Storm Front

Chapter 6

The Pigwhistle bar and grill had a painting of a woodchuck — a groundhog — in the front window under a flickering neon Blatz Beer sign, because that’s what a pigwhistle is.

In this case, the pigwhistle had been painted by a refugee from the Mankato State fine arts program, and looked, at first glance, like a dachshund, and was the reason that people familiar with the Pigwhistle called it “the Dog,” as in, “Meet you at the Dog.” You had to live in Mankato, and be of a certain boulevardier class, to know that. Virgil qualified.

He stepped inside, with Yael just behind him, and waited a few seconds for their eyes to adjust. In addition to a wide range of exotic beer, and excellent pizza, the Pigwhistle had an extreme degree of bar darkness, along with high-backed booths, the better to attract adulterers. When he could see, Virgil walked down the line of booths, checking each one, until, at the back, by the bowling machine, he found Awad.

And Derrick Crawford, the local private detective.

Virgil looked down at Crawford and his battered pinch-front fedora, and asked, “Whazzup, Derrick?”

Awad looked up, startled, and asked, “You followed me?”

Virgil said, “Of course. What, you thought we were here by accident?” To Crawford, he said, “Move over, Derrick.”

Crawford said, “Jesus Christ on a crutch,” and slid over, taking a half-glass of beer with him, and Virgil sat down. Yael sat across from him, next to Awad. She said to Awad, “You want to move your leg, please?”

Awad moved a quarter inch, which seemed to satisfy her, and she said to Virgil, “Proceed with the interrogation.”

Virgil nodded and said to Crawford, “Tell me everything you know about this whole thing with the stone.” He pointed to Awad. “And about this Awad guy.”

Crawford pushed back his hat — he wore a fedora because he thought he looked a little like Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones, and, in fact, he did, except that he was several inches shorter and perhaps fifty pounds heavier, and, when his hat was off, bald — and asked, “Right from the beginning?”

“That’s probably the best place,” Virgil said.

“Well, this guy”—he pointed at Awad—“called me up and said that he wanted some surveillance done on this Reverend Elijah Jones, to see who he was talking to. We met up, I told him two hundred bucks a day and expenses, and he gave me a grand, in cash. Said there was more where that came from.”

“Your uncle?” Virgil asked Awad.

Awad nodded.

Crawford took a sip of beer — he was one of the few people Virgil knew who could drink beer while keeping a wooden kitchen match firmly in the corner of his mouth — and said, “I asked around and found out that Jones was at the Mayo, so I went over there and talked to him about this stone. He denied knowing anything about it, and that was that. Then, he checked himself out of the place, and a nurse I know called me up and told me, so I put a watch on his house.”

“How did you do that?” Yael asked.

“Parked down the block,” Crawford said.

“He showed up?” Virgil asked.

“Yup. Last night, after midnight. Driving a rental car, which I thought was a little odd, because his own car is in the garage.”

“Why do you tell him all of this?” Awad asked. “This was secret communication, like with a lawyer.”

Virgil looked at him and said, “Quiet.” And to Crawford: “Go ahead, Derrick.”

“So anyway, when he got to the house, I called up Raj, here, and he said thanks, he’d give Jones a ring. He told me to stay on the job until he called and let me go,” Crawford said. “So fifteen minutes after that, another car pulled up. A rental. I checked on the tag, ran it through a couple of databases, and it turns out it was rented to a guy named Timur Kaya, who’s traveling on a Turkish passport. I happen to know he’s staying at the downtown Holiday Inn.”

“How do you know this?” Yael asked.

“I followed him there,” Crawford said.

“Good work,” Yael said. “Which room?”

“One-twenty.”

“When the Turk left, he didn’t leave with a body-sized bag, did he?” Virgil asked.

“He didn’t leave with any bag,” Crawford said. “Not even a stone-sized bag.”

Virgil: “So you followed the Turk to the Holiday Inn? Then what? You talk to him?”

“Hell, no. Raj told me about the Turk and this thing with testicles, and I said to myself, That’s not necessarily a guy I want to know. So I went back to Jones’s house, drinking lots of coffee, making two hundred bucks an hour. I’m standing behind a tree, taking a leak, when another car pulls up.”

