The main evidence against them were the recordings picked up by Harry’s bugs, but the rifle, and the threads of fabric taken off a barbed-wire fence and matched to the fabric of Davy Apel’s coat, were the nails in the coffin.

—

The Wheatfield pilgrims came back when the church reopened, and the numbers even bumped up after the History Channel did a documentary, The Mystery of Mary, in which Wardell Holland, J. J. Skinner, and Wheatfield played starring roles. One shot showed Holland sitting in an office chair with a photo on the wall behind him, the platoon he commanded before he was wounded, all the members looking fit, tough, and happy. After Virgil saw the movie, he recalled searching Holland’s trailer, finding not a sign of his having been in the Army. Passing through Wheatfield several months later, he asked Holland about the shot, and Holland said the movie people got it from a squad leader. “I don’t do memorabilia. Too many people wound up dead. When I start feeling nostalgic, I look at my foot.”

—

Virgil had been passing through Wheatfield, mainly to get a haircut and shoulder rub from Danielle Visser. She said she’d been involved in a tiff with Holland because she’d exposed his price gouging on “Wheatfield Talk.” “He and Skinner were going over to Walmart and buying potpies for a dollar ninety-five and selling them here for four dollars each.”

“So, you’re, like, an investigative hairdresser?”

“Hadn’t thought of it that way, but, yes, that’s right,” she said.

Roy Visser had been waiting in a customer’s chair, reading the Faribault County Register, and he said, casually, “Get your tit out of his ear, Danny.”

Pat, the dog, who was sitting by his feet, panted in agreement, and Visser reached down and gave him a scratch.

—

Margery Osborne hadn’t changed her will to benefit the church, so St. Mary’s got nothing from her. Barry Osborne didn’t have a will. The total of Barry’s estate, which included his mother’s, after everything was shaken out, amounted to a little over two million dollars. The lawyers got a third of it, and the rest went to some impecunious Arkansas cousins who hadn’t seen or spoken to the Osbornes in decades. For them, the money was Manna from Minnesota. They spent it all in four years and were broke again, though they still had four nice cars.

—