Rough country vf-3

by John Sandford

  "Ah, I'm not going to jump in bed with Virgil," Zoe said.

  THEY SAT for another minute, then Stanhope said, "Look me in the eye and tell me you didn't have anything to do with McDill getting shot."

  "Margery!"

  "Well… I wouldn't tell. But you've got this thing about Wendy, and I guess some people at the lodge knew Wendy stayed over with Erica the night before she was shot," Stanhope said. "You could've heard, and I know you can shoot, because I've seen you do it."

  "I didn't shoot Erica McDill," Zoe said.

  "And you didn't have anything to do with Constance…"

  "No! God! Margery!"

  "I'm sorry. I believe you. Even if I didn't… I'd let it go. You're a good person, Zoe."

  "I was down at the U that weekend, with some friends. I didn't even know Constance was dead until I got back up here."

  "I'm sorry," Stanhope said again. "I just…" She rubbed her forehead. "This whole thing…"

  She held up her glass, looking through the cut glass at the ceiling light, and asked, "You got another one of these?"

  WENDY ASHBACH had a new forty-two-inch LCD television and Blu-ray DVD player and she and Berni were halfway through Pretty Woman when her father banged on the trailer door and pulled it open and asked, "Whatcha doing?"

  "Movie," Wendy said, through a mouthful of microwave popcorn. Wendy was lying on the couch, with Berni sitting on the floor, her back to the couch. Her father came in, uninvited, waved at his daughter's legs. Wendy pulled her knees up to make a space at the other end of the couch, and Slibe Ashbach dropped into the opening.

  "What's this shit?" he asked, looking at the TV.

  "Richard Gere and Julia Roberts," Wendy said.

  "Oh, yeah." He stared at it for a minute, then asked, "Doesn't she blow him or something?"

  "You don't see anything," Wendy said. She reached out with the remote and paused the movie. "So what's up with you?"

  "Tell me about the cop," Ashbach said.

  "I only talked to him for five minutes," Wendy said. "He's a cop."

  "What's he think?"

  "He doesn't know what he thinks. Some people think the murder was because McDill was taking over her advertising agency and might fire people; some think it was because of a gay thing at the Eagle Nest, a sex thing. And he wanted to know if it was because of me. I told him it wasn't, and gave him my alibi, and he said he'd check it; which is okay with me."

  Ashbach looked closely at them, at the scratches on Berni's forehead, and Wendy's bruised eye socket, and asked, "What happened to you guys?"

  "Me and Berni got in a fistfight down at the Goose," Wendy said.

  "She slept with McDill, night before last. Night before she got killed," Berni said.

  "What? Does the cop know?"

  "Yeah, he asked me about it, with Berni standing there. That's what set her off," Wendy said. "She hit me right in the eye, before I had a chance to say a thing."

  "Witch. I'm gonna have nightmares, about you and McDill," Berni said.

  "He's talking to Zoe Tull," Wendy said. "They're hanging out."

  "Did you mention Constance Lifry?" Ashbach asked.

  "No way," Wendy said. "Let him find out for himself."

  Ashbach looked at the two of them for a minute, then said, "You didn't say a word."

  Wendy rolled her eyes: "Dad, we're not talking to him. Okay? We said we weren't, and we're not."

  "But you both lie like motherfuckers," he said.

  Berni leaned toward him and asked, "Gee, what's a motherfucker lie like, Mr. Ashbach?"

  Wendy said, "This doesn't have anything to do with us. Lifry was up at the Eagle Nest, like McDill. Another gay murder, if it comes to that."

  "Another gay murder of somebody who was talking about helping the band, which is pretty fuckin' weird, if you ask me," Berni said.

  "I'll tell you what, you little bitch, talking like that… your goddamn alligator mouth could get your butterfly ass in trouble," Ashbach said.

  "Is that right?" Berni asked, staring him down. "I'll tell you what, SA, we just hope the fuck that you didn't have anything to do with those murders. You or the Deuce."

  "Dad, take off, okay?" Wendy said. "Get out of here."

  "Watch your mouths," Ashbach said. He jabbed a finger at Berni. "Watch your mouths." He gave them a last look, turned, and headed out, letting the door slam behind him.

