Bad Company (11 page)

“Let me help.” Hawk was trying to put her at ease too. He ran a finger over the aluminum body of the scope. “I don’t mind toting a Swarovski,” he told her.

“A what?” Sally asked.

“This fine piece of Austrian optical engineering. Mrs. Wood here has the Cadillac of spotting scopes.” He turned to Molly. “I’ll wager you take some pictures with this thing from time to time.”

“Not me,” she said. “My husband was the photographer in the family. I never even took snapshots of my children at their birthday parties. I probably should have,” she finished on a mumble, as Hawk stowed scope and eyepiece in their cases, broke down the tripod, and shouldered all the equipment.

“Don’t worry about it,” said Sally. “I’d be just as happy if my mom hadn’t taken a million embarrassing pictures of me in some dress with puffy sleeves that cut off the circulation in my arms, with chocolate cake smeared all over my face and a stupid party hat.” All this talk about parents and children seemed to be making everyone nervous.

Hawk was still looking at the pond, searching for another subject. “You know, Mrs. Wood, for a stock pond, I’d say this one’s in great shape. The tules look good, there are cottonwood saplings, the water’s even clear. How do you do it?”

“Do you see any cows around here?” Molly Wood asked him. “Any cow pies even? I haven’t let them anywhere near this part of the place in almost ten years. We started out back then, just fencing them away from the pond and keeping them downstream. I’ve been reducing the herd steadily over the years, and by next year I’ll be ready to give up on cattle altogether.”

A ranch with no cattle? Not exactly a paying concern, Sally realized. How did Molly Wood make the mortgage? Jerry Jeff had said she’d stabled horses—could that possibly pay the bills? Obviously it would be rude to ask, but after all, they’d come out in part to find out what was up with Molly’s property.

“I was so sorry to read in the paper about your brother’s niece,” Molly said to Delice. “I don’t know what things are coming to around here. I understand that the memorial will be held tomorrow. I expect to be able to get there, but I have some appointments. If I’m delayed, please offer my condolences.”

Delice looked startled. “There’s no need to make a special trip. And thanks, I’ll pass on your thoughts to Mary and Dickie.”

“Don’t be so shocked that I’d attend,” Molly said acidly. “What happened to that poor Monette Bandy is just unconscionable, and I wouldn’t be surprised if you have a big turnout. People haven’t talked of anything else. Maude Stark called me up yesterday to tell me that she was thinking about organizing a demonstration. I don’t know about that, but I certainly believe in paying my respects.”

“Molly’s a Republican,” said Delice. “Republicans don’t demonstrate.”

“At least the ones who have any sense of decorum,” Molly acknowledged.

They’d gotten to the house, and were standing at the front door, when Brit turned an appraising eye on the creek, and the cottonwoods, and the carpet of wildflowers in the ungrazed pasture beyond.

“What are you looking at?” Hawk asked her.

Brit’s expression was halfway between blank and bleak. “I’m trying to imagine a bunch of condos by the creek, and those meadows all full of trophy vacation homes nobody lives in.”

Molly’s eyes flicked to Brit. “I beg your pardon?” she said.

“I understand that my Uncle Dwayne and Aunt Nattie are putting together a deal to get you to swap this place to some California developers, for some acreage up in the Laramie Range,” she said. “People haven’t talked of anything else.”

Molly Wood just stared at Brit. Brit returned the glare. Neither one blinked. A real Wyoming moment.

Molly’s eyes shifted and scanned them all. Nobody said anything. “Well,” she said at last, breaking the silence but smiling pleasantly, as if the conversation had just begun. “Why don’t you come in?”

Walking into her living room, Sally could imagine Ralph Waldo Emerson holding forth to sea captains and Harvard divines and Margaret Fuller. It smelled like lemon furniture polish and lavender sachets. Homey, but not precisely comfortable. Clean plank floor, mahogany chairs, stiff upholstered sofas, gleaming tables, a curio cabinet full of fossils and arrowheads, old coins and tin-types. Rich, red, Persian rugs that somebody’s great-grandfather had probably brought back from the Orient on a clipper ship. Not a single speck of dust, anywhere. The walls held a pair of heavily framed oil portraits, a man and a woman in somber clothes. The woman had blue eyes and Molly’s jaw line. There was a seventeenth-century map of a Connecticut land grant, in remarkably good condition, and a couple of what looked like excellent Japanese prints.

