She acted like she hadn't heard. She poked the scar again, like the puffiness of the skin fascinated her. Her breath dragged across my shoulder like the edge of a washcloth.

"Bullet hole?"

I turned to face her, but there wasn't much place to back up unless I sat in the sink.

"Sword tip. My sifu got a little excited one time."

"Sifu?"

"Teacher. The guy who trained me in tai chi."

She laughed. "Your own teacher stabbed you? He must not be very good."

"He's very good. The problem was he thought I was good too."

"You've got another scar. That one's longer."

She was looking at my chest now, where a hash dealer had stabbed me with a Balinese knife in San Francisco's Tenderloin District. I put on my Tshirt.

Allison pouted. "Show's over?"

I waved her out and closed the bathroom door in her face. She was still smiling when I did it.

Robert Johnson stared at me as I put on the jeans. He looked about as amused as I was.

"Maybe if we rush her," I suggested. "A twoflank approach."

His head disappeared again. So much for backup.

When I came into the living room Allison had opened another beer and relocated to the futon.

"This reminds me of my old place in Nashville," she said, studying the waterstained plaster on the ceiling. "God, that was bad."

"Thanks."

She looked at me, puzzled. "I just meant it's small. I was living on nothing for a while.

Kind of makes me nostalgic, you know?"

"The good old days," I said. "Before you married money."

She drank some beer. "Don't knock it, Tres. You know what the joke was in Falfurrias?"

"Falfurrias. That's where you're from?"

She nodded sourly. "We joked that you only go to college for an MRS." She tapped her wedding ring with her thumb. "I bypassed the degree plan."

She closed all ten fingers around the beer bottle and kicked her feet up on the futon. I stared at the beer, wondering how many it would take for me to catch up with her.

"When I was eighteen I was working during the summer as a secretary at A1 Garland's auto dealership." She looked at me meaningfully, like I should know A1 Garland, obviously a bigwig in Falfurrias. I shook my head. She looked disappointed.

"I was trying to sing at a few clubs in Corpus Christi on the weekends. Next thing I know A1 was telling me he was going to leave his wife for me, telling me he would finance my music career. We started taking weekend trips to Nashville so he could show me how rich and important he was. He must've sunk ten thousand into the wallet doctors."

"Wallet doctors?"

She grinned. "The guys in Nashville that smell smalltown money a mile off. They promised A1 all kinds of stuff for me—recordings, promotion, connections. Nothing ever happened except I showed A1 how grateful I was a lot. I thought it was love for a while. Eventually he decided I'd become too expensive. Or maybe his wife found out. I never knew which. I got left in Nashville with about fifty dollars in cash and some really nice negligees. Stupid, huh?"

I didn't say anything. Allison drank more beer.

"You know the bad part? I finally got up the courage to tell somebody in Nashville that story and it was Les SaintPierre. He just laughed. It happens a hundred times every month, he told me, the exact same way. The big trauma of my life was just another statistic. Then Les told me he could make it right and I got suckered again. I was a slow learner."

"You don't have to tell me any of this."

She shrugged. "I don't care."

She sounded like she'd said it so many times she could almost believe it.

"What happened with the agency?" I asked. "Why did Les decide to push you out of the business?"

Allison shrugged. "Les didn't want somebody bringing him back to earth when he went really far out with an idea. He didn't know when to stop. Most of the time, it turned out well for him that way. Not always."

"Such as?"

She shook her head, noncommittal. "It doesn't really matter. Not now."

"And if he doesn't come back?"

"I'll get the agency."

"You sound sure. You think you can keep it afloat without him?"

" I know. Les' reputation. Sure, it'll be tough, but that's assuming I keep the agency.

The name is worth money—

I can sell it to all kinds of competitors in Nashville. There are also contracts in place for publishing rights on some hits that are still bringing in money. Les wasn't stupid."

"Sounds like you've been looking into it."

Allison shrugged. Slight smile. "Wouldn't you?"

"You must've run down his assets, then."

"I've got a pretty good idea."

"You know anything about a cabin on Medina Lake?"

Allison's face got almost sober. She stared at me blankly. I told her about the probate settlement from Les' parents' property.

"First I've heard about it."

But there was something else going on in her head. Like something that had been bothering her slightly for a long time was now coming to the forefront. I looked at her, silently asking her to tell me about it. She wavered, then looked away. "You have a plan, sweetie?"

"I thought I'd head out there. Check things out."

I regretted my answer as soon as I said it.

Allison tottered to her feet, held up her beer to check how much was left, then smiled at me. "You'd better drive. I'll navigate."

Then she began that job by trying to locate the front door.

Allison was quiet for the first half of the trip.

She'd complained bitterly before we left about me making her a thermos of coffee rather than tequila, then making her change clothes into something more utilitarian. I'd found a pair of Carolaine's drawstring Banana Republics and a crewneck pullover in the back of the closet. They fit Allison well. Once we got going, she curled into the passenger's seat of my mother's Audi with her knees on the dash and her face behind the coffee mug and a pair of my mother's purple sunglasses she'd pulled out of the glove compartment. For a while she made occasional "uhh" sounds and I thought she was going to be ill, but once we got out of the city she began to perk up.

She even decided to come with me into the tax assessor's office when we got to Wilming. Wilming was a small county seat consisting of an American Legion Hall and a Dairy Queen and not much else. The assessor's office was open Saturday because it was also the post office and the grocery store. After successfully scoring the deed and the last five years of tax records on Les' property I had to grudgingly admit that having the subject's wife with me, the subject's pretty blond wife, had helped expedite matters somewhat.

When we got back in the car Allison poured herself more coffee and said, "Gaah."

"It's just strong," I said. "You're not used to Peet's."

She shuddered. "Is this like Starbucks or something?"

"Peet's is to Starbucks what Plato is to Socrates. You'll appreciate it in time."

Allison stared at me for about half a mile, then decided to turn her attention back to the tax assessor's documents and the coffee.

She flipped through the paperwork on Les' cabin. "Bastard. Two years ago he changed the billing for the tax statements so they wouldn't come to the house. Exactly when we got married."