Deep Freeze (Virgil Flowers #10)(11)

“Everybody in town know that?” Virgil asked.

“Yup, I think so,” Clarice said. “The tip-off came when Justine got publicly lovey-dovey with another guy, Rob. Hot Latin type. I don’t know his last name. Something not Latin.”

“Anyway,” Johnson continued, “word got around that they could force a sale and were planning to buy it themselves and sell it off as hunting parcels. Got some nice whitetails in there, a few birds, woodcock, ruffed grouse. Like that. Anyway, I heard about it, slipped in and made a deal with the Masons . . . Besides the whitetails, there’s some great old walnut in there, and lots of good maple and oak. I covered the mortgage and gave them a down payment on a contract for deed. And I get to select-cut. As part of the deal, they get to stay put and pay nothing but taxes. And when the last one croaks or moves to the nursing home, I pay the rest of the purchase price to their kids and take possession. We both got a good deal.”

“And that pissed off Hemming?”

“Yeah. She got up in Clarice’s face down at Dunkin’ Donuts. So the next time I saw her, I gave her a piece of my mind,” Johnson said.

“Called her a money-chokin’ bitch on wheels, is what he did,” Clarice said. “That’s a quote. Since he said it in the coffee shop, a lot of people heard him.”

“Okay, so Johnson’s a suspect,” Virgil said. He yawned and stretched, and asked Clarice, “You think he could handle hard time?”

“Probably. I could run the business while he was gone and we’d get rich. And we wouldn’t go wasting money on shit like airplanes,” Clarice said.

Virgil looked at Johnson: “My God, Johnson, tell me it’s not true . . .”

—

Johnson told him about the airplane, a single-engine Beaver, currently being refurbished in Seattle. “When I go pick it up in the spring, I want you to come along,” he told Virgil. “Help me bring it back across the Rockies.”

“Sure . . . when monkeys fly out of my ass,” Virgil said. “You already crashed two planes—”

“Not ‘crashes,’ they were ‘forced landings,’” Johnson insisted. “When I get the Beaver down here, I can run us up to Lake of the Woods on weekends . . .”

“Flying monkeys,” Virgil said.

—

They ate the sweet corn, which wasn’t as good as Midwestern sweet corn but was a lot better than no sweet corn at all, and the pheasant stew was perfect, a Northern Prairie equivalent to a Biloxi seafood gumbo. They were cleaning up the dishes, still talking about the Beaver and catching up with recent history, when Virgil took a call from the private detective.

“I can’t find this Johnson place,” she said. “I’ve been driving up and down the highway.”

“If you start at the Big Bill Boozy liquor store in Trippton and drive exactly one half mile north, you’ll go around a curve and see a fake yellow highway sign that says ‘Raccoon Crossing’ with the silhouette of a raccoon on it,” Virgil said.

“I’ve seen that,” the woman said. She had a husky voice like she’d smoked too many unfiltered Camels.

“That’s the entrance to Johnson’s driveway,” Virgil said. “We’re down here, washing dishes.”

“Five minutes,” she said.

Virgil had explained about the detective during dinner, and Johnson now asked, “You want some privacy for this talk?”

“No. I don’t want to talk to her at all,” Virgil said. “What I want to do is find Hemming’s killer, drop his ass in jail, and go home.”

—

They were still talking about nothing, still catching up, when headlights swept across the kitchen windows and Clarice said, “Here she is.” A moment later, the woman knocked once on the door and pushed through, carrying an oversized brown briefcase, and said to Johnson, “I’m Margaret S. Griffin. I hope you’re Virgil Flowers.”

Johnson said, “Yes, I am. These are my friends Johnson Johnson and his illicit lover, Clarice—”

“Shut up, Johnson,” Clarice said. She pointed at Virgil, who was drying a plate with a dish towel, and said, “This is Virgil. The big lug is Johnson. I’m Clarice. You want a beer? Or hot cider?”

“I’d kill for a cider,” the woman said. She pulled off a knitted ski hat and unbuttoned her parka, which looked about two hours old. She was tall and solidly built, in her late thirties or early forties. She had dark brown hair with a flamed tint the color of an international orange life jacket. Striking, with a Mediterranean complexion, dark eyes and eyebrows. Gold nose ring, a short white scar on her chin. She was wearing skinny jeans, a wool turtleneck sweater, and on her feet the worst possible winter shoes, thin-soled flats.

Clarice picked up on that and asked, “Where’re you from?”

“Los Angeles,” Griffin said. She took the unoccupied kitchen chair and dropped into it. “I haven’t been this cold since . . . I’ve never been this cold. My butt feels like an ice cube, my toes are freezing off . . .”

“If you’re gonna be around here, honey, you’ll need some different shoes—and I mean like right now—or you could lose those toes,” Clarice said. “When you’re done with Virgil, I’ll tell you where you can get some.”