Rough Country (8 page)

Mann scratched his head. I don't know. For a while, probably. I don't know who gets her stock, now. Her parents are still alive, I think. . . .

They are, Davies said. I won't get a thing. Not a thing.

She didn't leave you anything in her will? Mann asked her.

I don't think she had a will, Davies said. She was pretty sure she'd live forever.

She had a will somewhere, Harcourt said. She was too . . . not calculating, but rational . . . not to have a will.

Oh, for Christ's sakes, Lawrence, the woman was calculating, Mann snapped. To Virgil: They called her the SST at the office. Stainless Steel Twat.

Virgil asked Mann, with a smile, So . . . were you on the list? To be fired?

Oh, fuck no, Mann said. She went out of her way to let me know that.

Barney runs our major accounts and they're pretty happy with him. If he were to leave, he might take some of them with him, Harcourt said. He added, I had reason to believe that Erica was planning to offer him a partnership. Or a share.

Mann cocked his head. Really? Well, that's a shot in the ass.

Virgil threw his hands up. So? What happens now? With the agency?

Mann and Harcourt looked at each other, then Mann turned back and said, I don't know.

Harcourt said to Mann, We need to make arrangements here and get back to the Cities. We need a board meeting. Immediately. We have to have a new management in place by Monday, before the clients start calling.

What's going to happen to me? Davies asked. What's going to happen?

Again, Harcourt and Mann looked at each other. Neither one said, I don't know, but Virgil could see it in their faces; and so could Davies.

VIRGIL GOT OUT his notebook and jotted down a few thoughts, then talked to Harcourt, Mann, and Davies individually. Harcourt and Mann both said that they'd been in the Cities the day before, and gave Virgil a list of people they'd seen during the day. Unless one of them was telling a desperate lie, the alibis would eliminate them as the killer, because the Cities were simply too far away to get back and forth easily.

Davies, on the other hand, had no alibi. She'd been sick the morning before, she said, and when she finally got out of bed, it was almost noon. She went grocery shopping at a chain supermarket where they'd be unlikely to remember having seen her. Still feeling logy I think I ate something bad she'd spent the day cleaning, watching a movie on DVD, and then had gone to bed early, with a book. Neither a DVD nor a book would leave an electronic trace.

She picked up on the direction of the questioning and protested, I wouldn't ever do anything to hurt Erica I love Erica. She was the love of my life. We've been together for six years. . . . I don't know anything about guns. I've never been here. I didn't even know exactly where it was. . . .

Did you or Erica have outside relationships? Was your relationship, uh, an open relationship?

No. No, it wasn't open, she said. I mean, back at the beginning, we both were dating other people simultaneously, if you see what I mean . . .

I know what you mean, Virgil said.

. . . but once I moved in, we were committed.

Virgil nodded. Okay. I believe you when you say you wouldn't want to hurt Erica, but I had to ask you know, if there had been another person, if there was a sexual tension, if she'd started pulling away from the other person, to stay with you.

Why wouldn't the other person have shot me? Davies said. Why would you shoot the one you want?

Because you shoot the one who rejects you, Virgil said. Hell hath no fury . . .

Davies slumped. Oh, God. You know, there might have been one fling. She might have had one relationship, but she broke it off a year ago.

With who?

She shrugged. I don't know. I was afraid to ask. I was afraid if I asked, it would precipitate something. Instead, I just went out of my way to . . . attach myself more firmly.

You must at least suspect a person, a name . . .

She said, Look. I only suspect a relationship. I'm not even sure there was one. It could have been a bad time at work. We didn't talk about her work. She didn't want to. Our relationship was her way of getting away from work. So it's possible that what I thought was a distracting relationship was actually something else. So, no. I don't have a name. Or a suspect.

SHE LOOKED SO TIRED and beat-up that Virgil let her go. Mann and Harcourt had gone with Margery Stanhope to call the funeral home, to see if the body had already been shipped to the medical examiner at Ramsey County, or if further arrangements had to be made. Virgil lingered down the hall from Stanhope's office until he saw Mann emerge, turn away, and head toward the front of the lodge. He caught him just as Mann stepped into the bar.

Mr. Mann . . .

Mann looked back over his shoulder, then nodded to the bar. I need a drink.

At the bar, the bartender looked at him and said, Sir, this bar is basically ladies only

Just give me a goddamn drink, honey, Mann said.

Sir Still apologetic.

Mann cut her off: I came up here to take care of Erica McDill. If you don't give me a drink, I'll sue you for discrimination in so many different directions that you'll be an old woman before you get out of court. A martini, a double, two olives, and I want to see you make it and I don't want to see you spit in it, because then I'd have to throw you out the fuckin' window.

Relax, Virgil said. The bartender, anger on her face, stepped away, picked up a shaker, and scooped up some ice.

Relax, my ass. As soon as I get a couple drinks under my belt, I'm gonna go rent a car, and me and Harcourt are headed back to the Cities, Mann said. What a waste of time. What are we doing up here? We need to be down there.

You'll take Miss Davies with you?

Yeah, I guess, if she wants to go, Mann said. He watched as the bartender finished making the drink. But she's sort of a prune.

The bartender pushed the martini across the bar and said, Choke on it, motherfucker.

