Rough country

8

ZOE TULL'S SISTER'S HOUSE was more like a cabin than a real house, and sat on a shallow bay down a dark dirt road on Fifty-Dollar Lake. Zoe'd talked Virgil back to the place by cell phone, and was standing in the yard when he pulled in.

"The crime-scene guy who came to my house couldn't find any fingerprints but he said the door had definitely been forced," she said. And, "Hello."

"Hi. Yeah. I talked to him," Virgil said. "He said your locks wouldn't have kept a small child out."

"That situation will be fixed tomorrow." She wrapped her arms around herself and shivered. "I don't like this. I don't know if it was a coincidence, or if it's because I'm talking to you, or if it's some goof who kills women."

An older woman pushed out of the house: Zoe's sister. She looked a lot like Zoe, slender but more weathered, with cool, distant green eyes and a nose that was a bit too long. She was wearing a plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled up over her elbows, and jeans. She looked at Virgil for a moment, nothing shy about it, then looked past him for a minute, and said, "Nice rig."

"Works for me," Virgil said.

"You all best come in before the bugs eat you alive," the sister said.

"My sister, Sig. Signy," Zoe said. And to Signy, "This is Virgil."

SIGNY'S HOUSE SMELLED like pine wood and maybe a hint of bacon and pancakes; had a tiny kitchen, a small living room with a couch and a couple of easy chairs on an oval hooked rug, a woodstove in one corner, and a hallway that apparently led back to a couple of bedrooms. Virgil took one of the chairs and Zoe asked, "So what'd you find out?"

"Not much. Talked to a couple of people who didn't like McDill, but they didn't do it. Found out that Ruth Davies will inherit a hundred thousand dollars, and that she knew that McDill had had at least one affair, so I guess it's possible that she thought that their time was ending. Oh. She has no alibi."

Signy had gone to the kitchen and came back with three bottles, handed one to Virgil. Negra Modelo. Virgil took a swallow and said, "I'm sorry, ma'am. I can't drink when I'm on duty."

"That's a goddamn shame," Signy said. She handed another bottle to Zoe, and had one for herself. "You don't think this Davies woman did it?"

"I didn't say that," Virgil said.

"You sound like it," she said.

"Okay. I don't think she did it."

"Who do you think did?" Signy asked.

"I don't know enough of the players," Virgil said. "I'll be up for a few days, figure that out."

Signy smiled at him and showed a chipped front tooth. "Got an ego on you, I'll say that."

SIGNY'S HUSBAND was in Alaska. "One time he went out for a loaf of bread and wound up in Churchill, on Hudson Bay. This time, it's Alaska."

"Sounds confused," Virgil said.

"He is confused. A nice guy, but confused. I don't believe he'll be back," she said.

"He could come back," Zoe said.

"I don't think so," Signy said. To Virgil. "He keeps moving further north. Last time, he barely made it home. This time, he's over the horizon. I don't think he'll make it at all."

"Life," Virgil said.

"Show Virgil the picture he sent you," Zoe said.

Signy got up, went to a table in the front hall, picked up an envelope, and carried it back to Virgil; Virgil slipped out a photograph and tipped it toward the lamplight to see it better. It showed a thin, dark-haired man standing on the bank of a creek, looking at a bulldozer that had about sunk out of sight in what appeared to be a bog, or maybe quicksand. A chain led down to the dozer from a second bulldozer; the second dozer was apparently trying to pull the first one out of the muck.

"Guess what he got a job driving," Signy said.

"The bulldozer?"

"He has accidents," Zoe said.

Virgil gave the photo back to Signy, who asked, "You want another beer?"

"I shouldn't," Virgil said. She went and got him another one, and said, "I'd give you a sandwich, but I don't have anything in the house. I usually eat out."

"Got a bag of sweet corn in the truck," Virgil said.

Signy's eyes lit up: "I could do some sweet corn. That's just boiling water, right?"

VIRGIL GOT THE CORN and she looked in the bag and said, "Cucumbers. I could put together a salad. I've got some apples and lettuce…" Virgil got the impression that she wasn't big on cooking.

