Rough country

20

VIRGIL STOOD ON ZOE'S front porch and pounded on the door like a drunk husband. The porch light came on, then the door popped, and Zoe peered at him through the screen. "Virgil?"

She was still fully dressed.

"Haven't found him. I was out at the Ashbachs'. Can I come in?"

"Sure." She stepped back, and Virgil pulled open the screen door and followed her into the living room and plopped on the couch, his pistol digging into his back. He'd forgotten about it. He leaned forward, pulled it out, and put it on the coffee table.

"You're carrying a gun," she said. Her voice was apprehensive.

"Not for you," Virgil said. "I was out at the Ashbachs' with a couple of deputies and we were ready to go."

"You mean 'kill somebody.' "

"I mean 'shoot back.' We're dealing with some loonies out there. That goddamn Slibe says his goddamn son's gone walkabout, whatever that means."

"It's Australian."

"I know that. I'm a cop, not an idiot," Virgil snapped. "Anyway, the Deuce is out wandering around with a gun, in the middle of the night. When I pushed them on it, all of them out there, Berni, Wendy, and Slibe, pretty much agreed on the killer."

"The Deuce?" She sounded skeptical.

"No. You."

She sat back. "Even Wendy?" she squeaked.

"Even Wendy. Though it started with Berni. Anyway, so here I am, ready to do what I should have done a long time ago, but didn't, because I like you. Go get a rope."

"A rope?"

"Yeah. Like a clothesline or something. Six feet long or so."

SHE HAD TO THRASH around for a while, but finally came up with a piece of electrical cord, which Virgil said would have to do, and he brought her back in the living room, looped it around his neck, put his hand under the cord, in front of his Adam's apple, palm out, turned his back on her, and said, "Strangle me."

"What?"

"Strangle me. Really go for it," he said.

"Virgil, I don't want to hurt you," she said.

"Well, if you start hurting me, stop."

So she tentatively pretended to strangle him, and he shook her off like a flea, said, "Really try, or I will kick your freakin' homosexual ass all over this living room."

That got to her, a little bit, anyway, and she tried harder, and he yanked her around and slapped her off the cord, and said, "Just like a little girl. What a fuckin' pussy. I'll tell you what, my third ex-wife was half your size, and she could've done a hell of a lot better job than that."

The goading worked. The third time, she finally went for it, and he had trouble getting loose, yanking her this way and that, and with one heavy heave, yanked her around and she lost her grip on the cord and cried, "My hands…"

He unwrapped the cord and asked, "You all right?"

"You almost broke my fingers." She was half lying on the couch, where she'd landed, looking at the reddening grooves across her palms.

He sat down and looked at her. "All right. You could've strangled Lifry, but I don't see you cutting her head off."

"I didn't strangle anybody," she said, tearing up.

"Why didn't you tell me that you do Jan Washington's taxes."

"I don't…" But then her mouth made an O. "Oh… shit. Mabel does!"

"You never said anything," Virgil said.

"But I don't do their taxes," she said. "I never even thought… Mabel does their taxes. They bring their stuff in an envelope, give it to Mabel. Or mail it; we send out an organizer with a mail-back envelope-and Mabel does them. I mean, I bet I talk to Jan Washington three times a year, and never in the office. On the street, I talk to her."

He looked at her for a minute, then said, "C'mon."

"Where're we going?" she asked.

"Out to the Eagle Nest."

"It's after one o'clock."

"If I needed the time, I'd look at my watch," he said. "Let's go."

They went out to the truck, then had to go back to the house so Virgil could get his gun, and he put it under the seat and they headed out to the lodge.

AUGUST NIGHTS GET COLD in northern Minnesota, and this one, not cold, was at least crisp. When they pulled into the lodge, a car full of women was just unloading, heading back to the cabins; coming in from the Wild Goose, Virgil thought. The cabins mostly trailed away from the lodge to the right, from the land side. Zoe took him around to the left, behind the lodge, to a cabin set on the highest ground around, with a green-screen porch.

"She's gonna be pissed," Zoe said.

"So what?"

"Just sayin'."

STANHOPE WAS MORE STUNNED than angry. She was wearing voluminous flannel pajamas with a flying-monkey pattern, with a ratty pink terry cloth robe tossed on top. "What?"

