Chaper 7
Butman
I MET GRADY on the back porch, and he said Chief Butman was looking for me.
“Anything new?” I asked.
Grady dropped a butt, stepped on it.
“He figures he’s got the carver,” he said. “Someone called up and said to trace a lady named Virgie Beers, on from New York. Butman’s been poking around in drawers— and he’s found a threatening note. Signed by this Beers woman. It looks like an out.”
I nodded, fumbled in my pocket, said I’d left my stub of a pencil inside. I went back in and gave Virgie and the red-haired woman the news. Virgie sat up and looked scared. Then she looked mad. She said it was a frame. She’d only spoken a few words to the Widow in her life. She’d never written her. She didn’t know anything more about her than was mill-town rumor. She hadn’t been in Duqu