Signy wandered off to the kitchen and Virgil sat down again and said to Zoe, "Tell me all about this band. Tell me about Wendy and Berni and whoever else…"

ZOE TOLD HIM that the band had been around for two or three years, but that Wendy had been something of a Grand Rapids celebrity since middle school. "She's always been the best singer that anybody ever knew. When she was a little kid, she used to sing with a polka band, and even travel around with them. Around the Iron Range, I mean. Not all over."

Wendy and Berni became best friends in middle school, and Berni learned the drums because she wasn't any good at other musical instruments. Together they played in a high school rock band that later became a country band when Wendy decided that she had more of a country voice. She also decided that women got a better break in country music than in rock.

After high school, she worked for a while at a local convenience store, and then for her father, breeding dogs. "Nasty hairy yellow-looking things," Zoe said. "Though I guess they get a lot of money for them. They're some kind of rare dog, or something."

"I wonder if she literally breeds them," Signy said from the kitchen. "She breeds everything else."

"Shut up, Sig," Zoe said.

All the time she was working, Wendy had a band. The band was getting better-they were shedding the old high school part-timers, and were picking up some pros-and Wendy's voice was getting richer. So was her love life.

ZOE SAID, and Signy agreed, between bouts of looking into the corn kettle, that Wendy was a heartless slut who played her lovers off against each other, and sometimes slept with men to demonstrate her independence.

"But she's really talented. You heard her," Zoe said, her face alight. "She's got this magnetism that pulls people in. Even McDill. That's what all the big stars have. You can't figure it out, but you can feel it."

Berni, on the other hand, was a below-average drummer, Zoe said. "She can do it, but she's not so creative. Wendy told me that."

"You think Wendy'll dump her?" Virgil asked.

Signy said, "If Wendy thought Berni could cost her a recording contract, she'd drop her off the bus on the side of the interstate."

WENDY KNEW THAT she had to move-Taylor Swift, Zoe said, was two years younger than Wendy, and was already a huge name with the best-selling album in the U.S.

"But you know what? Taylor Swift is like Grace Slick. You know who Grace Slick was?"

"Jefferson Starship?" Virgil ventured.

"Yeah, and another band, Jefferson Airplane, before that. Everybody thought that she was going to be the queen of rock and roll. Then along came Janis Joplin, and Janis Joplin was the queen of rock and roll. Wendy is Janis Joplin. But she's got to make a move. She knows it. Time is pressing on her."

WENDY AND BERNI LIVED together in a double-wide out at Wendy's father's place, Zoe said. Berni and Wendy's father were tight.

"I think he's the one that got Wendy back with Berni, instead of with me," Zoe said.

"Are you still in love?" Signy asked.

"Well, what do you think?"

Signy said to her sister, "I think it might be a lack of other opportunity. If you were down in the Cities, with lots of other women, you'd be fine. But up here, what're you going to do? Go out with Sandy Ericson? I mean, Wendy's what you got."

Zoe faked a shiver and said to Virgil, "Sandy goes about two-twenty in her boxer shorts."

"And it ain't muscle," Signy said. To her sister: "You know why Wendy was plucking your magic twanger? Because you're an accountant, and she thought she might learn something about handling money. That's why."

"Sig-shut up," Zoe said.

VIRGIL ASKED, "If Berni thought Wendy was going to dump her because of McDill, would Berni have shot McDill?"

Signy and Zoe looked at each other, and then simultaneously shrugged. Zoe said, "I don't know if Berni knows anything about guns. I could ask."

"Don't do that. You already had one nut creeping around your house." Signy said, then, "Water's boiling. I'm gonna drop that corn in there for one minute and then we're gonna eat, so you might as well come now."

AS THEY STOOD UP, Virgil said to Zoe, "I can't think why somebody would break into your house, that would be connected with this killing. Can you?"

She shook her head. "No."

"On the other hand, we have a violent crime, and you know all the main local people around the dead woman, and you've been seen hanging out with me, and somebody breaks into your house. Is this the first time you've had a break-in?"

