Rough country

10

SIGNY ONLY HAD BITS and pieces of the story. A woman whose name was Constance Stifry, Lifry, Snifry, something like that, had two years earlier come up to the Eagle Nest on vacation from Iowa-Iowa City, Sioux City, Forest City, Mason City-"Something-City, I can't remember which, but it was definitely Iowa."

"I can find it," Virgil said.

Signy added, "I think somebody said she'd been here before, but I'm not sure about that."

Wendy's band was playing the area, Signy said, and did a one-week stand at the Wild Goose, but was not yet the house band. Constance whatever-her-name-was was an older woman, but knew a lot about country music. She was also friends with a guy who ran a major country-western nightclub, one of the circuit clubs where the about-to-be-big acts often played, and she suggested that Wendy might want to talk to the guy.

When she went back to Iowa, she did, in fact, talk to somebody, who was, in fact, something of a big shot. There was talk of a gig, of opening for one of the big hat acts.

"And then," Signy said, "she got killed. She got murdered and people were running around looking for the killer, and the whole idea of playing this nightclub kinda went away."

"How do you know this?" Virgil asked.

"From Zoe, who got it from Wendy, and Margery knows about it, too, because Constance whatever-her-name-is, Nifly, Gifly, something like that-Constance stayed at the Eagle Nest, and she was a lesbian."

"Why didn't Zoe tell me?" Virgil asked, running one hand through his hair. Couldn't believe it.

Sig said, "I don't know. I guess maybe… The woman was killed down there, in Iowa, and nobody really knew what happened to her. Somebody heard about it, probably one of the lesbians, and people at the Eagle Nest knew her, so the word got around. But it was quite a while ago, a couple of years, anyway. Nobody saw any connection with anything up here. I think the word was, it was a robbery. Maybe. I'm not sure about that part."

Virgil said, "Well, now there's a connection. Goddamnit, Sig, I'm gonna have to scream at your sister. Does she know all the details?"

Sig said, "I don't know what she knows. Really, it was sort of vaguely interesting… like you once met somebody who crashed in an airplane, but, you know… not all that interesting."

Virgil had come over for the pizza, feeling that there was an excellent chance that he would finish the evening with his boots off. Sig was an attractive woman who was apparently suffering the tortures of involuntary abstinence. Even if Virgil wasn't able to solve that problem this very night-misplaced and poorly considered Midwestern courtship manners usually demanded an acquaintanceship of longer than three hours before commissions of adultery-he might have hoped to establish a forward base camp from which to organize an attack on the summit.

But now this.

"Ah, man," he groaned. He pulled out his cell phone and found Zoe's number and punched it up, and when Zoe answered, he shouted, "Why didn't you tell me about Constance what's-her-name from Iowa?"

She said, "Oh, God."

"I'm coming over there. Goddamnit, Zoe…" He clicked off.

"You're leaving?" Sig asked.

"I gotta…"

She tilted her face up at him. "Well, shoot. I was enjoying our talk."

She was definitely standing inside his circle of friendship and he edged a little closer and said, "So was I-I mean, enjoying the talk, but, hell, Signy…"

"I know," she said, her eyes resigned. "The woman got murdered. So, maybe sometime…"

Virgil eased a bit closer and leaned over and kissed her on the lips and she pushed into him enough that he felt authorized to give her butt a squeeze, and what a glorious appendage it seemed to be…

She pushed off and said, "Goddamnit, your own self. Go see her. Maybe you could call me tomorrow. If you want…"

"I want, definitely," Virgil said. He looked around, checking to see if there were any excuses flying through the air that he might grab and use to avoid going to Zoe's, but there were none. "I'll call you," he said.

Signy had been wearing a sweet-tasting lipstick, and a little perfume, and Virgil could taste and smell her halfway over to Zoe's.

ZOE WAS WAITING in her living room, anxious, a twisted sheet of paper in her hand. Virgil thought she might have been pacing, rehearsing whatever she was going to say.

"Virgil, I'm sorry. I didn't really think it was important enough-"

"You're smarter than that," Virgil snapped. "So don't give me any bullshit. Tell me what happened."

