Chapter Twenty-Seven

I put thatquestion to the group during a video call, back in the KWMT news director's office, eating takeout dinner from Hamburger Heaven with Diana after the Five.

Before the broadcast, I'd called James Longbaugh's office for an appointment. To my surprise, he had one available for the next morning.

Three of tonight's top stories had Diana's video from today's assignments. I edited a couple pieces for Leona, so I wasn't a total waste of newsroom space.

"Keefe taunted him," Jennifer said. She was in her apartment in Evanston.

"He doesn't sound like the taunting kind. No—" I held up an objecting finger to my own objection. "Ideas first. Then we'll consider them. So, Keefe taunted him."

"Keefe told him there was no treasure," Diana offered. "Though how he would come to that conclusion, I have no idea."

"Keefe told him he had an inside track on the treasure because he'd been proved as a descendant. The only descendant as far as we know." From an office at the TV station in downtown Chicago, Mike added, "That's assuming he had the DNA test results."

Skipping over that last part, I said, "Oscar and Pearl were married young, so that cuts the chances for kids beforehand. No word of their having any kids before they went into bank robbing. That lasted about two years. Then Oscar's killed."

"So how did Keefer think he was descended from them? There had to be a kid in there somewhere for that to happen," Mike said.

We were all quiet for a moment, except for faint chewing.

"It's interesting," Diana said slowly, "that Pearl was his accomplice except for the last one."

I tried not to grin. I'd bet she was on the same track I'd followed earlier.

"What are you thinking, Diana?" Mike asked.

"That she might not have ridden with him on that job because she physically couldn't, having just had or being about to have a baby. I know, I know, there's no proof."

"I labeled it speculation when I wondered the same thing today. But that's what we're doing right now — letting our minds run wild with speculation, hoping we land on something."

Diana said, "A baby on the way or just born could be why Oscar pulled another job without waiting for her to participate. He wanted a bigger nest egg with another mouth to feed."

"Maybe there's no treasure at all. Maybe the bank people lied about how much he stole and they took the money."

That foray into deep skepticism by Jennifer caused a silence I covered by saying, "Boy, I wish I'd thought of that to tell Sam McCracken."

"You'd have made the poor man's head explode," Diana said.

"I know. That's why I wish it."

"What have you got against him?" Diana's voice went thoughtful and dry. "Other than he's wasting time he could be spending with his wife and kids. I did hear from several people that's caused tension between him and Serena. The word obsessed kept coming up."

"There's a flaw with that," Mike said.

"A big flaw — he's making stupid choices." Was she thinking about her husband, who'd lost the opportunity to ever again spend time with his wife and kids in a fatal ranch accident years ago?

"Huh? Oh. No, not that. Jennifer's idea about the bank people saying Oscar stole more than he did and them keeping the difference," Mike said. "They couldn't have known he'd die from his wounds."

"If he got away, that worked, too," Jennifer argued.

"But if he got caught — as he was — he could have exposed their lie."

"If the authorities believed him." She clearly didn't think they would. "Why would they take the word of a bank robber over employees."

"If he had the money with him to show them the amount—"

"They'd say the other guys who went south took the money. Or he hid most of it — which is what they said after he died."

"But—"

"Whoa, you two," I protested. "That's all stuff that concerns Sam McCracken. Not us. Because it didn't concern Keefe."

"You're right," Jennifer said coolly. "We focus on Keefe. And Ivy said Keefe said Sam was going to his cabin, so that's opportunity."

"If he actually went." Mike spoke low enough that Jennifer didn't respond.

I said quickly, "It is. But the more I think about Sam McCracken as a suspect, the less enthusiastic I am. Yes, we considered him in that other case. But his motive then would have been to protect his wife and kids. That could stir a lot more people to murder than the possibility of finding out about lesser-known outlaws who might or might not have buried loot somewhere."

"Does he have an alibi?" Jennifer asked.

"Shaky, if any," I said. "Didn't try to pin down Serena until we know the time of death."

"And we don't have time of death with Aunt Gee stonewalling me," Mike grumbled. "But McCracken's passionate about these outlaws and treasure. If he thought he was getting close, then Keefe blocked him..."

I couldn't argue with the reasoning.

Besides, you covered all the bases.

