Rough Country (17 page)

Virgil said, Thank you, pulled the bolt, sniffed, and smelled the distinctive cut of gun solvent. I'll get it back to you as soon as I can. He poked back into the safe. These all Thirties?

Except for the .22, Slibe said. A .308, .30-06, and the .22.

Virgil pulled out the pump .22, checked it, put it back. A long-rifle slug would have killed McDill if it had hit her right, but wouldn't have done the damage.

I thought she was shot in a swamp, Slibe said.

She was, Virgil said, turning around to face him.

But you found a slug? That's why you need the rifle?

No slug, but we've got a cartridge. We can do some tests of the shell . . . and we'll test fire your rifle, and then, if we ever do find a slug, we'll have it. Virgil shrugged. But what we'll probably do is some metallurgy, check metal remnants in the rifle against the metal frags in McDill's skull.

It was very quiet in the house, and Virgil became aware of a buzzing sound; a bee had gotten in. Slibe was staring at him, then blinked like a gecko and said, Well, do what you got to do. I'd like the rifle back, soon as you can get it. We might go out to Wyoming and shoot some prairie rats in October. It's something we do.

Do our best, Virgil said. Coming out the door, he said, I hear you run a kennel out here.

Best dogs in Minnesota, Slibe said. English Cr+?me Golden Retrievers. I'm the biggest breeder in the Upper Midwest; you want one of my dogs, baby-trained, gonna cost you three grand.

Virgil whistled. You get three grand?

And I got a waiting list long as your arm, Slibe said. He pulled a can of Copenhagen out of his jacket pocket, stuck a pinch under his tongue. Ask anybody.

What did you think about McDill?

Didn't know her. From what Wendy said, she might have had some good ideas. Wendy's pretty anxious to get the show on the road.

What do you think about that? Virgil asked.

Slibe poked a finger down toward the kennels. You see them dogs? They're solid gold. That's where the money is. Aren't nobody in Nashville going to pay any attention to a poor girl from Grand Rapids, Minnesota. Maybe twenty years ago, but not now. She wants to do it, but Wendy's a little crazy. I told her that a hundred times.

So you think she should stay with dog breeding.

That's what I think. But kids get crazy ideas. I mean, it's all right here. Everything she needs. I spent my whole life building this place up so she could take it over. And the Deuce, too, but the Deuce ain't got what it takes to run it. She knows that, but all she thinks about is that CMTV shit, Slibe said. Now you got the gun. You want anything else? I got some logs to split.

Virgil nodded and headed for his truck, then turned and said, Wendy's a little better than good. I don't know if she's good enough, but she's better than good.

Something shifted in Slibe's face. Don't go telling her that. She'll go sliding off to Nashville or L.A. and wind up on the street, selling her ass. She ain't a bad singer, but that's not why she's here.

BY THE TIME VIRGIL got back to town, it was late in the day. He called the Bemidji office and arranged for a guy to pick up Slibe's rifle the next morning, looked at his watch, and headed out to the Eagle Nest, still dragging the boat. Margery Stanhope was sitting in her office, alone, sad, and pensive, as she had been the last time he'd seen her; the murder was working on her. Virgil went in, closed the door, and she looked up as he crossed the office and took one of the visitor chairs.

She glanced at the closed door and asked, apprehensively, What happened?

I have some embarrassing questions to ask, Margery, Virgil said.

Her brow beetled: What?

Is it true that some of your waiter boys provide additional services to the guests?

She leaned back and said, Oh. Damnit. Well, I'll tell you what, Virgil, I have heard that, but I do not make any inquiries. What our guests do, as long as they don't do it in the parking lot, is up to them. They are adults.

Yeah, but Margery . . . you hire them, Virgil said. The boys.

You ever been to a Hooters? she asked.

No, I haven't.

I have. They didn't hire those girls on the basis of their master's theses. She actually smiled. Have you seen Kevin?

No . . .

