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She drew out her unfinished watercolor and waved it at me, half embarrassed. I could see it was a landscape and it had a good feel to it; the washed sky reminded me of a thousand overcast mornings in the bush. "Hadn't you better keep painting?" I suggested. "I thought watercolors had to be finished in a rush."  
    "They should," she said, nodding firmly. "But an artist in a place like this is considered a bit of a freak so I can't work the way I'd like to."  
    I found myself hanging on her words. She was frankly pretty in daylight, wearing a soft blue wool sweater with big open stitches and a pair of designer jeans. She was getting to me.  
    "Consider your painting invisible while I'm around," I said, and she smiled and reached for her paints.
    "Okay, you're on, as long as you don't give advice."
    "Not a chance. I'm looking for some from you." That made her glance up as she dipped her brush in the water jar. "About what?"
    "Well, I'm here to look into the death of Jim Prudhomme, the guy who was killed by the bear last month," I said carefully. It didn't clash with the insurance story I'd given her and I needed her help. She looked at me and nodded slowly, then looked down and went on painting while I continued. "I've been talking to some of the people involved—the Indian who found him and the police chief. Now I was going to ask you a favor."  
    "I'll help if I can," she said, mixing up green and black in her palette.
    "Well, I understood that Prudhomme left most of his gear at the motel here when he went into the bush."
    She worked at trees, not looking up, not missing a stroke as she answered. "Yes, most of our guests do, geologists and pilots and so on. But his widow collected everything when she came up for the inquest."  
    "Yes, I imagined she would have. But I wondered if you saw the pile of stuff at any time." I waited and she thought for a moment, working more slowly.  
    At last she looked up again, almost frowning with concentration. "I'm trying to remember. Seems to me he had two suitcases—well, one case and one suit bag, you know, the folding type. And there were a couple of wrapped parcels."  
    "That was one of the things I was interested in. He's supposed to have bought a stuffed animal from Keepsakes in town. I wondered if it was among his belongings."  
    I waited and she slowly dipped her brush again and went back to creating trees. "If he had, it would have been bulky, wrapped up for protection, maybe in a box," she said. Another tree shook itself out of the brush and she dipped more paint and looked up. "There wasn't a box. One of the two parcels was fairly heavy, tied with thick cord. The other was small, maybe a pair of boots or something like that."  
    "Could the big one have been anything from a taxidermy shop?"
    Now she set the brush down and looked at me. "As a matter of fact, it could. One corner of the paper was torn—I think somebody else's gear was stacked alongside it in the storeroom and one of the geology instrument cases had caught the paper and opened up a tear. There was fur inside, black fur. Looked like a bearskin."  
    "I see." I didn't question how she knew it was a bearskin. Women in the north may not know fur coats very well, but they know pelts. Their fathers and husbands all shoot and they see the animals themselves sometimes, in the bush. She went on painting while I stood and wondered why Sallinon had lied about the item he'd sold Prudhomme. Just being ornery, I supposed.  
    But I've been a policeman for a long time. If Prudhomme had bought a bearskin, no matter whether it came from Sallinon or not, the person who had killed him could have cut the head and claws off it and used them on him. Which meant this other person knew him well enough to be at the motel with him, maybe only socially, for a beer, but maybe they'd been seen together.  
    "Tell me, can you remember if Prudhomme was alone when he left to go on that last trip?"
    "Yes."