“You think she’d talk to me?”
Mackey said, “If you came onto her, like you came onto me-like you already knew about it, and like lying would get her in trouble, too. .. Yeah, she’d tell you about it. Things haven’t been good between her and Pat for quite a while.”
“Does she know about Marilyn Oaks?” Virgil asked.
“No. Pat told me about that. I think he might be lining her up as the next Mrs. Shepard.”
His affair with Jeanne Shepard, Mackey said, had begun right after golf season started, the second week of April. It had been going hot and heavy through May, but in the last couple of weeks Jeanne Shepard seemed to be cooling off. Then, he said, he found out that “she’d blabbed to her friend Bernice, who’s got the biggest mouth in Butternut Falls. No way she was going to keep the secret, and we got in an argument over that.”
Bernice, he said, had already outed one affair at the school, which had ended with resignations and divorces.
“Huh. Sounds like you’ve got a little rats’ nest over at the high school.”
“Nah. You know, it’s just pretty human,” Mackey said. “People getting to be middle-aged, and rearranging their lives. Pat and Jeanne have a ten-year-old daughter. Pat doesn’t care much for her, and I do, and we’d make a nice little family.”
“Well… might still happen,” Virgil said.
“I don’t think so, really,” Mackey said. “It all looks pretty bleak, with you figuring me out. I would never have made the call if it hadn’t seemed to be slipping away.”
Jeanne Shepard, Mackey said, was at home. Pat Shepard, he said, was out on the golf course, “probably on number three. He and his friends aren’t fast, they’ll be out there for another three hours.”
Virgil called Davenport, to tell him about the political break, but Davenport was out of touch. He called Ahlquist and said, “I need an honest prosecutor to come talk to a woman with me. Like right now.”
“You got a break?”
“Not on the bomber; something else. I need a prosecutor who can keep his mouth shut, and isn’t much interested in politics.”
“I’d have to think about that for a couple days,” Ahlquist said.
“C’mon, man-it’s something I don’t want to talk about yet. I could do it on my own, but it’d be better if I had a guy.”
“Let me talk to Theodore Wills. He’s the county attorney. Get back to you in five.”
More like ten. In the meantime, Virgil took a call from a blocked number.
“Lucas told me about the bomb. You okay?”
“I’m good,” Virgil said. “My boat is a smoking ruin.”
“But you’ve got insurance.”
“Yeah, with State Farm,” Virgil said. “I’m a little worried about that clause that says they won’t pay if there’s a war or civil insurrection.”
“Who’s your agent?”
“A woman named Mary Trail, down in Mankato,” Virgil said.
“I’ll give her a call. Tell her I’m worried about it.”
“I’m not sure that would be appropriate,” Virgil said, but he couldn’t keep the hope out of his voice.
“Sure it is. I’m just a friend making an inquiry for you, since you’re busy with this investigation.”
“Well…”
“Relax, Virgil,” said the governor of Minnesota. “It’s just fine. You take care of yourself, hear? I mean, goddamnit, you’re my thirdmost-favorite troublemaker.”
“ I got you a prosecutor, ” Ahlquist said, when he called back. “We’re all curious about what you’ve got going.”
“I’ll tell you this evening,” Virgil said. “What’s the guy’s name, and where do I find him?”
“Her name is Shirley Good Thunder, and she’s at the courthouse. Let me give you her number.”
Good Thunder was a sioux -a Dakota, for sticklers-a good-looking, dark-eyed woman about Virgil’s age, with long legs and a large briefcase. When she climbed into the truck, she asked, “Are you okay? I mean, after the bomb.”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” Virgil said. He was a little tired of the question; it wasn’t like he was bleeding from the ears. “Are you any relation to Larry Good Thunder, from Marshall? I played basketball with him.”
“Probably, somehow, like a great-uncle-fifth-cousin or something,” she said. “Quite a few Good Thunders running around.”
“Terrific ball player, but he didn’t shoot enough,” Virgil said. “He was too good not to put it up more often.”
“Tell me more about basketball,” she said. “I find it almost as fascinating as soil management.” But she said it with a smile.
“I’m happy to hear you’re interested in soil management, ’cause we’re out to dig up some dirt,” Virgil said.
The Shepards lived all the way across town, on a wide, well-treed peninsula that stuck out into the lake. On the way over, Virgil told her about the tip from the kid at the Holiday Inn, and about his conversation with Mackey. When he finished, she said, “All right. I’m now officially nervous.”
“About what?”
“Oh. Let me think,” she said, putting an index finger at the corner of her mouth and cocking her head. “Okay, uh, how about, if you’re right, we’re about to set Butternut Falls on fire, and I have to live here, and my boss is the most political guy in the county.”
“One good thing about it,” Virgil said.
“What’s that?”
“I live in Mankato,” Virgil said. “I won’t have to listen to it.”
That didn’t make her laugh. Instead, she got busy with her briefcase, pulled out a yellow pad, and said: “All right: give me the names, and tell me the story again. I gotta say, I hate the idea of people taking money under the table. Especially when a whole bunch of people are going to get hurt by it.”
“That’s my attitude,” Virgil said. “Though, I feel kind of sleazy, getting it this way.”
“I feel a whole bunch sleazy, and we’re not even at the Shepards’ place yet.”
When they got to the Shepards’ place, a minivan was sitting in the driveway, with the side doors open. A young blond girl was pulling out a bag of groceries, and Virgil said, “Damnit. That’s their kid, I think. I hate to hit her with the kid around.”
“Go on past,” Good Thunder said. She took her phone out of her pocket, asked Virgil if he had the Shepards’ phone number, and he said he didn’t. She pushed a single button on the phone, then said into it, “This is Shirley. I need a phone number for a Mrs. Pat Shepard, a Jeanne Shepard, on Bayview.”
She got the number, punched it into her phone, got an answer, identified herself, asked if she was speaking to Mrs. Shepard, got a “yes,” and said, “We have to talk to you about a legal matter. We just went by and saw your daughter in the driveway. We’d prefer to talk to you alone-we don’t want to upset your child.”
After a minute of back-and-forth, in which Good Thunder refused to say why they wanted to talk, she listened, and then said, “That would be best. We’ll see you in ten minutes.”
She hung up and said, “She can leave the kid with a sister, but has to take her over there. Her sister lives south of the highway, less than a mile. She said she’ll be back in five minutes.”
“Good enough,” Virgil said. They sat at the end of the block and watched Shepard, in sunglasses, a short- sleeved shirt and slacks, usher her daughter into the van and take off. She was too far away for Virgil to tell for sure, but he thought Thor, the desk clerk, might have been right: she did look fairly hot.
“What? Did you say something?” Good Thunder asked.
“I said, it’s gonna be hot out.”
She laughed. “Oh, jeez. I thought you were looking at her ass, and said, ‘hot.’”
“Hey, c’mon,” Virgil said.
She was gone not five minutes, but twenty, and Virgil and Good Thunder were getting a little itchy before she showed up. They were still sitting down the block, and after Shepard had parked, and had gone inside, Virgil started the truck and pulled into the driveway behind the minivan.
