Rough country

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.

The mass of women now got between the two fighters, and Berni was yelling, "Let me up, you motherfucker," and Virgil could hear Wendy screaming. A bunch of women were looking at Virgil and he said, "Could you help? Please? Hold on to her. Don't hurt her, just tangle her up."

So they piled on, and the women closer to Wendy saw what they were doing, and they piled onto Wendy, which freed up Chuck, who staggered to the bar and pressed a wet towel to his bloody forehead.

Zoe shouted over the crowd, "Good going."

Virgil wasn't sure how to take that, and shrugged.

"We leaving?" she asked.

"She never answered the question," Virgil shouted back.

Zoe elbowed her way to his side. "Now might not be the best time," she said.

"Fuck her," Virgil said.

Both the fighters were on their feet again, but pressed away from each other by the crowd of women, and, as in other bar fights that Virgil had witnessed, everybody seemed to be enjoying themselves, other than the two or three horrified liberals.

Virgil pushed his way through to Wendy and said, "Back of the bar. Back of the bar." He gave her a shove, and when a drunk woman brayed, "Who the hell do you think you are?" he snarled, "I'm a cop. If you don't want to get handcuffed to the bumper of my car, you best get the fuck out of my way."

She stepped back; she wasn't that drunk.

CHUCK PUT THEM in the storeroom, which was full of beer cases and a few kegs. Virgil stacked three sets of two cases. Wendy had a bruise under her eye and was dabbing blood from one corner of her mouth; her lower lip was protruding a bit, from a tooth cut. Virgil said to Wendy and Zoe, "Sit," and they sat on the beer cases, and he went back into the bar and got a couple of clean towels, wrapped fist-sized lumps of ice in them. Berni was still in a swirl of women, who were looking at a fingernail gash on her forehead. She'd started to cry, and was telling her tale of infidelity.

In the back room again, Virgil gave the ice packs to Wendy and said, "On your lip and on your eye, for half an hour. Won't be too bad in the morning."

"Not the first black eye I've had, probably won't be the last," Wendy said.

"So. You spent some time at Erica McDill's cabin the night before last. Were you sexually involved?"

She grinned at him, and he realized that she really wasn't much shaken by the fight. "Sure. What'd you think we were doing, playing Pinocchio?"

Zoe said, "That'd be pinochle."

Wendy shrugged. "Whatever."

"Where were you yesterday afternoon, between six and eight?"

"At the Schoolhouse, working up a song," Wendy said. "For most of it, anyway. There was some coming and going. Out to get a sandwich, and stuff."

Zoe: "The Schoolhouse is a recording studio."

Virgil nodded. "How many of you?"

"Me, the keyboards, a guy from the college who's an arranger, an engineer, our manager, uh, a pizza guy came and chatted for a while… might have been one or two more."

"So, quite a few, and I could check your story," Virgil said.

"Sure. Listen, I didn't hurt Erica. I mean, she was gonna set my career on fire," Wendy said. "She knew everything about advertising and promotion. She was going to take me to Nashville, or Austin, or someplace. She knew people."

"You were sleeping with her because she knew people?" Zoe asked.

"Well, yeah," Wendy said. "Duh."

Virgil said, "That's nothing personal against you, Zoe."

Zoe said, "No, no, that makes perfect sense to me."

"Someplace along the line, you gave her a souvenir of the night, right?" Virgil asked.

Wendy went blank. "What souvenir?"

"A little kiss mark?"

"You mean, a hickey?"

Virgil said, "A lipstick kiss on a card?"

She shook her head. "No. Nothing like that." She pulled the ice pack away from her face and looked at it; there was a little blood-stain where it had been pressing against her mouth, but not much. Her face was red from the cold.

"You didn't make a lipstick impression on a card?" Virgil asked.

"No… you found one?"

"In her purse. I assumed it was you," Virgil said. "I mean, if it was you, there's no reason to deny it-nothing wrong with it," Virgil said.

"Yeah, but… I didn't do it," Wendy said.

"Huh." Virgil thought she was lying-there was a feral quickness about her eyes-but didn't know why she would. Maybe because she could? They all thought about it a minute, and then Virgil asked, "She didn't mention any other relationships?"

"She said she had a woman in the Cities, but that relationship was all but over," Wendy said. "She said she'd already decided to get out, but she wanted to let the other person down easy. She was going to give her some money. I mean, Erica had a lot of money. She was talking about putting together a syndicate to sponsor me. She said that in three years, I could be making a million bucks a month."

"Ah, girl," Zoe said.

"You've got no idea of what might've happened to her?" Virgil asked.

"I really don't. It freaked me out," Wendy said. "I was kind of hoping that nobody knew about us, that she hadn't mentioned it to anybody. I mean, you know, me going with her had nothing to do with her getting killed, but it looks bad."

THE DOOR CREAKED OPEN, and Berni peeked in. She squeaked, "Wendy?"

Wendy stared at her for a minute, then grinned and said, "How're you doing?" and she strode over and they wrapped each other up, and they both started crying, and Wendy was stroking Berni's hair, saying, "It's all right, it's all right…"

OUTSIDE, Virgil looked up at the stars; bright and cool, full night now.

Zoe said, "Well, that worked out really well. I thought they were gonna go for it, right there on the floor."

"Got me a little hot when they started kissing each other," Virgil said. Zoe put her fists on her hips and he held up his hands and said, "Joke, joke. Jesus."

"I'm gonna go home and cry," Zoe said.

"I'm heading south," Virgil said.

"Good night for driving."

Virgil put his arm across her shoulders. "Get a few beers or a little weed, listen to some LeAnn Rimes. You'll be okay."

"That a promise?"

"Well…" He thought about his three ex-wives. "No. But LeAnn's always good."