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I tipped my head, then nodded slowly. “Maybe a particular kind of jealous.”
“You might have something there, Jennifer,” Mike said. “From your accounts, Elizabeth, he was more crediting the place than the man. And the place is something he could buy — try to buy.”
“That’s good. Both of you. You’re right. If he credited the place, he could try to buy it, control it, reshape it. Then it would be like he was the one who helped his daughter, who would help her even more going forward than she’d been helped initially, because he improved everything. He doesn’t get that he’d have to break each of those kids’ bones and leave them for a few hours in the rough country—”
“With a backwoods counselor who’s now dead.” Mike pointed out.
“—to have a hope of replicating his daughter’s transformation.”
“Sounds like he thinks he can buy anything. But he couldn’t buy Keefe,” Diana said.
I turned to her.
“You’re staring, Elizabeth,” she said.
“I wonder if he tried.”
Maybe Keefe’s excitement wasn’t about the DNA test. Maybe that was a blind and he was going to get a chunk of Randall’s money.” It didn’t make Mike happy to express that possibility.
“No. He thought he’d get rich because he thought he’d be a celebrity as the descendant of Oscar Virtanen,” Jennifer argued.
“How would he make money off that? Being confirmed as a descendant of Butch or Sundance, maybe. But Oscar Virtanen? How many people not from around here even know about him.”
They all looked at me.
“Not many.” I spoke for all of non-Cottonwood County. I probably could have gone out on a limb and said None.
“Or how’d he know that he’d find the treasure,” Jennifer said. “One he’d have to divide with Sam McCracken.”
“If there is a treasure,” I said.
“Keefe believed there was one and that’s what counts.” Diana had a point. And she added to it. “What would Randall Kenyon buying Keefe even consist of?”
“For him to go away so Randall could be the complete hero.”
“To expect him to leave his lifelong home and—”
Mike interrupted Jennifer. “Oh, Keefe wasn’t from here originally.”
“Where was he from?” she asked.
“Somewhere back east, I think,” Mike said. “Or maybe the West Coast.”
In other words, the huge swath of the country that was not Wyoming.
As he went on, I realized I hadn’t covered that part of what Brenda told us, “He came here as a kid. Came with his mother when she was brought in as the ranch’s cook. Surprised me, too, because it seemed like he was such a part of the place that he’d been there forever. But he told me once that in order for them to stay year-round, he started learning maintenance really young. All the things the place needed during the season and off-season. Wendy and before her, her uncle, would leave for the winter, but Keefe and his mother stayed year-round. Keefe did most of the maintenance and built some of the new cabins. She kept working until the day she died.
“I have a memory of going to services for her as a kid. Dropping my jaw when I saw this big, strong man crying over his mama. Made an impression. Didn’t seem to be any question that he’d stay on there, working at Elk Rock, living in that cabin. Wasn’t until more recent that Wendy started to stay more of the year. Used to be gone all winter in Florida or Arizona, someplace like that. Now it’s just a couple months from what I hear.”
“More to do around the ranch? Harder to find more help?” Jennifer offered.
“Could be. Though everything I heard said they had no trouble hiring. Even with other places begging for workers, the dude ranches seem to do okay. Of course that’s the college kids during the season. Might be different off-season.”
I jumped back to something that had snagged my interest. “You said yesterday that her uncle left her the Elk Rock Ranch?”
“Yeah. He’d owned it for years. I don’t know more about it than that. Leona would.”
Oh, yes, she would.
