Holy Ghost (Virgil Flowers #11)(45)

“I’m listening,” Virgil said.

Holland told the story, folding in a few carefully selected lies. Larry Van Den Berg was a truck driver engaged to Skinner & Holland’s afternoon cashier, Janet Fischer, who they called Jennie. Fischer had done some bragging on how well the store was doing, and Van Den Berg, after thinking it over, had decided he wanted a cut. He’d told Fischer that if he didn’t get one, that he’d tell everybody that the apparition was faked by Skinner and Holland, and that Fischer had posed as the Virgin Mary.

“He made it all up. It’s complete bullshit. But if he started talking it around—well, he could mess up the whole town. Jennie told us what he wanted, and we went over to her house to have a talk with him.”

Skinner said, “Tell him the rest of it. Tell him about Ralph.”

Virgil said, “Yeah, tell me about Ralph.”

Holland said, “Well, we were desperate to keep Larry from starting this kind of talk. Jennie had seen some . . . emails . . . on Larry’s computer, about some Lego sales . . .”

“Lego sales?”



* * *



—

When it had all come out, Virgil said, “We had Iowa cops up here last year, looking around. They called me to let me know. Lot of Legos involved, I guess.”

“Thirty-eight hundred cubic feet, worth between a half million and a million bucks, depending on what they were,” Skinner said. “Looked to me like more than half of them were still in the trailer.”

“I’ll have to tell somebody about this,” Virgil said. “If he beat up your cashier, I don’t feel too bad about it.”

Holland and Skinner looked at each other, and Skinner nodded.

“But what’s the right thing to do?” Holland said. “I mean, I know what the legal thing is, but we’ve known Larry a long time, and he had a really awful, mean childhood. I went to school with him, so I know. We want him to go to prison? We could get a couple of Jennie’s friends and have a chat with him.”

Virgil asked, “Would that chat involve a pool cue?”

“I don’t know where we’d get a pool cue,” Holland said, “but something like that. Jennie has quite a few friends in town. Larry doesn’t.”

Virgil shook his head, and said, “I’ll handle it, Wardell. You? Stay out of it.”



* * *



—

At that moment, Fischer pushed through the door. She was wearing a pleated skirt, a white blouse, and a faded high school letter jacket with a Greek harp where the letter would normally go, the insignia of a marching band letter. She had a purple ring under one eye, and a badly swollen lip where her teeth had cut into it. She said, “Whoops!” and started to back out, but Virgil said, “Janet? Come in here.”

She stepped inside.

Virgil asked, “Are you still engaged?”

She asked Skinner and Holland, “You tell him about it?”

Skinner said, “We couldn’t let it go.”

She said to Virgil, “The engagement’s over. I thought about shooting him, and I would have, but I don’t have a gun.”

“I’ll take care of it,” Virgil said. “I’ll put his ass in jail.”

Fischer said, “Fuckin’ A,” and tears began rolling down her cheeks.

“You can’t count on him being inside for long,” Virgil told her. “When he makes bail, you gotta stay away from him. We’ll get a court order that says he has to stay away from you, too.”

“Be tough, in a town like this, with one store and one cafe,” Skinner said.

“So what? You can’t go around beating up women,” Holland said.

“What a dummy,” Skinner said.

Fischer put her fists on her hips. “You keep calling him that. He might not be as smart as you, but he’s thinking all the time. About money, unfortunately . . .”

Skinner jumped in. “And porn.”

Fischer continued. “Money. That’s what that day-trading thing was all about. And remember when he was going to start that Jimmy John’s? And when he was going to be a landscaper? All he thinks about is money. He’s smart. I bet he knows more about money than anybody in town. Who’s got it, who doesn’t; how they got it, why they didn’t.”

“Then why’s he driving a truck?” Virgil asked.

“Because that’s what he can do,” Fischer said. “His folks were pure white trash. Larry started from zero and worked like a dog, and now he owns his own house and truck.”

“I don’t like to hear you defending him,” Skinner said. “Not after he beat you up, the way he did. Show them your hip. Go on.”

“No, I’m not going to do that . . . I don’t know . . .”

Skinner said to Virgil, “She looks like she’s been in a car accident. I tried to get her to go to the hospital, but she won’t do it. Now she’s saying how smart he is and what a hard worker he is.”

Fischer said, “It’s a bad habit. I’ll break it.”



* * *



—

Virgil called the sheriff’s office to get a deputy to stand by while he was busting Van Den Berg. Zimmer told him that because of the shootings, he’d kept at least two deputies in the immediate area and he could have one at Skinner & Holland in a few minutes. Virgil reheated what was left of the chicken potpie while he waited for the deputy, and told Skinner, Holland, and Fischer that he was struggling with the problem of why nobody had heard the supersonic crack of the rifle bullet and the apparently nonrelated question of the timing of the shootings.