Deep Freeze (Virgil Flowers #10)(31)

Everybody knew Virgil, or about him, and by now, with her inquiries, everybody would know Margaret Griffin. Somebody might go after her—and having been an MP in the Army, Virgil was quite aware of what a trained cop could do with a metal baton. Griffin was a big woman and appeared to be in good shape. If she’d spent her cop years on the street in L.A., as she said she had, she would be formidable in a fight.

—

Virgil’s first stop that morning was at Hemming’s Second National Bank. When he walked through the door, he was spotted by a stout white-haired man named Marvin Hiners, the bank’s senior vice president. They knew each other from Virgil’s investigation of the school board murders, and Hiners hurried over and said, “Let’s talk in my office” and “What’s that on your face? The blue thing?”

“Nose support—I got beat up,” Virgil said, as he followed the man to his office.

Hiners shut the office door, and they both sat down, and Hiners said, “I heard something about that, but I didn’t know it was so bad. Jeez, I’m sorry.”

“Not even the murder case,” Virgil said. “Nothing to do with Gina Hemming.”

“Isn’t this awful? Gina? And, no, I don’t think it was a customer who killed her. And I didn’t do it, either, so I could get her job.”

“Thanks for clearing that up,” Virgil said. “Tell me why it wasn’t a customer.”

“I’m not saying it wasn’t a customer, because everybody in Trippton is a customer. I’m saying it didn’t happen because the person was a customer.” He explained that—the apparent lack of aggression in their overdue accounts. “I’ve been through every one of them since this happened, trying to figure out if there was any danger to the rest of us. We’ve got some serious goobers out there, but I don’t see any of them doing this. Or Gina letting them into her house. I wasn’t there that night, but I understand that Jeff Purdy looked at the house and found out that nobody had broken in. In fact, it was all locked up, nice as you please. Like she’d gone out for a walk.”

Virgil sat back. “Is that possible? That she’d gone out for a walk? A little too much booze, decides to clear her head, somebody grabs her on the street?”

“As far as I know, she didn’t go for walks,” Hiners said. “She had an exercise room with an elliptical machine, and a place where she did her yoga . . .”

“I saw that, down the basement,” Virgil said. “I was thinking of a walk to get some air . . . stretch her legs.”

Hiners mumbled, “Where was I? Okay. Now, it was drop-dead cold that night and she was wearing a skirt . . . If Donald Trump had grabbed her by the . . . you know . . . after a walk that night, he would have gotten frostbitten fingers. She didn’t have a coat on when they pulled her out of the river. I think she was killed at her house, by somebody who knew her. In fact, that’s what everybody thinks.”

“If she let somebody into her house, who would that have been? Somebody here at the bank? A boyfriend?”

“Not at the bank—she was very strict about inner-bank relationships, though we’ve had a few. Her motto was ‘Don’t get your honey where you get your money,’ and I believe she followed that herself. Besides, we only have seventeen employees—if she was seeing one of them, I’d know about it. She wasn’t.”

Hiners was a smart guy, so Virgil asked the obvious question: “Who do you think the killer is, Marv?”

Hiners pulled at his lower lip for a moment, then said, “Don’t know, Virgil. But Gina had a number of sexual relationships over the years, and there was no reason to think that her . . . impulses . . . had cooled off. When you find the person who did this, I believe you’ll find out that it was a boyfriend that none of us know about.”

“None of you? Nobody in town? Is that even possible?”

“Difficult but possible. They could keep it in motels up in the Cities, or even in La Crosse or Rochester,” Hiners said. “Wouldn’t be much fun that way, but maybe the only thing they could do if the guy was married. So, possible. If it were somebody prominent who was already married and they quarreled, and Gina threatened to go public . . .”

“I like that, Marv, thank you,” Virgil said. “Another possibility: what if one of your employees is stealing, and something Hemming said, or did, hinted that she suspected, and he went over there to talk to her about it?”

Hiners pulled at his lip some more, flashed his blue eyes up at Virgil. “I don’t believe it. For one thing, Gina wasn’t that much into the numbers. That’s my job, and they would have killed me. But, I guess it’s a possibility. I’ll get an outside audit going. Like right now. I’ll be on the phone before you get out the door.”

“How long will that take?”

“A few days. To know for ninety percent sure. The other ten percent will take a while. But if that were the case, we’d be looking at a complicated form of theft—manipulating investment accounts and so on. I don’t think we’ve got people who could pull that off. Even if they could, Gina wouldn’t be the one who’d discover it, know about it.”

“Did she have any close female friends she might have confided in?”

“Didn’t like other women so much, but she did have one old friend. Maybe Margot will know about others. You should talk to Margot Moore. She was the Most Athletic Girl, Class of ’92, and she and Gina had been tight since high school. She was at the Thursday meeting. Margot’s father owned Moore’s Funeral Home, sold it out to a chain a few years ago. Margot runs Moore Financial—she’s one of those certified financial planners. Does quite well at it.”