  When he was gone, Berni said to Wendy, "I hope to fuck you didn't have anything to do with McDill."

  Wendy shook her head: "I'm cool," she said.

  "Okay. I'm not so sure about Slibe Two, though," Berni said. "Every time I look at the Deuce, I get the feeling that somebody smacked him on the side of the head with a coal shovel. He ain't right."

  "He wouldn't hurt anybody," Wendy said about her brother. "He's… you have to understand him. He's out there."

  "Watches me. All the time. Creeps me out," Berni said. "I wonder what would happen if I showed him my tits?"

  "Don't do that," Wendy said.

  "Don't worry-I won't." Berni shivered. "He'd probably go off like a bottle rocket. I wonder if he touches himself?"

  Wendy snorted, then said, "You gotta be careful about the way you talk to Dad. You piss him off, he might throw your ass out of here."

  SLIBE II WAS SITTING outside the back window, listening, and thrilled to the fact that they were talking about him. And he had seen Berni's tits, lots of times.

  He had a concrete block that he put down at the end of the trailer, and if he stood on it, he could just get one eye overlapping the screen window. He'd gone in the trailer while they weren't there and bent one blade of the venetian blind, to help things along, and now he spent his evenings with them, watching and listening.

  Berni liked to run around with her shirt open, and sometimes-well, once-without her pants. If he'd missed that… he didn't like to think about it. That was the best thing that had ever happened to him in his entire life. Better than finding his old man's stash of Hustler.

  He didn't know what he'd do for company in the winter, though, and had started worrying about it. Couldn't use his concrete block-they'd see his foot tracks in the snow and figure it out.

  Maybe something good would happen; there was time before the snow started.

  And they were talking about him.

  7

  SUNDAY MORNING, getting up.

  Virgil could always wring a few more hours out of a night if he had to. With four hours in bed, he could make it through the next day, and since most investigations happened during the daylight hours, when other people were available for interviews, the night was available for travel and introspection; and retrospection, as far as that went.

  Virgil left the Wild Goose a little after ten o'clock at night, pulled into his garage in Mankato a few minutes before three o'clock in the morning. He set his alarm for eight, thought about God for a few minutes, and what place McDill's death might have in His Great Scheme-nothing much, he decided-and went to sleep.

  The next morning, he was up before the alarm, threw his clothes in the washing machine, opened the mail, wrote some checks for the bills, moved his clothes to the dryer, and went out to drop the mail, to get breakfast at a Caribou Coffee, to return the rented truck to Avis, and to catch a cab back.

  He got a Star Tribune outside the coffee shop. The McDill story was on the front page, above the fold, with a two-column headline and a photograph. Nothing on the murder, except that it happened, and a few details. The rest was biography and expressions of shock from parents, friends, and business and political associates.

  He had his clothes folded and put away, his working clothes packed, and was on the road in his own truck, pulling his own boat, by nine-thirty. He had taken down Barney Mann's cell phone number the day before, and on the way out of town, headed toward the Cities, rang it. Mann answered on the third ring and Virgil asked, "Had your meeting yet?"

  "It's at one o'clock," Mann said. He sounded tired. "I'm just getting up
and I'm hungover… Are you coming to the meeting?"

  "I don't know-am I invited?"

  "I couldn't speak for the board, but I can tell you, the meeting's in the agency's main presentation room," Mann said. "I can tell them that you invited yourself."

  "Give me the address-I'll see you there. I'd like to get that address and phone number for Mark and Abby Sexton."

  Mann chuckled: "Boy, I'll bet they'll be happy to hear from you. 'Tell me, Mr. and Mrs. Sexton, was there anything about Mrs. Sexton's venture into muff-diving that might have elicited this response?' Like one of those intellectual BBC cop shows, huh?"

  "You got the number?" Virgil asked.

  "Getting my book now," Mann said. "You know what? You gotta loosen up. You strike me as tense."

  Virgil called the Sexton number as he was coming into the Cities. Abby Sexton answered the phone and said, "We read about it at breakfast. This is awful. But why would you want to talk to us?"

  "I'm filling in as much background on Miss McDill as I can. I understand the two of you had a relationship that ended badly."

