“That’s impossible,” Trudy said. “She said you haven’t been sleeping together for a year.”

Apel twisted away from her, rubbed his forehead. “Oh, horseshit, we’re still doing it all the time.”

“That’s not what she . . .”

Apel: “Okay, not all the time. But a couple of times a month anyway.”

“She said . . . Never mind.”

“WHAT?”

“Oh, God, please don’t tell her you talked to me. She’s my best friend—ever,” Trudy said. “She said thank God you weren’t doing it anymore because she didn’t think she could keep two men happy.”

Apel turned away. “Then it was Glen. For sure.”

“I think so . . . You’re not going to hurt me, are you?”

He turned back, his forehead wrinkled. “Hurt you? Of course not. Who do you think you’re talking to? I’ve known you since we were in kindergarten.”

“She told me that she thought you might have found out about Glen, and she thought that maybe . . . you know . . .”

He didn’t catch on for a moment, then said, “She thought I killed him?”

“That’s what she hinted at.”

“That witch,” Apel said. He walked a couple of circles around the shop, picked up a well-worn sweater, looked at all the fuzzballs put it back, said, “Listen, you can’t call her and tell her anything about me coming here, okay? No matter how good a friend you are. You know why?”

“Maybe.”

“That’s right,” Apel said. “If you do, she might kill you. Like she might have done to Glen, who she was fuckin’. And maybe how she killed Barry and Margery and Larry Van Den Berg, and shot that cop and those other people . . .”

“Oh my God,” Trudy said. “Oh, God.”

* * *

—

Virgil, Jenkins, Skinner, and Holland were all sitting in the back room, eating chicken potpies, when Apel pushed through the curtain that separated the back from the front of the store. They all stopped eating to look at him, and he said, “I might know who the killer is.”

Virgil: “Okay, who is it?”

“Let me start by saying this. All that evidence you had against me? You were right about it,” Apel said. “It all points to me, but I didn’t do any of it. You know where I was when Margery got shot . . . But you were right about the money. Margery Osborne probably had enough money for me to get paid off. That’s the only way I’d get it back.”

Holland: “So, you shot her, Davy?”

“Not me,” Apel said.

A few seconds passed before the penny dropped.

Virgil: “Are you telling us your wife . . .”

“I don’t know. I really don’t, but . . . maybe. Maybe. I’m a little scared right now because I’m the last guy standing between her and all that money, and I believe she knows I’m thinking about her.”

“But you have no proof, other than what you believe?”

“I know somebody who’ll tell you that Ann was sleeping with Glen Andorra, not that there was much sleep involved.” He explained about Trudy at Trudy’s Hi-Life Consignment.

“Your wife bow-hunts?” Jenkins asked.

“Damn right, she does. She’s good at it, too. She goes after turkeys and gets one most every year.”

“All right, that’s interesting,” Virgil said. “You think . . . she might shoot you?”

“Well, is it possible that she killed Glen for his gun? Glen wouldn’t have been crazy enough to go through with what she was planning, so she got rid of him? But I don’t really know. She hasn’t said anything. I didn’t see any signs . . . But Ann and I haven’t been in the best shape the last few years, so maybe I wouldn’t see it. I don’t think it’d bother her much if I went away. But—” He put his hands together, his fingers under his chin, as though he were praying, and finally said, “I don’t know. I might be wrong. I might be wrong about all of it.”

* * *

—

I’m too young to be such a sexist pig,” Skinner said. To Virgil: “You kept asking me who the crazies in town might be, and all I ever thought about were male crazies. If I’d included women, I might have put Ann in there.”

“She’s not totally crazy,” Apel said. “She can be, you know, really nice . . .”

Holland said, “Davy, if you’re right, she’s killed four people in cold blood and hurt three more.”

Davy sat down, looked around, and asked, “You got a beer?”

Virgil ignored the request. “Do you have any idea of what she might have done with the gun?”

Apel shook his head. “She’s not slow. Since the place got raided, and you didn’t find anything, I’d think she got rid of it. Or, she’s innocent and never had it. There’s no one in line to get shot after Barry, and I think I probably caused that . . .”

He told them about his conversation with Osborne shortly before Osborne was killed. “I went back to the house and told Ann about it . . . about how Barry kind of thought I might have been involved somehow. That probably set her off. She was still home when I left to go back to work.”

Virgil asked the key question: “Will you help us get her, arrest her?”

“That’s why I came here to talk,” Apel said. “I don’t think I can trust her. If she figures out that I knew she was the killer, she might stick a knife in me. Or we’d have a hunting accident or something. She’s smart, but she’s rough. And, like Skinner says, maybe a little crazy. She goes out there with the excavator and holds her own with construction crews. So . . . if you can think of a way to do it, I’d help out.”

Virgil looked around the room. “Well, we have the brain trust right here. Let’s figure something out.”

“She thinks I’m on my way to the supermarket in Fairmont, so I gotta go,” Apel said. “I’ll call her from there and then I’ll stop here on my way back. You can tell me what I should do.”

“Go, then,” Virgil said. “We’ll see you back here in an hour or so.”

* * *

—

He left, with Virgil staring after him, checking out his hair. Nicely trimmed, Virgil thought. He said to the others, “Give me twenty minutes. I’ll be back.”