Bad Company

Monday

Chapter 1

The Death Trap

Sally Alder had never been all that big on the notion that the two sexes were, in some fundamental way, opposites. She tended to believe that men and women had a lot more in common than, say, palm trees and golden retrievers, and she’d always held that any woman had the potential to be as big a jerk as any man.

But she was beginning to think that there might be some differences between the genders that were hardwired. Take, for example, the inability of male drivers to navigate supermarket parking lots. Every time you came within a hair of a head-on with some flea brain evidently unaware of the fact that all the parked cars were pointing in one (i.e., the other) direction, you just knew there’d be a guy behind the wheel. Even Hawk Green, a man who could find his way through the densest forest and navigate across the most trackless desert with the confidence of a man getting in an elevator, seemed to have a brain freeze every time he had to tackle the grocery store lot.

On this lovely Wyoming summer morning, the parking lot of the Laramie Lifeway was terrifyingly full of them, in big rusting pickups and behemoth RVs and SUVs, half of them hauling horse trailers, scaring the hell out of the regular shoppers and the mild-mannered tourist families who had the lack of imagination to be headed down the aisles in the normal way. Sally’d decided to play it safe and park halfway down an empty row, far from the store, when a long-bed king-cab Ford swerved ass-backward into the space right next to her. Just as she was opening the door of her mint-condition, 1964 1/2 Mustang and stepping out, three happy cow-pokes in plaid shirts and brand-new straw hats leaped out of the Ford in a clatter of empty beer cans, hauled a giant Coleman cooler out of the bed of the pickup, pulled the plug on the bottom, and started draining cooler water all over her new Italian sandals. She looked down into the open cooler. A ballooning plastic bag containing a loaf of Wonder bread and a half-open pack of bologna floated in two inches of cloudy fluid.

Bologna water on her new shoes.

She gave the pokes a murderous look, but they were too busy deciding that their lunch looked good enough to go another day. Fine. Maybe they’d get botulism.

To be fair, the pokes weren’t the only source of congestion. Threading her way to the store, Sally first ran afoul of a Winnebago with Nebraska plates unloading an oversize couple, tempers inflamed by raging red sunburns, fighting about whose idea it had been to spend Sunday by the pool at the Little America campground, and who had forgotten that the sun was stronger at high altitude. Then she was nearly run down by a pair of spandex-clad mountain bikers who were treating the parking lot like the rad-most slickrock at Moab. And finally, wonder of wonders, a vintage Volkswagen van sat blocking the handicapped access ramp. The van had disgorged a tribe of pierced and tattooed dreadheads in tie-dyed T-shirts and jeans, panhandling shoppers for grub money.

Jubilee Days. Every July, for one week, it was the same. Here it was only Monday morning, and already the multitude was gathering for the feast. Laramie locals had three choices: party down, hunker down, or get out.

Long experience had taught Sally to plan a combination of the three, starting with getting out. She and Hawk were taking the afternoon off and heading up to the mountains for a hike. The Laramie Range, east of town on the way to Cheyenne, wasn’t as high or as breathtaking as the Snowies, but it was a shorter drive. Hawk could get some work done in the morning, and she figured she’d get in a bout of grocery shopping. Pulling a cart out from the line of them nested together, she nearly collided with the red-faced Nebraskans. Yep, bout was the word.

Laramie had four supermarkets, and Sally had shopped them all and settled on the Lifeway. It was closest to her house, she knew where everything was, and now and then she could even find a piece of fish that didn’t look like it had been forced to crawl all the way from the ocean to Wyoming. Ordinarily she found the store well enough stocked, spacious, and clean. The employees, if not uniformly friendly and helpful, were at least not generally surly and incompetent. A model consumer experience, even though she and Hawk had the habit of referring to the place as the Death Trap.

Today the place was nearing overload. The aisles were jammed. The shelves had already been denuded of high-demand items like hot dogs and Oreos and Velveeta, and the stock clerks were having a hard time keeping up. Sally was rushing through her own shopping and trying to get the hell out of there when, as was inevitable, she ran into someone she knew, who wanted to yak. Amber McCloskey, a University of Wyoming student who was house-sitting for Sally’s friends Edna McCaffrey and Tom Youngblood, was bearing down on her with a cart-load of trail mix, instant oatmeal, and macaroni and cheese. Hey, Dr. Alder! How you doin’? she said cheerfully, the metal stud in her tongue flapping up and down in a hypnotic little dance.

