‘So what’s up?’ Magozzi asked when Gino had finally finished and climbed into the passenger seat.
Gino sighed. ‘The end of a dream. Bona fide proof that we wasted a day and a half’s worth of golden hours on finding Deaton’s and Myerson’s killer. McLaren just confirmed a Friday-night alibi for Weinbeck. No way he could have done it.’
Magozzi sighed. ‘Well, that’s what we kind of figured all along. Is it tight?’
‘Totally. His sister and about forty of his hair-ball friends threw a party for him.’
Magozzi frowned. ‘So why didn’t that turn up right away?’
‘It’s classic, stupid, drowning-in-a-shallow-gene-pool stuff,’ Gino muttered, rubbing his hands together in front of a heat vent. ‘They picked Weinbeck up from prison, took him straight to a bar, and got him skunk-drunk. Stayed there until closing time, then took it back to her house and went all night. Major parole violation for Weinbeck, obviously, and she knew it, so she got real paranoid when McLaren called her up, sniffing around for info about her brother. So she did what comes naturally to people like that – she played stupid. Her loyalty lasted about as long as it took McLaren to threaten to book her as an accessory for Deaton and Myerson, then she spilled her guts. What a pisser. And usually the dumb factor works in our favor. Go figure.’
‘Shit.’ Magozzi let out a frustrated sigh and pushed on the steering wheel, suddenly feeling claustrophobic in this car, in this place, in this county. ‘So now what? Head to Stillwater, put the screws to the Snowman?’
Gino lifted a shoulder noncommittally. ‘I suppose that makes sense. Just because he didn’t hire Weinbeck to kill Deaton and Myerson doesn’t mean he didn’t hire somebody else, right?’
‘Right.’
‘It’s the strongest lead we’ve got.’
‘It’s the only lead we’ve got.’
They were both quiet for a long moment. ‘So why do neither one of us like it?’ Magozzi finally asked.
‘I don’t know. It’s more like a weird feeling than anything else. Kinda like diet pop.’
Magozzi lifted a brow at him and braced himself for another Gino metaphor. ‘Diet pop.’
‘Yeah, you know, you take a sip and it tastes just great, just like the real thing. Then a couple seconds later it gets a little thin on the palate and you can start tasting the artificial sweetener. It’s just not right, and you know it, but it’s hard to peg.’
‘Well, whether or not it sits right, we’ve got to look at it anyhow.’
‘I know.’ Gino’s leg was starting to jiggle impatiently. ‘Where the hell is Rikker, anyhow?’
A few minutes later, a black sedan pulled into an empty parking space across and kitty-corner from them, under one of the big sodium vapor lamps. Magozzi and Gino watched as a man and a woman got out, and then both their jaws dropped simultaneously.
‘Jesus, Leo, are you seeing who I’m seeing? That’s Mary Deaton’s parents.’
Magozzi nodded, finally understanding why his brain had stumbled a little when he heard Laura ask if Alice and Bill were coming. ‘Alice and Bill Warner. Which makes Alice the grand-niece that Laura and her sister raised right here.’
Gino blinked a lot of times at the overload of coincidences. ‘Goddamnit, Leo, I’m sinking down into that dark place, ’cause this stuff is really getting to me. I mean, as far as I’m concerned, we just figured out that we’ve been working on two totally unrelated cases, and yet every single goddamned thread to both of them leads us straight to Bitterroot every time. What’s that about?’
Magozzi was just shaking his head, trying to clear his mind, trying to focus. Bitterroot. Gino was right – it felt like it had to be central to both cases, because it just kept popping up, but when you looked at it close, there was nothing here to connect it to the Deaton and Myerson murders. Except the two people he was watching as they hurried through the snow, around the corporate building to the village in back. ‘I don’t know, Gino, but there can’t be anything to it. Weinbeck was up here for his wife. He saw the news about Deaton and Myerson and put Doyle in a snowman to buy himself time. And Alice Warner just happens to be related to somebody who lives here. With four hundred residents and six degrees of separation, maybe that’s not such a coincidence.’
Gino pressed both hands to his forehead. ‘You know those smoothies when they put a bunch of different fruit in a blender and turn it on high? That’s what my brain feels like right now. A big pink-and-gray smoothie. And I got that diet soda feeling again.’
Magozzi’s eyes followed Alice and Bill Warner until they moved out of sight. He totally missed Iris walking up to the car.
‘Thank God,’ Gino said, jumping out of the car and opening the back door for her, eager to keep things moving and get the hell out of here. ‘It’s cold, Sheriff. Hop on in.’
She nodded her thanks and climbed in the back on a gust of cold wind and a faint hint of orange.
Soap? Shampoo? Cough drop? Magozzi wondered, searching for a mystery he might solve before they started piling dirt on him.
‘Thank you for waiting, Detectives. I know you’re probably anxious to get back to your own case. Is there still a chance that Weinbeck is your killer?’
‘Not a chance,’ Magozzi said. ‘We just alibied him.’
‘Then we’ve wasted your time here. I’m terribly sorry for that, but terribly grateful, too, for what you did tonight.’
Now that he was close to heading for home, Gino was feeling magnanimous. ‘You did pretty damn good yourself,’ he told her. ‘Not bad for your first day, Iris Rikker.’
She flashed him a grim smile. ‘Yesterday I would have been hiding in a closet, speed-reading the manual, trying not to get sick. You’d be surprised what you can learn in a day, watching good officers do their job.’
It was a great thing to say, and Magozzi started really liking her for the first time.
‘Listen, I won’t keep you long, but I really need some advice, and I would very much appreciate your professional opinions.’
Aside from food and sex, not necessarily in that order, the best way to worm your way into Gino’s heart – or any man’s heart, come to think of it – was to compliment him professionally. Magozzi wondered if Iris’s phrasing had been intentional or if it was just knee-jerk. Sometimes he thought all women were born with a special strand of DNA that made manipulating men effortless and instinctive.
Gino gave her a paternal smile. ‘Anything we can do, Sheriff. Ask away.’
Iris took a deep breath. ‘Well… how much stock would you put in some of the things Laura was saying?’
Magozzi and Gino looked at one another. ‘There could be some truth to it.’
‘Would you drag the lake, come spring?’
‘That’s totally your call, Sheriff.’
‘Thank God,’ Gino added tactlessly. ‘I wouldn’t want to touch that for a million bucks.’
Iris looked a little disappointed, but the wheels in her head were still turning. ‘Under normal circumstances, I probably wouldn’t give a second thought to what Laura had to say, given the clear evidence of her diminished capacity, but the bones really bother me.’
‘What bones?’ Magozzi asked.
Iris looked surprised. ‘Sampson didn’t tell you?’
‘Haven’t talked to him since he called me out of bed this morning, and all he said then was that you were tracking Weinbeck from your place to Bitterroot, and if we wanted in on it, to get up here. I got the feeling things were pretty tense on your end when he called.’
Iris nodded. ‘We were moving pretty fast then. But it turns out Weinbeck wasn’t the only thing in my barn. We found what was left of a body in a locked room under the barn floor – little more than a skeleton, really. Sampson thinks it was Emily’s husband. He disappeared decades ago.’