Smiling, she glanced up again. “Maybe I ought to go, just to keep an eye on you. Don’t you guys do any work?”

“Sure, we do. Don’t let Miranda’s style throw you off. We may be informal, but WAFA is a dignified, professional organization, and we work damn hard. Listen.” He had come into the living room to get some vegetables and dip for himself, and he took the letter from her, turning to the second page.

“Here. ‘Round-table topics will include the adjustment of aging standards in light of today’s accelerating maturation rates; race-linked differences in sexual dimorphism; blunt-force skull fractures; and new developments in computerized forensic data nets.’”

“Very impressive.”

Gideon accepted this with a magisterial nod. “‘In addition, we’re trying to scare up an FBI agent or high-level working cop to put on a session on crime-scene do’s and don’ts, which, it pains me to say, most of us can sorely use. (Contact me if you know any likely candidates for this. No honorarium, but we’ll cover expenses.) As usual, one of our conference highlights will be…’” He coughed and folded up the sheet. “Well, you get the idea.”

She snatched it away from him. “‘…will be our competition for the wildest, weirdest case of the last ten years. Present the most bizarre, off-the-wall doings you’ve had the good (?) fortune to be associated with in the last decade. Winner will receive a T-shirt with an appropriate and meaningful WAFA slogan, such as “Ten Years of Beer for Breakfast.”’

Julie nodded soberly. “‘Dignified’ hardly does you justice.”

“Didn’t I say it wasn’t all business? Forensic work can get pretty grim. You need some comic relief.”

“Right,” she said, beginning to read aloud again as he went back to the kitchen. “‘Another highlight, she said hopefully, will be the opening, after almost a year of feverish preparation, of the Murder, Mayhem, and Miseries exhibit in the Central Oregon Museum of Natural History. This, as you know, is the country’s first permanent, large-scale forensic anthropology exhibit, and if I do say so myself, it’s going to knock your socks off!