McDill did like to go to the Wild Goose.
“Was she gay?”
“Mmm-hmm,” Stanhope said, nodding. “She was, but she really didn’t come up here for romance. She has a life partner down in the Cities—she’s been notified, she should be coming up—but Erica really came up here to get away. To think. To relax a little bit. She was one of the girls who sometimes drank too much. I mean, not crazy, but she wouldn’t be your designated driver down to the Goose.”
“I want you to believe that I don’t have a problem with gay women,” Virgil said, “but I’ve got to ask: as far as you know, was she involved in any kind of stressful sexual entanglement?”
Stanhope shook her head: “Not as far as I know.”
“No kind of sexual competition with another woman up here?”
“I don’t think so. She’d been up here for a week, she was going to be here for one more week. She was participating, yoga in the morning, nature hikes and boating in the morning and afternoon, but I didn’t see her pairing off with anyone.” She put her hands to her temples, pressing. “I can’t figure it out. Believe me, if I had any idea of what happened, I would tell you in an instant. But I didn’t see anything.”
“Okay. Have you ever had anybody die here?”
She nodded. “Twice. One woman actually came here to die—she loved nature, she loved the place. It was in the fall, after we were pretty much closed down, and we’d wheel her out on the deck so she could see the lake. Then she died, from pancreatic cancer. We had another woman who had a heart attack, this was four or five years ago. We actually got her to the hospital alive, but she died there.”
They talked for a few more minutes, but Stanhope seemed befuddled by the killing. Her confusion was genuine, Virgil thought: it was too muddled to be faked.
Last question: “Who was that checking out when I was coming in?”
“Dorothy Killian from Rochester,” Stanhope said. “She was scheduled to leave. I don’t think you’d be interested in her, but what do I know? She’s seventy-four. She’s on some kind of art board down in Rochester and they have a meeting tomorrow afternoon, so she had to go.”
“Okay. Well, let me spend a few minutes here in the cabin, and then we’ll need to lock it up again, until the crime-scene crew can go through it,” Virgil said.
Stanhope stood up, sighed, and said, “What a tragedy. She was so young, and active. Smart.”
“Well liked?”
Stanhope smiled and said, “Well, she was well liked by the kind of people who’d like her, if you know what I mean. She didn’t take any prisoners. So, she put some people off. But anybody who’s successful is going to get that.”
VIRGIL SPENT TEN MINUTES in the cabin, giving it a quick but thorough going-over.
McDill had brought up two large suitcases. One was empty, with the clothing distributed between a closet and a chest of drawers. The other was still partly full—a plastic bag with dirty clothes, and other bags and cases with personal items, perfume, grooming equipment. None of the clothes, either clean or dirty, had paper in the pockets.
Her purse contained a thin wallet, with a bit more than eight hundred dollars in cash. A Wells Fargo envelope hidden in a concealed compartment had another three thousand. He went through the wallet paper: a new Minnesota fishing license, bought just before she came up to the lodge, insurance cards, frequent flyer card from Northwest, five credit cards—he made a note to check her balances, and her finances in general—a card from Mercedes-Benz for roadside emergency service, and membership cards from a bunch of art museums, including the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Walker Art Center, the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, the Art Institute of Chicago.
An art lover.
Tucked in with the other cards, he found a folded-over paper, and when he opened it, a lipstick impression of a woman’s lips . . . nothing else. He put the card on the dresser. Interesting.
She had a digital camera; he turned it on and paged through two dozen photos. Most were shots around the lake, but a half-dozen had been taken in a bar, women having a good time, getting loud, like women do when they’re loose and safe in a group of friends.
He took the SD card: he’d read the card into his own computer. He put the camera back on the dresser, next to the card. Picked up her keys, including a big black electronic key with a Mercedes-Benz emblem, and dropped them in his pocket.
The computer was password protected. He tried a few easy work-arounds, then decided to leave it to the crime-scene guys.