"Zoe here has been credibly accused of being the killer," Virgil told her. "I'm either going to clear her, or arrest her."

"What?" Stunned, not angry.

"Let's find a place to sit," Virgil said.

Stanhope's living room was comfortable in a lodge-like way, with shelves for old books, lots of Reader's Digest condensed novels from the sixties or so. A Bible was sitting on the arm of one chair. Virgil picked it up, tossed it from one hand to the other, like a softball, and said to the two women, "'Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord.' Proverbs twelve, twenty-two."

Stanhope: "Twelve, twenty-two?"

"How can you be 'goddamn this' and 'goddamn that' and go around quoting the Bible?" Zoe asked.

"Shut up," Virgil said. "Everybody sit down."

They sat.

To Zoe: "Now, on the day McDill was murdered, you were out here, right?"

"I came out, we were working on the books," Zoe said. "I finished the next day, when you were here. In Minnesota, you report your employee stuff each quarter, but the returns aren't due until the month after."

"What time did you leave?"

"About… I don't know. The middle of the afternoon."

She looked at Stanhope, who shrugged. "I don't know."

Virgil said to Stanhope, "I'm not looking for casual bullshit answers. Close your eyes. Concentrate, if you're capable of it. Think. When did you last see Zoe that day? What were you doing just before you last saw her?"

Stanhope closed her eyes, her fingers knotted in her lap, and finally said, "I saw her walking across the parking lot. I was in the office. I'd talked to Helen…" She looked up. "Okay. Helen was getting ready to leave, and I wanted her to finish her numbers the next morning, before Zoe came back. Helen leaves a few minutes before three o'clock because she has to pick up her kid at day care at three-fifteen. So, it was just before three."

Virgil to Zoe: "Is that about right?"

She nodded. "That's about right."

To Stanhope. "If I pull your ass into court, you'd swear to it?"

She nodded. "Yes. I suppose Helen would, too, because she was working with Zoe, and then she left to get Steve."

"Steve's the kid?"

"Yes. He's three," Stanhope said.

"What time do you think McDill left in the canoe?" Virgil asked.

"Early evening-six or so? I don't really know, because nobody really remembers seeing her leave. But that's not unusual, there are people paddling around all the time."

"So Zoe left at three o'clock, more or less, and McDill didn't leave for another three hours."

"Right," Stanhope said.

"Do you know the road that goes past the creek out of the lake?"

"Sure, I go up there in the fall," she said. "We try to be good neighbors with the people up there."

"Where would a killer hide a car?"

Stanhope had to think for a minute, and then said, "There are three houses that face out on the lake, but there are two more that are hunting cabins, not on the water. You could go through one of their gates, park behind a cabin. Or up the driveway. They're pretty overgrown, so you wouldn't see a car from the road."

"We looked up there, but didn't see much," Virgil said. "But the shooter would be taking a big risk. What if somebody was up there when he pulled in…?"

Stanhope was shaking her head. "It's easy to tell. There's nothing much in the cabins-some beds, electric stoves, a pump, tables and chairs. Not much worth stealing. So the gates are closed at the road, but they're not locked up. You drive down there, and if the gate is closed, nobody's home. If somebody's up there for a couple days, getting ready for hunting season or something, they leave the gates open."

"So you could drive down there, open a gate, drive up the driveway, close the gate, and you'd be out of sight."

"Yes."

Virgil asked Zoe, "Do you do taxes for anybody up there?"

She shook her head: "They're out-of-towners. From the Cities, I think. Maybe one from Alex…"

BACK OUT TO THE CAR. "Now where?" she asked.

"Down to your office. You must have a calendar."

"I do," she said.

They rode in silence, and not a particularly companionable one, back into town. On the way, Virgil called the sheriff's department, talked to the duty guy: no Windrow.

"You think he's dead?" Zoe asked in a small voice.

"I don't know. But I'm not sure he's alive," Virgil said. He pounded on the steering wheel. "I need to do something. I need to do something. I'm not doing anything."

IN TOWN, at her office, Zoe brought up her computer calendar, found two names, recalled both of them, and said, "That would have taken me up past five o'clock, for sure."

"But that's not far enough, Zoe," Virgil said. "You could make it out there with no trouble, leaving here at five o'clock. Think! What'd you do afterwards?"

