Authors: Virginia Swift
Until she realized that they’d come into the room. Then shock replaced discomfort and determination. Her eyes went wide and her mouth formed an O. “What in the world are you two doing here in the middle of the night?” she asked.
No slurred speech. No evidence that she was confused, no sign of change in the muscles of her handsome, tense face. Molly Wood wasn’t showing any of the common signs of stroke. Thank God.
“We heard that you were in here and came to see how you were doing,” said Hawk. “If you’d been asleep, we’d have come back in the morning.”
“Sleep! With an ankle that feels like it’s on fire, I hardly think sleep is a possibility,” she snapped.
Amazingly, Hawk laughed. Molly glared. “I’m sorry, I’m not laughing at your affliction, believe me,” he said. “But your daughter told us that you might have had a stroke, and from what I see, you’re sharp as a tack and mad as hell. I find that reassuring, Molly.”
“Perhaps you’d like to share your opinions with my doctor. The fool is putting me through all sorts of ridiculous tests. It seems my age is justification enough for assuming that my brain is going haywire and my body is breaking down.”
“I’m sure they just want to be careful,” said Sally. “Preventive medicine.”
Molly offered up a withering stare. “That is the purest horse manure,” she said. “When they X-rayed my ankle, they diagnosed the only thing wrong with me. I did not have a stroke. I was carrying a basket of laundry across the living room to the dining room to fold the clothes. I keep a tidy house, and I’m accustomed to everything being in its place. My daughter, Alice, left her laptop and briefcase in the middle of the floor, and I couldn’t see them over the laundry basket. I fell. That’s the whole story.”
Hawk gave Molly a long look, and at last, to Sally’s astonishment, took Molly’s hand. “If that’s it, and you don’t have any obvious symptoms of stroke, why all the alarm?”
Molly grimaced, reminding them that she was suffering. “Alice has been insistent that they consider all possibilities. And the doctors are, as always, cautious. I don’t blame them, but I rather wish they weren’t quite so concerned that I might sue them somewhere down the line.”
Alice had insisted. It occurred to Sally that the doctors might not be the only ones thinking in legal terms. Hawk shot her a glance that told her he’d had the same idea. “Maybe you should think about letting them give you something for that ankle. Wouldn’t hurt you to sleep, Molly,” Hawk said.
She took a moment to answer. “Josiah,” she said, “I’m not opposed to painkillers. But I don’t want to take anything that could interfere with my judgment just now. I have to be able to think clearly, as you’re aware. The future of my ranch, and of my family, depends on it.”
Molly lay her head back on the pillows. “I am worn out, and I wish this thing didn’t hurt so damn much.”
It was hard to see her like that, aching, spent, aging by the minute. “Your judgment can wait until morning,” said Sally. “Couldn’t you just try to get some sleep tonight?”
A glint of tears flickered in the blue eyes, but her words were cool and even. “I don’t think you quite understand the pressure I’m under,” Molly told them. “Alice has been badgering me constantly for the last two days. My son, Philip, will be here in the morning. So will Nattie and Dwayne, and Alice is coming back, of course.” Molly paused for a breath. “I’ve agreed in principle to the land swap.”
“You haven’t signed anything yet, have you?” Hawk asked.
“They’re bringing the papers here tomorrow. I have to think about my grandchildren,” she explained.
“Molly,” Sally said, “we’ve found some information that could change your mind. Hawk—um, Josiah—will fill you in. It won’t take long. Listen to what he has to say. I promise you, we have nothing to gain or lose personally from whatever you decide, but we do care about you. And then, if you want, we’ll stay here with you tonight. After a while you could let them give you a shot and try to get a little rest.”
Maybe they’d caught her at the point of utter exhaustion. Maybe, since they’d shown up at midnight, and she was alone and hurting, she’d decided to trust them. “As long as I don’t have to talk,” she said, closing her eyes a little too tightly.
So Hawk told the tale to the tired, gritty ranchwoman. When he finished, he asked if Molly understood what it all meant, and she nodded. “I’ll have to think about it,” she said. “I want to sleep.”
