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She turned away from us and stomped closer to the crime scene-taped cabin.
At the bottom of the steps, she stretched out a hand to pat the dog, which had the coat of a lab, except for a longer top knot between prick ears. Suzie Q might have looked comical if not for the intelligence in her golden-brown eyes. Now swimming in concern.
Diana had her camera already running and focused when Brenda Mankin turned around toward us, the daylight revealing her face for the first time.
From the way she’d moved, I’d put her age at maybe mid-50s.
Her face had me thinking in terms of centuries.
Saying she had wrinkles doesn’t convey the impact. The rippled skin of her face made me think of a Shar Pei made from linen, taken straight from the washer, and left to dry in a crumpled lump.
“I... I found him first thing this morning, you know. I called 9-1-1 right away but it’s not like they can get here fast. We’re all trained in first aid, including cardiac. Have to be. For the guests. Not breathing’s one thing. Sometimes you can get them back from that, but even though I tried chest compressions, I knew Keefe was gone... Hard not to. He was cold as a witch’s—”
She broke off that simile, perhaps in deference to Keefer Dobey’s memory.
“That must have been a terrible shock.”
“Sure was. He was right as rain last night. In fact, happy as a clam.”
She looked up and smiled at us. The sun- and wind- and age- and expression-etched lines shifted into their rightful place — into her rightful face. This was how she’d come to possess those folds. This was how she was meant to look.
“All excited about getting his DNA test back.”
My head came up. “DNA test?”
Forensics? Or—?
“For tracing his family. Never knew a lot about that kind of thing — his family history and all — and he’s been dying to get it and—” She broke off with a sucked-in breath and a return to the sagging wrinkles at belatedly recognizing her verbal gaffe. “Poor Keefe. Poor Keefe. He was sure these test results were going to tell him he’s descended from Oscar Virtanen and that had to give him an inside track on finding the treasure. Though it wasn’t like Oscar Virtanen wrote instructions to where he hid what he stole.”
“Treasure?” The single word covered my much broader confusion. I figured if I got an answer to that, I might also learn who Oscar Virtanen was and why Keefe wanted to have been descended from him.
But Brenda had another point to make. “Don’t get me wrong. It wasn’t like Keefe was ever dissatisfied with his lot. I don’t want you to think he was one of those people grasping to be something other than he was. That’s not true at all.” The rustiness in her voice remained. It wasn’t from lack of use, it was a permanent feature.
“The opposite. He loved living here year-round. Loved the solitude in the winter and the company in the summer. Loved working alone and loved teaming up with somebody. He was easygoing, that’s what he was. Most easygoing person I think I ever did meet. I’m not one to get all worked up like some, but he always was way more that way even than me... Mellow. That’s the word. Mellow. Sometimes he reminded me of those critters on the zoo shows that look like they’re going in slow motion.”
“Sloths,” Diana and I said simultaneously.
“That’s them. Sloths. He moved like that. Not lazy, but not scurrying around, either. Deliberate like. He’d get to where he was going and he’d get the job done, but not with any hurry.”
Her face, so naturally disposed to smiling, fell back into the folds of sorrow.
“That’s what was so confusing, even before the deputies got here. When I was trying to figure out what happened.”
She didn’t appear to notice that I hadn’t followed her segue from Keefer Dobey moving at sloth speed and her being confused about his death.
Perhaps because she needed more in this moment to say the thoughts in her head than to have them understood.
“There was blood. A lot of blood. Seemed to come from his head. Some of it was there, on the corner of the table by the kitchen, where he ate most times and did a lot of other things, too, because of the windows. Brings in the light. Guess my mind went to maybe he’d fallen, hit his head. You know, tripped over Suzie Q.” She frowned fiercely. “But it doesn’t figure. I’ve never known him to do such a thing. Because he moved slow, deliberate, like I said. Not like me. I’m forever turning around and finding Suzie Q or another creature behind me and nearly sending myself ass over teakettle.
“So I guess I was thinking of me. Real sure-footed — both of them, to tell the truth, Keefe and Suzie Q — but it could happen. Fact it hadn’t before didn’t mean it couldn’t ever. Get your feet tangled and go down, hit his head, you know, on the corner of the desk. That was certainly what came to my mind, even though that didn’t make sense because...”
She drifted away for a second, then jerked her head, apparently returning her mind to us.
“Course that was before the deputies said it looked like he’d been shot in the back of his head. Three times, I heard the medical guy tell that deputy named Shelton. Asked me all sorts of questions about what weapons Keefe had, like I kept an inventory of his belongings. And what weapons are around the place — might as well ask me how many sheets and such are around. Inventory’s Wendy’s area.”
Wendy.
The same Wendy that Mike mentioned as the current owner? The county’s billionaire?
