Virgil stepped inside and asked, "If something happened to Bill Judd Jr., would that change what happens with his father's estate?"
"Is he dead?" she asked.
"Pretty much," Virgil said. He told her about it, and she shook her head and said, "May the Good Lord keep him."
"Estate?"
Olafson made a noise, then said, "I'd have to look up the law, and you might even have to get a special ruling. But you know what? I think it's possible that Jesse Laymon and Todd Williamson, if they can prove a blood connection to Senior, could stand to get a bigger piece of the estate."
The argument would be complicated, she said, and hung on what the IRS would do about Junior's debt, how it would be counted against the estate. "And with this nut cake running around killing everybody, I'm not sure I'd hang around to make the argument."
Virgil thanked her, and continued on to the hotel. Shut down his cell phone, took off his boots, put the chain on the door, stretched out on the bed. There'd been a thread running through this thing, he thought, right up to the firefight at Feur's place. If he could only find one end of it, and pull it…
21
VIRGIL ROLLED OFF THE BED, looked at the clock-he'd been down an hour-brushed his teeth, and stood in the shower. At the end of a case, when the facts were piling up, a nap often worked to clarify his thoughts: instead of being scattered around like crumbs, they tended to clump together.
ABOUT FEUR: Jim Stryker was at least partly correct. When Virgil thought about it, it seemed unlikely that a town the size of Bluestem would be home to two, separate but simultaneous, very large crimes. Yet Feur had denied the connection, even when it wouldn't make any difference to him. Could he have been protecting someone? Seemed unlikely-seemed unlikely that in Bluestem he could have an unknown relationship so close that he would die protecting it; that he would swear on a Bible.
ABOUT THE OTHER SUSPECTS: Stryker, now, or some other cop-the Curlys, or the Merrill guy, or even Jensen or Carr-or one of the Laymons, or Williamson. Did he, Virgil, have a perceptual problem? Did he come to town and view certain people as suspects because those were the only people he saw, or spoke to, or heard about? He'd gotten all over Williamson. Had he been conditioned to do that, because Joan had mentioned Williamson's name the first time he met her? He thought about it and decided: No. That might have been the case, except for the Revelation…
The book of Revelation at the Gleasons', the cigarette butt at the Schmidts', the anonymous note, and the corporate evidence on Judd's secretary's computer, all had pointed him at Feur, or Judd and Feur together. He was being pushed by somebody.
A PASSING THOUGHT: Bill Judd's secretary. Who was she? The evidence for the Judd-Feur connection came right out of her computer. He'd heard her name, but didn't remember it…
MORE IDEAS: Could he clear anyone? If he could clear Stryker or Williamson, or the Curlys, the Laymons, or the Judds, then he'd know something. Other suspects would come into sharper focus. Was Joan a suspect? She'd gotten close to him by noon on his first day in town. How about Jesse Laymon, or her mother, Margaret? How long had they really been waiting for Judd to die?
ALSO: In one way or another, the killer of the Gleasons and the Schmidts, and probably the Judds, had been in Jesse Laymon's closet. Stryker had been there, he thought. Who else? Technically, her mother, but her mother wouldn't be framing Jesse…at least, not for any reason that Virgil knew of. There was the additional problem that the Laymons' house could be entered by any teenager with a stick…
HUH.
VIRGIL GOT his gun, clipped it under his jacket, put on his straw hat, and called Stryker.
"When we were in Judd's office, looking at the secretary's computer…What was her name again?"
"Amy Sweet. You think we ought to talk to her?"
"No need to bother you. I might stop by and have a chat," Virgil said. "Sort of at loose ends, is what I am. Can't get over Junior getting hit like that."
"Yeah. Still think it was Feur…You still think it wasn't?"
"I've moved a few inches in your direction," Virgil said. "But keep your ass down anyway."
A MY SWEET WAS another middle-aged woman, who might have been a rocker at one time, too heavy now, round-shouldered, wrapped in a housecoat with pink curlers in her hair. "I'd be happy to talk to you," she said at the door of her small home, "but I've got to be in Sioux Falls for a job interview at one o'clock."
"Take a couple of minutes," Virgil said.
"What was all the excitement a while ago?" She pushed her face toward him, squinting, nearsighted.
"Uh, there's been another murder."
"Oh, noooo…" She stepped across the room, fumbled around on a TV tray, found steel-rimmed glasses, and put them on. "Who?"
"Bill Judd Jr."
"Oh, noooo." Round, Swedish oooo's.
"Miz Sweet, when we were going through Judd Sr.'s office, we found some invoices on your computer, for chemicals that were apparently used in an ethanol plant out in South Dakota…"
"I heard about it on TV. That was the same one? The one where they were making drugs?"
"Yes, it was," Virgil said.
"Oh, nooo."
The sound was driving him crazy; she sounded like a bad comedian. "Who in town knew about the ethanol plant?"
She turned her face to one side and put a hand to her lips. "Well, the Judds, of course."
"Both of them?" Virgil asked.
"Well…Junior set it up, but Senior knew about it."
He pressed. "Are you sure about that?"
"Well, yes. He signed the checks."
"Did you see him signing the checks?" Virgil asked.
"No, but I saw the checks. It was his signature…"
"Do you remember the bank?"
She shook her head. "No, no, I don't." She frowned. "I'm not even sure that the bank name was on the checks."
"Did you ever talk to Junior about that?"
"No. It wasn't my business," she said. "They wanted to keep it quiet, because, you know, when ethanol started, it sounded a little like the Jerusalem artichoke thing. The Judds were involved in that, of course."
"So how quiet did they keep it?" Virgil asked. "Who else knew? Did you tell anybody?"
He saw it coming, the noooo. "Oh, noooo…Junior told me, don't talk about this, because of my father. So, I didn't."
"Not to anybody?"
Her eyes drifted. She was thinking, which meant that she had. "It's possible…my sister, I might have told. I think there might have been some word around town."
"It's really important that you remember…"
She put her hand to her temple, as though she were going to move a paper clip with telekinesis, and said, "I might have mentioned it at bridge. At our bridge club. That a plant was being built, and some local people were involved."
"All right," Virgil said. "So who was at the bridge club?"
"Well, let me see, there would have been nine or ten of us…"
She listed them; he only recognized one of the names.
WHEN HE WAS DONE with Sweet, he strolled up the hill to the newspaper office. He pushed in, and found Williamson behind the business counter, talking to a woman customer. Williamson looked past the woman and snapped, "What do you want?"
"I have a question, when you're free."
"Wait." Williamson was wearing a T-shirt and had sweat stains under his arms, as though he'd been lifting rocks. "Take just a minute."
The customer was trying to dump her Beanie Baby collection locally-ten years too late, in Virgil's opinion-and wanted the cheapest possible advertisement. She got twenty words for six dollars, looking back and forth between Virgil and Williamson, and after writing a check for the amount, said to Virgil, "I'd love to hear your question."