Hawk walked up to the map, squinting. “Walling Plantation?” he said. “I was born five miles from there.”

“And I was born right in the middle of that grant,” said Molly. “In Wallingtown. First person in eleven generations of my family to leave.”

Hawk took the opening. “I wasn’t. You’ve been out here in Wyoming a long time, haven’t you?”

Once again she examined them all. “You are a nosy bunch, aren’t you? Oh, all right!” she exclaimed, exasperated. “I might have known that like everybody else in the county, you want to know what’s going on with my ranch. Maude pumped me for a good half hour. I suppose it makes as much sense to let people hear the truth as to feed the Laramie rumor mill. The things for the rummage sale are in the spare room. Why don’t you load them up, and then we can have some lunch and I’ll explain.”

“We wouldn’t want you to go to any trouble, Molly. It’s nice enough of you to donate to the Historical Society,” Delice said.

“It’s no bother. I’ve got some very good frozen pizzas and some beer,” she announced firmly. “I don’t mind the company, and I’d just as soon have a civilized meal and a conversation as have you try to worm things out of me so deviously.”

“It appears,” said Hawk, “that we’re not so clever after all.”

Molly got lunch ready while they worked. Her white elephants filled the back of Hawk’s truck and most of Delice’s Explorer. She had already wrapped dishes and small objects in movers’ paper and packed them in neatly labeled cardboard cartons. They hauled the boxes out, along with a chrome and vinyl kitchen table set and some other furniture. If you liked Early American stuff, there were some real treasures. Sally had her eye on a captain’s chair and was giving some thought to a drop-leaf Governor Winthrop desk she’d seen Hawk linger over. It was time, she thought, for them to think about acquiring some decent furniture. They lived like grad students.

And besides, she’d been touched by the instant connection between Hawk and Molly Wood. She knew Hawk as a man who took his time getting to know people, and she suspected that Molly Wood didn’t warm quickly. But they’d clicked in a heartbeat.

At last they were all settled on a redwood deck overlooking the creek, sitting at a wrought-iron table eating pepperoni pizza and drinking—what else?—Budweiser. It must be the beer that made New Haven famous.

Hawk watched the redwing blackbirds dart at each other, squabbling over their turf, but returning, finally, to their original perches. “So how far can we see to the edge of your place?” he asked.

“I suspect that’s your polite way of asking how much land I have. About five thousand acres,” Molly replied. “Seven and a half sections. And it’s mine, outright. Most ranchers lease public land for grazing, but Ezekiel didn’t like the idea of having to rely on the government,” she said.

Another Wyoming moment. Oy veh.

“We had a thirty-year mortgage. Paid it off in 1988.”

“Land of the free and the home of the brave,” Sally couldn’t help saying.

Molly was somewhat amused.

“So it doesn’t cost you anything to live here,” Brit said. “Then why would you sell?”

Boy, Brit was really rolling today. She’d either slay them in court or end up looking at a shootout at high noon.

“I don’t need the money myself,” Molly explained. “I’m somewhat choosy about my gear, as you’ve noticed, Josiah. But my needs aren’t extravagant, and the stock market’s done fine for me. I’m not piling up a fortune, but I have no problem living on dividends.”

They waited while she ate her pizza, took a swallow of beer. And then Delice ran out of patience. “Come on, Molly. Why sell paradise? It can’t be that you’ve gotten tired of the winters. It’ll be colder and snowier and windier up in the Laramies.”

Molly took some more time, chewing, sipping before answering. “The land I’d swap for is a seventy-acre tract off the Happy Jack Road. It’s quite private, and it’s exceptionally pretty up there too,” she said at last. “The property has power and well water not too far down, a creek of its own, even a beaver pond. I’ve already seen crossbills and goldfinches up there, and there’s a nice aspen grove that will be heavenly in the fall. It’s an in-holding in the Medicine Bow National Forest, so the land around me would never be developed. I could build a nice, new, small house where everything would work, and I wouldn’t have to deal with constant upkeep and updating.”

“Could you show it to me on a map?” Hawk asked.

