"We know," Virgil said. The nurse nodded at him and drifted away with her garbage bag. "I need to talk to you about Bluestem and some things that have been going on there."
"Bluestem. Founded in 1886 by the Chicago and Northwestern Railway. My great-grandfather was among the first settlers. Amos Carlson. His father fought the Indians in the Great Uprising. My father owned six hundred and forty acres in Stafford Township, the best land in Stark County. He was killed in an automobile accident on County 16 in a blizzard. His skull was crushed. I was born the very next day. My mama always said I was a special child, God's gift. There was a death in the family, and then new life, all at the same time. What did you say your name was again?"
Virgil reintroduced himself, and then began pulling out memories of Bluestem, and Bill Judd and her sister, the days after her sister's heart attack.
She remembered the day of the heart attack: "My sister drank too much, and then she'd fight with Bill; you could hear them screaming all over the house. Usually, about money-he had it, but he hated to spend it. The day she had the heart attack, she was drinking, but she wasn't fighting. She started feeling sick in the morning, and thought maybe she'd drunk too much the night before. Anyway, she decided to move some furniture around in the living room, and we were dragging couches here and chairs over there, and pushing this old upright piano around, and we were just about done when she cries out, 'Lord almighty,' and she falls down. I ask her what's wrong, and she says, 'I hurt so bad, Betsy, I hurt so bad. Go get the doc, go get the doc.' So I ran and got the doctor…"
"Dr. Gleason?"
Her eyes faded a bit, and she seemed confused, and then said, "I don't think Dr. Gleason. I don't think we went to Dr. Gleason then. We went to him later."
"Do you remember the doctor?"
"I did. But then, you said Gleason, and that got me sidetracked…I, uh, I can't remember."
She did remember about manure spreaders and the funny things that might happen with them; about canning tomatoes, and how everything changed when freezers came in; she remembered playing the piano with her sister, and her sister's wedding to Bill Judd.
"Christ Lutheran Church. I was maid of honor. All the maids wore yellow and carried bouquets of yellow roses. 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.