It was only after ten minutes of focusing on almond chicken and moo goo guy pan that Stacy mentioned the workroom again.

"Actually, I have a show coming up," she said suddenly, with her mouth full.

It took Alison, who had been sucking down egg rolls as if there was no tomorrow, a moment to connect. "Where?

"At the art museum. They're doing a series on Colorado artists that they're calling 'Maverick Quilters."' Then, without any preamble at all, just as Alison was about to reply with congratulations, she burst out, "Oh, Alison, I knew that woman."

"At the bar?" It was something that had not occurred to Alison, and her first response, somewhat to her own annoyance, was that of a cop. "What was her name? How did you know her when n.o.body else in the whole bar had even seen her? I was beginning to wonder if she was in the right place."

"Melanie. Melanie Donahue." Stacy took a long draw on the tea she had made in the microwave. "I'm not surprised that n.o.body else knew her. She lived out in the suburbs-she had for years. She had this lover who was totally closeted. I guess the girlfriend had a little girl and she-the girlfriend-decided that the lesbian lifestyle might put a crimp in the kid's chances to go to the prom or something. Anyway, they did the real straight scene-had barbecues with their neighbors for socialization and pretended they were just housemates. I guess she just kicked the traces over...tonight?" She checked her watch. "Last night. G.o.d, what a thing to happen the first time you go out." The food, the drink, the shower she had taken while waiting for the delivery, had helped her to regain some composure. Now she was jittering nervously again, that same combination of despondence and hysteria. She ran her hand back through her wet hair, curls already springing up again, and then began opening all the fortune cookies.

"I don't think any of these are for us," she said. "We must have gotten someone else's cookies." Then, without lifting her head she asked, "Do you want to spend the night? I could stand to be held."

Oh, s.h.i.t. Alison hated these ambiguous d.y.k.e invitations. At least when she was dating guys she had been able to be sure of one thing: "Spend the night" had meant "Wanna f.u.c.k?" With d.y.k.es it could mean anything from that to comfort me like a sister, and any misinterpretation was going to end up making you look insensitive at the very best.

"Umm," she said, and then having started out stupidly, rushed to finish in the same vein. "I'm not into leather, Stacy...." She knew this was a bad opening and wanted to take the words back even before Stacy's reaction.

"What?" Stacy threw her hand out and the fortunes scattered across the kitchen floor. "Jesus, did you think that was an invitation for a scene? How insensitive do you f.u.c.king think I am? Could you play after a night like this?"

"Well, no, I mean I don't, I never...." Alison floundered heavily.

"What a minute," Stacy held up her hand. "Let me backtrack here. What do you mean that you're not into leather? Like, you're not in the scene, like you're a novice?"

"Uhh," said Alison stupidly, nodding her head in a circle that covered both yes and no.

"Oh, Jesus." Stacy covered her face with one hand. "I had no f.u.c.king idea. G.o.d save me from novices."

"Did you...?" choked Alison, somewhat horrified by the idea that was presenting itself.

"Of course I did," snapped Stacy. "Why the h.e.l.l do you think I wanted to go out with you? I thought that it was a miracle from heaven-an intelligent leather girl who's interested in quilts! Please, G.o.d, let her be able to cook, too, and I'll never ask for anything else!"

Before Alison could answer there was a knock at the front door. Stacy barely glanced at it, and made no move to answer it. Liz, who apparently had Mich.e.l.le privileges, threw it open. She was carrying two pints of Ben and Jerry's ice cream.

"I saw your light," she said, "and figured stress eating was in order. Oh, good," she said, looking at the table, "you've already started." She handed a pint to each of them and started eating the leftover kung pao chicken with Stacy's fork.

"She's a f.u.c.king novice!" said Stacy to Liz in a voice little below a shriek.

Liz, who was high-grading the almond chicken, stopped and looked at Alison with as much astonishment as if she had suddenly sprouted another head. "Bad call," she finally commented, and then filled her mouth so full that any follow-up was impossible.

