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George Baer lived on the tree-lined shore of Turtle Lake, which was north of St. Paul. As far as Virgil knew, and he tended to know these things, Turtle Lake had had a good population of largemouth bass, of nice size, and also a lot of smaller northern pike.

Which, in his humble opinion, was not outstanding, but was okay. He followed his iPhone app to Baer’s house, and found him, after speaking to his wife, Edna, at the front door, in his backyard with a compound bow, shooting at a life-sized whitetail deer target.

When Virgil walked around the house, Baer peered at him, frowning, and barked, “Who’re you?”

“Bureau of Criminal Apprehension,” Virgil said. “Your wife told me you were out here. I need to chat with you about Timothy Carlson.”

“Is there something wrong?”

“Wrong about what?” Virgil asked.

“Timothy died in a strange way, falling off a balcony,” Baer said. He was wearing a blue LA Dodgers ball cap, a blue lightweight Orvis outdoor shirt, and jeans.

“His death was investigated by the medical examiner’s office and found to be an accident,” Virgil said.

Baer had a bow case laying on the ground behind him. He picked it up, slid the bow inside, and said, “C’mon in the house. Let me get my arrows.”

Virgil waited, studying the small lake as Baer pulled a half-dozen arrows out of the plastic deer’s target zone and put them in a pocket in the bow case.

“Nice lake,” Virgil said, as Baer finished packing up the arrows.

“It’s exorheic, so we get a regular turnover in the water,” Baer said. “I pee in it from time to time. I like to think I’m contributing to the biological complexity of the Gulf of Mexico.”

They walked together through a back porch and into the house. Inside, he yelled, “Edna, me and the cop are in the library.”

She yelled back, “Okay.”

“She’s in her studio,” Baer said. “She’s a potter.”

“Yeah, I talked to her at the front door. She was a little muddy,” Virgil said.

“She often is,” Baer said.

The library was a large room with a wall of books of all kinds, set on built-in steel shelves that Virgil would have stolen if he could have gotten away with it.

“Great library,” he said, looking around.

“Should be,” Baer grunted. He was a compact man in the way bears are compact, medium height, thinning reddish hair and freckles, rimless glasses. He pointed at an easy chair and took another one that faced it. “Goddamn thing cost an arm and a leg.”

“Worth it,” Virgil said. “Good reading lights.”

“I spend a lot of time here,” Baer said. “So: you have questions about Timothy?”

“About Timothy and a nurse named Tina Locklin.”

Baer was surprised by that, and it showed on his round face: “Tina? What does she have to do with anything?”

“You knew her?”

“I still know her. She works over at Abbott Northwestern in Minneapolis. I was on staff there before I retired. Timothy wasn’t. He was focused in St. Paul.”

“Amanda Fisk told me that there was an episode a long time ago, twenty years or so, when Tina was somewhat…romantically obsessed with Timothy. She was fired because of it, left your clinic or partnership or whatever it was.”

“That’s more or less true, but she wasn’t fired. She was encouraged to move along, and she did, with a very good severance from us,” Baer said. “Exceptional nurse, one of the best. I’d still see her over at Abbott and we’d chat. She was more embarrassed by what happened, than angry or upset.”

What had happened, Baer said, was that Carlson had gotten divorced, and had worked closely with Locklin for several years before that. Locklin may have been in love with him for a while. She was about his age, or a year or two younger or older, was divorced and had hopes…

“Timothy wasn’t interested. He was looking for something younger and sexier, and said so, to us guys anyway. His first wife was an engineer he met in college,” Baer said. “She was at least as smart as Tim, and more creative. She was always getting patents on one thing or another, and never hid her light under a bushel. There was this competitive tension between them, and they got tired of each other—and the tension.”

“I spent an hour or so with Amanda Fisk, and she didn’t strike me as a low-stress, walk-in-the-park-type,” Virgil said. “I mean, if Timothy was looking for a caregiver.”

Baer nodded, a jerk of the head. “You got that right. When you showed up and said you were BCA, the first thing that popped into my head was that you were looking at Amanda and the accident .” He put some oral italics on the word accident .