“It was like a traffic jam,” Virgil said.

“Yeah,” Crawford said. “I oughta mention, it’s two o’clock in the morning by now, and the light’s still on at Jones’s house. It’s like he was expecting these people. Anyway, a guy gets out of the car and goes up to the house, and I see Jones let him in. I check the tag on the car, it’s a Cadillac SUV. I find out it’s private, owned by a guy named John Rogers Sewickey from Austin, Texas.”

“How do you spell that?” Virgil asked. He was taking notes. Crawford took his own notebook out and spelled the name.

“Never heard of him,” Awad said. “Who is he?”

“He’s a professor who specializes in Ancient Mysteries,” Crawford said, orally capitalizing Ancient Mysteries. “I was about to tell you that when Virgil arrived. He teaches the Ancient Mysteries core course at the Center for Transubstantial Studies at University of Texas.”

“Hook ’em, Horns,” Virgil said.

“Exactly. He’s written a lot of books and papers and so on. I looked at his bank account, don’t ask me how, and he has fourteen thousand dollars in checking and in an investment account. He appears to be writing two alimony checks a month.”

“Then he’s not here for the stone,” Yael said. “He couldn’t afford it.”

“The Turks are agents for somebody else, so maybe he’s an agent for, like, the Iraqis,” Crawford said. “I know he’s been there — he led the search for the Garden of Eden. I guess he found it, at the junction of these two big rivers, the Euphrates and the Ganges.”

“I believe the Ganges is in India,” Virgil said.

“Okay, then it was something else,” Crawford said.

“Where’s he staying?” Virgil asked.

“Well, conveniently at the downtown Holiday Inn, in room two-seventy,” Crawford said.

“Then what?” Yael asked.

“After I watched him check in, I went back to Jones’s house, and the lights were out and the rental car was gone.”

“Ah, crap, you missed him,” Virgil said.

“Yeah, I did.”

“Did you try going in the house?” Virgil asked.

“No, no, I didn’t…. You know why.”

“Okay. Do you know anything else? Anything at all? Or have any guesses?”

“Well, before you got here, Raj told me that you’d found blood on the floor?”

“Just a smear.”

“Then I suspect the Turk probably created that,” Crawford said. “When Jones came to the door, to meet Sewickey, he looked like he was blowing his nose in a hankie. Now, if there was blood on the floor, I think he might’ve been trying to stop a nosebleed. I mean, how many people would meet somebody at the door while blowing their nose? And keep blowing it?”

“That’s a legitimate question,” Virgil said.

“Thank you,” Crawford said. “Also, when Raj first called me, and before I found out that Jones was at the Mayo, I walked across the street to the courthouse to look up his tax records, to see where he lived. Turns out he has two places — the one here in town, and he’s got what looks like an old family farm off Highway 68 West. I haven’t gone out there yet, just looked at the tax file.”

“Where is it? Exactly?” Virgil asked.

Crawford looked at his notebook again, and gave Virgil the location, which Virgil noted in his own notebook. Crawford spread his hands. “And that is all I’ve got. Well, except for one thing. It was the Euphrates and the Tigris.”

Virgil said, “Ah. Good catch.”

Virgil turned to Awad. “Why didn’t you go over to Jones’s house last night, after Derrick called you?”

“Because he told me to come this morning. So I did.”

“Exactly how close are you to the Hezbollah?” Virgil asked. “Don’t lie to me.”

“I am not close, I promise you,” Awad said, holding up his right hand, as though swearing an oath. “I am now calling my uncle and telling him what has transpired here, and telling him I want nothing more to do with it.”

“Probably a little late for that,” Yael said. “Especially if you plan to go back to Lebanon. The Hezbollah do not like people who say ‘no’ to them. They’d cut off more than your testicles, though they might start there.”

“See, I don’t want to hear this,” Awad said. “I am an innocent pilot-in-training. I don’t need ‘Hezbollah agent’ on my résumé.”

Both Virgil and Yael asked a few more questions, but got nothing more of substance. Crawford swore he’d told Virgil everything he knew, and Virgil said, “If you find out anything else, call me up.”

“I think I’m done with this case,” Crawford said. “Hezbollah, the Turk, Mossad. And you know if a guy’s from Texas, and he’s driving a Caddy, he’s gonna be carrying a gun.”