Sally found a nurse, who arrived, presently, with a hypodermic. And then, in the dark and on into the dawn, they sat by the bed. Molly slept fitfully, reaching out, in wakeful moments, for a hand. Hawk never moved from her side.
At six
A.M.
a nurse came to take Molly’s vital signs, and woke them all up. Sally had conked out in the chair in the room, a piece of furniture upholstered in avocado-green vinyl, a material engineered to stick to human flesh. The chair had proven not to be Posturepedic. Her back hurt, her knees ached, and every muscle in her neck and shoulders was knotted up dense as rock.
As she pried her eyes open, she saw Hawk raise his head from the edge of the bed and blink. He wore his glasses slightly askew—he hadn’t meant to fall asleep. Now he took them off, rubbed his eyes and the bridge of his nose, wagged his head to loosen up his own neck.
Sally had done her share of all-nighters over the years, not a few during the high times of Jubilee Days. This was the first Jubilee Night she’d pulled in a hospital. Let the good times roll.
She caught Molly surveying Hawk with a hint of a fond smile on her face, but the minute Molly saw Sally looking at her, she replaced affection with dignity, as if she always woke up in hospital beds, in command.
“Well!” said Molly, looking at the two of them but addressing the nurse who was taking her blood pressure, “I nearly feel as if I’ve slept in my clothes myself. I wonder if you’d be kind enough to give me a sponge bath and to find my hairbrush before they bring my breakfast. I would also like to brush my teeth!” she concluded emphatically.
“We’ll give you some privacy,” said Sally, hauling the still half-asleep Hawk to his feet.
“Thank you,” said Molly. “My foot still hurts, but I’m feeling better this morning. You might as well go on home. Philip is due in by nine, and I expect Alice will be here before long.”
Sally stretched, felt and heard the muscles cracking in her back. “Whatever you say.”
“Go home, go home,” Molly insisted. “I’ll be fine. I remember what you told me last night, Josiah, and I’ll be thinking very seriously about what your news might mean for my plans. I am grateful to you both for staying the night, but there’s nothing more you can do for me.”
The nurse unwrapped the blood pressure cuff, told Molly, “I’ll be right back with your bath,” and walked out of the room.
“Now get out of here, I mean it!” Molly told them. “The last thing I want is for Alice to arrive and find you here. She’d never in a million years be able to understand why a couple of strangers would have spent the night here in the room with her mother.”
Sally doubted if Alice could have understood why even a daughter would do such a thing.
“I’ve always heard,” Hawk said as he drove them home, one hand kneading the back of his neck, “that people hate hospitals because they think they make you sick. Now I get it.”
“I thought Molly looked a lot better this morning,” Sally said. “She had some color in her face, and she was obviously well enough to boss people around.”
“She looked better than I feel,” Hawk said. “I need a bed real bad.”
Sally didn’t even have the strength to agree. Her lips felt as if they’d been glued together, and she was sure someone had come in during the night and thrown a bucket of rock salt into her eyes. “The parade doesn’t start until noon,” she muttered. “We could sleep until eleven forty-five.”
After her sojourn in the green chair, she could have slept until September. But she woke up at ten that Saturday morning. Maybe she was just too wasted to realize how bad off she was, after only four hours’ real sleep, but she felt refreshed and ready for the day. Perhaps it was one of those rare moments of instant karma: Spend a night in the hospital with somebody who needs you, and get back a little of what you need yourself. We all shine on.
She was careful not to wake Hawk as she slipped out to shower, performed her coffee sacrament, glanced at the
Boomerang.
Herman Schwink got some great coverage as a local hero contending for the team-roping title. No mention of the Monette Bandy case, but then what was new there? The paper that Saturday morning was predictably dominated by big photos of bucking animals and flying cowboys, and advertising for fast food, Western wear, automotive supplies, and weekend entertainment.
She had an hour and a half before heading off to join the parade contingent that was marching in memory of Monette, and in homage to Wyoming women. Plenty of time to check her email. She booted up her machine, and when the monkey had stopped screeching, she typed her password, logged into her mailbox, and was relieved to find a communique from Edna McCaffrey in Kathmandu.
