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“Wait a minute, let me get this straight. The outlaw Oscar Virtanen owned land in Cottonwood County. He robbed a bank in southern Wyoming — not his first stickup — and was shot in the process. He started north, presumably to meet up with his wife, Pearl, who was somewhere — we don’t know quite where — but possibly in the vicinity of Cottonwood County, which would make sense since they owned land here.”
I took a breath, she waited patiently. Possibly trying to model ideal behavior to me.
“The posse caught up with him, finding none of the proceeds of the robbery but — at least according to one secondary source — with evidence that he’d been digging. He then died of his wounds. His wife — who might or might not have been pregnant at the time — obtained a death certificate for him and then sold the property. Do I have that all right?”
“I believe so, with the caveat that the official record confirms only parts of it.”
Big surprise.
“And that property eventually became the Elk Rock Ranch, where Keefer Dobey lived most of his life, recently becoming fascinated with whether he might be descended from Oscar and Pearl Virtanen.”
No response.
That was not going to fly. “He must have asked you, Mrs. Parens.”
“He did ask me questions, however, as I’ve said, the official record—”
“Did that satisfy him?”
“No.” Her sadness softened me.
“What did he tell you, Mrs. Parens? If it helps to find his killer...”
Were rules on gossip more important?
I didn’t speak those words. We both understood them.
“As I stated, he largely asked me questions, while I could not supply the answers. He told me he had first explored the possibility of Harry Longabaugh and Etta Place or Ben Kilpatrick and Laura Bullion being his ancestors, however, he transferred his attention to Oscar and Pearl Virtanen. He expressed frustration with the dearth of information.”
“Did he say who else he’d talked to about this?”
“He told me what he’d learned from Ivy Short at the library and Clara Atwood at the museum. He also expressed frustration with the lack of interest in his endeavors shown by Brenda and Wendy, particularly when he learned of Pearl obtaining the death certificate and selling the property.”
“How did he learn that? Did you tell him?”
“I did not.”
But there’d be the faintest flicker of her eyes toward her office. “Russell Teague’s vacuum cleaner approach to historical information picked it up,” I concluded.
“Anything in those papers is the property of the Sherman Western Frontier Life Museum and use or dissemination of the information in them as well as the papers themselves is entirely the purview of the museum.”
If she’d found the material, she’d never have shared it with him, not without getting Clara’s okay. And if Clara okayed it, why not tell me? “He found the information himself.”
She looked unhappy.
“He wasn’t just delivering and returning boxes, he was dipping into them.”
Even more unhappy.
“I expressed myself quite firmly on the topic to Keefer. I told him if he did not cease that practice, I would inform Clara Atwood and his services would no longer be used. He appeared genuinely confused over why anyone would be upset about his looking at the materials. He said it would become accessible to the public in the due course of time, so why shouldn’t he see it now, especially if it assisted him in determining his lineage.”
“Did he mention Robin Kenyon or her father, Randall Kenyon?”
“That is the young woman who was injured at the end of last season?”
“Yes.”
“He did mention them, briefly. Primarily in expressing gratitude for their obtaining a DNA test for him to take to explore his lineage. That conversation occurred on his previous stop to return to the museum those boxes I had processed and to bring me ones not yet assessed. The last time we spoke, the day before he was found dead, I am sorry to say that we did not talk beyond the necessities. I thought at the time that he needed more time to absorb and adjust to what I had said previously.” Her eyebrows dropped in a microfrown. “In light of his death, of someone murdering him, I do now consider the possibility that he was being what one might term cagey.”
