Rough Country (7 page)

Inside, the bar was a little softer than most, with lots of booths and only a few freestanding tables, four stools at the bar, and a small stage on the other side of a dance floor; a jukebox. Three of the booths were occupied by women, two in one, three in another, four in the third. One of the bar stools was occupied by an elderly man who was peering into a half-empty beer glass.

They stopped at the bar, and Zoe said, Hey, Chuck, to the bartender, who took a long look at Virgil, not unfriendly, and Zoe ordered a beer and Virgil got a Diet Coke. Zoe asked, eyebrows up, Little problem with alcohol?

No, I just don't drink much, Virgil said.

The old man at the bar said to Virgil, If you gotta ask, it's half empty. Not half full.

Looks more like four-fifths empty to me, partner, Virgil said. The drinks came, and they carried them to a booth. Virgil checked out the women, and the bar in general, saw the bartender watching.

What do you think? Zoe asked.

It's a bar, he said, smiling. Must pick up at night mostly people from Eagle Point?

Eagle Nest.

Right, Eagle Nest. Mostly women from the Eagle Nest? Or half-and-half with locals, or . . .

More locals than Eagle Nest. It's just that if you're at the Eagle Nest and you want to get out, you probably come here.

Gay or straight?

Gay or straight, Zoe said. Same with locals mostly women, gay and straight. They can come down here, do some serious drinking, and not have to put up with being hit on, or pushed around. Chuck keeps all that runnin' smooth. Most local guys know that this isn't where they want to go.

You come down here?

Sure. Like I said, it's safe and friendly, she said.

A woman came in the door wearing cutoff jean shorts, a tight halter top, cowboy boots and a cowboy hat, and sunglasses. She was short, but well rounded, with dark hair twisted in a single braid. She had an Andy Warhol Marilyn tattoo on one tanned shoulder. She looked around once, scratched herself between her breasts, wandered over to the bar, and asked, Seen Wendy?

Not in yet.

Ah, man we were supposed to meet down at the Schoolhouse, the woman said. She glanced over at Virgil and Zoe, her gaze lingering on Virgil for a moment, then flicking to Zoe, and her mouth turned down. The two women stared at each other for a moment, then the other woman turned back to the bartender. We're working up Lover Do.' If you see her, tell her we're down there, waiting.

Virgil watched her go, and when she was gone, Zoe leaned forward and said, She's a drummer.

My type, too, Virgil said.

Not your type, she said. She lives with the lead singer.

Yeah? Maybe they're breaking up, Virgil said, hitting on the Diet Coke. Musicians lead tumultuous lives.

The lead singer is Wendy it's an all-girl band, Zoe said.

Ah, he thought. Okay.

You're supposed to say, What a terrible waste.'

Hey, I'm sophisticated I went to college, Virgil said. Anyway, the way you sounded, it's not being wasted.

Ahhh, poop. Zoe finished her beer in a gulp.

Ahhh poop, what? Virgil asked.

Ahhh . . . She wiped her lips with the back of her hand. Wendy. The singer.

She's pretty good?

Very good. Country, some crossover jazz stuff, Zoe said. Mostly country, though, Dixie Chicks.

Really not my type, then, even if she wasn't gay, Virgil said. Give me a choice between listening to a whole Dixie Chicks album, or sticking a gun in my ear, I'd have to think about it.

Well, she's my type, Zoe said. And that's my big problem.

Virgil looked at her for a few seconds, then dropped his forehead on his arms. No.

Well, it was gonna come out sooner or later, Virgil, Zoe said, laughing. We're getting friendly, but I don't want you to get any ideas.

Poop, he said.

He looked toward the bar and saw the bartender smiling and shaking his head, then hold up a finger, pull another Diet Coke, and bring it around the bar. On the house, he said, when he put it on the table.

Coulda put a little rum in it, Virgil said.

