Bad Blood

irrelevant.
    Maybe.
    He took out his cell phone and called Coakley. She answered on the third ring, and he asked, “Are you at Crocker’s folks’?”
    “Yes.”
    She didn’t say anything else, and Virgil realized that she was sitting there with them, and they were listening. “Is there any possibility that Crocker had homosexual inclinations?”
    “Very, very unlikely. But nothing’s impossible, as I’m sure you know,” she said.
    “You gonna come with me when I talk to this newspaper reporter?”
    “Absolutely. I’ll see you in an hour.”
    Virgil hung up, toyed with his home fries. Unless the crime-scene crew came up with something that definitely pointed at a particular person as the killer, or somebody came forward with information, it would be tough to get into the Crocker killing . . . though it would be interesting to learn more about friends and relatives of Tripp, to see if they blamed Crocker for the death.
    And with Crocker dead, it’d be tough to get into the Tripp killing, as well. Had to be some private motive. Some motive that involved Tripp and Crocker and almost certainly Flood.
    Tripp had wanted to talk to somebody about Flood, so that killing can’t have been on impulse. Tripp planned it. Took the T-ball bat with him. Could be an entry there . . .
     
     
    HE WAS ABOUT to leave the café when a man in a dark suit and close-cut silver hair came through the door, followed by a pretty, dark-haired woman carrying a briefcase and dressed in a gray lawyer suit. He looked familiar, and the man did a double take when he saw Virgil.
    “Virgil Flowers,” he said, and, introducing himself, “Tom Parker—I cross-examined you in the Larson case.” He said it with a friendly smile and Virgil remembered him. Good attorney, he thought, though he’d been on the other side.
    “Oh, sure,” Virgil said. “Nice to see you again.”
    They shook hands, and Parker said, “This is my associate, Laurie . . . and I bet you’re not here on a social visit. There’s a hot rumor going around the courthouse that Jimmy Crocker’s been murdered. That true?”
    Virgil said, “I can’t really talk to you about it in detail. But, yeah. I’m just in from his place. The sheriff’s out telling his folks.”
    “Better her than me,” Parker said.
    Laurie asked, “You know who did it?”
    “No idea, yet.”
    “When you find out, let me know,” Parker said. “I want to rush out there with my card.”
    “Maybe not. That didn’t work for me the last time,” Virgil said. They chatted for a couple more minutes, Parker and the woman probing for more facts, Virgil telling them only that it superficially looked like a suicide, by gun, but that he thought it was probably a murder. Other than that, he didn’t know anything.
    “Three murders, though, I figure they should be connected,” he said, aware that everybody in the café was listening to the conversation. “If you have any ideas, I’d listen to them. I’m fresh out of my own.”
    “I’ll give you a ring,” Parker said.
    But Laurie said, “In a way, it’s four murders.”
    Virgil: “Four?”
    “About a year ago, a girl was murdered out there . . . not murdered here in Warren County, but across the line in Iowa, north of Estherville. But she came from a farm by Blakely.”
    “That’s right,” Parker said. “Kelly . . .”
    “Baker,” Laurie said.
    Virgil snapped his fingers: “I remember something about that. Found her in a cemetery, right? The Iowa guys covered it, out of Des Moines. Did she go to school here in Homestead?”
    Laurie said, “Maybe, but her house would be out in the Northwest High area. . . . I mean, some people transfer around depending on where their parents work. So, I don’t know where she went.”
    “Had she graduated, or was she working?” Virgil asked.
    Laurie said, “I don’t know, really. . . .”
    A man two booths down from them cleared his throat and said, “She was homeschooled. She had a summer job here in Homestead, at the Dairy Queen. My daughter knew her.”
    “You know how old she was?” Virgil asked, turning in the booth.
    “About the same as my daughter—my daughter was a junior when the girl was killed, so, sixteen, seventeen.”
    Virgil said, “Huh. Another mystery. I wonder if I could clear it all out, with another order of home fries?”
    “You’d clear something out, but I don’t think it’d be the murder case,” the man in the booth said.
    A waitress said, “Hey. No pie for