Chapter Twelve

I called Dianaand arranged to meet her at Elk Rock Ranch.

The station could always use more footage for tonight's newscasts.

The McCrackens lived east of Sherman, the ranch was southwest of it. Returning to Sherman might have been quicker, would have been more familiar, but it was a day with a blue sky overhead that felt like it pulled your heart up by a string.

Zigzagging my way south and west, I pushed the cover back from the sunroof to get the most of that blue sky... without considering opening it. Wyoming. March. Not crazy.

Only one stretch of road had me questioning my sanity, so it was a routine drive.

The NewsMobile sat by the entrance to the ranch.

The sight of it simultaneously reminded me to luxuriate more in my SUV and to wonder at Diana's reluctance to replace it.

****

"Three and ahalf times as many head of livestock were killed by unknown predators than were killed by wolves," Randall Kenyon proclaimed.

Immediately, I identified him and his daughter, Robin, from photos I'd looked up last night before going to sleep.

They hadn't spotted us, though.

We'd been forced to park on the ranch's main entry road because of the behemoth pickup that must be the Kenyons' rental parked across the entrance to the offshoot we'd have otherwise taken.

How did I know it was the Kenyons' rental? Besides being glossy and tricked out, it hadn't been here when we came yesterday. Pretty good clue.

Robin sat on a bench by the corral fence next to the barn with Brenda sitting on the other end. Wendy stood past her and Randall beside his daughter.

Randall and Wendy were zeroed in on each other and the two on the bench didn't have a good angle to see us approaching, especially with the coverage of that pickup.

"I can show you the statistics from a well-regarded study," he continued loudly and with a hefty dollop of patronization. "People around here are prejudiced. But if you look at the numbers—"

Wendy snorted. "Before you trot out numbers, you should know that unknown predators is what they say when they can't a hundred percent say it was a wolf — and only a wolf. A wolf makes the kill, but other predators get after the carcass and that becomes unknown predators."

"Coyotes kill more livestock than wolves," he argued.

His clothes were top quality and new enough to crackle, including the retro red paisley neckerchief that immediately made me think of an outlaw pulling it up over his face to mask his identity.

"Lots more. But nobody's reintroducing coyote packs."

"The reintroduction of wolves in Yellowstone was decades ago—"

"And the monitoring and enforcement gets paid for every year." I had the feeling Wendy had made this argument before.

"Besides," Brenda said, "it's not just Yellowstone. Colorado has a pack that sure doesn't stop at the border. Those wolves kill livestock and they kill dogs — dogs guarding the livestock and pets."

"Coyotes kill dogs, too," Randall Kenyon shot back, not quite as patronizing.

Robin Kenyon had spotted us, was watching us. None of the others picked up on the direction of her attention, though.

Her jeans, boots, shirt, and jacket were the same quality as his — setting them well above the utilitarian rattiness of Wendy's and Brenda's. But hers were broken in. They looked less like a store window outfit and more individual pieces chosen that day.

She had those eyebrows that looked like they were painted on with a fat brush. I'd bet my house she didn't do them herself. Nor the artfully streaked hair pulled back in a low ponytail. She wore her cowboy with considerably more ease than Randall.

"Yeah, but you Easterners don't get as sentimental about coyotes," Brenda said. "Probably because you have problems with them back there, too."

Wendy nodded, united with Brenda on this topic. "People trying to keep livestock alive don't get sentimental about either one — wolves or coyotes."

"Sentiment has nothing to do with—" Randall's vehemence abruptly pivoted toward us. "Who are you? What are you doing?" He interrupted himself a second time and started toward us with the hand out to the camera. "You can't—"

With her camera going, Diana approached him slowly, with me hanging back slightly for the wider angle.

He kept moving his hand, trying to block the shot.

"Hi," I said with cheerful friendliness, then tried to sell it more with, "Brenda, Wendy, it's good to see you again. Randall, Robin, I'm Elizabeth Margaret Danniher and this is Diana Stendhal from—"

"Can see where you're from." After shifting his position, he must have seen the big letters on the side of the NewsMobile. "Go away."