McDill’s cell phone was sitting on the desk next to the computer. He brought it up and found three dozen calls made in the past week, the week she was at the lodge, mostly to one number in the Cities, a 612 area code, which was downtown Minneapolis—the agency?—and several others, both incoming and outgoing, to a separate number with a 952 area code.
He checked her driver’s license. She lived in Edina, which would be right for 952, Virgil thought. So, home and office. He took out his pad and jotted down all the numbers she’d called while at the lodge, and all the incoming calls. Nothing local.
Thought about local and picked up the phone on the desk and got a dial tone. All right; she had a direct dial phone. He would have to get those calls from the phone company. . . .
After a last look-around, he wrote a quick note to crime scene, explaining the lipstick card and the cardless camera, and left it on the chest of drawers.
He wrote, DNA on the lipstick? What do you think?
4
VIRGIL WALKED BACK to the lodge, nodding to a couple of women along the way, picked up his duffel bag, found Margery Stanhope, and asked, “Have you heard anything from Miss McDill’s friends?”
“They called from the air. They decided to fly up, which wound up taking longer than driving would have.”
“Maybe I’ll see them at the airport?”
She shook her head. “No. One of the things that took so long is that they apparently had the impression that we’re way deep in the woods. They got a floatplane out of St. Paul; they’ll be coming straight into the lake.”
Virgil looked out at the lake, which was not an especially large one, a couple of thousand acres at most, cluttered with islands. Pretty, but not exactly a landing strip. “You land floatplanes?”
“From time to time,” she said. “It annoys people—one cranky old man in particular, who’ll be calling me tonight and the county commissioners tomorrow.”
“All right. Well, if I can find your accountant . . .”
“She’s down at the shed—you get there through the parking lot.”
“I saw it. Okay: I’ll see you later. I’ll want to talk to Miss McDill’s friends,” Virgil said.
“You find out anything?”
“Maybe,” Virgil said, going for the enigmatic smile.
ZOE TULL WAS TALKING to a Latino man who’d been working on a gas-powered weed whip, which he’d disassembled on a workbench. She saw Virgil and waved, went back to talking to the Latino. Virgil fished McDill’s keys out of his pocket, pushed the unlock button, and saw the lights flash on a silver SL550.
He popped the driver’s-side door, squatted, and looked inside: car stuff, Kleenex, a cell phone charger plugged into the cigarette lighter, a bottle of Off!, a box of Band-Aids, breath mints, chewing gum, two lipsticks, an ATM receipt that showed a checking account balance of $23,241 at Wells Fargo, pens, pencils, a checkbook, a utility knife, an LED flashlight, two empty Diet Pepsi bottles, a sweater, a cotton jacket, an umbrella, a dozen business cards in a leather case.
He was thinking, What a pile of shit, when Zoe said over his shoulder, “She keeps her car pretty neat.”
Virgil stood up, said, “I was hoping for a blackmail note. You all done?”
“Yes. Getting more numbers.”
Virgil glanced over at the Latino, who’d gone back to working on the weed whip. “He illegal?”
“Would you arrest
him if he was?” she asked.
Virgil laughed. “If I started arresting illegal Mexicans, I wouldn’t have anyplace to eat.”
“Well, he’s not—I think Margery runs a few illegals in and out, paying them off the books, but since Julio’s name was right out there, I wanted to get his green card number,” Zoe said. “That way, the feds’ll think we’re on the up-and-up.”
“I don’t want to disillusion you, but the feds don’t think anybody is on the up-and-up.”
“And they wouldn’t be wrong about that,” she said. “I know a judge who deducted a wife and daughter as dependents for three years after the divorce and they moved to California.”
“He do time?” Virgil asked.
“He never got caught,” she said, adding, “He wasn’t a client of mine. I heard about it from an accountant friend who was reviewing his returns. He was like, ‘Well, I didn’t know.’ Idiot.”
“Seems to be the excuse du jour when you’ve committed a major crime,” Virgil said.
“My,” she said, “he knows French.”
