Deep Freeze (Virgil Flowers #10)(15)

Virgil had been there before and he followed the hallway around a corner as the sheriff popped out of his office and stuck out a hand. “Man, am I glad to see you. We gotta figure this thing out right quick. The Chamber of Commerce is all over my butt. Come on back.”

Virgil followed him back to his office, took a chair, and asked, “Who inherits? The husband?”

“Not quite sure. I haven’t seen a will yet. Gina had a sister, but the sister lives in Iowa City with her husband—he’s a doctor—and they were both there in Iowa when Gina went for the swim.”

“They’re out as suspects?”

“Yeah. They came up here—they’re still here, at the Motel 6, waiting to see when they might have a funeral, making arrangements for running the bank . . .”

“Who’s going to do that?”

“Well, Marv Hiners is first vice president over there. He’s iron-clad for Thursday night and Friday—he was up at a Wild game in the Cities with his wife and kids, got back here about noon on Saturday. Anyway, the sister, her name’s Ann Ryan—her husband is Terry Ryan—says they’ll probably sell the bank off to Wells Fargo. Take the cash out. That’s been the plan for a while, she said, so Marv knew he wouldn’t be taking over the place . . .”

“Still could wind up running the bank if Wells keeps him on,” Virgil said.

“Yeah, but he’d be on a branch bank salary. Even if he runs the place, he won’t be getting rich. Besides . . . he was in the Cities. This whole thing doesn’t look like a professional hit, which it would have to be if the Ryans or Hiners paid for it. To me, it looks like a domestic, and the killer tried to hide it.”

“So . . . Justin/Justine?”

Purdy winced and shook his head. “Got no alibi, got nothing. His boyfriend was down in Prairie du Chien that day, taking a cooking class and hanging out. He and Justin/Justine have a new French restaurant. Justin said he was home reading Proust.” He pronounced “Proust” as if it rhymed with “toast.”

“Proust?” Virgil rhymed it with “roost.”

“That’s what he said.”

“I understand he was still talking to Hemming,” Virgil said.

“Oh, yeah, they were still friendly. Gina told me, ‘No harm, no foul.’”

“Was she dating?”

“She’s had some male friends over the years but wasn’t sleeping with any of them—not currently, as far as I can tell. But I wasn’t in charge of watching her, you know?”

“You do know about the B and D bruises?”

“Thurston told me about them. I don’t know what that means. He said they were old, for one thing. And, hell, they were voluntary. I didn’t spend a lot of time worrying about them even if they are real.”

They spent another ten minutes talking over the background. When Virgil asked if the department’s crime scene investigator, whose name was Alewort, had turned anything up, Purdy told him that Alewort was up at St. Mary’s, in the Cities, drying out.

“This is usually our slow season, so it was the best time for him to go,” Purdy said.

“So, basically, you haven’t been able to turn up a lot.”

“That’s not quite true,” Purdy said. “We’ve got a guy who’s trained to fill in for Alewort, though he might not be quite as good as the real thing.” He turned around to his desk and pawed through a rubble of paper, finally coming up with a single yellow sheet torn from a legal pad.

“When Gina was found, she was wearing a dressy outfit, matching burgundy-colored skirt and jacket with a pinkish blouse. On Thursday night, she had a meeting at her house, to work with a committee that’s setting up the Twenty-fifth Reunion of the Trippton High School Class of ’92. There were eight people there, besides her, and all eight say she was wearing that same outfit. She didn’t show up for work on Friday, so we all think she was killed Thursday night before she had a chance to change clothes.”

Virgil said, “Okay, I can use that.”

Purdy held up a finger. “Furthermore, our investigator found a spot of blood on the carpet in the living room. Not much of a spot, but enough that it wasn’t a casual cut. We’ve taken samples and sent it off to the lab to make sure it’s human, but I’m betting it is. So, she was killed at home, Thursday night, after that meeting.”

“You’ve checked all the people at the meeting?”

“Sort of.”

“Sort of?”

“One thing we know is, the last three people who were there all left together. Of course, any of them could have gone back,” Purdy said. “But it’s also possible it’s a total outsider.”

“Anyone in particular look good?”

“I haven’t pushed that aspect of it,” Purdy confessed. “Soon as we pulled her out of the water, I called your folks up at the BCA and asked for help. Even if one of these people is the killer, I’d have to piss off seven innocent people to find that out. I knew you were coming, so I decided to leave the pushing to you. And the pissing off.”

Virgil nodded. He dealt with local sheriffs all the time, and what Purdy told him wasn’t unusual, although it wasn’t usually stated quite so bluntly. “All right. I can push.”