Virgil leaned toward him: “Wait. You don’t think Timothy’s death was an accident?”

“Oh, I think it probably was,” Baer said. “I do have some respect for the ME’s investigators. I have a Fourth of July party here, and was hanging out with Timothy…”

“Miz Fisk told me about it…”

“…he told me about a complicated murder case she’d prosecuted and won. He said, ‘Amanda’s a real killer. A real killer .’ When I heard that he’d died in an accident, that was the first thing that popped into my head. Honestly, I’ll deny this if you tell anyone I said it, but Amanda is a cold-hearted bitch. I mean the lights are on in the kitchen, but there are bats in the attic.”

“Is that medical jargon?” Virgil asked.

“Take it for what it’s worth,” Baer said. “And it is worth something .”

—

Virgil considered that, then said: “Back to Tina Locklin. I am looking at the death, the murder, of Doris Grandfelt. That was way back about the time Timothy Carlson had gotten divorced, and was looking for something younger and sexier, which Doris Grandfelt was.”

“You don’t think Tina…”

“The question is out there,” Virgil said.

Now Baer leaned forward, pointed a finger at Virgil’s chest: “Tina is one of the softest, mildest people I’ve ever met. Not timid, but…ethical. Kind. She wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

“Sometimes people break.”

“Not Tina. I watched her deal with a hundred very worried patients in our practice. Scared people, sometimes making outrageous demands. We were all surgeons, so when people came to us, they had serious problems. Tina was the most caring kind of nurse. I haven’t paid much attention to this Grandfelt thing, but I know what’s going on. It seems like Grandfelt was murdered in her workplace. Is that correct? If she was, it had to be in the middle of the night when nobody was around…”

“That’s one assumption,” Virgil said. “I guess it’s the main assumption.”

“How would Tina even have gotten in the building? You people are looking at DNA recovered from Grandfelt, which means whoever had sex with her must have been there. You think Tina was standing around holding Tim’s undershorts while he was screwing Grandfelt?”

“That doesn’t seem likely,” Virgil conceded.

“If it’s a big accounting firm, don’t you think they’d lock their doors at night? I mean, I know how Grandfelt got in. She worked there. How would Tina get in?”

“She could have followed Carlson…”

“Then what? She stuck her foot in the door as it was closing, and Timothy never saw her?”

“Okay.”

“I’m telling you: you can talk to Tina, but you’re barking up the wrong tree. She had nothing to do with a murder.”

—

Virgil pulled at an earlobe, thinking, and said, “You know Amanda Fisk worked at Bee at the time of the murder.”

“What!”

“She says she actually met Timothy Carlson during the investigation. He was a client of Bee’s, and she consulted on some contract matters.”

“So you’re looking at two violent deaths attended by the stone-eyed bitch from hell, and you’re asking questions about Tina?”

“We’re looking at everything,” Virgil said. He asked, “You seem to more than dislike Amanda.”

“I dislike her. Strongly dislike her, but I don’t hate her. She and Timothy were an odd couple. Timothy could be quite cold with some people, warmer with others, and he loved his dogs. He’d loved his dogs from the time he was a child, to hear him tell it. I believe he was sincere. But Amanda. Well, I have no solid reason to think she’s a terrible person…but I sense that she might be.”

“Does she know you think that?”

Baer shook his head: “I have no reason to think so. Timothy was a friend and a golfing partner. We were both members at Turtle Lake Golf. Amanda and I are…congenial when we have to be.”

“Could you find out when Tina Locklin is at work?”

Baer glanced at his watch. “She’d be getting off about now—she goes in early, her shift would usually be about six to three. I have her phone number, I believe, I could give her a call. She lives down in St. Paul.”

“Could you do that? I could meet her at her house,” Virgil said. “Don’t tell her too much—just that I want to talk to her about Timothy Carlson.”

—

Baer called and Virgil drove back to St. Paul; Locklin was waiting. She lived in a small house north of I-94, halfway between St. Paul and Minneapolis, flower beds planted with easy care flowers, red and yellow zinnias, marigolds, coneflowers. Virgil parked in the street and she saw him coming up the sidewalk and opened the door.

