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“That girl,” Brenda clucked. “Rides a horse the same way.”
“Not any of my horses,” Wendy said. “Never letting her on another Elk Rock animal.”
Robin Kenyon driving the truck.
Ah, that made more sense.
The truck skidded to a halt in the middle of the drive. The door flung open and Robin stumbled out.
Before anyone could react to try to catch her, she righted herself.
Okay, before Tom or I could react, because neither of the older women showed any sign of moving to her aid.
With tears tracing her cheeks, Robin shouted at us, “You have to do something. You have to stop them.”
Stop who from doing what?
The question was right there, begging to be asked. No one asked it. Probably not surprising in the case of Brenda and Wendy. But me, professional question asker?
Sometimes it’s important to not ask questions. Asking can make you a participant, when you can learn different things by remaining an observer.
I felt Tom’s look on the side of my face. He, too, remained silent.
Not getting an answer, Robin repeated, louder, “You have to do something. Right now.”
Wendy clacked her tongue and said with her usual snap, “What are you talking about?”
“My father. They have my father at the sheriff’s office. They came to the B&B and they took him away in one of those marked cars—”
Probably an SUV or truck — but I wasn’t participating, so no throwing in corrections.
“—and they didn’t say a lot, but the little that short guy said — I know what they’re thinking. But he didn’t. He couldn’t have killed Keefe. I know he didn’t.”
Not the same words as Brenda’s They got it wrong, but with as much conviction.
It didn’t carry the same weight.
Nobody could imagine Brenda making up a story to clear Wendy. They weren’t exactly enemies — or if they were, the enmity had aged so long that its sharp edges were worn off, leaving habit — but they weren’t sisters of the heart, either.
And, yes, Robin and Randall had issues, but everybody could imagine her lying to clear her one remaining parent.
“How do you know he didn’t?” Wendy asked.
Robin gaped at her, so shocked that her tears stopped.
With the silence continuing, Wendy made a get-away gesture with her hand toward the young woman. Instead of waiting to see if it would be obeyed, Wendy spun around and walked toward the main house.
Robin came back to animation with a gasp that let loose a new gush of tears and words. “She’s awful. Just awful. What a horrible, horrible thing to say to me.”
“Well, she does have a point,” Brenda said judiciously. “Your father tried to frame her. Unless you saw who killed Keefe or did it yourself—”
“Me?”
“—you can’t say for sure your father didn’t. Nobody can say that about anybody else. ’Less they did it themselves or saw it. That’s all I’m saying. The logic of it.”
“My father didn’t kill him. I know he didn’t.”
Brenda said, “Look at the bright side. If they arrest him and keep him in jail, you’ve still got a nice enough place to stay at the Wild Horses B&B, with us not open yet for the season.”
