“What have I done?” she asked through the screen door.
“Nothing, as far as I know,” Virgil said. “But I understand you’re a friend of Clancy Conley.”
“Who? I’m not sure I know that name—”
“Conley was found dead today. He was shot to death.”
“Oh, Jesus!” she said, taking a step back. She sputtered a few soggy cornflakes onto the screen. “What happened? Where was this? Are you sure it’s Clancy?”
She asked all the questions that Laughton should have, Virgil noticed; and she’d popped the hook on the door, almost unconsciously, to let him in. She backed across the living room and dropped into a chair, pointing him at a couch. The house was furnished like any middle-class suburban home, except the television was smaller.
“What happened?” She seemed to notice the bowl in her hand and set it on an end table.
Virgil told her about Conley, and as he did, the blood drained out of her face and she put both hands on her cheeks; no tears. When he finished, she asked, “How can I help?”
“Do you know . . . Everybody who knows him says he didn’t have much going for himself. Drank too much, probably did some dope. Maybe dealt a little? Sound right?”
“No. He quit drinking. Quite a while ago, and he said he wasn’t going back. He was working out, he was running, he was getting in shape. He was working on a story, he was all excited about it. In fact . . . Okay, he might have known he was in trouble. He once told me, we were in bed, and he said if a cop comes asking about me, tell him to look up the songs of some singer.”
“Some singer?”
“Yeah, but this was like a month ago. I can’t remember her name, but . . . Wait, I think she was the chick singer for the Mouldy Figs.”
“The Mouldy Figs?” The Figs were a local jazz band in the Twin Cities. “The Mouldy Figs don’t have a chick singer—they’re a jazz band.”
“Well, that’s what he said. And he said, their chick singer,” McComb said.
“Huh. Do you know what his story was about?” Virgil asked.
“No, I don’t—but he said he had a great story, he was working on it, but then he shut up and said he didn’t want to talk about it, really.”
“Did he say when he was going to publish it?”
“No, nothing like that, but I feel like it was pretty soon,” McComb said. She got up, took two or three quick steps around the living room, and sat down again. “He was as happy as I’d ever known him to be.”
“How about the drugs?” Virgil asked.
“He used some. He had one of those orange pill bottles, and it never changed. It said Prozac on it, but it wasn’t Prozac. But it wasn’t powder, it was pills, and I believe it was some kind of speed. I don’t think he was dealing, though—never tried to sell me anything, anyway. I never heard from anybody else that he was a dealer. We do have a few dealers around town. I don’t use myself, except a little pot on Saturday night.”
“Vike Laughton kinda hinted to me—”
“There’s a snake in the grass. I wouldn’t trust him any further than I could spit a brick,” she said.
Virgil said, “Hmm.”
“What did he hint to you?” she asked.
“That Conley was dealing. He said he’d started drinking again.”