VIRGIL SAID TO ZOE, You know, I can usually pick up on it? I apologize if I've offended you along the way.

No, no, you were fine, Zoe said, and I've had boyfriends. Maybe that's why you didn't feel it. But I . . . like women better. Always did and I finally admitted it to myself. I can still be attracted to some men. I mean, you're attractive in an obvious, superficial way. When I'm attracted to a guy at all, they usually have strong feminine characteristics. Like you, with the long blond hair, and you've got sort of a delicate face.

Virgil said, Okay you've guaranteed my shrink's income for another two years.

You've got a psychiatrist? I think that's very interesting. It shows an unexpected psychological sensitivity.

I don't really have one, Virgil said. I was lying.

Really?

Yeah. I lie a lot, he said.

She said, Sorry about this. I mean, the lesbian thing. I didn't mean to lead you on, if I did.

That's okay. The band doesn't have a straight saxophone player, does it?

HE GOT HER LAUGHING AGAIN, then asked, Why don't Minnesota women wear makeup? There are ten women in here, and a couple of them are pretty good-looking, including you, and none of you wear lipstick. Is it some kind of Minnesota thing? An efficiency thing? An egalitarian thing? What is it?

Not many people wear lipstick anymore, Zoe said. It's a pain to keep it looking good. You wind up chewing it off. But . . . people will put on a touch when they go out.

Even gay women?

Not so much, maybe, she said. But . . . some. The girly ones.

He thought about that for a moment, then said, Ah, man. Well, I've got to get back and talk to Erica McDill's friends from the Cities. I thank you for the tour. Maybe I'll come back tonight, take a look at the band. See if I can figure out your type.

Wendy . . . Whatever. She's a slut. But she turns my crank. If I had a crank.

Virgil laughed and asked, Why don't you pay for the drinks?

OUTSIDE IN THE PARKING LOT, she walked with him to the Trailblazer and asked, You really don't care if I tell some friends about this? About . . . that a woman did it?

He shrugged. No, go ahead. Something to talk about. Better than the Internet. But be careful about who you talk to we are dealing with a nutcase.

THE CRIME-SCENE CREW was eating dinner at the Eagle Nest, and Mapes said, We think she braced the rifle across a four-inch log. Looks like she moved the log for that reason to get a rifle rest. There were a couple of other logs she might have braced her hands or her arms on, and we've bagged all that and we'll look for prints and DNA. Haven't found any hair, but we did find some cotton fibers that may have come from her shirt. No more shells, so there might have been only the one shot.

Any possibility that more might have gotten thrown into the water? Virgil asked.

We checked with a metal detector. Never got a flicker, Mapes said.

So it's basically prints or DNA and the Mephistos, Virgil said.

I wouldn't count on prints I took a long look at that cartridge, and it looked clean and a little oily. I should have been able to see a print. But, maybe not. Maybe the lab will bring something up. And I've got to believe that if she came through that swamp, and knew what she was doing, she was wearing gloves. It's not so bad out in the open, but coming over the margins of the marsh, the mosquitoes were so thick they were clogging up our head nets. If she knew what she was doing, she would have covered up. Gloves, maybe even a head net.

He left them to finish eating and went looking for Stanhope. A woman Virgil hadn't met was turning off lights in the office. She said, She took them up to the library.

Uh, who . . . ?

The people from the Cities. Miss McDill's friends.

LAWRENCE HARCOURT, whose name was on the agency, was a slender man with close-cropped white hair, quick blue eyes behind military-style gunmetal glasses, and a face that seemed oddly unlined for his apparent age a face-lift? The second and third of McDill's friends, Barney Mann, creative director for the agency, and Ruth Davies, McDill's partner, always called him Lawrence, never Larry, and though neither deferred to him, they always listened carefully when he spoke.

Mann was a fireplug of a man with a liquor-reddened face and blond hair going white; he had an Australian accent. Virgil thought he might be forty-five. He was noisy and argumentative and angry.

