All Night Long

were grilling Maxine.”
    “I’m not sure what you mean by ‘grilling.’”
    He smiled humorlessly. “I know a deliberate line of questioning when I hear it.

    You’re trying to do ittle investigating on your own, aren’t you?”
    She slanted him a quick, cautious glance. “Maybe.”
    “Maxine filled me in on your connection with Pamela Webb. I realize that finding your old friend lik hat last night was bad. But that doesn’t mean there’s anything more to her death than the obvious.”
    She faced straight ahead, watching the narrow strip of pavement that wound toward town.
    “What I decide to do is my business,” she said quietly.
    “Look, I admit I’ve only been in this town for a few months, but from what I’ve heard, Sam McPherson is an honest cop. There’s no reason to believe he wouldn’t conduct a legitimate investigation if he found anything to warrant one.”
    “There won’t be an investigation. Not unless Senator Webb wants it, and I can pretty much guarantee that’s not going to happen. Just the opposite, more likely.”
    “Because he’s getting ready to announce a run for the presidency?”
    “Exactly. The last thing he’ll allow is an investigation into his daughter’s death.”
    He tightened his grip on the wheel. “Judging from some of the local gossip I’ve heard here in Dunsley,
    I guess it could get kind of messy.”
    “For years the Webb family has been able to keep a very tight lid on Pamela’s history of drug abuse and her, shall we say, youthful indiscretions. But any serious investigation is bound to dredge up a lot of old stuff that I’m sure Ryland Webb’s handlers would just as soon not hit the media fan. It could damage his image as a devoted father.”
    “He won’t be able to escape the media altogether, no matter what he does,” Luke pointed out. “A senator’s daughter dying of a drug overdose is going to draw some attention from the press.”
    “Trust me, Webb and his people will be able to control that story. But if it gets out that there’s even a remote possibility that Pamela was murdered, it will cause a firestorm.”
    He exhaled slowly. “Damn. I was afraid that was where you were going with this.”

    She did not respond, but when he glanced at her he saw that the hand resting on her thigh was curle nto a tight little fist.
    “Do you really believe that’s what happened?” he asked, gentling his tone.
    “I don’t know. But I intend to find out.”
    “Have you got any hard evidence to support the idea that someone killed Pamela Webb?”
    “None whatsoever,” she admitted. “But I’ll tell you this much. If I’m right about how Pamela died, then it’s very possible that her death is linked to the deaths of my parents seventeen years ago.”
    “No offense, but you’re starting to sound like a conspiracy theorist.”
    “I know.”
    “It probably doesn’t mean much coming from a stranger,” he said quietly, “but for what it’s worth, I’m very sorry for what you went through the night you found your parents. Must have been a god-awful nightmare.”
    She gave him a curious, half-shuttered look, as though he had surprised her with the simple, utterly inadequate condolences.
    “Yes, it was.” She hesitated. “Thank you.”
    He knew better than most that sometimes there was nothing else to say. He concentrated on his driving.
    Irene propped one elbow on the side of the door and braced her chin against her hand. “It’s true that I don’t have any solid evidence to indicate that Pamela might have been murdered. But I do have something.”
    “What’s that?” he asked, deeply wary.
    “The summer that Pamela and I spent together as friends, we invented a code phrase that we used to let each other know when something was really important and that it had to be kept a total secret from everyone else.”
    “So?”
    “Pamela used that code in the e-mail note she sent to me asking me to meet her here in Dunsley.”
    He tightened his hands on the wheel. “No offense, but a teenage code is not a lot to go on.”
    “It’s enough for me,” she said.

Six
    The center of town was busier than Luke had ever seen it since he had arrived in Dunsley. The parking lot in front of the post office was jammed with trucks, vans and SUVs. He glanced through the windows of the Ventana View Cafe and saw that every booth was filled.
    A long, gleaming black limo occupied three spaces in the parking lot in front of the municipal building that