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“I guess.” Gee was not impressed by celebrity.
“He lives here?”
“No. Over in Cooke City, now that he’s retired. I’ve got his number here somewhere. I’ll send it to you. Anyway, he’ll remember a lot more about all that ancient history, because he was working there at the ranch at the time.”
“Thank you.” I looked at Mrs. P. She did not meet my gaze as she got in the passenger side. “I do still have other questions—”
“Another time, maybe,” Gee said. “Time to make our rounds.”
I left. But not with my usual sense after encountering these two that all was right and orderly in the universe. I felt oddly jangly and unsettled and I didn’t know why.
****
I called Jennifer as I headed south out of O’Hara Hill, described the video of Keefe that Gee mentioned and asked Jennifer if she could track it down.
“Sure. Easy.”
“Without—”
“For Pete’s sake, Elizabeth, I know — without hacking.” She sounded sharper and more tired than usual.
“Yes, and without interfering with your work for the program. That comes first.”
“As if I don’t know—. Fine. Yes. Without interfering with the program. I’m not an idiot, you know.”
“I do know that.”
“Then please tell Mike. It’s like he suddenly decided he’s a hundred years old and I’m a baby. He’s not my father. He’s not anything to tell me who I should or shouldn’t see. It’s none of his business. I’ll see whoever I want to and I don’t care what Mike or anyone else says.”
“Understandable.” I said that after swallowing a whole bunch of words about heeding those older and more experienced.
I knew Jennifer’s parents hadn’t yet been to Evanston to visit her, so they hadn’t met this guy Mike didn’t like. So, who was anyone else...?
Ah.
“Have any of the guys been to see you in Evanston?” I asked, as if changing the subject with the reference to her long-time online pals.
“Just for a couple days.”
“That was nice of them.”
“No, it wasn’t. They were here for some job, consulting for a company downtown. They just came up to campus to pick my brain and take credit for it.”
Whoa. That didn’t sound like Jennifer at all.
Where did this come from?
Yup, I jumped immediately to this guy she was seeing being the origin. And that it was part of an effort to isolate her from her long-time friends, even family. Classic moves from the controlling boyfriend’s handbook.
Another one was to drop hint after hint that her friends and family didn’t trust her judgment. I wasn’t getting anywhere near something that would trigger that defense.
“You’d have seen right through that if they ever tried before. Did they?” I asked, as if it had just struck me.
“No,” she acknowledged, which told me she wasn’t totally under this guy’s influence — if that’s what was happening.
“Huh.” I bit my tongue to keep from saying more. Suggesting the boyfriend was defensive or jealous or anything else would put her back up.
She needed to consider those things herself.
