“You thought I’d gone nuts? You knew it wasn’t me who killed Margery. I told you about being in the barbershop. It couldn’t have been me.”
“I didn’t know you were telling the truth about that,” Ann shouted. “It’s not like I could go and ask Danny if you had an alibi. Then people would start wondering why we were trying to set up alibis.”
“You could’ve figured out a way.”
“Why don’t we talk about me for a while,” Ann shouted. “You know where I was when that lady got shot, and when that man got shot. The same fuckin’ place, down in Hargrove’s fuckin’ ditch with the Bob-Cat. Clayton Hargrove wouldn’t let me off the site one fuckin’ minute early, so you know I was down there until four-thirty and later . . .”
* * *
—
Virgil was getting discouraged. “Hasn’t given him an inch.”
“I’ll tell you something else—if we do find something and get them to trial, and Apel tells them about the wire, the defense is going to want to hear this recording. Then we will be truly fucked.”
Ann was back to screaming. “You fuck, you goddamn . . . You motherfucker . . . I don’t want you here tonight. I want you out of the house and I want a divorce. I want a divorce right now. And I’m going to talk to that fuckin’ Flowers about this tomorrow, we gotta lot of shit to get straight.”
More shouting, footsteps running up the stairs, screaming apparently from below. And Apel: “I’m getting my underwear. I’m getting my socks . . .”
Five minutes later, he was out of the house, carrying an oversized gym bag.
“His clothes,” Jenkins said. “Man, that Ann’s gotta mouth on her, huh?”
* * *
—
They’d arranged to meet Apel at Skinner & Holland after whatever happened at his house, and he pulled up behind the store a few seconds after they got there.
“Well, that was a waste,” he said, as they went inside. “That bitch wouldn’t budge. You know what she did when I went out the door? Do you want to know?”
“I don’t know, do I want to?” Jenkins asked, as they peeled the wire off Apel’s back.
“She stuck her thumb in her mouth and sucked it,” Apel said. Virgil checked: he wasn’t faking the anger. “Can you believe that? That fuckin’ Andorra, if he was still alive, I’d go over there and shoot him.”
“Where are you going now?” Virgil asked. “We want to stay in touch.”
“There’s a motel I can go to, over in Albert Lea; I got a friend there who’s the night manager, he’ll give me a rate. But I’ll tell you what, I ain’t giving up that house. I ain’t moving out. I’m going back after work tomorrow, I’m gonna put my bed in the office, and I’m gonna live there until the divorce. Say, can I borrow your recording for the divorce? I’m going to tell my lawyer about it. The bitch admits she was fuckin’ Glen . . .”
“We’ll have to let your lawyers work that out,” Virgil said. “In the meantime, not a word about the wire to anyone, you understand?”
Apel felt the threat. “Yeah, yeah, don’t worry.”
When he was gone, Virgil ushered Jenkins out of the store. They looked after Apel’s disappearing taillights and then followed him, in Jenkins’s car, until he made the right turn onto the Interstate ramp toward Albert Lea.
“Follow?” Jenkins asked.
“No, back to town. To Apel’s place.”
“You’re gonna talk to Ann tonight?”
“Why not? We know she’s up.”
“What do you think you’ll get out of her?”
“Maybe nothing. I’m not counting on anything.”
“Then why . . . ?”
“’Cause I’m going to wire her up,” Virgil said.
“Say what?”
* * *
—
Ann Apel came to the door with a frown on her face but no sign of tears or even a flushed face. She was an attractive woman, in a fortyish, small gymnast pork ’n’ beans way. When she turned on the porch light and saw who was standing there, she yanked open the door and shouted, “You ruined my marriage!”
Jenkins said, “Actually, you ruined your own marriage when you started playing house with Glen Andorra.”
Virgil winced, and Apel tried to slam the door, but Jenkins got his foot in the door before it closed. He pushed it farther open, and said, “Stand back. Our search warrant is good until midnight, and I don’t think I got a real good look at your undies.”
All right, Virgil thought, good cop/bad cop.
* * *
—
Jesus, take it easy, Jenkins,” Virgil said. To Apel: “I apologize for this, but we’re tired. We were following your husband tonight, and we tracked him out to the Interstate. We need to talk to you.”
She let them in, reluctantly, and gave the stink eye to Jenkins every time he said a word, but Virgil put her on a couch, and said, “Listen, I know this may come as a shock, but we think there’s a very good chance that your husband is behind these killings in town. In some way or another. And he’s behind the murder of Glen Andorra. We believe you may have had a relationship with Mr. Andorra . . .”
She began to talk after Virgil outlined the evidence they’d accumulated on the brew pub loan. “We think Mr. Apel might have been worried about the payback prospects if Mrs. Osborne gave all her money to the church . . .”
Apel told them about her own fears. That Davy had been acting odd, that he’d told her that he had an alibi for the shooting of Margery Osborne but that he had been worried Danny Visser would lie about the time he was there.
“He was acting strange enough that I started to worry myself. I woke up one night, and I could feel that he was awake. When I opened one eye, I could see in the moonlight that he was staring at me. I started to think he might hurt me.”
“During the search today, I mentioned that Mr. Andorra may have had a girlfriend,” Virgil said. “Is there any possibility that he knew about Mr. Andorra before I mentioned it?”
She hesitated, then said, “I used to go out to Glen’s to shoot my bow. So did Davy, but we usually went separately, after work. That’s how me and Glen got together. He’d laid out this 3D range along the creek, and I’d walk up the creek toward his house. I was coming back one day when Davy rolled in and he saw me coming down the creek. I told him I’d been shooting on the 3D range, and he said, ‘Then how come you’re on this side of the creek?’—I was on the wrong side for shooting—and I told him something. But, I don’t know, he might have suspected.”
“If your husband shot these people, you could be in danger yourself,” Virgil said. “Somebody murdered four people in cold blood, and there’s a lot of evidence against Davy. We were hoping you might help us out by wearing a wire . . . A wire is . . .”
“I know what a wire is,” Apel said. “It seems like I’d be a traitor. We’re still married.”
“It’s for your own safety,” Jenkins said.
She gave him the stink eye again and turned back to Virgil. “But if he’s innocent, it could help get him off the hook, right? I mean, other people do have the keys to the Quonset.”
“If he’s innocent, he’s innocent,” Virgil said. “We don’t want to send an innocent man to jail.”
She looked at Virgil and nibbled on her lower lip, then said, “Okay. I’ll do it . . . When?”
“When do you think he’ll be back?”
“I imagine sometime tomorrow. He took work clothes with him only for tomorrow, and he’s too cheap to buy new.”
“Then when he gets home, make an excuse to leave, call us, and we’ll wire you up. It takes two minutes.”
“We can meet at Trudy’s Hi-Life,” Apel said. “I’ve got a few things I want to say to Trudy anyway.”
* * *
—
Though the afternoon was shading into evening, Virgil got on the phone to his nominal boss, Jon Duncan, at home. “I need some more support. I need another warrant and I need another guy,” he said. “Get them to me, and we could finish this tomorrow.”
He explained further, and Duncan said, “I’ll have him down there by noon, no later than. He’ll bring the warrant with him.”
Virgil hung up and smiled. “All right,” he said. “We’re operating.”
* * *