fragile pretty boys.'
'Fragile. Big word for a guy like you,' Virgil said.
Johnson grinned: 'Turnoff coming up.'
ON THE WAY DOWN, Virgil had formed a picture of the Eagle Nest in his mind: a peeled-log lodge with a Rolling Rock sign at one end, at the bar, a fish-cleaning house down by the dock. A dozen little plywood cabins would be scattered through the pines along the shore, a battered aluminum boat for each cabin, a machine shed in the back, the smell of gasoline and oil mixed with dirt and leaf humus; and on calm nights, a hint of septic tank. Exactly how that fit with a rich advertising woman, he didn't know-maybe an old family place that she'd been going to for years.
When he turned off the highway, into the lodge's driveway, he began to adjust his mental image. He'd been fishing the North Woods for thirty years, ever since he was old enough to hold a fishing pole. He thought he knew most of the great lodges, which generally were found on the bigger lakes.
He'd never heard of an Eagle Nest on a Stone Lake, but the driveway, which was expensively blacktopped, and which swooped in unnecessary curves through a forest dotted with white pines, hinted at something unusual.
They came over a small ridge and the forest opened up, and Johnson said, 'Whoa: nice-looking place.'
The lodge was set on a grassy hump that looked out over the lake; two stories tall, built of cut stone, logs, and glass, it fit in the landscape like a hand in a glove. The cabins scattered down the shoreline were as carefully built and sited as the lodge, each with a screened porch facing the water, and a sundeck above each porch. An expensive architect had been at work, Virgil thought, but not recently: the lodge had a feeling of well-tended age.
There were no cars at the cabins. As they rolled down toward the lodge, the road jogged left and dipped into a hollow, where they found a parking lot, screened from the lodge and the cabins by a fifteen-foot-tall evergreen hedge. Four sheriff 's cars were parked in the lot, along with twenty or so civilian vehicles, and a hearse. There were no cops in sight; a lodge employee was loading luggage into a Mercedes-Benz station wagon from a Yamaha Rhino.
Deeper in the woods, on the other side of the parking lot, Virgil saw the corner of a green metalwork building, probably the shop. Neither the parking lot nor the shop would be visible from the lodge or the cabins. Nice.
'Where're the boats?' Johnson asked, as Virgil pulled into a parking space.
'I don't know. Must be on the other side of the lodge,' Virgil said.
AS THEY CLIMBED out of the truck, the lodge worker, a middle-aged woman in a red-and-blue uniform, stepped over and asked, 'Can I help you, gentlemen?'
'Where's the lodge?' Virgil asked.
'Up the path,' she said, and, 'Do you know this is ladies only?'
'We're cops,' Johnson said.
'Ah. Okay. There are more deputies up there now.' To Virgil: 'Are you a policeman, too?'
Johnson laughed and said, 'Yeah. He is,' and they walked over to stairs that led to a flagstone path through the woods, out of the parking lot to the lodge.
THE LODGE and its grassy knoll sat at the apex of a natural shoreline notch. The notch was filled with docks and a variety of boats, mostly metal outboards, but also a few canoes, kayaks, and paddleboats. A hundred yards down to the right, two women walked hand in hand down a narrow sand beach that looked out at a floating swimming dock.
Twenty women in outdoor shirts and jeans were scattered at tables around the deck, with cups of coffee and the remnants of crois sants and apple salads, and looked them over as they went to the railing. Down below them, two uniformed sheriff's deputies were standing on the dock, chatting with each other.
A waiter hurried over: a thin, pale boy with dark hair, he had a side-biased haircut that he thought made him look like Johnny Depp. 'Can I help you?'
Virgil said, 'I'm with the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. How do we get down to the dock?'
The waiter said, 'Ah. Come along.'
He took them inside, down an interior stairway, through double doors under the deck, and pointed at a flagstone walkway. 'Follow that.'
The flagstone path curled around the stone ledge, right at the waterside, and emerged at the dock. Two women, who'd been out of sight from the deck, were standing at the end of the path, arms crossed, talking and watching the deputies. Johnson muttered, 'I've only been detecting for ten minutes, but check out the short one. And she's wearing a fishing shirt.'
Virgil said, quietly as he could, 'Johnson, try to stay out of the way for a few minutes, okay?'
'You didn't talk that way when you needed my truck, you bitch.'
'Johnson…'
THE WOMEN TURNED and looked at them as they came along, and Virgil nodded and said, 'Hi. I'm Virgil Flowers, with the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. I'm looking for Sheriff Sanders.'
'He's out at the pond,' said the older of the two. A bluff, no-nonsense, heavyset woman with tired eyes, she stuck out a hand and said, 'I'm Margery Stanhope. I own the lodge.'
'I need to talk to you when I get back,' Virgil said. 'I noticed that somebody was checking out when we were coming-a lady was loading luggage. I'll have to know who has left since the… incident.'
'Not a problem,' she said. 'Anything we can do.'
The younger woman was a small, auburn-haired thirty-something, pretty, with a sprinkling of freckles on her tidy nose; the kind of woman that might cause Johnson to get drunk and recite poetry, including the complete 'Cremation of Sam McGee.' Virgil had seen it happen.
And she was pretty enough to cause Virgil's heart to hum, if not yet actually sing, until she asked, 'Are you the Virgil Flowers who was involved in that massacre up in International Falls?'
His heart stopped humming. 'Wasn't exactly a massacre,' Virgil said.
'Sounded like a massacre,' she said.
Stanhope said, 'Zoe, shut up.'
'I feel that we have to take a stance,' Zoe said to her.
'Take it someplace else,' Stanhope said. She looked past Virgil at Johnson: 'You're also a police officer?'
Virgil jumped in: 'Actually, he's my friend, Johnson. We were in the fishing tournament up at Vermilion and I got pulled to look at this case. The guys who'd normally do it are on that Little Linda thing. Johnson's not a police officer.'
'Pleased to meet you,' Stanhope said, and shook with Johnson. 'What's your first name, again?'
'Johnson,' Johnson said.
She said, 'Oh.' Not sure if her leg was being pulled. 'What's your last name?'
'Johnson,' Virgil said. When Stanhope looked skeptical, he said, 'Really. Johnson Johnson. His old man named him after an outboard. Everybody calls him Johnson.'
Zoe was pleased, either with the double name, or the concept of a name based on an outboard motor. 'You get teased when you were a kid?' she asked.
'Not as much as my brother, Mercury,' Johnson said.
Stanhope said, 'Now I know you're lying.'
'Believe it,' Virgil said. 'Mercury Johnson. He suffers from clinical depression.'
'Thank God Mom decided to quit after two,' Johnson said. 'Dad wanted to go for a daughter and he'd just bought a twenty-five-horse Evinrude.'
'I don't know,' Zoe said. 'Evvie's kind of a nice name.'
That made Johnson laugh, and, since she was pretty, laugh too hard; Virgil said, 'I'll talk to you ladies later. I gotta go see the deputies.'
Stanhope said, blank-faced, to Johnson, 'This isn't a laughing matter. This is a terrible tragedy.'
Virgil nodded and said, 'Of course it is.'
Virgil and Johnson turned toward the dock, and Zoe asked, 'She's dead, isn't she? Little Linda?'
'I don't know,' Virgil said, over his shoulder, still miffed about the massacre question. 'I don't know anything about it.'
'I wonder if it's connected to this death?'
Virgil paused. 'Do you have any reason to think so?'
