Dark Paradise

by Tami Hoag

  “Well, now, you just say the word and I'll take care of the whole ball of beeswax for you.”

  “Thank you. You're very”—opportunistic, exploitative, vulturelike—“industrious.”

  Daggrepont took it as a compliment.

  “I'm still in shock, to tell you the truth,” she said. “I can't think about the land yet. There are just so many unanswered questions. I was driving by and saw your lights on. Thought I'd just drop in and see if you might be able to answer any of them for me.”

  His brow furrowed into burls of flesh. He rubbed his sausage fingers over his third chin. “What sort of questions? Financial questions?”

  “Sort of.” She cast about for a place to sit, finally settling a minimal portion of her fanny on a chair taken up by a towering stack of old Life magazines and a shoebox half full of old military medals. She set the shoebox on the floor and leaned back against the magazines. “I thought you might know something about the inheritance Lucy came into before she moved here.”

  Daggrepont heaved out a gust of pent-up breath. “'Fraid I can't help you there, little lady. I wasn't privy. She had me draw up her will, named me executor, that's all.”

  “Did she say why? I mean, she was young, healthy, not the kind of person given to planning that way.”

  “She owned property and livestock. Had money in the bank. It's just sound thinking!” he shouted up at the ceiling. His eyes narrowed and swam in Mari's direction. “You ought to think about having one yourself. I'd be more than happy to take care of that for you. I've got the forms right here—”

  “Not just now,” Mari said, halting his search of the desktop. “Thanks anyway.”

  He stared at her hard, his fat hands dripping fishing tackle, his mind calculating what he might have made in additional fees. “Well, if you're sure . . .”

  “Maybe later on.”

  She sighed and glanced around the room. This had been a shot in the dark, but now that nothing had come of it, she realized she had actually hoped Daggrepont might prove to be something other than chronically weird. Her gaze scanned the bookshelves that were crammed with legal tomes, collector's price guides, and mail-order catalogues.

  “Did you know anything about her finances at all?” God, what's he supposed to say, Marilee? You mean, was Lucy a blackmailer? By golly, little missy, she sure was!

  Daggrepont looked at her sideways. “How do you mean?”

  “I mean, she seemed a lot more well off than when I knew her. I was just wondering how that came to be.”

  The grin that split the lawyer's face made him look like a cowboy-kitsch Buddha. Buddha with a string tie and Don King hair. The image didn't faze Mari, which told her just how far gone she was.

  “You're the first client I ever had who worried about getting too much money!” He let loose a belly laugh that shook the cobwebs in the corners of the ceiling.

  “No. I was just curious, that's all. Lucy and I kind of lost touch over the last year.”

  “That's a shame.”

  “Yeah, well . . .” His collection of the Martindale-Hubbell directories caught her eye as she stood. He appeared to have volume nine dating back to the time of Moses. Also the volumes that included Idaho and Wyoming. No California A—O. “Mr. Daggrepont, Lucy didn't leave anything else for me that you may have forgotten about, did she? She mentioned a book in her letter. I haven't been able to find it.”

  Daggrepont frowned like a bulldog as he rocked himself to his feet. The springs of his desk chair shrieked in relief. “No, ma'am, there was no book. If she'd left a book, I surely would have passed it along to you. I'm not the sort of unscrupulous shyster who keeps things he isn't entitled to.”

  He graciously offered her the use of a thirty-year-old umbrella to get out to her car. Mari was wrestling to get the thing closed, when an old pink Cadillac pulled up alongside her Honda on First Avenue. Nora Davis buzzed down the window on the passenger side and shouted to be heard above the rain.

  “Hey, there, Mary Lee, let's go honky-tonkin'!”

  The umbrella turned itself inside out. It seemed like a sign.

  The Hell and Gone was an oasis of life in a night canceled due to weather. Amber lights and Coors signs glowed a welcome out the windows and swinging front doors. Sweethearts of the Rodeo harmonized above the dull roar of pool games and high spirits.

  Nora squeezed her boat in between a pair of ranch trucks a dozen feet from the side entrance of the bar.

  “Aren't you worried about getting your doors bashed in?” Mari asked. She had to hold her breath to get out of the car.

