But Bill Judd…He was a bad man. He was even bad when he was a boy. He used to steal, and then he'd lie about it, and get other children in trouble. You know what he'd steal?'
'No, I don't,' Virgil said.
'Money. He wasn't like other children, who might steal somebody's toy or candy or something. You'd have him to your house and he'd always be looking around for loose change. My mother used to keep a sharp eye on him, after she figured it out. He was bad right from the beginning.'
Tears trickled down her cheeks and she said, 'After my sister died, there was all kinds of trouble. Bill didn't care about anything, then. She used to hold him back, but after she died, nothing could hold him back.'
She began to weep, and a nurse stepped toward them with a question on her face.
'Are you okay?' Virgil asked.
'Bill did bad things, bad things,' she said. Her eyes cleared a bit and she said, 'Men are no damn good.'
'I don't want to get you upset,' Virgil said, 'but I'm trying to figure out who might have started hating Bill Judd back then. And Russell Gleason…'
The nurse asked, 'Everything okay?'
Virgil said, 'She's a little upset.'
'She's late for her nap,' the nurse said.
Carlson looked at Virgil and said, 'Russell Gleason was there for the man in the moon. That was the thing. The man in the moon. Bill did a terrible thing, and we all knew. Russell knew, too. So did Jerry. Jerry knew about it.'
'Who's Jerry?'
She broke into choking sobs, and her whole body trembled. The nurse said, 'I think you should stop talking to her. This is not good.'
'I just…'
'You're really messing her up, is what you're doing,' the nurse said. To Carlson she said, 'It's okay, Betsy. The man is going away. It's okay. Let's get a Milky Way and then get a nap. Let's get you a Milky Way.'
'Not the Milky Way,' Carlson said to Virgil, ignoring the nurse. 'It was the man in the moon: and he's here. The man in the moon is here. I've seen him.'
She began sobbing again, and the nurse glared at Virgil and said, 'Take a hike.'
Virgil nodded, tried one last time: 'Betsy? Do you know the name of the man in the moon?'
She looked up and asked, 'What? Who are you?'
ON THE WAY OUT, Virgil stopped and asked the woman at the front desk if they required anybody to sign in.
'Nope. Not yet. That's probably next.'
'Do you remember anybody visiting Betsy Carlson?'
'You know, I think I do. But I couldn't tell you who it was, or even what he looked like. I just remember that she had a visitor, because it was so unusual. This must've been…oh, years ago.'
'I'm looking into a murder over in Bluestem,' Virgil said. 'A guy named Bill Judd, who was Betsy's brother-in- law. Do you know if Judd was paying for her care?'
The woman shook her head. 'You should ask Dr. Burke that. But as I understand it-just between you and me- Betsy inherited some property from her parents, and when she was admitted here, it was put in trust. I think that's all she's got.'
7
WORTHINGTON WAS thirty miles east of Bluestem, another node on I-90. On the way, Virgil dialed Joan Carson's cell number. Wherever she was, she was out of range, so he left a message: 'This is Virgil. Gonna be back around six, I hope, if you've got time for a bite. Like to see you tonight. Uh, thought we got off to a pretty good start…anyway, let me know.' He should have sent flowers, he thought.
In Worthington, he stopped at a coffee shop, got out his laptop, bought a cup of coffee, signed onto the Internet, and brought up a map. The town was twice as big as Bluestem, but it still only took a minute to orient himself and pick out Evening Street.
He took the coffee out to the car and rolled over to the west side, cut Evening, guessed left, guessed correctly, and spotted Michelle Garber's house, a postwar Cape Cod painted pale yellow, with green shutters on the windows and two dormers above the front door. A flat-roofed one-car garage had been attached, later, to the left side of the house, giving it a lopsided look; but better lopsided, in a Minnesota winter, than no garage at all.
Garber, Margaret Laymon had said, was divorced. And yes, Virgil could use Margaret's name when he introduced himself.
GARBER'S HOUSE felt empty. Virgil parked in front, knocked on the door, got no answer, and looked at his watch. Hoped she wasn't in France. The house next door had a bicycle parked off the front step, so he went there, knocked. A sleepy teenaged boy came to the door, scratching his ribs. 'Yeah?'
'Hi. Do you know if Miz Garber, next door, is she around? I mean, there's nobody home, but she's not on vacation?'
'Naw. She teaches summer school.' The kid turned, leaned back into his house, apparently looking at a clock, turned back and said, 'She oughta be coming down the sidewalk in ten or twenty minutes. She walks.'
Virgil went back to the truck, brought up the computer to see if he might link into an open network somewhere, got nothing, fished his camera bag out of the back, and started working through the Nikon handbook.
The damn things were computers with lenses; but the ability to take decent photographs was a selling point with his articles. An even bigger selling point would have been drawings, or paintings. Painted illustrations were hot with the tonier hook-and-bullet rags. He'd taken a course in botanical illustration in college, and had thought about signing up for art classes in Mankato, thinking he might learn something valuable. Even if he didn't, he'd get to look at naked women a couple of times a week.
His mind drifted off the Nikon handbook to Joan Carson. That could turn into something, even if it didn't last long…
He was getting himself a little flustered when he saw Garber turn the corner at the end of the street. She wore black pants and a white blouse with a round collar, and carried a canvas shoulder bag. With short dark hair and narrow shoulders, she didn't look like an orgy queen.
'Hell,' Virgil asked himself out loud, 'what's an orgy queen look like?'
GARBER WAS LOOKING at him as she came down the street and he put the camera on the floor of the passenger side of the truck and got out to meet her. 'Miz Garber? I'm Virgil Flowers. I'm an investigator with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. I need to speak with you for a few moments.'
She stopped in the middle of the sidewalk: 'About what?'
'About Bill Judd. You've probably heard that he died in a fire a couple of days ago.'
'I heard that,' she said.
'We believe he was murdered,' Virgil said. 'And because of a couple of other murders…'
'The Gleasons…'
'Yes. Because of those, we're beginning to wonder if the…genesis…of the whole situation might lie in Judd's past,' Virgil said. 'They're all older people, so we're checking with old friends of Judd.'
She looked at him for a moment, the sharp skeptical eyes of a sparrow, then asked, 'Where'd you get my name?'
'Margaret Laymon. She said I could use her name.'
Garber showed an unhappy smile, then said, 'Well. You better come in. Would you like some coffee? All I've got is instant…'
Virgil declined: 'I just had a big cup and I've been sitting in my truck. In fact, if I could use your bathroom for a moment…'
COP TRICK, Virgil thought as he stood in the bathroom. He didn't really need to go that bad, but once somebody'd let you pee in her bathroom, she'd talk to you.
