In Plain Sight

None of those things had happened. Opal’s status was in a dread state of limbo and rumors that were starting to fly had practically destabilized the entire valley.

Joe had carefully read the report issued by Sheriff McLanahan’s office, and he had spoken at length to Robey Hersig. It didn’t make sense that her body had not turned up. The river was, as Tommy had pointed out, surprisingly low and slow. Spring runoff hadn’t started yet. There were places near town where a person could walk across the river, hopping from stone to stone. The likelihood of Opal’s body washing downriver without being seen was remote.

Joe had heard some of the theories being bandied about town. Three garnered prominence:

Tommy Wayman threw her in the river, all right, but that was after he strangled her and weighted the body down with stones;

Hank was driving by and happened to see Opal crawling out of the river around the bend from where Tommy threw her in. Hank saw his opportunity and bashed her over the head with a shovel and took the body back to his side of the ranch and buried her, thinking he would eventually get the ranch from Arlen; and

Opal was fine. The brief swim scared her, though, and when she reached shore she got in her car, drove to Vegas, and found a young lover named Mario. She’d be back, eventually. There was even a reported sighting of her from a county resident who swore he saw her with a tall, dark young man in a casino on the strip. The report was credible enough that McLanahan dispatched Deputy Reed to Las Vegas, where he ran up an expense account that created a minor scandal at the city council meeting.

Joe stood on the sidelines with growing frustration. This wasn’t his case in any way and his involvement was peripheral. But it drove him crazy that no progress had been made. He suggested to Robey that maybe he could be involved in the official investigation, and Robey shook his head no, saying the sheriff wanted no outside interference. “Since when would we call in the game warden for a missing-person’s investigation?” Robey asked. And Joe knew better than to bring it up with Director Pope. Joe wasn’t sure he could help the investigation along. But he knew he’d feel better if he was a part of it.

SINCE THAT MORNING in April, details started to leak out about how the Thunderhead Ranch had been run and the difficulties and complications that were resulting from the matriarch’s disappearance. Joe had an appointment with Robey Hersig the next evening to discuss what was going on. Robey had been cryptic in his request for a meeting, and Joe had been intrigued.

“We may have something brewing here that none of us anticipated,” Robey had said to Joe on his cell phone. “The more I dig into it, the worse it gets.”

“So tell me about it,” Joe said.

“Not over the phone, no way.”

“Are you serious? Do you think someone may be listening?”

“You never know,” Robey said, hanging up.

AFTER FEEDING NATE Romanowski’s falcons after school, Joe took Julie and Sheridan to the Thunderhead Ranch so Julie could go home. As they drove down the road they were met by a yellow Ford coming the other way. There was something familiar about the driver, Joe thought, something about the pinched, hard look to his face that triggered a sour familiarity, but Joe couldn’t place it. Unlike most people on a back road, the driver didn’t wave or stop. In his rearview mirror Joe watched the yellow Ford drive off.

“Who was that?” he asked Julie.

She shrugged. “It wasn’t one of our trucks.”

As they neared the ranch house, Julie said to Sheridan, “Did you ask yet?”

“Not yet.”

“Ask what?” Joe said, turning his attention to the girls but still suspicious about the Ford.

Sheridan turned to Joe. “Is it okay to do a sleepover at Julie’s in a couple of weeks?”

Sleepovers were all the rage among the eighth-graders, Joe knew. Scarcely a weekend went by without an invitation to Sheridan to sleep over at someone’s house, along with five or six other girls. It was a group thing, a pack thing, and Joe was helpless before it. He gratefully turned over all planning and coordination to Marybeth. Marybeth rued the change in her oldest daughter from preferring the company of her family to the company of her friends.

Joe said, “Why are you asking me?”

“Because Mom may not let me,” Sheridan admitted.

This was not a place Joe wanted to go. “We’ll have to discuss it later.”

“Come on, Dad . . .”

He hated when she did that, since his inclination, always, was to give in. Sheridan had the ability to rope him in with such ease that even he was shamed by it.

“Later,” he said.

“I’ll call you,” Sheridan sighed to her friend, patting Julie on the arm. Julie gave Joe a pleading look, and he shrugged as if to say, It’s out of my hands.

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