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along, see if she remembered anything else Marjory had said about the man. We planned to meet at EATS at five-thirty and get out to the campground by seven, when the meeting would begin.
    That gave me some of the morning to take a walk and work on the manuscript for the agent and then time for a trip to Traverse City to start talking columns with Bill.
    I poked under the dying leaves with a stick, looking for wild leeks. They were almost too strong to use at this time of year, but I could throw one into a stew.
    Sorrow bounced back and forth through the trees, dancing circles around me, then taking off, black ears flying, pink tongue lolling.
    I started back toward Willow Lake. I knew Dolly would have a list of people to talk to when we got together, along with questions. I was going to come up with my own—if I felt like thinking about it. Dolly acted as if she knew everything about investigating a murder now that she was taking crime scene classes online. I was already tired of her preaching forensics and procedure to me. I’d been a journalist in Ann Arbor for eight years. I’d worked on murder cases before. Even one serial murderer. I always felt Dolly’s perspective—being from a small town, rarely going south of Saginaw—might be limited. I wanted to think things over, when I got the time. See if I could connect dots Dolly would never think to bring together and find out what happened to Marjory Otis, and why.

Later, happily wrapped in a lucky afghan out in my studio behind the house, I poked at the manuscript for a few hours, taking a “the” out here and putting a “the” in there. Nothing moved very far. I couldn’t tell if the novel was so bad, or so good, that it didn’t need changes. What I really needed was luck, and distance, maybe a new perspective … maybe a new book.
    Over the last four years, since moving up north and trying to make it on my own, I’d learned to say prayers to whoever was listening when things didn’t go my way. I said them to the four corners of the earth. I said them toward the heavens and to my dead parents. I burned incense and listened to my lucky music: which could be k.d. lang, or Ani DiFranco. Today it was lavender incense and k.d. lang’s Watershed album, the album that got me through last winter. Even in early fall, her music translates into hope. “I Dream of Spring …” As if dreaming ever really changed anything.
    Sorrow collapsed to the floor with one of those huge groans dogs can give. I was meditating when the phone rang. Usually I don’t answer at the studio, but what I was doing wasn’t writing. Or much of anything else.
    “I got a little more from Brent.” It was Dolly. “No defensive wounds beyond a couple of broken nails. Maybe surprised from behind, strangled right there. No drag marks. Anyway, Brent said there was nothing on the back of her skirt. Everything was pretty clean for somebody laid out on the ground. Techs took tire prints. Found a set that probably wasn’t from your Jeep. More likely her car since she drove herself up from Toledo. Car has to be somewhere. But how the heck did she get out there? And not liking the place, the question is ‘Why?’”
    I grabbed a pen and wrote down what she was telling me. “Time of death?”
    “Early Monday, maybe late Sunday. Nothing on stomach contents yet but the post mortem lividity, temperature, and rigor point to some time between midnight and seven a.m.” Dolly sounded tired.
    “Where do we start?” I asked.
    “Me and Lucky spent all morning going over things. Seems like the preacher’s got to be first—since she came here with some beef about him. Get an alibi and then talk to people in his group. Got to get a hold of this brother of hers, Arnold Otis, the famous one who’s running for senator. Whether he likes it or not, that’s his sister who was killed out there.” She stopped as if reading down a list. “Then the women in her shamanic group—Crystalline thinks they might