Hey, Amber, Sally returned weakly, registering two facial piercings (lip and eyebrow) she wasn’t sure she’d seen before. How’s Edna’s house?

Great! Gosh, I can’t believe how big it is compared to my apartment. I don’t know how they keep it clean all the time!

Bad sign.

And all those plants they’ve got—inside, outside, upstairs, downstairs, jeez, it’s practically a jungle. The water bills must be, like, gigantic! Of course, you don’t really need to water as much as they told me to, Amber said with a laugh. Most of what’s out there will survive or it won’t. If I was going off to do my fieldwork in Kathmandu for the summer, like Dean McCaffrey is, I sure wouldn’t have bothered planting that big vegetable garden.

They probably shouldn’t have, Sally thought. She imagined that by the time Amber was done ignoring the garden, Edna and Tom’s yard would be a scale model of the surface of Mars. Edna wasn’t all that good at unpleasant surprises, and despite having a sterling character and excellent manners, Edna knew subtle techniques for passing the unpleasantness along. Not only was she one of Sally’s best friends, but she was also the dean of arts and sciences, and Sally was a history professor. On just about every level, Sally figured, it paid to keep Edna happy.

Maybe I should come by and take a look at the garden, Sally offered. I love to weed and water—I do it to relax. You’d be doing me a favor.

Yeah, well, whatever. Actually, I’m glad I ran into you. The dean told me to call you if anything came up, and as it turns out, my boyfriend just asked me to go camping in Canada for a couple of weeks. We’re heading out tomorrow, so I won’t be around. I felt kind of bad about leaving the house, being as how I told Dean McCaffrey and Mr. Youngblood I’d hang around and all.

And, er, being as how Edna and Tom were paying Amber for the hanging. Sally gave the girl her best professorial stare. You’re just leaving Edna and Tom’s house for two weeks? she asked.

Oh, don’t worry, Dr. Alder. I was kind of freaked about taking this little trip, but everything’s all worked out. This guy called yesterday to say he was an old friend of the dean’s from Princeton, and was planning to drop by for a visit on his way out to the West Coast. He said he’d be in tomorrow, and since he didn’t have a tight timetable, he’d be glad to stick around and keep an eye on things. How about that? Amber said.

An old friend of Edna’s from Princeton? An academic with two weeks of slack in his schedule? Oh really? What’s the guy’s name? Sally asked.

Amber’s face scrunched up in thought. Her facial jewelry quivered. Something to do with an appliance, I think. Oh yeah! Stover. Sheldon Stover. He said they were colleagues at the institute.

Sally knew that Edna had been a fellow at Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study, so that made sense. But she’d never heard of this Sheldon Stover. You say he’ll be here tomorrow? Do you plan to stick around to meet him?

Now Amber was frowning. This perfect solution to her house-sitting dilemma might have its drawbacks. Well, actually, no. We want to get an early start, so I told this Stover guy I’d just leave a key in the mailbox. He said he was driving in from Omaha or someplace, and he’d be in around three in the afternoon. Said he was really sorry to miss Dean McCaffrey and all, but he was glad to be able to stay at her house.

Shit. Sally figured she’d better make a point of getting over to Edna’s and check out this Stover guy. He might easily turn out to be a substantially better house-sitter than Amber McCloskey (could hardly be worse, from the sound of it), but at the very least she thought Edna would want her to show Sheldon Stover how to turn on a hose. Well, don’t you worry about it, Amber. I’ll get over there tomorrow afternoon and meet him, give him the house and garden tour. You just have a great camping trip.

Sally would email Edna in Kathmandu and let her know what was up. Since Edna was out in the villages much of the time, the email connection was unreliable, but at least Sally would have made the effort. And duly notified, Edna could decide herself whether to fire Amber’s ass and have Sally get somebody else to stay in the house. Meanwhile, Sally’d better keep an eye on things over at the McCaffrey-Youngblood abode.

By now, people were bumping into each other’s carts in their haste to grab the last tube of Crest or package of Charmin. Sally hustled to the checkout counter, only to find herself dangling at the back of a tediously long line. The new issues of the check stand tabloids didn’t come out until Tuesday, and she’d already caught up with last week’s scandals from Hollywood and Washington. She’d have to fall back on Martha Stewart Living, which at least offered the amusing possibility of trying to imagine anyone in Laramie taking a shine to Edwardian silver teapots or water lilies.

