"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?"