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“Did you have any issue with Keefer or—?”
“Keefer Dobey was the hero. He took care of Robin.”
Okay, but he could still hold Keefe accountable for the accident in the first place. Especially if the staccato delivery of those sentiments about Keefe as a hero translated to resentment, anger, or something else negative.
“Did you consider suing?”
“Suing? Hell, no. Gave the guy that DNA test, didn’t I? Or Robin did.”
“Why?”
“What do you mean, why? Because he wanted to take one. As for me, I wanted to buy the place. Still want to buy it, even with Keefe gone. Though I really wish — No use wishing. No Keefer Dobey. That means the loss of a major asset—”
Not the most sentimental way to view a man, especially a murdered man.
“—but I still want Elk Rock Ranch.”
“Why?” He did not strike me as someone with youthful cowboy dreams.
“Isn’t it obvious? Well maybe it isn’t to you.” We’d been dissed and dismissed. “For starters, I’d get every friend, neighbor, colleague, and acquaintance back home to send their kids here. And that’s without taking it to the next level with investors and professional management. We could make a fortune. And help those kids,” he added belatedly.
He had not told that to Wendy or Brenda. He’d have been met with pitchforks if not shotguns.
“What makes you think that could work?”
“Robin. She came back from that place a completely changed person. It was like I sent off a spoiled six-year-old with a platinum credit card and no judgment and got back an adult who could look beyond herself. It was miraculous. Of course I want to buy the place.”
“Not such a miracle for Keefe,” I said slowly.
“What does that mean?”
I didn’t back down from his belligerence, but didn’t escalate, either.
“You showed up at the ranch, wanting to buy the place and he was dead that night. Unless that wasn’t your first day in Cottonwood County.”
An impatient shoulder hitch indicated it was, but it didn’t matter — to him.
Half my mind had already taken another tack.
Considering the emotions from Brenda and Wendy — and Keefer, maybe? — it might have made more sense the other way around, that Randall showed up wanting to buy Elk Rock Ranch and he was dead a short time later.
Shot by Keefe? That might be a stretch from what we’d heard of him, though he clearly was protective of the place. And by that, I don’t mean just the acreage of the ranch, but the wildness around it, its unique nature.
Maybe you feel that way about wherever you grow up if you really connected with the surroundings. I know I felt something chest-expanding when I saw the open fields and rich soil of Illinois. I’d heard others say it of swamps, of coasts, of mountains. Some visceral connection between human and non-human. Maybe that’s why they said a baby had to eat a peck of dirt — not only to up the immune system, but to seal that bond with the earth they came from.
So, I could stretch my impression of Keefer Dobey to switch the outcome and include his shooting someone three times in the head to protect what he loved. Barely.
As for Brenda and Wendy?
No stretch required.
But that was all theoretical with Randall Kenyon sitting in front of me, very much alive.
“Coincidences happen,” he said.
“Homicide detectives often say there’s no such thing as coincidence.”
“Bull.”