"I didn't know exactly, but I went online and found an article in the Cedar Rapids Gazette. She was from Swanson, Iowa, near Iowa City. Between Iowa City and Cedar Rapids, anyway… I got the article."

She handed Virgil the sheet of paper and he unrolled it.

Sept. 29-Forty-nine-year-old Swanson restaurant owner Constance Lifry was found strangled Saturday night in the parking lot behind Honey's, 640 Main in Swanson, Johnson County Sheriff Gerald Limbaugh said Sunday.

Lifry was a well-known civic activist and a member of several local gardening clubs, and an expert on heritage roses.

Limbaugh said that Lifry was last seen alive by two cleaning women who worked at the restaurant. The women said that Lifry had worked in her office until about 10 P.M. Saturday night, after the 9 P.M. closing, and they found her body when one of the women went outside to smoke a cigarette.

"We are processing a good deal of crime scene information and hope we can settle this quickly," Limbaugh said. "I knew Constance most of my life and everyone who ever met her would tell you that she was a wonderful woman, involved with her community and with the American Heart Association, somebody who worked hard and made jobs for twenty or thirty people. This is a tragedy, and we'll be busting our butts to bring her killer to justice."

He said that Lifry had been strangled with "a cord of some kind, but the killer apparently took it with him."

No witnesses to the murder have been found, he said, "But we're talking to several people, and we're also processing videotape from Larry's Exxon across the street."

THAT WAS THE HARD INFORMATION: the rest of the article was testimonials and history.

"That's all?" Virgil asked. "There was never an arrest?"

"It's not in the paper. I never heard that there was."

"When was she up here?" Virgil asked. "She stayed at the Eagle Nest, right? Did she go to the Wild Goose? What'd she have to do with Wendy?"

Zoe shook her head; she'd been twisting her fingers and sidling around him as he read the article, and now she produced some tears and said, "God, I feel awful about this."

Virgil softened up a notch: "Zoe…"

"She was here two summers ago, in August. And some other years, I think. She went to the Goose, she met Wendy, they talked," Zoe said. "There's this big country-western place near Iowa City, called Spodee-Odee. It's pretty important, you know, as a showcase. Lots of big bands play there. Willie Nelson used to play there and Jerry Jeff Walker. Those Texas guys."

"Okay."

"So she… I mean, Constance… knew the guy who owns the place, whose name is like, Jud. That's all I remember. But they were supposed to be pretty close, and she told Wendy that if Wendy wanted to do it, she'd, uh, recommend the band to Jud. Actually, she didn't like the band so much as Wendy. You know, her voice. She was right-the band back then sorta sucked, but they're a lot better now."

"So she was going to get Wendy a gig," Virgil said.

"More than a gig. A big deal, really. If you play Spodee-Odee, I guess, it's like a badge. You're that good," Zoe said.

"Who would have a problem with that?" Virgil asked.

"With what?"

"With Wendy getting a gig in Iowa City?"

She shook her head. "I don't know. Why would anybody have a problem with it? It's a good thing."

"But now we have another woman who was going to do a good thing for Wendy, and she's also murdered," Virgil said. "Right?"

"Right," she said.

"Was Lifry gay?"

"I think so," Zoe said. "I never met her. She was out of my age range. But, that's what I heard."

"From who?"

"I don't know. Wendy, maybe," she said. "Wait: I don't want to get anybody in trouble. I don't know who I heard it from, but I remember that I heard it."

"Okay. From what you know, then, she was right down the line, like McDill," Virgil said, ticking the points off on his spread fingers. "Gay, stayed at the Eagle Nest, talked to Wendy about her band, went to the Wild Goose. And was murdered."

"Yeah, but… not murdered for quite a while after she was here," Zoe said.

"Why didn't you tell me?" Virgil asked.

She looked up at him and misted up again: "Because… I was afraid that this is all going to blow into the newspapers and television, as some kind of perversion thing, lesbians killing each other, and drag the Eagle Nest down. I was worried about Margery. She's worked her whole life to build up that place, and if it turns out that killers go there, or killers stalk her customers… See?"

"Not exactly," Virgil said. "I would have found out sooner or later, and your not telling me delayed things by a couple of days. That's all it did. Let the trail get a little colder."

