Bad Blood

squarely facing the county highway, on a low rise a hundred yards back, with a shelterbelt of fir trees to the northwest and west, dark against the Milky Way. Five snowmobiles were rolling down the ditch to Virgil’s left as he came to the Floods’ driveway, and they went bucketing on past into the night.
    The yard was illuminated by three lights—one over a side door to the house, a yard light on a pole by the corner of the house, and another on a pole by the barn. The barn and a couple of lower outbuildings, a garage and a machine shed, sat off to the right of the drive, with the glint of a silvery propane tank off to the left. No cars were visible in the yard lights: everything was buttoned up, and dark.
    Virgil could see no tracks going to the front porch as he came up the drive; not unusual. The side door would be the main entry. He climbed out of the truck, took a second to look around, and to feel the cold night air on his face, and to look at the stars, then walked to the side door and rang the bell.
    He could hear a thumping inside, somebody running. A moment later, the door popped open. Two teenage girls stood looking at him, in the dim light of a small overhead bulb, and he nodded and said, “I’m Virgil Flowers,” and one said, “Yes, we were waiting,” and the other, “Come in. Wipe your boots.”
    “I could take the boots off.”
    “No need. Nobody else does.”
    The girls appeared to be about twelve and fourteen, junior high school age. They were dressed almost identically, in dark blue jumpers with white blouses and black tights, with black lace-up shoes. They were sallow with winter, with deep shadows under their eyes: their father had been murdered.
    Virgil asked, “So, what are your names?”
    “I’m Edna,” said the older one, and the younger one said, “Helen.”
    He followed them up four stairs into a kitchen and around a corner and through another door into a living room. One of the girls called ahead, “Mother, Mr. Flowers is here.”
    Alma Flood was sitting on a couch in a book-lined living room, a reading lamp over her shoulder, a Bible on the arm of her chair. A man, older, big, farm-weathered with a white beard, a big red nose, and small black eyes, sat facing her on a recliner chair. A glassed-in bookcase, built under the stairs going up to the second floor, was full of what looked like fifty-year-old novels, the kind you’d find in a used-book store or an aging North Woods resort.
    Alma Flood was square in the body, as the girls would be, with her hair pulled into a bun; she wore a dark brown dress. There was a resemblance between her and the older man, and Virgil thought he might be Alma Flood’s father. She said, “Mr. Flowers. You have news?”
    “Maybe,” Virgil said, smiling. The man gestured at the second recliner in the group of furniture, and Virgil sat down. A comfortable chair, and the house looked prosperous; but no sign of a television set. Virgil said, “You know the sheriff arrested Bob Tripp for Mr. Flood’s murder. Bob Tripp was then killed in jail—”
    “I thought he committed suicide,” the older man said.
    Virgil said, in his polite voice, “I’m sorry, who are you?”
    “Emmett Einstadt. I’m Alma’s father.”
    “Okay. . . . An autopsy was done on Tripp, and the medical examiner believes that he was murdered.”
    “That’s nonsense,” Einstadt snapped. “We were told by the sheriff herself that there was nobody there but Jim Crocker.”
    Virgil nodded. “That’s correct. The autopsy turned up indications that Tripp may have been killed by Crocker.”
    “Oh, no, that’s not possible. Jim Crocker is a righteous man,” Alma Flood said.
    “When we went to talk to Deputy Crocker this afternoon, we found him dead at his house. He’d also been murdered.”
    They were astonished. Not faking it at all, as far as Virgil could tell. Alma’s hands went to the sides of her head: “Jim Crocker is dead?”
    “Somebody shot him,” Virgil said. “There are indications that it may have been a woman.”
     
     
    VIRGIL GOT ALONG okay with animals—dogs, horses, chickens—but his relationships with them were nothing special. Cats were different. For some reason, which he didn’t entirely understand, cats liked him.
    He’d come from a cat family, of course, and that might have had something to do with it. They’d supported numerous cats over the years, ranging from the conservative red tabby Luther to the radical black Savonarola,