  Nora laughed as they dashed up onto the boardwalk and out of the rain. “Honey, you won't find a cowboy on this earth willing to get pink paint on his pickup. That's a bonus to having that old car—the Mary Kaymobile I call it. My mama won that ugly thing selling miracle night cream to homely old ladies in Bozeman. It sucks gas by the gallon and uses a quart of oil every thousand miles, but there's not a red-blooded man in Montana who'd steal it or put a dent in it.”

  “You're a wonder, Nora,” Mari drawled.

  The waitress tossed her frizzy dark hair and grinned. “Don't you forget it, girlfriend.”

  Laughing, each slung an arm around the shoulders of her new friend and they headed inside.

  The rain had driven the cowboys into town early. Most of them were well on their way to hangovers. All of them were glad to see unescorted females. Shouts went up as Nora and Mari walked in. They all knew Nora. She basked in the glow, waving to friends, shouting hellos and smart remarks as she led the way through the throng to a booth. She had traded her waitress uniform for a tight T-shirt with Garth Brooks's likeness plastered across her flat chest and tighter jeans that hugged her wide hips and disappeared into the tops of red, high-heeled, looking-for-trouble cowboy boots.

  They ordered beers. Mari ordered a Hell and Gone Bull Burger with the works and double onion rings.

  Nora raised her thinly plucked brows. “You eating for two, honey?”

  “I haven't had anything since breakfast. I worked up an appetite.”

  “Like a ranch hand. What you been doing all day—riding wild horses?”

  “Something like that.” Mari glanced away, hoping the warmth of the bar would explain her blush.

  She'd been in her share of working-class bars, not for the liquor or the horny tough guys, but for the music. A lot of great music got played in places like the Hell and Gone. A poster on the wall advertised a band called Cheyenne coming in on the weekend. She wondered if she might persuade J.D. to come listen with her, then almost laughed at herself. A date. God, what would he do if a woman asked him out? Was that done in Montana? The cowboy code would probably require him to perform ritual suicide.

  Nora launched into a narrative of who's who, pointing out this cowboy and that cowboy and the mechanic from the John Deere place and the best hairdresser at the Curl Up and Dye. Mari memorized their faces, their grins, their laughter. She took in everything about them and stored the images in her mind to be called upon later. She drank in the rowdy atmosphere of the bar, the smell of beer and cigarettes, and warm male bodies and strong perfume.

  The Braves were playing baseball on the TV that was crammed up on a shelf above the bar. People booed them enthusiastically. Ted Turner was not a popular man hereabouts. He had bought up most of the next valley and promptly declared the land off limits to local hunters, then sold off his cattle and replaced them with buffalo, angering all the area ranchers who feared his buffalo herd might spread diseases to their cattle.

  Over the speakers Alan Jackson shouted out above the hoopla—“Don't Rock the Jukebox.” Half a dozen couples zoomed around the small dance floor, twisting and twirling, trying to impress one another in a courtship ritual as old as time.

  A crowd gathered around an old Ping-Pong table on the far side of the room, where pinball machines blinked and billiard balls cracked together.

  “They're fixin' to start the mouse races!” Nora called, her face
bright with excitement. “Let's go!”

  They were across the bar in a flash, Mari squeezing her way between cowboys for a better view. The betting was lively as the entries were held up above the crowd for introduction. A mouse named Pink Floyd was a narrow favorite. She put a dollar on Mouse O'War and screamed at the top of her lungs with the rest of the fans as the doors were pulled up on the tiny starting gate and the racers started their mad dash down their lanes for a reward of peanut butter and stale cheese.

  Mouse O'War nosed out Godzilla for the win. Pink Floyd jumped the rail and made a mad dash for freedom, miraculously dodging the heavy boots of his disgruntled followers and disappearing under a video poker machine along the wall.

  Mari collected her winnings and made her way back to the table just as her supper was being delivered. Nora intercepted a cowboy en route and herded him onto the dance floor as Hal Ketchum came roaring over the speakers—“Hearts Are Gonna Roll.”