A message in a bottle.
Edna, as always, was having amazing adventures, which she described in elegant, funny prose. Ordinarily Sally took time to relish Edna’s exploits in faraway lands—hell, the most exotic place Sally had been in the last five years was, well, Laramie. But today Sally hurried through a hair-raising story about a day hike that turned into two arduous days’ climbing, lost in the Himalayas, to find what she was looking for.
“So you say that the redoubtable Sheldon Stover has shown up in Laramie, and installed himself in my house,” Edna wrote. “As I’m sure you’ve surmised, we weren’t close friends at the institute. But Sheldon has the appalling, yet somehow enviable gift of assuming, utterly without evidence, that he’s welcome anywhere. By all means, disabuse him of the notion, and get him out of my house. He’s craftier than he appears, so watch out— he’ll do everything he can to convince you that he’s harmless, and suddenly you’ll find yourself doing him one favor after another.”
Edna went on to say that once Sheldon was gone, the house might as well stay empty, since she and Tom planned to return in three weeks. She appreciated Sally’s willingness to keep an eye on the place and to try to revive some of the plantings. And then she wrote, “It just occurred to me that you didn’t say why Sheldon suddenly turned up in town. I remember that he mentioned, when we were at Princeton, that in the seventies he’d had a back-to-the-land period, and bought some undeveloped property up in the Laramie Range. I do hope he isn’t entertaining some fantasy of building himself a little cabin and becoming a twenty-first-century Thoreau! The thought of Sheldon Stover camping out in our neighborhood inspires a dreadful image: an October blizzard howling, a banging on the front door, and a snow-crusted Sheldon, blowing in with the weather and a steamer trunk, asking if he can crash at our place until he gets the roof on . . . sometime next spring. Brr . . .”
Sheldon owned land in the Laramies?
Sally scowled.
What the hell
was
his game?
She answered Edna’s message, saying she’d take care of everything, and inquiring whether Edna happened to know precisely where Sheldon’s property was. It would be the next day at the earliest before she got the answer from Kathmandu, given the time change. But in her heart, Sally already knew.
Hawk had wondered aloud why Marsh Carhart would haul Sheldon in on the land swap job. The investment group Nattie and Dwayne and Marsh Carhart were working for obviously had money to burn. But for Molly Wood to give up Wood’s Hole, it seemed money wouldn’t be enough. The deal had to include a piece of land Molly could call home, in a place she loved. Sally’d be willing to bet her Mustang that Sheldon Stover owned the pretty spot at Happy Jack, where crossbills twittered, and the wind sighed in the pines, and beavers frolicked and labored in their thriving pond, and poison spread, inexorably and invisibly, deep beneath the whispering grass and the sparkling water.
The question, to paraphrase the Senate Select Committee questioning the Watergate conspirators, was this: What did Sheldon know, and when did he know it?
“That little bastard,” said Hawk, when Sally woke him with a cup of coffee, a hard copy of Edna’s email message, and her suspicions. “I’m getting out of this bed and going right over to Edna and Tom’s house and nail him to the wall. It’s time we found out exactly what’s going on here.”
“I just called over there,” Sally told Hawk. “There was no answer. I let him know yesterday, in very clear terms, that he had to be out today—I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s split.” And left them a huge mess to clean up, no doubt.
“But if he’s a partner in this deal, don’t you think he’d hang around at least long enough to make sure the ink was dry? What if you went over to Edna’s and took a look, and I popped by the hospital?”
“Bad idea,” Sally said. “What would you do—drag Sheldon out of there and thump on him until he pulled out of the swap? You’d embarrass Molly, and at this point, I don’t think there’s anything you could do if she’s determined to sign off. She might well decide that the money’s too good to pass up. She could just write off the Happy Jack parcel as a place to maybe build a little summer cabin, forget about living up there, get a big house in town.”
