I’m six two, and I could barely see over the top of the smooth ash-blond head.

Her hair was gathered in a roll very low on the back of her neck and she was wearing a short-sleeved summery dress the color of cinnamon which intensified the fairness of her skin and did her no harm at all in the other departments. Maybe by some bean-pole standards she didn’t save enough ground on the turns, but not by mine. I’d never seen any reason women had to look like boys.

Her face was wide at the cheekbones in a way that was suggestively Scandinavian, and her complexion matched it perfectly. She had the smoothest, clearest skin I’d ever seen. The mouth was a little wide, too, and full-lipped. It wasn’t a classic face at all, but still lovely to look at and perhaps a little sexy. No, that wasn’t it exactly. Just intensely female, like the rest of her. The eyes were large and gray, and very nice. And scared, I thought. It didn’t make sense, but she was afraid of something.

It was hot in the sun, and quite still, and I was a little uncomfortable, aware I was too damned conscious of her and that I’d been doing the same thing I’d been angry at her about. Staring. Maybe we could just stand here the rest of the morning and look at each other like a couple of idiots.

“What can I do for you?” I asked again.

“Perhaps I’d better introduce myself,” she said. “I’m Mrs. Wayne. Shannon Wayne. I wanted to talk to you about a job.”

We walked over in the shadow of the shed by her car and she opened the door and sat down on the end of the seat with a hand on the window frame. She wore no jewelry except the engagement and wedding rings and a thin gold watch that looked fragile and useless enough to cost a young fortune. Her fingers tapped nervously against the metal.

“What kind of job?” I asked.

She glanced at my face, and then away. “Recovering a shotgun that was lost out of a boat.”

“Where?”

“In a lake, about a hundred miles north of here—”

I shook my head. “It would cost you more than it’s worth.”

“But,” she protested, the gray eyes very near to pleading, “you wouldn’t have to take a diving suit and air pump and all that stuff. I thought perhaps you had one of those aqualung outfits.”

“We do,” I said. “In fact, I’ve got one of my own. But it would still be cheaper to buy a new shotgun.”

“No,” she said. “Perhaps I’d better explain. It’s quite an expensive one. A single-barreled trap gun with a lot of engraving and a custom stock. I think it cost around seven hundred dollars.”

I whistled. “How’d a gun like that ever fall in a lake?”

“My husband was going out to the duckblind one morning and accidentally knocked it out of the skiff.”

I looked at her for a moment, not saying anything. There was something odd about it.