AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She wouldn’t givethem a name, wouldn’t give them a hint, and when they pressed her, she said, “As far as I’m concerned, all your arguments are bullshit. I’m going to kill him.”
When they left the restaurant to walk to their cars, it was snowing again, more than flurries this time. Virgil, who lived in the countryside and so tracked storms, looked up at the iron-gray skyand said, “They’re saying we might get an inch, but it’ll be gone in a couple of days. Gonna be cold, though.”
Cooper said, “We live in Minnesota.”
Lucas: “Maggie, I...”
She held up a finger: “I’ve heard it all. You can stop talking about it.”
“Goddamnit...” They walked along for a half block, and then Virgil asked, “Are you going back to the U?”
She looked at her iPhone, checking the time. “No, actually. George Whitman called me, he’s the vice-chairman of the Heart/Twin Cities board. There’s a board meeting this afternoon. The first order of business will be to elect me to the board, as a replacement for Alex. As the second item on the agenda, Noah Heath will present an emergency report on the murder of one employee and the disappearance of another. He plans to say that the disappeared employee did the murder. He apparently doesn’t know what you guys dug up.”
“Heath murdered them,” Virgil said. “We’re trying to get the search warrant reinstated. I doubt we’ll find much, but it cranks up the pressure on him.”
“I believe all of that,” Cooper said, hunching her shoulders against the snow and wind. Her cheeks and nose already looked raw with the cold. “The third order of business will be to dismiss Noah from the board. Alang Thao, a board member, will make the motion, there’ll be discussion, so Noah has a chance to defend himself. Then Noah will be asked to leave the room, and there’ll be a unanimous vote to dismiss him. He’ll be called back in, told that he’s gone. The last item of business is authorizing a complete audit, andthe executive committee—I’ll be on that—will be authorized to release the audit to the attorney general.”
Lucas: “You’re headed for a dogfight, then.”
“Noah doesn’t know it, but the dogfight is over,” Cooper said. “All that’s left is to clean up the dog poop.”
24
Back in the Tahoe, Lucas said, “I smell smoke. You must be thinking.”
“Yeah. Maggie seemed too certain that the killer is going to show up. One way or another, I think she’s baited her trap. I don’t know with what.”
“I agree,” Lucas said. “What do we do about that?”
“A little ratiocination,” Virgil said.
“Fuckin’ novelists and their word-a-day calendars,” Lucas grumbled.
—
As they crossedtown, they agreed that the killer, if he went after Cooper, would come at night, but before bedtime, before the lights went out in Cooper’s house. They also agreed that they couldbe wrong—that while Cooper might know who the killer was, she wouldn’t wait, but planned to go after him.
“Damnit. We’re talking a stakeout,” Lucas said. “If a killer goes after Cooper, we need to see him coming. If she goes to him, we need to track her.”
“We need to re-scout her house. See where we can sit where she won’t see us, and neither will the killer.”
Lucas: “If we have to sit outside, we’re gonna get colder than a well-digger’s ass. Temp’s going down to twenty tonight and there’ll be some wind.”
“We could go talk to Russo or Durey and let them run the stakeout,” Virgil said. “They could be convinced that we’re onto something.”
“Who could they get who’d be better than us?” Lucas asked.
Virgil said, “Nobody.”
“You talk to Frankie, I’ll talk to Weather, tell them we’ll be out late,” Lucas said. “Cooper’s not stupid, if she set a trap, he’ll be coming, and soon.”
—
Cooper would beoccupied by the board meeting, so they went to her house, and rolled through the neighborhood. Crocus Circle was not exactly a circle, but was more of a square with well-rounded corners. They talked about a couple of potential stakeout spots, but because the neighborhood was well-lit and patrolled, and cars weren’t left on the street at night, neither place was exactly subtle.
Virgil pointed to a well-preserved clapboard Victorian at the far end of the block, which was surrounded by a raised lawn dotted with oak trees. “That’s our best shot. We’d be out of the car.”
“We’d need parkas and hunting boots,” Lucas said. “Nothing to get behind except trees. Couldn’t even move.”