"I'm sorry," she said. "I'm sorry."

VIRGIL GOT DAVENPORT, who was out for a nighttime walk with his wife. Virgil told him what had happened, and said, "I've got to get down to Iowa City. There's no airline that will get me there faster than a car would, but it's nine hours, and I don't want to drive nine hours, and nine hours back. Can I rent a plane? It's maybe a grand."

"Is it absolutely necessary?"

"It's pretty necessary," Virgil said.

"Tell you what-drive down here, bag out in a motel, and I'll get Doug Wayne to fly you down first thing tomorrow. Tell me a time."

Wayne was a highway patrolman who'd flown Virgil on other trips. Virgil glanced at his watch, did some arithmetic, and said, "Seven o'clock tomorrow morning at St. Paul."

"I'll call somebody right now. You're still in Grand Rapids?" Davenport asked.

"Yeah."

"Okay, uh, you'll be here by two. Five hours of sleep. That good enough?"

"That's fine," Virgil said. "Listen, call the patrol and tell them I'm coming down I-35 with lights. If they'll let me roll, I can get an extra half-hour."

"Plan on it. But I'll call you."

ZOE SAID VIRGIL could drop the boat in her driveway, and when that was done, he headed back to the motel, told the clerk to hold his room, got his bag, and took off. Davenport called as he was pulling out of the parking lot, said, "You're clear all the way down, but don't hit any deer or you'll be all over the place. You're not pulling a boat, are you?"

"No, I'm not pulling a boat," Virgil said. "Why're you always so suspicious?"

" ' Cause I got you working for me, for one thing," Davenport said. "I talked to Doug; he'll be ready to fly at seven o'clock."

Then he was driving fast through the starry night, past the hamlets and small towns and widespots, Blackberry, Warba, Swan River, Wawina, Floodwood, Gowan to the Highway 33 cutoff, south to I-35, then hammering down I-35, into Minneapolis by one o'clock. He crashed at the Radisson University, with a wake-up call for six-thirty.

Thought little about God that night; but, still, some.

WAYNE WAS IN HIS FLIGHT SUIT, reading a Walter Mosley paperback and eating a peanut butter cookie. Virgil came in, five minutes late, and Wayne said, "We're rolling."

They were in the air in ten minutes, heading for an airport south of Cedar Rapids. Hertz had promised to have a Chevy Impala waiting for him.

"So tell me about what happened after I dropped you off last time," Wayne said.

Virgil told him about the shoot-out in International Falls, about who did what, and how they set up the ambush, and about the Vietnamese team coming in, about the firefight at dawn.

"Man, people were so proud of you guys," Wayne said. "Nobody was talking about anything else. Fucking North Vietnamese commandos, man, and you guys took them down."

"Didn't feel proud at the time," Virgil said. "Still don't. And we missed their main operator."

"That chick. Yeah. But man, that was something…"

ON THE WAY DOWN, passing from cell tower to cell tower, Virgil talked to the chief deputy for Johnson County, whose name was Will Sedlacek, and who said the sheriff was fishing in Minnesota. "If you tell me he's in Grand Rapids, I'll kill myself," Virgil said.

"I don't know where Grand Rapids is-I thought it was in Michigan, to tell you the truth-but he's on Lake of the Woods."

"That's quite a way from Grand Rapids," Virgil said. "Look, I'll be down there at eleven, and I need to talk to somebody about the murder of Constance Lifry and this country-western bar you got down there-"

"The Spodee-Odee," the deputy said. "Tell you what: call me when you get here, I'll take you over and talk to Jud."

"Deal," Virgil said.

Two hours to Cedar Rapids, clear skies all the way. Wayne said he'd catch a movie up in Cedar Rapids. He'd brought a bag, and was prepared to stay overnight, if Virgil had to.

"I don't think we'll have to," Virgil said. "I mostly need to look at the case file and talk to a few people, and we're all set up on that."

SEDLACEK WAS A BURLY, dark-haired man who pointed Virgil at a visitor's chair and asked, "Have any trouble finding us?" and half listened to Virgil's reply as he poked a number into his office phone and said, "He's here," and hung up.

