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This time, I asked Brenda, “And did you grow up here, too, with Keefer?”
“She was just a neighbor,” Wendy Barlow said.
It wasn’t something I could ever report, not without multiple sources, but I was satisfied that neither woman would be happy letting the other hold an advantage.
“My folks owned the next place over.” Brenda tipped her head to the east. They were good friends with Chester. He stayed with them when he first came here — before I was born. And they helped him upgrade the place. My dad rebuilt the barn, which—”
“Probably why it leaks,” Wendy muttered.
“—had fallen to rack and ruin.” Brenda either hadn’t heard Wendy or was very good at pretending she hadn’t. “Worked here a lot of winters, fixing up buildings. Then adding new cabins and such.”
She tipped her head toward the cabin surrounded by crime scene tape, then to the one in the middle, and the one she’d come out of.
“When my folks were killed in a crash, I was in high school, working here the summer as a waitress — youngest one,” she said with pride. “Then or since. Chester took me in, said I’d never want for a job or a roof over my head and I never have.”
That had an undertone of challenge to it. Had Wendy threatened her continued position here?
Definite undercurrents between these women.
How did Keefer Dobey fit into this apparent rivalry? Or did he?
A “mature” love triangle? A throuple gone wrong? If a romance — of however many angles — existed, I’d discover signposts to it by making a trip to the Sherman Supermarket and listening to head checker Penny Czylinski. Yes, obscure, misleading, frustrating signposts like the ones the Scarecrow gave in the Wizard of Oz by pointing in opposite directions simultaneously, but signposts nonetheless.
“But Keefe was the one who’d been here the longest of anybody. He loved this place deeper than anybody, too,” Brenda added. “He was never happier than when he’d been out all day and sometimes all night, just on his own with Suzie Q now or any of his earlier dogs. Such peace in the man.” Her voice cracked.
Wendy shed no tears, but the delicate skin around her eyes went red.
“And all the guests loved Keefe,” Brenda added.
Even with red eyes, Wendy produced a snort. “Unless they were in a hurry. Besides, a lot more guests like the cute college girls and the buff college boys than old farts like Keefe.”
“Or us? Is that what you’re saying? Because he was younger than either of us. So—”
“Doesn’t matter to guests how old we are as long as we do the job.”
Brenda jumped on that. “And Keefe always did his job.”
Wendy mouthed Sloooow-leeeee.
The other woman pretended not to notice. “And you certainly can’t argue against me saying the Kenyons think real highly of him.”
“So they say.”
Before this devolved further, I inserted, “Who are the Kenyons?”
“Robin Kenyon and her father, Randall,” Wendy said.
If she hoped a short, direct answer would end the topic, Brenda had other ideas. “Rich folks from back east. He’s some big-shot businessman. Robin was a guest here last summer. Came by herself, which not a lot do. And her not much older than most of our staffers, which isn’t a group — demographic, as they call it — we get much of. She was a problem from the start. Real snippy and—”
“That is not on the record,” Wendy snapped, a hand slicing toward Diana’s camera. “Be quiet, Brenda. We don’t talk about guests.”
“Why not? It all turned out fine — better than fine with how grateful they’ve been. Thanks to Keefe.” She focused on us. “She got hurt up on the trail. Keefe stayed with her while I brought the other guests back and to get help — couldn’t use phones up there. And when we got her down and packed off to the hospital, it was like she was a different person. Only found out after that her mother had died the year before. Never said anything. Not until her time with Keefe. So, all thanks to Keefe, like I said. Her father knows it, too. That’s why he came here now. Him and Robin, with all that tension between them, trying to—”
“Be quiet.” The vehemence of this snap stopped Brenda. Possibly trying to smooth it over, Wendy added, “They don’t want to hear all these side-issues.”
“That’s okay. It’s interesting and—”
She cut me off, too.
