“What kind of opportunities?”
“Investments... moving out of Trippton. She has a condo down in Naples, Florida... If she hadn’t gotten involved with this reunion thing, she’d have been down there right now and would still be alive,” Moore said. “Anyway, she’d talked about moving down there, about the opportunities to meet eligible men. Not many of those in Trippton. Not desirable ones anyway.”
“Huh. I’ve been told that her sister will probably sell out. Should I be looking at one of the other stockholders who might have been anxious to move the sale along?” Virgil asked.
“Nah. The biggest of them has maybe a quarter million in stock. He might get three hundred thousand if Wells or U.S. Bank bought them out, and that’s before taxes. After taxes, the buyout would net him less than an additional forty thousand, more than he’d get from a private buyer. I know him and he doesn’t need the money.”
“No boyfriend that you know of, or will admit to, and not a stockholder. Who, then?”
“I don’t know enough about the murder—only rumors. Tell me about it,” she said.
Virgil told her about it—everything he had. When she’d heard him out, she said, “You know I was at the meeting the night she disappeared.”
“Yes. I have your name on a list. Most Athletic Girl.”
“I’ve been thinking about the people at the meeting and there’s not a single one of them that I’d suspect of killing her. If she was killed that night—”
“She almost certainly was,” Virgil said.
“—it was somebody who showed up later.”
“That doesn’t help much,” Virgil said.
She shrugged. “That’s the way it is.”
When Virgil got up to leave, he said, “I’ll tell you, Margot, I believe you’re lying about knowing her B and D friend.” She opened her mouth to protest, but Virgil held up a hand. “I’m not going to argue about it because I’ve got no proof. If you deliberately withhold information I need to conduct this investigation, you could find yourself with deep legal problems. If the killer knows that you know about him... you could be in even more trouble.”
She said nothing for a moment, then asked, “Do you have a card?”
“Yes.” He fished one out of a pocket, wrote his cell number on the back of it, and said, “The sooner you call, the better. Don’t wait until it’s toolate.”
TWELVELucy Cheever was standing in the glass cage of the manager’s office at Cheever Chevrolet when Virgil went by on his way to interview Hiners at the bank. She recognized his 4Runner because, for one thing, it was probably the only 4Runner in town.
“There goes Virgil Flowers. I wonder what he’s finding out?”
Elroy Cheever sat behind a wide metal desk, going through a stack of invoices. He was a big man, easily large enough to carry a hundred-and-fifty-pound woman down to the effluent outflow and throw her in. He also had a ferocious five o’clock shadow, even early in the morning. When put together with his large square jaw, he looked like an enforcer for the mob.
“Nothing about us,” Elroy Cheever said.
“He might think it’s suspicious that Gina Hemming looked like she was going to turn us down for a business loan and, two minutes later, she gets killed,” Lucy Cheever said. She chewed on her lip for a moment, then said, “Wonder if she told Marv Hiners? Marv all but said we were clear for it.”
“Don’t think she would have had time,” Elroy Cheever said. “He was up in the Cities at a hockey game. Technically, she hadn’t turned us down yet.”
“Marv might give it to us if he’s running things now.”
“Lot of money,” Elroy Cheever said. “Makes me nervous.”
“Shouldn’t,” Lucy Cheever said. She had the money brain in the business; Elroy was sales, and was good at it. “The question is, should we go talk to Marv now? That might make him suspicious. Especially if they’d talked. Might make Virgil Flowers suspicious of us.”
“Maybe we ought to go back to the Wells guy in Rochester.”
“It’ll cost a percentage point, maybe a point and a half,” Lucy Cheever said. “God, I don’t know. A million dollars...”
“Lot of money,” Elroy said again.
“If we get it, we’ve got Trippton cornered. Heck, we’ve got the whole Minnesota side from La Crescent down to the Iowa line. Dodge will be gone in a year; they’re having a hard time selling a truck anymore. If only that bitch hadn’t turned us down...”
“You know what? Flowers is going to suspect that one of us killed Gina. Because of all the money.”