“Yeah, probably,” Virgil said. “Staying clear might be a good idea.”

Crawford switched the kitchen match from one side of his mouth to the other, and back. “I understand you’re chasing after Ma Nobles.”

“You got something on that?” Virgil asked.

“Nope. Not other than the observation that Ma has some excellent headlights. I personally wouldn’t mind examining her high beams.”

“Thanks for that,” Virgil said. “I’ll put it in my report.”

“What is this?” Yael asked.

“Car talk. American men love cars,” Virgil said.

“There were ambiguous undertones,” she said.

“You really do speak great English,” Virgil said.

When they were back out on the street, in the dazzling sunshine, Yael said to Virgil, “I will confess, this was an amazing interrogation. He tells you everything, because you ask.”

“He’s our only private eye,” Virgil said, as they walked back to his truck. “There’s not a lot of private detective business around here, so he makes ends meet by selling marijuana to the college students. He’s probably got a hundred pounds of it down in his basement, which is why he’s careful about committing any other crime — like going into Jones’s house. If we find a reason to search Crawford’s place, he’d be in trouble.”

“You’re saying that he’s a drug dealer, and yet you don’t arrest him.”

“Well, he sells only California-grown pot, and none of the heavier stuff like cocaine or heroin,” Virgil said. “That mostly keeps the Mexican dope out of here. I mean, we can bust as many people as we want, but somebody will still be selling weed. Better to have it somebody we know, who buys only California, instead of letting the cartel in.”

“Also, it gives you an excellent lever when you need one.”

“That’s the other reason,” Virgil said.

“Interesting,” she said.

“Pretty sophisticated for a rural state, huh?”

“Yes. So, what is next?”

“Next we check out Jones’s farm.”

“Perhaps we should go to the Holiday Inn, instead?”

Virgil said, “Here’s what I’m thinking: if we get hold of Jones, we could probably get the stone. Once we get the stone, everything stops, and right quick. We no longer have to worry about the Turk or the Texas guy, or Hezbollah, because we’ve got the stone. But another possibility would be for me to drop you at the Holiday Inn, you could check in there, too, and keep an eye on the place, while I go out to the farm.”

Yael mulled that over for a moment, then shook her head. “I think I ride with you. You’re a lucky guy. One of my advisers tells me, ‘Good intelligence is important. Good luck is critical.’”

“That would be one of your advisers at the antiquities bureau?”

“Of course,” she said.

They’d just cleared town running northwest, when Virgil saw a red Ford coming up in the rearview mirror, and it gave off a certain vibration. He said, “Shoot,” and looked around the interior of the truck for a baseball cap — anything but the straw hat he’d been wearing — saw nothing handy, but then spotted a farm driveway coming up. He stood on the brake and swerved down the drive, and pulled up toward the house.

“This is it?” Yael asked, frowning. Instead of an old farmhouse, they were looking at a newer ranch-style house with an above-ground swimming pool and a children’s play set in the side yard.

“No. I’m just…” Virgil was watching the mirror, and fifteen seconds later, Ma Nobles went by in her pickup. As far as Virgil could tell, she never looked down the drive. He put the truck in reverse, backed down the drive, and edged out to the highway. “The woman in the truck ahead of us… I’m interested in where she’s going.”

“This is not about Jones?”

“No, it’s a different case. Be patient, this won’t take long.”

The highway ran parallel to the Minnesota River, where Ma and her son had allegedly stashed the fake barn lumber. Virgil stayed well back and they drove along four miles, then five, and finally Ma turned north on a gravel road toward the river. Virgil pulled to the shoulder of the road, hooked his iPad out of the pocket on the back of the passenger seat, and called up a satellite view of the area.

“No bridge down there,” he said. “The road does go along the river for a while.”

“She made a lot of dust on that road. If you go down there, she could see it.”

They never had a chance. Ma’s truck reappeared at the corner, and she turned toward them. As she went by, she smiled, twiddled her fingers at Virgil, and continued back toward town.

“She saw us,” Yael said.

“I was almost sure she didn’t,” Virgil said. “She never looked at us when she turned off.”

“Then… she has an outlook. They saw us coming behind, they saw us go to the shoulder, they telephoned her.”