Davies was stunned: not weeping, but disoriented, almost not-believing. A short, not-quite-dumpy woman with brown hair and wire-rimmed glasses, she looked like a church mouse. Her mouth was a thin, tight line: whoever had given McDill the lipstick note, it hadn't been Davies.

All three, Virgil thought, after the introductions had been made and some questions answered, were intensely self-centered. They were not so concerned about the existential aspects of McDill's death, but rather, what it means to me. They had also been concerned with image, Virgil thought, to the point of silliness. They could have driven up from the Twin Cities, individually, in three hours. Instead, they'd rented a floatplane, apparently to demonstrate the urgency of the matter, and after soaking up time in arranging the flight, and getting together, and making the flight, they'd taken six or seven hours.

Harcourt had checked Virgil quickly, eyes narrowing a bit, and he asked, Have you had any experience with this kind of investigation?

Yes, Virgil said.

He's the one who killed the Vietnamese, Stanhope told them.

They all looked again, and Mann asked, Do you have any ideas about how it happened? About who did it?

Virgil opened his mouth to answer, and Davies broke in. I just want to see her. What if there's been a mistake?

She's been identified by people who knew her, Virgil said, as kindly as he could. The photograph on Erica McDill's driver's license is a picture of the woman who was killed.

I still . . . she began, and she turned in a circle, and Stanhope patted her on the shoulder.

Mann: You said you have some ideas . . .

It seems to me after some investigation that the killer is a woman who knows how to handle a rifle and knew the territory. Could be local, or could be an outsider, a guest at the lodge. If I knew why, I'd be closer to a complete answer.

Mann rubbed his nose and then looked at Harcourt and said, That's not what I expected to hear.

Harcourt nodded, and Virgil asked, What'd you expect?

He shrugged: That it came like a bolt out of the blue and nobody had any idea. If that were the case, I could probably give you the why.

Virgil spread his hands. I'm all ears.

Mann said, Lawrence told me on the way up that he and Erica had agreed that she would buy his stock in the agency. That would have given her about three-quarters of the outstanding stock, and total control. Ever since Erica took over, she's been agitating to make the agency more . . . efficient.

She wanted to fire people, Harcourt said. As many as twenty-five or thirty. A lot of them have been with the agency for a long time. They've been protected by the board. Erica had the authority to fire them, as CEO, but then her actions could be reviewed by the board, and there are a number of people on the board who already didn't like her. There would've been a fight

What did you think about the firings? Virgil asked him.

Harcourt stepped back and sat in one of the library chairs and crossed his legs. Virgil noticed that even though he was wearing jeans and ankle boots, he was also wearing over-the-calf dress socks. He said, I was generally against them I could see a couple of them, but no reason for a top-to-bottom housecleaning.

But you were gonna sell?

Harcourt sighed, and looked around the room at all the faded old books. I kept the stock in the first place because the agency pays a nice dividend. But I'm seventy-one and I've got a bad ticker. I need to get my estate in order, he said. The thing about an ad agency is, its property is mostly intellectual. It's a group of talents, a collection of clients. We don't really own a damn thing, except some tables and chairs. We even lease our computers. So, if I passed the stock down to my children, and Erica got pissed, she might just cherry-pick the talent and start her own agency, and my kids would get screwed. They'd get nothing. But bolting would be a big risk for Erica, too. Big start-up costs, diminished client list. She'd be much better off keeping things as they are. All of that gave me an incentive to sell, and Erica an incentive to buy. We made a deal a couple of weeks ago. We never closed on it.

Mann said, The point being, there are about thirty scared people down in the Cities who think they might lose their jobs. Some of them have worked at the place for twenty-five or thirty years. They'd have no place to go. Too old. Burned out. Some of them, or one of them, might have . . . you know . . . killed her to stop that. That was my first thought, when I heard she'd been killed.

Would killing McDill actually stop the firings? Virgil asked.