“That’s right, Barbara,” Joy said. “I remember Gertrude thought you encouraged her to take part in the protests.”

“I never camped out there,” Barbara said. “Too chicken, I suppose, but it’s true she came to me when Gertrude was giving her grief over the commune.”

“Did Dr. Kiel’s experiment have something to do with the missile?” I asked.

“No, no,” Barbara said. “It’s just that’s the last I can remember of talking to Jenny. Until she died, I was . . . quite close . . . to her mother. After that it . . . well, we’re cordial at coffee hour.”

“It turned out Jenny’d had a baby, little Cady,” Joy said. “Someone actually left Cady on Gertrude’s doorstep, as if it was a movie, with a note saying, ‘This is Jenny’s little girl. Please look after her.’”

“It didn’t happen like that,” Barbara said. “Jenny drove off without the baby. One of the local farmers rescued her and turned her over to Gertrude.”

The room was quiet as we all imagined the scene. What had led Jenny to take off in that dramatic way, abandoning her baby? She’d been nineteen; was she racing after her baby’s father? If I’d been looking for Matt Chastain instead of Emerald Ferring, I would have asked those questions.

“It sounds as though I need to go out to the missile silo, see the remains of the commune,” I said.

“There’s nothing out there,” the woman in the blazer said. “Really nothing. It’s in the middle of farmland. The air force compelled the sale of land from farmers, not just at Kanwaka but all over the Midwest. Then, when the commune burned down, the air force found that the land was contaminated and they seized about fifteen more acres so farmers wouldn’t plant where there was a radiation danger. It was hard on the farmers. I can’t remember whose land they took—”

“Doris McKinnon’s,” Barbara supplied.

“Anyway, the air force took the missile away after the disarmament agreements,” the blazer continued. “Someone came into the bank wanting to borrow money to turn it into a condo, but there were too many issues with the site. It couldn’t be done.”

“Pity,” Barbara said. “My niece clerks for the federal judges in Topeka. She says a lot of those abandoned silos have been taken over by meth makers, and God knows we have enough meth in the county already.”

“You think meth contaminated the land around the silo?” I asked.

“Barbara always imagines the worst,” the blazer said.

“Maybe because the worst happens so often,” Barbara said dryly.

Lisa Carmody tried to change the subject before the fight got out of control. I helped by asking about Emerald Ferring.