"I...." Stacy threw her hands up, shouting, "Look-I'm too freaked out about everything. Everything! I'm going to go have a smoke!" She stormed out of the apartment.

"Wait!" Alison started to protest. G.o.ddammit, there was a d.y.k.e killer out there. It was foolish to be out on the street in a bathrobe after midnight.

"Umm." Liz, her mouth full, shook her head and waved negative with her hand. Taking Alison by the elbow, she led her over to the front window. After a moment the front porch light went on. They could not see Stacy herself because of the porch roof, but they could see her shadow cast out onto the street. The shadow sat on the railing and began to smoke rapidly.

"I wish she'd stop smoking," said Liz between mouthfuls.

"I wish she'd stop screaming," said Alison, who was having the very non-butch urge to cry.

"Ahh," Liz waved her hand to dismiss it, "she's always like that when she's stressed. G.o.dd.a.m.n queen of the scene. Give her a cigarette or food and she'll pull it together."

"Why the h.e.l.l is she so upset? Alison burst out.

"Well, I'd say it's because somebody she knew got killed tonight, wouldn't you?" Liz looked at her as if she were an idiot.

"Well, yeah, but...."

"Ahh...." Liz threw up her hand again. "That might not be what she's screaming about, but it's what she's freaked about. Take my word. She's dated too many vanilla girls to lose it over that." She gave Alison an apologetic half smile. Alison realized that she had come close to being insulted.

"Well, what...," she began indignantly.

"Look," interrupted Liz, "what if you met this woman at a gay place? A bar? Just your type. Hotter than a two-dollar pistol. And you asked her out and she said yes and it was great and you were thinking baby-oh-baby and at the last minute she said, 'Oh, by the way, I'm not a d.y.k.e, I just like to hang out there.'"

"I didn't tell her I was into the scene," Alison said in an offended voice. "I didn't even realize she was until tonight when Trudy started talking."

Liz started to give her an incredulous, 'Are-you-an-idiot-or-what?' look but then, as if she realized she were being a little too harsh, fairly successfully changed it into something that could have been read either as plain surprise or mild heartburn. "Well, we've seen you at the Blue Ryder every Thursday for the past six months."

"That's my job," Alison protested. "What do you think I do, rent a uniform and another cop once a week for a prop so I can do a walk-through scene?"

"No, but not every cop who walks through has this look." Liz rolled her eyes from side to side like a kid in a candy shop, not moving her head, as if that would ruin what little control she had.

Alison flushed to the roots of her hair. "I'm getting sungla.s.ses," she mumbled.

"And," continued Liz, as if she'd asked, "novices-well, what do you do if someone who is just coming out wants to go out with you?"

"Begone, evil one." Alison held up crossed fingers and hissed. "Look me up in two years."

"Because...?"

"They fall in love with you if they sleep- with you and have second thoughts about doing the right thing and go back to their boyfriends and husbands. Or at least they used to. I haven't actually been around someone who was just coming out in years."

"So." Liz threw her hands up, indicating that was that. Alison scowled out the window, wondering if it would be tactful to leave by the back way while Stacy was still outside. She was willing to bet that the overnight invitation had been withdrawn.

Something suddenly occurred to her. Liz had said...Trudy had mentioned...did that mean that Liz was also into the leather scene? She shot an inquiring look sideways. Unfortunately, Liz not only caught it but fully interpreted it. She bared her teeth into an evil smile and said, "Heh, heh, heh." Alison gave her a f.u.c.k-you look, hoping that it was as fully readable.

"Where have you been?" Mich.e.l.le demanded.

Alison turned slowly. Stacy-and this was so far the largest strike against her-had not had any coffee-not even instant!-at her house and so Alison was not in the mood to take s.h.i.t. "Out," she answered, holding her copy of the Rocky Mountain News in front of her face to reinforce the hostility in her voice.

