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scarf, sort of a swirling pattern on a dark green background?”
    She made a cursory pass through the paper in front of her.
    “Nothing about a scarf,” she said, and went back to her phone call.
    I took a piece of paper from my purse, wrote my name and address on it, and shoved it across the desk towards her.
    “Call me, please, if it turns up.”
    “Right,” she said, and she waved me off.
    I left through the side door. The snow had stopped, but it had been a substantial fall. Across Lorne Street, BlessedSacrament, fresh with snow, glowed in the moonlight. The parking lot had pretty much cleared out. Only a few cars were left. The old Buick was still there, and as I walked towards my car, I thought of Howard’s prolonged virginity and smiled. I stopped smiling when I saw the body.
    She was lying on her back, close to the right rear wheel of the Buick. I thought at first that someone had run her down. Then I saw the scarf. Bright as a parrot. I had always loved the way the material draped itself in a swirl of colours over the shoulder of my coat. But tonight the scarf wasn’t tied right. It had been pulled so tight around Maureen Gault’s neck that her head angled oddly and her eyes bulged from her head.
    I felt my knees go weak. Then I took a deep breath and stumbled back through the snow towards the hotel. When I saw the cruiser turning down Lorne Street, I shouted for it to stop. The officer who jumped out of the car seemed too young to be out this late, but he knew his job. He followed me across the parking lot, but when he saw the body, he grabbed me.
    “Don’t go any further,” he said. “Leave the area alone till the crime scene people get here. I’ll call for backups.” But he didn’t start for his car immediately. Instead, he took a step towards the body, and looked down.
    “Do you know her?” he asked.
    “Her name was Maureen Gault,” I said. “Little Mo,” I added idiotically. The security lights glinted yellow in Maureen Gault’s unseeing eyes. The crimson mouth drawn over her own thin lips seemed like a wound in her milky skin.
    “Do you know of anybody who’d want her dead?” he asked.
    I stared down at Little Mo’s inert body and shivered. My voice seemed to come from somewhere far away. “Me,” I said. “I wanted her dead.”

CHAPTER
    5
    Half an hour later, I was sitting in police headquarters on Osler Street studying the medicine wheel on the wall behind the desk of Inspector Alex Kequahtooway. A Cree elder had told me once that the medicine wheel is a mirror that helps a person see what cannot be seen with the eyes. “Travel the four directions of the circle,” she said. “Seek understanding in the four great ways.”
    I stared hard at the markings on the medicine wheel. At that moment, I would have given a lot to see what could not be seen with the eyes, but all I saw was cowhide and beadwork. I knew the fault was with me. A seeker must be calm and receptive. I was scared to death.
    Inspector Kequahtooway was from Standing Buffalo Reserve, about a hundred kilometres east of the city. I knew this because I knew his brother. Perry Kequahtooway had been the RCMP officer in charge of investigating a tragedy which had threatened my family. During the investigation, I had counted on Perry’s calm determination to discover the truth; afterwards, I had come to know his kindness, and we had become friends. But that night, in police headquarters, itdidn’t take Alex Kequahtooway long to let me know that my relationship with his brother didn’t cut any ice with him. When he led me through the litany of what I had done and whom I had been with that evening, his face was impassive.
    As I talked, he made notes in a scribbler that looked like the kind my kids used in grade school. When I’d finished, he read his notes over unhurriedly. I stared at the medicine wheel, and tried to remember the four great ways to understanding: wisdom, illumination, innocence, and something