"Nice boots," Virgil said into her cleavage.

"My eyes are up here," she said.

"Yeah, yeah," he said, as they crossed the parking lot to the door. "I've only heard that line in about eight movies."

"What's your favorite movie?"

He paused at the door, thought, and then said, "That's too important a question to settle on the front porch of a bar."

"You don't have to defend your choice-just name it," Zoe said.

"The Big Lebowski," Virgil said. "The dude abides."

"I was afraid of something like that," she said.

"I could've said Slap Shot," Virgil said.

"Ah, Jesus. Let's go drink." Inside the door, she said, "If you'd said, Hannah and Her Sisters, you might've got laid tonight."

"I was gonna say that," Virgil said. "Honest to God."

"I was lying," she said. "I lie a lot. Like you."

THE BAND WAS ON, singing a Dixie Chicks song which, like all the other Dixie Chicks songs, Virgil didn't like. Not so much that he didn't like them, it was just that they affected him like the Vulcan nerve pinch, and caused him to crumple to the ground and drool. They got the last booth and Virgil checked the crowd-probably fifty women and eight or ten men-and then the singer.

Wendy was a fleshy blond beauty in the Janis Joplin mold-not crystal-pretty, like the blondes big in Nashville, but stronger, with breasts that moved in their own directions when she turned, over a narrow waist and long legs. She was wearing a deliberately fruity cowgirl suit, a white leather blouse and skirt with leather fringes, and cowboy boots like Zoe's. And lipstick: she had a large mouth, with wide lips, coated with deep red lipstick that glistened in the bandstand lights. Here was the source of the kiss-card that he'd found in McDill's cabin, Virgil thought.

She could sing. Again, not the currently popular Nashville crystal-soprano, but a throwback to the whiskey-voiced singers of an older generation. Virgil actually listened to the song, although the words themselves threatened to lower his IQ. When she finished, Wendy said, in the whiskey voice, "One more song this set, for those of you who like to dance, a little old northern Minnesota slow-waltz, 'The Artists' Waltz.' I wrote it myself and I hope you like it."

Virgil did: like it.

A dozen couples, all women, danced to the music, as Chuck turned the rheostat and the lights dimmed, a real slow-waltz and terrifically romantic. Virgil listened all the way through, alternately watching Wendy, and then watching Zoe, whose face was fixed on Wendy's, and whose hands were clenched on the table, the knuckles white. She had lied to him, Virgil thought. Even if he'd said, Hannah and Her Sisters, he wouldn't have gotten laid, because the girl was already in love.

Wendy finished and said, "We're gonna take fifteen minutes, back to you then with another hour of the finest Wild Goose music. Thank you…"

THE SOUND LEVEL DROPPED, and Zoe, halfway through her beer, leaned forward and asked, "What's the question you couldn't put on the cell phone?"

Virgil shook his head. He almost didn't want to ask it, now that he'd seen her reaction to Wendy. On the other hand, unasked questions didn't often solve murders.

"Look," he said, "I was watching you watching Wendy, and I didn't realize how attached you were. Are. Whatever."

"I'm not attached. We're all done," Zoe said.

"If she'd take you back, would you go?" Virgil asked.

She said, "No," but her hands were doing their twist again. Virgil shook his head, and she said, "All right-yes."

"That's better," Virgil said. "You're really a horseshit liar."

"What does that have to do with the question?"

Looking right in her eyes, Virgil asked, "Did you know Wendy spent the night before last with Erica McDill, at her cabin at the Eagle's Lair?"

"Eagle Nest, and I don't believe you," Zoe said. She was looking straight back at him, and he felt that she was telling the truth. Then she said, "Why would you try to tell me something like that? Are you trying to get me to spread the lie around?"

Virgil opened his mouth to answer, when Wendy dropped in the booth next to Virgil, her thigh against his. She looked across the table at Zoe, said, "Hey, babe," and then at Virgil, then back to Zoe, and asked, "Who's the hunny-bunny?"

"He's the cop investigating the murder at the lodge," Zoe said.

Wendy tensed just a hair; Virgil saw and felt it.

Zoe added, "He's the guy who massacred all the Vietnamese up at International Falls. He looks like a surfer boy, but he's a stone killer."

"Hey," Virgil said. "I…"

The drummer, Berni/Raven, came up on Zoe's side of the table, looking first at Wendy, then at Zoe, and said, "I thought you might be over here."

Wendy tossed her hair back, like Marilyn Monroe might have done, and said, "Oh, God, don't be evil."

"I know, you're just punkin' me," the drummer said. She was dressed in black jeans, with a sleeveless black jean jacket over nothing, and heavy dark eye shadow. The name Raven was stitched into the front of the jacket. She looked down at Zoe: "Wish you'd find a friend. He ain't it, is he?" she said, looking at Virgil.

"He's a cop," Wendy said. "Asking questions about the murder."

Berni said, "So ask me a question."

Virgil shrugged. "Where were you at eight o'clock last night?"

"Eight o'clock. Mmm, lying in bed, rubbing myself, thinking about Wendy," she said. She checked Virgil to see if he was embarrassed. He wasn't. He did think, No alibi.

"Do me," Wendy said. "Give me a question."

Zoe blurted, "Don't do it."

"Do what?" Wendy asked, but Virgil was looking into Wendy's eyes now, and saw that she knew. So he asked.

"I need to know what Erica McDill said to you night before last. Whether she said anything that might have to do with the murder."

"She didn't see Erica McDill the night before last," Berni said. "She had to run over to Duluth…"

THEY ALL STOPPED TALKING. Zoe was staring at Wendy, who looked from Virgil to Berni and back to Virgil. Berni was focused on Wendy, saw the truth on her face, shouted, "You bitch," pulled back her fist, and plugged Wendy in the left eye.

Virgil wasn't moving fast enough; saw the punch coming and started to move, but the punch was already coming and landed with a solid thwack, and some tiny backward part of his brain thought, Good punch.

Wendy rocked back, her skull bouncing off the back of the booth, her mouth twisting, and then she came out of the booth in a hurricane of fingernails and teeth and the two women surged together and then went straight down to the floor, punching and screaming.

That answered one of Virgil's questions: the drummer hadn't known.

ZOE WAS SCREAMING at Virgil, "Stop them, stop them."

Virgil was reluctant. In his experience, when women break down the social barriers so far that they begin physically tearing at each other, they are dangerous. Men learn social fighting as children; the posturing, the dominance routines, the punch in the nose, the threats to "get you someday," and everybody goes home satisfied. Women don't learn any of that: when they fight, they'll rip the gizzard out of anyone who gets in the way.

But something had to be done. The women in the room were surging around like a lynch mob in a movie, as Chuck the bartender's head bounced through them like a fishing bobber on a windy day. Virgil reached into the whirlwind of twisting flesh and grabbed a cowboy boot and yanked Berni out of the pileup.

Wendy came crawling after her, blood on her face. Berni tried to kick Virgil, and her boot started to come off, and Virgil grabbed her other boot; then Chuck grabbed one of Wendy's boots and instead of trying to kick him, she did a pure abdominals sit-up, which put her within range, and she slashed him across the forehead with her fingernails. Chuck stumbled back but held on to the boot, and Wendy went with him. Berni was trying to kick Virgil again, so he twisted her feet once, and she flipped over onto her stomach and he put a knee in the middle of her back and pinned her, like a turtle: legs and arms still flailing, but the body was going nowhere.