“Lookout, not outlook,” Virgil said. “Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking. Which means the real turnoff is somewhere between here and the driveway we turned down. That’s helpful.”

“She won’t be going there now.”

“No. And Jones’s place ought to be about a half-mile up the road.”

Jones’s place was just what Virgil had expected from Crawford’s tax-roll information. The house was old, and in poor shape: an early twentieth-century frame farmhouse in need of new paint, new roof, new windows.

New everything.

A garage at the end of the driveway had a hayloft and was in the same shape; a machine shed farther down the drive was falling apart, and a head-high stone foundation was all that remained of what had once been a barn. All of it stood on what looked like ten acres, most of it covered with lumpy fescue and knee-high weeds. A cluster of old, arthritic apple trees stood to one side of the house, while overgrown bridal wreath and lilac bushes lined the driveway. A “For Sale” sign, with a “Reduced” card fixed to the top, faced the highway, and looked as though it had been there for a while.

A black ragtop Jeep sat in the driveway.

“Here we go,” Virgil said. He pulled in behind the Jeep, to within inches of its back bumpers, pinning it between two lilacs. If anyone managed to get to it, to flee, they’d have to go forward and then across the front yard to get out. Virgil popped the door, got his pistol out of the back, and stuck it in his belt at the small of his back.

Yael was pointing at the front door like a Weimaraner. Virgil said, “There’ll be a side door. That’s where you go in.”

She said, “Yes?”

She and Virgil walked down the driveway and as they did, a slender dark-haired woman with green eyes walked out of the side door and asked, “Can I help you?”

Virgil took her in. She was pretty in a reserved way, and when their eyes met, they went “clank,” like eyes sometimes do. She would not be a candidate for marriage. “We’re looking for Elijah Jones.”

“Dad’s not here,” she said. “He lives in town.”

“We’ve been there,” Virgil said. “I’m an agent with the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. We have a warrant for Reverend Jones’s arrest.”

“His arrest?” Her hand went to her throat. “What for?”

“On a hold request, for theft, from the nation of Israel, and for failure to declare the importation of an artwork or artifact of value more than eight hundred dollars, which is a federal offense,” Virgil said.

“My God, what’d he do?” she asked. But Virgil saw the flicker in her eyes, and Yael glanced at Virgil to see if he’d picked it up. He nodded his head a quarter of an inch. Not only was the woman not telling the truth, but that kind of pickup put Yael distinctly with the Mossad.

“You’re his daughter who works with the DOT?” Virgil asked. He dug around in his memory and came up with, “Ellen?”

“Yes, how did you know?”

“We tried to get in touch with you, but were told you were on your way to Alaska,” Virgil said.

“That was a joke about getting away from my ex,” she said. “But about Dad… You can’t find him? I’m sure he never smuggled anything, or stole anything, that’s crazy talk. He’s very ill. We tried to talk him out of going to Israel this summer. We were supposed to meet out here this morning, to see if there’s anything anybody might want in the house before they burn it down—”

“You’re going to burn it?”

Ellen looked back at the place and nodded. “I’m afraid so. It was my great-grandparents’ place, but I can hardly ever remember even coming here. My grandfather was a preacher, and then Dad. The land was all sold off, the house can’t be fixed… the land’s more valuable with the house gone. We’ll burn it, then clear it with a bulldozer, fill in the basement, and then maybe Chuck Miller will add it to his farm.”

Virgil said, “Nice to have apple trees… and asparagus.” He could see the feathery bush-tops of asparagus growing down the far fence line.

“The apple trees are pretty much shot. Mostly good for firewood, now.”

Virgil came back to the case: “We went to your father’s house this morning. He wasn’t there, but he was last night. We haven’t been able to locate him, but we did find a spot of blood on the floor.”

“I just can’t help you,” she said. “I’ve tried calling his cell, but it goes right over to the answering service, so it’s probably turned off.”

Virgil said, “He’s not in the house. This house.”

“No, of course not. You think I’m lying?”

Virgil said, “No, I just have to ask — because if I ask, and if it turns out that you are lying, then you’ve committed a crime, and I can come back to you on that. I mean, you can refuse to talk to me, but you can’t lie to me to cover up a crime or hide a criminal.”