  "Oh, God, are people still talking about that? Well, come on ahead…"

  The Sextons lived in a big brown-shingled bungalow on a narrow lot, with a garage in back accessed from an alley, in the St. Anthony neighborhood, a nicer residential area of old homes north and east of the Minneapolis downtown. The porch had a swing; a strip garden in front of the porch was divided between flowers on one side, and vegetables on the other, including eggplant. Virgil hated eggplant, even chicken-fried eggplant, and took this as a sign of the Sextons' decadence.

  He clumped up the stairs to the front door and rang the doorbell. Abby Sexton's blue eyes popped up behind the cut-glass diamond in the door, and she pulled it open and asked, "Virgil?"

  She was a dishwater blonde, slender and athletic and pretty, wearing a white long-sleeved blouse with the sleeves pushed up, khaki capri pants, and sandals. Her husband came up behind her as she invited Virgil in: he was a dishwater blond, slender, athletic, and pretty, wearing a blue shirt that vibrated with his blue eyes, and khaki surfer shorts and sandals. He was eating an apple and shook hands with his free hand, and said, "Come on in-should we have our lawyer here?"

  Virgil said, "This is more of an interview than an interrogation. I can't tell you not to get a lawyer, so…"

  "We'll trust you, at least for now," Abby said with a toothy smile. "I might have to run and get the baby now and again. He's in his pen right now, not making a peep."

  They arranged themselves in the front room, Pottery Barn couches and overstuffed chairs with a scattering of antiques and new Stickley-style oak tables and bookcases. Abby Sexton put a plastic box on the table and said, "It's an intercom, so we can hear if the baby cries."

  Virgil didn't quite know how to open the conversation, with Mark Sexton sitting there, and said, "I don't know exactly how to get into this…?"

  "If you're worried about Mark, he knows all about it. He knew about it at the time," Abby Sexton said.

  Mark Sexton nodded; he didn't seem put off.

  "All right," Virgil said. He still felt uncomfortable-this wasn't exactly a country-western scenario. "I've interviewed a number of people, and it's been suggested that the murder may have originated here in the Cities. That Miss McDill was about to get full control of the agency, and that she planned to fire a number of people. I've been told that Mark might have been one of them, not because of job performance but as revenge for… the unpleasantness at the end of your relationship."

  "We didn't know that she'd gotten control of the agency," Mark Sexton said. "I read that in the paper this morning, and called up some other people. One guy had heard rumors, but most of us were clueless. I don't think I would have been fired anyway, because I'm pretty on top of the job. But who knows?"

  "Who heard the rumors?" Virgil asked.

  The two glanced at each other, then Mark shrugged and said, "Barney Mann. He's the creative director for the agency. He's sort of the information central."

  "What was Mr. Mann's attitude toward Miss McDill?" Virgil asked.

  "They got along," Mark Sexton said. "Barney's really good at what he does. So was Erica, in a way. She wasn't any threat to him."

  "Like Hitler," Abby Sexton said. "Good at what she does, if you don't mind working with a Nazi."

  "But you had a relationship with her," Virgil said.

  "That was sex," Abby Sexton said. "Even a Nazi can be good in bed." Mark Sexton smiled indulgently at his wife. Like Ward Cleaver finding out that June had just dropped an oatmeal cookie on the good carpet, Virgil thought.

  He said, "Huh." Virgil didn't like either one of them, and struggled to hide it. "When you and Miss McDill broke up, was there any kind of an aftermath? Did she come around to see you? Were there any threats? Or scenes?"

  "Phone calls. But it was typical breaking-up kind of stuff," Abby Sexton said, wrinkling her nose. "The problem was, she didn't want to share. I mean, she wanted to stay with Ruth while we went out-you know about Ruth?-but she didn't want me with Mark. But I like men and told her I was going to stay with Mark. So then I suggested that we share Mark, that we three get together. But she wasn't into that. She'd be happy enough to share a man, but not an employee, if you can believe that."

  "Huh. So she wasn't strictly gay?"

  "Not strictly-technically a bi, I guess, like Mark and me," she said.

  He digested that for a moment, then smiled at them, apologetically, and asked, "Where were you the evening before last? Here in the Cities?"

