Deep Freeze (Virgil Flowers #10)(18)

She nodded and took them back to the topic of Gina Hemming. “Here’s some of the good stuff: before she and Justin separated, Gina had an on-and-off affair with a brute named Corbel Cain.”

Virgil nodded. “Really. C-o-r-b-e-l C-a-i-n?” He wrote it down.

“That’s correct. Corbel is a tough guy. Though not dim. He’s smart enough. I believe I gave him a B-plus in English. He’s a heavy-equipment operator, not somebody that you’d think would be in Gina’s wheelhouse. Corbel and his wife are one of those high school couples that didn’t break up. He married his sweetheart right after graduation, and they’re still married, though he’s beaten her up a few times—enough that his wife’s father once put a shotgun to Corbel’s ear and said if he did it again, he’d blow his head off.”

“You think he would?”

“Yes. Janey Cain is the apple of her father’s eye. Her father is a farmer down south of town, and a man who means what he says,” Anderson said.

Virgil picked up a vibration in her voice, looked at her for several seconds, not responding, sipping on his cocoa. She suddenly blushed and said, “Goddamn you, Flowers.”

“You got this information from your farmer friend, right? Might have had a couple of interesting reunions yourself?”

“Shut up. Anyway, I happen to know that Corbel and Gina had an off-and-on affair for years. I know Corbel drinks and I know that he has a violent streak,” Anderson said. “If you asked me if I thought he did it . . . I would have said yes, before you told me a few minutes ago how she died. To tell you the truth, I can’t see him hitting her with a heavy object. He’d use his fists. He’s been in enough fights over the years that he knows how to channel his anger.”

“When was the last time you think they were . . . seeing each other?”

“It’s probably been a couple of years now. They started and stopped a few times, I believe. They could have started again. Corbel is quite a . . . vigorous type, somewhat attractive in a rough way, and he’s not a braggart. He wouldn’t have talked about their relationship. I suspect that when Gina needed a sexual outlet, she turned to Corbel.”

“If he didn’t talk, and she didn’t talk, how do you know about it?”

“Because us old people talk to each other even if nobody else pays attention to us. People think when you pass sixty-five, you suddenly turn stupid. Anyway, we see things, and we used to see Corbel sneaking into Gina’s house. And people have seen them sneaking into the Days Inn over in La Crosse. This was two or three years ago, though. Maybe even longer.”

“Got it,” Virgil said. “Where can I find Corbel?”

“He’s got an equipment yard down on the river, on the south end of the marina. You know where the marina is?”

“Yes.”

“And you didn’t hear it from me,” she said.

“Of course not.”

“And you don’t know I might have had a farmer friend,” she said.

“I’ve already forgotten about it,” Virgil said. He drank the last of the hot cocoa. “Though, to tell you the truth, Janice, when you’ve had a serious relationship with a person, and at your age . . . why not put everything else aside and go for it?”

“His wife is still alive,” Anderson said.

“A lot of people . . .”

“His wife is my sister,” she said.

“Ah,” Virgil said. “The twists in the social fabric of Trippton never fail to astonish me.”

“Let it go.”

—

One other thing,” Virgil said. “Do you know where I could find Jesse McGovern?”

A wrinkle appeared in her forehead. “I don’t . . . I don’t believe I know that name.”

“Liar.”

“You’re right, I am.” She rapped the table with her knuckles. “Stay away from her, Virgil. I know about this private detective who’s wandering around town. If you found Jesse, anything that happened would lead to a tragedy.”

Virgil felt a little sneaky about it, about the misdirection, but he did it anyway and asked, “Say . . . Jesse McGovern’s not in this same class, the Class of ’92, is she? She wouldn’t be connected somehow?”

“No, no, she’s several years younger. She’s your age,” Anderson said. She told Virgil how to get to Gina Hemming’s house, which was only a few blocks away, a little higher on the hill.





EIGHT Hemming’s house was set higher than the street, a robber baron’s well-preserved Victorian mansion that looked out over the town, like a proper banker’s should. A red-brick driveway, perfectly cleared of snow, ran straight up past the house to a parking circle in back. A detached three-car garage, all yellow clapboard with a circular window above the center door, sat next to the parking area. A covered, fifty-foot-long swimming pool was visible on the far side of the lot, edged with now barren lilac bushes.

Virgil was impressed by the Victorian: a beautiful house, if you liked that style, yellow with blue trim, a level of snazz you didn’t often see outside of San Francisco. Hemming had spent some time getting it right, he thought.

He let himself in using the keys he’d gotten from Purdy.

Of the crime scenes Virgil had visited, Hemming’s house was one of the neater; even better, it didn’t carry the common odor of death or the disruptions of a crime scene crew. The kitchen did smell faintly of old food—garbage. There were two empty wine bottles and one half full, plus two empty beer bottles on the kitchen counter with a half dozen wineglasses showing traces of red wine. A wooden tray held a couple of Triscuits and two dried slices of white cheese.