“Or she could leave it as is, with the beavers in charge on the surface, and the toxins way down below. We can’t tell her anything more that might change her mind. But what about Sheldon?” Hawk replied. “Even assuming that the Happy Jack parcel is Sheldon’s land, it’s still possible that he’s not aware of the pollution from the tie plant. Maybe he’s got a conscience.”
Sally just looked at Hawk. “You’re right. I should just clobber him,” Hawk said, swinging his legs out from under the covers.
“Hang on a second,” Sally said. “Okay. It’s possible he doesn’t know about the groundwater contamination—after all, if the land is his, he hasn’t ever done anything with it. He and Carhart go back a ways—maybe Marsh remembered that Sheldon had the land and Marsh brought him into the deal, but hasn’t bothered to mention the tie plant. Suppose that’s the case, and Sheldon has no idea that the land he’s selling off is lousy with toxic waste. He just thinks he’s gotten in on a good deal, and figures he stands to make out big as a partner in the Wood’s Hole development. Or hey, maybe, since he’s in the Insurgency, he thinks he can make toxic waste disappear simply by refusing to believe it’s there. And in the meantime, gentleman scholar that he is, he rationalizes making out like a bandit by doing his participant-observer experimental ethnography. I bet he’s got some really loopy ideas about the part he is or isn’t playing in some complicated transaction between the global and the local. It makes you see land speculation in a whole new light.”
“Please,” said Hawk. “This is all getting a little post-modern for me. Recall that this is, after all, a real estate deal, and Nattie Langham will get her seven percent, or whatever. That ought to bring this conversation back down to earth.”
Sally pressed her lips together, blew out a puff of air. “Do you think Dwayne and Nattie know about the tie plant?”
Hawk took a big swallow of his coffee. “It’s not up to us to tell them. Molly asked me to look at the land—they didn’t. How deep into this thing do you want to get?”
Sally put her hand to her forehead and closed her eyes. “How deep are we?”
“You’ve got me,” said Hawk as the telephone rang, “but if that’s Delice, and she’s managed to find out that the deal’s about to go down, then likely we’re both in over our heads.”
But it wasn’t Delice. When Sally answered the phone, at first all she heard was silence. And then, faint and scratchy, music. Old-fashioned, twangy country guitar. Thumping percussion. A woman’s voice, unmistakable. Kitty Wells. Singing “Honky-Tonk Angels.”
The music faded. And then a whisper. “You better watch out, angel. Maybe you ought to stay home today.”
Click. Dial tone.
Sally stared at the phone, frozen. Hawk took the receiver from her and hung up. “Who was that?” he asked quietly.
“I-I don’t know,” she stammered. “Kitty Wells.”
Hawk grabbed her by the shoulders. “Did someone threaten you? What did they say?”
Sally swallowed. “I’d say it was a threat.” As she explained, the phone rang again. Hawk snatched it up instantly. “Yeah. Oh hi, Maude. Yes, we’ll be over there in a little while. We had a kind of a late night last night . . . No, we’re fine ...Yes, see you soon. Goodbye.” He hung up. Then said, “Shit!”
“What’s wrong now?” Sally asked, her voice shrill.
“If Maude hadn’t called just then, we could have dialed star six-nine and found out where the previous call came from.”
But Sally was already calling Dickie and Mary’s house.
Mary answered, excitement in her voice. “Oh hey, Sally. I’m just on my way out the door, heading for the parade. Dickie’s already down there. They’ve got him riding a golden palomino at the head of the memorial float group. Then after us come some twirlers with flaming batons, and then the Shriners. This is going to sound weird, but this way of remembering my niece seems right to me.”
Somehow, Sally found her voice. “Could you tell Dickie I’ve got to talk to him right away? I’ll be down there as soon as I can, looking for him. Tell him it’s urgent.”
“Yeah, sure. Are you okay?” Mary asked.
“I’m fine. Just a little shook. Listen, do you know if Scotty Atkins is down there too?”
“Couldn’t say. I know Dickie’s put a lot of his people on parade duty, but not everybody. Do you want Dickie’s cell phone number?”
“No,” said Sally. “I’ll just look for him there.”