Flowers,” he said, and, introducing himself, “Tom Parker—I cross-examined you in the Larson case.” He said it with a friendly smile and Virgil remembered him. Good attorney, he thought, though he’d been on the other side.

“Oh, sure,” Virgil said. “Nice to see you again.”

They shook hands, and Parker said, “This is my associate, Laurie . . . and I bet you’re not here on a social visit. There’s a hot rumor going around the courthouse that Jimmy Crocker’s been murdered. That true?”

Virgil said, “I can’t really talk to you about it in detail. But, yeah. I’m just in from his place. The sheriff’s out telling his folks.”

“Better her than me,” Parker said.

Laurie asked, “You know who did it?”

“No idea, yet.”

“When you find out, let me know,” Parker said. “I want to rush out there with my card.”

“Maybe not. That didn’t work for me the last time,” Virgil said. They chatted for a couple more minutes, Parker and the woman probing for more facts, Virgil telling them only that it superficially looked like a suicide, by gun, but that he thought it was probably a murder. Other than that, he didn’t know anything.

“Three murders, though, I figure they should be connected,” he said, aware that everybody in the café was listening to the conversation. “If you have any ideas, I’d listen to them. I’m fresh out of my own.”

“I’ll give you a ring,” Parker said.

But Laurie said, “In a way, it’s four murders.”

Virgil: “Four?”

“About a year ago, a girl was murdered out there . . . not murdered here in Warren County, but across the line in Iowa, north of Estherville. But she came from a farm by Blakely.”

“That’s right,” Parker said. “Kelly . . .”

“Baker,” Laurie said.

Virgil snapped his fingers: “I remember something about that. Found her in a cemetery, right? The Iowa guys covered it, out of Des Moines. Did she go to school here in Homestead?”

Laurie said, “Maybe, but her house would be out in the Northwest High area. . . . I mean, some people transfer around depending on where their parents work. So, I don’t know where she went.”

“Had she graduated, or was she working?” Virgil asked.

Laurie said, “I don’t know, really. . . .”

A man two booths down from them cleared his throat and said, “She was homeschooled. She had a summer job here in Homestead, at the Dairy Queen. My daughter knew her.”

“You know how old she was?” Virgil asked, turning in the booth.

“About the same as my daughter—my daughter was a junior when the girl was killed, so, sixteen, seventeen.”

Virgil said, “Huh. Another mystery. I wonder if I could clear it all out, with another order of home fries?”

“You’d clear something out, but I don’t think it’d be the murder case,” the man in the booth said.

A waitress said, “Hey. No pie for you, Earl.”

4

Virgil left the café pleased with himself. He’d learned something, and it had made the case more intricate and therefore more interesting, and also more breakable. The more ways in, the better. He drove over to the sheriff’s office and found John Kraus, a tall, portly bald man who wore the department uniform, and looked like a cook, or a potential department-store Santa.

“Got your files right down the hall,” Kraus said. “We got them either on computer, or on paper, but I got you the paper ones. Easier to shuffle things around.”

“That’s terrific. Just the way I like it,” Virgil said.

Kraus said, “I’ll leave you to it. We got some coffee going down the hall, to the right. Can’s around the corner.”

Virgil started by calling Bell Wood, an agent with the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation. “Tell him his personal hero is calling from Minnesota,” Virgil told the woman who answered the phone.

Wood came up: “That fuckin’ Flowers. Everything was going so well, too. Just a minute ago, I told Janice, everything’s going too well—something’s wrong.”

“I heard the fools who run the National Guard made you into a major,” Virgil said.

“That is indeed the case. People now call me Major Wood.”

“That wouldn’t be any women you know,” Virgil said, “or have known, or will ever know.”

“Au contraire, my ignorant Minnewegan friend. My standing is well known in the female community. So, is this a social call?”

“Nope. Something’s wrong,” Virgil said.

“Ah, crap,” Wood said. Wood was the number two guy in the major crimes section. “Let’s hear it.”

“You know the murder of a young Minnesota girl named Kelly Baker?” Virgil asked. “Down by Estherville, a year or so ago?”

“That would