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“Penny always speaks highly of you,” she added.
Penny always spoke — that was certainly true. Whether she spoke highly of me, I withheld judgment.
“Won’t you come in?” Serena invited.
Okay, Penny spoke of me at least highly enough to get in the door.
“I hope to talk to your husband—”
“He’s not here. Come on in.”
I did.
A twinge of something gripped me, but I’ve done enough interviews to not let unspecified — or specified — twinges interfere.
Besides, I was otherwise occupied with taking in the surroundings.
From the entry hall, with a stairway off to the right that must lead to bedrooms upstairs and recreation downstairs, a small office was visible to the left. Past that, the back of the house opened to two stories. I was vaguely aware of the kitchen at the right side, a massive stone fireplace on the left.
In fact, this space reminded me of a house I’d looked at when I was looking to buy. Including a soaring wall of windows between the kitchen and fireplace. This house’s windows showed a spacious deck, then even more spacious vistas of buttes and broken lines of red-tinged earth, including a formation called the Red Sail, for the obvious reason.
Unfortunately, that other house also had a dead body in it at the time I looked at it, which dimmed its appeal considerably.
“You’re here about the death of the man from the dude ranch.”
As she gestured me to a seat on a leather couch that looked out the windows, Serena McCrackin didn’t ask, she told.
And reminded me that, while this house didn’t have a dead body in it — that I knew off — a dead body was the reason I was here.
“I am.”
She nodded slowly, taking her seat on a matching leather sofa at right angles to the loveseat so it faced the fireplace. “I only met him once — at the supermarket with Sam one day. He and Sam had an overlapping interest. But he seemed a nice man.” She paused. “Gentle in many ways, but I could imagine him being fierce in the protection of those he thought needed it.”
If she had any inkling her husband was a person of interest — to me and my cohorts, if not law enforcement — this was a really interesting approach. She’d practically painted a scenario requiring adding only a little imagination to envision Keefer Dobey and her husband becoming combative.
Clueless? I didn’t think so. Her gray eyes were too intelligent.
Throwing Sam under the bus? Again, I didn’t think so. Those gray eyes reflected a brain rolling something around, but it didn’t seem to be, Here, here’s my husband on a platter. Cart him off to jail as the prime suspect.
So, what was going on?
“That overlapping interest...?”
I dangled it, wanting to hear how she defined it.
She didn’t answer directly.
“Sam was so driven at work. I thought when we moved here he seemed to downshift. But it didn’t last.” She shook her head slightly, burrowing her fingers into Snowball’s fur. “Like after he got rested, he needed someplace to put his—”
I expected obsession.
“—passion.” Her fingers tightened. The dog turned to look at her. She eased up on her hold. She expelled a breath. “Outlaw treasure.”
My impression that she was neither unaware nor tossing her husband to the wolves of suspicion deepened.
Her frame of reference was Sam. All Sam. What was good for Sam. What wasn’t.
Outlaw treasure fell into that second category.