His continued effort to block the camera kept raising the folds of the neckerchief's fabric, reinforcing the impression of an outlaw masking his lower face.

Boy oh boy, did he need media training.

Made great video for us, though, if we decided to use it.

There wasn't much that made someone look shiftier — and thus guiltier — than holding their palm out to the camera. You can start a debate about this in most TV newsrooms, with some holding out that it was the perp walk when an arrestee bent nearly double and pulled a sweater or other piece of clothing over his/her head. I fell into the hand-in-front of the camera as shiftier camp.

Yes, because it was active and the sweater-head shuffle was passive. But more important because of how it looked if it aired — like the person on camera's hand was pushing away the viewer. Like that palm is about to be shoved in the viewer's face.

Not the way to win over sympathizers.

Not the way to win us over, either, but he did not appear concerned with that.

"You can't be here." The dope showed no sign of recognizing he wore the perfect face-blocker on his head — that's how unaccustomed he was to cowboy attire, including his hat. "This is private property."

"Yeah," Wendy said to him. "My private property. Not yours."

With the advantage of the property owner viewing me momentarily as a friend as a result of the-enemy-of-my-enemy alchemy, I quickly said, "If you'd answer our questions—"

"No reason I should and no reason to let you film me. If you won't leave, I will. We will." He moved toward that vehicle that hadn't been here yesterday, with enough bells and whistles to nearly mask the pickup underneath.

Robin stayed put.

"She said you're doing a piece on Keefe. He was a real good guy. Make sure you say that and—"

Until she spoke, I didn't realize I'd expected at some level that she would whine. She did not. Her voice was neutral, though quick.

"We are. You know him. When did you last talk to him?"

"Yesterday. We came up here and—"

"Robin, be quiet. You have no idea how these things work and—"

"How what works? Keefe's dead. Dead." Her voice broke.

"And that's a shame. But I'm still going to buy this ranch for you and that—"

"Not for me. For yourself."

"—should make you happy, since this place is so almighty important to you. This place that transformed you." With the twist of that word, the crack in the fa?ade of his gratitude widened to a chasm. "And you go off with a stranger — won't say a word to me, but you'll talk to him. Tell him everything. Proclaiming me an ogre, telling him—"

"We didn't talk. Not about you. Not about me. Not about anything. That was the point. Just to be with him and not talk."

"They were like this yesterday, too," Brenda said to the universe. "Keefe tried to square things between the two of them best he could, telling them over and over he appreciated them giving him the DNA test, but he's not — wasn't — the best with people and he—" Her hat tipped toward Randall. "—wouldn't shut up. And she—" Toward Robin now. "—wouldn't talk."

Randall Kenyon was here the day before the shooting. Interesting.

"Shut up, Brenda." Wendy's words didn't have much heat this time. Maybe she'd abandoned all hope of quieting Brenda.

Randall had another idea. He backtracked to wrap a hand around his stationary daughter's arm just above the elbow. "C'mon, Robin."

"You gave Keefe a DNA test?"

Neither showed any sign that I'd spoken.

Robin said, "I want to stay."

"No. We're going."

This time he tugged.

She didn't resist a lot beyond grimaces and RAN-dalls that made up for the previous lack of whiny. Those RAN-dalls were ostensibly on our side, so I can only imagine they sounded worse to him. Along with being called by his first name rather than Dad or Father or Pops — No, he wasn't a Pops type.

He might even be the type to tell his daughter to call him by his first name so he'd seemed younger.

He had her bundled into the passenger seat quickly, went around the back of the vehicle, and got in behind the steering wheel.

Diana who'd kept shooting, raised a questioning eyebrow at me without removing her focus from getting the shot.

She'd do what she thought best, but I nodded anyway.

Even when the pickup started toward the bridge and the way out, she stepped into the center of the drive, where he couldn't help but see her in his rear-view mirror.

How fast could the guy throw it in reverse and — "Diana..."

"No worries," she said. "They're gone."