But she knew why the line was moving so slowly. Checker trainee. That was bad enough—they always had trouble with the scanner, and had to look up the codes for fruits and vegetables—but to compound the delays, the trainee in question was one Monette Bandy, recently promoted from shelf stocking, a kid who might already be stretching her peak career potential.

As it happened, Sally knew a little more about the new checker than she might have wished, because Monette was the niece of Sally’s good friends Dickie and Mary Langham. Dickie was the sheriff of Albany County, a man with a past that didn’t bear much scrutiny. Dickie’s wife, Mary, had at one time been the crunchiest young earth mother in Laramie, raising her three children on buckwheat groats and spaghetti squash, and wondering why the kids always seemed to have Dorito breath when they came home from parties. Mary’s sister Tanya, a woman famous for her lack of common sense even in the judgment-challenged 1970s, had run off with a bad-news roughneck by the name of Pettibone Bone Bandy, and Monette was the result. Sally had met Monette a couple of times at barbecues at Dickie and Mary’s.

From the looks of things there in the checkout line, Monette had inherited her mother’s unerring predilection for scumbags. Just now she was flirting awkwardly with an evil-smelling fat guy in a sweaty cowboy shirt that gaped open between the snaps, barely covering a barrel belly that was slopping over a belt that didn’t manage to keep his jeans from riding down unpalatably in the back. When the guy smiled at Monette it made Sally think of medieval dentistry, but Monette was simpering and smiling back as if he was frigging Mel Gibson or something.

Then again, Monette wasn’t exactly Julia Roberts. Her mother, Tanya, and her aunt Mary had been what Sally’s family had always called zaftig, and Monette had added a few Twinkies to the package. She’d dyed her hair the color of number two pencils, and her teeth were a fair match for those of the guy who was hitting on her. In fact, if there was a Hollywood star Monette could be said to resemble, it would be Gene Hackman. But he would probably have gotten those teeth fixed.

I get off in an hour, Monette was saying to the guy. Maybe we could go get a beer or something. I know all the good places.

I’d sure enough like to get a little something, said the guy, but I reckon my old lady would kill my ass. She’s out in the truck right now, waiting for her carton of Kools. We drove down from Worland and she ran out of cigs fifty miles back, and then the baby started screaming her head off. The wife’s ready to tear the fucking truck apart, but she’s gotta breast-feed the brat so I get to come in here and get her butts for her.

What a prince.

Well, if you’re in town for the rodeo, maybe later this week you can sneak off and you and me can party somewhere, Monette suggested.

What, Sally wondered, could the girl possibly be thinking?

The guy just chuckled, leered at Monette’s chest, took a minute to give Sally an unwelcome once-over, pocketed his change, and swaggered away.

Hey, Monette, Sally said, loading her stuff onto the conveyor belt. Insane in here today.

Yeah, it’ll be busy all week, the girl mumbled, not looking Sally in the eye. Jubilee Days. What do you expect? What’re these things? she asked, holding up a plastic bag full of vegetables.

Artichokes, said Sally. They’re really good.

Never heard of ’em. Monette looked up the code, punched it in, went back to scanning bar codes.

Think you’ll get out to the rodeo? Sally asked, passing the time.

Yeah, I’ll get there, said Monette, eyeballing a tin of anchovies with suspicion, but passing it across the scanning glass, if they let me out of this puke hole. She looked wistfully out at the parking lot, where the man she’d just hit on was firing up a particularly noisy Chevy pickup and—what else—heading the wrong way down the aisle. Everybody’s in town lookin’ for fun, and I’m stuck working afternoons and nights almost the whole week. Today’s about my only day to get it on. I got things to do.

Well, I guess as the newest checker in the place, everybody else must have seniority, huh? Sally said.

Monette said, Whatever.

Thinking about the exchange she’d just seen, it might be a good thing for Monette to be confined to the Life-way during prime party time. Rocky Mountain rodeos always brought in more than enough of the kind of men who were looking, as the fat guy had so poetically put it, to get a little something from a girl witless enough to make eye contact in a bar. Monette might try to act streetwise, but Sally knew that she was only twenty-one, new in town, obviously desperate for attention, and not the brightest pixel on the screen. Sally had found the conversation she’d just witnessed disturbing, and she said nothing as Monette bagged her groceries.

