that she smiled at you as you floated by?”

Reed looked from Joe to Robey and back to Tommy. He was clearly skeptical. “What kind of smile?” he asked. “A Hi-Tommy-happy-to-see-you-again smile? Or a Get-over-here-and-pay-me-my-fee smile?”

“Damn it,” Tommy said, thumping the table with the heel of his hand, “that’s what she was doing. And yeah, I guess it was sort of a, um, pleasant smile. Like she was, you know, happy.”

Reed rolled his eyes toward the ceiling.

Although small details kept changing, which was very disconcerting if one wanted to believe Tommy Wayman’s story, the basic tale was the same: The outfitter took his fifteen-foot Hyde low-profile drift boat out on the Twelve Sleep River to do some fishing of his own after a pair of clients canceled. He brought along his cooler, which had been filled with beer for three. Fishing was good. The beer was cold. Tommy landed nothing smaller than twenty-two-inch rainbows on dry flies. He lost track of how many beers he had drunk after counting eleven, and how many fish he caught after twenty. He may have even dozed off. Yes, he did doze off, which wasn’t a good thing, generally.