She put her fists on her hips: “That’s a mean thing to say.”

“I try not to be mean,” Virgil said. “But this is a serious matter, Ellen, and you should not be fooling around with it, thinking otherwise. Your involvement in this, if you’re involved, could jeopardize your whole career.”

Yael chipped in: “He is trying to sell this artifact he stole. The people he is trying to sell it to are extremely dangerous. People who might kill him, if they need to, to get the stone.”

Virgil added, “Hezbollah, among others.”

Yael added, “And Texans.”

Ellen nodded. “I will keep trying to get in touch. I’ll go into town and look for him. I’ll leave messages. I’ll do everything I can.”

“Don’t get too close,” Virgil said. “Like Yael said, these people could be dangerous. There’s a lot of money involved.”

“I promise: I’ll tell you the minute I find him.”

They exchanged cell phone numbers, and Virgil got her father’s phone number, and then, like an afterthought, she asked, “Before you go, do you want to look inside? To see that I’m telling the truth?”

Yael said quickly, “I would.”

Virgil said, “Go ahead. But old houses can be dangerous — Ellen should go with you. I’ll take a look at the machine shed and garage.”

The two women went inside, and Virgil headed toward the garage. He stepped inside, saw nothing, then checked to make sure the two women were out of sight in the house. They were; he hurried back to the truck, got inside, and dug into Yael’s handbag.

She carried a small clutch purse inside, with a snap, which he unsnapped. In one of the credit card slots he found two key cards for the Downtown Inn. Like most seasoned travelers, she’d gotten two, so she wouldn’t lock herself out on a quick trip to the Coke machine. He took one of them, and put the purse back in the bag.

He got out of the truck, eased the door shut, walked quickly behind the row of lilacs, to the end of the driveway, into the machine shed. Nothing there, either, except one piece of an old hay rake, a rusting fifty-five-gallon drum full of ashes, with two ancient yellow Pennzoil cans sitting on top. They were empty as they always are, with two triangular punch-holes in each of them.

He looked at the weathered boards, then stepped outside, looked in his directory, and called Ma Nobles.

She answered by saying, “Were you following me, Virgie?”

“No, I wasn’t,” Virgil said. “I was actually on my way out to an abandoned farm owned by a guy I’m investigating, which is about a mile on down the highway from where you saw me. On the south side. Got an Edina Realty sign on it. They’re about to burn it down. I was looking at it, and realized the whole thing is made out of the kind of lumber you’re selling.”

“In good shape?”

“Authentic antique shape, but a lot of the boards look solid, like they could be cut and reused. Anyway, I could talk to the owner about giving it to you, free, or almost free, if you’d tell me where I might find a bunch of lumber at the bottom of the river… and how to get it out of there.”

After a long silence, Ma said, “Free, huh?”

“They don’t want to burn it,” Virgil said.

“I’ll take a look at it, and call you,” Ma said.

“I’ll tell you, Ma,” Virgil said. “We got a couple people looking at you real hard. This would be a good way to keep your ass out of jail. And your boy’s, too.”

“I’ll take a look,” she said again, and hung up.

Virgil was walking back up the driveway when the two women came out of the house. Yael shook her head: nothing inside. Virgil told Ellen about Ma Nobles.

“Well, sure, she can have it if she wants it,” Ellen said. “Maybe… for a few dollars.”

“You’d have to work that out with her,” Virgil said, looking up at the house. “But you know, it’s just sort of old and neat. I’d hate to see it go up in flames.”

Virgil gave her Ma Nobles’s phone number, and he and Yael got in his truck. As they backed toward the highway, Yael said, “She knows where her father is.”

“Yeah, I know. The blood.”

Yael nodded: “You told her there was blood on the floor of the house, and she never asked about it. She knows he’s not injured badly, and that he was bleeding in his house. And she did not ask about the artifact.”

“Mmm. I’d hate to put her in jail, though,” Virgil said. “Probably doesn’t want to betray her father, which I can understand.”

“It seems to me, after some discussion and observation, that you do not wish to put anyone in jail.”

“Not true,” Virgil said. “I know about nine people right now that I’d like to put in jail, and who deserve it. Just not anyone you’ve met.”

She asked, “Now what?”