“Of course. In a while,” Molly told him. She gazed out at the creek, and continued. “Look around the valley,” she told them. “Out here, the landholders are under so much pressure to sell or subdivide, half my neighbors are saying that it’s not a matter of whether, but when. Right now people are getting an excellent price for their land. But we all know that the booms don’t last forever. A year from now the bottom could drop out of the market, and I’d have let my best opportunity pass me by.”

They all nodded thoughtfully. But here came Brit again. “You have kids, don’t you?”

“Yes. A son and a daughter,” Molly said, without much expression. “And five grandchildren.” There she perked up some.

“Doesn’t it bother them that you’re thinking of selling this place?” Hawk asked, with what Sally considered an uncharacteristic lack of finesse. It bothered him, that was for sure.

Molly thought about it. “They say they understand why it’s tempting.”

And now Delice gave up on subtlety. “Dwayne said something about the deal giving you a nice legacy to pass on.”

Molly laughed cheerlessly. “I could pass on an even better legacy by simply giving Wood’s Hole to a land trust that would protect the place.” She’d finished her pizza, wiped her hands on her paper napkin, and folded it carefully, along the original creases. “My children are, shall we say, not as attached to this place as I am. In fact, they couldn’t wait to get out of here. My son, Philip, went off to college in Boulder, and it took him about eight years to graduate. Drugs had something to do with it. Then he got born-again and joined that football coach thing—the Promise Keepers—and cleaned up his act. Now he lives in Colorado Springs, with his wife and three children, and works for some company that markets what he calls ‘Christian products.’ I confess, I’ve never quite understood how a product could be Christian. But I know that his church tithes. A good percentage of any money I leave him will probably end up with them. I’m not too sure how I feel about that.”

Molly folded her hands in her lap now, as carefully as the napkin. “At least I see Philip from time to time,” she said evenly. “He brings the kids for a visit once a year or so. He’s very worried about my immortal soul. That’s what comes of being a descendant of Jonathan Edwards.”

“The guy who sang ‘Sunshine, Go Away Today’?” Delice wondered.

“The minister who wrote the sermon ‘Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,’ ” said Hawk. “Mighty scary stuff. Better than Stephen King.”

“Indeed. Philip is certain I’m not prepared to meet my maker. I keep telling him I’m in better shape than most people in this world and the next.”

Sally didn’t doubt it. “What about your daughter?” she asked.

“Alice hasn’t been back here in twelve years. Partly it’s because she hates Wyoming. She left for school when she was eighteen, telling me it was the happiest day of her life. Now I hardly ever hear from her, and she claims that her work just doesn’t leave time for a visit where she has to change planes three times just to get here.”

Sally felt a minor pang of guilt. Her own parents were dead, but she hadn’t been back to St. Louis to see her brothers in a couple years. She should at least call. “So what does your daughter do for a living?” she asked.

“I suppose you’d call it e-commerce,” Molly explained. “Five years ago she and a couple of partners started a website. It’s called Alice’s Restaurant. They started with organic food products, but now they specialize in selling personal services, whatever that means.”

“I can guess,” said Sally. “You can get anything you want.”

“Yes. They’ve gotten very big. She must have made a ton of money, but all she does is work. My grandchildren go to boarding school and to camp in the summer. I doubt she sees them for two weeks put together at a time. Her husband left her last year, so when the kids have free time, they’re with him. I don’t blame him for walking out—she never had a minute for him either.”

“So Alice is too busy to care whether you sell or not?” Sally asked.

Molly raised her eyebrows. “Not quite. When I called her to tell her I might have an offer on the place, suddenly she was very interested. Not only does she think I should do it, but she’s urged me to simply give her and Philip the cash from the sale, right now. She’s pointed out that I’ve always intended to leave them everything in my will, and I don’t need the money to live on. Giving it to them now will avoid inheritance taxes. It’s a lot of money, so of course the taxes would be considerable.”

“Excuse me?” Brit said. “Oh yeah. It’s about taxes, not about greed.”

“Perhaps,” said Molly. “Philip assures me that Alice is simply thinking about what will be there for her own children, and he agrees with her. Alice says she could invest the money now, and in short order it would be worth ten times the current value of my land.” Molly sighed. “They’re probably right. And I’d still have a lovely piece of Wyoming to call my home.”

Hawk tilted his head and looked Molly in the eye. “Why not just sell off part of this place? Why the whole thing?”