Deep Freeze (Virgil Flowers #10)(10)

As they were finishing the conversation, Duncan dropped his voice and said, “Virgil, when you’re all done and back home, take a whole week off. I will not tell a single person. That’s two days to make up for lost vacation, plus three days. If you work overtime in Trippton, put in for it. Is that fair or what?”

“That depends on what kind of goddamn sinkhole you’ve thrown me into with this Griffin woman,” Virgil said. “I know something’s up. I can smell it from here. I might be talking to you about a couple of weeks off even if I don’t get shot or something.”

“We can talk about it,” Duncan had said. Then, after promising to give Virgil’s phone number to Griffin and arranging for her to meet Virgil at Johnson Johnson’s cabin, he’d hung up.





FIVE Virgil and his fishing buddy, Johnson Johnson, had met while playing baseball for the University of Minnesota. Virgil had been at third base while Johnson was a catcher. Johnson had been given his unusual first name by his father, Big Johnson, an outboard motor enthusiast who’d named both of his sons after his favorite outboards, Johnson and Mercury.

“He liked to have a few drinks after his babies were born,” Johnson said. “That’s when he’d think up the names.”

Johnson Johnson was tall and heavily built, like a proper catcher, and ran a hardwood lumber mill in the hills west of town. He’d once chivvied Virgil into Trippton to investigate a rash of dog thefts.

In the course of that investigation, Virgil had broken the dog theft ring and had uncovered both a major meth mill and a murderous conspiracy run by the local school board. The school board and the local newspaper editor were serving thirty-year, no parole sentences at two different penitentiaries, and two other accessories were serving shorter sentences. He’d also acquired Honus the Dog.

Because of that investigation and the prosecution that followed, Virgil was well known to Trippton and Trippton was reasonably well known to him. All of which made him wary of the whole private investigator problem.

What in God’s name had the town gotten up to to attract a private eye from Los Angeles in the middle of the winter?

—

Johnson Johnson’s cabin fronted a backwater of the Mississippi, with a channel that led north to the main stream. That arrangement gave Johnson both immediate access to the water and also protection from the waves generated by the tow boats that pushed barges up and down the river during the open-water months.

The driveway into the cabin had been neatly plowed, and Johnson’s truck sat parked in a clearing on the right side of the structure. Virgil parked beside it, got his bag and his shotgun, locked the 4Runner, and trudged up the steps to the front door. A sharp wind was blowing in from the northeast, which must have put the windchill in the minus numbers. When he opened the front door, he walked into a wave of heat that pushed at him like a warm mink muff.

Johnson and his girlfriend, Clarice, were standing at the kitchen sink, shucking sweet corn.

Johnson said, “Hey, man,” and Clarice said, “Hi, Virgie,” and Virgil asked, “Where in the heck did you get that corn?”

“Picked this morning in Florida, flown straight into La Crosse by my old buddy Hank Johnson. He brings some every time he comes back,” Johnson Johnson said. “We’re having pheasant stew and sweet corn.”

“He a relation?” Virgil asked, dumping his bag and shotgun next to the couch.

Johnson frowned. “Why would he be?”

“You’re both Johnsons,” Virgil said. “And he has an airplane.”

“Virgil, every third person on the river is named Johnson.”

“There is that,” Virgil said. He slipped his hand around Clarice’s waist and said, “How about a kiss, sugar bun?”

She kissed him on the lips and said, “Maybe I’ll come back after Johnson’s asleep.” She was a pleasant but tough-looking blonde who could more than hold her own with Johnson.

“I sleep with one eye open,” Johnson said. And, “Tell us who murdered Gina Hemming.”

“I do want to hear about that,” Clarice said. “It was quite the shock.”

“Give me a week,” Virgil said. “Then I’ll tell you. In the meantime, you guys are big gossips . . . What have you heard?”

“I’m not a gossip,” Clarice said. “Johnson is, of course. I try to weed out the ridiculous bullshit he picks up, but even after that, I can tell you, there are still a whole bunch of suspects. Everybody’s pointing a finger at somebody else, so almost everybody in town has been pointed at. Including Johnson and me.”

“Really?” Virgil said. “You didn’t do it, did you?”

“Not that I recall,” Johnson said. “Maybe Clarice did. I can’t speak for her.”

“Why you guys?”

“Well, hmm. See, there’s this old couple, the Masons, retired twenty years ago, got some nice timber land up on the bluffs, mortgage with Second National with ten years to run,” Johnson said. “They missed some payments—one of their daughters said they were getting forgetful, another one said they might not have the money—and the bank was talking about foreclosing. Word kind of got around that Gina and her husband, Justine . . .”

Clarice jumped in. “Used to be Justin. Soon to be her ex-husband.”