Joan said, "I know you're upset, but I say, thank God it's over."
"Yeah."
"Well, look: the alternative would have been a heck of a lot worse-if it'd been you who got shot."
"On the other hand, Margo Carr did get shot," Virgil said. "She's gonna have six different surgeries before she's back. Hospital for a month, physical therapy, gonna have to take some skin off her thigh to make her neck right, never gonna be right…"
SHE LOOKED HIM over carefully: "You're really frozen up, Virgil. The guy was crazy."
Virgil, lying on his back, his head cupped in the palms of his hands, said, "I had a chance to talk with him before he died. Isn't that just like a cop? Interrogating a dying man?"
"You didn't know he was dying," she said.
"I knew I'd shot him with a.30-06, which wouldn't do him a hell of a lot of good."
"Well…"
THEY PICKED OUT a watermelon, which was just an oval cloud, and a three-legged dog, or maybe a three-legged chicken, after the wind blew a beak on it, and Joan asked, "What'd you ask him?"
Virgil wiggled his butt around on the blanket, and said, "I asked him about the woman who called and told him that he was Bill Judd's son. Asked whether it was an old woman or a young woman."
Long silence. Then, "Oh, shit."
"Yeah. He said young."
They sat in another cloud of silence, until finally she said, "Who was the other candidate?"
"Your mom. Amy Sweet said she mentioned at her bridge club, three, four years back, that Judd was getting into the ethanol business. I asked her who the members of the club were. Your mom was one of them."
"So how did that…?"
"A whole list of things. I couldn't figure out how Williamson knew he was Judd's son. I talked to Maggie Lane's mother, and she didn't know. She said Maggie might not have known for sure…though I suspect she did. That might have been what she and Judd were arguing about the night of the man-on-the-moon party: the pregnancy."
Virgil yanked a long grass stem out of its envelope, nibbled on the sweet end. "Anyway, if nobody in the Cities knew, then it had to come from here. And who would put Todd Williamson in with the Judds? Had to be somebody with a hard grudge against Judd. Who was that? The Strykers.
"It seemed too subtle to be Jim. And then you told me directly that you'd been too young to be much affected by your father's death-but your mother told me the exact opposite, a couple of times. Said your father's death really tore you up.
"And you've been all those years out here on the farm, trying to pick up the pieces.
"And you got close to me the very first day I was in town, and suggested Williamson as a target…
"Then I got that note out of nowhere. That got me looking for a typewriter, and I never found one-but then you had those federal farm crop insurance papers, in several copies, and they were filled out with a typewriter."
"Shit, shit, shit…" More silence. "When Williamson showed up and shot the dummy in your car, did you expect it to be Williamson? Or Big Curly? Or me or Jim?"
He shook his head: "Didn't think it was you. We had the evidence of Roman Schmidt's dick to say so."
He had to explain that.
"HOW'D YOU TRACK him down?" Virgil asked finally. "How'd you find out he was crazy?"
"I didn't know he was crazy." She sat up and pulled her legs against her chest, wrapped her arms around them. "I knew Junior was in financial trouble and that Senior had bad health problems. When I heard about the ethanol thing from my mother…well, we both thought it was another scam, the whole Jerusalem artichoke deal all over again, with a bunch of farmers getting screwed.
"I didn't know what to do about it," she said. "Then, I was thinking, there'd always been rumors about Lane, that the baby was Judd's, that Judd had killed her. So I wondered, what if another heir showed up? What if the whole Judd fortune had to be taken to court? If the details of the ethanol plant came out? What if somebody sued Senior for wrongful death? All kinds of things could have happened-maybe we'd even find out where the money went from the Jerusalem artichoke business…That's what I thought.
"About that time, the Internet was really getting going and they had all these groups that were set up to help adopted kids track their natural parents. I got hooked up, found out how it was done. Ended up with Todd Williamson. Gave him a call. Told him he was heir to a fortune."
"And then?"
"Nothing. For quite a while. Then he just showed up. Never made any claims: just showed up as the editor of the Record." She frowned, tossed her hair. "I don't know how he did that, but it freaked me out. And nothing happened. I knew he knew, but I couldn't say anything. I figured he was waiting for the old man to die; or maybe he'd already talked to the old man, and had made a deal."
"You waited."
"Three years. When the Gleasons got killed, it never crossed my mind that it was Todd. Honest to God. Then old man Judd was murdered, and Jim thought-and you thought-that the two things went together. That worried me."
"You should have said something."
"I should have-I sorta did, to you-but I felt like…people would blame me," she said. "And I wasn't sure that it was related. I just wasn't sure."
"So you sent me a note…"
"Because nobody was doing anything about the Judds. And it seemed to me that the Judds were right at the center of all of this. If they were running another scam, then wouldn't that say something about the murders? When you and Jim checked it out, you found Feur-I didn't know he was in the ethanol plant; I just knew that Judd was. And then, Jim was sure that the murders were Feur, or Feur's people. So I kept letting it go, the thing about Todd. You found out pretty quick anyway…"
"But you sorta killed the Schmidts, Joanie."
"OH, HORSESHIT," she said. "I thought about that, I really did. And the Gleasons. But you know what? The Gleasons killed the Gleasons. And the Schmidts killed the Schmidts. And the Johnstones would have killed the Johnstones, if they'd been killed. They'd all covered up that awful murder and what they got back was Todd Williamson. That was the return on the investment."
"Jesus."
"He would probably disapprove."
AFTER A WHILE, Joan asked, "So what are you going to do about it?"
"Nothing," Virgil said. "Go home."
"That's it?" She seemed a little surprised.
"I think you fucked up, Joanie. But I'm not sure you've committed a crime," Virgil said. "If you have, I sure couldn't prove it."
She sighed, and lay back on the blanket. "Ah, gosh, Virgil."
"Yeah."
They picked out more clouds: an atomic-bomb explosion, a semierect and uncircumcised penis, and the hat of the quaker guy on the Quaker Oats label.
Eventually, Joan sat up and stretched and said, "Listen. If you ever come by this way again…"
Virgil pulled out another blade of grass, chewed for a second, getting the sweet out, then said, "Bite me."