"Guess what he got a job driving," Signy said.
"The bulldozer?"
"He has accidents," Zoe said.
Virgil gave the photo back to Signy, who asked, "You want another beer?"
"I shouldn't," Virgil said. She went and got him another one, and said, "I'd give you a sandwich, but I don't have anything in the house. I usually eat out."
"Got a bag of sweet corn in the truck," Virgil said.
Signy's eyes lit up: "I could do some sweet corn. That's just boiling water, right?"
VIRGIL GOT THE CORN and she looked in the bag and said, "Cucumbers. I could put together a salad. I've got some apples and lettuce…" Virgil got the impression that she wasn't big on cooking.
Signy wandered off to the kitchen and Virgil sat down again and said to Zoe, "Tell me all about this band. Tell me about Wendy and Berni and whoever else…"
ZOE TOLD HIM that the band had been around for two or three years, but that Wendy had been something of a Grand Rapids celebrity since middle school. "She's always been the best singer that anybody ever knew. When she was a little kid, she used to sing with a polka band, and even travel around with them. Around the Iron Range, I mean. Not all over."
Wendy and Berni became best friends in middle school, and Berni learned the drums because she wasn't any good at other musical instruments. Together they played in a high school rock band that later became a country band when Wendy decided that she had more of a country voice. She also decided that women got a better break in country music than in rock.
After high school, she worked for a while at a local convenience store, and then for her father, breeding dogs. "Nasty hairy yellow-looking things," Zoe said. "Though I guess they get a lot of money for them. They're some kind of rare dog, or something."
"I wonder if she literally breeds them," Signy said from the kitchen. "She breeds everything else."
"Shut up, Sig," Zoe said.
All the time she was working, Wendy had a band. The band was getting better-they were shedding the old high school part-timers, and were picking up some pros-and Wendy's voice was getting richer. So was her love life.
ZOE SAID, and Signy agreed, between bouts of looking into the corn kettle, that Wendy was a heartless slut who played her lovers off against each other, and sometimes slept with men to demonstrate her independence.
"But she's really talented. You heard her," Zoe said, her face alight. "She's got this magnetism that pulls people in. Even McDill. That's what all the big stars have. You can't figure it out, but you can feel it."
Berni, on the other hand, was a below-average drummer, Zoe said. "She can do it, but she's not so creative. Wendy told me that."
"You think Wendy'll dump her?" Virgil asked.
Signy said, "If Wendy thought Berni could cost her a recording contract, she'd drop her off the bus on the side of the interstate."
WENDY KNEW THAT she had to move-Taylor Swift, Zoe said, was two years younger than Wendy, and was already a huge name with the best-selling album in the U.S.
"But you know what? Taylor Swift is like Grace Slick. You know who Grace Slick was?"
"Jefferson Starship?" Virgil ventured.
"Yeah, and another band, Jefferson Airplane, before that. Everybody thought that she was going to be the queen of rock and roll. Then along came Janis Joplin, and Janis Joplin was the queen of rock and roll. Wendy is Janis Joplin. But she's got to make a move. She knows it. Time is pressing on her."
WENDY AND BERNI LIVED together in a double-wide out at Wendy's father's place, Zoe said. Berni and Wendy's father were tight.
"I think he's the one that got Wendy back with Berni, instead of with me," Zoe said.
"Are you still in love?" Signy asked.
"Well, what do you think?"
Signy said to her sister, "I think it might be a lack of other opportunity. If you were down in the Cities, with lots of other women, you'd be fine. But up here, what're you going to do? Go out with Sandy Ericson? I mean, Wendy's what you got."
Zoe faked a shiver and said to Virgil, "Sandy goes about two-twenty in her boxer shorts."
"And it ain't muscle," Signy said. To her sister: "You know why Wendy was plucking your magic twanger? Because you're an accountant, and she thought she might learn something about handling money. That's why."
"Sig-shut up," Zoe said.
VIRGIL ASKED, "If Berni thought Wendy was going to dump her because of McDill, would Berni have shot McDill?"
Signy and Zoe looked at each other, and then simultaneously shrugged. Zoe said, "I don't know if Berni knows anything about guns. I could ask."
"Don't do that. You already had one nut creeping around your house." Signy said, then, "Water's boiling. I'm gonna drop that corn in there for one minute and then we're gonna eat, so you might as well come now."
AS THEY STOOD UP, Virgil said to Zoe, "I can't think why somebody would break into your house, that would be connected with this killing. Can you?"
She shook her head. "No."
"On the other hand, we have a violent crime, and you know all the main local people around the dead woman, and you've been seen hanging out with me, and somebody breaks into your house. Is this the first time you've had a break-in?"
"Oh, yeah-I mean, we had some kids who were breaking into houses in my neighborhood, a couple of years ago, stealing stuff to buy drugs, but they caught them right away."
"There are burglaries," Signy said. "It's not like this place is totally crime-free."
"But the time link makes it interesting," Virgil said. "She's been up around the crime scene, she's seen with me, and we get the break-in."
"On some of the crime shows, you get people who don't know what they know, and that's why they're in danger," Zoe said. "You think that's like me? I don't know what I know?"
Virgil grinned at her and said, "Crime shows and mystery novels are totally different things than real life, you know? What I'm thinking is, you had somebody come in there, planning to threaten you, or even hurt you, or to find out what you were saying to me, or to find out what you knew, and he came in with a pipe or just his fists, and this voice says, 'I've got a gun,' and he says, 'Fuck it,' and takes off."
"Or she," Zoe said.
"Or she. And if you knew something, I think you'd know it. Wouldn't you?"
Signy said, "Well, we had that secretary of defense, who was always talking about known unknowns, and unknown unknowns, and all that-maybe Zoe could have an unknown known."
Virgil looked at her for a second, then said, "Two beers might have been one too many. I didn't understand a thing you said."
SIGNY HAD a tiny kitchen table, and three mismatched chairs. As they sat around, working on the mediocre salad and terrific sweet corn with real butter, Virgil asked Signy what she did, and she said, "I've got a quilt store in Grand Rapids."
"Ah. That's pretty cool. I like quilts," Virgil said. "My mom makes them and I've got three of them."
"Damn near can't make a living at it," Signy said. "You can get so close… but then you always need an extra fifty dollars for something. You'll think everything's working this week, and then you tear up a tire or something."
Zoe said, "Signy went to the U in Minneapolis. In art."
Virgil reevaluated, and so obviously that Signy said, "What? You thought I was a hillbilly woman, right?"
"Nah. I come from a small town myself," he said.
"It's Joe that's dragging you down," Zoe said to Signy. "You oughta get a divorce. Like, next week."
"Divorces cost money and he's not bothering me, so… when I get the money," Signy said.
"I don't even know why you married him; he's such a loser," Zoe said.
"Well," Signy said, and she picked up one of the corn cobs on her plate and held it erect, contemplated it with slightly crossed eyes. About ten inches long, Virgil thought. "I don't honestly know why," she said after a minute.