Storm Front

floated around and talked about life, about the summer and the heat, and about the possibility that lumber was aging at the bottom of the Minnesota River, and about the likely location of Jones and the stele. Virgil told her about the fight at Custard’s.
    “Tag Bauer? Really? I mean, you know him now?”
    “Well, I talked to him,” Virgil said. “You know who he is?”
    “Sure, he has a show on Channel Two.
The Bauer Crusade
. He’s always looking for artifacts. He sails someplace on his yacht,
The Drifter
, or he flies someplace in the airplane . . .”
    “
The Wanderer . . .
”
    “Yeah. And he goes on expeditions in Jeeps, and he takes his shirt off when he swims these rivers, or when he’s sailing.”
    Virgil could see that in his mind’s eye. “Not when he’s flying?”
    “Not so much when he’s flying,” Ma said. “He’s got this spider tattoo on his shoulder blade, given to him by a tribe in New Guinea, and now he’s a member of the tribe and is pledged to fight with them. Anyway, I’d like to meet him, you know . . .”
    “Because of your interest in archaeology?”
    Ma floated up to Virgil and wrapped both her legs around one of his and said, “C’mon, Virgie, I need this something fierce.”
    Virgil said, “Ma, if a guy takes it out and waves it at you, you get pregnant. I don’t need any redneck kids running around my house, and even if I was inclined to scratch your itch, which is, I confess, not an entirely unattractive proposition—”
    “I can tell,” she murmured. “Judging from the evidence at hand.”
    “. . . I don’t happen to have any protection with me, and I’m not going to take the chance that you’re on the pill—”
    “They’re not good for you, the pills,” she said. “They cause hormonal imbalances.”
    “. . . so, I’m going to have to pass. And, by the way, I suspect you already have hormonal imbalances.”
    “Well then, the heck with you,” she said, letting go of the evidence. “Maybe I’ll introduce myself to Tag.”
    “Why? Because you know where the stone is?”
    “Of course not.”
    —
    S O , THEY GOT DRESSED and walked back to the farm, companionably enough, getting there just as Sam arrived back on his bike. He eyed them for a moment, both of them with wet hair, then said to Virgil, “I guess you found her.”
    Virgil said, “Yup. How was the den meeting?”
    “Same old shit,” Sam said. “You arrest her?”
    “Not yet,” Virgil said. “But you should talk to her, and tell her to stop messing with the law. And you shouldn’t say ‘shit.’”
    “Okay,” the kid said.
    “That’s really not fair,” Ma said. “Bringing in the children.”
    “Ma, what the hell do you think is going to happen to the kids if you wind up in the joint for eight to ten?” Virgil asked. “You think that’s going to be good for them? Sam’ll be in college before you get out.”
    For the first time she looked a little shaken. “I gotta think,” she said. She took her son’s hand. “Come on, Sam. We gotta go think.”
    —
    B EFORE V IRGIL LEFT M A ’ S , he checked the tracking tablet. Ellen was still showing at the farm, and he wondered if that might be where the sun came through. He turned that way.
    As he drove, he called Shrake, who was watching the Hezbollah guy. “Nothing happening. They went out to a McDonald’s, and then back to the Awad guy’s apartment. I’m watching the back and both cars, and Jenkins is out front. It’s really, really boring.”
    At Jones’s old farm, Ellen’s Jeep was parked halfway up the drive. Virgil pulled in, found the house and sheds unoccupied; one exterior wall of the house had had several boards removed. He walked past the last shed and saw Ellen on her hands and knees at the back fence line. He walked that way; she saw him coming and stood and waved. When he came up she asked, “Want some rhubarb?”
    “Jeez, I wouldn’t know what to do with it,” he said. She had a pasta pot, which she’d half-filled with cut rhubarb stalks. “I don’t cook much.”
    “If I’m down in the next couple of days, I’ll bring you a pie,” she said.
    “I do eat rhubarb pie,” Virgil said. “You’re just getting a last harvest?”
    “I’m thinking about trying to move the whole bed, and some of the asparagus,” she said. “I’m going to have to talk to somebody about the best way to do it. And there’re some old yellow farm iris I’d like to move. There’re some roses and