"You're right. He stays on the list."

"Are we confident about focusing on Oscar and Pearl to the exclusion of the other women?" Mike asked.

"Let's consider that. Etta Place — or whatever her real name was — disappeared after 1907. On at least two of her reported return trips to the United States from South America, she and Sundance went to medical facilities. There's the possibility she was ill, which could have led to an early death."

"Or she was pregnant," Jennifer said.

"No reports of a child, were there?" Diana asked.

"None that I know of. As for Laura Bullion, she disappeared shortly after Ben Kilpatrick was killed in 1912 trying to rob a train, barely a year after getting out of prison. Nothing's heard from Laura for years. She resurfaced in Memphis in 1918, claiming to be a war widow from World War I."

"Well, she could have been with that kind of gap," Mike said.

"I suppose. But her war widow story wasn't given much credence."

"When you say disappeared, you mean... what?" Diana asked.

I considered. "In essence, it means the Pinkerton agency stopped paying attention because they were after the men. Although they really should have kept track of Laura Bullion, since evidence points to her dressing as a man and participating in robberies. But maybe they figured they'd gotten the money back, so forget her."

"They got the money back? Not from all the robberies," Diana said.

"No. But most of the money from the Great Northern Railway near Wagner, Montana, on July 3, 1901. Ben Kilpatrick, Kid Curry, and a third man got away with tens of thousands of dollars in unsigned bank notes."

"Kid who? Not Sundance?" Jennifer asked.

"No. Mrs. P said newspapers of the day frequently attributed actions to one or the other erroneously, but this was definitely Kid Curry. Not only had Sundance, Etta, and Butch left for South America earlier in the year, but Kid Curry's girlfriend was arrested for passing notes. He got away, temporarily.

"St. Louis police arrested Ben Kilpatrick and found a hotel room key in his pocket. When they got to the hotel, they found Laura Bullion checking out. She had unsigned banknotes from the robbery in her luggage. Laura got out of prison in 1905. Kilpatrick got out in 1911 and was killed the next year trying to rob another train. From 1912 until around 1918, when she surfaced in Memphis, there's little or no information on Laura. She remained in Memphis until her death in the 1960s. Apparently late in life she didn't keep her identity secret."

"What happened to the other robbers?" Jennifer asked.

"Curry was caught in 1902, imprisoned, escaped, then shot himself after being caught stealing horses. The third robber was killed in a drunken shootout with law enforcement, possibly a self-inflicted wound."

"Not a lot of longevity," Mike said.

"It was that kind of occupation. And the women slid away into the mists."

"You want me to find out where the women went?" Jennifer asked.

"I appreciate your offering, but I won't do that to you. That's a majorly dangerous rabbit hole. Etta Place has baffled researchers for a century-plus. Theories all over the place, from dying, to becoming a prostitute, to marrying a fight promoter, to being shot in a domestic dispute, to becoming a schoolteacher. In South America or here. Living only a couple years longer or surviving into the 1960s. And each researcher's positive he or she is absolutely right. Similar story with Laura Bullion's blank of five years before she settled in Memphis."

Abruptly, Jennifer said, "Did you know the first guy Laura Bullion paired up with had been married to her aunt? I read up on her during a break today."

"He dumped the aunt for the niece?" Diana asked.

"No. The aunt died from fever a year into the marriage. He connected with Laura later. Then they split the blanket and—"

I interrupted, "Split the blanket?"

"Pretty self-explanatory for ending a relationship. Handy when it's not officially a divorce," Diana said. "Also torn the blanket."

I'd have to remember those.

"Anyway," Jennifer said with impatient emphasis, "she hooked up with that guy, then Ben Kilpatrick, then that guy again before she went back to Kilpatrick. When she disappeared after Kilpatrick died, maybe she went back to the first guy—"

"He'd already died — killed by law enforcement who suspected him of a murder he hadn't committed in 1901."

"So, still a blank in Laura's history," Diana said.

Nodding, I moved on. "And Pearl Virtanen's after Oscar died."

"I'll get the guys on it. Start with the census."

I had a momentary vision of Jennifer's guys encountering these women and their outlaw significant others in the timelessness of the cyber world. I'd pay to be a spectator if that meeting took place outside my imagination.

