“Rock shrimp with garlic-basil sauce and pine nuts over fettucine.”

She was patently impressed. “That sounds wonderful. How long will it be? I’m starving.”

“I don’t know, I’ll see what it says on the can.” “No, seriously.”

He peered at the recipe and did some quick arithmetic. “Oh, should be no more than half an hour. Say seven o’clock at the latest.”

Julie sighed. “Say eight o’clock,” she murmured more or less to herself.

Julie was an amazingly fast cook. Her stints in the kitchen were blurred, efficient flurries of activity, with everything seemingly done at the same time. Gideon had a more leisurely approach, slicing, chopping, and arranging things well ahead of time, so he could putter pleasantly through the cooking with his own glass of wine beside him. The result, they both agreed, was that he enjoyed it more, but what took her forty minutes was likely to take him two hours.

“Say seven-thirty,” he told her. “Have another carrot stick.” He poured her some more wine and went back to cutting basil leaves.

Julie returned to the letter. “‘The Annual Albert Evan Jasper Memorial Weenie Roast, Singalong, and Chugalug Contest will begin at its time-hallowed hour of 7:00 P.M., Friday, and end God only knows when.’”-She looked at him quizzically. “Do you really have a singalong?”

“Absolutely. It’s great fun.”

“And a chugalug contest?”

He laughed, dumping the basil into the blender along with some garlic and Parmesan cheese. “Poetic license.”

“And who’s Albert Evan Jasper? I know the name…”

“One of the pioneering physical anthropologists. A student of Hrdlicka’s. He was one of the first ones to really get into forensic work. The whole idea of WAFA came out of a sort of retirement party for him, put on by some of his own ex-students. They all got together at this Whitebark Lodge for a few days and talked forensic anthropology.”