  The burger was heaven. Mari sank her teeth in, closed her eyes, and groaned in heartfelt appreciation. Half a pound of prime Montana beef on a spongy white bun. She could barely get her hands around it. Melted cheese oozed out the sides and over her fingers.

  “I never saw a woman eat the way you do, Mary Lee. How do you keep that sweet figure?”

  Will slid into the booth across from her and plunked a long-necked bottle of Coors on the table. By the looks of him, it wasn't his first. His blue eyes had a blurry sheen to them. The incorrigible grin was lopsided. His dark hair tumbled across his forehead. He hooked a giant onion ring off her plate and bit into it, flashing handsome white teeth.

  “I work it off.”

  “J.D. work it off for you?” he said archly.

  Mari didn't blink. “A gentleman wouldn't ask a question like that.”

  Will squinted and craned his neck, looking all around the bar. “Not a gentleman in the place. Not a gentleman for miles. No one here but us shit-kicking losers looking to get lucky or pass out.”

  He was feeling sorry for himself. He'd been feeling sorry for himself since—hell, forever. At least two days. Wasn't it two days since he'd seen Samantha? His ex-wife, ex-wife, ex-wife. It seemed like two days that he'd been working on alternately tormenting himself and trying to wash her out of his memory.

  “I met your wife last night,” Mari said, haptizing her burger in a puddle of ketchup.

  She kept an eye on Will while she chewed, trying to read his reaction, wondering what was at the heart of his trouble—his drinking? his wife? J.D.? Maybe he was just a jerk, but she didn't want to believe it. There was a sweetness to Will's charm, a genuine sense of innocence to his clowning, even though she imagined he was guilty of many things. He cheated on his wife, which should have made him despicable, but Mari couldn't get past thinking there was some deeper reason than a testosterone imbalance.

  Lucy would have laughed at her.

  His grin tightened and soured. He put the onion ring back on the plate. “Oh, yeah? Was she having a high old time dancing with the rich boys?”

  He could picture it too easily now that he'd had a chance to torture himself with the possibilities. Sam with her hair down, all that long black silk swinging around her shoulders. He saw her in high heels and a skimpy dress with a glass of champagne in her hand, laughing, smiling, dazzling the city boys.

  “Actually, she didn't look very comfortable there,” Mari said. “She seems too sweet to be hanging out with that crowd.”

  “Yeah, well, you don't see her hanging out with me.”

  “That might have something to do with the fact that you're too busy coming on to anything with two X chromosomes. I'll give you a clue here, Will: infidelity is not a trait most women find desirable in a husband.”

  Will tried to find a snappy comeback, but his brain stalled out. He started picking at the label on his empty beer bottle instead. He was a jerk. He was a heel. He was a loser, a screwup. He had told himself he wanted out of his marriage, and he'd even managed to fuck that up. He felt as though he had thrown himself into a pond and now his feet were caught up in the weeds and he was getting sucked under, drowning in confusion. He didn't know how to get out.

  He had pushed Sam away; now she was getting drawn into the swift current of the good life. How could he even hope to get her back? Why would she want to come back? What was there to come back to? Hell, he would have taken the diamond life in a flash and never thought twice about what he was leaving behind.

  What does that say about you, Willie-boy?

  He peeled a strip down the center of the label, lifting an O out of Coors.

  “Look,” Mari said. “It's none of my business. God knows I've got enough to think about without butting into your life. She just seems like a nice girl, that's all.”

  “She is,” he murmured. Looking up, he flashed her a grin that was as phony as a three-dollar bill. “So why do you suppose she got hooked up with a jerk like me?”

  “Maybe you should ask her that.”

  “Maybe she thought she could redeem me, huh?” He held up the beer bottle beside his face as if he were posing for a commercial. “Sorry, ladies, not redeemable. No deposit, no return.”

  A waitress came by with a tray of drinks for another table. Will snatched a bottle of Coors and set his empty in its place, flashing the woman a wink and a devilish smile when she would have chewed him out.

  Mari shook her head in amazement. He gave the impression that life was just a game of three-card monte and he was the wheeler-dealer with all the charm and all the luck, but she had the distinct feeling he wasn't at all sure which card was the queen. The smile was a front. The charm was a smoke screen to hide the secret fear. She couldn't find it in her to dislike him.

