"To tell you the truth, I didn't even know that nobody saw her last night, until we were talking about it this morning," Stanhope said.
"Was she pretty social?"
"Oh, I'd say… average. A little more aggressive about it when she was being social. She liked to dominate the talk, but there are other women up here who are no cream puffs. So, I'd say, she fit in."
McDill did like to go to the Wild Goose.
"Was she gay?"
"Mmm-hmm," Stanhope said, nodding. "She was, but she really didn't come up here for romance. She has a life partner down in the Cities-she's been notified, she should be coming up-but Erica really came up here to get away. To think. To relax a little bit. She was one of the girls who sometimes drank too much. I mean, not crazy, but she wouldn't be your designated driver down to the Goose."
"I want you to believe that I don't have a problem with gay women," Virgil said, "but I've got to ask: as far as you know, was she involved in any kind of stressful sexual entanglement?"
Stanhope shook her head: "Not as far as I know."
"No kind of sexual competition with another woman up here?"
"I don't think so. She'd been up here for a week, she was going to be here for one more week. She was participating, yoga in the morning, nature hikes and boating in the morning and afternoon, but I didn't see her pairing off with anyone." She put her hands to her temples, pressing. "I can't figure it out. Believe me, if I had any idea of what happened, I would tell you in an instant. But I didn't see anything."
"Okay. Have you ever had anybody die here?"
She nodded. "Twice. One woman actually came here to die-she loved nature, she loved the place. It was in the fall, after we were pretty much closed down, and we'd wheel her out on the deck so she could see the lake. Then she died, from pancreatic cancer. We had another woman who had a heart attack, this was four or five years ago. We actually got her to the hospital alive, but she died there."
They talked for a few more minutes, but Stanhope seemed befuddled by the killing. Her confusion was genuine, Virgil thought: it was too muddled to be faked.
Last question: "Who was that checking out when I was coming in?"
"Dorothy Killian from Rochester," Stanhope said. "She was scheduled to leave. I don't think you'd be interested in her, but what do I know? She's seventy-four. She's on some kind of art board down in Rochester and they have a meeting tomorrow afternoon, so she had to go."
"Okay. Well, let me spend a few minutes here in the cabin, and then we'll need to lock it up again, until the crime-scene crew can go through it," Virgil said.
Stanhope stood up, sighed, and said, "What a tragedy. She was so young, and active. Smart."
"Well liked?"
Stanhope smiled and said, "Well, she was well liked by the kind of people who'd like her, if you know what I mean. She didn't take any prisoners. So, she put some people off. But anybody who's successful is going to get that."
VIRGIL SPENT TEN MINUTES in the cabin, giving it a quick but thorough going-over.
McDill had brought up two large suitcases. One was empty, with the clothing distributed between a closet and a chest of drawers. The other was still partly full-a plastic bag with dirty clothes, and other bags and cases with personal items, perfume, grooming equipment. None of the clothes, either clean or dirty, had paper in the pockets.
Her purse contained a thin wallet, with a bit more than eight hundred dollars in cash. A Wells Fargo envelope hidden in a concealed compartment had another three thousand. He went through the wallet paper: a new Minnesota fishing license, bought just before she came up to the lodge, insurance cards, frequent flyer card from Northwest, five credit cards-he made a note to check her balances, and her finances in general-a card from Mercedes-Benz for roadside emergency service, and membership cards from a bunch of art museums, including the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Walker Art Center, the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, the Art Institute of Chicago.
An art lover.
Tucked in with the other cards, he found a folded-over paper, and when he opened it, a lipstick impression of a woman's lips… nothing else. He put the card on the dresser. Interesting.
She had a digital camera; he turned it on and paged through two dozen photos. Most were shots around the lake, but a half-dozen had been taken in a bar, women having a good time, getting loud, like women do when they're loose and safe in a group of friends.
He took the SD card: he'd read the card into his own computer. He put the camera back on the dresser, next to the card. Picked up her keys, including a big black electronic key with a Mercedes-Benz emblem, and dropped them in his pocket.
The computer was password protected. He tried a few easy work-arounds, then decided to leave it to the crime-scene guys.
McDill's cell phone was sitting on the desk next to the computer. He brought it up and found three dozen calls made in the past week, the week she was at the lodge, mostly to one number in the Cities, a 612 area code, which was downtown Minneapolis-the agency?-and several others, both incoming and outgoing, to a separate number with a 952 area code.
He checked her driver's license. She lived in Edina, which would be right for 952, Virgil thought. So, home and office. He took out his pad and jotted down all the numbers she'd called while at the lodge, and all the incoming calls. Nothing local.
Thought about local and picked up the phone on the desk and got a dial tone. All right; she had a direct dial phone. He would have to get those calls from the phone company…
After a last look-around, he wrote a quick note to crime scene, explaining the lipstick card and the cardless camera, and left it on the chest of drawers.
He wrote, DNA on the lipstick? What do you think?
4
VIRGIL WALKED BACK to the lodge, nodding to a couple of women along the way, picked up his duffel bag, found Margery Stanhope, and asked, "Have you heard anything from Miss McDill's friends?"
"They called from the air. They decided to fly up, which wound up taking longer than driving would have."
"Maybe I'll see them at the airport?"
She shook her head. "No. One of the things that took so long is that they apparently had the impression that we're way deep in the woods. They got a floatplane out of St. Paul; they'll be coming straight into the lake."
Virgil looked out at the lake, which was not an especially large one, a couple of thousand acres at most, cluttered with islands. Pretty, but not exactly a landing strip. "You land floatplanes?"
"From time to time," she said. "It annoys people-one cranky old man in particular, who'll be calling me tonight and the county commissioners tomorrow."
"All right. Well, if I can find your accountant…"
"She's down at the shed-you get there through the parking lot."
"I saw it. Okay: I'll see you later. I'll want to talk to Miss McDill's friends," Virgil said.
"You find out anything?"
"Maybe," Virgil said, going for the enigmatic smile.
ZOE TULL WAS TALKING to a Latino man who'd been working on a gas-powered weed whip, which he'd disassembled on a workbench. She saw Virgil and waved, went back to talking to the Latino. Virgil fished McDill's keys out of his pocket, pushed the unlock button, and saw the lights flash on a silver SL550.
He popped the driver's-side door, squatted, and looked inside: car stuff, Kleenex, a cell phone charger plugged into the cigarette lighter, a bottle of Off!, a box of Band-Aids, breath mints, chewing gum, two lipsticks, an ATM receipt that showed a checking account balance of $23,241 at Wells Fargo, pens, pencils, a checkbook, a utility knife, an LED flashlight, two empty Diet Pepsi bottles, a sweater, a cotton jacket, an umbrella, a dozen business cards in a leather case.