It did not work. Mich.e.l.le rode right over the top of her bad mood. Mich.e.l.le's theory of moods and getting your way was always to be more so. She could be more crabby, more stressed, more angry and more hyper than anyone else when occasion demanded. She had out-crabbed Alison so often that it was hardly a challenge anymore.

"Yeah, well, do you know who that woman you were f.u.c.king is?"

Alison read a number of things in her voice, including the hope that she didn't know and could still be saved from evil. The hope was overlaid with a fear that she recognized and that drastic measures, like ostracism, would have to be taken. Well, just let Mich.e.l.le try to shun her into changing her ways. She'd bring up that year when Mich.e.l.le had decided she was bis.e.xual and had brought home sensitive New Age guys from her stained-gla.s.s cla.s.ses. She didn't even bother to ask how Mich.e.l.le knew she had been out with Stacy. Mich.e.l.le had friends everywhere who reported back to her with more reliability than the CIA.

"Yes, I do know what she is and what she does and what she wears while she does it. Incidentally-we didn't f.u.c.k, I fell asleep on her couch while she obsessed over ice cream."

"Yeah, well." This was dismissed in a sneer as if it were even more kinky than s.e.x surely would have been. "So you feel okay about going out with a woman who is a batterer? Are you going to start wearing a leather jacket and letting her slap you around?"

"Maybe, Mich.e.l.le." Privately Alison thought that at this moment smacking her friend would be much more satisfying. When Mich.e.l.le was in this berserker state she had to keep reminding herself why they were friends.

"And did I mention that she had a booth two doors down from us at Michigan last year? That was delightful, let me tell you. All these women- some of them trying to come out-feeling like they're in a safe place and here she is wearing a leather skirt at the festival, doing her little thing and making play dates on the side, and this f.u.c.king stream of leather women in and out of there like it's a bar on the Castro."

"She sure does nice work," Alison said.

Mich.e.l.le stopped right in the middle of her tirade.

"What?"

"She does beautiful work. She's got such a sense of color."

Mich.e.l.le regarded her blankly for a moment.

"You are nuts," she finally said. "You are f.u.c.king nuts. You have been alone too long, you have been a cop too long-I don't know what it is, but you are f.u.c.king nuts. There is some crazy out there who is murdering lesbians, you are dating a woman who beats up on other women-and not just as a hobby either, for money!-and you are standing here talking about her 'work' like you are some little old lady at a quilt show. You've flipped out. I can't even talk to you." She stormed out the front door, slamming the screen behind her. It was what Alison had hoped for, but still she felt as if she had been slapped in the face. Even adding a large grain of salt to account for Mich.e.l.le's love of the dramatic, it had still been pretty harsh. She gulped the last of her coffee and poured herself another cup.

A knock at the back door, and Janka stuck her head in.

"Was all that screaming and slamming my honey?" She was wearing one of her hippie-weaver-at-the-craft-fair outfits instead of her usual sweatpants and t-shirt, which meant that they must be really backed up with their laundry.

"Yes," answered Alison shortly. "Are you planning on not speaking to me if I go out with Stacy, too?"

Janka picked up KP and spent some moments arranging him on her chest like a scarf. "She's upset, Alison," she finally answered.

"She's upset?! I'm f.u.c.king upset! How do you think it feels to have your best friend do a blackmail scene on you?"

"I don't think she sees it that way. But, anyway, she's freaking out because she knew that woman."

"Stacy-yeah, she told me."

"No, the woman who was killed last night."

"Oh." It brought her up short and jarred her out of her own rage.

"Not well. Or at least, not for a long time. They worked on the newspaper together." The women's newspaper had folded years before, but linear time meant nothing to Mich.e.l.le where d.y.k.e-bonding was concerned. A wedding was a weak ceremony compared to protesting together.

"Stacy knew her too," Alison said absently.

"Oh, s.h.i.t." Janka started so violently that KP leapt down in disgust. "She's not thinking about going to the funeral, is she?"

"I don't think so."

