All Night Long

beneath a workbench. He did not encourage familiarit r conversation. It was understood that if you wanted to employ him, you made your needs known in polite terms using short sentences and then you left him alone until it was time to pay for the work. Tucker did not accept checks or credit cards.
    As far as Luke could tell, Mills had no formal relationship of any kind with a bank or the IRS . He dealt only in cash or goods-in-trade.
    Luke kept moving until he reached the office. Phil Carpenter was at his desk, paging methodically through a massive parts catalog. His shaved head blazed as bright as the sun in the glow of the fluorescent lamps.
    Phil was built like a brick, but he moved with surprising speed and agility for a man with one prosthetic limb. Luke knew that beneath the long sleeve of Phil’s pristine garage uniform there was a globe-and-anchor emblem tattooed on one arm. The missing left leg was the legacy of a land mine explosion. Another war, not my own, Luke thought. But as Connie Watson had observed so insightfully earlier in the day, some things never change.
    “Danner.” Phil closed the catalog and leaned back in his chair, looking both pleased and curious. He motioned to a chair. “Have a seat. Gotta say, I’m surprised to see you. From what I’ve heard, you’ve been right busy lately.”
    “Things have definitely not been dull.” Luke sat down. “How goes the garage business?”
    “Not bad. How about the lodging business?”
    “Like I told Irene this morning, be a lot more enjoyable if I didn’t have to actually deal with the customers.”
    Phil squinted in a thoughtful manner. “You ever get the sense that maybe you weren’t cut out for areer in the hospitality field?”
    “Lately people have been asking me that a lot.”
    “In that case, I won’t mention it again.” Phil picked up a glass pot full of coffee and poured some of the contents into an unchipped, unscratched white mug. He put the mug down on a small napkin in fron f Luke. “Can I assume this is a special occasion?”
    “I need some information. Figured this was probably the best place in town to find it.”

    “It is, indeed.” Phil leaned back and laced his fingers behind his head. “Carpenter’s Garage is what you might call a regular nexus of the universe.” He raised his brows.
    “This information you’re after, would it have anything to do with your new lady friend?”
    Luke considered that briefly. “Is that what folks are calling Irene? My new lady friend?”
    “The polite ones are starting to refer to her that way, yeah. And the fact that you have not had an ther lady friends during the five months you have been living here in Dunsley has only made Iren ll the more interesting.”
    “Is that so?”
    “Speculation had begun to circulate that you were, perhaps, not interested in lady friends.”
    “Huh.” Luke tasted the coffee. It was good, just as it always was at Carpenter’s Garage.
    “Such idle speculation has, however, given way to more in-depth discussion of the unusual nature o he dates that you and Irene Stenson appear to enjoy.”
    “Unusual?”
    “Believe it or not, in this town it’s downright rare for two people to spend their evenings finding dead bodies or nearly getting incinerated in house fires. Around here, couples that do not enjoy the bonds of matrimony generally go for a more traditional style of romance. Sex in the backseat of a car, for example.”
    “Right. Thanks for the tip. I’ll have to see what I can do to make things look a bit more normal.”
    Phil shrugged. “Sometimes normal is hard for guys like us.”
    “There is that.” Luke put the mug down on the little paper napkin so that it wouldn’t leave a damp rin n the polished desk. “In the meantime, you can let your loyal patrons know that I will take serious offense if I hear that anyone is referring to Irene in any way that might be deemed impolite.”

    Phil inclined his head in a sage nod. “Understood.” He drank some coffee and lowered his mug. “S hat kind of information are you looking for?”
    “Irene knew Pamela Webb when they were teens.”
    “They were close for one summer, as I recall, but that was about it,” Phil said. “That was the same summer that Irene’s parents died.”
    “Irene and Pamela didn’t see or speak to each other after that summer. Yet for some reason Pamela e-mailed Irene a few days ago, asking her to meet her here in Dunsley.
    The implication was that she