"Yeah, I got tangled up by the river and went the wrong way around the university… nothing to speak of," Virgil said.

Another deputy stepped into the office, carrying a paper file, and Virgil stood up to shake hands with Larry Rudolph, and they all sat down and Sedlacek asked, "What the heck happened up there?"

Virgil ran them through it, both men listening closely, and when he finished, Rudolph said, "That's a hell of a coincidence, if it's a coincidence, but boy, it doesn't feel like our guy. Our guy did it with a rope, up close and personal. Gun's a whole different thing."

"Both wound up dead," Sedlacek said.

"Yeah, but I know what he means," Virgil said. "I'll tell you what: I've got all this stuff in my head, not much of it written down yet, so if it's okay with you, I'd just like to go through your file and see if anything pops up."

"Okay with us," Sedlacek said, "but, there's not much there. I mean, all the reports and everything, but we never got the first hint."

"Pissed off Jerry," Rudolph said. "He was good friends with Constance."

"Jerry's the sheriff," Sedlacek said. "He was pushing us like dogs."

"Did it look to you like somebody deliberately ambushed her?" Virgil asked. "Did they rob her? Rape her? Anything?"

"Took her purse, so it could have been a robbery-especially outside her restaurant. Wasn't raped or anything. Wasn't beat up. Whoever did it jumped her with the idea of strangling her. Might have figured she was taking the day's receipts home," Sedlacek said.

"But then they'd have to know about her," Virgil said. "They'd probably be local."

"Pretty much," Sedlacek said.

Rudolph added, "The thing about Swanson is, it's this tiny little town halfway between Cedar Rapids and Iowa City and it's got seven businesses-one gas station, one restaurant, Constance's, and five bars. It used to be where the kids went to drink, but we cleaned that up. But still, it's a honky-tonk town, and a lot of folks still go up there for the atmosphere."

"Is that where the Spodee-Odee is?" Virgil asked.

"Naw. That's in Coralville, out on the strip. That's right next door, here."

THEY TALKED for a few more minutes, then they gave Virgil a table and chair, and he spent an hour combing through a thick but nearly information-free file. All of the technical work looked good, but the technicians simply hadn't found anything except one nylon fiber buried in Lifry's neck, and more under a couple of broken fingernails, which suggested that she'd been strangled with a nylon cord.

Which-except for one thing-was like discovering that the killer wore pants. Useless.

When he was done, he carried the file back to Sedlacek's office to ask about that one thing. Sedlacek asked, "Crack the case?"

"I didn't even bend it," Virgil said. "One thing. The cord that Lifry was strangled with, nylon, I guess, but the ME says that it cut way into her neck muscles. You figure it was a guy?"

"Oh, yeah. That oughta be in there somewhere, but that was our operating assumption," Sedlacek said. "A guy with some muscle: she was not only strangled, she actually bled quite a bit."

"Doesn't fit with us," Virgil said. "We found those tracks, women's boot or shoe…"

"You breed some big women up that way."

"But none of the ones I'm looking at could do that," Virgil said. "They're healthy, but I don't see them cutting somebody's head off with a rope."

Sedlacek flipped his hands up. "Can't help you. Anyway, you had anything to eat today? We could get a sandwich and head out to Jud's. He'll be there at one o'clock…"

THEY GOT A BURGER, fries, and a shake at a student bar. Virgil was wearing a Breeders T-shirt under his jacket and a thin blond woman, standing in line for food, leaned toward him and asked, "Are you a musician?"

He grinned at her: "Nope."

"I really admire the Breeders," she said. "Kim Deal is awesome."

"I'd give you the shirt," Virgil said, gesturing across the table at Sedlacek, "but this guy's a cop, and he'd probably bust me for exposure."

"Maybe I could give you a phone number, and you could drop it off," she said. But she was joking, and she twiddled her fingers at him and moved up the line.

"I've been working downtown for ten years and I've never been hit on by a college girl," Sedlacek said, looking after her. "What have you got that I don't?"

"Good looks, personality… cowboy boots."

"Fuck me," Sedlacek said. "I've been trying to get by on intelligence."

"Well, there you go," Virgil said.

