Dark of the Moon

could hear it from one of the wives first?”
    “I know both of them, banker and lawyer,” she said. “One of them’ll spill the beans, and then I can add everything you gave me.”
    “Sounds good,” Virgil said. “Did I mention I like your dress?”
    “Really? I sewed it myself. Ordered the material out of Des Moines.”
    “Seriously?”
    “Try not to be stupid, Virgil,” she said. “I bought it at Neiman Marcus, in the Cities.”
     
    V IRGIL HAD GROWN UP in Marshall, Minnesota, sixty miles north of Bluestem, as the crow flies, or eighty miles, if the crow were driving a pickup. His father had the biggest Presbyterian church in town, until he retired, and his mother taught engineering and survey at Southwest Minnesota State University, until she retired. They were both still alive and played golf all summer, and had a condo in Fort Myers so they could play golf all winter.
    Joan’s father had been a farmer. He’d been involved with Bill Judd’s drive to make a commodity out of the Jerusalem artichoke.
    “I don’t remember all this, because I was too young at the time, but Dad thought that nothing good was going to happen with corn and bean prices. There was too much low-priced competition around the world. He thought if we could come up with a new crop, that could replace oil…well, I guess back in the seventies and eighties there were all these predictions that oil might run out any minute, and then we’d all be screwed.”
    “Like now.”
    “Like now, with ethanol and four-dollar corn. Anyway, if you could grow oil…I guess he figured they couldn’t lose. But it was all bullshit. It was a scam right from the start, cooked up by a bunch of commodities people in Chicago and some outlanders like Bill Judd. When it all went bust, Bill Judd didn’t care. He was a sociopath if you’ve ever seen one. But people who were tied into him, like my dad, did care…”
    She sighed and shook her head. “Lot of people thought my dad was right there in with Judd. But Dad lost half his land. He was farming more than two thousand acres back then. He sold off the land at way-depressed prices, right into a big farm depression in the middle eighties, paid off all his debts, and then he got this .45 that he had, and killed himself. Out in the backyard, one Saturday afternoon. I can still remember people screaming, and I can remember Mom sitting in the front room looking like she’d died. That’s what I remember most: not Dad, but Mom’s eyes.”
    “Jimmy was pretty hurt, I guess? Boys and fathers?”
    “He was.” Her eyes came up to meet his. “You don’t think Jim had anything to do with Judd’s murder?”
    He shook his head: “Of course not…Were the Gleasons tied in with Judd?”
    “They were friendly,” Joan said. “There was a tight little group of richer folks, like in most small towns. Doctors, lawyers, bankers, real estate dealers. People say that Judd helped some of them with investments…but the Gleasons didn’t have anything to do with the Jerusalem artichoke scam. Everyone would have known—it all came out in the lawsuits…”
    He leaned toward her again, pitching his voice down: “I’ll tell you what, Joanie. Jim and I and Larry Jensen, we all think that the Gleason murders and the Judd murder are tied together. Three murders in three weeks, all by somebody who knew what he was doing; where to go and when to go. Even did it under the same conditions, in the rain, in the dark. And that’s after you haven’t had any murders in twenty-two years.”
    “What about George Feur? The preacher?”
    “I heard of him…”
    “He’s somebody to look at—I even asked Jim about him,” she said. “Jim says he’s got an alibi. There was a prayer meeting that Friday night, and a lot of people stayed the weekend. There’s somebody who’ll say that Feur was there every minute of that time. Jim and Larry decided that it would have been hard for him to sneak away…”
    “How long would he have to be gone?”
    “Well, if he…” She looked up at the ceiling, her lips moving as she figured. “Well, if he drove in and out, half an hour? Probably longer than that, if he walked part of it, or if they talked. But that’s not very long, really.”
    “It’s not long if there are lots of people around, and everybody thinks you’re talking with somebody else, and you’re seen here and there…you might get away for half an hour.”
    “And maybe one of his goofy converts would have been