"I walked over to Donaldson's and ate-I don't cook very much, neither does Sig-uh, then, let me see." She sat back and closed her eyes. "I ate… but first I went over to Gables and bought a magazine and looked in some windows, because I like to read while I eat. Then, I got gas."

"Did you pay for it with a credit card?"

"Yeah."

"And that would have been around… six?"

She thought about it. "Just about six. Maybe a little later, because I might not have gotten out of here right at five o'clock. I usually don't. Let me think…"

Back to the closed eyes. After a minute, she said, "You know, I remember saying good-bye to Mabel that night. She came in to tell me something… mmm… I can't remember what, it was casual, but she would remember seeing me. Then I did work for a little bit. Mabel leaves at five o'clock-she acts as a receptionist as well as an accountant, so she's in charge of closing up at five. You know, I bet I didn't get out of here until five-twenty or so. So it might have been six-fifteen or even six-thirty when I bought gas."

She shook a finger at him. "Credit cards. I pay for everything with credit cards, because then I have a record. Most accountants do that. C'mon, let's go back to my place."

They got back at three o'clock, and she took Virgil inside, past a little niche office with a filing cabinet, to a closet. Opening the closet, she revealed a stack of plastic file boxes with the years noted on them, going back to 2005.

She said, "Constance Lifry was killed two years ago… you have the date and time?"

"Yeah. Let me get it from the truck."

He came back with his notebook, and they found the relevant box. She found her American Express and Visa bills, and they ticked off the charges.

"Here," she said. "I went to Nordstrom's that day, too. They don't open until eleven o'clock. They know me-they wouldn't take my credit card from somebody else. Look, I went to Target, too, and I bought a bunch of stuff… And the next day, I'm back…"

"You could have driven back by the next day," Virgil said. "But… these don't have exact time stamps on them."

"But they will have," Zoe said. "You can get them from Amex and Visa."

"I'm going to do that, Zoe," Virgil said. "Don't be bullshittin' me about this."

"Do it," she said. "Let's get it over with." And, she said, "You know I didn't do it."

THEY'D GOTTEN DOWN on their knees to search through the boxes, and now Virgil sat back on his heels and asked, "What gas card do you use?"

"I don't have one. I use my Visa," she said. "You can check that with a credit agency."

He thumbed through the Visa again, found charges for gas three days before Lifry was killed, and four days after. Nothing between. Of course, you could pay for gas with cash, though it never occurred to most people.

Huh.

He took his phone out of his pocket, looked up a number, and punched it up. It rang six times, and then Sandy, the hippie, said, "Virgil. Do you know what time it is?"

"Hang on a minute, I'll check," he said.

"Are you out on the town? I thought you were-"

"I'm up north, working a case," Virgil said. "Get a pencil. I need some information by the time I get up tomorrow, which will probably be about ten o'clock."

"I've got human osteology class at ten o'clock."

"So I'll call at nine-fifty," Virgil said. "We need to check the credit agencies for credit cards held by a guy named Slibe Ashbach. You got a pencil?" She did-he spelled the name. "And we need to see when and where he bought gas…"

He gave her the dates.

"Virgil, you know, you are a real treat," Sandy said.

A male voice in the background mumbled something, and Virgil asked, "Who was that?"

"I have friends," she said.

"Sandy…"

"Virgil, shut up."

ZOE SAID, "Was that a special friend?"

Virgil said, "She's a researcher at the office."

"She ever done any research into Virgil Flowers?"

"Maybe," he said.

THEY SAT for a minute, and she asked, "Well, what's the verdict?"

"I never thought you did it. You're too stable. Though you have some stability problems when it comes to Wendy. If you were gonna kill somebody, you'd probably kill Berni. Or Wendy. Or yourself," Virgil said. He pinched his lower lip, thinking about it. "But it's complicated. If you figured that she was going to dump Berni anyway, eventually, like everybody does, maybe you wouldn't kill Berni. Maybe McDill was more of a threat, both to take Wendy away and to take the lodge away from you."

"Oh, for Christ's sakes, I'm going to bed," Zoe said, pushing up off the floor. "If you decide to arrest me, call ahead so I'll have time to wash my hair."

"That's what they all say," Virgil said.

Outside, sitting in the truck, he drew a line through Zoe: he'd make a few checks, so he wouldn't get bitten on the ass again, but she didn't do it.