Virgil said quickly, “I’m a police officer, with the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. I’m investigating the death of Ag O’Leary.”
Still tentative, she asked, “You have identification?”
“Sure.” He took his ID out of his jacket and handed it to her.
There was still a light on above the garage, and she stepped back and scanned it, frowned, said, “Okay,” and, “How did you find me?”
“I got your name from the O’Learys, and your address from the Department of Motor Vehicles,” Virgil said.
More confident now: “Okay. What can I do for you?”
They went up to her apartment, and she offered Virgil a glass of wine, which he declined; she poured one for herself and sat in an easy chair, while Virgil perched on a couch. “This is a confidential conversation. I’d ask that you not speak to anyone about it, unless you feel that you need to talk to an attorney.”
“Why would I need to do that?”
“I don’t know. I couldn’t object to your talking to an attorney, that’s all. I don’t suspect you of doing anything wrong. But I have some sensitive questions.”
She gazed at him for a moment-she was a pretty young woman with shoulder-length brown hair and brown eyes; her dress was a muted green chosen to fit well with her modest gold necklace. She’d kicked off her high heels when she sat down. “Sensitive questions. . about Ag?”
“About Ag’s relationship with her husband.”
“Interesting,” she said. “Will this conversation be made public?”
“Only as part of a court hearing, and if we get as far as that, there’d be more important issues than your privacy.”
She nodded and said, “So ask a question.”
“When you went to the Twin Cities with Ag, did she miscarry? Or did she have an abortion?”
She flinched at the word, and her eyes went flat, and Virgil had the answer.
She saw him react and realized that she’d given it away, so she told the truth. “We went to Planned Parenthood in St. Paul,” Deren said. “We had an appointment, and the pregnancy was terminated. Her parents don’t know that. They’re all good Catholics.”
“Does Dick Murphy know that?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t seen him since the day we went to the clinic. I did see Ag quite a bit, and she hadn’t told him three days. . I think it was three days. . before she died. We’d put that miscarriage story out there, and her parents. . whether she told him the truth or not, I don’t know.”
“Had she asked him for a divorce?”
“No. We don’t ask for divorces anymore, Officer Flowers. We simply tell them. She’d told him.”
“I knew that. . about the telling,” Virgil said. “I’ve been told myself.”
“Well, there you go,” Deren said. She smiled for the first time.
“The reason I asked about it,” Virgil said, “was that Dick was apparently visiting her at her parents’ house.”
“He did. Ag was going through the fiction that they were separated, and they might get back together. That was so she could spare her parents’ feelings-like I said, they’re all Catholic over there-until she could get set up with an apartment in the Cities, and buy some furniture and so on. We were going to start doing that this week. Ag planned to work for a year, while she waited to see what happened with her med school applications. She was planning to go back to school.”
“Did Dick ever get physical with her?”
“Yes. He raped her, but she wouldn’t call it that. He knew better than to hit her. He’d twist her and squeeze her. . he had a way of squeezing her that was agonizing, but didn’t show much of a sign of anything. He’d put his arms around her from the back, with his knuckles turned into her breast bone, and he’d squeeze her really hard. She told me she thought she was dying when he did that.”
“She didn’t tell anybody else about it?”
“No. For one thing, it didn’t leave a mark, like I said, so it’d be hard to prove,” Deren said. “But what really worried her was, one of her brothers, or a bunch of her brothers, would go pound on Dick. An assault conviction doesn’t help your med school application, and the whole bunch of them plan to be doctors.”
“So she. .”
“She had it all planned out. She was in her parents’ house, and wouldn’t be alone with him. And then, she was going to disappear,” Deren said. “Go up to the Cities. Her family would know where she was, but Dick wouldn’t. She’d only come down here for the divorce proceedings, which would be fast.”
Virgil mulled that over for a minute, until she asked, “What’s this about? Dick wasn’t involved in her death. . I mean, I thought everybody knew what happened.”
“We’re pretty sure we know who pulled the trigger,” Virgil said. “It was Jim Sharp. Murphy and Sharp were shooting pool the night before the night Ag was murdered. Jim didn’t have a pistol, and was so broke that the morning of the shooting he spent the last of his money, the last of Becky Welsh’s money and the last of Tom McCall’s, on a loaf of bread and some peanut butter. That night, he had a gun and a thousand dollars.”
She gazed at him for a moment, then whispered, “You think Dick paid to have Ag murdered?”
“That’s the aspect that I’m investigating,” Virgil said. “If she aborted his baby-”
“Oh, bull,” she said. “Dick probably didn’t want the baby any more than she did. Dick wants stuff-cars and cabins and boats, and he’d like to go to Vegas at Christmas. To get that, he needed to get at her trust fund. If you don’t get him, he’ll have it, too.”
“I’m not sure what the status of that is,” Virgil said.
Deren shook her head. “Ag didn’t have a will. She was a young woman, she was in perfect health. Why would she have a will? What could go wrong? So. . he gets it.”
“Why did she ever marry him?”
“Well. . he’s good-looking. He’s athletic. He’s somewhat intelligent, and he pursued her. And maybe. . Ag was a little socially awkward. She wasn’t one of the social kids in high school, or college, either one. You know, a firstborn, with all the firstborn traits: bossy, pushy, privileged,” Deren said. “And then, Dick wasn’t an O’Leary. They are very good people, to a fault. Ag felt like she was on a railroad train to medical school. Had to be the hardest worker in high school to get the grades to get the best slots in college. Had to be the hardest worker in college to get the grades to get into medical school. Dick was like, ‘Hey, chill out. Have a couple beers. Let’s get in the car and run down to Vegas and roll the dice and go to the shows and get drunk and make love. . ’ So, they wound up getting married, and after a while, guess what?”
“What?”
She smiled ruefully. “She found out she was an O’Leary.”
“He couldn’t be too bright if he paid Jimmy Sharp to kill her,” Virgil said.
“Unless he planned to kill Jimmy Sharp afterward,” she said. When Virgil’s eyes went up, she hastily added, “I don’t know anything. I’m just saying. . you know. And he could do it. And who’d ever see that connection?”
Virgil asked, “What do you do, Miz Deren?”
“I’m a bookkeeper, right now. I’m almost finished with my degree in accounting. I’m going to be a CPA.”
“Can you keep this conversation quiet?” Virgil asked.
“I can. But you have to get him. Dick, I mean.”
“We’ll see. Right now, this is mostly conjecture.”
“When you said he was playing pool with Jim Sharp the day before? That’s when it added up for me. He did it. Paid Jim Sharp.”
Her opinion about that was interesting, but it’d be useless in court, Virgil thought, as he ambled back toward town. He looked in the doorway at Roseanne’s, saw that Morton was still there, leaning against a wall, his pool cue grounded while two other guys worked through a game.
Virgil backed out, walked down to the motel, said hello to a few people, then went to his room, changed into dark slacks, a sport coat, and a collared shirt with a necktie. He saw Jenkins as he was walking toward the door, and Jenkins said, “Don’t tell me you’ve got a date.”
“I’m talking to a guy. I was watching him a little, a couple hours ago, in a beer joint, but he wasn’t looking at
