"Let me get the door," she said. She pulled open a lower-level door on the barn, which led into what at the turn of the century would have been a milking chamber, but was now a garage. She turned on lights and Lucas got in the truck and backed the boat into the barn.

"Stop," she yelled when the boat was far enough back. He stopped, and they unhitched the trailer and dropped it. The interior of the barn, years past the last bovine occupant, still smelled slightly of hay and what might have been manure; a thoroughly pleasant smell. Clay's wife closed the door and came out to stand by Lucas, and they both looked up at the sky.

"Pretty night," she said. She was a small, slender woman with dark hair and a square face. She and Lucas had always liked each other, and if things had been different, if the Clays hadn't been quite so happy with each other She smelled good, like some kind of faintly perfumed soap.

"Pretty night," he repeated.

"Thanks for helping out with the boat," she said quietly.

"Thanks for bringing it," Clay called from the porch.

"Yup." Lucas got back in the truck. "Talk to ya."

At ten minutes after eleven o'clock, he rolled up his driveway, punched the garage-door opener, and eased the Tahoe in next to the Porsche. A new car, the Porsche; about time.

Clean, mellow, starting to fade, the memory of Verna Clay's scent still on his mind, he dropped into bed. He was asleep in five minutes, a small easy smile on his face.

He got three hours and forty-five minutes of sleep. The phone rang, the unlisted line. Groggy, he pushed himself up in bed, picked it up.

"Yeah?"

Swanson, one of the old-time guys: "Goddamnit, you'rehome. You know who Alie'e Maison is, the famous model?"

"Yeah?"

"Somebody strangled her in a rich lady's house. We need some political shit over here: This is gonna be a screamer."