—
Virgil exhaled impatiently, as Quill blew another cloud of smoke through her Cheshire cat grin, and said, “I thought you kids vaped.”
“A, I’m not a ‘kid,’” she said. “B, I need the nicotine right now, and I get it from Camels. Like, instantly. And, C, it pissed off my father—he of the dented head.”
“That’s a little crude,” Virgil said.
“Live with it,” she said. “What do you want to know?”
“Eggs are ready,” said the dude.
“Give her a plate,” Virgil told him. “We can talk over it.
“One of the things we try to do is connect a murdered person with anyone who might have a tendency to be violent,” Virgil told Quill. “Not saying you’re lying, but I’d like to see that chessboard.”
She stared at him for a second, the Camel hanging from her lower lip, then said, “Sure. It’s at the top of the pile in the closet. Help yourself.”
Virgil went back to the closet and opened the door. Above the hanger bar, a shelf was piled with old-fashioned board games in tattered cardboard boxes, as though they’d been inherited. Risk, Stratego, Scrabble, Clue, Monopoly.
Quill said, “The chessboard’s up on top. On top of the Monopoly.”
Monopoly was in its thick blue box, and Virgil reached up, grabbed it, pulled it forward, and the chessboard on top of it flew off and nearly clipped his forehead. It clattered to the floor, and Quill started laughing and simultaneously choking on the smoke from her Camel. “Told’ja,” she said. “That motherfucker almost scalped you.”
The fat kid and the dude were grinning at him. The kid said, moving to an Elmer Fudd voice, “You cwazy wabbit.”
“I can see how it could happen,” Virgil said. He picked up the heavy board, four inches thick, with internal drawers for the pieces, shook it once, then propped it against the wall of the closet.
“You guys play a lot of games?” Virgil asked.
“Jerry does. He’s a fuckin’ psycho, never stops,” Quill said. “Brett and I play when we’re not touching each other.”
“True, dat,” Brett said. “I spent three hours dreaming about that yesterday afternoon. The most beautiful dreams.”
“All right,” Virgil said to Quill. “Now let’s talk about your father.”
* * *
—
He went back to his chair, watching Quill as she switched one leg over the other, sliding the gown another two inches higher. Trane had called Quill a sad sack, but she hadn’t come off that way to Virgil—if anything, she seemed manic.
“Tell me about your history with your father.”
“I hardly knew him,” she said.
“He was a fascist asshole,” Jerry said.
“Jerry speaks the truth,” said Brett. “It’s possible that his death was karmic payback.”
Virgil: “For what? Because he worked hard and didn’t smoke weed?”
Brett: “No. Because he gave the orders about how everybody should conduct their lives and he expected everyone to follow his orders. And if you didn’t spend your life studying medicine, you weren’t worth talking to. You were basically something stuck to the bottom of his shoe.”
“I know a lawyer he spent time with, played handball—they seemed to get along fine.”
“Law, medicine, all the same thing,” Jerry sneered. “You go to college for a hundred years, then work for rich people.”
* * *
—
Her parents had been divorced when she was two years old because, Quill said, her father was never home, he was always pursuing his career. “He didn’t care about Mom. At all. Especially not after I was born. His spermies had done their thing.”
“He always supported you and your mother,” Virgil said.
“That was the least he could do. He was rich and we weren’t. Mom was working on her Ph.D. when they met, and he took her away from it and she never got it. She’s been teaching at a community college ever since, over by White Bear Lake,” Quill said. “Getting the money was better than nothing, but money isn’t the same as having an actual, you know, father.”
Brett was walking around the kitchen area, eating eggs off the cast-iron skillet, and he said, “An actual father gives solid structure to your life.”
Virgil ignored him, and said to Quill, “Sergeant Trane told me that you’d been seeing more of him lately.”
“Only so he could get on my case about schoolwork,” Quill said. “He wanted to see if his investment in me was paying off. When he thought it wasn’t, he’d get pissed off.”
“Not so upset that he didn’t give you that trust fund.”
“Once again, the least he could do,” she said.
“And when he was killed, you got a payday that stretches out for another eleven years.”
“No. That comes from the trust. I would have gotten it anyway. I am getting it anyway.” She snubbed out the cigarette. “Give me a fuckin’ break, huh? I didn’t kill him. I didn’t even know how to find him if he wasn’t home. Never even been up to his lab. As far as I know, he could be making a new Frankenstein up there.”
“How often were you going over to his house?”
“Maybe every week or two. I’d go over to get money from him. I’d say, ‘Let’s talk about, uh, psychology, should I switch my major to psychology?’ We’d talk about it, and before I left I’d say, ‘Could I get some pizza money?’ and he’d throw me a hundred or a couple hundred. That’s a lot to me, but not to him. I don’t even think he noticed what he was giving me.”
“Doesn’t exactly make the case that he was an asshole,” Virgil said.
“Throwing your daughter a few bucks doesn’t cure you of being an asshole,” Jerry said.
Brett: “He was a global asshole, but he could be okay on the specifics.”
* * *
—
Virgil asked Quill what she knew about her father’s second and third wives. The answer was straightforward: nothing. “Never met either one of them.”
“So you had no idea about any stress, or conflicts, he might be going through?”
“Well, his fight with that lady professor is pretty famous. Made the TV news. They even argue about it over here at St. Thomas. I’d look at her, if I were you.”