With the pickup out of sight and her returning toward us, I met her halfway. "Diana..." was all I got out.

"Making a point. He nearly touched my camera lens. Nobody but me touches this lens."

Turning back to the others, who'd remained in their spots, I said, "Interesting conversation. But are you raising cattle? I thought this was a guest ranch."

"It's not a guest ranch. It's a dude ranch," Wendy said sharply. "Dudes are what we have here. There's nothing pejorative about the word. It means they don't know ranch life and that's why they're here. You don't go seeing a rancher spending his vacation at Elk Rock. We like dudes. We love dudes. We need dudes." The last of those statements rang truer than the others. "That's what we call them and that makes us a dude ranch."

Okay...I'd stepped into some Wyoming vocabulary controversy I hadn't heard of before. I did it less often these days than when I arrived two years ago, but it still happened. And there was no app to translate.

"Dude ranch," I repeated, an acknowledgment that might also be heard as an apology. I'm getting so tactful I'm going to be recruited by the diplomatic service. "So, no cattle? But you have horses for riding for the—" I swallowed guests and said, "—dudes. Where are they?"

"Pastured out for the winter."

"You must need a lot of hands come summer time to help, right?"

"Of course."

"Same people year after year?"

"No."

Brenda expanded on Wendy's brief responses. "We've got a steady pipeline of college kids. We try to keep a mix of those who've been here before with a few new ones so we don't have complete turnover when the older ones graduate and we lose them to year-round jobs. That way the experienced kids help train the new ones. We pin down which ones are coming back, then open for new hires. A lot of times the returners or even alums will recommend their friends. We try to have a few kids who aren't part of that — guess you could call it legacy — string. Fresh blood." She chuckled. "Because, just like with breeding cattle or horses, sometimes one line will peter out eventually, so you don't want to rely all on one. Need a couple strings runnin'."

Made sense. Even if it was likening hiring college kids to breeding cattle or horses.

"Did Robin work for you?"

"Her?" Wendy scoffed.

Again, leaving Brenda to fill in. "Told you, she was a guest last summer. Not one anyone would've thought would ever be back, not until after her accident and all that happened. Changed a lot."

Wendy huh'd. "Yeah, like her even being with her father."

"She did complain a lot about him. You'd've thought she hated him more than anything to listen to her last summer when she was here."

"She said she hated him," Wendy said, disparagingly. "Didn't take any thinking at all."

"It's why she took to Keefe so strongly, I suspect. Opposite of her dad."

Wendy clicked her tongue, expressing scorn nearly as strongly as her snorts did. "Anybody here'd be the opposite of him. Don't get a lot of hard-charging CEO types working at a dude ranch. A few come through our staff who will be that later, but not while they're here. And they don't stick around to work all their lives here, like Keefe did." Her voice changed, shifting toward Chamber of Commerce talk. "That's one reason people come to dude ranches — to get away from all that. Whether it's people trying to get away from the boss for a week or two, or even the boss, trying to get away from the pressures of being the boss."

From what we'd seen of her personality, if she'd gone into another business, Wendy could have been a hard-charging CEO type herself.

Apparently I wasn't the only one thinking along those lines.

"Some of 'em never get away from it because they carry it with them," Brenda spoke under her breath, but plenty loud enough to be heard.

Wendy pretended she hadn't heard. "Sure don't want to surround themselves with more of the same while they're here. So we encourage our staff to be firm when it's a matter of safety and what's good for the horses, but not to be tossing around a lot of orders."

"No danger of that with Keefe." Brenda shook her head slightly. "He wasn't slow." She sounded like she'd defended him from that description and I recalled Wendy's mouthed sloooow-leeeee from yesterday. "More like he just wasn't interested in what he wasn't interested in, and a lot of that had to do with the practicalities of life."

"What she's not saying is she took care of those practicalities for him, right down to keeping him in clean undies."

A flush swept up Brenda's creped throat, into her cheeks, and up her forehead.

