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I had to accept that her head-shake was that the question didn’t apply to her.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
On the other end of the video call, Mike and Jennifer were eating pizza at his Evanston apartment, just north of Chicago.
Diana and I, in the KWMT office officially designated as the news director’s, and unofficially Mike’s temporarily, were not eating pizza. Being around Tamantha and Tom I’d been conscious of trying to eat healthier meals. Right now, I wished I were in Evanston with the other two, at least for the pizza.
I had started with condensed versions of my trips yesterday to the library, museum, and Mrs. P, as well as today’s to the McCracken place.
Diana had put out feelers, but didn’t have anything back yet from her sources. Aunt Gee hadn’t yet responded to Mike, either.
Jennifer reported on Randall Kenyon’s business holdings and financial position.
Mike whistled. “Why’s he bothering with a dude ranch in Cottonwood County? He’s up there with the Barlows.”
“General view was he was a money-making machine until his wife died two years ago,” Jennifer said. “Then it’s divided about whether he’s been distracted because of her death, because of his daughter becoming a problem or both. It’s not like he’s in trouble — or his businesses — but people talk about if his golden touch is gone.”
I caught the group up on my futile pursuit of the DNA test results.
“But would Keefe be that excited if the results hadn’t arrived?” Diana asked.
“Pre-excited, maybe?” Jennifer suggested. “Sounds like he tended that way on the topic of Oscar Virtanen.”
“What it comes down to is, he could have already received the results or he hadn’t — Don’t say it, Paycik.” He closed his mouth on the obvious rejoinder I’d opened myself up to. “The point is, we follow up on the DNA test.”
“If he didn’t get the test already, it’s pretty much up to law enforcement to pry the results out of the company, right?” Jennifer asked.
“Pretty much. Although we could consider asking Robin and/or her father to see if they have any standing as the purchasers of the test to get the result.”
“Could consider,” Diana said thoughtfully. “That’s not exactly gung-ho, Elizabeth.”
“If one of them is involved — or both of them — with his murder that could muddy the waters,” Mike said. “I’d think especially if how they got the information became a legally contested issue.”
“Exactly,” I answered the first part and ignored the ending. “Then, in the other possibility for those test results — that Keefe did receive them — it gets really interesting. Because that means someone took them and—”
“Or he burned them because they weren’t what he wanted,” Jennifer jumped in to add. “Although it doesn’t have to have been burned. He could have thrown them out long enough before he was killed that they’ve already been recycled or whatever.”
“Possible,” I conceded. “Though Brenda said—”
“Brenda said?” Jennifer repeated with an undercurrent.
“—he was excited the day before his death, so he wouldn’t have had time to dispose of them.”
“Having them taken by someone else is a lot better clue to follow than the dump,” Mike said.
I couldn’t deny the truth of that. “Yeah, we’ll leave Shelton and company to pursue that aspect if that’s what it comes to. So the question becomes what about those tests would have been worth killing Keefe for?”
“The connection to Oscar Virtanen,” Mike said immediately.
“But why? We come back to being proven a descendant of Mr. and Mrs. Virtanen wouldn’t—”
“You’re not calling them Pearl and Oscar, like Bonnie and Clyde?” Diana asked.
I’d been showing off — at least to myself — my first grasp on their last names. “They were more formal in the nineteenth century, but if you insist... being proven a descendant of Oscar and Pearl wouldn’t give him an immediate open sesame to the so-called treasure.”
“Some of these people don’t care about the money. They’re just interested in the history, in the mystique,” Mike said.
“The mystique of some old bank robber?” Jennifer asked. “I get wanting the treasure — if there is one — but so what if his great-whatever grandfather was a bank robber?”