"Doesn't have to be from right after Oscar Virtanen's death, either," Jennifer said. "Later censuses could show her with a kid of the right age."

"Good point," I said. "I'll let you know if there are any pointers in the dissertation Mrs. P gave me. But it did rather give away the ending up front by saying what happened to Pearl was not known."

Diana tipped her head. "We don't want to eliminate other possibilities, just because Keefe zeroed in on the Virtanens. Laura Bullion being disappeared for those years after Ben died, could fit with a woman having a baby, staying a few years, then leaving it to be raised in a more stable situation."

"Or the kid could die."

Diana and I stared at Mike. Jennifer huffed in disapproval at his grim outlook.

He stuck to his guns. "Well, it could. High infant mortality rate's a historic fact."

"I was thinking," I said, leaving that topic behind, "knowing the historical truth one way or another might not affect this investigation, because it wouldn't change what Keefe believed was true."

"But," Diana said, "how could it have led to his murder? Unless... unless there's some special information about the location of the treasure being held for someone who proves descent from Oscar and Pearl?"

"We haven't heard anything about something like that," Mike said. "Along with the fact that if someone somewhere held the secret location of this treasure for an Oscar Virtanen descendant, why wasn't it collected by earlier generations? Keefe's parent or grandparent, say, assuming he's related. Or—"

Jennifer jumped in. "Previous generations didn't know or couldn't prove the connection in pre-DNA days."

"Or," Mike repeated emphatically, "why didn't whoever's been holding this secret of the location for more than a century — and presumably passing it down to younger folks, because it sure isn't one person from the early 1900s to now — take it?"

"Honesty," Diana said.

"Afraid of Oscar Virtanen's ghost," Jennifer offered.

Mike shook his head. "Buried treasure — it's such a long shot."

"You're getting stodgy," Jennifer tossed at him. "Before you would have loved the idea of buried treasure."

"Before what?" he snapped.

"Before you got that big job in Chicago, and got all stodgy."

Diana and I looked at each other. We'd both thought they were getting along better recently. But this felt even sharper than they used to be. Especially Mike.

"You're in Chicago, too. Or close enough, so—"

Diana cut across the squabbling with the ruthlessness of a mother of teenagers. "We're off topic. Back to this inquiry about why a man's dead."

I might have let it run a little longer to see if it revealed anything interesting. You could say that made me a better journalist, while Diana qualified as the better friend.

But I cooperated. "Mike, you said something early on about Keefer Dobey that's stuck in my head — that he's never harmed anybody. But Randall Kenyon could feel Keefe harmed him."

"By helping his daughter when she was hurt? Hard to say how much Keefe had to do with her transformation, but he sure as heck was there and just for that, her father should be down-on-his-knees grateful." Mike's vehemence also spoke of his regard for Keefe.

"That's what he's saying," Jennifer pointed out. "Over and over — how grateful he is. And how that's what made him want to buy the place."

"That and running the financials," Diana said dryly.

Was there something in the fact that the two of us who'd met him in person didn't trust Randall Kenyon?

"He could be grateful for Keefe's role in Robin's epiphany and still feel harmed by him," I persisted. "Jealous that Keefe was, at least partially, the instrument of that. Resentful that she still seems — or seemed — to turn to him."

"That would really suck if Keefe was killed by an egotistical father with his nose out of joint."

Mike hadn't yet reached the stage of grief when he realized logically that no one cause of death was going to suck less than another.

"He's not a man accustomed to not being able to direct things the way he wants them to go," I said.

"I wonder if that's some of why his wife's death hit so hard — and why it hit Robin so hard, too, because she does seem to be like him."

"Good point, Diana. Robin is definitely his daughter, under her layer of recent kumbaya-ness. Of course there's real pain and grief for each of them, but I think the other is part of it, too. Not only that his wife, her mother died, but that they haven't been able to bend the grief to their wills. They have to live through it, like everybody else."

"That's the part that bugs them — like everybody else."

I nodded at Jennifer's words.

But would a sense of helplessness against his own feelings have been enough to make Randall Kenyon kill Keefer Dobey?

Plus, I didn't see it applying that way to Robin.

"One more thing," Jennifer said. "I found the video of Keefe. The one by the guest."