  "We got a babysitter, Sandra Oduchenko, who lives down the street, and she came at seven o'clock, and we went out clubbing with some friends," Abby Sexton said. "We are completely alibied, up to our necks. That's why we didn't call a lawyer. Do you want everybody's names?"

  Virgil took the names down, and then asked, "Who do you think did it?"

  Abby Sexton rolled her eyes up and took a deep breath. Her husband deferred to her, and she said, "We definitely think it's possible that it was somebody with the agency. If we had to take a guess-you're not going to tell anybody that we said this, right?-we'd say Ronald Owen."

  Ronald Owen, she said, was in his late fifties and for the past five or ten years, had slipped from being one of the top account managers to being something less than that: the guy who got small stuff, and who no longer did much with it.

  "He burned out," Mark Sexton chipped in. "But he's got kids and alimony and a second wife and he can't afford to quit. The other thing is, he's one of those veteran guys you see around-he was in Vietnam toward the end of the war, and all of that. He's bitter about the way everything turned out. He's also got good sources, so I suspect he knew about McDill taking over. And he hunts. Every year. People kid him about it, but he goes off and shoots antelope in Montana, and deer in Wisconsin. He's really into guns. He's always talking about how the rest of us don't know about real life. He says we get life from Whole Foods. He calls us Whole Foodies."

  They had another suggestion, a John Yao, "An Asian, who's always creeping around. He runs some Asian business accounts, local stuff, Hmong businesses. He's another gun guy. I get a really bad feeling from him," Mark said. They had nothing specific about Yao-no suggestion that he was about to get fired, except that his accounts were "ratshit stuff. Small, insignificant. McDill might have decided to get rid of them."

  VIRGIL BROUGHT THE TALK BACK to the Sexton-McDill relationship. "From what you knew of her, was she sexually predatory? When she was with you, was she drifting away from Ruth, and looking for another long-term relationship? Or was she really going out on the town?"

  "Mmm. She definitely didn't like me leaving-but I think her relationship with Ruth was about done. And I knew that our relationship wouldn't have lasted, and she was smart enough to know that, too."

  "Might there have been another relationship after you? Somebody that Ruth didn't know about?"

  She shook her head: "I don't know. I'd tell you, but I don't know."


  "If she did," Mark said, "it wasn't with anyone associated with the agency. Word would have gotten around-there are no secrets in that place."

  VIRGIL ASKED a few more questions, but basically had written them off as suspects: their alibis would be too easy to check, so he doubted that they'd be lying. He ran out of follow-up questions, asked them for any last thoughts, and stood up.

  As he did, the baby started crying, its voice squeaking out through the intercom.

  "You're up," Abby Sexton said to her husband, and he hurried off. "We try to split the baby chores exactly fifty-fifty," she said.

  She trailed Virgil to the door, and as he went out, he said, "Listen, thank you for your help, and I may get back to you."

  She stepped a foot too close and put a hand on his triceps and said, "Do you do any clubbing? Here in the Cities? I notice you're not wearing a wedding ring."

  "I'm, uh, mostly down south of the Cities," Virgil said, edging away.

  "Well, give us a call if you're in town," she said. "We enjoy creative relationships."

  He bobbed his head and hastened away. Creative relationships, my ass. He really didn't like them-and he really didn't think they were involved in the murder of Erica McDill.

  Ruth Davies? That was a more interesting proposition…

  Virgil glanced back. Abby Sexton was still on her porch, and she waved.

  He waved back, and was gone; and thought to himself, as he turned the corner, Do not imagine Mark Sexton naked in bed.

  NOON. He called Mann from his truck and asked, "How long is that meeting going to last?"

  "I don't know, but it'll be a while. People are freaking out. Everybody'll want to talk for eight minutes, so that'll be an hour and a half of bullshit before we get to the hard stuff."

  "Do you have a number and address for a Ronald Owen?" Virgil asked.

  "Sure. What does Ron have to do with this?"

  "Don't know. I want to ask him," Virgil said.

  "That fuckin' Sexton pointed you at him," Mann said. Not a question. "That little weasel. Listen, I'll vouch for Ron, if that means anything."