“I made the mistake of saying that out loud,” Shrake said, as they took a table. “If I’d kept my mouth shut, and my old handicap, I’d have made a thousand bucks by now.”
“I feel sorry for you not being able to cheat,” Virgil said. He handed Shrake a menu. “Get what you want, I’m going with the Double Barrel.”
* * *
—
Virgil told him all about the Quill case—everything he had. Shrake had been following the story in the papers but hadn’t heard anything else, other than that Margaret Trane was working the case. “Trane and I had a thing once, back when we were young.”
“I’m not sure I want to hear this,” Virgil said.
“I’m not going to tell you anything else . . . other than the fact that when you got out of Maggie Trane’s bed, you definitely knew you’d been in bed with Maggie Trane. I lost about five pounds that first night.”
“She’s married now,” Virgil said. “A doctor.”
“I know. He’s a fourteen handicap out at Edina.”
“Jesus, Shrake, your mind is like a golf garbage dump.”
“Golf is the only thing in there that’s not garbage,” Shrake said. “Tell me again about chewing up those pill bottle caps . . . You say McDonald had fragments in his mouth?”
“Fragments, but no cuts on his lip. Could be murder, could be assisted suicide, but I don’t think he swallowed the pills on his own.”
“Why didn’t the medical examiner catch it?” Shrake asked.
“Probably because they didn’t have anyone dumb enough to chew on a pill bottle,” Virgil said. He pulled at his lower lip and it hurt. “I cut the heck out of myself and never even got the cap off.”
“Poor baby.”
* * *
—
As they were finishing lunch, Virgil got a call from an unknown number.
“Mr. Flowers?” A woman’s voice, high and shaky. “Officer Flowers?”
“Yes?”
“This is Genevieve O’Hara. You interviewed me about Dr. Quill.”
“Yes, of course,” Virgil said.
“I wanted to tell you my mother died yesterday afternoon.”
“I’m sorry. I hope she went peacefully,” Virgil said.
“Well, of course she was heavily drugged, so I suppose it was peaceful as it could be. But that’s neither here nor there. I was actually calling you about Dr. Quill.”
“Yes?”
“After you were here . . . Well, not right after, I didn’t think of it until the next day but didn’t call because I’ve been so preoccupied with Mother . . . Well, this morning I saw your card and thought I’d better call . . . I didn’t steal those maps, by the way,” she said.
“I believe you,” Virgil said, though he didn’t. He was curious about where the conversation was going.
“Thank you. Last winter, Mother was still conscious and getting around, and I remember telling her about this . . . I was working up on the second floor at the Wilson, where Dr. Quill’s carrel was, and I saw this man. He was looking at books in the stacks. You know how sometimes you can watch a child doing something and you know he’s only pretending to do it? Like, he’s pretending to look at your silverware but he’s really thinking about stealing a cookie?”
“I do understand the concept,” Virgil said. “A bad guy goes into a gas station to buy a candy bar, but he’s looking at the cash register and counting the clerks.”
“That’s right,” O’Hara said. “Like that. I got that feeling about this man. That he was not interested in the books, that he was up to something else. I would occasionally see it with a student who was planning to steal a book. I asked this man if I could help him, but he said no, and a couple of minutes later I saw him heading out the door. Then, a week later, I saw him near the carrels again. Have you been up there?”
“Yes.”
“You know how the carrels are lined up along that outer wall? He was walking along there, slowly. I got the feeling he was up to something again. Both times, he was right by Dr. Quill’s carrel.”
O’Hara said the man was white, of medium height, balding but with reddish brown hair pulled back in a short, brushy ponytail. “He wasn’t fat, but I’d say he was a little porky. He had a porky face. A red face, like a drinker. Small eyes. He was a smoker, I could smell it on him. When he saw me the second time, he sped up and walked away and went down the stairs. I think he recognized me from the first time and wanted to get out of there.”
“Miz O’Hara, thank you. This could be important. I will come by to interview you again. I’d like to record this.”
“I’m afraid I won’t be here for a while. I’m leaving in a few minutes for Eau Claire. Mother was registered ahead of time with the county medical examiner, so the body was taken directly to the funeral home and is being transferred to Eau Claire this afternoon for burial. I have to be there to make arrangements.”
“Okay. You said this was last winter when you saw him?”
“Or early spring—not later than March. I wasn’t focused on it at the time. I will think about it some more to see if I can recall exactly when it was.”
“Call me as soon as you get back from Eau Claire.”
“I will.”
* * *
—
“Something good?” Shrake asked.
“Could be,” Virgil said. He slipped a couple of French fries off Shrake’s plate. “Somebody seen hanging around Quill’s carrel up at the library. But quite a while ago. Don’t know if it’s connected. Anyway, let’s go talk to McDonald.”
* * *
—
McDonald lived in a tree-shaded rambler in St. Louis Park, which was good because the day was both hot and humid. They’d driven over in their separate vehicles, left them at the curb, and as they walked up the driveway, Shrake asked, “If she’s here, which I doubt, you wanna go in hard?”
“Semi-hard,” Virgil said.
“Last time I heard that phrase, I was in bed with a woman from the county recorder’s office,” Shrake said.
“I didn’t want to hear about Trane sex, and I don’t want to hear about county recorder sex,” Virgil said. “Push the fuckin’ doorbell.”