Chapter Four

"They're here aboutKeefe, Wendy." Brenda answered the question without any indication the other woman's authority had an impact on her.

So this was Elk Rock Ranch's owner.

Also Cottonwood County's representative to the billionaire class.

You wouldn't guess the latter from her appearance.

She was short. Not that billionaires have to be tall, but she was really short.

And scrawny.

Not thin, as in you can never be too rich or too thin — in that quintessential twentieth century remark attributed all over the place, including being claimed by Truman Capote. But like a chicken's neck without flesh under its skin.

Yet her face was soft and rounded.

It was like the two women had mismatched heads. Put Wendy's head on Brenda and you had a youthful-looking and youthful-moving senior. Put Brenda's head on Wendy and you had a walking mummy.

Wendy wore jeans, work boots, a jacket with plenty of bulging pockets without masking that scrawniness, and a serviceable cowboy hat.

On second thought, maybe she was the perfect template for Cottonwood County's billionaire.

"Hello. Ms. Barlow?" I stripped off a glove and held out that hand. "I'm Elizabeth Margaret Danniher and this is Diana Stendahl. We're—"

I started to answer. Brenda talked over me.

Not the easiest thing to do to a broadcast journalist, but she accomplished it with ease.

"They're doing a story on Keefe. A remembrance. He deserves that and more."

"A remembrance?" Wendy Barlow scoffed without looking at us, much less meeting my offered hand. I gladly put it back in the glove. "Out-of-town vultures wanting to peck away at his death."

"No, ma'am."

Diana's eyelids flickered at my pulling out the ma'am, but no one else would have noticed. The other two women reacted more to my emphaticness... emphaticism?... to my being emphatic.

"We're from KWMT-TV from right here in Cottonwood County and we'd heard so many good things about Keefer Dobey, we came out to do the story as Brenda said. I'm E.M. Danniher and this is Diana Stendahl," I repeated.

"Danniher. I've heard of you. You do those exposés about murders."

I don't think she meant exposés as a compliment. I twisted it to one for our benefit. "We have done coverage on how murderers have been exposed and brought to justice in our county. I also do the Helping Out! feature and—"

"Oh, yeah," Brenda interrupted enthusiastically. "My cousin followed all your tips about holding a garage sale last summer. Because of what you said, she called the deputies about a guy skulking around and they found out he was wanted in Montana."

"That's great. You'll have to give me your cousin's name to see about a follow-up story on that." It would have been nice to have it last summer, but we could dig up a news peg to run it now. Maybe the start of this year's garage sale season.

"I sure will." She scribbled with a stub of a pencil on the back of a paper she pulled from her pocket. "She'd about jump out of her skin to be on TV. Be sure to tell her I was behind this."

"I absolutely will." The paper was the back of a gas station receipt from two years ago, but her handwriting was surprisingly legible.

Wendy was having none of it. "You shouldn't have come out here without calling first. Wasted a trip. We're sure not going to be on TV dressed for work like we are. It's bad for the ranch's image.

"Why shouldn't we be dressed for work," Brenda argued. "This is our work season. No guests to impress—"

"Never will be any more guests if we gross them out—"

"—so we dress for the tasks."

"—by letting them see us like this."

I'd seen Tom come in from some days when gross could apply. This was not it. Granted, neither woman was going to a fashion show, but their appearance would not raise a single eyebrow among our viewers.

"What our viewers want to know are your thoughts about Keefer Dobey," I said.

"Suffice it to say, he's gone to a better place," Wendy said.

Diana murmured what could be taken for agreement. I didn't.

I do not understand that sentiment when someone's been shot in the back of the head. Like the shooter should be thanked for sending the victim to a better place?

And even if it is better, isn't there a way to get to that better place that doesn't involve bullets in the brain?

I have never argued that point with someone I'm interviewing. It goes against all sorts of journalist guidelines, starting with not wanting to send the interviewee into catatonic silence — whether from stunned recognition of my logic or fury that my comments might edge toward irreverence.

But I think it. Often. And stick to my stance that shot in the head is not a good ticket to any place.

Hoping Diana's murmur and my not saying what I was thinking was enough to soften Wendy, I pretended she hadn't previously objected.

"Tell us what he was like."

Neither of them looked at me. Neither answered, either.

I thought Wendy sent Brenda a keep-still look, but the angle was wrong for me to be sure.

Diana had kept her camera running throughout, but without making a big deal of it. I doubted either of the ranch residents was aware she was recording.

We already had enough footage of Brenda to offer the human-reaction angle that would be added to Nala's hard news account of Shelton and the sheriff's department barely acknowledging they'd been to Elk Rock Ranch today, much less that someone had died, and not a hint of the bullets in the back of the head. But we'd gathered hardly anything from an investigation standpoint.

"Give our viewers a sense of the man," I suggested, deliberately using the cliché for its familiarity to put them more at ease.

"Can't imagine there are many of your viewers who didn't know the original."

