Dark of the Moon

him along, when the estate was about to fall to him anyway.
     
    W HEN V IRGIL had finished with the boxes, the manager moved him to a computer terminal in a vice-president’s office, and signed him onto a bank service that kept computer images of checks. “There are images going back to 1959. The early ones can be a little obscure, because they were on microfilm, and got blown up and computerized later…”
    He looked first at Roman Schmidt’s account, and a light went on in his head: from 1970 through 1985, when Schmidt was supposedly paying off a mortgage on his home, he found not a single check that appeared to be a mortgage payment.
    That, he thought, was something.
    Looking through a half-dozen Judd accounts, he found more than thirty thousand checks, so many that he simply didn’t have time to work through them. But there were no incoming checks for $547 between 1970 and 1985; no sign that Roman Schmidt had ever written a check to Judd. Just as interesting, during the whole period of the Jerusalem artichoke scam, he found little variation in Judd’s income or outgo. There had to be other accounts that he didn’t know about. He’d talk to Sandy, Davenport’s research assistant, and see what she could find in the state’s corporate filings…
     
    A GAIN, the Gleasons were a dry hole.
     
    W HEN V IRGIL WALKED out the door, it was one o’clock in the afternoon, one of the best of the year: very warm, with a touch of breeze, and the smell of August coming up. He got on his cell phone, and called Joanie: “I thought you might be the tiniest bit irritated with me when I dropped you off,” he said. “Were you?”
    “Somewhat. But I’m over it,” she said. “I was surprised, more than anything. After I thought about it, I wasn’t surprised anymore.”
    “Mmm. Would you be interested in going out to the farm this evening? Explore the pond and the waterfall?”
    “Maybe, if you play your cards right,” she said.
    “What cards would those be?”
    “Stop at Ernhardt’s and buy us a box lunch and a six-pack. Or box dinner. Picnic. Then I won’t have to cook anything.”
    “Deal,” Virgil said. “I’ve got a question. Is there a funeral home in Bluestem?”
    “Sure. Johnstone’s. Over on the west side, by the cemetery. Go out on Fifth Street, you’ll run right into it.”
    “Do you think they might have records going back to the seventies?”
    “Well, Gerald Johnstone’s still alive. He must go back to the fifties. His son, Oliver, runs the place now. But Gerald’s sharp as a tack, he lives up by the Gleasons. About six houses down the way, on the left. Right on the edge of the coulee. Wife’s name is Carol.”
    “Hmm.” Virgil thought: Betsy Carlson, the old woman in the nursing home, said that “Jerry” had been there the night of the man in the moon.
    “He sure as heck didn’t do it,” Joan said. “He’s sharp, but I doubt that he could pick up a gallon of milk, much less a body.”
    “All right…What kind of sandwiches?”
     
    V IRGIL WALKED OVER to Ernhardt’s Café, ordered a box lunch, roast beef sandwiches on sourdough, with mustard and mild onions, a pound-sized carton of blue-cheese potato salad, a six-pack of Amstel, two plastic plates, and two sets of plastic silverware. The woman behind the counter said he could have it in ten minutes, or he could pick it up anytime before six o’clock. He told her he’d be back at five, borrowed her phone book, and looked up Gerald Johnstone’s address.
     
    J OHNSTONE LIVED in a redwood-sided ranch-style house with a walkout basement on the coulee side, a deck looking out at the town, and a three-car garage. A sprinkler system was watering the unnaturally green lawn when Virgil pulled into the drive. He dodged the overlapping wet spots along the drive and the walk to the front door, ducked under a wind chime, and rang the bell.
    A moment later, an elderly man, gray-faced and wary, spoke through a screened window to the side of the porch. “Who are you?”
    Virgil held up his ID. “Virgil Flowers, Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. Like to talk to you for a couple of minutes, Mr. Johnstone.”
    Johnstone unlocked the inner door, pushed open the screen door. He was well into his eighties, Virgil thought, tall, too thin, with shaky hands and blue eyes that seemed to be fading. He was bald on top, with a few strands of silvery white hair combed over the bald spot. “Don’t usually have everything all locked up,” he said.