Deep Freeze (Virgil Flowers #10)(71)

“I got nothing to say about that, except what I already said: I didn’t know what they were planning, and, if I had, I would have shut it down,” she said.

“So . . . how are sales?”

“Starting to tail off,” McGovern said. “Another three months and we’ll have to move on to something else.”

“Try to pick on a smaller company, okay?”

“We’re thinking Apple,” McGovern said.

“Oh, man, not a good idea, Jesse. Anyway, any fake Apple product is going to be expensive to make . . . Uh, what is it?”

“An app. We hired a programmer, put the app together, and we’re field-testing prototypes.”

“An app. There are a million apps out there; it’d have to be unusual.”

“You know how an iPhone vibrates when you get a text message or a phone call comes in when you’ve got the phone set on silent?”

“Yeah?”

“What if it vibrated for ten minutes?”

Virgil had to think about it for a minute. “Jesse, please . . .”

“We’re thinking, ‘iPhone-eeeO: The Lady’s Happy Helper’ . . .”

“What is it with you guys and the sex toy thing?”

“Sex sells. It’s nothing personal,” she said. “You been here before, you oughta know: middle of the winter, there’s nothing to do but look out the window, watch HBO, and fuck. And if you can only afford the basic package, it’s look out the window and fuck. So, there’s a market. We think iPhone-eeeO will go big.”

“C’mon, Jesse . . .”

The whole idea was nuts, but Virgil liked to hear the woman talk, the sound of her voice.

—

When he got off the phone, Virgil went into the bathroom and checked his face in the mirror. He still looked beat up, and, from experience, thought he’d look that way for another three weeks or a month. He was pleased that none of his teeth were loose: dental work was a whole different problem, and way more unpleasant.

When he was done with his inspection, he undressed and got in the shower and steamed himself off, carefully washed as much of his face as he could get to. The air was so cold and dry that the humidity of the bathroom felt terrific. He got out of the shower and was toweling off when somebody began banging on the door.

Johnson’s cabin was a full-service establishment—Johnson had somebody staying in it half the weeks of the year, he’d said—and Virgil pulled a robe off a hook, wrapped it around himself, and hurried out to the front door, pausing only to open his gun safe and put his main pistol, a Glock, in the pocket of the robe.

At the door, he flipped on the porch light and peeked out a window to the left side of the porch. Margaret Griffin was standing there, and as he looked out the window, she knocked on the door again.

He went over and opened the door and motioned her inside and said, “You caught me in the shower.”

“Sorry. I stopped to tell you that I papered Duane Hawkins down at the Kubota dealer. He didn’t go to Florida at all. Everybody’s lying to me. Anyway, he says he didn’t know that anybody was putting together the dolls at his fishing shack.”

“It’s actually a tent, and since it’s transparent, and since he supposedly goes out there almost every night, that sounds like a fib,” Virgil said. “Not that I could prove it without some surveillance.”

“That won’t happen—this is a townwide conspiracy,” Griffin said. “I need to know whether you’re making any progress on the murders. I don’t want to get involved there; I just want to know if you’re going to be able to get me some time to run down Jesse McGovern.”

Virgil considered for a moment, then said, “Listen, Jesse called me tonight, out of the blue. I don’t know how she got my phone number, but lots of people in town have it. She actually had a tip on the murder investigation—but she also told me that sales of the dolls are dropping off, and they’re getting ready to move to a new product that has nothing to do with Mattel. A few more weeks and there’ll be nothing to investigate, no reason to serve papers on anyone.”

“That’s not the entire point here,” Griffin said. “We don’t only want them to stop, we want people to see that they get punished. Jesse McGovern especially. We don’t want people messing with the Mattel product lines.”

Virgil said, “Margaret, I’m sorry, but I’ve got two murders on my hands. I don’t have time right now to mess with Jesse McGovern. If I break these murders in the next day or two . . . I’ll do what I can.”

Griffin left, still grumpy.

She might have to look elsewhere for help, she said.





TWENTY-ONE The next morning, Virgil met Pweters at Ma and Pa Kettle’s. They both ordered pancakes and link sausages and extra syrup, and Virgil told him about an anonymous phone call from the night before, with the tip about a blond guy in a GetOut! truck.

“You gonna talk to Birkmann about his employees or hit Fred Fitzgerald’s place?” Pweters asked. “I’ll tell you, Fitzgerald will be back on the street before noon.”

“Then let’s do his place first—maybe he’s got something about this B and D ring he had going. Maybe there were more people involved than Hemming and Moore.”