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“...and we know all that from the amazing job Jennifer Lawton did with enhancing it.”
“It you damaged the original—”
“It was photos of the copy Keefe made. The original’s lurking somewhere in your boxes. If something happens to it while it waits for your priorities, that’s not on us.”
“I want those enhanced images.”
“I’ll send you Jennifer’s contact info so you can thank her appropriately while asking her for that favor.”
She breathed out through her nose. “I have to talk to someone up front. You can stay here as long as you want,” she said to the other two women.
“She’s thrilled,” Gee said once Clara was gone.
“She should be. Jennifer did amazing work. And Keefe found it amid all those boxes. She should be grateful.”
“She is,” Gee said. “In her way. But you didn’t come here for that.”
“No. I saw you were here and... I’m trying to sort out if there were long-standing jealousies or — Well, we know there were between Brenda and Wendy. Not only from when they were younger over at least one specific guy, but tension over Chester, too. And I wondered if there was something with Keefe...”
Gee turned to the older woman, putting the ball firmly in her court.
Mrs. P didn’t hit it back.
I tried again. “I mean, two women and a man. Especially when they were young — not that I’m saying people past their first flush of youth can’t be passionate—” Only when the words were out did I realize they could be applied to these women. I’d meant Tom and me. But come to think of it...
I backtracked to pick up my thread.
“So maybe the triangle still jabbed with its three sharp points or maybe time smoothed out aspects of it, but resentment remained.”
This time Mrs. P accepted the opening to speak. “An alternative explanation could be that such feelings never existed or dissipated with the recognition, whether conscious or not, of the futility of them.”
When she stopped — after a much shorter statement than her usual — I said neutrally, “Futility of the feelings...”
“You referred to a triangle, Elizabeth, with three sharp points and contemplated the possibility that time smoothed them. However, that is based on there having been three points at the start. It is difficult to have a triangle with two points, while the third...”
She looked at me steadily, waiting for the student to reach the correct conclusion on her own.
“Was never a point.” Making Randall’s fake note even more inept. I thought about Scott Hoole saying Keefe substituted wildlife and nature for human relationships. “Keefe wasn’t gay...”
“No, he was not. It is likely that he could be considered as qualifying as what is now termed asexual. Scholars are only now studying it, with varying stances on whether it is a sexual orientation, as well as what percentage of the population to which that term applies, whether self-identified or otherwise. In addition, there is research and writings viewing a spectrum under that umbrella. Such interest in clarity is, perhaps, new, while it is highly unlikely this variation in human sexuality is new.”
Figured she’d talk of this with ease. It was educational.
“You believe Keefer Dobey was asexual.” She ever so slightly tipped her head. “Okay, you don’t like believe. You—” She would like conjecture even less. “—have formed the hypothesis that he was asexual.”
“My observations, limited and uneducated in this matter, do not rise to the level of a hypothesis.”
“But, if he were asexual, how would that lead to his murder?” I saw her objection brewing and spoke quickly. “Or contribute to the complex interactions that might have led to his murder?”
She shook her head. I had not headed off her objection. “I would suggest that you consider the contrary. That if he was not one of those three sharp points that you described as forming a triangle that it is another shape or another cause you are looking for.”
I could just barely stretch to believing that Keefe being asexual might have been a factor back when Wendy and Brenda were younger and wrangled over men. Each could have misread the situation and suspected his lack of interest stemmed from his being interested in the other.
But now? After decades of knowing the man?
I’d hoped for more clarity from this conversation, not fewer motives.
Which was interesting, because wasn’t I waiting for Randall Kenyon to be charged?
