I had a sinking suspicion Mr. Poling was back at the party, but I knew there was no way I was going to stay and start lifting masks. I’d give him the benefit of the doubt and go to the nursing home in the hopes that he was sleeping. I parked a block up from the Senior Sunset. I was right by the police station, but I knew where the head cat was tonight, and it made me cocky. I strapped on my flashlight and made my way to the one-story Sunset. I counted off windows until I saw what I thought was 11A and peeked in. Through the cracked shades I saw Curtis Poling wrapped in a hospital blanket and sleeping like a baby. Or a really old guy.

I rapped my knuckles on the glass and waited. Nothing. It occurred to me that he might wear a hearing aid during the day that he took out at night, or that he maybe just slept really hard. I tapped the glass again, this time with a pebble I picked off the ground. Curtis opened one eye and looked toward the door. I waved my arms and he glanced toward the window. He squinted his eyes, nodded his head, and was out the door.

I strolled over to the garden and waited, enjoying the moonlight and the sound of crickets. Residential Battle Lake went to bed early, even on Fridays. I was wondering about old people. There was a lot about them that I didn’t know. I had previously viewed them as a sort of wrinkly garnish: I saw them around and didn’t mind that they were there, I appreciated their decorative purpose, but I never really thought they had nutritional value. Here I was finding out they were as clever, horny, and inclined to party as the rest of us. It was a little reassuring and a little disturbing. Oh well, it gave me some hope for my future. If I couldn’t get laid again in what was left of my twenties, I still had another sixty or so years to work on it. Curtis was out in the blink of an eye, naked except for boxers and work boots. Given what I had seen tonight, I was grateful for the boxers.

“Aren’t you cold?” I asked.

He pulled a cigarette out from behind his ear and a lighter from his boot. “Nah. It’s darn near fifty degrees out here! I got the blood of an ice fisherman.” He sparked the lighter and held the flame to his smoke. I could see a flash of his vivid blue eyes in the temporary light. “I was wondering when you’d be back.”

“Sorry to wake you up, Mr. Poling. Why did you think I’d come back?”

“You got curious eyes, missy, and they didn’t look satisfied when you left. I suppose you got the right questions to ask this time?”

I did. “Jeff came to talk to you on Saturday. You told him to watch out for the Jorgensen land. Did he tell you about the Indian etchings he found that morning?”

Curtis smiled. “That he did, missy. And that’s when I told him he can’t build there, no matter what, no matter how. I told him that Mrs. Jorgensen never did want that land sold, and it’s because she knew what was on it. You find her will, you find out all about that. That land is about as sacred as it comes to the native people.”

“And when Kennie talked to you later that day, did you tell her that Jeff needed to find some different land in this area to build on?”

I think Curtis may have blushed at the mention of Kennie, but given what I knew about him, it was probably just a trick of the moon. “That woman can make the dead talk, I tell you.” He shook his head in disgust. “I told her that Jeff was smart enough to figure out the Jorgensen land wasn’t no good. She asked me what I knew about Skinvold’s acreage over by Glendalough Park, and I told her I knew about as much as she did. And that was the end of that.”

“Thank you, Mr. Poling. You’ve been very helpful.” My head was dancing. I knew Herbert Skinvold was selling a good-sized chunk of prairie on the north side of town. I had seen the flyer on the library bulletin board.

“I believe you’re going to find who killed that Wilson boy, missy.”

“I believe I am too, Mr. Poling.” I smiled at him, took one last whiff of his Old Spice and tobacco smoke, and walked back to my car.

Talking to Bev that morning and then stumbling into the geriatric hedonism fest had clarified some things. The first was that Jeff was about as decent as they come. I had never wanted to believe that he would have OK’ed building on the Jorgensen land after he found the petroglyphs, and Curtis had proved my faith justified. A visit to the Skinvold farm would verify that Jeff never had any intention of approving the Jorgenson purchase for Trillings and that Trillings was never going to buy the Jorgensen land, which meant Jeff’s death was unrelated to his archaeology work.

His murderer was clearly someone with a grudge, and my guess was that it was either Lartel, who was also blackmailing Karl, or Gary Wohnt, who maybe loved Kennie enough to murder the man who had done her wrong in high school and could win her love back in the present. I didn’t have all the pieces yet, though. I was hoping Herbert Skinvold could fill some in for me the next morning. What he couldn’t tell me, a travel agent could.