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Serena and Snowball answered the door together again.
Instead of inviting me in, she left the dog inside — to his chagrin — snagged a jacket and pulled it on as she gestured me to go back down the stairs.
“Sam’s out in his office — what used to be the workshop. I’ll take you out there.”
Sam McCracken’s workshop/office was a steep-roofed shed beside the barn.
Serena opened the door then gestured for me to enter, but did not follow. “Sam, Elizabeth Margaret Danniher of KWMT-TV is here to see you.”
She closed the door behind me.
I barely noticed.
I don’t think Sam noticed at all.
My inattention stemmed from the sight before me.
I now understood Serena’s gesture when she’d touched on Sam’s book-ordering. The fruits of his clicking finger stretched from floor to ceiling and wall to wall around three-quarters of the shed. The fourth wall held a desk with five computer screens along its length, with Sam McCracken on a wheeled chair that moved from screen to screen a lot based on marks on the floor.
Clerestory windows brought natural light in without interrupting the book cases.
Sam’s inattention to his wife’s departure stemmed from the sight of me.
“What do you want?”
Not the most welcoming of greetings, but better than get the h— out of here.
“When I was here before you’d just gotten four horses for you and your family.”
He answered the implicit question with, “Riding the horses is nice, but not something you can do all day, every day.” His gaze went in the direction of the house though a wall of books — and what they represented — blocked his view. “At least I can’t. Tried running some cattle, but decided that wasn’t for me, either.”
“Looks like you have another—” I rejected the terms hobby, rabbit hole, craze, obsession. “—pastime now.”
He lifted one shoulder as his focus slid to the bulletin board behind the closest computer monitors. They held printouts, photos, replica wanted posters, maps — lots of maps. “This is interesting. Fascinating.”
Interesting, even fascinating, maybe. But his expression did not say fun.
When we’d met, I’d thought he wouldn’t be mistaken for a rancher despite being comfortable in the attire, because his skin didn’t reflect years outside in every weather. Now his face looked downright pale.
Of course, ranchers aren’t as tanned in March as in August, either, but this was more than winter limiting exposure to the sun. This was pallor born of choosing inside over outside, day after day after day.
He hadn’t invited me to sit, but I did anyway — on a stool that put me half a foot lower than his commander-of-the-kingdom desk chair.
It was my only choice. This was not a place set up for McCracken to entertain visitors.
“You’ve heard that Keefer Dobey was murdered?”
I was sure Serena would have relayed that even if he cocooned himself from other sources of news.
“Yeah.”
“He lived such a quiet life. Seemed the only thing that took him out into the wider world was his pursuit of Oscar Virtanen.”
He took a different approach to the topic.
Still staring at the bulletin board, he said, “Treasure hunting, for wont of a better name for it, has become trendy. You know anything about it?”
“I know about all the people who went after the treasure chest Forrest Fenn buried in the Rocky Mountains then wrote the poem with riddles to solve for finding it,” I said carefully.
