Deep Freeze (Virgil Flowers #10)(21)
“But that fuckin’ Justin gets the real estate,” Terry Ryan said. He was a tall, thin man, intense; looked like he’d spent a lot of time on a racing bike.
“Language,” Ann Ryan said to him, glancing through the door at the two boys in the other room. To Virgil: “Gina owns her house, and a condo down in Florida—a very nice condo, in Naples—Justin inherits those. She also had large cash investment accounts—I get those. She and Justin were talking to lawyers about a divorce, but she hadn’t changed her will. She simply didn’t think she was going to die . . .”
“Do you think Justin . . .”
Ann was shaking her head. “I’ve known him forever. He wouldn’t hurt a fly. But he has this boyfriend . . .”
“Rob Knox,” Terry Ryan said. “Justin moved out of Gina’s house last summer and he and Knox moved in together. Knox is a vicious little snake. He also thinks he’s got a great investment mind and he decided Trippton needed a French restaurant.” Terry snorted. “Can you believe that? A French restaurant? He hired some chef from down in Prairie du Chien, and they started a restaurant up here, with Justin’s money. I understand they’re in the process of losing their shirts.”
“You don’t know that,” Ann protested.
“Yeah? Garlic butter snails in Trippton? Are you kiddin’ me?” Terry said. “Truffled squab in sauce le orange? More like fuckin’ bridge pigeons, if you ask me. A hundred dollars a plate? In Trippton? I don’t think so.”
“Language,” Ann said. Virgil decided not to correct the “le orange/l’orange.”
Terry Ryan continued. “You want a tip, Virgil? Rob Knox is an ass”—he glanced at his wife—“a jerk. Would he kill Gina to get the real estate money? Yes. In a New York minute.”
“How much is the real estate worth?”
Hemming owned her house free and clear. The Florida condo had a mortgage on it—but if it were sold, the takeout would be about four hundred thousand dollars, Terry Ryan said. The house would be another six hundred thousand, even in Trippton.
“Altogether, Justin will clear around a million,” Terry Ryan said. “There’s no estate tax on the trust because of the way it was set up. Since the rest of her estate comes in under five mil, there’ll be no estate tax at all. He’ll get the whole amount tax-free.”
Ann said, “We sound greedy. We don’t want to sound that way. We’re not greedy, really. Terry’s a surgeon, and I’m a clinical psychologist, and we have an excellent income, especially for Iowa City. I’ve inherited a bunch, Terry will inherit from his folks when they die. We don’t need the money. But they were getting divorced . . .”
“And Knox is going to get the money from Justin and piss it away,” Terry said. “A guy who had nothing to do with Gina. Nothing.”
They had more to say, and Terry said it with more language to corrupt the boys, but what they said wasn’t of any help to Virgil.
But the inheritance . . . that was more than interesting.
—
Back in his truck, Virgil called Rhodes Realty and was told that Justin Rhodes was out on a call. He thought about Corbel Cain, supposedly Gina Hemming’s rough, on-again, off-again lover.
Time to pay him a visit.
NINE Corbel Cain’s heavy-equipment yard had a variety of yellow John Deeres and Caterpillars lined up at one edge of the two-acre lot, including a huge excavator with a claw at the end of its boom instead of a bucket. Probably used for demolition, Virgil thought. If you needed a house ripped apart, right now, that would do it. A sprawling gray metal building stood on the back of the lot, and two men in battered canvas work clothes were working on a bulldozer’s hydraulics, pumping steamy breath out into the cold air as they worked.
The company office was inside a low, unadorned concrete-block building with narrow barred windows. Virgil went to the front door and pushed through, found two women and a man working behind a wooden service counter. The place smelled of diesel exhaust and multipurpose cleaning liquid.
“Can I help you?” one of the women asked.
“I need to talk to Corbel Cain,” Virgil said. “Is he in?”
“Can I tell him what it’s about?”
“It’s private,” Virgil said. He held up his ID. “I’m with the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension and I’m hoping Mr. Cain can help me out.”
“Really? Well, hang on a minute.” She picked up a phone and said, “Corbel, you’re needed in the office.” As she spoke, Virgil heard her voice ringing through a speaker outside. She hung up and said, “He ought to be here in a minute or two.”
On the way across town, Virgil had called the duty officer at the BCA and had given him Corbel Cain’s name. “Don’t know his birthday, lived his life in Trippton, Minnesota. I do have an address, which should give you his DOB from his driver’s license.”
The duty officer called back as Virgil was leaning on Cain’s shop counter. “We show three arrests involving domestics, no convictions, two DWIs, paid fines on both of those, the last one was in 2010. Not a lot of detail on the domestics, but it appears that the charges were withdrawn by the victim.”
Virgil rang off, and five minutes after the woman had called for him, Cain pushed through the front door. His face was red from the cold, and he was wearing a heavy yellow canvas work jacket over a hoodie and cloth work gloves. He nodded at Virgil and said, “I’m Corbel. Can I help you?”