“Cute, for a cop,” the bartender said, softening a bit on Mann.
“He is cute,” Mann said. “I’d fuck him myself, if I were gay.”
“Guys,” Virgil said. “Shut up.”
The bartender looked at him for a beat, then another, then made a tiny dip of her head toward the back of the bar, and wandered away. Mann had been concentrating on his drink, said, “What a day.”
“When you’re on the way back, and I expect either Miss Davies or Mr. Harcourt will be driving, because you’ll have done this drinking . . .”
Mann grinned again and said, “You’re an optimist, son.”
“. . . so when you’re on the way back, make up a list of the people who would have been fired. Especially the ones who’d be most bitter, and the women.”
“You really think a woman did it?”
“At this point, it’s the best bet,” Virgil said. “Though I take you seriously about those people down at the agency. I’ve been thinking about it, and looking at Google Earth, and the maps, and the fact that people down at the agency knew where Erica was going, and when, and she probably talked about what she did up here. I’ve recalculated. It might be fifty-fifty on whether the killer was from up here or down there.”
“You think?” Mann sucked the life out of an olive, then popped it into his mouth.
“Which brings me to ask, who did McDill have that affair with, last year? Ended about a year ago. Somebody at the agency?”
There was about one long suck of alcohol left in the martini glass, and Mann paused with the rim of the glass an inch from his lip, stared straight ahead for a minute, thinking, then turned to Virgil and said, “So . . . Ruth knew about it, huh?”
Wasn’t a guess: he’d figured out where Virgil had gotten the information. Smart guy. “She did,” Virgil said. “But she doesn’t know who it was.”
“Abby Sexton, editor at a specialty home-furnishings magazine down in the Cities,” Mann said. “She never worked at the agency, but her husband does.”
“Her husband. Okay. Was he gonna get fired?”
“That’s possible. The word was, Erica would have left Ruth for Abby, but Abby sort of blew her off. Had her little fling, went back to Mark, and promptly got pregnant. Erica was really hosed about the pregnancy. That was one thing that Erica couldn’t have given Abby. Anyway, Mark’s an account guy. He’s okay, not great. Firing him would have been a nice little piece of revenge, what with them having the new kid. Magazines don’t pay enough to feed a canary.”
Kara the bartender was at the far end of the bar, and Mann held up another finger. She rolled her eyes and started putting together another drink.
Virgil took out his notebook, wrote Abby Sexton in it, asked, “What magazine was that?”
Mann said, “Craftsman Ceramics, something like that. They specialize in Arts and Crafts tile and pottery and so on.”
“You’re a smart guy,” Virgil said. “What else should I know?”
“I don’t know. The Abby thing hadn’t occurred to me, because I don’t think like a cop. But I do take this hard, this murder. If I think of anything, I’ll call you.”
Virgil nodded and said, “Thanks—and I’ll give you a call tomorrow morning about that list. If you could get me a phone number for Abby Sexton, that’d be a bonus.” He caught the eye of the bartender, drifted out of the bar, turned left, and walked down toward the restrooms.
THE BARTENDER pushed through the back door a moment later, stepped close, and said, “You could lose me this job, and there aren’t any more jobs like it. Not around here. So, I’d appreciate it if . . . you know.”
Virgil nodded. He was like the Associated Press—lots of sources, all anonymous.
“I saw you with Zoe, getting in her car,” Kara said. “You know she’s gay?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, the thing is, I like her fine—I’m straight, by the way—but I thought you should know that Zoe has had two short, mmm, involvements, with a girl named Wendy Ashbach, who’s a country singer down in Grand Rapids.”
“Sings at the Wild Goose,” Virgil said.
She nodded. “Zoe told you? Anyway, Wendy has this longtime girlfriend named Berni Kelly . . .”
“The drummer?”
“Yes. You know, you’re smarter than you look, picking up all this stuff.”
“Thanks, I guess,” Virgil said. “So there’s a love triangle with Zoe and Berni and Wendy.”
“Up until night before last,” Kara said. “Then it became a rectangle. Or a pentagon.”
“Yeah?”