Locklin: “Virgil Flowers.”

“Yes, I just left George Baer. Thanks for talking to me.”

“You really think I stabbed Doris Grandfelt to death?” Locklin appeared to be in her early sixties, with short gray hair and oversized plastic-rimmed bifocals. She didn’t smile when she asked the question.

“You must have talked to George twice,” Virgil said. “One when I was there, and again after I left.”

“He was worried about me. George is a good guy. Come in: watch for the cat.”

Her house smelled of pasta and bread, and an orange-striped tabby looked suspiciously at Virgil, sniffed at his pants cuff, and then, in the living room, after Virgil sat down, leaped onto his lap to give him a more thorough going over.

“Toss her on the floor,” Locklin said.

“She’s okay. I like cats,” Virgil said. The cat settled on his lap and looked up at him, Virgil gave her an easy stroke from her neck to her tail.

“She’s trying to make me jealous,” Locklin said. She was wearing a white blouse and blue slacks, crossed her legs and said, “I didn’t murder Doris Grandfelt. I was unaware of Doris Grandfelt until this whole hoo-hah blew up, all these true crime people coming to town.”

“Did George tell you…”

“Some of it. You’re wondering if I might have gone crazy after Timothy told me that he wasn’t interested in a relationship and stabbed a woman he may have been sleeping with. But I didn’t even know about Doris Grandfelt, at the time.”

“Did you—”

Locklin broke in: “I wasn’t paying too much attention to this investigation until George called. I spent the last half hour reading the Star-Tribune online stories and I looked at one of the true crime websites. Here’s the thing: Timothy told me he wasn’t interested in me, way before the murder. She was killed in the spring, and I was asked to leave the practice, like, six months before that. The fall before, like in October.”

“I didn’t understand that,” Virgil said. “I was under the impression that the two things happened closer together.”

“Depends on your definition of ‘close.’ Anyway, the docs gave me a great severance, which took some of the sting out, and Gary Parsons…Dr. Parsons…got me fixed up with a job at Abbott. I’ve been there ever since.”

“Never married?” Virgil asked.

“Never remarried. I was married in my twenties and divorced just before I turned forty. Part of my grasping after Timothy was that he was also available after his divorce, and we liked each other. Maybe I just wanted a friend.”

“And Timothy’s…attitude…didn’t make you angry?”

“A little. It mostly left me depressed. Feeling sort of unwanted by anybody. But I didn’t stab Doris. He was seeing another woman when I left the practice and I got the impression, from a last talk with Timothy, that the relationship might be somewhat serious.”

“Really,” Virgil said. “Who was the other woman?”

She shook her head. “Don’t know. He told me there was someone, a professional lady, I think. Could have been another doc. But I don’t know. I didn’t even have a hint of that when I started nudging him.”

“George didn’t say anything about that,” Virgil said.

“I don’t know if George knew about it,” Locklin said. “Timothy could be close-mouthed. He was a good guy when you got to know him, but it took a while to get there.”

The cat meowed at Virgil, who gave it a couple more strokes, then picked it up and put it on the floor. They both looked at the cat, as it sat by Virgil’s feet and began cleaning a paw, then Virgil asked, “Do you stay in touch with anyone at the practice? Anyone who might know who Timothy’s girlfriend was?”

“I don’t think anyone would remember. I mean, I probably knew Timothy as well as anyone, and I didn’t know about it until we had that last chat,” Locklin said. “All of it was more than twenty years ago.”

“What did you think when you heard he was dead?”

“I was shocked, I guess. He was a healthy man, exercised, ate right, all of that, the kind you think will live to be a hundred. I heard he fell when he was trying to get a dog ball out of a gutter, and that somehow seemed right. Like something he’d be doing. He was huge on dogs. I remember when he had a Labrador that died, and he couldn’t talk about it without choking up. Like, for years.”

“We think Doris was murdered at the Bee Accounting building, in Lowertown, or close to Bee—her car was found near a bar that she might have been going to. She was almost certainly killed with a piece of hardware from the Bee executive dining room. Were you ever there at Bee, in any capacity? As a client, delivering something to them…anything at all?”

