Chapter Twenty-Four
As Marybeth had predicted, the sign in the window of the Burg-O-Pardner flashed Open—Open—Open.
Joe pulled into the unplowed parking lot beside the building.
There were only two other vehicles in the lot—a jacked-up Jeep near the back door and a five-passenger Polaris Ranger in front mounted with tracks.
Joe told Biscuit to stay inside, then he swung out and squinted against the snow driving into his face. Torrents of snow streamed down from the flat roof of the restaurant like an intermittent waterfall and he stepped through it and opened the door.
As always, the Burg-O-Pardner smelled of fry grease, baked goods, and tobacco smoke.
But in this case, there was a rare emptiness inside.
Five women sat together at a large round table in the corner of the restaurant, their heavy coats piled up on a nearby four-top.
The cook leaned out over a half door to the kitchen.
His forearms displayed multicolored tattoos and an unfiltered cigarette dangled from his lips. He looked bored and slightly annoyed.
“My goodness,” one of the women cried out when Joe arrived, “it’s the game warden.”
“Are you here to check our licenses?” another of the Coffee Chicks asked provocatively. “Does this mean a full body search?”
“Oh, Bitzy,” another said with a laugh. “You should hope for so much.”
“As a matter of fact,” Joe said as he approached the table and removed his hat, “I am here to talk to you all, if you don’t mind.”
The women looked at each other, obviously intrigued.
“Have a seat,” Bitzy said, gesturing to an empty chair. “Not all of us made it today in this storm. We’re missing Lisa and Mary Katherine.”
“Thank you,” he said, setting into the chair. The Coffee Chicks looked at him anxiously, if playfully. They knew they weren’t in trouble.
“We all know who you are,” said Bitzy Scicluna, who was dark-eyed and wiry and clearly in charge. “We’ve often discussed your storied exploits. But I don’t know if you know the rest of the Coffee Chicks.”
“Kind of,” Joe said. “But not formally.”
In addition to Bitzy, the rest of the women at the table were all in their seventies or eighties.
There was Cheryl, the plump and rosy-cheeked former manager of the Holiday Inn.
There was Betty, who once managed the fairgrounds and 4-H program for the youth of Twelve Sleep County, even though she was never the official director of either.
There was Shawna Johnson, who had recently sold a home-cleaning company called Shawna’s Magic Maids that had serviced the valley for forty years.
And there was Debbie, who still ran a fourth-generation ranch near Winchester with her ailing husband.
“Unlike the Main Street Mafia,” Bitzy said with a nod toward the empty head table where the town fathers had coffee every morning, “we are tough and resilient when it comes to dealing with Mother Nature. We don’t let a few snowflakes ruin our day.
On a day like this, I just get in the Ranger and drive around and pick up the members of our crew.
It isn’t so hard. If our pioneer ancestors could survive this kind of weather, we can, too. ”
“It’ll be over by tomorrow,” Cheryl said. “November storms don’t last.”
Betty said, “We’re not a bunch of softies. I hear they closed schools last night based on the weather report. Can you believe that?” she asked the others.
Then the Chicks talked over each other for a while, detailing the hardships they’d experienced due to Wyoming weather “back in the day.”
Joe waited for the topic to finally wind down, and he said, “My wife, Marybeth, said you’d be here.”
“Your wife should join us when she can,” Bitzy said. “We like her and she’d be more than welcome.”
“I’ll let her know,” Joe said.
“She’s the best thing that ever happened to that library,” Debbie offered. The others all murmured their agreement.
“I’ll get right to it,” Joe said. “Marybeth told me this morning that the Coffee Chicks are more plugged into this community than anyone else. She suggested I ask you for your opinions on a few of the local folks I’m dealing with.
I’m not asking you to sign affidavits or testify in court about anyone.
It’s not like that. But I think I could really benefit from any background you can provide. ”
The women shared long looks with each other. Then Bitzy said, “We’re not merchants of gossip.”
“I appreciate that,” Joe said. “I was thinking of you more as local oracles.”
Which made Bitzy cackle with laughter. “Oh, nice one, Mr. Joe. Flattery is always appreciated.”
Bitzy raised a finger and turned to the cook, who was watching them from the half door. “Corky, we need some lunch menus.”