“There were some women in here late, getting loaded. My deal is, I stay until they leave. So I got out of here late and walked down to my car when I saw Miz McDill’s car pull into the parking lot. They didn’t see me, I was down at the far end of the lot, where the employees park. Miz McDill and Wendy Ashbach get out of the car and walk around to the end of it, and Miz McDill throws a lip-lock on Wendy and Wendy gives it right back to her. So they’re fooling around for a minute, which made me kinda hot, I gotta admit, and then they go sneaking off through the dark, toward Miz McDill’s cabin. I don’t know what happened the next morning, or if they snuck out early, or what.”
“You didn’t mention this to anyone?” Virgil asked.
“No, but if somebody saw them the next morning, the word would have gotten around,” Kara said. “A lot of the lesbos know Wendy, and they know she’s hot and likes girls, and if McDill got her in the sack, everybody would have been interested.”
“Huh.”
“That’s exactly what I thought. Huh.” She glanced down the hall. “I gotta go . . .”
“Listen, Kara . . . don’t tell anybody about this. There’s a crazy woman around here and you don’t want to attract her attention.”
“No shit, Sherlock,” she said. “My last name’s Larsen. I’m in the Grand Rapids phone book. If you need to ask me any more questions, call me. Don’t talk to me here.”
VIRGIL FOUND MARGERY STANHOPE in the main office, alone, staring out the window at the darkening lake. She turned in the chair when Virgil stepped in and asked, “Figured it out?”
“Not yet. Margery: if you knew anything at all that might put some light on this thing—or even if something unusual happened with Miss McDill in the last day or two, behavior-wise, you’d be sure and tell me, right?”
She said, “Something happened. What happened? Why did you ask that?”
“I’m wondering who spent the night in McDill’s cabin, night before last, and why nobody’s telling me about it,” Virgil said.
Stanhope sat up straight: “Night before last? I know nothing about that. I don’t spy on people—but I should have heard. I would have heard, if it were true.”
“You don’t think it’s true? I’ve got it on pretty good authority.”
She said, “Let me go talk to people. I’ll find out.”
“Do that,” Virgil said. “Let me give you my cell phone number. Call me anytime.”
5
NINE O’CLOCK, and Virgil rolled out of the resort into the dark, called Zoe Tull. She answered, and he picked up a soft Norah Jones-style sound behind her. “You going to the Wild Goose tonight?” he asked.
“I could, but . . . I usually stay away on nights when Wendy is singing. She likes to come over and pull on my tits. If you know the expression.”
“I don’t, actually. I mean, I’ve pulled on a few tits, both human and bovine, but I’ve—”
“She comes over and chats, like she thinks there’s no problem and we’re still good friends, and she pushes Berni in my face,” Zoe said.
“Berni’s the drummer? The one with the cowboy boots and the nice whachacallums.”
“Yeah. She calls herself Raven. Like the Edge, or Slash.”
“Well, if they come over, you could come slide in the booth next to me and put your hand on my thigh,” Virgil said.
“I don’t think that’d mean anything to her,” Zoe said.
“Mean a lot to me, though,” Virgil said. “I miss the woman’s touch.”
After a moment of silence, she laughed long, and said, “I really like that crude shitkicker side of you. All right. I’ll take you to the Goose.”
“Good. I’ve got a question I need to ask you,” Virgil said.
“Can’t ask on the telephone?”
“Cell phones are radios,” Virgil said. “You never know who’s listening.”
“That’s paranoid,” she said. “But . . . I wouldn’t mind going. Pick me up at the house, or meet me there?”
“Since there’s no chance I can get you drunk and take advantage of you, I’ll meet you there,” Virgil said. “Be quicker, and I’m going south tonight.”
“The Cities?”
Virgil nodded at his reflection in the windshield. “Yeah.”
“I thought you’d be up here for the duration,” Zoe said.
“I need to get some stuff—I’ll be back tomorrow.”
“Fifteen minutes,” she said. “Wait for me in the parking lot if you get there first. We can go in together.”
He stuck the phone back in his pocket, caught the yellow-white-diamond eyeblink in the ditch at the last possible moment, and stood on the brakes. A doe wandered into the headlights, stopped directly in front of the truck, fifteen feet away, and looked at him, then hopped off toward the other side of the road.
