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“By helping his daughter when she was hurt? Hard to say how much Keefe had to do with her transformation, but he sure as heck was there and just for that, her father should be down-on-his-knees grateful.” Mike’s vehemence also spoke of his regard for Keefe.
“That’s what he’s saying,” Jennifer pointed out. “Over and over — how grateful he is. And how that’s what made him want to buy the place.”
“That and running the financials,” Diana said dryly.
Was there something in the fact that the two of us who’d met him in person didn’t trust Randall Kenyon?
“He could be grateful for Keefe’s role in Robin’s epiphany and still feel harmed by him,” I persisted. “Jealous that Keefe was, at least partially, the instrument of that. Resentful that she still seems — or seemed — to turn to him.”
“That would really suck if Keefe was killed by an egotistical father with his nose out of joint.”
Mike hadn’t yet reached the stage of grief when he realized logically that no one cause of death was going to suck less than another.
“He’s not a man accustomed to not being able to direct things the way he wants them to go,” I said.
“I wonder if that’s some of why his wife’s death hit so hard — and why it hit Robin so hard, too, because she does seem to be like him.”
“Good point, Diana. Robin is definitely his daughter, under her layer of recent kumbaya-ness. Of course there’s real pain and grief for each of them, but I think the other is part of it, too. Not only that his wife, her mother died, but that they haven’t been able to bend the grief to their wills. They have to live through it, like everybody else.”
“That’s the part that bugs them — like everybody else.”
I nodded at Jennifer’s words.
But would a sense of helplessness against his own feelings have been enough to make Randall Kenyon kill Keefer Dobey?
Plus, I didn’t see it applying that way to Robin.
“One more thing,” Jennifer said. “I found the video of Keefe. The one by the guest.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
She shared her screen so we could watch it together, with our faces thumbnailed down the side.
I wasn’t sure how it helped us, but it was fascinating. In a slo-mo sort of way.
Wendy had a point with her Sloooow-leeeee.
Also, I saw what Penny meant about spaces between Keefer and other people. There was a detachment about him. Not cold. Not superior. Simply... disconnected.
I also remembered Sam McCracken’s comment about Keefe letting woodland creatures come up to him.
Because Sam saw this video?
If he had, it wasn’t by accident.
It took even Jennifer and her crew an effort to find it. As a non-whiz, Sam would have had to really dig.
But what stuck in my head, even after we wrapped up and I got back to work recasting a story for the Ten, was a litany.
Etta Place disappeared. Laura Bullion disappeared. Pearl disappeared.
Yes, women did die or disappear, especially in that era.
Yes, the Pinkertons did not follow up on the women once the man they were connected to died. So maybe that bit of short-sighted sexism was a benefit.
That allowed the women to disappear.
Did it allow them — any of them — to go on to full lives.
