“He liked girls,” Noehring said.
“Don’t we all?”
“Little girls, preferably between the ages of seven and nine.”
Then I’ll stop feeling sorry for him, my inner voice said.
Out loud, I said, “You were blackmailing him into giving information.”
“That’s one way of looking at it,” Noehring said.
“Talk to us,” Rask said.
“I don’t know what to say,” I said. “I don’t even know why I’m here yet.”
“You’re here because of this.”
Rask produced a clear plastic bag. Inside the bag was a small sheet of wrinkled paper ripped from a pocket notebook. Written on the sheet was the name McKenzie.
“We found it stuffed in the outside pocket of his overcoat. Notice the ink?”
The first two letters were printed in vibrant blue, but the ink soon began to fade—the e was barely readable.
“You know what it tells me? It tells me it was written by a pen whose ink had frozen. Officer Thoreson? What’s the current temperature?”
“Minus nine, LT,” the log recorder said. ‘The wind chill is around minus twenty.”
“So, McKenzie, no bullshit,” Rask said. “Who would want to kill a man and then stuff your name in his pocket?”
“I don’t know.”
“You said you never met Tarpley, but you knew who he was, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Well?”
“It’s kind of a long story. Sure you don’t want to go someplace warm?”
Noehring smiled his movie-star smile. Rask folded his arms across his chest. “Out with it,” he said.
I flashed on what the City of Lakes Art Museum executive board of trustees had said earlier about keeping news of the theft secret in order to protect the museum’s reputation. That made me hesitate, but only for a moment.
“Gentlemen,” I said, “have you ever heard of the curse of the Jade Lily?”
FOUR
The room was silent except for the monotonous drumming of Fiegen’s fingers on the tabletop. He and the other members of the museum’s executive board were seated in the same chairs in the museum’s conference room as the day before. This time no one looked happy to be there. Perrin leaned back in her chair, her eyes closed, her head tilted so that her chin was pointed at the ceiling. She looked as if she had aged a decade since I had seen her last. Mr. Donatucci, on the other hand, hadn’t changed at all. He still sat quietly, although this time his gaze was fixed on a large oil painting of what appeared to be Split Rock Lighthouse. A seventeenth-century sailing ship lay just off the shore, and hordes of savage-looking Indians were attacking or greeting it—take your pick—from a dozen canoes. It was impossible, of course, for the lighthouse, ship, and Native Americans to be in the same place on Lake Superior at the same time, but as it had often been pointed out to me, I know nothing about art.
“Mr. McKenzie, I thought we had an understanding,” Fiegen said. “This matter was to be kept strictly confidential.”
“What can I tell you?” I said. “I see a dead body in the snow, I become a regular blabbermouth.”
“Are we facing any liability issues?” asked a member of the board whose name I forgot.
Perrin raised her hand a few inches and then let it drop as if the effort had been too great. “I didn’t get any sleep at all,” she said. “First the police, that rude Lieutenant Rask, then the lawyers, then the police and the lawyers, and then the lawyers again. I asked for discretion. Lieutenant Rask made it clear that the museum’s reputation is the least of his concerns. The police confiscated all of our security footage. They started interviewing our employees this morning.”
“Do the police have any suspects, McKenzie?” Fiegen asked.
“Tarpley’s partners,” I said. “That’s merely speculation on my part, though. Lieutenant Rask does not confide in me.”
“It’s only a matter of time before news of the theft gets out,” Perrin said. “I’ll be sitting down with our PR director following this meeting. The question is, do we want to get out in front of this, make an announcement to the trustees, our membership, the press, or wait until reporters start calling?”
“Wait,” the unidentified trustee said. He spread his hands wide, the palms facing upward. “Who knows? We might get lucky.”
“Define lucky,” Fiegen said.
The trustee shrugged and leaned back in his chair. “We might still recover the Jade Lily,” he said.