The Vissers’ place wasn’t far, but a detour over to Skinner & Holland would only take five minutes. Virgil thought about the ice-cream cone that the priest, George Brice, had been eating that morning, realized he was hungry, and decided to stop.
On the way over, he called Sheriff Zimmer and told him he was going to visit the Nazis. “I ought to be there about one o’clock,” Virgil said.
“You know your way around out there?” Zimmer asked.
“More or less.”
“More or less won’t work—they’re back in the sticks,” Zimmer said. “I’ll have a guy out at the Wheatfield interchange on I-90 at one. You can follow him out.”
“Excellent.”
When he got to the store, a heavyset, sixtyish woman who had a strawberry beret perched atop her iron-gray hair was shouting at Skinner and Holland, who were standing behind the cash register. Three embarrassed patrons, including a nun in a black habit, were standing behind her at the counter, holding individual serving sacks of fried crap. As Virgil walked in, one of them wandered off, apparently to hide at the back of the store.
The woman turned away from Skinner and Holland, stormed toward the exit, where Virgil was standing. She snapped, “Out ofthe way, bum,” and steamed on past. Holland gave her the finger, which she didn’t see.
“What the heck was that?” Virgil asked Skinner.
“Holland’s mom,” Skinner said. “She told all her friends that they could come in and shoplift, and Wardell started asking them if they could pay for the stuff. A sack of Fritos here, a sack of Cheetos there—it adds up.”
“She told them they could shoplift?”
“Not exactly,” Holland said over Skinner’s shoulder. “She told them that her friends could eat free and that it was all right with me. It isn’t. She thinks it’s all right because she loaned us the money to buy the store.”
“Okay. Not saying I agree with her, but I can see her thinking,” Virgil said. “She does you a favor, you do her a favor.”
“She got us for nine percent interest,” Skinner said.
“Nine percent. So, basically, fuck her,” Holland said. His eyes flicked over to the nun. “Excuse the language, Sister.”
The nun said, “I can forgive the language. I’m not sure I can forgive your making an obscene gesture at your mother.”
“Ya gotta know her,” Holland said. “If you knew her, you’d give her the finger, too. Let me get those Fritos for you.”
As the nun’s Fritos were being rung up, Virgil asked, “If I buy a chicken potpie, can I use your microwave to heat it up?”
“Sure, go ahead,” Skinner said.
The nun, looking at her Fritos, said, “You’re lucky.”
Virgil got the chicken potpie from the freezer, paid for it, went in the back room, popped it in the microwave, and was waiting for it to heat up, when Holland came in. “Plastic forks and spoons in the drawer under the sink. You figure anything out?”
“Not much, except that your mom’s cafe sells sugar water as syrup.”
“She puts sugar in it now?”
“Okay, I couldn’t go to court and swear to it.” Virgil told him that Ford might drop by and ask for an escort down to the church, and Holland said he’d do it or get Skinner on the case.
“What’s next?” Holland asked.
“Nazis,” Virgil said.
9
The deputy was sitting in his patrol car, reading a John Connolly novel,Every Dead Thing, when Virgil pulled in beside him. Darren Bakker got out of the car, carrying the book, and said, “Good thing we’re going to talk to heavily armed Nazis ’cause now I can quit reading this book. It’s scaring the hell out of me.”
“That’s a good one. I gotta say, reading it in a patrol car is the right way to do it,” Virgil said, as they shook hands. “You don’t want to read them at night in bed.”
Bakker was a tall, thick man, with rosy cheeks, a blond brush mustache, close-cropped blond hair, and small blue eyes. He had a U-shaped scar on one cheekbone about the size and shape of a pull tab on a beer can. He was wearing a radio with a shoulder mic.