"Oh, yeah-I mean, we had some kids who were breaking into houses in my neighborhood, a couple of years ago, stealing stuff to buy drugs, but they caught them right away."

"There are burglaries," Signy said. "It's not like this place is totally crime-free."

"But the time link makes it interesting," Virgil said. "She's been up around the crime scene, she's seen with me, and we get the break-in."

"On some of the crime shows, you get people who don't know what they know, and that's why they're in danger," Zoe said. "You think that's like me? I don't know what I know?"

Virgil grinned at her and said, "Crime shows and mystery novels are totally different things than real life, you know? What I'm thinking is, you had somebody come in there, planning to threaten you, or even hurt you, or to find out what you were saying to me, or to find out what you knew, and he came in with a pipe or just his fists, and this voice says, 'I've got a gun,' and he says, 'Fuck it,' and takes off."

"Or she," Zoe said.

"Or she. And if you knew something, I think you'd know it. Wouldn't you?"

Signy said, "Well, we had that secretary of defense, who was always talking about known unknowns, and unknown unknowns, and all that-maybe Zoe could have an unknown known."

Virgil looked at her for a second, then said, "Two beers might have been one too many. I didn't understand a thing you said."

SIGNY HAD a tiny kitchen table, and three mismatched chairs. As they sat around, working on the mediocre salad and terrific sweet corn with real butter, Virgil asked Signy what she did, and she said, "I've got a quilt store in Grand Rapids."

"Ah. That's pretty cool. I like quilts," Virgil said. "My mom makes them and I've got three of them."

"Damn near can't make a living at it," Signy said. "You can get so close… but then you always need an extra fifty dollars for something. You'll think everything's working this week, and then you tear up a tire or something."

Zoe said, "Signy went to the U in Minneapolis. In art."

Virgil reevaluated, and so obviously that Signy said, "What? You thought I was a hillbilly woman, right?"

"Nah. I come from a small town myself," he said.

"It's Joe that's dragging you down," Zoe said to Signy. "You oughta get a divorce. Like, next week."

"Divorces cost money and he's not bothering me, so… when I get the money," Signy said.

"I don't even know why you married him; he's such a loser," Zoe said.

"Well," Signy said, and she picked up one of the corn cobs on her plate and held it erect, contemplated it with slightly crossed eyes. About ten inches long, Virgil thought. "I don't honestly know why," she said after a minute.

Zoe fell into a coughing fit, and Virgil asked, "Can you breathe?" and she patted herself on the chest and said, "I inhaled a corn."

"'Zat what it was," Virgil said. And he asked her, "Are you staying here?"

"Until the locks are on," Zoe said. "The lock guy is coming tomorrow morning."

"What're you going to do tomorrow?" Signy asked Virgil.

"Push on people," Virgil said. "I'm going to run around and push on people."

"I'd like to see that," she said; her head was tilted, and she stroked her cheek with the fingers of one hand. "I really would like to see you work."

VIRGIL CRASHED at a chain motel on Highway 169 South, the kind where they don't bother with drywall, but simply paint the concrete blocks a dusty shade of yellow; but offered double-length parking for customers pulling boats. When he checked in, the desk clerk asked him how long he'd be there, and he said, "Three or four days."

Before he went to sleep, in the time he usually thought about God, he thought about Wendy. One problem with looking at a talent in isolation, he thought, was that it was almost impossible to judge exactly how good they were.

Wendy was as good as anyone he'd heard in a small bar in Minnesota-but on the other hand, those bands were in small bars in Minnesota, and that was the problem. Put Wendy up against Emmylou Harris, and she might sound like Raleigh the Talking Bulldog.

Of course, that didn't mean so much if the people around her were convinced that they stood at the edge of a gold mine; on the one hand, you had life in Grand Rapids; in the other one, the possibility of Nashville and Hollywood and… whatever.

Then he thought about God and, after a while, went to sleep.

