Bill had decided to commence his performance right around the time Sam Goosson came home from work that Monday. Some assistance he and Flora hadn’t counted on, which worked in their favor, was that Boyd Hunsicker telephoned the Parker house from the bank that Monday to ask where in the hell Flora was, and also to ask him what he knew about the robbery, but Bill had been at work all day.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Hunsicker, but there’s no answer,” Vivian Dalton had said into her mouthpiece at the switchboard. “Would you like to try again later?”

The Parkers’ telephone had been ringing when he got home, and Bill had watched the street in front of the house for Sam’s car before he answered it. It was June, and hot, so the windows were open. He made sure Sam heard the phone ringing, and then the curtain went up on Bill’s performance.

The shotgun had been a touch of genius. And he had recalled Jacob Starlin’s volcanic rage, when Bill had borrowed his wheelbarrow out of his backyard without asking permission first. It was a piece of junk, that wheelbarrow. Rusted all around, with a hole clean through in the corner. Bill had felt so bad about Jacob’s rage that instead of returning the rusty, battered wheelbarrow, Bill bought him a new one from Oliver’s Farm Supply. But Bill never forgot Jacob’s hot-red face, and the veins bulging in his neck as he screamed bloody murder in the backyard just opposite the Parkers’. Jacob had taken to the streets of Wooster, shouting at anyone who could hear him, about the “thievin’, stealin’ delinquents, got nothin’ better to do than steal my personal property.” Bill channeled that rage for his performance.

Since Jacob lived behind Bill Parker, he hadn’t seen Bill’s dramatic exit after the news broke about the bank robbery, but he had heard about it later. The neighbors on either side of the Parkers had said it was a wonder he hadn’t driven the Studebaker right through the back of the garage, Bill was so steamed when he got into the car. “Carryin’ his hat in one hand, his shotgun in the other,” they all said.

They had also wondered later, when Bill hadn’t returned after what seemed like an awful long time to be gone looking for your cheating wife. The burnt tire marks were a constant reminder of the wild episode, but Bill Parker never returned to his house. Some suspected he’d been so crazy with rage he must have driven himself right off a cliff to his death. Others thought he was probably okay, but just too darned ashamed to return to town.

“Maybe he found himself another girl,” Roy Patterson said. “One who wouldn’t screw around on him and run out of town with a skinny, four-eyed weasel and two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”

But not one person in all of Wooster thought that Bill had been in on the robbery, and had created a big to-do, just for show, before driving straight up to Canada to be with his wife and her sibling accomplice and all that money. Not even Vivian Dalton. Vivian hadn’t thought that Flora Parker would’ve ever left her husband in the first place, so she would have at least been half right.