Chapter Eleven

With Mike's endorsement,not to mention I needed something to share soon to stem his and Jennifer's paranoia, and on top of my lack of success with securing Keefer Dobey's DNA test results, I decided it was time to get out of the office.

I hadn't fibbed to Ivy Short yesterday. To run a story stating Sam McCracken was a treasure hunter, I'd need two independent sources for that information.

Some might debate if Clara was first or second source, since Ivy gave me only a first name.

But I did not need a first or a second source to go ask the man some questions.

****

I recognized thewhite truck parked in front of the impressive timber house with the even more impressive view of buttes and mountains behind it as belonging to Serena McCracken, Sam's wife.

I'd been here before, when Diana, Mike, Jennifer, and I considered Sam McCracken a suspect in an earlier murder. Property belonging to the McCrackens and the murder victim belonged to the same ditch association. As the source of irrigation water, ditches are the lifeblood of Low Side ranches.

Not so much for the McCrackens, who rented out most of their land, as the others.

They were from Colorado, moving up here with their two kids after Sam McCracken reached that level of wealth that no longer required working.

In response to my knock, a woman about my age opened the large front door as a medium-sized white fluff of a dog came skidding to a stop at her side.

"Snowball," I said.

My knowing his name caught the dog in the instant of sucking in air to bark at me. He gave a half-hearted yap — had to use that air and adrenaline somehow — and started waving his tail.

I put down my hand, with the back facing him. He sniffed, then licked.

We were buds.

I scratched behind his left ear.

We were bonded.

I shifted to the woman.

Her slight smile said she'd indulge the dog, but not me.

She had dark hair pulled back in a sleek ponytail from the nape of her neck, which I knew would accommodate a cowboy hat. She wore a t-shirt, jeans, and boots. That could describe the attire of two-thirds of the population of Cottonwood County. She did not shop the same places most of them did.

I calibrated my smile to a few degrees warmer than hers, subtle encouragement to her to match me with the hope that smiling warmly would make her inclined toward me. It was a fine line, though. Too much warmer and I'd come across creepy.

"I remember the name Snowball because it suits him so well. I'm E.M. Danniher from—"

"I remember."

She'd said it neutrally, a big step up from what I sometimes get.

I'd seen Serena McCracken around town, mostly at the supermarket. Which proved we both ate, but didn't give us much common ground beyond that.

"Penny always speaks highly of you," she added.

Penny always spoke — that was certainly true. Whether she spoke highly of me, I withheld judgment.

"Won't you come in?" Serena invited.

Okay, Penny spoke of me at least highly enough to get in the door.

"I hope to talk to your husband—"

"He's not here. Come on in."

I did.

A twinge of something gripped me, but I've done enough interviews to not let unspecified — or specified — twinges interfere.

Besides, I was otherwise occupied with taking in the surroundings.

From the entry hall, with a stairway off to the right that must lead to bedrooms upstairs and recreation downstairs, a small office was visible to the left. Past that, the back of the house opened to two stories. I was vaguely aware of the kitchen at the right side, a massive stone fireplace on the left.

In fact, this space reminded me of a house I'd looked at when I was looking to buy. Including a soaring wall of windows between the kitchen and fireplace. This house's windows showed a spacious deck, then even more spacious vistas of buttes and broken lines of red-tinged earth, including a formation called the Red Sail, for the obvious reason.

Unfortunately, that other house also had a dead body in it at the time I looked at it, which dimmed its appeal considerably.

"You're here about the death of the man from the dude ranch."

As she gestured me to a seat on a leather couch that looked out the windows, Serena McCrackin didn't ask, she told.

And reminded me that, while this house didn't have a dead body in it — that I knew off — a dead body was the reason I was here.

"I am."

She nodded slowly, taking her seat on a matching leather sofa at right angles to the loveseat so it faced the fireplace. "I only met him once — at the supermarket with Sam one day. He and Sam had an overlapping interest. But he seemed a nice man." She paused. "Gentle in many ways, but I could imagine him being fierce in the protection of those he thought needed it."

If she had any inkling her husband was a person of interest — to me and my cohorts, if not law enforcement — this was a really interesting approach. She'd practically painted a scenario requiring adding only a little imagination to envision Keefer Dobey and her husband becoming combative.

Clueless? I didn't think so. Her gray eyes were too intelligent.

Throwing Sam under the bus? Again, I didn't think so. Those gray eyes reflected a brain rolling something around, but it didn't seem to be, Here, here's my husband on a platter. Cart him off to jail as the prime suspect.

So, what was going on?

"That overlapping interest...?"

I dangled it, wanting to hear how she defined it.

She didn't answer directly.

"Sam was so driven at work. I thought when we moved here he seemed to downshift. But it didn't last." She shook her head slightly, burrowing her fingers into Snowball's fur. "Like after he got rested, he needed someplace to put his—"

I expected obsession.