IN THE MORNING he put on a fresh, but vintage, Nine Inch Nails T-shirt, took five of the eight remaining free miniature Danishes in the complimentary breakfast, and two cups of coffee, and ran out to the Eagle Nest. Another good day, sun creeping up into the sky, almost no wind. He wondered if Johnson was fishing, or if he'd given it up and gone home.

That God-blessed Davenport.

The problem with Davenport, Virgil thought, was that he tended to think in very straight lines. Brutally straight. We have a murder in Grand Rapids, the victim's prominent, the BCA agent with the highest clearance rate in the agency happens to be on a lake nearby, so what do you do? Send in Flowers.

Was there anything creative in that? Was there a break for a new guy, somebody who could use the experience? Did it take into account the agent's emotional state, or need for respite?

Virgil thought not.

Just drop in that fuckin' Flowers, and forget it. Let him sink or swim.

MARGERY STANHOPE was leaning against a railing, looking out over Stone Lake, when Virgil came up beside her. "Still bummed?"

"I can't shake it," she said.

Virgil looked out over the lake and said, "Well… another month, and you can take the winter off."

She sighed and asked, "What are you up to?"

"I'd like to talk to people who are still here who knew McDill. I need some names."

"You want to talk one at a time, or all together?"

"Both," Virgil said. "I'd like to have the whole group in, and then, when we're done, I'll ask if anybody has anything they'd like to follow up with me, privately. Give them my cell number to call."

"A bunch of them went on a bear-spotting trip to Steven's Island. They'll be back for lunch. How about right after lunch?"

Virgil patted the rail. "See you then," he said.

HE CALLED ZOE. "Get your locks?"

"The guy's here now. He'll be done in an hour," she said.

"Where'd I find Wendy and Berni and the rest of them?" Virgil asked.

"Probably down at the Schoolhouse. They've rented it for the month; they're working on a record."

THE SCHOOLHOUSE was east of town, and had once been a one-room schoolhouse. A red-brick cube with a chimney at one end and a door and bell tower-no bell-at the other, it was surrounded by a gravel parking lot with a half-dozen SUVs scattered around in no particular pattern. When Virgil got out of his truck, he could see through a glass-brick wall the flailing arms of a drummer, but he could hear not a sound. He climbed the steps, went through the front doors, found himself in an entry room facing a skinny, nervous blond woman who was sitting on a desk, reading what looked like a manuscript, but turned out to be a musical score, and chewing gum in rhythm with the faintly audible bass.

Virgil said, "I'm looking for Wendy Ashbach."

The woman chewed and asked, "Who're you?"

"The cops," Virgil said.

He must've said it in a cop-like way, because she nodded and said, "Virgil. I heard about you. You were at the fight last night."

"Yeah…"

"They're laying down the basic tracks for 'Lover Do,' and they'll be greatly pissed if you mess it up."

"I don't want to mess anything up, but I need to talk to Wendy and maybe Berni and anybody else who might have something to chip in," Virgil said.

"Okay. You ever been in a recording studio?"

"Nope."

"Follow me in, and sit on the couch against the back wall," she said. "You don't have to be real quiet, but be a little quiet. They're working."

The control room was probably twenty feet long and fifteen feet deep, with a long window facing a room full of women musicians-a bass guitar, a lead, keyboards, a violinist, all wearing headphones, playing a fairly simple song. On the other side of the musicians' room was another, smaller room, also with a window, and Berni was inside, pounding on her drums.

Under the window, on Virgil's side, two men crouched over a control board that must have been fifteen feet long; the music flowed into the control room through speakers on either side and above the control board. Wendy was in the control room itself, standing behind the engineers, wearing headphones and a microphone, half singing, half humming the words to the song, and behind it all, a metronome-like click was parsing out the beat.

Nobody looked at Virgil or the blonde. They stayed with the music, and the blonde pointed Virgil at a couch against the back wall, and when he sat down, she sat down beside him.

"They're laying down the basic tracks," the blonde said quietly. "They'll record the solos later, and overdub them. When they've got that perfect, then Wendy'll come in with the real vocals and they'll overdub that. She's doing scratch vocals now, to keep everybody tuned in to her."

