Chapter Fifteen #2
He pulled into the yard and parked out in the open within sight of the main house.
When he cracked open the door to his pickup, a sudden outcry of manic barking broke the silence of the morning.
Ranch dogs that were hybrid wolf mixes boiled out from beneath the porch of the log house and rushed the truck.
The pack of dogs snapped their jaws and barked at him and completely surrounded his vehicle. Joe waited, grateful that he’d made the decision to leave Biscuit back at home.
After about five minutes, he saw Lisa McElwee open the front door of the main house and shout at her dogs. When they didn’t retreat, she slapped at her thighs and called them a bunch of “buttholes.”
Finally, the lead alpha male backed down and trotted to the house. The others followed.
When Joe swung out of his pickup, he had his right hand on his large canister of bear spray, just in case he needed to pull it out if the dogs attacked.
“You better not spray my babies,” Lisa called out cheerfully.
“I hope I don’t have to,” Joe replied.
“You won’t,” she said, as equally cheerful. “Unless I decide to sic ’em on you.”
—
Lisa was a sight, all right, Joe thought.
In her late forties, she wore a flowing floral caftan of some kind and Muck boots.
Her dyed rust-colored hair was unkempt and it stuck out from her head in points like a starburst. She was fleshy and solidly built, but surprisingly fluid in her movements.
Her eyes were dark and heavily mascaraed, which made her look like a raccoon emerging from a flower bed.
“Do you mind if I check out your corral?” Joe asked.
Lisa narrowed her eyes. “Why would you want to do that?”
“Oh,” Joe said, intending to downplay it, “we got a report that there might have been some shenanigans involving a bull elk over there this morning.”
“Shenanigans?”
He nodded.
“Ah, to hell with that,” she said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “Why don’t you come in and have a cup of coffee first? I just made it.”
Joe hesitated. He’d never been invited inside the ranch house before. Usually when he arrived, either Lisa or Lainie met him on the porch. They kept a close eye out for visitors.
“Aren’t you game wardens supposed to be big on landowner relations?” Lisa asked with a mischievous grin. The way she said “landowner relations” made it sound salacious.
“Yup.”
“Then come on in. Whatever you want to look at ain’t going anywhere.”
From what Joe understood, Lisa and Lainie shared the house. Lisa occupied one side of the home and Lainie lived in the other. In the middle were the common rooms, including the kitchen, great room, and a pair of small business offices.
Joe glanced over his shoulder at the corral. He thought he saw some items glinting in the cheatgrass on the approach. Shell casings?
Whatever they were, he thought, they’d still be there after he had a cup of coffee inside. Plus, he was naturally curious to see what their house was actually like. Because he’d heard things.
“Sure,” he said. “Thank you kindly.”
—
“You don’t need to take off your boots,” Lisa said when Joe stepped across the threshold. “Unless, of course, you’re planning to stay here awhile.”
Joe stayed mum as he scraped the mud off his soles on a mat in the mudroom. He wasn’t sure how to respond to that.
“This way,” she said as she turned. He followed her flowing robes through the great room toward a small nook off the kitchen.
The interior of the home was spacious but dark, with ancient hardwood floors and an unlit elk-antler chandelier hanging from the ceiling.
All of the furniture was overstuffed and musty, and European mounts of elk, deer, bighorn sheep, and pronghorn antelope were affixed to the walls.
Cobwebs stretched between the tines of most of the antlers, and dust motes floated across the floor as they walked.
A massive painting of a nude woman sprawled across a cowskin rug dominated one of the walls.
In the painting, the woman lay on her belly looking up at the artist with a come-hither look.
Her buttocks were in full view and illuminated with light from a source to the side, and her large breasts ballooned below her onto the cowhide.
It made Joe pause in his tracks. The painting was one of the things he’d heard about, but he hadn’t been sure it was true until that moment.
“Yes, that’s me,” Lisa said. “Twenty years and thirty pounds ago.”
“It’s…nice,” Joe said.
“That rug gave me lice.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“I’ve got other ones up in my bedroom, but they’re definitely not rated PG-13 like that one.”
Was she inviting him to see them? Joe wasn’t sure.
“My second husband, Eduardo, was a painter,” Lisa said.
“He was an asswipe, also. When I kicked him out, he wanted the paintings, but I wouldn’t let him have them.
You can guess why he wanted to keep them, but I didn’t want him to have the pleasure, if you know what I mean.
He called the artwork his ‘wanker collection,’ after all.