"—passion." Her fingers tightened. The dog turned to look at her. She eased up on her hold. She expelled a breath. "Outlaw treasure."

My impression that she was neither unaware nor tossing her husband to the wolves of suspicion deepened.

Her frame of reference was Sam. All Sam. What was good for Sam. What wasn't.

Outlaw treasure fell into that second category.

The mutual — overlapping — interest of her husband and Keefer Dobey.

"How did it start?"

"I have no idea. He started volunteering to take the kids to the library more, but I didn't think much of it when he brought books on local history home. Not at first. Then the online orders started to arrive. From all over. Day after day. Not just books, but also metal detectors — plural — other equipment, all the while consuming books like a starving man."

"What were the books about?" I could make a good guess on what the equipment was for.

She raised one hand in half a shrug, then dropped it so abruptly it slapped her thigh.

"Geology, metal detector operation, history, biographies—"

"Of?"

She gave me a you-already-know look, but obliged anyway. The Hole-in-the-Wall Gang, the Robbers' Roost Gang, the — No, wait. I have that wrong. The Hole in the Wall was a hideout here in Wyoming, and Robbers' Roost was another hideout in Utah. Then there were multiple names for the gang, which—Oh, hell, I don't know. Sam would be correcting me all over the place. And if I said it involved Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, he'd look superior and say I only remembered those names because of Hollywood and many others among the robbers were more prolific or more dangerous."

Sounded like we should get Sam together with Mrs. P.

"But he sure read enough books about them. All of them."

She gestured past me. To the office beyond the wall behind me? Or farther?

"All the outlaws?"

"All of them. And the lawmen. And the chroniclers. And anything else he could get his hands on."

"Did he find books on Oscar Virtanen?"

"I don't know." She sounded weary. "If they'd ever been published anywhere he probably did. He also went down to Laramie and Cheyenne quite a bit. Research, he said. I wondered..."

She lifted one shoulder.

She'd wondered if he was having an affair.

Was it better or worse that he truly had gone to those places to bury himself in... what? I could guess at letters, deeds, newspapers, and official records from the era. Was there more I wasn't thinking of?

"As if the expensive tools and equipment, especially those damned metal detectors and calibrating them more often than he talks to his family, weren't bad enough." She gusted out a sigh. "I suppose it could be worse. It could be spending all his time at casinos. He's still gambling in a way — and losing — but at least he gets outside. Most of the rest of the time, he spends in his office. Sometimes all night, as he did Monday night. He gets so engrossed he loses all track of time."

Uh-huh. Slipping in his alibi. On the other hand, if she hadn't stayed up all night, she couldn't vouch for his whereabouts.

"Did he connect with Keefer Dobey?"

She looked down at the dog as she petted him. "The man from the dude ranch who died?"

"Yes."

"As I said, they knew each other."

"Did they share information? Cooperate on research? Go out together on searches?"

"Not that I know. He certainly never came here."

I'd count both statements as truthful. And carefully worded.

Time to gracefully withdraw. Until I had more facts to pry harder. And deeper. And preferably with Sam McCracken on hand.

****

Catching a lookat the house in the SUV's rear-view mirror shifted the perspective enough to make me not see solely this house, but another one, too.

And explained my earlier twinge.

The McCrackens' home was what Mike's house should look like.

Not the apartment in Evanston just north of Chicago he'd had since his first days playing for the Chicago Bears and that remained his base there now — a one-bedroom in a traditional brick building. Pleasant, small, meeting his basic needs.

But the house on the ranch he'd bought as his rooting here in his home county. Didn't take much imagination or psychological training to see it was his way of getting an approximation of the family ranch his father sold from financial necessity when Mike was younger.

Heck, Mike had nearly said the same himself.

Cottonwood County likely would have continued to claim him as their local hero no matter what, but his buying a tidy place, meant he also claimed them and that meant a lot — to him and them.

Even when he'd worked at KWMT-TV as sports anchor, he hadn't had the time or ambition to devote to ranching. Good thing, I suppose, or he wouldn't have had the spare time and energy to push all of us into this murder-solving business. It had required considerable energy at the beginning to push me in this direction.

From the time he bought the ranch, he'd leased out most of his land, as the McCrackens did. Unlike them, he left the big house largely unfurnished and unlived-in.

It had made my heart ache for him when I first saw it. It still did.

I was making my life, my future with Tom. That didn't mean I didn't still love Mike. What I hoped for him was a home like the McCrackens'. Warm and lived in, with a dog and kids and a few horses. And a smart woman looking out for his best interests.

That thought brought me back to why I'd driven to the McCracken place.

Without appearing to, Serena spiked my suspicion's biggest gun — that Sam and Keefer were rivals — and weakened others.

Oh, she hadn't removed my suspicions. They definitely remained. But each had to logically overcome the obstacle she'd placed in front of it.

And where better to find information to achieve that than at Elk Rock Ranch?