Virgil nodded.

The blonde asked, "Are you here about Erica McDill?"

"Yeah."

"That was a bad break. We needed somebody like her. She knew her shit."

"Who're you?"

The woman stuck out her hand and said, "Corky Saarinen. I'm the manager."

As Virgil shook it, the band clattered to a sloppy stop, and one of the engineers said, "Okay, guys, let's pick it up right at the top of the fourth verse. Sin, lead us in, and Wendy can pick it up…"

They started again, and Virgil whispered, "Why'd you need McDill?"

Saarinen leaned closer and said, "I can handle all the detail stuff-the road stuff. Making sure everything gets where it's supposed to, on time. And I can find other people to work for us, lawyers, accountants, and so on. But some of it-contacts, agents, advertising, publicity-so much counts on talent. You don't know when people are bullshitting you, or if you're getting what you're paying for. And you know, if you come out with a bad initial image, you could be dead for years. It's something you've got to get right, right off the top. That's what McDill could have done for us."

"So what'll you do now?"

She shrugged: "McDill talked to some people down at her agency, about the band. I'll track them down, find out what they think. Maybe they can give us a lead to a new PR guy."

"You guys were going to hire McDill? Could you afford her?"

"Nah. Wendy and McDill were bumpin' each other. McDill was doing it because it made her feel hip. Edgy. Out there. I mean, she was married to a fat housewife, and along comes Wendy, you know?"

"You knew they were involved?" Virgil asked.

"Yeah, me and Sin did. We tried to keep it quiet, because we figured Berni'd go off, like she did. Have you seen Wendy's eye?"

Virgil hadn't; hadn't seen anything of Wendy but the back of her head. He shook his head: "No."

Saarinen giggled: "She looks like she went six rounds with Rocky."

"How long were Wendy and McDill involved?" Virgil asked.

Saarinen glanced at the singer, then said, "A few days-since about… mmm… Tuesday. Maybe Tuesday. McDill and some other women introduced themselves on Saturday night, at the Goose, and they got to talking. McDill came around and watched us work on Monday, and on Tuesday, we were talking about PR and I realized that they'd been talking during the day, when the rest of us weren't around. You could tell something was about to happen."

THE BAND got to the end of the song, then played the end again, and again, and finally one of the engineers leaned into a microphone and said, "That's got it, guys."

Wendy pulled her headphones off and turned and spotted Virgil and did a double take, then grinned and said, "Hey, guy." She had a black eye as big as a silver dollar, startling under her blond hair.

"Wendy," Virgil said. "That black eye looks pretty interesting."

"You like it? We did a couple of publicity photos this morning. Might use it for the album cover."

THERE WAS AN EMPTY wheeled office chair pushed under the control board, and she rolled it over to Virgil and plopped down, with her feet overlapping his, their knees almost touching. She did it deliberately but good-naturedly, poking at him, to see how he'd react. He said, "I need to talk to you and the band about which one of you killed McDill."

That stopped her: "You know… one of us did it?"

"No, but you're the best I've got, and I've got to work with what I got," Virgil said, poking her back.

"Well, let me see… I guess it was Wednesday when we decided to kill her. I said, 'Girl, you gotta get it on. Gotta get the six-gun and shoot Erica McDill right in the ear.' " The smile vanished and she cocked her head: "So what in the fuck are you talking about?"

"McDill could have been killed for business reasons, but when I dug into that, I couldn't find any," Virgil said. "Most everybody needed to keep her alive. Her getting killed is going to cost a lot of people a lot of money. Then, I thought maybe her girlfriend did it-but her girlfriend needs written instructions to walk across the street, and I don't see her figuring out something this complicated. Then I've got a whole band full of people whose love lives are all twisted up, with you in the middle of it. A lot of emotion going around. People fighting in bars about it. Most of you are small-town girls, and I bet more than one of you has her own rifle, and could figure out how to get through that swamp into Stone Lake. That's how I figure it."

