Deep Freeze (Virgil Flowers #10)(81)

At six o’clock he called Frankie, and they talked for half an hour. He learned that both Frankie and the dog Honus greatly missed him, and that a neighbor had gone in a ditch, rolled, and totaled his two-year-old Escalade. When he got off the phone, he stepped into the shower and got steamed up against the cold, dressed again, and drove across town to the steak house.

—

Jenkins and Shrake knew Johnson and Clarice and approved of both of them. Shrake said to the table, as the drinks came, “We oughta start a pool on when Virgil solves this thing. I’m thinking three more days.”

Johnson said, “That’s what I’d take. If we’re really going to do a pool, we’d have to cut the days into half days or something. Because if it’s not soon, it’s not going to happen at all . . .”

They were talking about that when Corbel Cain came in trailed by a woman who he introduced as Janey, his wife. She was a pretty, thin, and slightly fragile-looking woman. Virgil couldn’t see her as the violent housewife who sparked off brawls with her husband, but he’d often been surprised in the past. Cain said that he was out on bail but hadn’t given up on his search for Hemming’s killer.

“Corbel . . .”

“That’s the way things are,” Cain said. He slapped Johnson on the shoulder and asked, “How’re things going with the airplane?”

“Me’n Virgil are flying it back in April,” Johnson said.

“You oughta invite me to go along. I could be a valuable addition to the crew,” Cain said. “I used to fly myself. I could spell you at the controls.”

“You still got a license?” Johnson asked.

“No, but who’s gonna tell?” Corbel asked.

—

The Cains continued on to their own table, and Virgil, watching them from time to time, decided that they looked happy enough. They’d been there for an hour or so, whittling their steaks, when David Birkmann came in looking like a lost file clerk, in brown shoes, khaki Dockers, a blue shirt, parka, and a yellow ball cap. He said hello to Virgil, Johnson, and Clarice, then went off to a table by himself.

Johnson leaned across the table to Virgil and said in a low voice, “Birkmann’s your killer. See that hat he’s wearing? The little dots all over it?”

Virgil glanced at Birkmann’s hat. A pale yellow with black dots. “Yeah?”

“He gives those hats out as promotions. I got one. If you look real close at those dots, they’re actually little tiny bugs crawling all over. That, my friend, is nuts. He thinks it’s funny.”

“Well, he was the class clown,” Virgil said. “He’s supposed to have a good sense of humor.”

“I say it again: goofy.”

“You know that joke?” Shrake asked. “Mickey Mouse goes to his lawyer, says he wants a divorce from Minnie Mouse, and he explains why. The lawyer said, ‘I’m not sure you should go for a divorce just because she’s having a few psychological problems.’ Mickey says, ‘Psychological problems? I didn’t say she was having psychological problems. I said she was fuckin’ Goofy.’”

Virgil happened to glance over at Cain while Shrake was telling his musty joke and saw that Cain was staring past his wife at Birkmann’s back. He thought, Oh-oh . . . but let it go.

—

Jenkins and Shrake had taken the last two available rooms at Ma and Pa Kettle’s, probably the first time they’d all been occupied at once since the Great Flood of ’27. Jenkins said that Margaret Griffin had asked that they be available the next morning for another raid. They would be.

“You know what she’s doing?” Clarice asked. “She’s going around to people and offering a whole bunch of money for someone to rat out Jesse McGovern.”

Virgil groaned and asked, “How’d you hear about it?”

“Everybody’s heard about it,” Johnson said. “Sandy Martinez told me that she put up a wanted poster in the Laundromat. One of two things is going to happen: somebody’s going to rat out Jesse, or somebody’s going to shoot Margaret in the head. Then you’d have two separate murder cases . . . or three.”

“Ah, shit,” Virgil said.

—

As they were all leaving the restaurant, Johnson Johnson said he and Clarice would not be available for dinner the following evening because they had couples league night at Brown’s Bowling Alley. Jenkins and Shrake asked about Brown’s, Johnson filled them in and they decided they’d go by and bowl a few frames before heading to bed. They invited Virgil, but Virgil was thinking about his yellow pad and his murder case.

“I’m going to go back to the cabin, I’m going to lie on the bed and listen to Elmore James on my iPad, and I’m going to figure this out. If you guys get up a pool on when I’m going to crack this, you should take ‘Tomorrow.’”

Jenkins looked at Shrake, Johnson, and Clarice and said, “Oooo. Wave.”

The four of them did a football wave for Virgil, and he let them do it.

—

The trip back to the cabin was slowed by the occasional snowpack on the roads. As was usually the case, the lead car in the line of vehicles going down Main Street was driven by the slowest, most cautious driver, who rarely ventured above fifteen miles per hour.

Virgil finally made it past the “Raccoon Crossing” sign and turned down the driveway and pulled up to the side of the porch. As he stopped the car, he saw a flash on the finger of land across the channel from the cabin and, a moment later, the truck jerked with a sound like SPAT!