Nineteen. Sophomore at UMD next year. Half the people in town think Kevin might be gay, because he goes around with these French haircuts. He even gets them done in a ladies' salon down in Grand Rapids. Looks like he came out of one of those science fiction movies. The women up here eat him up like a big ice cream cone. But I don't know anything about it.

Did McDill sleep with any of the boys? Virgil asked.

I have no idea. Well, let me change that. Maybe. From what I understand, she'd do a little bit of everything, Stanhope said.

I was told that she might like to do a little domination routine with the boys, Virgil said.

Stanhope shrugged. Don't know.

Did you ask whether anybody knew about McDill and Wendy?

Yes, I did, and I couldn't find anybody who'd admit it; and I get up early, earlier than about anybody, and I never saw Wendy heading out to the parking lot.

And it doesn't bother you that you're running a high-rent, ecologically sensitive whorehouse?

But I'm not, she protested. I don't get a penny of anything that changes hands. I don't make any arrangements. I simply don't interfere when nature takes its course.

Although you arrange nature a little bit, Virgil said.

Hooters, she said. Look. Are you going to put this in the newspapers? I mean, you'd wind up embarrassing a lot of fairly important people for no good reason, and probably wrecking a pretty good business.

I'm not interested in doing that, Margery. I leave that to our administrative people, and my boss, Virgil said. But it's possible, even likely, that all of this sex stuff had something to do with the murder. People get killed for money, sex, and drugs cocaine and alcohol and sometimes simply because of craziness. I don't see much money here, and not much in the way of drugs. That leaves sex and craziness.

The sex here doesn't involve competition . . . it really doesn't, Stanhope said. The boys . . . I don't interfere with the boys, or make any arrangements for them, or anything like that. But everybody knows that the boys are here, and what they might do for you. Word gets around. But there isn't a competition for them why would you compete, when a couple of hundred dollars would get you what you want?

What if you want love?

She sighed and said, I've got no answer for that, Virgil. Now, you want to see McDill's friends?

THE DISCUSSION LEFT a bad taste in Virgil's mouth. Sex was terrific; sex for money, at least in the American culture, was brutally destructive. He didn't care what Stanhope said: it was a whorehouse.

HE MET WITH SEVEN WOMEN in the library; gay or straight, he had no idea. All of them were aware of McDill's sexual orientation, but none of them had seen her with Wendy Ashbach. One woman said that McDill seemed interested in a dock boy named Jared nobody knew his last name, and Stanhope had gone off on an errand whom they described as blond and thin and, one woman added, girly.

When they were done, Virgil took that woman aside and asked, Did McDill have a sexual relationship with Jared?

Maybe. We didn't talk about it, but I'm pretty sure she liked his looks.

Have you seen him today?

No. I haven't seen him for a couple of days, but I haven't been looking, she said.

Virgil found Stanhope and asked, Who's Jared?

Jared? Jared Boehm? He's a dock assistant.

One of the boys?

She looked exasperated: Yeah, I guess.

Is he working today? Virgil asked.

No. He had to take some kind of a test. Over at the university in Duluth. He's trying to get in there. He last worked on Friday.

I'm gonna need his number.

VIRGIL CALLED JARED BOEHM on his cell phone, got no answer, went back to the motel, got a Coke from the machine in the lobby, and lay on his bed and thought about Slibe and Margery and Jared and the boys.

Just as an everyday, walking-around matter, nothing Slibe said had sounded crazy if every music wannabe stuck with his old man's business, the world would probably be a better place, Virgil thought. If you didn't mind raising dogs and digging septic systems and splitting wood for winter heat. . . .

Margery. She didn't look like a madam, and he supposed she wasn't, technically; but she did get money from the boys, if only because the boys pulled in the women who wanted a little nocturnal carnality to go with their diurnal snipe hunts.

Jared: the problem was, if Jared was the age Virgil thought he might be, then his hasty relationships, as somebody had called them, might constitute statutory rape under the laws of Minnesota if the female partner was old enough; or child abuse. If he was getting paid for sex, it was prostitution. If it were any of those things, and there had been an attempt at blackmail, if there had been threats or counterthreats . . .

