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And explained my earlier twinge.
The McCrackens’ home was what Mike’s house should look like.
Not the apartment in Evanston just north of Chicago he’d had since his first days playing for the Chicago Bears and that remained his base there now — a one-bedroom in a traditional brick building. Pleasant, small, meeting his basic needs.
But the house on the ranch he’d bought as his rooting here in his home county. Didn’t take much imagination or psychological training to see it was his way of getting an approximation of the family ranch his father sold from financial necessity when Mike was younger.
Heck, Mike had nearly said the same himself.
Cottonwood County likely would have continued to claim him as their local hero no matter what, but his buying a tidy place, meant he also claimed them and that meant a lot — to him and them.
Even when he’d worked at KWMT-TV as sports anchor, he hadn’t had the time or ambition to devote to ranching. Good thing, I suppose, or he wouldn’t have had the spare time and energy to push all of us into this murder-solving business. It had required considerable energy at the beginning to push me in this direction.
From the time he bought the ranch, he’d leased out most of his land, as the McCrackens did. Unlike them, he left the big house largely unfurnished and unlived-in.
It had made my heart ache for him when I first saw it. It still did.
I was making my life, my future with Tom. That didn’t mean I didn’t still love Mike. What I hoped for him was a home like the McCrackens’. Warm and lived in, with a dog and kids and a few horses. And a smart woman looking out for his best interests.
That thought brought me back to why I’d driven to the McCracken place.
Without appearing to, Serena spiked my suspicion’s biggest gun — that Sam and Keefer were rivals — and weakened others.
Oh, she hadn’t removed my suspicions. They definitely remained. But each had to logically overcome the obstacle she’d placed in front of it.
And where better to find information to achieve that than at Elk Rock Ranch?
CHAPTER TWELVE
I called Diana and arranged to meet her at Elk Rock Ranch.
The station could always use more footage for tonight’s newscasts.
The McCrackens lived east of Sherman, the ranch was southwest of it. Returning to Sherman might have been quicker, would have been more familiar, but it was a day with a blue sky overhead that felt like it pulled your heart up by a string.
Zigzagging my way south and west, I pushed the cover back from the sunroof to get the most of that blue sky... without considering opening it. Wyoming. March. Not crazy.
Only one stretch of road had me questioning my sanity, so it was a routine drive.
The NewsMobile sat by the entrance to the ranch.
The sight of it simultaneously reminded me to luxuriate more in my SUV and to wonder at Diana’s reluctance to replace it.
****
“Three and a half times as many head of livestock were killed by unknown predators than were killed by wolves,” Randall Kenyon proclaimed.
Immediately, I identified him and his daughter, Robin, from photos I’d looked up last night before going to sleep.
They hadn’t spotted us, though.
We’d been forced to park on the ranch’s main entry road because of the behemoth pickup that must be the Kenyons’ rental parked across the entrance to the offshoot we’d have otherwise taken.
How did I know it was the Kenyons’ rental? Besides being glossy and tricked out, it hadn’t been here when we came yesterday. Pretty good clue.
Robin sat on a bench by the corral fence next to the barn with Brenda sitting on the other end. Wendy stood past her and Randall beside his daughter.
Randall and Wendy were zeroed in on each other and the two on the bench didn’t have a good angle to see us approaching, especially with the coverage of that pickup.
