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“What our viewers want to know are your thoughts about Keefer Dobey,” I said.
“Suffice it to say, he’s gone to a better place,” Wendy said.
Diana murmured what could be taken for agreement. I didn’t.
I do not understand that sentiment when someone’s been shot in the back of the head. Like the shooter should be thanked for sending the victim to a better place?
And even if it is better, isn’t there a way to get to that better place that doesn’t involve bullets in the brain?
I have never argued that point with someone I’m interviewing. It goes against all sorts of journalist guidelines, starting with not wanting to send the interviewee into catatonic silence — whether from stunned recognition of my logic or fury that my comments might edge toward irreverence.
But I think it. Often. And stick to my stance that shot in the head is not a good ticket to any place.
Hoping Diana’s murmur and my not saying what I was thinking was enough to soften Wendy, I pretended she hadn’t previously objected.
“Tell us what he was like.”
Neither of them looked at me. Neither answered, either.
I thought Wendy sent Brenda a keep-still look, but the angle was wrong for me to be sure.
Diana had kept her camera running throughout, but without making a big deal of it. I doubted either of the ranch residents was aware she was recording.
We already had enough footage of Brenda to offer the human-reaction angle that would be added to Nala’s hard news account of Shelton and the sheriff’s department barely acknowledging they’d been to Elk Rock Ranch today, much less that someone had died, and not a hint of the bullets in the back of the head. But we’d gathered hardly anything from an investigation standpoint.
“Give our viewers a sense of the man,” I suggested, deliberately using the cliché for its familiarity to put them more at ease.
“Can’t imagine there are many of your viewers who didn’t know the original.”
It wasn’t clear to me if Wendy Barlow was saying our viewership was narrow or Keefe’s acquaintances were widespread. Possibly some of each.
“Still, they want to be reminded why he was special,” I persisted. “And who better to share that than the people who knew him best. He worked here year-round, right? With you both?”
“He and Brenda are both year-round employees,” Wendy said.
She didn’t say my employees, but I think we all got the drift. Brenda certainly did from her sour expression.
“I understand he’d lived here most his life?” I said neutrally.
Brenda spoke up, clearly not willing to have Wendy take control. “Yeah. Came as a little boy when his mom was hired on as cook and all. They came from back east.”
“She worked here year-round? I’d understood most dude ranch employees are summer hires.”
“Most. But Ulla — Keefe’s mother — kept house for Chester, too. That’s Chester Barlow, who brought the dude ranch back to what it started as.”
“It didn’t start as a dude ranch.” Wendy contradicted. “Started as a cattle operation. Went the dude ranch route back in the 1920s. Then my family bought it for a private retreat.”
Brenda’s mouth twisted at being corrected, but she didn’t say anything. I was just happy that correcting the history lured more words from Wendy.
“When Uncle Chester came here to live, the family had stopped coming long before. He remembered it from his childhood, though. He decided to return it to a dude ranch.”
“And he brought Ulla in,” Brenda said, grabbing back the conversational reins. “She did housekeeping and cooking for him during the offseason, like she’d done for his family, plus helped with other things around the place, too. But during the season, she cooked for the guests. There’s a slew of them come summer and they work up quite the appetite with being outside all day, not to mention the summer staff. More than enough to do feeding all those mouths — even with kitchen help.
“When the guests left, it was like we kind of were a family. She’d do big meals for the holidays — Thanksgiving and Christmas and Easter — and it would be Chester and her, and the three of us — Keefe, Wendy, and me — and sometimes friends from town or around the county.” She smiled. “She was so used to cooking for the guests, if she tried to cook for just us, we’d have the leftovers frozen for months. So Chester would invite a big group. She worked real hard, right up to the end.”
I turned to Wendy Barlow. “You were around when you uncle turned it back into a dude ranch?”
Brenda answered. “She came later. A lot later.” Clearly she held that as some sort of advantage over the other woman.
