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folks on your way home.’’
    ‘‘Are you s-s-sure it wasn’t an accident?’’ Robles stuttered.
    Lucas shook his head and Krause said, ‘‘He was murdered.’’
    ‘‘So that’s it,’’ O’Dell said, and the bankers all looked at each other for a moment, and then Bone broke the silence: ‘‘Damn it. That’ll tangle things up.’’
    McDonald, ignoring Krause, asked Lucas, ‘‘Do you think . . . one of us . . . ?’’
    Lucas looked at Krause. ‘‘We have no reason to think so, in particular. Since we know you were here, we’ve got to talk to you,’’ Krause said. ‘‘But we’ve got no suspects.’’
    SLOAN SUGGESTED THAT HE WOULD PREFER TO TALK to the four of them individually, inside, while the others waited on the porch. ‘‘Nice day, anyway,’’ he said, pleasantly. ‘‘And it shouldn’t take long.’’
    ‘‘Let me go first,’’ McDonald grunted, pushing up from his chair. ‘‘I want to get back and start talking to the PR people. We’ll need a press release ASAP. God, what a disaster.’’
    ‘‘Fine,’’ Sloan said. He turned to Lucas: ‘‘You gonna take off?’’
    ‘‘Yeah. The sheriff’ll send you back with a deputy.’’
    ‘‘See you later then,’’ Sloan said. ‘‘Mr. McDonald?’’
    McDonald followed Sloan and Krause into the cabin. When they’d gone, Bone said to Lucas, ‘‘I’d feel better about this if you were running things.’’
    ‘‘Krause is a pretty sharp cookie, I think,’’ Lucas said. ‘‘He’ll take care of it.’’
    ‘‘Still, it’s not something where you want a mistake made,’’ Bone said. ‘‘A murder, I mean—when you’re a suspect, but you’re innocent.’’
    ‘‘I appreciate that,’’ Lucas said. He glanced at the other two, then took a card case from his jacket pocket, extracted four business cards and passed them around. ‘‘If any of you need any information about the course of the investigation, or need any help at all, call me directly, any time, night or day. There’s a home phone listed as well as my office phone. Ms. O’Dell, if you could give one to Mr. McDonald.’’
    ‘‘Very nice of you,’’ O’Dell said, looking at the cards. ‘‘We just want to get this over with.’’
    ‘‘You shot one of the deer, didn’t you?’’ Lucas asked her. The two gutted deer were hanging head down from the cabin’s deer pole in the side yard.
    ‘‘The bigger of the two,’’ she said.
    ‘‘I like mine tender,’’ Bone said dryly. ‘‘Always go for a doe.’’
    ‘‘Good shot,’’ Lucas said to O’Dell. ‘‘Broke his shoulder, wiped out his heart; I bet he didn’t go ten feet from where you shot him.’’
    She didn’t feel any insinuation; he was just being polite. ‘‘Do you hunt?’’ she asked.
    He smiled and nodded: ‘‘Quite a bit.’’
    WHEN LUCAS HAD GONE, O’DELL SAID TO BONE, ‘‘That’s not a bad dog. That’s a pussycat.’’
    Bone took another cheroot out of his jacket pocket, along with a kitchen match, which he scratch-lit on the porch railing; an affectation he acknowledged and enjoyed. ‘‘He’s killed four or five guys, I think, in the line of duty. He built a software company from nothing to a ten-million AT buyout in about six years. In his spare time. And I’ll tell you something else . . .’’
    He took a long drag on the cheroot, and blew a thin stream of smoke out into the warming afternoon air, irritating O’Dell. ‘‘What?’’
    Bone said, ‘‘When we did the transfers on the IPO, I talked to him for ten minutes. While we were doing it, my daughter called on my private line, from school. All upset. She was having a problem with a language credit, and she was afraid they’d hold up her graduation. I mentioned it to him, in passing—just explaining the phone call. This was seven months ago. He remembered me, he remembered Sally’s name, and he remembered the language she was taking.’’
    Bone looked at O’Dell. ‘‘You can take