As Monette handed Sally the receipt, her eyes wandered away to the man next in line, a skinny dude with stingy eyes, sporting biker colors. Hi there, Monette said throatily. Nice leather. And then, remembering the Lifeway training manual, she turned to Sally and said, Have a nice day.

Yeah, you too, Sally replied. And then on impulse touched Monette on the wrist and said, And a nice week. Take care, okay?

But Monette had already moved on to the biker.

Shaking her head, Sally wheeled her cartful of bags out the door. How was it possible that a girl like Monette Bandy had gotten to adulthood without developing any sense of self-protection at all? Maybe Tanya had never gotten around to telling her not to take candy from strangers. Or, as happened in too many families, maybe strangers looked like a good bet, compared to what Monette had to deal with at home. Sally didn’t really want to think about it. But she figured that next time she saw Mary and Dickie, she’d better let them know that Monette could use a little more friendly guidance from the loving auntie and uncle.

Sally was pulling into the driveway of the house on Eighth Street just as Hawk was swinging down the front walk, his daypack bulging at the bottom, full of rocks and notebooks. College professors were supposed to have the summers off from teaching to do their own research. Sally herself had just turned in a book manuscript to her publisher, and she had the whole summer to catch up on a backlog of reading so mountainous it was nearly driving her out of her office. But Hawk Green was a geologist, so for him, summer meant spending at least half his time shepherding his grad students through the fieldwork they had to do for their theses and dissertations. Mostly he liked it, but it did mean hauling around other people’s rocks.

Ah well, he had the back for it. On the far side of forty, Hawk was long-legged and lean-hipped, carrying most of his weight in his shoulders. As long as Sally had known him, he’d never seemed to care enough about his physical appearance to change it. He wore jeans and T-shirts and boots or basketball shoes, and the same round John Lennon glasses he’d favored since she’d first laid eyes on him, more than twenty years ago. He’d never bothered to cut his hair, but tied it back in a thick pony-tail that fell, black streaked with silver now, halfway down his back. His face had developed some seams and crags over the years, and she considered that all to the good. The two of them were the same age, and they both looked it. It worked for them, especially when they were naked.

The thought of Hawk naked made her smile as she opened the trunk to get the groceries, and he smiled too as he came over and picked up a couple of bags. How was the Death Trap? he asked.

Lethal, she said. I got hosed with bologna water before I got halfway out of my car.

Bologna water? Hawk asked.

Never mind. You’d know it if you saw it, she said, following him in the door and into the kitchen–dining room to put down the bags. It’s the liquid generally found in the bottom of a cowboy’s cooler.

Got it, said Hawk. Ick.

Yeah, that’s about how it was. The parking lot was a madhouse and the lines were starting to creep back into the aisles. I ran into Amber McCloskey, that student who’s supposedly house-sitting for Edna and Tom. It sounds like she’s already filthied up the place and killed all their plants, and now she’s taking off on a camping trip for two weeks. But she told me not to worry, because some guy named Sheldon Stover had called up saying he was a friend of Edna’s from Princeton, headed this way, and he offered to stay in the house for a couple of weeks.

You’ve got to be kidding, Hawk said.

Sally shook her head. This Stover shows up tomorrow. I’ll go over there and give him the holy word. Jesus, just what this town needs this week, one more damn flat-lander. The Jubilee-ers have arrived.

You make it sound like an invading army, Hawk said, shrugging off his pack and starting to unload a grocery bag, frowning at the tin of anchovies.

They say an army marches on its stomach, she replied. And if that’s so, I saw some well-armed people doing their marching. You know Monette? she asked him.

The one who’s Dickie and Mary’s niece, who works down there? Vaguely. Why?

They promoted her to checker trainee, and I ended up in her endless line. When I finally got to unloading my stuff on the check stand, she was making goo-goo eyes at a real horror-show redneck specimen, and by the time she’d checked me out, she’d already started chatting up a ratty little biker with a face like a pocket gopher. Looking for trouble. Hell of a week for it.

Hawk tilted his head, thought a minute. Maybe she’s just clueless. Either way, you might want to say something to Dickie and Mary. Monette’s an orphan or something, isn’t she?

