Bad Blood

and Tripp, for that matter.”
    “We’ll do it,” Einstadt said. “We’re just buckling down for winter, so we’ll be coming and going—we’ll see a few folks.”
    Virgil gave them a business card, carefully removed the cat from his shoulders, scratched her head, and put her back on the floor. “I appreciate all your help,” he said.
     
     
    WHEN HE WAS GONE, Einstadt looked at Alma Flood and said, “You know who killed Crocker?”
    “I was thinking Kathleen.”
    “I was thinking the same thing,” he said. “I’ll get Morgan and we’ll go have a talk with her.”
    He stood up and said, “Rooney will be over tomorrow.”
    Alma Flood whined, “We can get along all right. We don’t need Rooney.”
    “Rooney’s a good man and you’ll knock some edges off him. The thing about it is, you leave a bunch of women alone in a house like this, you can’t tell what they’ll get up to. Rooney’ll handle that, and take care of the farm, too.”
    “He’s rougher’n a cob,” Alma Flood said.
    “Like I said: you’ll knock some edges off him.”
    “Be happy if he took a bath,” Alma Flood muttered.
    “I’ll tell him that,” Einstadt said. He looked at the two girls, standing in a corner. “You girls get your asses upstairs. I’ll be up in a minute.”
    One of them said, “Yes, Grandpa,” the other one said nothing, and they both headed for the stairs.
    Einstadt said to his daughter, “When Rooney gets here tomorrow, I want you to make him welcome. I don’t want any trouble about this. But—don’t tell anyone that he’s moving in. That’s private business.”
    He turned away and followed the girls toward the stairs. He hadn’t had any sex for two days, and he needed it, and the last time he’d bent Alma over the kitchen table, she’d been dry as a stick.
    The girls, though . . .
    He left Alma sitting in her chair, with her Bible, and hurried up the stairs, the hunger upon him.

6
    T he Floods were unusual, Virgil thought, as he drove away. Reticent. The daughters looked morose, as might be expected, but had never mentioned their father. Neither had Alma Flood or Emmett Einstadt, except in direct discussion. There was no hand-wringing or remembrance or tears: they spoke of him almost as though he were a distant acquaintance.
    Einstadt looked like an Old Testament image of Abraham, as he was about to stick the knife in Isaac’s neck. And the way they dressed, all brown, black, and blue—he didn’t know if this was a religious thing, similar to the plain dress of the Amish, or personal preference.
    Back at Homestead, Virgil took the exit, looked at his watch: coming up on seven o’clock, not enough time to eat before he had to be at the Tripps’. He stopped at a convenience store, got a bottle of orange juice, a pack of pink Hostess Sno Balls, and a couple of hunting magazines to take back to the motel.
    One of the problems with working in a small town was that whenever you went somewhere, you were already there— it was only six or eight or ten minutes from one end to the other, so if you were running early, you stayed early, and if you were running late, there was no way to make it up by speeding or taking shortcuts.
    He stopped a block from the Tripps’, parked, ate the Sno Balls and drank the juice, and watched a man walking along the dark street with two Labrador retrievers. The dogs were looking for a comfortable snowbank in which to take a dump; the product of their efforts would sink into the snow, and freeze, and in March, when the snow went away, there it’d be. Sometimes, if your yard was on a popular corner, whole piles of newly thawed dog poop ushered in the spring.
    Virgil thought about the unfairness of it, and checked his watch. Still early, but not too; he stuffed the juice bottle and Sno Ball packaging in a trash bag hung from the back of the passenger seat, and went on down the block.
     
     
    THE TRIPPS HAD GOTTEN dressed up for their visit to the funeral home. George Tripp was wearing a church suit, black wool with a white shirt and black-and-blue tie, and Irma was wearing a black dress with black boots with low heels. They looked simply, ineffably, sad.
    George Tripp was standing in front of the picture window again, waiting for him, and opened the door when he came up the walk. “Come in, please,” he said.
    Irma Tripp came into the living room, carrying a long coat. She said, “We haven’t gone into his room except once, to make his bed. It’s just . .