Wendy didn't appear to notice and she clearly wasn't praising Brenda for this. "Laundry, shopping, cleaning his cabin, cooking for him more often than not, too."

"Just helping a friend." From stiff and defensive, her voice strengthened. "Besides, all that left him free to do all the things you needed him doing, especially off-season without other hands around to do your bidding."

"Bidding? You mean trying to keep this place going and keeping both of you in jobs?"

"I didn't mean—"

"You've always resented—"

They both broke off and turned to Diana and me as if we'd just intruded on a private dispute, rather than them airing it in front of us.

Brenda recovered first, which surprised me. And reminded me not to underestimate the woman.

"You want to know why that Kenyon man was here today, you ask her." Brenda jerked her chin in the direction of Wendy.

Brenda clearly had something she wanted to share. If I had to reach it via a Jeopardy-style pro forma question, no problem.

"Today? Or the day before yesterday? Why did he come to the ranch?" I asked both of them.

"I have no idea," Wendy said promptly.

"Yes, you do," Brenda immediately disputed. "Same reason both days."

I popped out another question in response to her leading statement. "Why was he here the day before Keefe was shot? Did he see Keefer?"

"Keefer? Why would he see him?" Wendy demanded.

"Well, Robin saw Keefe. Though just for a few minutes, after he came in and before Randall stormed off — sort of like today."

"Why'd he storm off then?"

Before Brenda could use her intake of breath on words, Wendy rolled her eyes and said, "I told you then and I'll tell you now, I didn't know he was coming, I didn't know he was going to try to buy my ranch, and I told him no — N-O."

"He wants to buy the ranch?" That was not a deliberate Jeopardy-esque question, but surprise coming out.

"Sure as hell does. Said it bold as brass on Monday."

Before Brenda could say more, Wendy broke in. "And you stopped listening and got all emotional when he said it."

"It is emotional when someone wants to buy your home out from under you."

"It's my home. And he's trying to buy it from me."

"See? So you had been talking to him about it. He said he'd been talking to—"

"He hadn't been talking to me. He'd been nosing around into what's none of his business. My personal affairs." She jerked her head around to us. "He came here — uninvited. Made an offer to buy Elk Rock Ranch — uninvited. I told him no. By the time I could get that word in, Robin had gone off with Keefe. Randall Kenyon wasn't leaving without his daughter, so I left — went into the barn, mucking out stalls. He followed, but only a short way. I wasn't being real careful with where what I threw out of the stall landed. He got the hint. He got out of my sight. No idea what he did after that."

"Did he leave without his daughter? Or—"

"I'm telling you, I have no idea."

"You must have noticed if his vehicle was still here or not?"

"Left about four-thirty," Brenda said.

"See? There you have it," Wendy said, as if I'd never want any more information. Foolish woman.

"Could he have come back? Would you have heard the vehicle?"

They exchanged a look. For all the friction between them, there also was a communication, a connection built from the decades of close contact.

"Didn't hear it," Wendy said.

In a reversal of roles, Brenda snorted. "You wouldn't have heard it if it parked under your window and revved the engine." She turned toward us. "I didn't hear it and I don't sleep like the dead like her. But..."

She drew that out.

"But what, Brenda?" That sort of lubricant to keep people's jaw's moving was second nature.

"I wouldn't have heard a vehicle if he had an ounce of brains. Because anybody with an ounce of brains would park right as it got to the bridge. Not only wouldn't make the clattering that crossing the bridge raises, but the creek masks the sound of most vehicles before they get to the bridge. And another thing—" She turned a glare on Wendy. "He's not acting like anybody's told him no about buying Elk Rock."

"I can't help how the man acts," Wendy snapped. "I told him it's not for sale. If he won't listen or doesn't understand the word those two letters make, that's his problem — and yours if you take him with more than a grain of salt."

Wendy jerked her hands up.

"Not my problem. Not how he acts. Not what you think. My problem is getting the tack inventory done. And that's what I'm going to do."

With what might be a signature move, she turned on her boot heel as she had yesterday, though this time she headed toward a lean-to structure alongside the barn.