Wendy looked at him for a minute, then backed up to the control board. On the other side of the glass, the musicians were chatting as they took down music and put their instruments away, and Wendy pushed a button on the control board and said, "Everybody, come on in: there's a cop here who thinks we killed Erica."

IN A MINUTE or so, the room had filled with a half-dozen querulous women, none of them, with the exception of Berni the drummer, especially small. Virgil watched with interest as Wendy put on her outraged mask. It went on like a Halloween face, and Virgil thought, I've got a crazy one.

Not knowing exactly what was going to happen, Virgil eased to his feet as the women pushed into the control room, as though he were being polite; they brought the odor of overheated bodies with them, and he noticed that a couple of them were sweating, from the session just ended-harder work than it seemed.

Wendy said, "Well, he says one of us did it-who was it? Cat? Did you do it?"

"Not me," said the keyboard player. She looked at Virgil, storming up. "Did he say it was me?"

Wendy turned to Virgil, ready to say something, but Virgil snapped, "I didn't say it was anybody. But we've got a lot of women swarming around Wendy here, and Wendy was sleeping with McDill. You're where we look. Everybody who doesn't like Wendy, raise your hands: you can go."

They all looked at one another, and a couple of women flashed amused smiles. No hands went up.

Berni said, "You know, people could get sued if you go throwing these accusations around."

"If you think you see an accusation, sue me," Virgil said.

"Maybe we ought to kick your ass," the lead guitar said, and she sounded serious.

More quick glances, people checking to see how far this was going, and Virgil took a step to his right, to open the distance by three feet and to get his back against a wall. One of the engineers said, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, we got equipment in here."

Virgil said to the lead guitar, "Well, roll it out, honey. Let's see what you got," and he said it with enough ice that he caught their attention.

"You think you can take all of us?" the lead guitar asked.

"I think so," Virgil said. "Maybe not. I'll have to hurt a couple people bad, maybe blind you."

"You're fuckin' crazy," one of the engineers said.

"I'm a BCA agent investigating a murder. If you guys take me on, I'll beat as many of you as I can, and all of you will be going to prison for assault on a peace officer, which is a felony in the state of Minnesota," Virgil said. "You think a murder is fuckin' funny, you should have come down and looked into McDill's dead empty eyes, the back of her head all blown out. She wasn't laughing. You want a couple of years in prison to think about that, bring it on."

That turned them off, quick as a light switch. The woman who'd been playing the violin said, "This is nuts. I've got nothing to do with this. I don't want to fight a cop. My dad's a cop."

"Pussy," Wendy said.

"Hey, you wanna come out in the live room and say that?" the woman snarled at Wendy.

The engineer, a burly guy with heavy-rimmed black-plastic Hollywood hipster glasses, pushed into the woman and said, "Get out of here. You're gonna start breakin' stuff, goddamnit. Wendy, that board's a hundred and fifty thousand and if you bust it, you pay for it; or your old man does."

"I'm outa here," said the violinist.

"Nobody's out of here," Virgil said. "I came here to interview you, one at a time. Take five minutes each."

"Outside," the engineer said. "Do it outside."

THEY WOUND UP doing it in the drum booth, Virgil sitting on the drummer's stool, the women, Wendy last, moving in and out of a metal folding chair.

Berni Kelly, who called herself Raven, drummer: "Like I told you the other night, I was by myself, but I didn't do it. I was home, waiting for Wendy. Her dad was there, over at his place, part of the time, anyway. I didn't see him-I saw his truck and I'm sure he must've seen mine. I didn't know about Wendy and McDill. I guess I was the last to find out."

"You're pretty upset?"

"Well, she's gone off before," Berni said. "She always comes back. But I was pretty upset. I mean, last night, I hit her as hard as I could."

"Pretty good shot, too," Virgil said with a grin.

"Thank you."

"You're back together?" Virgil asked.

"We are. Yes. Listen, I really don't have anything against you. I hope you find out who killed Erica, even though I didn't like her. Us guys got this rock 'n' roll attitude about cops, but it's a TV thing, it's not real. I'm on your side, really."

"What do you think about Zoe Tull?"