Or something, said Sally. Her mother’s dead, and from what I hear, she’d be better off if her father were.

Family values, said Hawk. Every time a politician starts in on the subject, it makes me want to check my wallet. He pulled a jar of pepperoncini and a bottle of cooking marsala out of the bag he was unloading. Didn’t you buy any real food?

Sally laughed. He ate pretty much anything anybody served him, but when it was Hawk’s turn to cook, he liked it straight and simple. Yeah yeah. I’ve got the peanut butter and jelly.

Good, he said. I thought maybe being in mortal danger left you too shell-shocked to shop. Why don’t you make us a lunch and I’ll gas up the truck and we can get going.

One of the great things about Laramie was that even at the moment when the town was filling up for the annual week of hell-raising, it took only about five minutes to get out of town, and get into the mountains or the prairie or the desert. And nothing beat being out in the boonies in Wyoming on a July afternoon. After lunch Sally and Hawk headed east on I–80, up into the Laramie Range, aiming for the pink granite hills the locals called Vedauwoo, a word they pronounced Veeda-voo, sort of rhyming with peekaboo. Rock climbers loved the rugged cliffs, and hikers could follow a hundred different little-traveled trails, or simply head off along streambeds or across meadows toward high places, looking for a view. They’d decided to try a place neither of them had been, identified on Hawk’s topo map as the Devil’s Playground. From the Death Trap to the Devil’s Playground in one day? Playing with fire there, darlin’, Sally thought.

But the weather was perfect—cloudless big sky, balmy and not too windy, wildflowers everywhere. They walked for hours, mixing easy strolls across the rolling grasslands with scrambles up and down tumbled piles of boulders, catching endless views large and small. Part of the way, to catch some shade, they’d followed the path of a creek, marveling at the delicacy of tiny wood violets and moss. And then, wanting views, they’d hiked up to a sweeping meadow between two jutting granite outcrops. Carpets of tall blue lupines flourished, mixed with delicate fleabane and purple asters, buttery yellow thermopsis and little sawtooth prairie stars. The Indian paintbrush, the state flower and Sally’s favorite, was abundant. There was something impudent and sexy about those clusters of flaming spikes, something that had her shooting a certain kind of look at the man she’d loved twice in her life, including this time. But he was too busy watching birds to catch her drift.

She looked up. A red-tailed hawk swooped, looking for prey. Over the outcrop they were headed toward, a half-dozen vultures swung lazily overhead, circling lower and lower.

Something dead over there, said Hawk.

Probably a cow. Maybe we should turn around, said Sally. I have no desire to hike out there only to end up looking at cattle remains.

Hawk shook his head. I don’t know. I don’t think they’re grazing up here. Not that much good grass, and we haven’t seen any cow pies. I think we should take a look.

Why? said Sally. It could be anything. This is where the deer and the antelope play. What’s the big deal? The hair on the back of her neck was standing on end. For no reason at all, she had that big-deal feeling too, but wondered why they’d walk toward death rather than run away from it.

But Hawk was already walking, his hand on the sheath of the knife he took hiking, fingering the snap, determined to get to whatever they were looking at on the ground. She had a hard time keeping up, half running, panting as she reached the place where the grass began to be broken up with rocks, the terrain turning into flat nooks of grass and dirt ringed by boulders, at the edge of the outcrop. Sally decided this place must be familiar to people who liked to get out in the country to do some of their partying. The grass had been well-trampled, the ground dusty. There was an old fire ring, full of cold ashes and burned beer cans, and a lot more litter than Sally cared to see. Empty Coors cans and the cardboard twelve-pack box. Cigarette butts, empty cigarette packs. An old tin of Skoal chewing tobacco.

Hawk was already on his way up, making his way over the rocks. When he crawled between two upended boulders and disappeared behind them, she doubled her pace to catch up.

And then wished she hadn’t.

There was a sickening, rotten-sweet odor in the air. Hawk stood there, rock-still. Sally’s whole body turned to granite, looking at what he was seeing. Sticking out of a crevice between a jumble of rocks, just below, was the arm of a woman. There was some kind of cord wrapped around her wrist, one long end dangling down.

Don’t get any closer, Hawk finally said.

It shook her out of her paralysis. What? We have to. There might be a chance she’s still alive.

