13

VIRGIL WAS STUCK. With the accountant working the records, he had nothing to do until four, and then he had a date-and the date wasn't going to help with the investigation. On the other hand, wandering around town wouldn't help much, either.

Time to talk to Judd? And look at other names in his notebook? Suzanne Reynolds, the overweight ex-sex groupie?

Judd first.

HE WENT DOWNTOWN; a guy at the SuperAmerica, gassing his truck, waved at him, and Virgil waved back. Parked in front of the Great Plains Bank amp; Trust, looked at a Red Wing jug in the window of an antique shop, and strolled down to Judd Jr.'s office.

His office was a mirror image of his old man's: same dark wood generating financial gloom, a secretary at a desk behind a railing, two wooden chairs for visitors to wait in.

The secretary said, "Mr. Flowers. Let me see if Mr. Judd is available." The door to Judd's office was open, and she stuck her head inside and said, "Mr. Flowers is here."

Judd said, "Send him in."

JUDD WAS WEARING half-frame reading glasses, looking at a printed-out spreadsheet that he folded and pushed to one side of his desk. He pointed at a chair and asked, "You getting anywhere?"

"Somewhere," Virgil said. "I can't tell you how I know it, but I can tell you for sure that I've upset somebody…"

"That's good," Judd said. "That's something."

"I've got a question for you. I don't know how far you've gotten in working through your father's estate…"

"The Jesse Laymon deal is going to hose me off pretty good, I can tell you," Judd said.

"That's something else…"

"Well, I think there's a question of whether she might have wanted the old man to disappear," Judd said.

"That's being looked into."

"By the sheriff, personally, is what I hear."

"By me," Virgil said. "Anyway: where'd your old man stick the money from the Jerusalem artichoke business?"

Judd looked at him for a minute, then barked; he'd laughed, Virgil thought. "Virgil, there is no money. There is no secret account. As far as I know, there wasn't much to begin with, and believe me, some very sharp investigators from the state and from the IRS tore up everything they could find. It does not exist."

"You're sure."

Judd tapped his desk a few times, then sighed. "Look, how can you be sure? My dad grew up poor, and he was a hard-nosed sonofabitch. Came out of the Depression, and made his own way. So he might have hid some money, if there was any. But if there was, he never would have told a soul. I mean, if he had it, it was a crime, and he wouldn't have taken any chances with that."

"But then the money just would have been lost…"

Judd wagged a finger at him. "Not lost if someday you needed it. Like with anybody who dies with money. Say he had an account in Panama or somewhere, invested it in overseas securities. The investment would grow, and if he ever needed it, he could get it. He never needed it."

"You're sure."

"It's not that I'm sure-I'm not sure about any of this. What I believe is, there never was any money. You're wasting your time looking for it, and if somebody killed him trying to get it, then the murder was a waste of time. There is no Uncle Scrooge's money bin."

THEY TALKED for a couple of more minutes, then Virgil was back on the street. Looked in his notebook, found the address for Suzanne Reynolds, and headed that way, in the truck. Thinking about Judd: and who the heck was Uncle Scrooge?

REYNOLDS CAME to the door of her house, blinking in the sunlight: she'd either been dozing, or watching TV, and her heavy face was clouded with sleep.

She opened the door and said, "You're Mr. Flowers?"

"Yes, I am," Virgil said, holding up his ID.

"Michelle said you might be coming," she said. She pushed open the door.

VIRGIL FOLLOWED HER past the kitchen into the tiny living room. Reynolds wasn't overweight, but rather was morbidly obese. Virgil thought she must weigh three hundred pounds, though she was no more than five-four. The house stank of starch and fat, and doors and windows not opened. In the living room, a plate with three cold surviving French fries sat next to an open jar of mayonnaise. She picked up one of the French fries, dipped it in mayonnaise, pointed it at a plush-magenta La-Z-Boy, said, "Sit down," and ate the fry.

Virgil sat down and said, "I'm talking to people who had relationships with Bill Judd Sr. back in the late sixties and seventies. I'm not trying to mess anybody up, I'm trying to figure out if there was anything back then that could have led to these murders. All the people were of the same age…"

"Seems like you're a generation too late, then. They're all twenty years older than us girls were."

"Yeah, but you're what I got," Virgil said. "Let me ask you this, privately between the two of us. Did the Gleasons or the Schmidts or the Johnstones have anything to do with…this whole relationship thing with Judd?"

She was taken aback: "The Johnstones? Are the Johnstones dead?"

"No, no. I should have made that clear. It's just that they were people of this age who might have been involved in something that would snap back-we're thinking it had to be serious. Revenge, something that festered. Since Gleason was a doctor, and a coroner sometimes, and Schmidt was the sheriff, and Johnstone was the undertaker…"

"I see where you're going," she said. She thought about it, and then said, "The only things I can think of, are the Jerusalem artichoke business, and then the sex. Maybe somebody's husband just found out about the sex and couldn't stand the thought, but this was a looonngg time ago. People get over stuff like sex: it's just a little squirt in the dark. No big deal."

"Some people think of it as a little more than that," Virgil said. "Michelle told me that it might have been the best part of her life. The most fun, anyway."

A wrinkle spread across the lower part of Reynolds' face, and Virgil realized that she was smiling. "She was a crazy one," Reynolds said. "She liked everything: boys, girls, front, back, upside down." She shook a finger at Virgil: "Here's something. Polaroids were a big deal back then, and Bill used to take some pictures. You know, homemade porno. You could even get Polaroid slide film, and take pictures and develop them yourself, and then have slide shows…"

Virgil was getting uncomfortable. "You think some of those pictures…"

"Well, suppose somebody's daddy or brother or husband got a picture of some guys getting his little girl airtight. That could set something off," she said.

Airtight. He'd Google it later. "Michelle said she only knew of one other guy who…took part. The postmaster…"

"There were more'n that," she said. "Two or three more, but not all from right here. Not all the girls were from here, either, there were some that came down from Minneapolis, one used to come down from Fargo. But: like I said, those things fade away. Who cares, when you're fifty-five and fat? If I were you, I'd be looking at the Jerusalem artichoke scam. That's what I'd do."

"You think that might be more combustible…?"

She shook her finger at him again. "Listen. You're not from here. That thing…you had to be here. There were old men crying in the streets. People lost everything they had: borrowed money against their homes and farms…lost every damn dime of it. Lots of people. If you lost your farm in the eighties, you wound up working in a meat-cutting plant somewhere, or going up to the Cities and working the night shift in an assembly plant, five dollars an hour. Can't even feed your kids. That's what could come back on you. That's what could come back."

"You think?"

She nodded. "Us girls…we were playing. It was in the sixties, and everybody was playing. But the artichoke thing…that was real, screaming, insane hate. There were people who would have hanged Judd if they could have gotten away with it, and I'm not fooling. He was lucky to live through it: you'd hear people talking about taking their deer rifle out, and shooting him down. Talking out in the open, in the cafe." She stopped talking for a moment, and Virgil watched her, and then she said, "And what made it worse was, Bill was laughing at them. His attitude was 'too bad, losers.' He was laughing at them, and there was little kids eating lard sandwiches. Lard sandwiches."