Mann grinned at her, then at Virgil, said, They got a tough brand of bartender up here. He sipped the drink. Make a pretty good martini, though. He'd put a ten on the bar, and the bartender slapped five dollars back in change. He pushed it into the bar gutter as a tip.

The bartender, a bottle-redhead with dark-penciled eyebrows, with a name tag that said Kara, looked at the money, then at Virgil, and said, You're the police officer. People said it was the surfer-looking guy.

Yes, Virgil said.

Mann looked him over and said, You are sort of surfer-looking.

Cute, for a cop, the bartender said, softening a bit on Mann.

He is cute, Mann said. I'd fuck him myself, if I were gay.

Guys, Virgil said. Shut up.

The bartender looked at him for a beat, then another, then made a tiny dip of her head toward the back of the bar, and wandered away. Mann had been concentrating on his drink, said, What a day.

When you're on the way back, and I expect either Miss Davies or Mr. Harcourt will be driving, because you'll have done this drinking . . .

Mann grinned again and said, You're an optimist, son.

. . . so when you're on the way back, make up a list of the people who would have been fired. Especially the ones who'd be most bitter, and the women.

You really think a woman did it?

At this point, it's the best bet, Virgil said. Though I take you seriously about those people down at the agency. I've been thinking about it, and looking at Google Earth, and the maps, and the fact that people down at the agency knew where Erica was going, and when, and she probably talked about what she did up here. I've recalculated. It might be fifty-fifty on whether the killer was from up here or down there.

You think? Mann sucked the life out of an olive, then popped it into his mouth.

Which brings me to ask, who did McDill have that affair with, last year? Ended about a year ago. Somebody at the agency?

There was about one long suck of alcohol left in the martini glass, and Mann paused with the rim of the glass an inch from his lip, stared straight ahead for a minute, thinking, then turned to Virgil and said, So . . . Ruth knew about it, huh?

Wasn't a guess: he'd figured out where Virgil had gotten the information. Smart guy. She did, Virgil said. But she doesn't know who it was.

Abby Sexton, editor at a specialty home-furnishings magazine down in the Cities, Mann said. She never worked at the agency, but her husband does.

Her husband. Okay. Was he gonna get fired?

That's possible. The word was, Erica would have left Ruth for Abby, but Abby sort of blew her off. Had her little fling, went back to Mark, and promptly got pregnant. Erica was really hosed about the pregnancy. That was one thing that Erica couldn't have given Abby. Anyway, Mark's an account guy. He's okay, not great. Firing him would have been a nice little piece of revenge, what with them having the new kid. Magazines don't pay enough to feed a canary.

Kara the bartender was at the far end of the bar, and Mann held up another finger. She rolled her eyes and started putting together another drink.

Virgil took out his notebook, wrote Abby Sexton in it, asked, What magazine was that?

Mann said, Craftsman Ceramics, something like that. They specialize in Arts and Crafts tile and pottery and so on.

You're a smart guy, Virgil said. What else should I know?

I don't know. The Abby thing hadn't occurred to me, because I don't think like a cop. But I do take this hard, this murder. If I think of anything, I'll call you.

Virgil nodded and said, Thanks and I'll give you a call tomorrow morning about that list. If you could get me a phone number for Abby Sexton, that'd be a bonus. He caught the eye of the bartender, drifted out of the bar, turned left, and walked down toward the restrooms.

THE BARTENDER pushed through the back door a moment later, stepped close, and said, You could lose me this job, and there aren't any more jobs like it. Not around here. So, I'd appreciate it if . . . you know.

Virgil nodded. He was like the Associated Press lots of sources, all anonymous.

I saw you with Zoe, getting in her car, Kara said. You know she's gay?

Yeah.

Well, the thing is, I like her fine I'm straight, by the way but I thought you should know that Zoe has had two short, mmm, involvements, with a girl named Wendy Ashbach, who's a country singer down in Grand Rapids.

Sings at the Wild Goose, Virgil said.

She nodded. Zoe told you? Anyway, Wendy has this longtime girlfriend named Berni Kelly . . .

The drummer?

Yes. You know, you're smarter than you look, picking up all this stuff.

Thanks, I guess, Virgil said. So there's a love triangle with Zoe and Berni and Wendy.

Up until night before last, Kara said. Then it became a rectangle. Or a pentagon.

Yeah?

There were some women in here late, getting loaded. My deal is, I stay until they leave. So I got out of here late and walked down to my car when I saw Miz McDill's car pull into the parking lot. They didn't see me, I was down at the far end of the lot, where the employees park. Miz McDill and Wendy Ashbach get out of the car and walk around to the end of it, and Miz McDill throws a lip-lock on Wendy and Wendy gives it right back to her. So they're fooling around for a minute, which made me kinda hot, I gotta admit, and then they go sneaking off through the dark, toward Miz McDill's cabin. I don't know what happened the next morning, or if they snuck out early, or what.

You didn't mention this to anyone? Virgil asked.

No, but if somebody saw them the next morning, the word would have gotten around, Kara said. A lot of the lesbos know Wendy, and they know she's hot and likes girls, and if McDill got her in the sack, everybody would have been interested.