asked, 'What happened to you guys?'
'Me and Berni got in a fistfight down at the Goose,' Wendy said.
'She slept with McDill, night before last. Night before she got killed,' Berni said.
'What? Does the cop know?'
'Yeah, he asked me about it, with Berni standing there. That's what set her off,' Wendy said. 'She hit me right in the eye, before I had a chance to say a thing.'
'Witch. I'm gonna have nightmares, about you and McDill,' Berni said.
'He's talking to Zoe Tull,' Wendy said. 'They're hanging out.'
'Did you mention Constance Lifry?' Ashbach asked.
'No way,' Wendy said. 'Let him find out for himself.'
Ashbach looked at the two of them for a minute, then said, 'You didn't say a word.'
Wendy rolled her eyes: 'Dad, we're not talking to him. Okay? We said we weren't, and we're not.'
'But you both lie like motherfuckers,' he said.
Berni leaned toward him and asked, 'Gee, what's a motherfucker lie like, Mr. Ashbach?'
Wendy said, 'This doesn't have anything to do with us. Lifry was up at the Eagle Nest, like McDill. Another gay murder, if it comes to that.'
'Another gay murder of somebody who was talking about helping the band, which is pretty fuckin' weird, if you ask me,' Berni said.
'I'll tell you what, you little bitch, talking like that… your goddamn alligator mouth could get your butterfly ass in trouble,' Ashbach said.
'Is that right?' Berni asked, staring him down. 'I'll tell you what, SA, we just hope the fuck that you didn't have anything to do with those murders. You or the Deuce.'
'Dad, take off, okay?' Wendy said. 'Get out of here.'
'Watch your mouths,' Ashbach said. He jabbed a finger at Berni. 'Watch your mouths.' He gave them a last look, turned, and headed out, letting the door slam behind him.
When he was gone, Berni said to Wendy, 'I hope to fuck you didn't have anything to do with McDill.'
Wendy shook her head: 'I'm cool,' she said.
'Okay. I'm not so sure about Slibe Two, though,' Berni said. 'Every time I look at the Deuce, I get the feeling that somebody smacked him on the side of the head with a coal shovel. He ain't right.'
'He wouldn't hurt anybody,' Wendy said about her brother. 'He's… you have to understand him. He's out there.'
'Watches me. All the time. Creeps me out,' Berni said. 'I wonder what would happen if I showed him my tits?'
'Don't do that,' Wendy said.
'Don't worry-I won't.' Berni shivered. 'He'd probably go off like a bottle rocket. I wonder if he touches himself?'
Wendy snorted, then said, 'You gotta be careful about the way you talk to Dad. You piss him off, he might throw your ass out of here.'
SLIBE II WAS SITTING outside the back window, listening, and thrilled to the fact that they were talking about him. And he had seen Berni's tits, lots of times.
He had a concrete block that he put down at the end of the trailer, and if he stood on it, he could just get one eye overlapping the screen window. He'd gone in the trailer while they weren't there and bent one blade of the venetian blind, to help things along, and now he spent his evenings with them, watching and listening.
Berni liked to run around with her shirt open, and sometimes-well, once-without her pants. If he'd missed that… he didn't like to think about it. That was the best thing that had ever happened to him in his entire life. Better than finding his old man's stash of Hustler.
He didn't know what he'd do for company in the winter, though, and had started worrying about it. Couldn't use his concrete block-they'd see his foot tracks in the snow and figure it out.
Maybe something good would happen; there was time before the snow started.
And they were talking about him.
7
SUNDAY MORNING, getting up.
Virgil could always wring a few more hours out of a night if he had to. With four hours in bed, he could make it through the next day, and since most investigations happened during the daylight hours, when other people were available for interviews, the night was available for travel and introspection; and retrospection, as far as that went.
Virgil left the Wild Goose a little after ten o'clock at night, pulled into his garage in Mankato a few minutes before three o'clock in the morning. He set his alarm for eight, thought about God for a few minutes, and what place McDill's death might have in His Great Scheme-nothing much, he decided-and went to sleep.
The next morning, he was up before the alarm, threw his clothes in the washing machine, opened the mail, wrote some checks for the bills, moved his clothes to the dryer, and went out to drop the mail, to get breakfast at a Caribou Coffee, to return the rented truck to Avis, and to catch a cab back.
He got a Star Tribune outside the coffee shop. The McDill story was on the front page, above the fold, with a two-column headline and a photograph. Nothing on the murder, except that it happened, and a few details. The rest was biography and expressions of shock from parents, friends, and business and political associates.
He had his clothes folded and put away, his working clothes packed, and was on the road in his own truck, pulling his own boat, by nine-thirty. He had taken down Barney Mann's cell phone number the day before, and on the way out of town, headed toward the Cities, rang it. Mann answered on the third ring and Virgil asked, 'Had your meeting yet?'
'It's at one o'clock,' Mann said. He sounded tired. 'I'm just getting up and I'm hungover… Are you coming to the meeting?'
'I don't know-am I invited?'
'I couldn't speak for the board, but I can tell you, the meeting's in the agency's main presentation room,' Mann said. 'I can tell them that you invited yourself.'
'Give me the address-I'll see you there. I'd like to get that address and phone number for Mark and Abby Sexton.'
Mann chuckled: 'Boy, I'll bet they'll be happy to hear from you. 'Tell me, Mr. and Mrs. Sexton, was there anything about Mrs. Sexton's venture into muff-diving that might have elicited this response?' Like one of those intellectual BBC cop shows, huh?'
'You got the number?' Virgil asked.
'Getting my book now,' Mann said. 'You know what? You gotta loosen up. You strike me as tense.'
Virgil called the Sexton number as he was coming into the Cities. Abby Sexton answered the phone and said, 'We read about it at breakfast. This is awful. But why would you want to talk to us?'
'I'm filling in as much background on Miss McDill as I can. I understand the two of you had a relationship that ended badly.'
'Oh, God, are people still talking about that? Well, come on ahead…'
The Sextons lived in a big brown-shingled bungalow on a narrow lot, with a garage in back accessed from an alley, in the St. Anthony neighborhood, a nicer residential area of old homes north and east of the Minneapolis downtown. The porch had a swing; a strip garden in front of the porch was divided between flowers on one side, and vegetables on the other, including eggplant. Virgil hated eggplant, even chicken-fried eggplant, and took this as a sign of the Sextons' decadence.
He clumped up the stairs to the front door and rang the doorbell. Abby Sexton's blue eyes popped up behind the cut-glass diamond in the door, and she pulled it open and asked, 'Virgil?'
She was a dishwater blonde, slender and athletic and pretty, wearing a white long-sleeved blouse with the sleeves pushed up, khaki capri pants, and sandals. Her husband came up behind her as she invited Virgil in: he