“I don’t know where he is now, young Eduardo, but I’d guess he’s found another older woman with a lot of money. But if someone ever broke into this house and either vandalized the painting or stole it off the wall, I know who I’d blame.”
Joe followed her into the breakfast nook, which was more brightly lit due to a big east-facing window that looked out at the grounds.
“Between my sister and me,” Lisa said as she poured coffee into a mug for Joe, “we’ve had a six-pack of rotten husbands over the years. Lainie has four exes and I have two. None of them have been worth a damn.”
Joe cleared his throat and asked, “Do you mind if I ask you a couple of questions?”
Lisa cocked her head and pouted her lips. “I thought we could have a nice little visit first.”
Joe conceded and sat back in his chair. He sipped at his coffee.
“I could warm up a cinnamon roll if you’d like,” she offered.
“Thanks, but I already had breakfast.”
“Then I hope you don’t mind if I eat one in front of you.”
“Feel free,” Joe said.
After Lisa heated up a softball-sized roll in the microwave and sat down across from Joe, she studied him for a moment while she pulled it apart and ate it.
She chewed her food in a slow, sultry way.
She finished by licking her lips in a deliberate rotation of her tongue, and finished by licking her fingers.
Her eyes never left his, and Joe felt the back of his neck flush.
“Has anyone ever told you that you have soulful eyes, Joe? Sensitive eyes. Even kind of sensuous?”
“Nope,” he said.
“Well, you do. I mentioned that to Lainie once and she agreed.”
Joe focused on a spot over her head to avoid her gaze. It felt to him that it was getting a little warm in the room.
“Marybeth winds up with the soulful-eyed game warden,” Lisa said wistfully. “Lainie and I end up with the assholes of the world. Life just isn’t very fair sometimes, wouldn’t you agree?”
“I would agree that life isn’t fair,” Joe said. “This isn’t a conversation I thought I’d be having today.”
It was then that he contemplated the situation he was suddenly in, and what it might actually be about. Not Lisa flirting with him, not the painting of Lisa in the great room. Not his soulful game warden eyes.
It was about drawing him into the house and away from the corral.
Joe stood up and walked around the table to the large window. From there, by leaning far to the right, he could look to the south, which had been out of his view from where he’d sat at the table.
“What are you doing?” Lisa asked, obviously annoyed.
“Watching your sister collecting the shell casings by the corral,” Joe said.
—
Lainie McElwee was younger than Lisa by a few years, with long blond hair and delicate birdlike features—except for her eyes, which were hard and remorseless. She looked as though she’d been poured into her Wranglers. Lainie was a looker, Joe conceded. Hence the four husbands thus far.
Lainie was semi-famous in Saddlestring for mounting the bar at the Stockman’s and swanning down the length of it kicking over every glass, then choosing a young cowboy to fall into the arms of.
Joe had seen the performance once, and he’d had the wherewithal to grab his bourbon and water from the counter and retreat before she could vanquish it.
Lainie’s hands were in the pockets of her Carhartt barn coat as she walked from the corral toward the house. Joe stepped outside and she froze when she saw him.
“What do you have in your pocket, Lainie?” he asked.
She didn’t flinch or show any guilt. “Why do you ask, Joe? What business is it of yours?”
“It’s my business if you picked up all of the shell casings,” he said.
“What shell casings?” Lainie asked.
When Lisa shouldered her way past Joe on the porch to join her sister, Lainie asked her, “What in the fuck is he talking about?”
“Beats me,” Lisa said. “He’s pretty piss-poor at landowner relations, I’ve found.”
—
Joe squared off across from the McElwees, who stood shoulder to shoulder, confronting him. Their backs were to the corral, and it was as if they were daring him to get through them to reach it.
“I’m responding to a call we got this morning,” Joe said. “An archery hunter up on the public section said he saw three guys shoot up a bull elk that was tied in place in your corral. If it’s true, that’s breaking a bunch of laws. And if it’s true, it makes me pretty mad. I hate things like that.”
Lainie rolled her eyes and said, “That’s why they call him ‘Dudley Do-Right’ in town behind his back.”
Lisa guffawed at that.
“They call me that to my face,” Joe said, instantly regretting it. Then, to change the subject, he said: “Something else. The guy who called said the bull elk was staggering around like it was drunk. Do you have any idea why the elk would act that way?”
“You’re the expert on elk,” Lainie said. “Not us. Isn’t that part of your job to know?”