He needed to talk to Jared.

And he felt bad about Margery. She was a type he liked: tough old ornery woman yanking a good livelihood out of the North Woods. Who ran a few whores.

He remembered the camera memory card he'd taken from McDill's camera. He'd looked at them on the LCD on the camera, but not closely. Had there been a male face anywhere along the way? He rolled off the bed, got the card, read it into his laptop, started paging through the photos. Not much, women at the Wild Goose, pictures taken out on the lake, some down by the swimming beach . . . and a young boy on the dock, standing with a couple of women, apparently telling them something about a boat.

He was tall, thin. Girlish? Maybe; but with some thin, hard muscle, like you might see on a cyclist or a runner. He was subtly at the center of the photograph . . . Jared . . .

HE WAS STILL THINKING about Jared when the motel phone rang. Almost anyone he wanted to talk to had his cell phone number, so he contemplated it for a moment, then picked it up: Hello?

This is Signy. I'm thinking about ordering out for a pizza, but I'm out of beer. Are you up for an emergency beer run?

Sounds fine, Virgil said. Give me twenty minutes.

He was surprised; but then, on second thought, not totally surprised. He and Signy had shared a little spark. He got up, brushed his teeth and shaved, thought about it for three seconds, then jumped in the shower and scrubbed down with Old Spice body wash.

He went out in the night: still hot. Could be thunderstorms lurking somewhere, but the stars were bright overhead, and he heard no thunder anywhere. Signy had given him a Negra Modelo the night before, so he got a six-pack of the same, already cold. He got lost again, on the way out to Signy's, and she talked him in on the cell phone.

WHEN HIS HEADLIGHTS PLAYED across the front of her house, she was waiting outside the door, looking up at the sky, and she came to meet him. I just ordered it a minute ago, when you called. I didn't want to get stuck with a whole meat lover's if you had to cancel.

' S okay, he said. Probably ought to put the beer in the fridge.

He followed her inside, took a couple of bottles out of the six-pack, put the rest in the refrigerator, very aware of her moving around him in the narrow space of the kitchen, and she said, We ought to take these out to the gazebo.

You got a gazebo?

Last thing Joe did before he went to Alaska built me a gazebo. Never got the screens in, so I had to do that part. C'mon . . .

She got a flashlight and led the way out the back door, down a flagstone path, over the lip of the lake bank, and down to the water. The night was dark enough that he couldn't see much but the cone of the light over the path, from the flashlight, and then the greenish timbers of the gazebo. They went inside, and she wedged the door shut, to keep the bugs out. There were two aluminum lawn chairs and two recliners, and she took one of the recliners and Virgil folded into a chair.

Great night, he said. Million stars.

Lot of great nights in August, she said, turning off the flash. The lake was quiet, with still some blue in the west, stars in a thick crescent overhead, and dots of light that were cabin windows on the far shore. Far down to the right, a more golden dot, a weenie-roast fire on a beach. So what happened with the murder? Did you get anywhere?

I don't know. I went around and pissed off a lot of people, hinted that I knew about stuff that I don't know about. See what I could stir up.

Zoe told me how you massacred the Vietnamese.

I didn't

Yeah, I know. So does Zoe. She's figured out that talking about it is a way to get on top of you, Signy said. She pulled up her knees, draped her hands over them.

Fuckin' women, Virgil said.

THEY SAT AND DRANK their beers and Virgil told her about his encounters with Berni and Cat and the others, and with Slibe, and the boy toys. She said, Slibe. Now there is a wickedly mean guy. Slibe did it.

You think?

He could definitely kill someone, Signy said. She burped. He's a sociopath. Came up dirt-poor and his old man used to beat him like a cheap carpet. He never saw anything wrong with that, so that's what he did with his wife and son. His wife took off one day, and nobody's heard from her since, but Slibe was pretty hosed. His kid, Junior, is another one to keep your eye on. He might not be violent, but he's not right.