It wasn't clear to me if Wendy Barlow was saying our viewership was narrow or Keefe's acquaintances were widespread. Possibly some of each.

"Still, they want to be reminded why he was special," I persisted. "And who better to share that than the people who knew him best. He worked here year-round, right? With you both?"

"He and Brenda are both year-round employees," Wendy said.

She didn't say my employees, but I think we all got the drift. Brenda certainly did from her sour expression.

"I understand he'd lived here most his life?" I said neutrally.

Brenda spoke up, clearly not willing to have Wendy take control. "Yeah. Came as a little boy when his mom was hired on as cook and all. They came from back east."

"She worked here year-round? I'd understood most dude ranch employees are summer hires."

"Most. But Ulla — Keefe's mother — kept house for Chester, too. That's Chester Barlow, who brought the dude ranch back to what it started as."

"It didn't start as a dude ranch." Wendy contradicted. "Started as a cattle operation. Went the dude ranch route back in the 1920s. Then my family bought it for a private retreat."

Brenda's mouth twisted at being corrected, but she didn't say anything. I was just happy that correcting the history lured more words from Wendy.

"When Uncle Chester came here to live, the family had stopped coming long before. He remembered it from his childhood, though. He decided to return it to a dude ranch."

"And he brought Ulla in," Brenda said, grabbing back the conversational reins. "She did housekeeping and cooking for him during the offseason, like she'd done for his family, plus helped with other things around the place, too. But during the season, she cooked for the guests. There's a slew of them come summer and they work up quite the appetite with being outside all day, not to mention the summer staff. More than enough to do feeding all those mouths — even with kitchen help.

"When the guests left, it was like we kind of were a family. She'd do big meals for the holidays — Thanksgiving and Christmas and Easter — and it would be Chester and her, and the three of us — Keefe, Wendy, and me — and sometimes friends from town or around the county." She smiled. "She was so used to cooking for the guests, if she tried to cook for just us, we'd have the leftovers frozen for months. So Chester would invite a big group. She worked real hard, right up to the end."

I turned to Wendy Barlow. "You were around when you uncle turned it back into a dude ranch?"

Brenda answered. "She came later. A lot later." Clearly she held that as some sort of advantage over the other woman.

This time, I asked Brenda, "And did you grow up here, too, with Keefer?"

"She was just a neighbor," Wendy Barlow said.

It wasn't something I could ever report, not without multiple sources, but I was satisfied that neither woman would be happy letting the other hold an advantage.

"My folks owned the next place over." Brenda tipped her head to the east. They were good friends with Chester. He stayed with them when he first came here — before I was born. And they helped him upgrade the place. My dad rebuilt the barn, which—"

"Probably why it leaks," Wendy muttered.

"—had fallen to rack and ruin." Brenda either hadn't heard Wendy or was very good at pretending she hadn't. "Worked here a lot of winters, fixing up buildings. Then adding new cabins and such."

She tipped her head toward the cabin surrounded by crime scene tape, then to the one in the middle, and the one she'd come out of.

"When my folks were killed in a crash, I was in high school, working here the summer as a waitress — youngest one," she said with pride. "Then or since. Chester took me in, said I'd never want for a job or a roof over my head and I never have."

That had an undertone of challenge to it. Had Wendy threatened her continued position here?

Definite undercurrents between these women.

How did Keefer Dobey fit into this apparent rivalry? Or did he?

A "mature" love triangle? A throuple gone wrong? If a romance — of however many angles — existed, I'd discover signposts to it by making a trip to the Sherman Supermarket and listening to head checker Penny Czylinski. Yes, obscure, misleading, frustrating signposts like the ones the Scarecrow gave in the Wizard of Oz by pointing in opposite directions simultaneously, but signposts nonetheless.

"But Keefe was the one who'd been here the longest of anybody. He loved this place deeper than anybody, too," Brenda added. "He was never happier than when he'd been out all day and sometimes all night, just on his own with Suzie Q now or any of his earlier dogs. Such peace in the man." Her voice cracked.

Wendy shed no tears, but the delicate skin around her eyes went red.

"And all the guests loved Keefe," Brenda added.

Even with red eyes, Wendy produced a snort. "Unless they were in a hurry. Besides, a lot more guests like the cute college girls and the buff college boys than old farts like Keefe."

"Or us? Is that what you're saying? Because he was younger than either of us. So—"

"Doesn't matter to guests how old we are as long as we do the job."

Brenda jumped on that. "And Keefe always did his job."

Wendy mouthed Sloooow-leeeee.

The other woman pretended not to notice. "And you certainly can't argue against me saying the Kenyons think real highly of him."

"So they say."

Before this devolved further, I inserted, "Who are the Kenyons?"

"Robin Kenyon and her father, Randall," Wendy said.

