Holy Ghost (Virgil Flowers #11)(81)

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They gathered in Ford’s living room, and Virgil told her what Button said about Margery Osborne’s Florida house.

“Yeah, that’s right,” Rose said. “When Margery came back this winter, after the Virgin Mary thing, she told me that she might sell. She was excited about the Virgin Mary; she started going to church every day. When she asked me what I thought about the apparitions and I told her I smelled a rat, she got really upset. I thought she might fire me.”

“What about this Florida house? You know anything else?” Virgil asked.

“The usual stuff . . . She and her husband sold their farm down south of here, which was small but worth quite a bit for land, and they moved into town. They rented a place; they were saving the money for their ‘real’ old age. Then, when her husband died, which was sort of unexpected, Margery started going to Florida with a friend. After a couple of years, she bought a place down there. This was a few years back, when the prices were lower and she figured it would be a good investment. I . . . mmm . . . I got the impression that it might be worth a million now. Maybe more.”

Jenkins said to Virgil, “There you go.”

“You know where the house is?” Virgil asked.

“Naples. I’ve got a phone number,” Rose said.

“Jim told us that Barry thought she ought to move back here,” Holland said.

“They talked about that,” Rose said. “I heard them. She said it was too gloomy and cold in winter, but he hated driving her back and forth every year. After the apparitions, when she came back up here, she mentioned that she might be selling. Nothing definite, but she was thinking about it. If the Virgin came back, she was not going to miss it.”

When Rose ran out of new information, Ford asked Virgil, “You think Barry killed his mom for the inheritance?”

“I don’t know,” Virgil said. “There are some reasons to think he didn’t—but we’ve been looking for a motive, and a million dollars is a powerful motive.”



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Out in the street again, Jenkins asked, “What are we going to do? You want to go talk to him?”

“Not tonight. I need to do some research on this house, make some phone calls. See if she owns it, for one thing. See how much the farm sold for . . . I’d like to know what I’m talking about when we go back to Osborne.”

“I can probably find out about the farm sale from my girlfriend, but that won’t be until nine o’clock tomorrow,” Holland said.

“Do that,” Virgil said. “We’ll meet in the back of the store at nine.”

“It’s already past midnight, so make it ten o’clock,” Jenkins said. “We oughta drive over to Fairmont and check on Shrake again, and get a decent breakfast. I can’t look at another one of those potpies.”

“Okay,” Virgil said. “Skinner and Holland at ten.”

“What about Button and Good?” Jenkins asked.

Virgil asked, “What if we cut them loose?”

Jenkins nodded. “That’s what I’d do. I mean, we could do a mountain of paperwork to get them on a bullshit charge, but they did give us something interesting. I think we at least broke even.”

“Scare them and let them go,” Virgil said.



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They were on the move at 8:30 the next morning. Virgil called the BCA computer specialist and gave him Margery Osborne’s name and Florida phone number and asked him to find out what he could about the house.

They stopped at a Subway on the way to the hospital to pick up a sandwich for Shrake, who they found in a much-mellowed mood—possibly because one of the nurses had a mouth that matched his and because she’d given him a back scratch and early-morning lotion rub. And, of course, because Jenkins had smuggled in the foot-long Italian BMT.

“Wish I’d been there,” Shrake said about the chase the night before, as he gnawed through the sandwich. “I got a feeling we turned a corner. Has that feel.”

“There is the bow hunter problem,” Virgil said. “I believed Osborne when he said he didn’t have a bow.”

“If he’s a psycho—and he’d have to be a psycho to kill his mom—he’s probably an excellent liar,” Jenkins said.

“Sure, but . . . would he lie if everybody in the neighborhood knew he used a bow and we were sure to find out?”

“Dunno, but my gut says we’re onto something, and my gut doesn’t lie,” Shrake said.

“There was that time with that Rudolph chick,” Jenkins suggested.

“That’s because my dick overruled my gut, but my gut was telling me the truth,” Shrake said. “What can I tell you?”

“Don’t want to hear about it,” Virgil said.

“Yeah, like you haven’t been there,” Shrake said. And, “Damn, that was a tasty sandwich.”



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Virgil and Jenkins got a pancake and link sausage breakfast and drove back to Wheatfield for the 10 o’clock meeting. Holland had talked to his banker girlfriend, who’d come through with details from the title agency.