“I’m thinking about closing,” Corky said. “There isn’t much going on today, and I don’t want to get stuck on the way home.”
“You’ve got valued customers sitting here, Corky. You can close after our lunch.”
“I’m buying,” Joe told him.
“You bet you are, Mr. Joe,” Bitzy said.
Corky sighed and stubbed out his cigarette. As he delivered the menus, he grumbled, “The menu hasn’t changed in twelve years, ladies. You all know what’s on it already.”
—
While Corky made and delivered salads, soup, and sandwiches—and a cheeseburger for Joe—Joe outlined the parameters of his three distinct investigations without getting into too much detail.
“Like I said, I’m not here looking for dirt.
I play things by the book. I’m just looking for insight.
If you know good things about the subjects involved, I’d love to hear that, too. ”
The Coffee Chicks all warmed up to the topic and joined in with their observations about the Thompsons of the Double D, the McElwee sisters, and John and Shelby Bucholz.
“That’s the thing with those three ranches out there,” Bitzy said.
“We’ve talked about it many times before.
It’s like God took a wagon filled with common sense, decency, and integrity and distributed them in equal measure among the ranches in the county.
But when it came to that stretch of Antler Creek Road, He ran out of all the good things before He got there. ”
Joe listened and nodded and made a few notes in his spiral notebook. He found, as he always had, that when he had an open blank page in front of him, the people across from him simply felt compelled to fill it.
—
On the McElwee sisters, rancher Debbie said that she and her husband had tolerated Buck, the father, even though he “was a horse thief and known outlaw.” But when it came to Buck’s two wild daughters, they’d cut all ties to them years before.
She said, “The sisters don’t hesitate to ask for help or to borrow equipment or labor, but they never reciprocate.
Plus, they have very, very loose morals.
And no compassion, in my opinion. They could care less if their cows starve in the winter, or if a horse needs doctoring.
They’ve always had bigger things on their mind. ”
Bitzy added that over the last few years, the sisters had started registering and licensing large vehicles at the county courthouse DMV to their ranch corporation. “We were wondering what they were up to,” she said. “We thought they were starting up a trucking company or something.”
Joe didn’t mention his new suspicion that the McElwee sisters were hosting the manufacturing and distribution of fentanyl, but Debbie’s and Bitzy’s observations bolstered his theory.
—
Shawna Johnson, the former owner of the home-cleaning service, provided especially valuable information to Joe, because unlike the others, she’d actually been in their homes.
On the McElwees, Shawna said she’d fired them.
“It was a nightmare some days,” she said.
“We were always picking up empty liquor bottles and drug paraphernalia around the house. And we never knew who would show up and wander through the house when we were out there. Once, I bumped into a naked man who claimed he was an artist. He had paint all over his skin and just one name, although I forget what it was. Plus, there were out-of-state ‘businessmen’ ”—she did air quotes with both hands as she said it—“who looked more like gangsters to me. I’d just go about my business, but it’s hard to ignore the fact that groups of people are smoking weed and doing dope in the living room at any time of day.
Some days, I’d leave that place and just find myself trembling, it was so bad. ”
“The businessmen,” Joe asked. “Could you tell where they were from?”
“Mexico, or some other country like that in South America,” Shawna said. “A couple of them could barely speak English. Oh, and how Lisa and Lainie sucked up to them! It was disgusting.”
—
On the Thompsons, Shawna also had inside knowledge. She said that Brandy was a narcissist who never looked her in the eye, and that Michael looked her in the eye, but only to intimidate her.
“They wanted their mansion to be perfect,” Shawna said. “And that’s okay as far as it goes. But we live in the rural West. A lot of the roads aren’t paved, and there’s the weather. You can’t have that kind of white-marble tile just a few steps away from the mud outside and keep a pristine home.”
Shawna leaned toward Joe and said, “Did you know about the cameras?”
Joe said he didn’t.
“Michael had them installed,” she said. “There are hidden cameras in every room.”
“You’re kidding,” Joe said, recalling the layout of the public rooms he’d been in on the ranch.
“And there were some other secrets, of course,” Shawna said while arching her eyebrows and turning her heard toward Cheryl, the former manager of the Holiday Inn.
Cheryl said to Joe, “I’d never talk about this if I still worked there, but I don’t anymore.”
“What’s that?” Joe asked.