“Never asked. If I had, she’d have told me to get lost,” Brown said. “She was also too old for me. My date line is moving up, but, right now, it’s twenty-one.”
“Really?” Virgil said. “Mine’s thirty, and I’m six years younger than you are. I mean, if I were out dating.”
“You lack ambition, Virgil, you really do. If I was your age, my date line would be seventeen,” Brown said.
“Couldn’t do that,” Virgil said. “She’d be listening to bands like Scouting for Girls.” He shivered.
“There is that,” Brown admitted. “The last chick I dated didn’t know who the Eagles were. But Gina Hemming? No. Nope. No way. The chemicals were all wrong. You ought to check out David Birkmann. He was there that night and he’s been in love with Gina since forever.”
“Really? David Birkmann? I interviewed him, and he seemed all shook up by her death. You think he’d hurt her?” Virgil asked.
“Oh, jeez, I don’t want you to think that,” Brown said. “I mean, I spoke out of turn right there. Bug Boy’s always been in love with her, but he’s always been, well, Bug Boy. He had less chance with her than I did and he knew it.”
“Still...”
“If he’d gotten physical with her, she’d have stuck her hand down his throat, grabbed his nuts, and pulled them out his face. David was not an athlete. He was the class clown, for Christ’s sakes.”
“Class clown... There could have been a lot of resentment built up there,” Virgil suggested.
“You’ve been watching too many chick flicks, man,” Brown said. And, “Listen, I heard that Corbel Cain got in some kind of fight at Ryan Harney’s place last night, and it was about Gina. Is that right?”
“Right enough, I guess,” Virgil said.
“I kicked Corbel out of here last night, cut him off. Didn’t see the Harney thing coming, though.”
“Probably wasn’t drunk enough at that stage,” Virgil said.“Corbel says they took a bottle of vodka with them, out on the river, and that’s where they decided to go interrogate Harney.”
“I heard Harney kicked his ass.”
“Mostly Mrs. Harney, but, yeah, Corbel and his pal didn’t do well. That Denwa guy lost about five teeth.”
“Denwa is a piece of work. Somebody ought to get a court order to keep those two apart,” Brown said. He glanced at his watch. “Say, it’s after six. You wanna get a drink somewhere? Like here?”
He wasn’t a nope, but he gave Virgil so many names of patrons who’d seen him behind the bar on Thursday that he thought Brown probably hadn’t done it.
—
Virgil left the bowling alley and drove up to Johnson Johnson’s place in the woods, a sprawling, self-designed ranch-style house. Johnson explained that when he designed it, he’d forgotten a few things, which had to be added, and then when he hooked up with Clarice she’d wanted a few more things—like a big bathroom off the bedroom. The result looked like a collection of children’s blocks laid out on rug, but giant-sized.
There was a barn out back for Clarice’s horses, which she trained and endurance-raced, and an addition to the barn, which housed Johnson’s collection of vehicles.
When Virgil arrived, Clarice was ready to shove the lasagna in the oven.
They ate and drank a bottle of red wine—Johnson was only allowed his single glass—and talked about the Hemming murder and the hunt for Jesse McGovern, about movies and possible summer fishing trips, and the past deer season and the possibility thatwhitetails from Wisconsin would cross the frozen Mississippi and spread chronic wasting disease into Minnesota, and how Clarice wanted to go to Palm Springs, California, at the end of the month, and possible alternatives to that, and about flying the Beaver back from Seattle.
They were having such a good time that when Virgil’s phone rang and he saw that it was Jeff Purdy calling, he hated to answer. He did anyway.
“Jeff, goddamnit...”
“I’m sorry, Virgil, but something awful has happened,” Purdy said. “Somebody shot and killed Margot Moore.”
“What!”
“Yup. Right in her front room, while two of her friends were sitting in the kitchen at the Scrabble board. I think you better get down here.”
“I’m on my way,” Virgil said. “I’ll be ten minutes. Gimme the address.” He wrote the address on a notepad that Johnson handed him. “Listen, Jeff. Keep your crime scene guy out of there.”
Clarice, her eyes wide knowing the news would be bad, asked as soon as he’d hung up, “What happened?”