If she hoped a short, direct answer would end the topic, Brenda had other ideas. "Rich folks from back east. He's some big-shot businessman. Robin was a guest here last summer. Came by herself, which not a lot do. And her not much older than most of our staffers, which isn't a group — demographic, as they call it — we get much of. She was a problem from the start. Real snippy and—"

"That is not on the record," Wendy snapped, a hand slicing toward Diana's camera. "Be quiet, Brenda. We don't talk about guests."

"Why not? It all turned out fine — better than fine with how grateful they've been. Thanks to Keefe." She focused on us. "She got hurt up on the trail. Keefe stayed with her while I brought the other guests back and to get help — couldn't use phones up there. And when we got her down and packed off to the hospital, it was like she was a different person. Only found out after that her mother had died the year before. Never said anything. Not until her time with Keefe. So, all thanks to Keefe, like I said. Her father knows it, too. That's why he came here now. Him and Robin, with all that tension between them, trying to—"

"Be quiet." The vehemence of this snap stopped Brenda. Possibly trying to smooth it over, Wendy added, "They don't want to hear all these side-issues."

"That's okay. It's interesting and—"

She cut me off, too.

"You did say this was about Keefer Dobey, didn't you? What his death means. Or was that a lie?"

Fiercely, Brenda said, "It's such a shame it had to happen now, when he was so excited."

Unfortunately, while that freed me from responding to Wendy's accusation cloaked in a question, it also closed off any other avenue of discussion.

Wendy's eyes regained their red-rims but didn't overflow as she clicked her tongue in disapproval. "That nonsense."

I had a feeling this referred to the earlier mention of treasure and someone I'd never heard of. Not particularly where I wanted to go, but best to take what I could get.

"What was he excited about?"

Wendy rolled her eyes. Brenda answered.

"He was expecting results back on his genealogy test — that DNA — any time now. Years he's been working to put together his family history, tracking down any little scrap. Never seen anybody spend so much time at the library. We don't get the best connection up here, so he'd go to the library and spend hours and hours whenever he could, especially in winter. He's been thinking for a while there might be something in it, but he became certain here the past year or so that he's the descendant of a famous outlaw."

"Famous," Wendy scoffed.

"You can't say Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid aren't famous," Brenda shot back.

"He was descended from one of them?" I asked.

"Well, no. Doesn't seem so, according to what he was telling me about his research. But that doesn't mean he wasn't descended from somebody famous," Brenda insisted. Then she temporized with, "Famous around here. The Virtanens."

She looked at me expectantly.

I'd avoided exposing my ignorance the previous time she'd mentioned that name. I wasn't getting away with it this time.

Into the pause that followed, Wendy snorted. Brenda's face fell.

Diana looked up from her camera and stepped in to support KWMT-TV's reputation for knowledge of local history. "Of course. The famous outlaws, Oscar and Pearl Virtanen. They were contemporaries of Butch and Sundance."

Brenda beamed on Keefe's behalf. "That's right. They were deeply connected with Cottonwood County."

If deeply connected with meant they'd pulled off robberies here, I didn't see the appeal.

"Having a connection to Cottonwood County didn't matter to him," Wendy said. "Could have been Etta Place and the Sundance Kid, could have been Laura Bullion and Ben Kilpatrick he was descended from and he'd have been just as happy. Maybe happier."

I'd heard of the first couple from the multiple family viewings of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid mandated by my father as fundamental to his children's upbringings, along with Irish music, and Chicago sports teams.

The second couple meant nothing to me.

At times, ignorance — real or assumed — can be a journalist's secret weapon. Some sources so enjoy teaching that you win them over by letting them teach you. Others can get so involved in showing off what they know that they let far more slip than they intended.

Wendy did not strike me as either of those kinds.

She struck me as the kind who saw ignorance as a weakness that dropped her respect for the other person, giving her the right to dismiss them.

I wasn't going to be dismissed.

I finessed, "But he settled on Oscar and Pearl Virtanen as his more likely ancestors?"

Wendy snorted. She resorted to that derisive dismissal a lot. With a jerk of her head toward me, she said, "She hasn't heard of any of them."

Defending myself that I did know about Sundance and Etta Place would display my ignorance of the others. One out of three wasn't bad for a batting average, but not great in these circumstances. I kept my silence.

"Keefe did a lot of research before taking the DNA test, eliminating the others as possibilities," Brenda said. "You see—"

"Nonsense," Wendy interrupted. "It's all complete nonsense. And so is this. You can stay and play to the camera if you want to Brenda, but I intend to get some work done today. It'll be hard enough to get ready for the season without Keefe. If we spend all our time talking to deputies and lookie-loos we don't stand a chance."

She turned on her heel.

Nothing to lose at this point. "Wendy, did you hear the dog — Suzie Q — bark last night or this morning?"

"No." She kept going.

I spoke louder. "Did you hear anything else? Or see anything?"

No answer from her, but Brenda shook her head in obliging answer to my questions. "Not anything more than I told you."

If only I hadn't heard that statement frequently from people who were far from telling all.