At Osborne’s house, Zimmer was leading the way to his front door when Virgil glanced at the van in the driveway, noted the logo on the side, hooked Zimmer’s arm, and asked, “‘Steam Punk’—that’s a rug-cleaning company?”

“That’s what it is.”

“When we went into Andorra’s house, there were two rolled-up rugs in the kitchen. You think he could have been waiting for . . . Osborne? Or maybe Osborne delivered them, and Andorra never had the chance to unroll them?”

They all looked at one another, and then Zimmer said, “Damn,” and Jenkins said, “I’ll rip his lungs out.”

Virgil said, “Wait, wait, wait . . . it’s not a sure thing. We need to look at Andorra’s checkbook, or his bank records, or his credit cards, and see if he paid Osborne and when . . .”

Osborne’s door popped open, and Osborne, dressed in jeans and a “Steam Punk” T-shirt, looked out at them, and called, “Are you coming here?”

Virgil said, “Yeah . . . we’re working our way through the neighborhood. We’re trying to figure out who’s a bow hunter and who isn’t.”

“Well, I’m not,” Osborne said. “I don’t hunt anything. Guns, bows, spears—nothing.”

Virgil was momentarily nonplussed. “Really?”

“Yeah, really,” Osborne said. “Bow hunting is barbaric. Bow hunters retrieve less than half the animals they shoot. The rest are left to die out in the woods and rot.”

“All right,” Virgil said. “I’m sorry we disturbed you. We’re asking around. Another question: was Glen Andorra a rug-cleaning client of yours?”

“Nope. Never was. I did know him, but not well. Why do you ask?”

Virgil considered not answering the question but, after a few seconds, said, “He had a couple of rolled-up rugs in his kitchen when he got killed. Like he didn’t have a chance to unroll them. Or maybe he was waiting for them to be picked up.”

“Okay. Well, you have to understand, I don’t haul rugs around with me. I steam them right in the client’s house, and it’s hardly ever rugs, it’s wall-to-wall carpet. If somebody has good rugs, like Persians, they’d take them to a specialty house. If they’re crappy rugs, they’ll clean them by themselves, with cleaner they get at the hardware store. It’s the wall-to-wall carpet they can’t clean by themselves, because you gotta have the machinery that’ll suck the cleaning fluid back up out of the rug. If you pour fluid on them and then try to soak it up with a mop or something, it’ll stink to high heaven for weeks.”

That was more than Virgil needed to know about the rug-cleaning business, and he thanked Osborne again, and said to Jenkins and Zimmer, “Time to move on.”

—

They sort of trotted back to their vehicles, and, when they got there, Zimmer asked, “What do you think?”