She sighed and asked, "What are you up to?"

"I'd like to talk to people who are still here who knew McDill. I need some names."

"You want to talk one at a time, or all together?"

"Both," Virgil said. "I'd like to have the whole group in, and then, when we're done, I'll ask if anybody has anything they'd like to follow up with me, privately. Give them my cell number to call."

"A bunch of them went on a bear-spotting trip to Steven's Island. They'll be back for lunch. How about right after lunch?"

Virgil patted the rail. "See you then," he said.

HE CALLED ZOE. "Get your locks?"

"The guy's here now. He'll be done in an hour," she said.

"Where'd I find Wendy and Berni and the rest of them?" Virgil asked.

"Probably down at the Schoolhouse. They've rented it for the month; they're working on a record."

THE SCHOOLHOUSE was east of town, and had once been a one-room schoolhouse. A red-brick cube with a chimney at one end and a door and bell tower-no bell-at the other, it was surrounded by a gravel parking lot with a half-dozen SUVs scattered around in no particular pattern. When Virgil got out of his truck, he could see through a glass-brick wall the flailing arms of a drummer, but he could hear not a sound. He climbed the steps, went through the front doors, found himself in an entry room facing a skinny, nervous blond woman who was sitting on a desk, reading what looked like a manuscript, but turned out to be a musical score, and chewing gum in rhythm with the faintly audible bass.

Virgil said, "I'm looking for Wendy Ashbach."

The woman chewed and asked, "Who're you?"

"The cops," Virgil said.

He must've said it in a cop-like way, because she nodded and said, "Virgil. I heard about you. You were at the fight last night."

"Yeah…"

"They're laying down the basic tracks for 'Lover Do,' and they'll be greatly pissed if you mess it up."

"I don't want to mess anything up, but I need to talk to Wendy and maybe Berni and anybody else who might have something to chip in," Virgil said.

"Okay. You ever been in a recording studio?"

"Nope."

"Follow me in, and sit on the couch against the back wall," she said. "You don't have to be real quiet, but be a little quiet. They're working."

The control room was probably twenty feet long and fifteen feet deep, with a long window facing a room full of women musicians-a bass guitar, a lead, keyboards, a violinist, all wearing headphones, playing a fairly simple song. On the other side of the musicians' room was another, smaller room, also with a window, and Berni was inside, pounding on her drums.

Under the window, on Virgil's side, two men crouched over a control board that must have been fifteen feet long; the music flowed into the control room through speakers on either side and above the control board. Wendy was in the control room itself, standing behind the engineers, wearing headphones and a microphone, half singing, half humming the words to the song, and behind it all, a metronome-like click was parsing out the beat.

Nobody looked at Virgil or the blonde. They stayed with the music, and the blonde pointed Virgil at a couch against the back wall, and when he sat down, she sat down beside him.

"They're laying down the basic tracks," the blonde said quietly. "They'll record the solos later, and overdub them. When they've got that perfect, then Wendy'll come in with the real vocals and they'll overdub that. She's doing scratch vocals now, to keep everybody tuned in to her."

Virgil nodded.

The blonde asked, "Are you here about Erica McDill?"

"Yeah."

"That was a bad break. We needed somebody like her. She knew her shit."

"Who're you?"

The woman stuck out her hand and said, "Corky Saarinen. I'm the manager."

As Virgil shook it, the band clattered to a sloppy stop, and one of the engineers said, "Okay, guys, let's pick it up right at the top of the fourth verse. Sin, lead us in, and Wendy can pick it up…"

They started again, and Virgil whispered, "Why'd you need McDill?"

Saarinen leaned closer and said, "I can handle all the detail stuff-the road stuff. Making sure everything gets where it's supposed to, on time. And I can find other people to work for us, lawyers, accountants, and so on. But some of it-contacts, agents, advertising, publicity-so much counts on talent. You don't know when people are bullshitting you, or if you're getting what you're paying for. And you know, if you come out with a bad initial image, you could be dead for years. It's something you've got to get right, right off the top. That's what McDill could have done for us."

"So what'll you do now?"

She shrugged: "McDill talked to some people down at her agency, about the band. I'll track them down, find out what they think. Maybe they can give us a lead to a new PR guy."

"You guys were going to hire McDill? Could you afford her?"

"Nah. Wendy and McDill were bumpin' each other. McDill was doing it because it made her feel hip. Edgy. Out there. I mean, she was married to a fat housewife, and along comes Wendy, you know?"

"You knew they were involved?" Virgil asked.

"Yeah, me and Sin did. We tried to keep it quiet, because we figured Berni'd go off, like she did. Have you seen Wendy's eye?"

Virgil hadn't; hadn't seen anything of Wendy but the back of her head. He shook his head: "No."

Saarinen giggled: "She looks like she went six rounds with Rocky."

"How long were Wendy and McDill involved?" Virgil asked.

Saarinen glanced at the singer, then said, "A few days-since about… mmm… Tuesday. Maybe Tuesday. McDill and some other women introduced themselves on Saturday night, at the Goose, and they got to talking. McDill came around and watched us work on Monday, and on Tuesday, we were talking about PR and I realized that they'd been talking during the day, when the rest of us weren't around. You could tell something was about to happen."

THE BAND got to the end of the song, then played the end again, and again, and finally one of the engineers leaned into a microphone and said, "That's got it, guys."

Wendy pulled her headphones off and turned and spotted Virgil and did a double take, then grinned and said, "Hey, guy." She had a black eye as big as a silver dollar, startling under her blond hair.

"Wendy," Virgil said. "That black eye looks pretty interesting."

"You like it? We did a couple of publicity photos this morning. Might use it for the album cover."

THERE WAS AN EMPTY wheeled office chair pushed under the control board, and she rolled it over to Virgil and plopped down, with her feet overlapping his, their knees almost touching. She did it deliberately but good-naturedly, poking at him, to see how he'd react. He said, "I need to talk to you and the band about which one of you killed McDill."

That stopped her: "You know… one of us did it?"

"No, but you're the best I've got, and I've got to work with what I got," Virgil said, poking her back.

"Well, let me see… I guess it was Wednesday when we decided to kill her. I said, 'Girl, you gotta get it on. Gotta get the six-gun and shoot Erica McDill right in the ear.' " The smile vanished and she cocked her head: "So what in the fuck are you talking about?"

"McDill could have been killed for business reasons, but when I dug into that, I couldn't find any," Virgil said. "Most everybody needed to keep her alive. Her getting killed is going to cost a lot of people a lot of money. Then, I thought maybe her girlfriend did it-but her girlfriend needs written instructions to walk across the street, and I don't see her figuring out something this complicated. Then I've got a whole band full of people whose love lives are all twisted up, with you in the middle of it. A lot of emotion going around. People fighting in bars about it. Most of you are small-town girls, and I bet more than one of you has her own rifle, and could figure out how to get through that swamp into Stone Lake. That's how I figure it."