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“Yes. Basically an assistant — secretary, according to T.Y. Then I stopped for a while because of the ranch and the boys and before we knew about Brian’s health.” That was her husband, who’d had a degenerative disease before his death a year and a half ago. “When I knew I had to go back to work because we needed the income and insurance so desperately, T.Y. and Nina had retired. Tom hired me on the spot, gave me a raise and a free hand. I’ll never stop being grateful — to both of them, in different ways.”
“They do seem quite different. Look, I know it might feel awkward, my asking questions—” Though considering she’d been among the most vocal urging me toward Tom...
“I understand. You don’t know T.Y. at all and I know Tom holds things in.” She met my eyes for an extra beat. “Holds hurts in.”
Then she stalled.
Good questioning techniques don’t help only with news stories and murder investigations, so I gave her breathing room, while keeping us focused on the topic.
“You call him T.Y., but I’ve only heard Nina call him Thomas.”
“Most people do — call him Thomas, I mean. He was Thomas, Tom was Tom. Since his parents left, Tom gets Thomas used a lot more with business, legal dealings—” An eye flicker reminded us both that one dealing had been charges by the former sheriff against Thomas David Burrell. “—and such, but to most people he’s still Tom.
“I started calling Thomas T.Y. when I got to know him and realized...” I saw her shoulders drop the instant she decided to tell me. “He liked T.Y. because it distinguished him from his own father as well as Thomas David — no, that’s not exactly right. It wasn’t really Tom. It was Nina’s father, that’s where the David comes from.
“With his own father and his father-in-law, T.Y. couldn’t do anything right. If it turned out good, it would have turned out better if only he’d listened to them.” She clicked her tongue. “Strong men who’d have been even stronger if they’d been a little softer... if that makes sense.”
“It does.”
“And in some ways, T.Y. was no better,” she said tartly. “He took out his problems with the previous generation on his son, like Tom was responsible for his grandfathers — and I told him that.”
“You did?” No questioning technique behind that, I blurted it.
“I did. Not that it did any good. And I said he was hurting his wife at the same time.” She half grinned. “I was pregnant and the hormones were running rampant.”
“What did he say?”
“Not a thing. His ears got real red and I thought he might erupt, but he just got that real calm, controlled, impenetrable way Tom does, too, and he walked out that door. Miracle he didn’t fire me on the spot.”
No, a Burrell wouldn’t fire a pregnant woman for speaking her mind. But he would walk away, aiming to regain the mastery over himself he required. Maybe there were more similarities between son and father than their facial structure.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
I’d thought that first day that the Elk Rock Ranch cabins and barn and other buildings and fences formed a stage with no actors on it.
As we pulled in today, after I picked up Diana from where she’d parked the NewsMobile, the play appeared to be in progress. Though which act was impossible to tell.
Wendy moved back and forth, back and forth inside the two open doors to the tack room.
From just outside, Randall, again in a version of Western wear, mirrored Wendy’s movements, like a predator trying to adopt its prey’s coloring.
A truck I’d seen before was parked off the entry road near the front of the barn. I detoured to look in the front passenger window as Diana and I walked past. Books were on the back seat, a file box in the footwell. One glance at the book titles and I said to her, “Sam McCracken.”
He was not in sight — off stage for now, but Serena sat on the steps of the unoccupied middle cabin, her head down as if contemplating her hands clasped between her knees. Brenda was not around.
That left Robin, leaning against the fence opposite the tack room, watching her father, looking torn between relief and unhappiness.
“Go away,” Randall shouted at us. “We’re talking business.”
“No, we’re not,” Wendy said emphatically.
Leaving them to sort that out, I tipped my head toward Robin and Diana and I went to her.
“You must be feeling a lot better than yesterday,” I said.
“Yeah.”
“Why aren’t you and your dad out celebrating his release?”
