Deep Freeze (Virgil Flowers #10)(88)

Of course, that assumed he’d walked up to Hemming’s door, immediately whacked her on the head, and had left unseen.

A vagrant thought, as he looked over his high beams: why did Fred Fitzgerald’s confession that he’d moved the body make Virgil think he couldn’t have killed Hemming? Of course he could have—he’d confessed to the last half of the crime. But then, there was the whole left-handed thing, and the fact that they hadn’t found the weapon at Hemming’s house, at Fitzgerald’s house, or in the Mississsippi.

All very confusing.

—

Le Cheval Bleu was open for dinner when Virgil walked through the front door. Only four tables, out of twenty, were occupied. If they’d offer a decent open-face roast beef sandwich, brown mushroom gravy, mashed potatoes with butter, and pumpkin or cherry pie, Virgil thought, or maybe hot fudge sundaes, they’d fill the place. Roast beef, and hold the cheval, French cuisine or not.

A waitress came to meet him, and he was about to ask for Knox when one of the few patrons, who’d had his back to Virgil, turned around, and Virgil saw that it was Justin Rhodes. Virgil didn’t recognize the woman across the table from him, but Rhodes said something to her, dabbed his lips with a cloth napkin, got up, and hurried over to Virgil.

“Please tell me you’re here for dinner,” he said.

“I’m here to talk to Rob Knox,” Virgil said.

“About what? . . . If I might ask?” Rhodes was anxious, twisting his hands.

“His alibi for his time down in Prairie du Chien doesn’t entirely check out. We need to talk.”

“Oh, boy—well, he’s in back.”

Two people were working in the kitchen, but not very hard, since there weren’t many customers. Knox was wearing what looked to be a Japanese chef’s outfit: a deep-bloody-red neck-high apron, with a banana-yellow bandanna wrapped around his head.

Virgil told him about his interviews in Prairie du Chien. “You told me you left quite a bit later than six-thirty,” Virgil said. “Why was that?”

Knox objected. “I didn’t leave immediately! I left Le Café after six-thirty because William reminded me that the table was reserved for an anniversary party or something . . .”

“Birthday,” Virgil said. His phone buzzed with an incoming text. He ignored it.

“Yeah, birthday,” Knox said. “So it wasn’t six-thirty when I left, it was closer to seven, and I left because of the reservation. But no sooner did I get on the road than the snow started. I should have turned back, but I kept going, and I didn’t get here until after ten o’clock, like I told you the first time. I was lucky to get here—it was really coming down.”

He looked scared, Virgil thought. Too scared? He was being questioned about a murder, so a little fear was natural.

Virgil nailed down details about the trip back but couldn’t shake him.

“Listen, there’s a reason I went down there that I haven’t talked about, that I didn’t want to talk about.” He stepped over to a roll of paper towels, ripped one off, and used it to wipe his sweating upper lip. “We’re not exactly packing the place here. You might have noticed.”

“I have.”

“One reason I went down was to . . . take a close look at their menu,” Knox said. “The American part of it. We’re going to have to go more American here . . . and I was seeing how we could do that and still keep the French vibe.”

“You were stealing their menu.”

“Looking at it.”

Virgil told him not to leave town. “I have to do more research, but we’ll still have things to talk about. Like the million dollars.”

“We don’t need the money to make this place work! We don’t!” Knox said.

—

Virgil left Rhodes and Knox standing in the kitchen and, on the way out, through the restaurant, glanced at the text message.

It came from Clarice. “Call me NOW.”

He called, and she said, “Virgil, here’s Johnson.”

Johnson came on and said, “We’re down at Brown’s for couples league.”

“Let me guess: you lost your balls.”

“That’s almost hilarious. Remind me to laugh. In the meantime, Corbel Cain was here. He’d had a few . . . like twelve . . . Or something.”

“Ah, shit, now what?”

“He told me, and everybody else, that he’s figured out the murderer. Not only that, he knew where he was, and he was going to go over and face him down. He and Denwa had some more drinks, until Brown cut them off, and they left to confront Dave Birkmann.”

“Birkmann? Why Birkmann?”

“Don’t know, exactly. But, Corbel deduced it. They’re on their way over to Club Gold. Birkmann’s supposedly over there for karaoke.”

“All right, I’m going.”

—

Club Gold was six blocks away, straight up Main. Virgil had cranked the rented 4Runner over, ready to move, when it occurred to him that Rob Knox had told him something important. Maybe even critical. With Corbel Cain on his way to Club Gold, he couldn’t wait to puzzle it out, but it was there, in the back of his brain. What was it?

He hadn’t figured it out when he arrived at Club Gold. There were cars parked all along the street, so he went around back, to the parking lot, where he saw two men running across the lot to the back door.