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."
6
ZOE PUTTERED around the house, waiting-did the few dishes that she'd left in the sink that morning, vacuumed in the living room, cleaned up the guest bathroom, put out a hand towel. She was neat, tidy-an accountant even in her household chores. The only place she wasn't an accountant, she thought ruefully, was in her sex life. If she could write off Wendy, life would be easier. Take her as a loss, depreciate her, call her a toxic asset, and unload her at twenty cents on the dollar…
And she thought about Virgil. Virgil was good-looking, in the way she liked men to be-shoulders and arms, big hands, small butt, long hair, cheerful. But that, she thought, was misleading. His attitude and appearance were natural enough. It's what you got with a good-looking small-town jock who'd grown up with an intact family and enough, but not too much, money. There was nothing faked about his attitude-but beneath the attitude, she thought, there was something cool, watchful, calculating. Hard, maybe.
An emotional accountant, with brass knuckles.
She smiled at the thought; and the doorbell rang. She glanced at the mantel clock: eleven o'clock, right on the dot. She popped the door and said, "Hi. Come on in."
Margery Stanhope stepped in, let her shoulders slump, and said, "This day…"
"Something, huh? You want a margarita?"
"Yes, I do. Make it a large one," Stanhope said.
"Did you hear about the fight?" Zoe asked, as she led the way to the kitchen.
"The fight?" Stanhope tossed her purse on the kitchen table.
"At the Goose… Wendy and Berni got into it."
Zoe put the margaritas together-a couple ounces of Hacienda del Cristero Blanco, a bit of Cointreau, lime juice; she wetted the rims of the glasses with the lime juice, spilled some salt on the countertop, rolled the rims in it, shook everything with ice, doing it proper-and got Stanhope laughing about the fight.
"… we left them standing there, and she had her tongue so far down Berni's throat, Berni's lucky to be alive…"
"Oh, dear; I know how you feel about her," Stanhope said.
"Yeah." Zoe handed Stanhope her glass: "Luck."
Stanhope said, "Luck," and took a sip and said, "Make a damn good margarita…"
They went and sat in the living room and Stanhope said, "So. Virgil."
"He's going to catch whoever did it," Zoe said.
"You think it'll be a guest?" Stanhope asked.
"We've got to hope not-if it is, it'll all come out, about the gays and so on. You know what the TV stations will do with it."
"I keep thinking about Constance. Should I have told Virgil?"
"If there's any other indication that the killer's a guest, we probably have to. If we don't…" Zoe shrugged. "… I don't know. We might be in trouble."
"I'm not sure how many people know, other than us," Stanhope said.
"Some people do. I'm pretty amazed that Virgil hasn't heard yet-some of Wendy's band members must know. Wendy does, for sure," Zoe said.
"But that makes it look like the band is involved," Stanhope said. "They wouldn't want that."
"And we think it makes it look like the lodge is involved, and we don't want that."
They sipped at their drinks for a minute, thinking, and then Zoe sighed and said, "If nothing comes up, I'll probably tell him when he gets back. I'll just tell him that we don't know anything about it, but it was another murder, and she did stay up here…"
"Mention the band," Stanhope said. "The more he looks at the band, as the cause, then the less it looks like the lodge."
"Mmmm."
"So what I want to know," Stanhope said, "is your position, if it does involve the lodge."
"I'm ninety-five percent go-ahead," Zoe said. "It'd have to be really awful before I'd back out. I'm already moving money, I'm talking to Wells Fargo about a loan, and they're telling me it's no problem. I'll continue the accounting business-I'll move Mary up to partner, and let her run the office-while I set up the lodge."
"Gonna have a lot of balls in the air," Stanhope said.
"What else have I got to do? I've got no life," Zoe said.
"Somebody'll come along," Stanhope said.
"Maybe I ought to jump in bed with Virgil," Zoe said. "It'd never work out, but maybe I could have a baby before it blew up."
"There's an idea," Stanhope said, her tone dry as sandpaper. "A lodge and an accounting business and a baby and no husband to help out…"
"Ah, I'm not going to jump in bed with Virgil," Zoe said.
THEY SAT for another minute, then Stanhope said, "Look me in the eye and tell me you didn't have anything to do with McDill getting shot."
"Margery!"
"Well… I wouldn't tell. But you've got this thing about Wendy, and I guess some people at the lodge knew Wendy stayed over with Erica the night before she was shot," Stanhope said. "You could've heard, and I know you can shoot, because I've seen you do it."
"I didn't shoot Erica McDill," Zoe said.
"And you didn't have anything to do with Constance…"
"No! God! Margery!"
"I'm sorry. I believe you. Even if I didn't… I'd let it go. You're a good person, Zoe."
"I was down at the U that weekend, with some friends. I didn't even know Constance was dead until I got back up here."
"I'm sorry," Stanhope said again. "I just…" She rubbed her forehead. "This whole thing…"
She held up her glass, looking through the cut glass at the ceiling light, and asked, "You got another one of these?"
WENDY ASHBACH had a new forty-two-inch LCD television and Blu-ray DVD player and she and Berni were halfway through Pretty Woman when her father banged on the trailer door and pulled it open and asked, "Whatcha doing?"