“You got any better ideas?” Virgil snapped.
“Yeah, I do. What we’ve got is a wonderful, classic, free-floating motive: two million bucks. That apparently didn’t inspire anybody to kill her? I don’t believe it. It’s involved, somehow,” Jenkins said. “We got that subpoena; let’s go look at her bank accounts. See if there’s something we haven’t thought of. Maybe somebody else wanted to get money out of her.”
“That’s a possibility,” Virgil said. “I wonder if there’s anything in Florida? If maybe she committed to something down there that wasn’t going to happen . . . But, nah. That’s weak. How’s a Florida guy gonna fit in up here? With a gun? How would he know about Andorra?”
“It’s weak, but it’s something,” Jenkins said. “We need to think about Florida and go look at her accounts.”
* * *
—
When Virgil and Jenkins had gone, Osborne went upstairs to his bathroom and took a shower, to get the rug-cleaning odor out of his hair, changed out of his Steam Punk coveralls into jeans and a flannel shirt, went down to the kitchen and took one of the Skinner & Holland potpie boxes out of the freezer. He’d removed the pie from the box and was reading the cooking instructions when he heard a knock at the back door. He wasn’t expecting anyone, and when he looked out, found his backyard neighbor, Davy Apel, on the steps.
He opened the door, said, “Hey, Davy.”
Apel asked, “How are things? You okay?”
“All things considering. Come on in. You want a chicken potpie?”
“No, I ate fifteen minutes ago,” Apel said. He sat in a kitchen chair. “I was driving back home from the store when I saw that Flowers’s car parked out front of your place. I thought maybe he had some news.”
“Not really. They thought I had a motive for the shootings. You know, inheriting from Mom. I told them they were crazy, thinking that I’d kill Mom for . . . financial reasons. I guess they believed me. Then they fingerprinted me ’cause of that thing with the cartridge case they found at Larry Van Den Berg’s.”
“So at least they know you’re innocent,” Apel said.
“I guess. Kind of a kick in the butt, though. I was up in St. Paul, signing papers at the medical examiner’s to get the arrangements started on Mom . . .” Osborne went back to the potpie, stuck it in the microwave, and took a chair across from Apel.
“So bizarre,” Apel said. “I was talking to her last week. I can’t believe she’s gone.”
A tear trickled down Osborne’s cheek. “I can’t, either . . . Somehow, you think your mom is going to last forever, even if you know she won’t. One thing about it, I guess, is I’ll be able to pay you the money back.”
Then his eyes closed down a fraction of an inch and cut sideways to Apel.
Apel said, “I guess you’ll have the service at the church, huh?”
“Yeah, I already talked to Father Brice about it . . . So how have you been, Davy? How’s business been?”
“Fine. It’s been fine. I’ve been working that new hog factory down in Iowa, the one that’s got everybody pissed. And Ann’s got an overdue ditching job that’ll keep her busy for two more weeks. So it’s been good.” Apel stood up, and said, “You know, all this talk reminds me of something. About Marge. I gotta go get something. I’ll be right back.”
“What is it?”
“A surprise,” Apel said.
* * *
—
Apel walked through the gate in the fence between his house and Osborne’s, went down the basement and took the .223 out from behind the workbench, carefully pulled a cartridge out of the magazine, washed it with soap and water. He dried it with a paper towel, used the towel to press it back into the magazine, and jacked it into the chamber.
He hesitated to do this, but he’d seen something in Osborne’s face: Osborne had realized that Apel had a motive. And if Flowers was asking about Osborne’s finances, then, sooner or later, he’d find out about the Mad Hatter Brew Pub and what had happened with that.
He’d learn that Apel held a two-hundred-thousand-dollar note from Osborne that wouldn’t get paid if Margery had been so goddamn dumb as to leave her money to the church. Barry would never make enough with his rug-cleaning business to pay it; the money had to come from Margery.
Eventually, when Margery’s estate was settled, and then Barry’s estate was settled, he’d have to submit the note to the executor to get paid. All the legal work, with the two deaths, and two separate estates, could take a year, according to what he’d read on the internet. Even if Flowers found out about the debt, a year from now all the details of the killings, all the weapons used, all the momentum, all the witness memories, would be obscured or gone. Flowers, if he found out about the note, might suspect, but he’d never convict.
He slung the rifle over his shoulder and pulled on a raincoat to cover it.
Two minutes later, he’d recrossed the two yards and walked up Osborne’s back steps, called, “It’s me again.”
Osborne said, “Come on in.”
When Apel got inside, he found Osborne bent over a plate, his back to the door. No point in waiting; no point in talking about it.
He pushed the door shut, lifted the rifle, pointed it at the middle of Osborne’s back, two feet away.
BANG!
Loud, but not deafening. Osborne jerked upright, pushed one hand on the table, then toppled over, facedown, into his lunch. The steaming hot potpie, Apel thought, would definitely leave a mark.
He could see no blood, nothing but a dimple in the back of Osborne’s shirt.
A minute later, he was out the door, back across the yard. Time to do nothing at all, he thought. Time to be a good citizen who knows nothing about nothing.
If it weren’t for that damned fingerprint, he’d be all clear. He could ditch the rifle, and that would be the end of it. He wasn’t convinced that there was a fingerprint, though the fact that Flowers had printed Osborne was evidence of something.
One thing: the rifle had to go, and soon. Everything else could be finessed, but not that.
23
Virgil and Jenkins spent an hour at the Blue Earth bank. The bank president came out to talk with them about Margery Osborne: “Most of her money was in Florida. I don’t know why—I guess they sweet-talk a little better than we do. Anyway, most years, we’d get two checks to cover her local expenses. She’d draw each one down to nothing before we’d get the next one. Right now”—he looked at a piece of paper he’d brought out with him—“she has $6,142.74 in her account. Or had.”
But that year a third check had come in, for twenty-five thousand dollars, he said. All of that had gone almost immediately to St. Anne’s, handled through the Diocese of Winona-Rochester.
“So she was already donating large chunks to the church,” Virgil said.
“Yep. I talked to her about it, and there was more to come. I’m not Catholic myself, but I have to say I was impressed by her charity and devotion. Her whole face lit up when she talked about the church and the Virgin.”
Other than the big check to the church, there wasn’t much interesting about her account—they looked for names going back three years, and while Osborne had made small donations to several local charities, the largest check was for a hundred and twenty-five dollars for a Coats for Kids charity.
“She wasn’t exactly throwing it down ratholes,” Jenkins said, as they walked across the parking lot back to Virgil’s Tahoe. “I don’t see anybody hustling her. Not here anyway. Probably oughta get her Florida checks, too.”
“The shooter’s local,” Virgil said.
“Yeah . . . I know . . . You wanna go see Shrake?”
“You go. I’ll drop you at your car . . . I’m going to walk around and talk to people,” Virgil said.
“Don’t get shot in the head.”
* * *
—
On the way back to Wheatfield, they took a call from Holland on the Tahoe’s speaker: “Did you arrest Osborne?”
“No . . . we talked to him. I think he’s okay. Why?”
“I was wondering. I got a call from Jacoby and Sons . . .”