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The Victoria Seven were as well known in Minnesota as the 1980 “Miracle” Olympic hockey team was to the rest of the nation. Seven kids from tiny Victoria High School overcame incredible odds to win the tournament. This was before the state high school league divided the schools into four different classes, back when there was only one state champion, when it was still possible to have upsets and underdogs and Cinderella stories, when it was still possible to build a legend.
There was surprisingly little information about the team on the Internet, probably because the game had been played so long ago—over thirty years. Most of the stories that mentioned the Seven were connected to the governor’s election campaign, although there was one stand-alone piece written on the eve of the team’s thirtieth anniversary. In it, the writer praised the team for the heroic manner in which it faced adversity throughout the season, including the brutal murder of Victoria High School cheerleader Elizabeth Rogers one week prior to the state tournament.
So, there was an Elizabeth Rogers, and she had been murdered. I attempted to learn more. Had anyone ever been arrested or convicted of the crime? I accessed the Web sites of both the St. Paul Pioneer Press and the Minneapolis Star Tribune and browsed their archives. Both papers had stories, but they were short and to the point: A seventeen-year-old high school cheerleader was found murdered in the tiny town of Victoria, according to authorities, with little additional information. Each article linked the woman to the Victoria Seven, but not to John Allen Barrett personally. There were no follow-up stories that I could find.
I switched gears and began searching for intel on the Brotherhood. There was surprisingly little information about Muehlenhaus. Apparently the man shunned publicity, although I unearthed a nice joke about him: “Muehlenhaus is so cheap when he walks onto a green he picks up all the dimes.” Mahoney, Gunhus, and Coole, on the other hand, seemed to enjoy publicity, although they didn’t do much that anyone would be interested in. Troy Donovan was a bit harder to read. He had been everywhere for a while and then apparently decided to keep a lower profile, not unlike Muehlenhaus. I learned that he was single, that he had inherited a $7 million stationery business from his father and grew it into a $60 million concern, and that a few years ago he began exploring the possibility of building a Kinko’s-like copy and print shop franchise throughout the Upper Midwest. I wasn’t interested enough to read how it turned out.
I was staring at the computer screen, wondering what to do next, when my phone rang.
“Oh baby, oh baby, oh baby,” Kim Truong’s voice chanted.
“Hey, Kimmy. Long time, no see.”
“At least five and a half hours.”
“Seems longer.”
Kim thought that was pretty funny. After she finished chuckling, she said, “I have what you’re looking for.”
“We’re talking about the information I was needing, right?”
“Well, that, too. Write this down: one six zero point nine seven point two eight six point one eight seven.”
“What’s that?”
“The number of the computer that sent your e-mail.”
“That doesn’t exactly help me, Kimmy.”
“How ’bout this, then. The computer is located at—Are you writing this down?”
“I am. I am writing it down.”
“The computer is located at 347 Second Avenue, Victoria, Minnesota.”
“Do you have a name?”
“No, just a location.”
“Victoria, Minnesota.”
“Yeah.”
“Makes sense.”
“In what way?”
“It’s the scene of the crime.”
3
The Sixteenth Annual Charity Ball to raise money for the Governor’s Endowment for a Drug-Free Minnesota was held at International Market Square, an enormous brick-and-mortar warehouse on the outskirts of downtown Minneapolis. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, it had been remodeled to house 135 upscale home furnishing showrooms, designer studios, architectural firms, remodeling resources, and advertising agencies as well as a spectacular atrium located at the heart of the Square beneath a huge glass and steel girder roof.
After depositing our winter coats and Nina’s boots at a makeshift coat check just inside the entrance of the building, we made our way from the lobby down a corridor toward the atrium. There were several retail businesses located along the corridor, all shuttered for the evening, and Nina could see our reflections in the windows as we passed.
She stopped. I was two steps past her when I felt Nina’s hand slip from mine and turned about.
“What is it?” I asked.
My first thought was that she had halted to admire her gown. It was what she was doing when I arrived at her home earlier, posing this way and that in front of a full-length mirror like a model at a photo shoot. Red velvet stretched lovingly over her thighs, hips, waist, and chest, and a shawl, attached to the bodice, rose up from under her arms to hug her neck. There was plenty of exposed flesh both front and back. The hem of the gown grazed the bottom of her ankles and the side slit was high enough to expose much of Nina’s leg, yet not so high as to cause her embarrassment.