All Night Long

changed.
    She walked slowly into the room, unnerved. True, the downstairs had not been redecorated but at least

    it had always been furnished in an adult manner. Even seventeen years earlier Pamela’s pink-and-white bedroom had struck her as somehow too sweet, too innocent, for the sophisticated and worldly Pamela Webb. Tonight the canopied bed with its gossamer clouds of drapery and pink satin pillows seemed downright weird.
    Another case of time warp, she thought. It was hard to believe that the room had never been redecorated. Surely Pamela had needed it for her guests on those occasions when she brought friends up to the lake.
    Poor Pamela. Had she been so deeply attached to the memories of her girlhood that she could not bea o alter her old bedroom? Somehow that didn’t seem Pamela-like. She had been a risk-taker; always excited about the forbidden. And she loved fashion.
    But Pamela had been a girl who lost her mother at the age of five, Irene reminded herself. Maybe some part of her had tried to cling to the memories of that shattered bond here in this room.
    There was so much that she had never comprehended about Pamela, Irene thought.
    She did not even know why Pamela had selected her to be her best friend that long-ago summer. At the time she had not questioned her good luck. It had been enough to bask in the reflected glow of Pamela’s dangerous, glittery light; enough to pretend that she, too, was a bad girl. But in hindsight, she had often wondered what Pamela had seen in her.
    She crossed the room to the fairy-tale bed, selected one of the pink satin pillows and placed it on the nightstand. She propped the flashlight against the pillow so that the beam struck the light switch on the wall.
    Reaching into one of her pockets, she took out the screwdriver she had brought with her. Very carefully she inserted the tip into one of the screws that anchored the light switch plate to the wall.
    Pamela’s words the night she had revealed her secret hiding place floated through her mind as she worked.
    “It’s such a guy thing, hiding stuff in the wall behind a light switch. No one would
[_think that a girl would do it.” _]
    Certainly not the sort of girl who lived in a pink-and-white princess room like this, Irene mused as she removed the second screw.
    She put the plate and the screws down on the table and went back to work on the two screws that secured the switch itself. A moment later she was able to pull it away from the wall.

    Pulse leaping, she grabbed the flashlight and angled the beam into the outlet box.
    Light gleamed on brass. Her breath caught in her throat when she realized that she was looking at a key.
    She reached into the outlet box and removed the small find. When she held it up to the light to get loser look she was disappointed to see that it looked like an ordinary house key.
    Why would Pamela keep a spare house key tucked away up here in her secret hiding place?
    She dropped the key into a pocket and reached for the light switch plate.
    She was tightening the last screw on the plate when she heard the sound of a door opening downstairs.
    Her blood turned to ice in her veins.
    She was no longer alone in the house.

Fourteen
    The almost noiseless plop of the screwdriver falling onto the thick white carpet at her feet broke the trance.
    Irene finally remembered to breathe.
    In the darkness below, floorboards squeaked. Someone was moving through the house. The intrude as not turning on any lights.
    A burglar, she thought. That was the most logical explanation. Some local vandal had decided to se hat he could steal from a dead woman’s house.
    She heard footsteps in the front hall. Whoever was down there was making no attempt to be quiet. She prayed that meant he was not aware that there was someone else in the house. But if he was looking for cash and valuables, he would no doubt make his way upstairs sooner or later.
    She had to get out before he found her. People who confronted burglars got killed.
    She had sometimes wondered if that was what had happened to her parents.
    She pushed past the panic that was threatening to clog her throat and tried to concentrate. The only way out of the house from this floor was the staircase, the lower section of which ended in full view of the living and dining area. Whoever was downstairs would surely spot her if she tried to leave via that route.
    She realized that the penlight was still blazing. Hastily she switched it off and then worked to