Virgil shook his head, feeling bad for the bear, and gave the photo back to her. "I've been to Fairbanks. I was told that in the winter, it's the coldest place on earth."

"Well, Joe hasn't been there for a winter, yet," she said. "He's thinking of going to Anchorage and getting a job on a fishing boat."

A PAIR OF HEADLIGHTS swept the house and she said, "Pizza," and went and got it. They ate it in the living room, sitting close enough that he could feel the warmth from her arm. Virgil asked her about Grand Rapids, and the schools, and her friends, and the Eagle Nest, and the Wild Goose, and Wendy and Berni and Zoe.

About halfway through the pizza, when Virgil was thinking about declining the next piece, she said, "Actually, I have a piece of information for you-I thought of it one second ago. I don't know if it'll mean anything to you, or not. Because, I don't know…"

"I accept all information," Virgil said.

She said, "Erica McDill wasn't the first lesbian who was murdered after messing around with Wendy's band. Or who stayed at the Eagle Nest."

Virgil forgot about the pizza. "What?"

10

SIGNY ONLY HAD BITS and pieces of the story. A woman whose name was Constance Stifry, Lifry, Snifry, something like that, had two years earlier come up to the Eagle Nest on vacation from Iowa-Iowa City, Sioux City, Forest City, Mason City-"Something-City, I can't remember which, but it was definitely Iowa."

"I can find it," Virgil said.

Signy added, "I think somebody said she'd been here before, but I'm not sure about that."

Wendy's band was playing the area, Signy said, and did a one-week stand at the Wild Goose, but was not yet the house band. Constance whatever-her-name-was was an older woman, but knew a lot about country music. She was also friends with a guy who ran a major country-western nightclub, one of the circuit clubs where the about-to-be-big acts often played, and she suggested that Wendy might want to talk to the guy.

When she went back to Iowa, she did, in 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 restaurant. The women said that Lifry had worked in her office until about 10 P.M. Saturday night, after the 9 P.M. closing, and they found her body when one of the women went outside to smoke a cigarette.

"We are processing a good deal of crime scene information and hope we can settle this quickly," Limbaugh said. "I knew Constance most of my life and everyone who ever met her would tell you that she was a wonderful woman, involved with her community and with the American Heart Association, somebody who worked hard and made jobs for twenty or thirty people. This is a tragedy, and we'll be busting our butts to bring her killer to justice."

He said that Lifry had been strangled with "a cord of some kind, but the killer apparently took it with him."

No witnesses to the murder have been found, he said, "But we're talking to several people, and we're also processing videotape from Larry's Exxon across the street."

THAT WAS THE HARD INFORMATION: the rest of the article was testimonials and history.

"That's all?" Virgil asked. "There was never an arrest?"

"It's not in the paper. I never heard that there was."

"When was she up here?" Virgil asked. "She stayed at the Eagle Nest, right? Did she go to the Wild Goose? What'd she have to do with Wendy?"

Zoe shook her head; she'd been twisting her fingers and sidling around him as he read the article, and now she produced some tears and said, "God, I feel awful about this."