Rough Country

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.
    Zoe fell into a coughing fit, and Virgil asked, “Can you breathe?” and she patted herself on the chest and said, “I inhaled a corn.”
    “’Zat what it was,” Virgil said. And he asked her, “Are you staying here?”
    “Until the locks are on,” Zoe said. “The lock guy is coming tomorrow morning.”
    “What’re you going to do tomorrow?” Signy asked Virgil.
    “Push on people,” Virgil said. “I’m going to run around and push on people.”
    “I’d like to see that,” she