THE CORALVILLE STRIP was a fading business/motel district outside Iowa City, motels, service businesses, insurance companies, a few clubs, and the Spodee-Odee, a big log-sided bar with an acre-sized gravel-and-dirt parking lot and a useless hitching post in front of the doors; and a life-size painting of a John Deere tractor splayed across one side wall, juxtaposed against a Sioux Indian on a pinto horse. A tangle of prickly pear cactuses climbed out of two pots on the front porch, and behind one pot was a sign that said, "Pee on these plants, and you will be shot; survivors will be shot again."

Virgil had followed Sedlacek out to the place, and they got out in a swirl of dust, hitched up their pants, and looked around. Another sign, inside the barred front window, said, CLOSED, but the door was open, and in the dim interior, a bartender was doing paperwork. He looked up and said, "We're not open until four," and Sedlacek answered, "Johnson County sheriff. We've got an appointment with Jud."

"He's in the office," the bartender said, pointing with his pen. "Go on back, right there in the corner."

They followed the line of the pen, across a dance floor and past a twenty-foot semicircular stage. Virgil was impressed: he'd been in a lot of country bars, but the Spodee-Odee was maybe the biggest. In the back, down the hall, was an office suite, a secretary behind a big wooden reception desk, and two more women poking at computers behind her. The secretary said, "Deputy Sedlacek?"

JUD WINDROW POPPED OUT of the back office, a tall, thin, dry-faced guy in a Johnny Cash black shirt with mother-of-pearl buttons, jeans, and cowboy boots; brush mustache, nicotine-stained fingers. He said, "Come on back, y'all want a coffee or a beer?"

"Just ate," Sedlacek said, and Windrow said, "How you doing, Will? We don't see you much anymore."

"Ah, you know, got the kids, I'm so damn tired by the time they get to sleep all I want to do is sleep myself."

"Can't go through life that way," Windrow said. "Get a babysitter. Come out and dance. Your old lady would love you for it… You must be Virgil."

They shook hands and all took chairs and Windrow said, "By the way, I invited Prudence Bauer to come down and talk with us."

A woman stepped through the door, probably fifty, Virgil thought, with small prim features, and gray hair swept up on top of her head in an old-fashioned bun: Prudence, all right. She must have been right behind them, in the parking lot.

"And there she is," Windrow said. He stepped over to Bauer and they air-kissed, and Windrow said to Virgil, "This is Connie's sister. She took over Honey's when Constance passed away."

"Was murdered," Bauer said. She had a low, grainy voice, the voice of the third-grade teacher in Virgil's nightmares.

"Sure," Windrow said.

They all sat down again and Virgil asked Windrow, "What was your relationship with Constance?"

He nodded: "We were probably best friends. Wouldn't you say so, Prudie?"

Bauer said, "I believe so."

Windrow added, "We grew up like twins. Born a week apart, next door to each other in Swanson, raised together, went to school together, talked to each other most every day. When she was killed, it broke my goldarned heart."

Virgil knew of such things, and had old friends in Marshall, Minnesota, whom he might see once a year, but were still close, even intimate, and always would be. "Okay. What-if anything-did you guys have to do with a band run by a singer named Wendy Ashbach from up in northern Minnesota? Or with a resort called the Eagle Nest?"

"Nothing," Bauer said. "I knew Connie went to the Eagle Nest, and she told me a little about this Wendy, that she was a wonderful singer, but I never went up there, and never met Wendy."

"I heard about Wendy from Connie," Windrow said, looking at Virgil over a steeple made of his fingers. "She said there was this terrific country act up in Grand Rapids, and thought I might want to bring them down here. I was planning to go up and listen to them, but then Connie got killed, and that broke the connection. I never followed up."

His affable country-western personality had disappeared behind his businessman's face, Virgil thought-not that he'd ever doubted that the businessman was back there. Running a successful bar was not something done by fools.

"Was there a contract, or an offer…?"

"Nothing official. Connie had an ear for all kinds of music, and if she said this woman was good, then I'd listen," Windrow said. "Also, the woman and her band would probably be cheap. What I do is, I have a house band that plays four nights a week for a month, which are the slow nights. Then the headliner plays on Friday and Saturday, with the house band playing as the opener on those nights. We're closed on Sundays, of course. I would have brought this Wendy in for a one-month gig as a house band. If they were good enough."

