Rough Country

fact, talk to somebody, who was, in fact, something of a big shot. There was talk of a gig, of opening for one of the big hat acts.
    “And then,” Signy said, “she got killed. She got murdered and people were running around looking for the killer, and the whole idea of playing this nightclub kinda went away.”
    “How do you know this?” Virgil asked.
    “From Zoe, who got it from Wendy, and Margery knows about it, too, because Constance whatever-her-name-is, Nifly, Gifly, something like that—Constance stayed at the Eagle Nest, and she was a lesbian.”
    “Why didn’t Zoe tell me?” Virgil asked, running one hand through his hair. Couldn’t believe it.
    Sig said, “I don’t know. I guess maybe . . . The woman was killed down there, in Iowa, and nobody really knew what happened to her. Somebody heard about it, probably one of the lesbians, and people at the Eagle Nest knew her, so the word got around. But it was quite a while ago, a couple of years, anyway. Nobody saw any connection with anything up here. I think the word was, it was a robbery. Maybe. I’m not sure about that part.”
    Virgil said, “Well, now there’s a connection. Goddamnit, Sig, I’m gonna have to scream at your sister. Does she know all the details?”
    Sig said, “I don’t know what she knows. Really, it was sort of vaguely interesting . . . like you once met somebody who crashed in an airplane, but, you know . . . not all that interesting.”
    Virgil had come over for the pizza, feeling that there was an excellent chance that he would finish the evening with his boots off. Sig was an attractive woman who was apparently suffering the tortures of involuntary abstinence. Even if Virgil wasn’t able to solve that problem this very night—misplaced and poorly considered Midwestern courtship manners usually demanded an acquaintanceship of longer than three hours before commissions of adultery—he might have hoped to establish a forward base camp from which to organize an attack on the summit.
    But now this .
    “Ah, man,” he groaned. He pulled out his cell phone and found Zoe’s number and punched it up, and when Zoe answered, he shouted, “Why didn’t you tell me about Constance what’s-her-name from Iowa?”
    She said, “Oh, God.”
    “I’m coming over there. Goddamnit, Zoe . . .” He clicked off.
    “You’re leaving?” Sig asked.
    “I gotta . . .”
    She tilted her face up at him. “Well, shoot. I was enjoying our talk.”
    She was definitely standing inside his circle of friendship and he edged a little closer and said, “So was I—I mean, enjoying the talk, but, hell, Signy . . .”
    “I know,” she said, her eyes resigned. “The woman got murdered. So, maybe sometime . . .”
    Virgil eased a bit closer and leaned over and kissed her on the lips and she pushed into him enough that he felt authorized to give her butt a squeeze, and what a glorious appendage it seemed to be. . . .
    She pushed off and said, “Goddamnit, your own self. Go see her. Maybe you could call me tomorrow. If you want . . .”
    “I want, definitely,” Virgil said. He looked around, checking to see if there were any excuses flying through the air that he might grab and use to avoid going to Zoe’s, but there were none. “I’ll call you,” he said.
    Signy had been wearing a sweet-tasting lipstick, and a little perfume, and Virgil could taste and smell her halfway over to Zoe’s.
     
     
     
    ZOE WAS WAITING in her living room, anxious, a twisted sheet of paper in her hand. Virgil thought she might have been pacing, rehearsing whatever she was going to say.
    “Virgil, I’m sorry. I didn’t really think it was important enough—”
    “You’re smarter than that,” Virgil snapped. “So don’t give me any bullshit. Tell me what happened.”
    “I didn’t know exactly, but I went online and found an article in the Cedar Rapids Gazette . She was from Swanson, Iowa, near Iowa City. Between Iowa City and Cedar Rapids, anyway . . . I got the article.”
    She handed Virgil the sheet of paper and he unrolled it.
    Sept. 29—Forty-nine-year-old Swanson restaurant owner Constance Lifry was found strangled Saturday night in the parking lot behind Honey’s, 640 Main in Swanson, Johnson County Sheriff Gerald Limbaugh said Sunday.
    Lifry was a well-known civic activist and a member of several local gardening clubs, and an expert on heritage roses.
    Limbaugh said that Lifry was last seen alive by two cleaning women who worked at the