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The smile faded when she transferred her attention to me. “What?”
“Something Brenda said. Well, she’s said a lot, but there’s something tugging at the back of my mind.”
Diana tipped her head. “About Randall trying to buy the place?”
“Mmm.” I figured that sounded more encouraging than I have no idea. But whatever it was in my memory had enough muscle behind it to keep tugging.
Trying to help, Diana said, “Wendy kept saying she’d told him no.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“And it was his problem — and Brenda’s — if they couldn’t understand the word No.”
“Uh-huh. But that’s Wendy talking. I’m almost certain it was something Brenda said.” Almost.
“Okay. Brenda said the bit about Randall and Robin leaving at four-thirty. Then—”
“No—”
“Hold on, let me keep going. Then about whether he could have come back in that truck. How Wendy wouldn’t have heard him no matter what, and how he’d have made it so Brenda didn’t hear him if he was smart.”
“No. Not that.”
“Let me think. She went back to when Randall was there. Something about him acting like he owned the place and Wendy—”
“Wait. That’s it...” But it wasn’t quite right. “Maybe that’s it.” I uncurled my legs. “That is it. Except it was today. To Tom and me. That Randall came sweeping in and — No. Not sweeping in. She said he was sweeping out.”
“Out of where?” Diana asked.
“Exactly.”
She frowned. “I suppose that makes sense to you, but she might have just misspoken.”
“She definitely said out, sweeping out. That’s why it kept tugging at me. She said he acted like he already owned the place. She could have meant it as hyperbole or something specific. And then she said he swept out. So your question Out of where? is the key. But you could be right that she misspoke. We’ll just have to ask her and — What are you doing?”
“We’re going back up to the ranch, aren’t we? I’m calling my kids to take something out of the freezer and defrost it, because I won’t be home in time to do that myself.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Brenda looked like she’d aged a decade. I wouldn’t have thought that possible with all the wrinkles, but it was the spaces between the wrinkles. The downturn of her mouth, the pinch of her eyebrows, the confusion in her eyes.
“Did you hear what’s happened?” she demanded before we were all the way out of my SUV.
I was grateful for its four-wheel drive as we’d found snow as we climbed. More than grateful that we weren’t trying to get to Cooke City and beyond grateful Diana wasn’t driving the NewsMobile.
From the lightning look we exchanged, both Diana and I thought she might mean Wendy being taken in for questioning by the sheriff’s department. But I didn’t want to put words in her mouth.
“What’s happened?”
“They took Wendy. Asked her a bunch of questions here, then took her. They’re crazy. They’ve got it all wrong. They asked me a lot of questions again, too. What they’re thinking — that is just wrong. That’s not Keefer. Hell, that’s not Wendy, either. They got it wrong. And I told them so. I said, right to his face, You got it wrong, Wayne Shelton.”
Tempted as I was to hear more about how she’d told Shelton he got it wrong and how he’d reacted, I moved on.
“Brenda, can you list exactly who’s been in Keefer’s cabin since you found him?”
“Exactly? With all the people coming and going, going and coming? It’s like the end of the week when one set of guests leaves and another set arrives, only this is worse because it’s every day and no tellin’ when somebody’ll turn up.” Belatedly, she added, “And what does that have to do with them taking Wendy?”
I felt safe ignoring that last part. “You talked about Randall Kenyon being here and acting like he already owned the ranch.”