"I don't think about her," Berni said. "She and Wendy had a thing, but Zoe's so straight, Wendy couldn't stand it anymore. I mean, Zoe wanted to exchange Valentine's Day candy-heart boxes, for God's sakes."

CATHY (CAT) MATHIS, KEYBOARDS: "We could have taken you."

"Maybe-you had total weight on your side and you might have taken me down, but I would have hurt a few of you, and the more I hurt, the more room I'd have to go after the rest," Virgil said with a smile. "It'd be an interesting thing to try out, except that we'd have to hurt people to do it. If I didn't have the job I have, I'd be willing to try it out."

Her head bobbed up and down a couple of times, and then she said, "Really?"-a genuine question.

"Yeah. Really," Virgil said.

"You like to fight?" she asked.

"Like is the wrong word," Virgil said. "I find it intense. My life lacks intensity."

"You killed all those Vietnamese. Was that intense?"

"I didn't personally kill anybody-but yeah: it was intense," Virgil said. Before she could ask another question, he asked, "Where were you when McDill was killed?"

"I don't know exactly when she was killed, but I heard it was late afternoon. I have a karate class at six o'clock, and I was in class."

"Karate. You like to fight?" Virgil asked.

"My life lacks intensity," she said.

"How many people in the class?" Virgil asked.

"Probably eight or nine people, plus the sensei," Mathis said. "Then, another class came in while we were finishing. If you want to check the alibi, you should do it quick-today-before people start to forget. I sparred with a guy named Larry Busch."

"If you had to pick out one person that you know who might have killed Erica McDill, who would you pick?"

But she was already shaking her head: "Not a fair question. I have no idea who might have wanted to hurt McDill. I knew that she and Wendy were fooling around, but I figured that was their business."

"Have you had a relationship with Wendy yourself?"

"Yeah. She pays me to play keyboards. I'm an employee," Mathis said.

"But…"

"I'm straight."

"All right; so you had no… love interest in the situation… with either McDill or Wendy or Berni or whoever."

"Nope."

BERTHA (BERT) CARR, the violinist: "You're looking at the wrong place. The only person who might have wanted to get rid of McDill for romantic… or sexual reasons… would be Berni, and Berni really didn't know. I mean, I know she didn't know, because I was talking to her about Wendy and she asked me if I thought McDill was a threat. She knew McDill had an eye on Wendy, but didn't know how far it had gotten."

"When did you figure it out?"

"Tuesday night. Nobody said anything, but we were sitting around here and Wendy's dad brought some pizzas and McDill and Wendy were sitting right next to each other, were touching each other all the time; right there with Dad watching."

"Tuesday."

"Yes. I counted back."

"If I shouldn't be looking here, where should I be looking?" Virgil asked.

"At the Eagle Nest," Carr said. "That place… you know that there are a lot of us who stay there, right?"

"Us?"

"Gays. Lesbians," she said.

"Sure. I've been told that."

"That's not the whole story," she said. "Did you notice that there are quite a few little boy-toy waiters up there?"

"Boy toy… Are you…?" He thought of the waiter who'd taken him down the steps to the water, and his cutting-edge hairdo.

"Yes. There are any number of hasty romances going on up there, and they're not all gay. I'd heard that McDill would rent one of the boys every once in a while. She had this dominatrix thing going. You know, I don't mean leather or vinyl or any of that, but she sort of liked getting a little boy to kneel down for her, if you get the picture."

"Ah, man. Did Wendy know that?" Virgil asked.

"Wendy… Wendy would inhale a boy every once in a while," Carr said. "That was something she and McDill shared. I wonder if there was a boy there that night, when Wendy stayed over?"

"Ah, man," Virgil said.

"What? You weird about sex?" Carr asked.

"No. But everything just got more complicated," Virgil said. "So where were you when Erica McDill was murdered?"

"I think-this is just from what I heard on TV-that I was right here, working on 'Lover Do' with Wendy. There were a few people here, Gerry, Corky, our manger, that guy Mark…" She pointed through the window to one of the engineers, who was disconnecting a microphone in the live room.

