Rough Country

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