"What'd he say?" They were in her office, and she was looking more cheerful than she had in weeks.

"He said, 'I don't care about how good they detected-what I liked was the way they handled it.' "

"So that's good," Lucas said.

"That's very good."

TIDYING UP THE loose ends on the case hadn't tidied up Lucas's head. A vague melancholia settled over him, a mood that Weather picked up. She began arranging events and talked to Marcy behind his back; Marcy began arranging events, and suggested that Lucas and Weather and she and Kidd go out to dinner. Lucas said "Sometime," and kept wandering around town.

He could have stopped the whole train, he thought. He'd never made up his mind; he'd never gotten clear on what he should do. He could have made a decision, but he hadn't-a private failing, and a serious one, he thought.

THAT NIGHT, AFTER the sailboat, after a salad of roasted chicken breasts and walnuts and lettuce, after a bowl of wild rice soup, after a beer or two, he was puttering in his study, the whole case still tingling at the back of his brain. After a while, he sighed and walked down to the bathroom. The door was shut and locked.

"Weather?"

"Yes. Just a minute."

"That's okay, I can run down-"

"No, no, just a minute." He could hear her moving around, and tried the door. Locked.

"What are you doing?"

"Uh…"

"Okay, I'll run down to the-"

"No, no… I'm, uh, I'm just, uh, peeing on a stick."

"What?"

"Peeing on a stick."

"Weather? What…?"

"I'm peeing on a stick. Okay?"