"Okay. Enough to nail down an alibi."

"Yes. I believe so. I mean, people were coming and going, we went out to eat for a while… But, generally, we were around," Carr said.

"It's only ten minutes out to the Eagle Nest."

"Well… what can I tell you? I don't know where everybody was, for every ten minutes. The dinner break, some people were out for an hour…"

CYNTHIA (SIN) SAWYER, the lead guitar. She came in carrying a saxophone, tooted it once, then put it on the floor beside her chair.

"Gay or straight?" Virgil asked.

"Me? A little of both," she said.

"Do you think Wendy and McDill ever shared a male companion?" Virgil asked.

"I doubt it. Wendy would have been bragging about it, if they did," Sawyer said. "And she hasn't. Been bragging."

"You ever hear about male companions working up at the Eagle Nest?"

"Sure. It's a high school joke around here," she said. "If you've got a certain look, apply at the Eagle Nest for a summer job. Depending on the length of your dick, you might get overtime."

"You believe it?"

"Yep." She smiled.

"The place is starting to sound like a whorehouse," Virgil said.

"What, you thought women came up to look at loons all day? Believe me, you can only look at a loon for so long," she said. "You get up, you do some yoga, drink some body-cleansing green tea, look at some loons, paddle some canoes, drink some martinis, get your brains banged loose, go to bed. All part of the package."

"Do you have any feeling that anybody in the band might have wanted to hurt McDill?"

She leaned forward and tapped his knee. "No. And I'll tell you why. I'm a good goddamned lead guitar; I'm a pro. Gerry is a terrific bass player-she's not from here, she's from the Cities, and moved up here to get with Wendy's voice. And she's got a good backup voice. The violin is fine, the keyboards are okay; if we can find a decent drummer, we could go a long way with Wendy. McDill could have been part of that plan. I listened to McDill talk, and I'm a believer. She knew her shit. She was somebody we needed."

"But you'd have to dump Berni, right?" Virgil asked.

"Well, yeah-but she doesn't necessarily know that," Sawyer said. "Or maybe she does. That's life. Maybe she could be an assistant manager or something, a roadie, or a spare drummer, or she could do some other percussion shit-tambourines. She can sing a little, and she's got really great tits, so she'd look good up front, I mean, she could stay… but the point is, McDill could have put us on that road, you know? She had contacts all over the place: she knew how to get it done."

"You liked her?"

"Oh… no. But that didn't make any difference to me," Sawyer said. "It's like you've got a terrific music teacher, and he puts his hand on your ass. You don't like him, but hey-he teaches you to play a killer guitar. You like that part. Same with McDill. I'm not going to sleep with her, but she can do my PR all day and night."

She had been running around to a grocery store and to a Wal-Mart when McDill was killed: "I guess that's not exactly a great alibi, but that's what I was doing. I was in and out of here, while they were trying to figure out 'Lover Do,' but I didn't have anything to do with killing McDill."

Virgil believed her.

GERRY O'MEARA, BASS, didn't seem to have a nickname; she'd been working on the "Lover Do" song with Wendy and the others when McDill was killed. "Yeah, there'll have to be some personnel changes in the band, and I guess she probably knows it. I mean, this is what I do for a living, and I'm good at it, and I've played with some heavy people. Now I need to cash it in. I'm almost thirty, and if I'm going to make it, it's got to be soon."

"But you don't think the changes might somehow lead to this murder?" Virgil asked.

"I don't see how. McDill was going to help with PR, and with contacts in Nashville and so on, but… I don't see how the changes would wind up with her getting shot. I think it was something at the Eagle Nest. Somebody heard about her sleeping with Wendy and got jealous. I mean, who else would know where Erica was going in that canoe?"

"Good point. Have you heard that McDill had anything going up here, other than Wendy?"

"No, I haven't heard anything. I don't hang with the gay chicks. I'm straight. But McDill getting killed has to be one of two things, right? Business-I mean, money-or sex. Jealousy. One of those two things. You just have to figure out which one."

"Thank you," Virgil said.