  “Mary Lee,” he said, waxing philosophical. “Did you ever feel like a pair of left-handed scissors in a world of northpaws?”

  “Yeah,” she murmured, “I have.”

  Nora returned from the dance floor, flushed and euphoric. Will tugged on her frizzy ponytail and teased her about her choice of dance partners, trying to goad her into going back out on the floor with him. When she refused on account of exhaustion, he turned to Mari.

  “Come on,” he coaxed. “Work off that burger, chow hound.”

  “I don't think you're sober enough to stand up.”

  “Hell no, but I can dance. It's sorta like people who stutter being able to sing. I am the Mel Tillis of the Texas two-step.”

  She went with him against her better judgment. He proved to be a better dancer drunk than any man she knew sober. He was athletic, graceful, with a natural feel for the rhythm of a song. They danced until her calves felt as though they might explode, and then they danced some more. Mari reasoned that if he was dancing, he wasn't drinking—though he still managed to empty a couple more bottles—and if he was dancing with her he was dancing with someone who wasn't about to invite him to bed after the bar closed down.

  At midnight Nora declared the evening over. She had to get her beauty sleep before the breakfast shift. Will followed them out the side door, trying to cajole them into staying another hour.

  “Come on, Mary Lee,” he begged. He caught hold of her hand and tried to reel her in. “One more dance.”

  “No dice, cowboy. I've had enough, and so have you.” Mari pulled her hand from his, pulling Will off balance. He staggered sideways a step. “Maybe you'd better find someone to drive you home.”

  He tucked his chin back, offended. “I can drive.”

  “Yeah, right into a tree.”

  “Mary Lee's right,” Nora said, holding out a hand palm-up. “Hand over the keys, Romeo.”

  Will shuffled back a step. “Jeez, what is this? Thelma and Louise? I don't need a couple of women bossing me around.”

  “You need a goddamn keeper, that's what you need.”

  Will's heart started pumping at his brother's words. “Oh, shit, it's the voice of doom!” he pronounced, cringing dramatically. He shot J.D. a look. “What you gonna do, J.D., ground me?�
��

  J.D. ignored him, turning instead toward the women. “You slumming tonight, Mary Lee?”

  “I'm a social egalitarian,” she declared, refusing to be baited. “What's your excuse?”

  “Thirst.”

  “Why don't you go on over to the Moose?” Will said irritably. “You can run into Bryce and chew his ass instead of mine for a change.”

  “Yeah,” J.D. sneered, taking a step toward his little brother, “the taste of yours is getting pretty old.”

  “So why don't you back off?”

  “So why don't you straighten up?”

  Mari put a hand on his arm, trying to draw his attention away from Will. He shot her a ferocious look. “Ease up, J.D.,” she said softly. “He's had a little too much to drink.”

  “Will's always just had a little too much to drink. It's the one thing he does really well. That and fucking up. You're just a regular wonder at that, aren't you, Willie-boy?”

  “Shut up.” Inside his head Will felt ten years old, sick of looking up at his big brother and always falling short of J.D.'s standards. His temper swelled and he reached out and shoved J.D.'s shoulder. “Shut up, John Dick-head. I'm sick of you.”

  “Then you finally know how I feel,” J.D. growled. He was tired and his temper was run ragged. The stock-grower's meeting had netted him nothing but sympathy and a headache. He needed a fight with Will like he needed dysentery, and the absolutely last thing he needed was Mary Lee sticking her pretty little nose into the fray. That was too reminiscent of Sondra coming between them as boys, always taking Will's side, protecting him no matter what he'd done.

  “You been down in Little Purgatory again?” he said to Will, his gut knotting at the possibility. “What'd you lose tonight, hotshot? The shirt off my back?”

  Mari tugged on his arm, trying to pull him back a step. “J.D., maybe you should just—”

  “Maybe you should just butt out, Mary Lee!” he roared, wheeling on her. “You don't know a damn thing about this.”

  Mari backed away with her hands raised in surrender. “Fine,” she said tightly. “Knock each other out. Nora, I think we missed our cue to leave.”