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“Two? That’s getting expensive—”
“Not that bad.” She now was fully into lobbying for this. The employee no longer refusing an upgrade from the owner, but instead asking for more. The world was no longer spinning backward. “Maybe get them a little older than you’d planned. Or one of them, anyway.”
“Good idea to have a backup,” I stuck in.
She picked up on that. “Right. If one breaks down — because, you are talking used and how many live trucks get driven by little old ladies going to church—”
Certainly not the ones she drove.
“—we’d still have the capability we needed.”
Mike ran a hand through his hair.
Have I mentioned he had great hair. He should do that now and then on-air. His female viewership in Chicago would expand beyond true sports fans.
“I’ll look at the numbers and see what’s available — no promises.”
“Of course not,” she said with understanding. Perhaps she understood his position. She certainly understood she was almost certain to get what she wanted. And I agreed that would serve KWMT-TV well.
****
Not even an hour later, Audrey rolled her eyes at me and said, “Don’t you have a murder to solve or something?”
I parted my lips, but that was as far as I got.
“Your prowling around here is driving everyone nuts.” I glanced around and received several confirming nods. “And, no, you cannot ask Dale to do a little work for you. I need him. And everybody else on staff.”
Surely that didn’t include Diana.
I called her after I’d left the building. Hoping for inspiration, I asked her to meet me at the entrance to Elk Rock Ranch when she finished her next assignment.
“I had a feeling you weren’t satisfied with Randall Kenyon,” she said.
“Not yet, anyway.”
She’d keep me posted on her progress.
After a quick stop at home — where I was a distraction from the well-oiled feeding-Suzie Q machine that was Iris and Zeb Undlin, and included plenty of side-treats to Shadow so he didn’t feel left out — I left.
But I had a stop to make on the way.
****
Make that two stops.
The first one came when I recognized Gee’s vehicle parked by the museum’s rear entrance.
Possible she was there without Mrs. P, but unlikely.
The back door wasn’t locked. Shoddy security for a museum. How could they expect people not to walk in?
“Not again,” Clara Atwood said. She and Audrey could have been eye-rolling twins.
“You’ll be glad I came.”
As I started telling her about the nutmeg tin with the copy of an old newspaper article — but not about the other finds in Keefe’s cabin — Mrs. P and Gee came into sight down the hallway.
Under the power of those two women, Clara gestured us all into her office. They took chairs, I sat on a spare desk, continuing my account.
