Rough Country

popped a couple of people because he got the urge?”
    “Maybe,” Service said. “He’s had enough shit shoveled on him, all his life. He could be pretty angry under all of it. Kids gave him a hard time in school, old man gives him a hard time at home, doesn’t have the brains to deal with it. He just heads for the trees.”
    Interesting , Virgil thought, when he said good-bye to Service. A good suspect whom he had no good reason to suspect.
     
     
     
    FROM HIS CAR, he called Mapes and asked him about Slibe’s AR-15, and was told that they’d done test shots with it, and whatever it might be, it wasn’t the weapon that had produced the shells at Stone Lake or the Washington shooting.
    “Could you get that back to me? Is there some way I could get it back this afternoon?”
    “Let me check around. We’ll figure out something.”
    The gun, Virgil thought, was an excellent reason to go back out to Slibe’s place.

    HE WAS ON HIS way to the hospital, to check on Washington, to see if she was awake and had anything else to say, to ask if she or her husband knew anything about Jared Boehm or the Deuce, when Sanders called. “I got a woman who wants to talk to you. She says she might have some information.”
    “Yeah? Who?”
    “Iris Garner. She’s Margery Stanhope’s daughter.”
     
     
     
    IRIS GARNER was a tall redheaded woman in her mid-thirties who lived not far from the Boehms, in another sprawling ranch house, but on the precise edge of town, off the water, with an actual ranch in the back. Not exactly a ranch, but a training ring for horses, with a small horse barn behind it, and a pasture that extended out to a tree line that marked the edge of the real countryside.
    She smiled in a tired way when she answered the door, said, “Come in,” and as they walked through to the living room, she said, “I wasn’t sure I should call you. I had to think about it. But after Jan Washington . . . I’m not even sure that this amounts to anything. . . .”
    “I take everything,” he assured her.
    “Mother doesn’t know that I called you,” she said. “Please don’t tell her, unless it’s necessary. She’d be really upset.”
    She sat down in a red armchair next to a flagstone fireplace, and Virgil settled onto a couch. “That’s not a problem. The only time the specifics of an investigation get out is when they get into court. At that point, of course, things are pretty serious.”
    She understood that. “All I want to say, that I think you should know, is that Mother told me that you were a little friendly with Zoe Tull. Is that right?”
    “A little. She gave me a ride from the Eagle Nest to the airport, to pick up a rental—and she showed me the Wild Goose, so I could interview some of the people who hang out there,” Virgil said.
    “Wendy and her band. I know about that.” Garner sighed, then asked, “Did you know Zoe wants to buy the Eagle Nest from Mother? That she’s been trying to do it for a couple of years? And that Erica McDill is . . . was . . . another possible buyer?”
    A moment of silence, then Virgil said, “Nobody mentioned it to me.”
    “Here’s the thing,” Garner said. “Mother would like to retire. Earl and I—that’s my husband—think she should stay on for a few years. The real estate market is falling to pieces, and five years from now, she could probably get a lot more. Unless we’re in a depression, or something. Anyway, Zoe is pushing her to sell. Zoe would like to market the place more to lesbians. She thinks that lesbians are a rich specialized market. Mother has never really done that. We had lesbians, but we had a lot of straight women, too. Heck, when I was a kid, we were a family resort. My folks only started the all-women thing when every Tom, Dick, and Harry from the Cities started building fishing resorts.”
    “About McDill . . .”
    “Mother mentioned to Erica McDill that she might want to sell the place, and Erica right away said that she might be interested in buying it,” Garner said. “Mother told me at dinner Sunday before last. I don’t know how serious Erica was, and I don’t know what became of it.”
    “You’re saying that Zoe might have had competition for the place,” Virgil said.
    “Not just that . . . by the way, I do like Zoe, even if she is gay. What I’m saying is that Zoe works really hard, and saves her money, and really has her heart set on this. Then Erica comes along. A bidding war would push up the