Dark of the Moon

with…this whole relationship thing with Judd?”
    She was taken aback: “The Johnstones? Are the Johnstones dead?”
    “No, no. I should have made that clear. It’s just that they were people of this age who might have been involved in something that would snap back—we’re thinking it had to be serious. Revenge, something that festered. Since Gleason was a doctor, and a coroner sometimes, and Schmidt was the sheriff, and Johnstone was the undertaker…”
    “I see where you’re going,” she said. She thought about it, and then said, “The only things I can think of, are the Jerusalem artichoke business, and then the sex. Maybe somebody’s husband just found out about the sex and couldn’t stand the thought, but this was a looonngg time ago. People get over stuff like sex: it’s just a little squirt in the dark. No big deal.”
    “Some people think of it as a little more than that,” Virgil said. “Michelle told me that it might have been the best part of her life. The most fun, anyway.”
    A wrinkle spread across the lower part of Reynolds’ face, and Virgil realized that she was smiling. “She was a crazy one,” Reynolds said. “She liked everything: boys, girls, front, back, upside down.” She shook a finger at Virgil: “Here’s something. Polaroids were a big deal back then, and Bill used to take some pictures. You know, homemade porno. You could even get Polaroid slide film, and take pictures and develop them yourself, and then have slide shows…”
    Virgil was getting uncomfortable. “You think some of those pictures…”
    “Well, suppose somebody’s daddy or brother or husband got a picture of some guys getting his little girl airtight. That could set something off,” she said.
    Airtight. He’d Google it later. “Michelle said she only knew of one other guy who…took part. The postmaster…”
    “There were more’n that,” she said. “Two or three more, but not all from right here. Not all the girls were from here, either, there were some that came down from Minneapolis, one used to come down from Fargo. But: like I said, those things fade away. Who cares, when you’re fifty-five and fat? If I were you, I’d be looking at the Jerusalem artichoke scam. That’s what I’d do.”
    “You think that might be more combustible…?”
    She shook her finger at him again. “Listen. You’re not from here. That thing…you had to be here. There were old men crying in the streets. People lost everything they had: borrowed money against their homes and farms…lost every damn dime of it. Lots of people. If you lost your farm in the eighties, you wound up working in a meat-cutting plant somewhere, or going up to the Cities and working the night shift in an assembly plant, five dollars an hour. Can’t even feed your kids. That’s what could come back on you. That’s what could come back.”
    “You think?”
    She nodded. “Us girls…we were playing. It was in the sixties, and everybody was playing. But the artichoke thing…that was real, screaming, insane hate. There were people who would have hanged Judd if they could have gotten away with it, and I’m not fooling. He was lucky to live through it: you’d hear people talking about taking their deer rifle out, and shooting him down. Talking out in the open, in the café.” She stopped talking for a moment, and Virgil watched her, and then she said, “And what made it worse was, Bill was laughing at them. His attitude was ‘too bad, losers.’ He was laughing at them, and there was little kids eating lard sandwiches. Lard sandwiches. ”
     
    A T THREE-THIRTY, he was back at the motel; got cleaned up, thinking about Reynolds in her dark living room, with her French fries, and lard sandwiches. She’d once been a pretty girl, he’d been told.
    He met Joan at four o’clock. They stopped at Johnnie’s Pizza, found that they agreed on sausage, mushroom, and pepperoni, and the inherent evilness of anchovies. “Little spooky going back to the farm,” Virgil said, as they rolled out of town. “Keep an eye out the back. See if there’s anybody trailing us.”
    “You don’t have to trail anybody out here,” she said. “If you see Joan Carson heading out of town on this road, it’s ninety-five percent that she’s going out to the farm. There’s not much else out here.”
    “Didn’t think of that,” he said.
    “Besides, we’re not going to the farm,” she said. “We’re going up the hill behind it—that’s as