He waited, and another doe, and then a third, crossed in front of him, like ladies going first through the supermarket door. When he thought the last of them had crossed, he eased forward again, keeping watch: saw a half-dozen more deer in the ditches, but had no more close calls.
HE WAITED FIVE MINUTES for Zoe. She pulled in, hopped out of her Pilot, came across the parking lot wearing a frilly white low-cut blouse that showed her figure, tight jeans that showed the rest of her figure, and fancy dress cowboy boots made out of the skins of chicken testicles, or some such, with embossed red roses.
“Nice boots,” Virgil said into her cleavage.
“My eyes are up here,” she said.
“Yeah, yeah,” he said, as they crossed the parking lot to the door. “I’ve only heard that line in about eight movies.”
“What’s your favorite movie?”
He paused at the door, thought, and then said, “That’s too important a question to settle on the front porch of a bar.”
“You don’t have to defend your choice—just name it,” Zoe said.
“The Big Lebowski,” Virgil said. “The dude abides.”
“I was afraid of something like that,” she said.
“I could’ve said Slap Shot,” Virgil said.
“Ah, Jesus. Let’s go drink.” Inside the door, she said, “If you’d said, Hannah and Her Sisters, you might’ve got laid tonight.”
“I was gonna say that,” Virgil said. “Honest to God.”
“I was lying,” she said. “I lie a lot. Like you.”
THE BAND WAS ON, singing a Dixie Chicks song which, like all the other Dixie Chicks songs, Virgil didn’t like. Not so much that he didn’t like them, it was just that they affected him like the Vulcan nerve pinch, and caused him to crumple to the ground and drool. They got the last booth and Virgil checked the crowd—probably fifty women and eight or ten men—and then the singer.
Wendy was a fleshy blond beauty in the Janis Joplin mold—not crystal-pretty, like the blondes big in Nashville, but stronger, with breasts that moved in their own directions when she turned, over a narrow waist and long legs. She was wearing a deliberately fruity cowgirl suit, a white leather blouse and skirt with leather fringes, and cowboy boots like Zoe’s. And lipstick: she had a large mouth, with wide lips, coated with deep red lipstick that glistened in the bandstand lights. Here was the source of the kiss-card that he’d found in McDill’s cabin, Virgil thought.
She could sing. Again, not the currently popular Nashville crystal-soprano, but a throwback to the whiskey-voiced singers of an older generation. Virgil actually listened to the song, although the words themselves threatened to lower his IQ. When she finished, Wendy said, in the whiskey voice, “One more song this set, for those of you who like to dance, a little old northern Minnesota slow-waltz, ‘The Artists’ Waltz.’ I wrote it myself and I hope you like it.”
Virgil did: like it.
A dozen couples, all women, danced to the music, as Chuck turned the rheostat and the lights dimmed, a real slow-waltz and terrifically romantic. Virgil listened all the way through, alternately watching Wendy, and then watching Zoe, whose face was fixed on Wendy’s, and whose hands were clenched on the table, the knuckles white. She had lied to him, Virgil thought. Even if he’d said, Hannah and Her Sisters, he wouldn’t have gotten laid, because the girl was already in love.
Wendy finished and said, “We’re gonna take fifteen minutes, back to you then with another hour of the finest Wild Goose music. Thank you . . .”
THE SOUND LEVEL DROPPED, and Zoe, halfway through her beer, leaned forward and asked, “What’s the question you couldn’t put on the cell phone?”
Virgil shook his head. He almost didn’t want to ask it, now that he’d seen her reaction to Wendy. On the other hand, unasked questions didn’t often solve murders.
“Look,” he said, “I was watching you watching Wendy, and I didn’t realize how attached you were. Are. Whatever.”
“I’m not attached. We’re all done,” Zoe said.
“If she’d take you back, would you go?” Virgil asked.
She said, “No,” but her hands were doing their twist again. Virgil shook his head, and she said, “All right—yes.”
“That’s better,” Virgil said. “You’re really a horseshit liar.”
“What does that have to do with the question?”
Looking right in her eyes, Virgil asked, “Did you know Wendy spent the night before last with Erica McDill, at her cabin at the Eagle’s Lair?”