ZOE DROVE A RED HONDA PILOT with a metal file box behind the driver’s seat, and a clutter of empty water bottles and ice cream wrappers in the passenger-side foot well. She put the file folder in the metal box, snatched up the ice cream wrappers and bottles and threw them on the backseat, and they took off.
“So—who did it?” she asked. “Any ideas?”
“Some,” he said. “But let’s not talk about the murder—let’s talk about you. Your life and your boyfriends, and all of that. Say, those are nice shoes. Are they Mephistos?”
She glanced at him, puzzled, and said, “What?”
“Just trying for a little friendly conversation,” Virgil said. Sitting shoulder to shoulder with Zoe, he could smell a floral scent, light and vanilla-y.
“Virgil, are you on drugs? Is this something I should know about?”
“They’re not Mephistos, are they?” She glanced at him again, then lifted her left foot off the floor so he could see the Nike logo. “I wouldn’t know a Mephisto if one bit me on the ass,” she said.
“Now there’s a war crime for you,” Virgil said.
She smiled and said, “Bob Sanders told me that you were sort of full of it.”
“I’m shocked,” Virgil said, the uninterest set deep in his tone. “Shocked.”
“You don’t seem like somebody who would have perpetrated a massacre,” she said.
“I didn’t.”
THEY’D GOTTEN TO THE END of the driveway, and when Virgil looked left, he saw the crime-scene van rolling toward them. He said, “Hold on for a second, will you? I want to see if these guys got anything else.”
He hopped out of the car, and when the van driver saw him, he pulled off onto the shoulder of the road. Mapes climbed out of the passenger seat carrying a small plastic bag, which he handed to Virgil. Virgil held it up to the sky, to get some light on it.
“A .223,” he said. The shell’s brass was still bright.
“Hasn’t been there long—I could still smell the powder burn,” Mapes said. “It was caught in some logs, a couple inches above the water. The shooter couldn’t have looked for it long—it was right there.”
“Off to the right? Like it was thrown out by an autoloader?”
“Ah, yes—off to the right, but the extraction marks look like they came from a bolt action. I’m sending Jim”—he jabbed his thumb back toward the truck—“back to Bemidji with it, see what we can see. The other guys are still working the beaver lodge.”
“Good going, man.”
“Well, it was right there—even you could have found it,” Mapes said. Pause. “Maybe.”
Virgil handed him McDill’s car keys and said, “I knew you were going to insult me, so I carefully contaminated the car. See if you can find something anyway.”
VIRGIL GOT BACK in the Pilot and told Zoe about the shell. “Now all I have to do is find a rifle and some Mephistos, and we’ve got it.”
“You’ll be able to tell the rifle from just one shell?”
“Not me, the lab. But, yup. Extraction marks. And if we’re lucky, she pushed the cartridge down in a magazine with her thumb, and there’ll be a big ol’ thumbprint. Brass takes good prints.”
“Mmm. Well, I for one have no Mephistos,” she said. “Why’d you ask?”
“Because the woman who killed Erica McDill may be local—she knew exactly when and how to get into the pond to catch McDill alone. And she may wear Mephistos.”
“You thought I did it?”
“You’ve been sort of hanging around. A psychopath might do that,” Virgil said.
“I’ve been hanging around because I’m curious,” she said. “Also, I’m not a psychopath. I’m an obsessive-compulsive.”
“That’s what a psychopath would say,” Virgil said. “The case of the curious accountant—a woman for whom blood was just another cocktail.”
She brushed the chatter away, as though it were a fly. “You know for sure it’s a woman?”
“Pretty sure,” he said.
“And local.”
“Possibly. You could make a good argument that it comes from the lodge, too,” Virgil said. “Would you like to suggest a name or two?”
“No, no. But it makes you think,” Zoe said.
“It does make you think,” Virgil agreed.
After a moment, she asked, “Should you be telling me all of this?”
“Why not?” Virgil asked. “I’ve got nothing to hide.”
“Well, God. What if I blabbed to everybody?”
