“It’s not bad,” Wy admitted, measuring white wine, raspberry vinegar, sugar and minced green onions into a saucepan. She turned the gas on low beneath it and rolled the roast over again in a marinade made of olive oil, garlic powder and crushed thyme. The thermometer in the oven read three-fifty, and she put in the roast. “I don’t know when Liam will be back. He didn’t leave a message on the machine, so it’s best if we just cook dinner and act like he’ll be home on time.”

“A cop’s life doesn’t run by the clock,” Jim intoned, raising a glass. “Let’s hear it for the chef.”

Wy raised her glass in turn. “Only for tonight. The rule is whoever gets home first has to cook. I’m later than he is most of the time.”

Bridget had been watching the preparations with an inquisitive eye. “And you said that this was moose meat, then?”

“Yeah, honey, like the big bruiser we saw that morning in my backyard,” Jim said. “Chowing down on my mountain ash.”

Bridget was properly horrified, and Wy and Jim exchanged a grin before they remembered that they were rivals for Liam’s affection. “If he’d beat me home, he would have sliced the roast into steaks, shaken them in his very own special flour mixture and fried them in an inch of peanut oil.”

“Why peanut oil?”

“You can get it hotter at higher temperatures without burning. Liam fries everything. If he could figure out a way to do it, he’d fry peanut butter.”

The two women laughed. Jim, putting on a puzzled expression, said, “And your point is?”

At eight o’clock the phone rang. “Hey, flygirl, you crash any planes lately?”

Wy grinned, a wide grin of pure pleasure. “Hey, Jo. Driven any politicians to suicide lately?”

“Give me time. Labor Day’s coming up.”

“You are one hell of a reporter, I’ll say that for you,” Wy said, one eye on the sauce.

“Smart-ass. I was thinking about coming down.”

“Oh yeah?” Wy said. “Were you thinking you might have a place to stay?”

“Smart-ass,” Jo repeated. She hesitated.

It wasn’t like Jo to hesitate. Wy turned the heat under the sauce down and took the portable phone around the corner and into the hallway. “What’s wrong, Jo?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” Jo said irritably.

Wy frowned at the wall. “You sound funny.”

Jo huffed out an aggravated breath. “There’s someone I want you to meet.”

Wy blinked. “Someone you want me to meet.”

“That’s what I said.”

Now that she was listening for it, Wy could hear the self-consciousness and maybe even a little embarrassment in Jo’s voice. Tongue in cheek, she said, “Would this someone by any chance be, ah”-she paused delicately-“male?”

“Kiss my ass,” Jo said, varying a theme.

Wy grinned at the opposite wall, and waited.

“Yeah, all right, it’s a guy.”

“And you want me to meet him.”

“Yeah. So?”

“Have you taken him home yet, or am I the first test?”

“Fuck you, Chouinard.”

“I love you, too, Dunaway,” Wy purred. “By all means, put this paragon on the first available plane, and get on after him.” Voices came from the living room. How nice. Liam could have his ex-college roomie and main squeeze to stay, and she could have hers. One big, very full, deliriously happy house. “You’ll have to sleep on the couch.”

“That’s where I slept last time,” Jo said.

“Yeah, but this time it’s a full house. Tim’s up the river with Moses, and I’d let you have his room, but there’s somebody already in it.”

“Who? Liam?”

“Nope. One of your favorite people. Jim Wiley.”

There was a long silence. Unlike Wy, Jo had actually met Jim Wiley. They both lived in Anchorage, not that big a town, and they were both involved in the information-gathering business, more or less. Her paper occasionally employed his services to track down subjects in cyberspace, something they both preferred to keep quiet. “Oh.”

“And friend,” added Wy.

“Oh.” Jo rallied. “Where from this time, Sri Lanka? Peru? Pago Pago?”

“Ireland.”

“Figures.” Another pause. “So, you need backup.”

Wy peered around the corner to see Jim murmuring sweet nothings in Bridget’s ear. “It couldn’t hurt.”

“See you tomorrow.” Click.

She walked around the corner and hung up the phone. “It’s going to be a full house.”

“I thought it already was,” Jim said.

“Jo’s coming down for the Labor Day weekend.” She watched with interest as his eyes narrowed and his jaw set. Wy didn’t know what had happened between the two of them because Jo refused absolutely to discuss it. Other than inventing new and better invective to describe Mr. Wiley, his progenitors and his character. Well, this certainly promised to be one of the more interesting three-day weekends of the year. She smiled to herself, and added innocently, “You remember my friend Jo Dunaway, don’t you?”

He reached for his wine and drained it with one gulp. “Sure. Jo Dunaway. Pudgy blonde. Nosy reporter type. I’ve had to work with her a couple of times. Definitely not a fun date.” He put his arms around Bridget and said brightly, “Now where were we before we were so rudely interrupted?”

Wy hid a grin and went back to the sauce. It would be nice for Jim to have another moving target at which to aim over the weekend.

It would be nice for her not to be the only target he was aiming at.

At eight-thirty the roast was ready to come out of the oven, the potatoes were done, the salad was dressed with balsamic vinegar and olive oil. Bridget and Jim set the table while Wy stepped the sauce.“Beurre à montre la sauce,” she said. In answer to Bridget’s quizzical look, she added, “My friend Jo and I backpacked across Europe the year we graduated from college. In Paris we took a cooking class. Madame Claudine was delighted when she heard where we were from, and she made up this sauce for us to use on game. It’s dead easy, it just takes forever. You reduce the initial ingredients to a couple of tablespoons, and then use butter to step the sauce.Beurre à montre la sauce. ” She held out the spoon to Bridget first.

“That is simply heavenly,” Bridget said.

“Okay, you get to eat,” Wy said, and everyone laughed again.

The door opened as they were sitting down and Liam walked in. “Sit, sit,” he said. “Jim, what the hell are you doing here?”

“Come to make your life a living hell,” Jim retorted. “You’ve had it too easy way too long. This is Bridget, a friend who is visiting from Ireland.”

“Bridget.” Liam shook hands with Bridget, and put a hand on Wy’s shoulder. When she looked up he leaned down to kiss her. It flustered her, this casual demonstration of their relationship, and he knew it and grinned. “Yum, moose roast. No, keep eating, I’ll wash up and be with you in five.”

When he reappeared, attired in jeans and a T-shirt, he took the seat across from Wy and filled a plate, ladling on the sauce with a lavish hand. “My favorite. My girl, I think I’ll keep her.”

It was all so domestic that Wy expected the theme forThe Waltons to begin playing at any moment. She sniffed around the edges of the feeling, decided she could live with it, and joined in the general conversation. Jim was explaining how Bridget and he were both ham radio operators and how they’d met on the air a few months before.

A few months? Wy thought. You’re a fast worker, Jim Wiley. As if he could read her mind, Liam winked at her.

Bridget was a computer programmer for a software manufacturer-“We make the buttons work when you click on them”-and she had some amusing stories about people with new systems calling for help. “The first thing you tell them is, Check to see if it’s plugged in. You’d be amazed at how offended they get, and how frequently they don’t have the machine plugged in.”

Liam told them about his week, beginning with the killing of the postmistress in Kagati Lake.

Bridget seemed more interested in how he got to Kagati Lake than in what he found there. “Well, it’s not exactly the garda, now is it.” She caught Wy’s glance. “The garda are our local police,” she explained. “They get around on foot, or in cars.”