"Hmm." Janka obviously had not made up her mind on the s/m-d.y.k.es-are-evil issue, but wasn't about to say anything that could be construed as going against Mich.e.l.le.

"Why?"

"Ch.e.l.le is thinking about going. That shows you how upset she is."-Mich.e.l.le didn't do funerals-she planted trees or did vigils or made squares for the AIDS quilt. Alison knew that she would never go through with the plan, but it gave her an idea of her own.

"How'd she know about the funeral?" she asked. "Is that information in the paper?"

Four.

Armed with what newspaper coverage she could find, as well as a begged, borrowed and not quite stolen police report from Robert, Alison set out for her first inquiry into the death of Melanie Donahue.

"Coffee, please," was the first thing that the drawn, blond woman said after Alison approached her. The woman had regained her composure a little since leaving the funeral home for the diner with Alison tailing her. No longer crying, her hands shook as she tapped out a cigarette. She was just at the right level of pliability-numb, with questions of her own.

Alison waited for her to take two swallows of coffee. "Krista," she said gently, "I'd like to ask you some questions about Melanie."

Krista jerked her head the slightest bit, but her voice was steady. "Who did you say you were?"

Here was where things might get sticky. "I'm a police officer "

"I've had the police," Krista interrupted, in a voice that would have been petulant, had it not been so overladen with grief. "I've had the police and had the police, and they haven't done anything."

"I know you have." She decided to come right out with it in hopes of forming an alliance. "But I thought I might pick up something they hadn't. Because I'm a lesbian, and Melanie was a lesbian..."

"She wasn't a lesbian." Krista put out her cigarette almost angrily.

Oh. Had she missed something? Mich.e.l.le never gave the time of day to straight women.

"She wasn't a lesbian," repeated Krista, and then paused. "She just loved me. Why do people have to put labels on that?"

Uh oh. Stacy had told her they were closeted, but she hadn't said that Krista couldn't say the L-word. How to handle this and still get the scoop?

The waitress, wanting to know if there was anything else, gave Alison a brief reprieve. As Krista wearily scanned the menu Alison considered what she knew. Despite the current set up, Melanie must have been out and about once upon a time if she had worked on Big Mama Rag, and bonded with Mich.e.l.le. Mich.e.l.le considered closeted d.y.k.es a waste of time.

"Why was Melanie at the Blue Ryder?" she asked carefully.

"She wasn't at the bar! She was killed in her car and dumped there. Her car was then parked two blocks away, no fingerprints anywhere, just blood."

Alison said nothing. There was nothing else by the Blue Ryder but warehouses. For a moment she was disgusted. Like Mich.e.l.le, she had no patience with these women who couldn't even say who they were. Krista was probably the kind of woman who 'couldn't understand' why anyone would want to talk about their 's.e.xual preference.'

Then she looked up and saw that tears had reformed in Krista's eyes. For Christ's sake, Alison, the woman had just lost her lover, whatever she chose to call her. Show some compa.s.sion.

She reached out and recurled Krista's fingers around her coffee cup. Obediently Krista took another sip, and Alison thought, with a twinge of disgust, "This is the kind of thing that I am good at. Squeezing out information on cases that aren't even my own." But it did not occur to her to stop.

"Where was Melanie going, then?" she asked, catching herself only at the last moment to keep from saying, 'supposed to be going.' The road to the Blue Ryder was a dead end. She hoped that Krista would not protest again that she had already been over this with the police, for she no longer had any grounds on which to plead for support or solidarity. If Krista didn't call Melanie a d.y.k.e, then she sure as h.e.l.l didn't call herself a d.y.k.e, and that made Alison no more than a busybody.

But Krista answered eagerly. "To her therapist's. She usually had a Wednesday appointment, but she'd made a special one. She'd been real stressed out. She must have been on her way home."

For a moment Alison could not understand her eagerness. Then it came to her. It had been clear from the report that Jorgenson did not believe that Melanie's destination was any place but the bar. Krista was anxious that her version be proven. But why was the name of the therapist not in the report Robert had given her?