“Eagle Nest, and I don’t believe you,” Zoe said. She was looking straight back at him, and he felt that she was telling the truth. Then she said, “Why would you try to tell me something like that? Are you trying to get me to spread the lie around?”
Virgil opened his mouth to answer, when Wendy dropped in the booth next to Virgil, her thigh against his. She looked across the table at Zoe, said, “Hey, babe,” and then at Virgil, then back to Zoe, and asked, “Who’s the hunny-bunny?”
“He’s the cop investigating the murder at the lodge,” Zoe said.
Wendy tensed just a hair; Virgil saw and felt it.
Zoe added, “He’s the guy who massacred all the Vietnamese up at International Falls. He looks like a surfer boy, but he’s a stone killer.”
“Hey,” Virgil said. “I . . .”
The drummer, Berni/Raven, came up on Zoe’s side of the table, looking first at Wendy, then at Zoe, and said, “I thought you might be over here.”
Wendy tossed her hair back, like Marilyn Monroe might have done, and said, “Oh, God, don’t be evil.”
“I know, you’re just punkin’ me,” the drummer said. She was dressed in black jeans, with a sleeveless black jean jacket over nothing, and heavy dark eye shadow. The name Raven was stitched into the front of the jacket. She looked down at Zoe: “Wish you’d find a friend. He ain’t it, is he?” she said, looking at Virgil.
“He’s a cop,” Wendy said. “Asking questions about the murder.”
Berni said, “So ask me a question.”
Virgil shrugged. “Where were you at eight o’clock last night?”
“Eight o’clock. Mmm, lying in bed, rubbing myself, thinking about Wendy,” she said. She checked Virgil to see if he was embarrassed. He wasn’t. He did think, No alibi.
“Do me,” Wendy said. “Give me a question.”
Zoe blurted, “Don’t do it.”
“Do what?” Wendy asked, but Virgil was looking into Wendy’s eyes now, and saw that she knew. So he asked.
“I need to know what Erica McDill said to you night before last. Whether she
said anything that might have to do with the murder.”
“She didn’t see Erica McDill the night before last,” Berni said. “She had to run over to Duluth. . . .”
THEY ALL STOPPED TALKING. Zoe was staring at Wendy, who looked from Virgil to Berni and back to Virgil. Berni was focused on Wendy, saw the truth on her face, shouted, “You bitch,” pulled back her fist, and plugged Wendy in the left eye.
Virgil wasn’t moving fast enough; saw the punch coming and started to move, but the punch was already coming and landed with a solid thwack, and some tiny backward part of his brain thought, Good punch.
Wendy rocked back, her skull bouncing off the back of the booth, her mouth twisting, and then she came out of the booth in a hurricane of fingernails and teeth and the two women surged together and then went straight down to the floor, punching and screaming.
That answered one of Virgil’s questions: the drummer hadn’t known.
ZOE WAS SCREAMING at Virgil, “Stop them, stop them.”
Virgil was reluctant. In his experience, when women break down the social barriers so far that they begin physically tearing at each other, they are dangerous. Men learn social fighting as children; the posturing, the dominance routines, the punch in the nose, the threats to “get you someday,” and everybody goes home satisfied. Women don’t learn any of that: when they fight, they’ll rip the gizzard out of anyone who gets in the way.
But something had to be done. The women in the room were surging around like a lynch mob in a movie, as Chuck the bartender’s head bounced through them like a fishing bobber on a windy day. Virgil reached into the whirlwind of twisting flesh and grabbed a cowboy boot and yanked Berni out of the pileup.
Wendy came crawling after her, blood on her face. Berni tried to kick Virgil, and her boot started to come off, and Virgil grabbed her other boot; then Chuck grabbed one of Wendy’s boots and instead of trying to kick him, she did a pure abdominals sit-up, which put her within range, and she slashed him across the forehead with her fingernails. Chuck stumbled back but held on to the boot, and Wendy went with him. Berni was trying to kick Virgil again, so he twisted her feet once, and she flipped over onto her stomach and he put a knee in the middle of her back and pinned her, like a turtle: legs and arms still flailing, but the body was going nowhere.