She went away, and came back ninety seconds later and unlatched the door and said, “Come in.”
“You found somebody to vouch for me?”
“The sheriff. He said you looked like a hippie who’s lost the faith, or a cowboy who’s lost his horse. That fits.”
“Remind me to shoot the sheriff,” Virgil said, as he stepped inside.
“Say, isn’t that an old Eric Clapton song?”
“I think it is,” Virgil said.
“Bob Marley, too. Probably before your time,” she said. She took him into what once would have been called a parlor, and pointed at a couch with her cane, said, “Sit there,” and took a high-backed chair.
Virgil sat down, his elbow falling on a couple of poetry collections edited by Garrison Keillor, which sat on a side table, atop a yellowed lace doily.
“What can I do for you?” Anderson asked. “I didn’t know Clancy Conley, other than by sight.”
“I need to look at the school budget,” Virgil said. He patted his briefcase. “I understand you checked it out of the library.”
Her eyebrows went up. “The school budget? The state finally figured out what’s going on with all this science and math bullshit?”
“No, no. I’m strictly working on the Conley case. Well, and a couple other things. But I need to look at the budget.”
She used the cane to push herself up out of the chair, winced, and said, “Let me get it.”
“Are you okay?”
“No, I’m not. I cracked my hip a few months ago and it hasn’t quite healed,” she said.
“Sorry to hear that,” Virgil said, as she limped toward the kitchen. “How’d you do it?”
“I was skateboarding on the levee and lost my edges,” she said.
“You were skateboarding?”
She turned and looked at him and shook her head in exasperation: “No, you dummy, I fell. On the ice. On the sidewalk. Like old people do.”
Virgil: “Oh.”
She shook her head again. “Jesus wept.”
—
SHE BROUGHT BACK the school budget document, which was thinner than Virgil expected, thinner even than the sheaf of papers he was carrying—and since the papers were only part of somebody’s budget, it seemed unlikely that it was the school’s.
Anderson watched him thumbing through the school document for a moment, then asked, “Exactly what are you looking for?”
He thought about not answering, but couldn’t think of any good reason to do that. So he told her: “I found a bunch of photos of a spreadsheet in Conley’s camera, and I thought it was possible that it was the school district’s budget. But the budget just isn’t big enough.”
“I know all about this stuff,” she said. “Let me look at the spreadsheets.”
Virgil hesitated again, and said, “It’s gotta be just between you and me.”
“I can keep a secret,” Anderson said.
“Good, because one guy has already been murdered,” Virgil said. “I’d hate to find out that your hip was better, but your neck was broken.”
“Give me the spreadsheets.”