I knew how little sleep she’d had, because I knew what time she’d gotten in last night: three-fifteen. And I knew that because Mitch had announced her arrival with considerable vigor. As soon as he started barking, Peppy joined in. Morrell and I lay in bed, arguing over who had to get out of bed to deal with them.

“They’re your dogs,” Morrell said.

“She’s your friend.”

“Yeah, but she isn’t barking.”

“Only in the sense of barking mad, and, anyway, she provoked them,” I grumbled, but it was still me who stumbled down the hall to quiet them.

Marcena was in the kitchen, drinking another beer, and letting Mitch play tug-of-war with her gloves. Peppy was on the perimeter, dancing and snarling because she wasn’t included in the game. Marcena apologized for waking the house.

“Stop playing with Mitch so I can get them to lie down and shut up,” I snapped. “What kind of meeting went on this late?” I took the gloves away from Mitch, and forced both dogs to lie down and stay.

“Oh, we were inspecting community sites,” Marcena said, wiggling her eyebrows. “What time do we need to set out? It really takes almost an hour? If I’m not up by six, knock on the door, will you?”

“If I remember.” I shuffled back to bed, where Morrell was already sound asleep again. I rolled over, hard, against him, but he only grunted and put an arm around me without waking up.

I assumed from Marcena’s suggestive grin that site inspections meant she’d been out with Romeo Czernin in his big truck, having sex at the CID landfill golf course, or maybe the high school parking lot. What point was there in acting so cute about it? Because he was married, or because he was a blue-collar guy? It was as though she thought I was a prude whom this kind of teasing would both offend and titillate. Maybe because I’d told her the kids were talking about their affair, or whatever it should be called.

“Let it go,” I whispered to myself in the dark. “Relax and let it go.” After a while I managed to doze off again.

Morrell was still asleep when I got up at five-thirty to give the dogs a short run. When we got back from our dash to the lake, I opened the door to the spare room so Mitch and Peppy could wake Marcena while I showered. I put on the one business outfit I’d left at Morrell’s. It was a perfectly nice suit in an umber wool, but when Marcena appeared in a red-checked swing jacket I did look like a prude next to her.