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his ’76 Land Cruiser, made a note to change the oil, and settled behind the wheel as the engine thundered out of a monthlong slumber. He motored into town to check the mail that had been held for him at the Bridger Mountain Cultural Center, mulling over Martha’s advice to get in touch with Max Gallagher. The truth was, buying a tank of gas to drive up the Madison Valley didn’t appeal to him. Still, it was the logical step and he thought about it for the twenty minutes it took to drive into town and climb the stairs to his art studio. Gallagher, standing outside the studio door, saved him the decision.
    â€œBlue Ribbon Watercolors. Private Investigations.” Gallagher read aloud the lettering etched into the frosted glass. “All you need is somebody to scratch in a pistol with smoke curling out the barrel.”
    Stranahan ushered him inside. “You need a bath, Max,” he said.
    â€œI haven’t exactly been sleeping. Or eating. Or washing up.”
    Stranahan waited while Gallagher’s bloodshot eyes crawled around the paintings on the walls. When they stopped and narrowed, Stranahan knew that he’d noticed the watercolor of the Madison River Liars and Fly Tiers Club. It was evening in the painting, the co-owners gearing up on the porch as a swarm of caddis flies mobbed the light over the door. Gallagher was flanked by Robin Hurt Cowdry, who was stringing his fly rod, and by Kenneth Winston, whose long ebony fingers were tying on a fly. Patrick Willoughby, the clubpresident, sat on the bench pulling up his waders, his round glasses giving him the look of a professorial owl. The initials P.S. were carved into the door, as homage to Polly Sorenson, the club’s founder who had died on the bank of one of his beloved Catskill streams a couple years before.
    â€œDon’t tell anybody yet,” Stranahan said. “It’s a gift to the club for voting me an honorary member.”
    â€œMaybe if I had your talent I wouldn’t have to pay my dues, either,” Gallagher said. “I’ve been a little strapped lately.”
    â€œSo the sheriff informed me.”
    Gallagher nodded. “Does she really think I had anything to do with that girl dying in the chimney? I’ve done a lot of things I’m not proud of, but the only person I ever hurt was myself.”
    â€œWould your exes agree to that assessment?”
    â€œWell, those two witches aside.” He grinned, the canine leer Stranahan remembered from the day he’d introduced Martinique to the club members, some two summers ago. Gallagher had bent to kiss her hand, making a
titching
sound, as if he wanted to devour her arm with a side of fava beans. Martinique had told Sean it made her think of the quote by Lana Turner—“A gentleman is simply a patient wolf.”
    Martinique.
That sweet, unaccountably shy woman with a soft spot for cats had become the love of his life, long before he’d ever worked a jigsaw puzzle with Martha Ettinger. No one could have told him that the relationship would falter after Martinique had been accepted into the veterinary medicine program at Oregon State in Corvallis, that she would gradually pull away, his phone calls going straight to message.
    â€œI seem to have caught you at a bad time.”
    Sean swam out of his reverie. “No, I’ve just got jet lag. Why are you here, Max?”
    â€œThere may have been something I didn’t think to tell the sheriff. I’d like to ask your advice.”
    â€œIn a professional capacity, or as a friend?”
    â€œI can’t afford to pay you.”
    Sean reached for the lower right-hand drawer of his desk, brought out the fifth of The Famous Grouse, and poured shots into two cups. He brought out the nose with a few drops of tap water. “It isn’t branch water from your creek,” he said, “but I doubt you’ll object.”
    Gallagher didn’t.
    Stranahan said, “I heard