Virgil said, "Thank you," pulled the bolt, sniffed, and smelled the distinctive cut of gun solvent. "I'll get it back to you as soon as I can." He poked back into the safe. "These all Thirties?"

"Except for the.22," Slibe said. "A.308,.30-06, and the.22."

Virgil pulled out the pump.22, checked it, put it back. A long-rifle slug would have killed McDill if it had hit her right, but wouldn't have done the damage.

"I thought she was shot in a swamp," Slibe said.

"She was," Virgil said, turning around to face him.

"But you found a slug? That's why you need the rifle?"

"No slug, but we've got a cartridge. We can do some tests of the shell… and we'll test fire your rifle, and then, if we ever do find a slug, we'll have it." Virgil shrugged. "But what we'll probably do is some metallurgy, check metal remnants in the rifle against the metal frags in McDill's skull."

It was very quiet in the house, and Virgil became aware of a buzzing sound; a bee had gotten in. Slibe was staring at him, then blinked like a gecko and said, "Well, do what you got to do. I'd like the rifle back, soon as you can get it. We might go out to Wyoming and shoot some prairie rats in October. It's something we do."

"Do our best," Virgil said. Coming out the door, he said, "I hear you run a kennel out here."

"Best dogs in Minnesota," Slibe said. "English Creme Golden Retrievers. I'm the biggest breeder in the Upper Midwest; you want one of my dogs, baby-trained, gonna cost you three grand."

Virgil whistled. "You get three grand?"

"And I got a waiting list long as your arm," Slibe said. He pulled a can of Copenhagen out of his jacket pocket, stuck a pinch under his tongue. "Ask anybody."

"What did you think about McDill?"

"Didn't know her. From what Wendy said, she might have had some good ideas. Wendy's pretty anxious to get the show on the road."

"What do you think about that?" Virgil asked.

Slibe poked a finger down toward the kennels. "You see them dogs? They're solid gold. That's where the money is. Aren't nobody in Nashville going to pay any attention to a poor girl from Grand Rapids, Minnesota. Maybe twenty years ago, but not now. She wants to do it, but Wendy's a little crazy. I told her that a hundred times."

"So you think she should stay with dog breeding."

"That's what I think. But kids get crazy ideas. I mean, it's all right here. Everything she needs. I spent my whole life building this place up so she could take it over. And the Deuce, too, but the Deuce ain't got what it takes to run it. She knows that, but all she thinks about is that CMTV shit," Slibe said. "Now-you got the gun. You want anything else? I got some logs to split."

Virgil nodded and headed for his truck, then turned and said, "Wendy's a little better than good. I don't know if she's good enough, but she's better than good."

Something shifted in Slibe's face. "Don't go telling her that. She'll go sliding off to Nashville or L.A. and wind up on the street, selling her ass. She ain't a bad singer, but that's not why she's here."

BY THE TIME VIRGIL got back to town, it was late in the day. He called the Bemidji office and arranged for a guy to pick up Slibe's rifle the next morning, looked at his watch, and headed out to the Eagle Nest, still dragging the boat. Margery Stanhope was sitting in her office, alone, sad, and pensive, as she had been the last time he'd seen her; the murder was working on her. Virgil went in, closed the door, and she looked up as he crossed the office and took one of the visitor chairs.

She glanced at the closed door and asked, apprehensively, "What happened?"

"I have some embarrassing questions to ask, Margery," Virgil said.

Her brow beetled: "What?"

"Is it true that some of your waiter boys provide additional services to the guests?"

She leaned back and said, "Oh. Damnit. Well, I'll tell you what, Virgil, I have heard that, but I do not make any inquiries. What our guests do, as long as they don't do it in the parking lot, is up to them. They are adults."

"Yeah, but Margery… you hire them," Virgil said. "The boys."

"You ever been to a Hooters?" she asked.

"No, I haven't."

"I have. They didn't hire those girls on the basis of their master's theses." She actually smiled. "Have you seen Kevin?"

"No…"

"Nineteen. Sophomore at UMD next year. Half the people in town think Kevin might be gay, because he goes around with these French haircuts. He even gets them done in a ladies' salon down in Grand Rapids. Looks like he came out of one of those science fiction movies. The women up here eat him up like a big ice cream cone. But I don't know anything about it."

"Did McDill sleep with any of the boys?" Virgil asked.

"I have no idea. Well, let me change that. Maybe. From what I understand, she'd do a little bit of everything," Stanhope said.

"I was told that she might like to do a little domination routine with the boys," Virgil said.

Stanhope shrugged. "Don't know."

"Did you ask whether anybody knew about McDill and Wendy?"

"Yes, I did, and I couldn't find anybody who'd admit it; and I get up early, earlier than about anybody, and I never saw Wendy heading out to the parking lot."

"And it doesn't bother you that you're running a high-rent, ecologically sensitive whorehouse?"

"But I'm not," she protested. "I don't get a penny of anything that changes hands. I don't make any arrangements. I simply don't interfere when nature takes its course."

"Although you arrange nature a little bit," Virgil said.

"Hooters," she said. "Look. Are you going to put this in the newspapers? I mean, you'd wind up embarrassing a lot of fairly important people for no good reason, and probably wrecking a pretty good business."

"I'm not interested in doing that, Margery. I leave that to our administrative people, and my boss," Virgil said. "But it's possible, even likely, that all of this sex stuff had something to do with the murder. People get killed for money, sex, and drugs-cocaine and alcohol-and sometimes simply because of craziness. I don't see much money here, and not much in the way of drugs. That leaves sex and craziness."

"The sex here doesn't involve competition… it really doesn't," Stanhope said. "The boys… I don't interfere with the boys, or make any arrangements for them, or anything like that. But everybody knows that the boys are here, and what they might do for you. Word gets around. But there isn't a competition for them-why would you compete, when a couple of hundred dollars would get you what you want?"

"What if you want love?"

She sighed and said, "I've got no answer for that, Virgil. Now, you want to see McDill's friends?"

THE DISCUSSION LEFT a bad taste in Virgil's mouth. Sex was terrific; sex for money, at least in the American culture, was brutally destructive. He didn't care what Stanhope said: it was a whorehouse.

HE MET WITH SEVEN WOMEN in the library; gay or straight, he had no idea. All of them were aware of McDill's sexual orientation, but none of them had seen her with Wendy Ashbach. One woman said that McDill seemed interested in a dock boy named Jared-nobody knew his last name, and Stanhope had gone off on an errand-whom they described as blond and thin and, one woman added, "girly."

When they were done, Virgil took that woman aside and asked, "Did McDill have a sexual relationship with Jared?"

"Maybe. We didn't talk about it, but I'm pretty sure she liked his looks."

"Have you seen him today?"

"No. I haven't seen him for a couple of days, but I haven't been looking," she said.

Virgil found Stanhope and asked, "Who's Jared?"

"Jared? Jared Boehm? He's a dock assistant."

"One of the boys?"

She looked exasperated: "Yeah, I guess."

"Is he working today?" Virgil asked.