Virgil yawned, tipped his seat back a couple of inches, leaned back, and closed his eyes. “Go ahead,” he said. “I don’t care.”
AT THE AIRPORT, Zoe pointed him at a metal building; inside, he found a guy with a pilot’s hat half asleep on a couch, who got grog gily to his feet and asked, “You the state trooper?”
“Close enough,” Virgil said. He rented a Chevy Trailblazer, got his duffel from Zoe’s car, and threw it in the back of the SUV.
“How come you don’t have a gun?” she asked, through her open car door. “Aren’t cops required to carry guns? I read that somewhere.”
“In my experience, bad things can happen if you carry a handgun,” Virgil said. “For one thing, it causes your shoulder to slope in the direction of the pocket you carry it in. Over the years, that could cause spinal problems.”
“I can’t tell whether this is some hopeless attempt to be charming, or if you’re just being weird,” she said.
“Can you tell me where the Wild Goose is? I want to take a quick look.”
“Well, follow me. I’ll take you over,” Zoe said. “It’s mostly a women’s bar. You might feel a little odd being there by yourself. Lonely.”
THE WILD GOOSE was a mile or so north of the Grand Rapids city limits, a standard North Woods country bar—orange-stained peeled-pine logs set on a rectangular concrete-block foundation, a pea-gravel parking lot, a tin chimney, a low wooden porch outside the front door, and a carved wooden upright black bear guarding the front door, an American flag in its paw.
There were four other cars in the front lot, and two more that Virgil could see around the side. Probably the bartender’s and the cook’s, around to the side—at most country bars, the employees tried to park where their cars wouldn’t get hit by drunks.
Inside, the bar was a little softer than most, with lots of booths and only a few freestanding tables, four stools at the bar, and a small stage on the other side of a dance floor; a jukebox. Three of the booths were occupied by women, two in one, three in another, four in the third. One of the bar stools was occupied by an elderly man who was peering into a half-empty beer glass.
They stopped at the bar, and Zoe said, “Hey, Chuck,” to the bartender, who took a long look at Virgil, not unfriendly, and Zoe ordered a beer and Virgil got a Diet Coke. Zoe asked, eyebrows up, “Little problem with alcohol?”
“No, I just don’t drink much,” Virgil said.
&n
bsp; The old man at the bar said to Virgil, “If you gotta ask, it’s half empty. Not half full.”
“Looks more like four-fifths empty to me, partner,” Virgil said. The drinks came, and they carried them to a booth. Virgil checked out the women, and the bar in general, saw the bartender watching.
“What do you think?” Zoe asked.
“It’s a bar,” he said, smiling. “Must pick up at night—mostly people from Eagle Point?”
“Eagle Nest.”
“Right, Eagle Nest. Mostly women from the Eagle Nest? Or half-and-half with locals, or . . .”
“More locals than Eagle Nest. It’s just that if you’re at the Eagle Nest and you want to get out, you probably come here.”
“Gay or straight?”
“Gay or straight,” Zoe said. “Same with locals—mostly women, gay and straight. They can come down here, do some serious drinking, and not have to put up with being hit on, or pushed around. Chuck keeps all that runnin’ smooth. Most local guys know that this isn’t where they want to go.”
“You come down here?”
“Sure. Like I said, it’s safe and friendly,” she said.
A woman came in the door wearing cutoff jean shorts, a tight halter top, cowboy boots and a cowboy hat, and sunglasses. She was short, but well rounded, with dark hair twisted in a single braid. She had an Andy Warhol “Marilyn” tattoo on one tanned shoulder. She looked around once, scratched herself between her breasts, wandered over to the bar, and asked, “Seen Wendy?”
“Not in yet.”
“Ah, man—we were supposed to meet down at the Schoolhouse,” the woman said. She glanced over at Virgil and Zoe, her gaze lingering on Virgil for a moment, then flicking to Zoe, and her mouth turned down. The two women stared at each other for a moment, then the other woman turned back to the bartender. “We’re working up ‘Lover Do.’ If you see her, tell her we’re down there, waiting.”