He’d learn that Apel held a two-hundred-thousand-dollar note from Osborne that wouldn’t get paid if Margery had been so goddamn dumb as to leave her money to the church. Barry would never make enough with his rug-cleaning business to pay it; the money had to come from Margery.
Eventually, when Margery’s estate was settled, and then Barry’s estate was settled, he’d have to submit the note to the executor to get paid. All the legal work, with the two deaths, and two separate estates, could take a year, according to what he’d read on the internet. Even if Flowers found out about the debt, a year from now all the details of the killings, all the weapons used, all the momentum, all the witness memories, would be obscured or gone. Flowers, if he found out about the note, might suspect, but he’d never convict.
He slung the rifle over his shoulder and pulled on a raincoat to cover it.
Two minutes later, he’d recrossed the two yards and walked up Osborne’s back steps, called, “It’s me again.”
Osborne said, “Come on in.”
When Apel got inside, he found Osborne bent over a plate, his back to the door. No point in waiting; no point in talking about it.
He pushed the door shut, lifted the rifle, pointed it at the middle of Osborne’s back, two feet away.
BANG!
Loud, but not deafening. Osborne jerked upright, pushed one hand on the table, then toppled over, facedown, into his lunch. The steaming hot potpie, Apel thought, would definitely leave a mark.
He could see no blood, nothing but a dimple in the back of Osborne’s shirt.
A minute later, he was out the door, back across the yard. Time to do nothing at all, he thought. Time to be a good citizen who knows nothing about nothing.
If it weren’t for that damned fingerprint, he’d be all clear. He could ditch the rifle, and that would be the end of it. He wasn’t convinced that there was a fingerprint, though the fact that Flowers had printed Osborne was evidence of something.
One thing: the rifle had to go, and soon. Everything else could be finessed, but not that.
23
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 muchinteresting 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.”
