Virgil and Jenkins spent an hour at the Blue Earth bank. The bank president came out to talk with them about Margery Osborne: “Most of her money was in Florida. I don’t know why—I guess they sweet-talk a little better than we do. Anyway, most years, we’d get two checks to cover her local expenses. She’d draw each one down to nothing before we’d get the next one. Right now”—he looked at a piece of paper he’d brought out with him—“she has $6,142.74 in her account. Or had.”

But that year a third check had come in, for twenty-five thousand dollars, he said. All of that had gone almost immediately to St. Anne’s, handled through the Diocese of Winona-Rochester.

“So she was already donating large chunks to the church,” Virgil said.

“Yep. I talked to her about it, and there was more to come. I’m not Catholic myself, but I have to say I was impressed by her charity and devotion. Her whole face lit up when she talked about the church and the Virgin.”

Other than the big check to the church, there wasn’t much interesting about her account—they looked for names going back three years, and while Osborne had made small donations to several local charities, the largest check was for a hundred and twenty-five dollars for a Coats for Kids charity.

“She wasn’t exactly throwing it down ratholes,” Jenkins said, as they walked across the parking lot back to Virgil’s Tahoe. “I don’t see anybody hustling her. Not here anyway. Probably oughta get her Florida checks, too.”

“The shooter’s local,” Virgil said.

“Yeah . . . I know . . . You wanna go see Shrake?”

“You go. I’ll drop you at your car . . . I’m going to walk around and talk to people,” Virgil said.

“Don’t get shot in the head.”

—

On the way back to Wheatfield, they took a call from Holland on the Tahoe’s speaker: “Did you arrest Osborne?”

“No . . . we talked to him. I think he’s okay. Why?”

“I was wondering. I got a call from Jacoby and Sons . . .”

“Who’s that?”

“The funeral home in Fairmont. He had an appointment to pick out a casket and didn’t show up. They can’t get in touch with him. Doesn’t answer his phone. I know Don Lee Jacoby, and he thought maybe I’d seen him. I thought maybe you had.”

“Not since this morning,” Virgil said.

“With everything that’s happened . . .”

Holland rang off, and they drove along for a while, then Virgil said, “Goddamnit.”

“That’s what I was thinking,” Jenkins said. “Hit the lights.”

They drove the rest of the way to Wheatfield at thirty miles an hour over the speed limit, pulled up outside Osborne’s house, and saw the Steam Punk van in the driveway. “He parked a little crooked this morning,” Jenkins said. “Still crooked. He hasn’t been out of the house.”