Hawk cleared his throat. Sally, she’s not alive. Buzzards have a real good feel for that.

But Sally was a woman spellbound. Slowly, carefully, she crawled over the scrambled rocks to the crevice and looked down. At hair the color of a number two pencil, matted with blood.

Chapter 2

It’s Just a Shot Away

Sally straightened up, the peanut butter sandwich she’d had for lunch a new and unpleasant return visitor. Hawk, using his own personal mojo combination of Yankee self-control and desert survivor stillness, had managed to keep from throwing up, but he was white-faced and wide-eyed.

She knelt down, took off her daypack, and balanced it on a rock. Rooting around, she found a bottle of water. She twisted off the top, took a big swallow, and spat to get rid of the sour taste. No help there. She drank some, then poured half the rest over her head.

Shit, Monette. Why?

We’ve gotta call Dickie, Sally said at last.

Call? asked Hawk.

She dug back in the pack and pulled out a cellular phone. She’d given it to Hawk for his birthday, hoping he’d take it with him when he went out in the field, but he’d so far refused to have anything to do with it. He liked being where nobody could reach him. Cell phones, he said, were wrecking the world, cluttering up the land-scape with cell towers, making every place the same as every other.

Handy to have that, he conceded, but it probably won’t work up here.

Maybe not. It’s worth a try, she told him. Every day you see them putting up more towers. We could be in range. She stuck the phone in the pocket of her shorts and climbed up out of the dip, back through the gap between the two upended rocks, hoping to pick up a relay.

She turned on the phone, and was relieved to see the icon for the cell tower appear. Punched in 911. A dispatcher answered.

My name is S-Sally Alder, she stammered. I’m up in Vedauwoo, somewhere around the Devil’s Playground, and, uh, I’ve f-found a body. That is, we’ve found a b-body. She took a deep gulp of air, exhaled. Ah, you’d better tell Sheriff Langham to get up here.

Calm down, ma’am, said the dispatcher. Can you give me your exact location?

That was too much for Sally. About all she knew was that she was in the Laramie Range. When it came to knowing where the hell she was, she usually just looked at the scenery and left the locating to Hawk.

Just a minute, she said, as he came out of the declivity and she handed him the phone.

While Hawk was unfolding his map, talking to the dispatcher, giving directions to the nearest Forest Service road, Sally entertained a series of irrational thoughts. She should have made a point of talking to Monette right that morning, as she’d watched the girl deal with those guys in the line. Should have warned her. Or she and Hawk should be running around, seeing if they could find whoever had put Monette in the crevice. Or maybe she should pick up all the litter. She stooped down and scooped up an empty cigarette package, shoving it in her knapsack.

But this was a crime scene. Sally realized suddenly that she shouldn’t mess with anything. She could already see the prints of her hiking boots and Hawk’s on ground scuffed by other shoes, including somebody’s pointy-toed cowboy boots. The cops would want to see those tracks. She’d better sit down.

Moving toward rational thought, anyhow. And then a rational question occurred to her: What were she and Hawk doing hanging around someplace way out in the outback, with the cops at least an hour away, where one person had already been murdered? How freaking brilliant was that?

She ran to Hawk, just ending the call with the dispatcher, yanking his arm. We have to get out of here! What if whoever did this is still around? Come on, hurry—we’ve got to run!

Trust Hawk to be reasonable at a time like this. Run where? We’ve just been calling the cops. They’ll be here in half an hour. If I’d done that—he tossed his head back in the direction of Monette’s body—I’d get the hell out, fast. And if, for some reason, I was still hanging around when a couple of hikers showed up, and then heard them phoning for the police, I’d figure it was high time to split.

What do you mean, the cops will be here in half an hour? Sally demanded. We’ve been walking all afternoon. How could they get here that quickly?

Sal, we parked all the way back at the Lincoln Summit and set out for a summer stroll. You can get here a lot faster by pulling off the highway at the Vedauwoo exit and then coming up the dirt roads. Trust me, they’ll be here before you know it. And meanwhile, we’re supposed to sit tight.

By now she was shivering. He peeled her hand off his arm, so that he could hold her. Dickie Langham and two deputies found them still wrapped together, not quite forty minutes later.

The outcrop where they stood was only a few hundred yards from the road, but Dickie was huffing and puffing