"But only if she was cheap," Virgil said.

Windrow wagged a finger at him: "The money would pay for their keep, and a little more. The main thing is, they'd be heard by big-time music people. If a new band does good at the Spodee-Odee, people hear about it. I mean, people who run country music. That's worth more than any money I could afford to pay them."

"But you never… nothing ever happened," Virgil said.

"Nope. That was two years ago, almost. Connie's been gone almost two years," Windrow said.

Bauer jumped in. "When I heard why you were coming down here, I looked on the Internet and found the story on this other murder. You know my sister was a lesbian?"

Virgil nodded. "Yes."

"There has been some speculation about this Miss McDill," she said.

"She was a lesbian, or bisexual, businesswoman who stayed at the Eagle Nest, like your sister," Virgil said.

Bauer leaned back in her chair: "Then that's the connection. I prayed to the Lord for two years to give us something. Anything. Connie's murder couldn't have been a random act. The Lord wouldn't allow it."

"That argument might not hold up in court," Sedlacek said.

She waved him off. "I don't care about that. I want to know why some animal took Connie's life. If I can find out why, I'll find some peace. The way it is now, I think about it all the time. I have no peace."

Virgil went back to Windrow and pressed him on Wendy, but Windrow insisted that he knew nothing at all about her. "So tell me," he said, "you got that music shirt on, and you've heard her… what do you think?"

Virgil thought about it for a moment, then said, "Have you seen the Rolling Stones film Shine a Light?"

" ' Bout twenty times," Windrow said.

Virgil said, "Think Christina Aguilera. But country."

Windrow tipped back in his chair, raised his eyebrows, and said, "Really."

"Really," Virgil said.

"That's pretty damn interesting," Windrow said. "I'm hunting for a September band. The guy who was coming in hurt himself bad and had to cancel."

"She's good," Virgil said. "Her band's got a couple of soft spots."

"We can fix that," Windrow said. He tipped forward and wrote a note on his calendar, and added, "Backup people are like lamp plugs-plug them in, pull them out. A good one can play anything."

Bauer said, "I believe this will have more to do with sex than with music."

Virgil nodded at her and said, "Well, Miz Bauer, Wendy Ashbach is a little bit gay. She's living with a gay drummer, and spent the night with Miss McDill, the night before McDill was shot to death-so you may be right."

HE TOLD THEM ABOUT the investigation so far, and about the fistfight between Berni and Wendy, and when he did, Windrow made another note on his calendar, then said, "I'm going to run up there and take a look at her."

"You like the idea that she fights?" Virgil asked.

"Yeah, I do," he said. "People like that have an authenticity that these crystalline chicks can't fake. The fans can feel it; they're starved for it."

"Take it easy when you get up there," Virgil said. "We got enough dead people."

AS THEY WERE LEAVING, Bauer said to Virgil, "We saved all of my sister's papers; I thought there might be something in them for an investigator, but nobody saw anything. If you want, I could make them available to you."

Virgil looked at his watch. "I'd like to get out of here before dark-how far are the papers from the Cedar Rapids airport?"

"Five or six minutes," she said. "Swanson is a little way south of the airport."

"Good deal," Virgil said. "I'll follow you up there."

"And I'll probably see you up in Grand Rapids," Windrow said. "How far is it?"

"Nine hours by car, probably. You can fly in, commercial, but there aren't many flights. Bar is called the Wild Goose."

"I fly a little Cessna. Love to do it, don't do it enough," Windrow said. "If the weather's good, I'll head up there in the morning, maybe."

OUT IN THE PARKING LOT, Sedlacek and Virgil shook hands, and Sedlacek said, "Prudence is okay. A little dry, but she's smart, like her sister."

"Seems okay," Virgil said.

"I was worried that she might seem a little crazy, going on about the Lord this and the Lord that, that he wouldn't allow Constance to be murdered at random."

"Who can tell about that," Virgil said, looking over at the woman as she got into a Ford Taurus. "She might even be right."