Jenkins had come back in, and said, “Dave’s gonna get the subpoena down to us . . . What’s the deal with Florida?”
“If I understood everything the banker guy was hinting at, Margery was probably worth two million bucks, maybe more, and was about to give a big chunk to the church. And if she had a difficult late life, Barry could have been left with almost nothing.”
“There you go,” Jenkins said. “Let’s jack him up.”
“I dunno,” Virgil said. “He still seems like a weak possibility.”
“Better than no possibility,” Jenkins said.
Virgil couldn’t argue with that, so they drove over to Osborne’s house. The rug-cleaning truck was gone, and there was no answer when Virgil knocked. “Call him,” Jenkins said.
“I’d rather jump him face-to-face,” Virgil said. “Why don’t we . . . Wait, here he comes.”
The Steam Punk van turned the corner, slowed when the driver saw Virgil, then pulled into the driveway. Osborne got out, carrying a grocery sack, and asked, “What’s up?”
“We need to talk,” Virgil said. “Can we go inside?”
“Sure. If it won’t take too long. I’ve got an appointment to make arrangements for Mom. I’ve got to buy a coffin. Can you believe that?” His voice pitched up; stress leading to a crying jag. “The medical examiner is done. God knows what they did to her. I don’t want to know . . .”
“It’s tough,” Virgil said, as they walked to the door. “I’ve seen enough of it to know. We can’t tell you anything but that we’re sorry.”
Osborne unlocked the door, led them inside, put a couple of packages in the freezer section above the refrigerator, opened the main compartment and got a bottle of Dasani water, and offered bottles to Virgil and Jenkins. They both accepted because it established a friendlier mood, even only a fake one. In the living room, they all sat, and Virgil said, “I talked to some people in Florida today, and they said that you’d be inheriting from your mother.”
Osborne nodded. “Yeah, probably, although I think she gave some money to the church.”
“She was going to give money to the church? Do you have any idea how much?”
Osborne shook his head. “No, not exactly. I don’t think she was planning to give them all of it . . . I’d get something.”
Virgil and Jenkins glanced at each other: the interview wasn’t going exactly as they’d foreseen. “So . . . did that bother you? That a good bit of it was going to the church?”
“No, not especially. I don’t worry much about money—what’s gonna happen is gonna happen,” Osborne said. “I miss Mom, though. That didn’t have to happen. The guy who killed her . . . If I knew who it was, I’d think about killing him myself.”
“Not what you usually want to tell a couple of cops,” Jenkins said. “Now if he gets run over by a car, people are going to be looking at your front bumper.”
“Okay, so I’ll back over him,” Osborne said.
Virgil said, “Listen, Barry, the reason we’re asking is, we’re looking for a motive. You could get a couple of million, from what we hear. That’s a motive.”
“C’mon,” Osborne said. “How many people do you know who’d kill their mom for money?”
“A few,” Virgil said.
“But it’s rare, I bet.”
“But it happens,” Virgil said.
“You know where I was for some of those shootings,” Osborne said. “I couldn’t have done it, you know that.”
“You wouldn’t necessarily have pulled the trigger yourself,” Jenkins said.
Osborne rolled his eyes. “Of course not. I could have hired the Wheatfield hit man to do the job for me. Then I wouldn’t even have had to watch a bullet blow her heart out.”
“Barry . . .” Virgil began. He stopped, and took another direction. “Let me run out to the truck for a minute. I’ll be back.”
He was back in a minute, bringing the fingerprint kit with him. “This will probably clear you for good,” he told Osborne. “You might have heard that we got a print off a cartridge shell. We might normally need a warrant, but if you’re innocent . . .”
“Everybody in town heard,” Osborne said. “I’m innocent. Bring it on.”
After that comment, they didn’t have to, but Virgil printed him anyway, rolling all ten of Osborne’s fingers on a blank white piece of dress shirt cardboard. He compared Osborne’s prints to one of his own, taken from the cartridge Virgil had gotten from Martin, the gunsmith. After inspecting the prints, he said to Jenkins, “Nothing here.”
“Worth a look, though,” Jenkins said.
Osborne: “So I’m clear?”
“At this point,” Virgil said.
* * *
—
They tried jerking him around for a while longer but he didn’t jerk easily because, Virgil thought, he was innocent. Back on the sidewalk, Jenkins said, “What was that whole fingerprint thing about?”
“As far as the killer knows, we’re still printing people. The print’s still out there. If Osborne spreads the word around, maybe the killer will come back.”
“Real fuckin’ smart,” Jenkins said. “Next time, he’ll shoot you in the fuckin’ head.”
“You got any better ideas?” Virgil snapped.
“Yeah, I do. What we’ve got is a wonderful, classic, free-floating motive: two million bucks. That apparently didn’t inspire anybody to kill her? I don’t believe it. It’s involved, somehow,” Jenkins said. “We got that subpoena; let’s go look at her bank accounts. See if there’s something we haven’t thought of. Maybe somebody else wanted to get money out of her.”
“That’s a possibility,” Virgil said. “I wonder if there’s anything in Florida? If maybe she committed to something down there that wasn’t going to happen . . . But, nah. That’s weak. How’s a Florida guy gonna fit in up here? With a gun? How would he know about Andorra?”
“It’s weak, but it’s something,” Jenkins said. “We need to think about Florida and go look at her accounts.”
* * *
—
When Virgil and Jenkins had gone, Osborne went upstairs to his bathroom and took a shower, to get the rug-cleaning odor out of his hair, changed out of his Steam Punk coveralls into jeans and a flannel shirt, went down to the kitchen and took one of the Skinner & Holland potpie boxes out of the freezer. He’d removed the pie from the box and was reading the cooking instructions when he heard a knock at the back door. He wasn’t expecting anyone, and when he looked out, found his backyard neighbor, Davy Apel, on the steps.