"If you hadn't been to the bar, where'd you get that beer? The one you had at the parking lot?"

She tipped her head toward the kitchen: "Out of the refrigerator."

"So you just went up to the fire to look at it?"

"Of course," she said. "What do you think? You ever lived in a small town?"

"I have, and I know what you mean," he said.

"THESE PEOPLE who got killed, the Gleasons and Judd. They were the same age, and friendly, at least," Virgil said, turning to Margaret. "I'm wondering if there's something way back that's only coming out now. Something that really pissed somebody off, thirty or forty years ago, and winds up in these murders."

Jesse looked at her mother, and Margaret shrugged. "I had a pretty hot affair with Bill Judd, but the only thing I came out of it with was that girl…" She nodded at Jesse. "I loved her from day one. For the first eighteen years, Bill sent me a check every month to cover her upbringing, so I don't have any complaints that way, either."

"Don't have any complaints that he didn't marry you?"

"He never asked, which would have been polite, but I wouldn't have done it, anyway," Margaret said. "He could be a good time, but he was twenty-five years older than me, and he could be a mean jerk. I mean really, violent, beat-your-face-in mean."

"How long did you date him?"

"Oh…a year or so. But it wasn't exclusive, on his part. He'd screw anything he could get his hands on." She smiled, then tilted her head and asked, "Have you talked to his sister-in-law? She might be able to tell you about those days."

"I didn't know about a sister-in-law. What's her name?"

"Betsy Carlson," Margaret said. "Sister to his wife. She's been in a rest home over in Sioux Falls for, gosh, twenty-five or thirty years now. Think Bill was paying for that, too."

Virgil said, "You sort of linked screwing, with his sister-in-law. Was there something going on there?"

"Yeah." She said it flatly, her voice like flat rocks smacking together.

"Before his wife died, or after?" Virgil asked.

"If you want my opinion, I'd say before he married his wife, during, and after," Margaret said.

"How'd his wife die?"

"Heart attack," she said. "Thirty-two years old."

"Sure it was a heart attack? You say he was beat-your-face-in mean…"

"This was before the thing with Jerusalem artichokes, and before everybody hated him, so there wasn't that mean talk you would have heard later. All the official stuff said it was a myocardial infarction, so I guess that's what it was."

"Huh." Virgil said, and he thought, Russell Gleason was the coroner.

HE TURNED BACK to Jesse. "How long have you known that Bill Judd was your father?"

Her tongue peeked out, and she rubbed it on her upper lip, thinking. "Mmm, for sure, since the day after the fire. Mom sat me down and told me. But I thought he might be, from one thing or another that she said over the years. I knew it was somebody from around here. She'd start talking about being responsible even when you're having fun, and his name came up a couple of times. And I kind of look like a Judd."

"So, you've sorta known for a while."

"Yeah, but I didn't really care," she said. "Everybody said he was a jerk, and he looked like a jerk, and his son was a jerk, so why would I care? I wouldn't even have thought about it when he died, if Mom hadn't said that I should be practical."

"You mean, get a chunk of the estate," Virgil said.

"That's what it comes down to," Jesse said, and smiled.

"Do you know George Feur?"

"Know who he is, never met him," Jesse said. Margaret shook her head.

"Tell me," Virgil said to Margaret, "what was it like back then, when Judd was on the loose? There are all these rumors…"

JUDD HAD SLEPT with an untold number of local women, Margaret said-untold being the literal word, since nobody knew how many. But many. "He liked to go three at a time, when he could find the girls willing to do it. The word was, he liked to do one of the girls, then watch them do each other, and then he could get it up to do another one. And around and around…"

"Mom!" Jesse said, maybe really shocked.

Margaret shrugged. "That's the way it was, honey. I didn't get involved in any groups; I was strictly one-on-one. But you know, on the right night, if I'd had a couple of drinks, might have gone for a roll with a couple of the girls. I mean, we were rock 'n' rollers-everything was getting loose, the Stones, the Beatles, the war, smoking dope." She reached out toward his chest, and the Stones T-shirt: "We old people lived that T-shirt."

"Were there any other guys involved?" Virgil asked.

"Never heard of any-but there could have been, I guess," she said. "Is that relevant?"

"Somebody had to drag old man Judd down to his basement to kill him," Virgil said. His eyelids dropped, and he looked Jesse over. "Seems more likely to be male than female. Could have been a strong woman."

Margaret said to Jesse, "See-looks like a surfer, thinks like a cop."

"Do you know any other of the local women?" Virgil asked.

"One was Betsy Carlson. I know two more, but…I think I'll only tell you one. Michelle Garber, who lives in Worthington, now. She's in the book."

Virgil wrote the name in his notebook. "Why won't you tell me the other?"

"Because she's got a happy marriage and I don't want to mess it up. And it would, if it got out," Margaret said.

"What if her husband found out, and he's the killer?" Virgil asked.

"He isn't," Margaret said coolly. "I know for sure that he doesn't know. And I won't tell who it is."

Jesse's mouth hung open for a moment, and then she said to her mother, "You gotta be kidding me."

Virgil to Jesse: "You know who it is?"

"I just guessed," she said.

"You shush," Margaret said.

"If it turns out to be that man, I'll do my best to put you two in jail," Virgil said. His voice had gone cool, and Jesse sat back. "You gotta understand that."

"It's not him," Margaret said.

Jesse bobbed her head and said, "It really isn't."

WHEN MARGARET suggested there had been a lot of local women, Virgil wondered, did that also imply nonlocal women?

"There were professionals from Minneapolis," Margaret said. "That was the rumor. Supposedly one of the local women…came down with something that we wouldn't get around here. Supposedly it came from a woman he got at a striptease place up in Minneapolis, on Hennepin Avenue."

Virgil thought, She'd need a doctor, like Gleason. "Was this Garber who came down with it?" He looked back in his notebook. "Michelle Garber?"

"No, no…I don't know who it was, if there was anybody. Just a rumor. Michelle might know, though. She spent more time with Bill than I did, and she was quite a bit wilder than I was. She might be able to give you more names. Group names."

Virgil tapped his notebook against his chin, looking at Margaret, and said, "Sounds like Judd was out of control."

"If you were ever going to look for one sentence for Bill Judd's tombstone, 'Out of Control' might be it," she said. "He never had enough money, enough land, enough power, enough women. He was an animal."

"He was my daddy," Jesse said thoughtfully.

"Well, there's something to be said for animals," Margaret said. "He certainly could get me going. For a while, anyway."

WHEN THEY were done, Margaret excused herself, said she had to run off to the bathroom. Jesse took him out the front door and they looked at the dog on the street, and Jesse said, "That's Righteous…" and then she touched him on the chest, on the old Stones shirt, and asked, "You really like music?"

"Yes, I do," Virgil said. "I'm a damn good dancer, too."

"Who do you like?"

"You know, some old, some new. Kind of like alternative; used to listen to some rap, but it got pretty commercial…"