Joe grunted, wondering but not asking if she was referring to Will.
“What kind of animal would Pete Illoway be?”
Joe thought about it for a moment. “A wolf.”
She laughed, apparently delighted. “Jim Johnson?”
“Bear.”
Joe knew what was coming next.
“What animal would you say would describe me?”
He felt his face flush. “Can I get back to you on that?” he asked.
She smiled at him knowingly. “But will you?”
He hesitated. He liked being with her, liked watching her talk. She was an exotic species, charming and attractive, yet dangerous somehow. He was drawn to her, despite himself. He said, “I’m bound to see you again. This isn’t that big a place.”
“I’ve found it’s as big or as small as you want it to be,”
she said. “Jackson is unique that way.”
Joe reshuffled the files in his hands.
“You don’t need to do that,” she said. “I saw your ring last night. You saw mine. Is your wife here with you?”
“No, she’s not,” Joe said, “but she might as well be.”
“Good answer,” she said. Stella Ennis lowered her eyes and her lips tugged into a mischievous smile. It was as if she didn’t quite know where to put them, Joe thought.
“Stella’s Lips.”
“I had better be going.”
“Yes, you had better be going,” she said, agreeing with him.
Joe swung into the cab of his pickup, and when he looked back she was still there, beside his truck, looking like she wanted to say something else. He rolled the window down.
“Have you found the file on me in Will Jensen’s desk?”
she asked.
“File?”
“I assume there’s a file.” She nodded. “I had to sign a release form with the Wyoming Game and Fish Department in order to go on ridealongs. You know, agreeing not to sue the state in case a horse bucked me off or a bear bit my leg.”
“You went out with Will?” Joe asked, his tone more urgent than he wanted it to be.
“Not my choice of words exactly,” she said. “I accompanied him on a few elk trend counts, and once to check an outfitter camp. I absolutely loved it.”
If possible, Joe felt even more flushed than he had a moment before.
“I loved the realness of it,” she said. “The rawness and the danger. I’m a junkie for authenticity, if there is such a term.”
Joe swallowed, looked at her. “I saw you at the funeral.”
She nodded.
“You knew Will pretty well, then? Were you and Will.. .”
“Yes, Joe,” she said. “We were.”
He tried to picture Will and Stella together. He could only picture Stella. He felt a surprising rush of jealousy.
She crossed her arms defensively. “I admired him. He was real. I thought he had a quiet honesty and dignity about him, unlike most of the species. He was straightforward and unpretentious. People mistook his earnestness for lack of intelligence, which was a tragedy. I respected him very much. You remind me of him.”
Joe wasn’t sure he bought it, but she seemed sincere.
“Even though your husband didn’t respect him?” he asked, deliberately not addressing the last part of her statement.
“Believe it or not, we don’t think alike,” she said, “much to Don’s chagrin. Actually, he prefers it if I don’t think at all, except to think about how much I admire him.”
Joe was on thin ice and tried to think of a way off it.
“Do you have any idea why Will chose to kill himself ?”
She stared at Joe for a long time, pursing her lips. He found himself staring at them, again.
“Maybe he didn’t like what he’d become,” she said vaguely.
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning,” she said, “that I’ll need to decide what I should share with you and what I shouldn’t.”
“I’d like to know,” Joe said.
“You had better be going,” she said again, and displayed a little wave.
Joe fumbled in his breast pocket for a business card and handed one to her. She took it and slipped it into the pocket of her slacks in one quick movement, as if she didn’t want anyone to see. Joe glanced toward the building. Don was standing at the sliding glass door watching them.
Joe looked back at Stella, wondered if she’d seen Don watching them, if she cared.
“You felt it too?” she said. “When we met.”
He knew exactly what she meant, but feigned confusion. She smiled. “I thought so.”
He drove out of the lot into the sundappled trees. At the moment before the road curled into the timber, he chanced a look in his rearview mirror. She was at her car, opening the door, but looking back at him.
“Marybeth!” he heard himself shout into his cell phone.
“Joe, why are you calling now?” She sounded annoyed, her voice a loud whisper. “I’m in the middle of the audit at Barrett’s I told you about. So unless this is an emergency, I can’t talk.”
Was it? he asked himself. Yes! “No, no emergency.”
“Then call tonight, like we agreed.”
“Okay.”
“Joe, are you all right?”
“Dandy,” he said, feeling as if he were telling a lie.
Twenty
Bud Barnum was starting to get impatient. It had been a week since Randan Bello had come into the Stockman’s, and Barnum was starting to wonder if Bello was consciously avoiding him. He knew the tall man hadn’t moved on. Tubby Reeves, who managed the rifle range for the county, told Barnum that he had watched Bello put over a hundred rounds through each of his rifles the day before, and said they were nice rifles too. Bello shot long distance, peppering target after target with tight patterns at four hundred yards, the most distant standard available at the range. Reeves said Bello had three handguns as welclass="underline" a heavycaliber revolver, a midrange semiautomatic with a fourteenshot clip, and a little .25 caliber he wore in an ankle holster. “More coffee?” Timberman asked, walking the length of the bar with the pot.
“Nearly changeover time,” Barnum said, putting his hand over the top of his cup.
“Changeover time is getting earlier every day, it seems,”
Timberman mumbled.
Barnum said, “Thanks for sharing your opinion on that.”
...
Bello had checked into the Holiday Inn at the edge of town and not moved since. The receptionist, a blocky woman named Sharon, had once let Barnum bed her, and she still had feelings for the retired sheriff. She was willing to tell Barnum what he wanted to know. According to Sharon, Bello was out of his room early every day and didn’t return until dark. He was a good guest, she said, an “easy keeper.” Meaning he was quiet, didn’t use many towels, kept his room neat, and put two dollars on the dresser for the maid, which was Sharon most days. He had paid cash a week in advance but told her he may be staying up to three weeks. When he left in the morning he took his rifle cases, as well as a briefcase and a heavy duffel bag. The only things he left in his room were his clothes and a few books on falconry.
Barnum had a good idea where Randan Bello went when he wasn’t at the range practicing. Bello was scouting, like the hunter he was.
Earlier, during coffee with the morning men, Barnum had almost said something. The mayor had been droning on about the possible annexation of some land near the river, Guy Allen was saying that the temperature in Yuma was in the nineties, a rancher was bitching about how cattle prices had dropped because another mad cow had been found in Alberta. The conversation was the same as the day before, and the day before that. Barnum had felt the urge to lean forward, get their attention, and say, “There’s going to be a killing.” But he restrained himself, thinking that instead of announcing it now, he would tell them later, after it had happened, that he had suspected it all along. Telling the story slowly would have more impact, he thought. He’d explain how he’d pieced it together but was powerless to stop it because the citizens of Twelve Sleep County, in their infinite wisdom, had voted him out of office and replaced him with a preening nitwit.