'You almost broke my fingers.' She was half lying on the couch, where she'd landed, looking at the reddening grooves across her palms.
He sat down and looked at her. 'All right. You could've strangled Lifry, but I don't see you cutting her head off.'
'I didn't strangle anybody,' she said, tearing up.
'Why didn't you tell me that you do Jan Washington's taxes.'
'I don't…' But then her mouth made an O. 'Oh… shit. Mabel does!'
'You never said anything,' Virgil said.
'But I don't do their taxes,' she said. 'I never even thought… Mabel does their taxes. They bring their stuff in an envelope, give it to Mabel. Or mail it; we send out an organizer with a mail-back envelope-and Mabel does them. I mean, I bet I talk to Jan Washington three times a year, and never in the office. On the street, I talk to her.'
He looked at her for a minute, then said, 'C'mon.'
'Where're we going?' she asked.
'Out to the Eagle Nest.'
'It's after one o'clock.'
'If I needed the time, I'd look at my watch,' he said. 'Let's go.'
They went out to the truck, then had to go back to the house so Virgil could get his gun, and he put it under the seat and they headed out to the lodge.
AUGUST NIGHTS GET COLD in northern Minnesota, and this one, not cold, was at least crisp. When they pulled into the lodge, a car full of women was just unloading, heading back to the cabins; coming in from the Wild Goose, Virgil thought. The cabins mostly trailed away from the lodge to the right, from the land side. Zoe took him around to the left, behind the lodge, to a cabin set on the highest ground around, with a green-screen porch.
'She's gonna be pissed,' Zoe said.
'So what?'
'Just sayin'.'
STANHOPE WAS MORE STUNNED than angry. She was wearing voluminous flannel pajamas with a flying- monkey pattern, with a ratty pink terry cloth robe tossed on top. 'What?'
'Zoe here has been credibly accused of being the killer,' Virgil told her. 'I'm either going to clear her, or arrest her.'
'What?' Stunned, not angry.
'Let's find a place to sit,' Virgil said.
Stanhope's living room was comfortable in a lodge-like way, with shelves for old books, lots of Reader's Digest condensed novels from the sixties or so. A Bible was sitting on the arm of one chair. Virgil picked it up, tossed it from one hand to the other, like a softball, and said to the two women, ''Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord.' Proverbs twelve, twenty-two.'
Stanhope: 'Twelve, twenty-two?'
'How can you be 'goddamn this' and 'goddamn that' and go around quoting the Bible?' Zoe asked.
'Shut up,' Virgil said. 'Everybody sit down.'
They sat.
To Zoe: 'Now, on the day McDill was murdered, you were out here, right?'
'I came out, we were working on the books,' Zoe said. 'I finished the next day, when you were here. In Minnesota, you report your employee stuff each quarter, but the returns aren't due until the month after.'
'What time did you leave?'
'About… I don't know. The middle of the afternoon.'
She looked at Stanhope, who shrugged. 'I don't know.'
Virgil said to Stanhope, 'I'm not looking for casual bullshit answers. Close your eyes. Concentrate, if you're capable of it. Think. When did you last see Zoe that day? What were you doing just before you last saw her?'
Stanhope closed her eyes, her fingers knotted in her lap, and finally said, 'I saw her walking across the parking lot. I was in the office. I'd talked to Helen…' She looked up. 'Okay. Helen was getting ready to leave, and I wanted her to finish her numbers the next morning, before Zoe came back. Helen leaves a few minutes before three o'clock because she has to pick up her kid at day care at three-fifteen. So, it was just before three.'
Virgil to Zoe: 'Is that about right?'
She nodded. 'That's about right.'
To Stanhope. 'If I pull your ass into court, you'd swear to it?'
She nodded. 'Yes. I suppose Helen would, too, because she was working with Zoe, and then she left to get Steve.'
'Steve's the kid?'
'Yes. He's three,' Stanhope said.
'What time do you think McDill left in the canoe?' Virgil asked.
'Early evening-six or so? I don't really know, because nobody really remembers seeing her leave. But that's not unusual, there are people paddling around all the time.'
'So Zoe left at three o'clock, more or less, and McDill didn't leave for another three hours.'
'Right,' Stanhope said.
'Do you know the road that goes past the creek out of the lake?'
'Sure, I go up there in the fall,' she said. 'We try to be good neighbors with the people up there.'
'Where would a killer hide a car?'
Stanhope had to think for a minute, and then said, 'There are three houses that face out on the lake, but there are two more that are hunting cabins, not on the water. You could go through one of their gates, park behind a cabin. Or up the driveway. They're pretty overgrown, so you wouldn't see a car from the road.'
'We looked up there, but didn't see much,' Virgil said. 'But the shooter would be taking a big risk. What if somebody was up there when he pulled in…?'
Stanhope was shaking her head. 'It's easy to tell. There's nothing much in the cabins-some beds, electric stoves, a pump, tables and chairs. Not much worth stealing. So the gates are closed at the road, but they're not locked up. You drive down there, and if the gate is closed, nobody's home. If somebody's up there for a couple days, getting ready for hunting season or something, they leave the gates open.'
'So you could drive down there, open a gate, drive up the driveway, close the gate, and you'd be out of sight.'
'Yes.'
Virgil asked Zoe, 'Do you do taxes for anybody up there?'
She shook her head: 'They're out-of-towners. From the Cities, I think. Maybe one from Alex…'
BACK OUT TO THE CAR. 'Now where?' she asked.
'Down to your office. You must have a calendar.'
'I do,' she said.
They rode in silence, and not a particularly companionable one, back into town. On the way, Virgil called the sheriff's department, talked to the duty guy: no Windrow.
'You think he's dead?' Zoe asked in a small voice.
'I don't know. But I'm not sure he's alive,' Virgil said. He pounded on the steering wheel. 'I need to do something. I need to do something. I'm not doing anything.'
IN TOWN, at her office, Zoe brought up her computer calendar, found two names, recalled both of them, and said, 'That would have taken me up past five o'clock, for sure.'
'But that's not far enough, Zoe,' Virgil said. 'You could make it out there with no trouble, leaving here at five o'clock. Think! What'd you do afterwards?'
'I walked over to Donaldson's and ate-I don't cook very much, neither does Sig-uh, then, let me see.' She sat back and closed her eyes. 'I ate… but first I went over to Gables and bought a magazine and looked in some windows, because I like to read while I eat. Then, I got gas.'
'Did you pay for it with a credit card?'
'Yeah.'
'And that would have been around… six?'