She shook her head: “Never. Never even heard of them. I do my own taxes, I’ve always been an employee of somebody, so my financial life is routine. Never needed any kind of accountant.”

—

When Virgil left her, he was convinced that she hadn’t had anything to do with the murder. But he was curious about Carlson’s unknown girlfriend. Fisk hadn’t mentioned a second woman, only Locklin. Would she have known about her? She said she’d met Carlson during the Grandfelt murder investigation, which would have been months after Carlson told Locklin about the unknown woman.

Might Carlson have concealed that other, more serious relationship, from his soon-to-be wife? Or was there even another woman? Might Carlson have simply been lying about that, to put off Locklin?

In the truck, Virgil called Lucas, who asked, “What did you find out?”

Virgil told him about the interviews with Baer and Locklin: “Bottom line, I didn’t get much, but I’d like to know who this other woman is.”

“So would I,” Lucas agreed.

“I’m gonna focus on finding her. And any possibilities the true-crimers turn up.”

“What do you think about Carlson?” Lucas asked. “Is he our DNA guy?”

“I’m cautiously optimistic, but I really don’t have to be anything in particular—we got hair out of the sink he used, so we’ll know for sure whenever the DNA analysis gets back.”

“Okay. Something else you don’t know,” Lucas said. “Henderson called a while ago. The DNA scrubs are being sent to a private lab in Chicago. We’ll have the results about the time I get home, early next week.”

“Good. See you then. Take it easy, big guy.”

“You too, Virgie. Probably see you Tuesday. Listen, call me if anything comes up. Anything.”

—

Virgil called Baer: “Tina Locklin told me that Timothy Carlson had a relationship with another woman, back when the problem came up with Tina,” Virgil said. “Would you have any idea of who that might have been?”

“None at all,” Baer said. “Tina left in October or November, somewhere after it got cold. I quit playing golf in early October, about the time for the first snow squall, so…I don’t have a lot of social chit-chat with Timothy in the off-season. Although…it’s kind of odd that I wouldn’t know.”

“Any chance that there was no other woman, that Carlson was trying to let Tina down easy?”

“That’s a thought,” Baer said. “That’s something that Timothy might do.”

“All right. If you have any new thoughts, let me know.”

Still sitting in the truck, Virgil got out his notebook and made a note about the timing of Carlson’s rejection of Tina in the autumn before Grandfelt’s death. He finished the note and started the truck, but hadn’t yet put it in gear, when Baer called back.

“I had a new thought,” Baer said.

“Tell me.”

“You said that Amanda told you that she met Timothy during the investigation of Doris Grandfelt’s murder…”

“Yes.”

“Huh. I’ll tell you something. Timothy was not impulsive. I’m digging around in my memory, now, but if you look it up, I think he married Amanda at the end of that summer. They were married at the golf club. It’s possible that it was the next year after Grandfelt was murdered, but I don’t think so. I think it was the same year.”

“So…”

“So that would be awful fast for Timothy. Awful fast, if they only knew each other from the time Grandfelt was murdered in the spring. I was wondering if it was possible that Amanda was the woman Timothy was talking about with Tina. That he and Amanda were actually dating the autumn before the murder?”

“That’s not what she told me.”

“I know. You told me that,” Baer said.

“You think she was lying?”

“Let’s just say that I wouldn’t necessarily believe everything that Amanda tells me,” Baer said.

“Okay. Thanks, Doc.”

“Don’t call me Doc. You’re not Bugs Bunny, and I’m not Elmer Fudd.”

Virgil called Dahlia Blair and said, “I have another search, if you guys could do it.”

“What?”

“I need to find out when Timothy Carlson got married to Amanda Fisk—whether it was the year Doris was murdered, or the year after.”

“Do you know where he was married?” Blair asked.

“Here, in Ramsey County.”

“Okay, that should be easy. But everything is going to be closed in a few minutes, so it’ll have to be tomorrow.”

“That’s soon enough,” Virgil said.