"I'm on the job," I told her. "It got more complicated than I thought it would."

"Oh."

If we were new lovers, or even just five years into the marriage, that conversation would have spanned half an hour.

"Be careful," she said.

"Good night."

"I guess it's just you and me," Lucy said as I disengaged the call.

I looked around and saw that the bar was empty.

"Business is bad, huh?"

"It's a lull."

"Before the storm?"

Lucy was looking right at me. It had been a long time but I still remembered that look.

A bear growled restlessly.

"Hello?" I said into the cell phone.

Lucy was walking away. She was skinny but she had nice hips.

"Have you spoken to the woman in question?" Sam Strange asked.

"No."

"And?"

"There was a complication."

"What kind of complication?"

"Murder."

"Tara?"

"Maybe."

"This is no time to be coy, Mr. McGill. He's called me three times for an update."

I was watching Lucy clean up at the bar sink, remembering the lyric Where did our love go?

"The dead girl was named Wanda Soa, I'm told. Somebody shot her in the face. The probable killer was six feet away, stabbed in the chest. No gun was found."

"Do the police know?"

"Indeed they do."

"Did they, did they speak to you?"

"At length."

"And why haven't you called in to report?"

Giving no answer worked better than words on that question.

"I'll report to him and get back to you if there's anything else," Sam Strange said.

He hung up and I turned off my phone, preferring the slightly addled silence that three shots of good liquor provided.

"Walk me home," Lucy said. She wasn't giving me a choice.

6

Lucy took my arm half a block from the bar and we walked in silence. I made no comment when we passed Gert's building. Four blocks later, on a quiet, not to say desolate, block, she stopped.