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Virgil confirmed thatthe next morning, as they sat in Cecil’s diner eating pancakes, and as Cooper and Melton were cruising around Lake St. Croix, waiting for the gun. “Everybody and his brother has been telling me that the second novel is where you fall on your ass. I’m trying to keep from doing that.”
“Maybe Ms. Lundgren will give you another character.”
“I’ve been working in southern Minnesota for ten years,” Virgil said. “I’ve got more character models than I know what to do with. I could probably get five books out of Johnson Johnson alone.”
Johnson Johnson—his father named him after an outboard motor, along with his brother Mercury Johnson and their sister, Evie (Evinrude) Johnson—had crashed every kind of vehicle known to mankind. He was one of Virgil’s two closest friends, along with Lucas. Lucas liked Johnson, though he was wary.
“You ought to help that crazy motherfucker write a memoir, though I doubt anyone would believe it,” Lucas said. “We ought to take him up to Stearns County with us. He could probably seduce Lundgren right out of her goat farm.”
“Johnson does get along with goats,” Virgil admitted.
Lucas poked a fork at Virgil: “You figure anything out?”
“The pickings were thin, although there’s one guy... I don’t know exactly what the situation is there, but he’s an investment advisor with that Barnes and Blue firm that Cooper mentioned. The advisory firm. He kept trying to talk Sand out of contributing money to a charity he called a scam. Sand wanted to kick a hundred thousand to this charity, and this investment guy was getting pretty hysterical about it.”
“But... why?”
“I don’t know. I got a bunch of emails and they both knew what they were talking about so they didn’t go over it in the emails. The B-Team didn’t look at it, not closely, because it was a negative thing—he was trying to talk Sandoutof an investment, instead of into one.”
“What’s the company? That Sand wanted to invest in?”
“Home Streets,” Virgil said. “The whole conversation got pretty tense, even though Barnes and Blue get some heavy fees from Sand. Sand sounded like he was getting pissed off about it. About the resistance he was getting from this guy.”
“Was he gonna dump Barnes and Blue?”
“No, I don’t think so. But it was tense,” Virgil said. “The other thing is, the guy doesn’t exactly have a rock-solid alibi for the night of the murders. He lives alone in a St. Paul condo. He says he was home, his phone was home—that checked out—the video cameragot him walking out the front door at six o’clock, for dinner, he says, and back in the front door at seven-fifteen, and not out again. But, he could have gone down the fire stairs and out the back—no camera there.”
“What about his car?”
“He walks to work, downtown. Eight or ten blocks from the condo. He has a car, but it was in an underground parking ramp the whole time. Thatison video.”
“You think he could walk to Crocus Circle?”
“Sure. Easy. It’d be the safest way to get there, on a rainy night. It’d be dark, not a lot of people on the street. It’s a little more than a mile from his condo to Crocus Hill. If he’s in good shape, he could do the round-trip, plus the murders, in forty-five minutes.”
“It’s possible, maybe even likely, that the killer walked in,” Lucas said.
“Yup.”
Virgil started working on a pecan cinnamon roll, Lucas thinking about it, until he said, “A hundred grand would be chicken feed, if I understand Sand’s total net worth. Barely worth arguing about.”
“It is. I added up as much as I could, and I figure Sand and Cooper have something between a hundred and twenty-five and a hundred and fifty million, liquid,” Virgil said. “That’s not counting real estate, which I guess is extensive. Apartments. They own the land and buildings leased long-term to Walgreens drug stores. And, you know, other hard assets. Barnes and Blue is a big Midwestern advisory agency, offices in Chicago, Minneapolis, St. Louis, Omaha, and Kansas City, so a hundred thousand would probably be chicken feed to them, too. The overall Sand account wouldn’t be chicken feed, though. They get three-tenths of a percent of the overall amountthey advise on—roughly a half million a year. And this guy might have been pissing off Sand. It’s unusual enough to look at.”
“We will, if we don’t squeeze anything out of Ms. Lundgren.”
Virgil wiped frosting off his mouth with a paper napkin, dropped it on his empty plate, and said, “Let’s go squeeze.”
—
Paynesville was twohours northwest of St. Paul, the first part of the trip through Minneapolis and its suburbs, then breaking out into open countryside. Once out of the urban area, Virgil synced his phone to Lucas’s Cayenne and called Cooper, who was in her car and answered on the first ring.
“Agent Flowers...”
“Yes. I’ve been looking over the financial records in the BCA file,” Virgil said. “Could you tell me if you’ve continued the relationship with your Barnes and Blue advisors?”
“Yes... Why wouldn’t I?” Cooper said.
“I’ve been reviewing your husband’s emails from the last month and it seems like the relationship with Barnes and Blue has gotten... mmm... somewhat tense, especially the discussion between your husband and a Barnes and Blue executive named Thomas Burston.”
