All Night Long (18 page)

“How’s it going, Tucker?”

“Goin’ fine, Mr. Danner.”

Tucker Mills’s haggard, burned-out expression made it impossible to judge his age. He could have been anywhere between thirty and sixty. His long, lanky hair was sparse and thin and going gray. He operated somewhere at or near the bottom of the social pecking order in Dunsley, surviving on his odd jobs and judicious recon trips to the town dump. Luke had found him to be invaluable when it came to dealing with the myriad maintenance and gardening issues that afflicted the lodge.

Tucker concentrated on pushing the mop head beneath a workbench. He did not encourage familiarity or 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 a career 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 front of 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 any other lady friends during the five months you have been living here in Dunsley has only made Irene all 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 of the 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 ring on 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. “So what 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 wanted to discuss something important. Even used an old secret code that the two had invented. All in all, that was enough to convince Irene that Pamela’s death might not have been a suicide or an accident.”

“Heard about Irene’s theory,” Phil said. “What’s your take on it?”

“Let’s just say that after watching someone torch the Webb house last night, I find Irene’s theory interesting.”

“Sam McPherson has put it about that the arson job was probably the work of a vandal, most likely from Kirbyville, a known den of thieves and miscreants.”

“Motive?”

Phil unlaced his hands and spread them wide. “That’s the beauty of the crime of arson, isn’t it? Firebugs are nutcases. Everyone knows they don’t need a motive.”

“A useful factoid, if ever there was one.”

Phil looked thoughtful. “You didn’t see the guy?”

Luke shook his head. “Nothing but a shadow. I was too busy getting Irene off that deck before the house went up in flames. All I know is that he got away in a boat.” His mouth twisted. “Course I made the escape easy for him because I figured he had come by car. I was heading for the road at the same time he was going in the opposite direction back to the lake.”

“Don’t blame yourself. Situation like that, you have to make choices.”

“Which is a polite euphemism for screwing up.”

“Screwing up happens.”

Luke extended his legs. “Moving right along, what I came here to ask you is whether you have heard anything about Pamela’s latest boyfriend.”

“Her latest?”

“Evidently, she was not in the habit of coming to Dunsley on her own.”

“True.” Phil paused, frowning a little. “But it appears she broke that habit this time. I didn’t hear anything about her having a gentleman friend with her on this visit.”

“Is it likely that you would have heard?”

“When Pamela was in town, there was always talk. She was a Webb, and the doings of the Webbs have always been of considerable interest to everyone in the community.”

“Any possibility that the reason she didn’t bring a friend with her this time was because she already had one lined up here in town?”

Phil snorted. “From what I knew of Pamela Webb, I think it’s safe to say that there was no man here in Dunsley who would have been able to meet her high standards of elegance and sophistication. Present company excepted, of course.”

“Naturally.”

“But given that neither of us two classy, sophisticated dudes was dating her, I think it’s safe to say that she wasn’t fooling around with anyone local. Trust me, word would
have circulated like wildfire if she was carrying on with someone from around here.”

“It was just a thought.”

“Here’s another one,” Phil said, eyes very steady. “You and Irene are taking on a U.S. senator who, because of his family connections, has this whole town pretty much in his back pocket.”

“That thought has crossed my mind more than once.”

“Having stated the obvious, I would like to point out that not everyone here is in Webb’s pocket,” Phil added quietly. “You need anyone to watch your back, feel free to call.”

Luke stood. “Thanks.”

“
Semper fi,
man.”

“Semper fi.”

A
quarter of a mile outside town Sam McPherson’s cruiser appeared in the SUV’s rearview mirror, closing the distance rapidly. This was probably not one of life’s astonishing little coincidences, Luke thought. But he waited until McPherson went to the trouble of flashing a few lights before he pulled over to the side of the road and stopped.

He kept his attention on the mirror, watching McPherson’s image come toward him. Objects may appear smaller than they really are, he reminded himself, just like it said at the bottom of the mirror. But that didn’t mean they couldn’t cause trouble.

When McPherson reached the driver’s-side door, Luke lowered the window.

“I assume I’m not being stopped for speeding,” he said.

Sam planted one hand on the side of the SUV. “Saw you leave the garage. Thought this might be a good chance to talk to you alone.”

“That would mean without Irene around, right?”

Sam exhaled heavily. “You’re new here, Danner. I think it might be a good idea if I gave you a little background on Irene Stenson.”

“Such as?”

“She was always the quiet type. She wasn’t exactly shy, but she always seemed real serious, more interested in books than in boys. She had real nice manners. Never got into trouble.”

“Not like Pamela, is that what you’re trying to say?”

“Don’t get me wrong. I liked Pamela. Felt sorry for her. After she hit her teens, though, she went wild. She lost her mother when she was only five, and her dad was always too involved in his next campaign to pay any attention to her. Pamela had problems, no doubt about it. I never understood why the Stensons let Irene run around with her that summer. Talk about one hell of a bad influence.”

“You got a point, Sam?”

“I’m getting there. What I’m saying is, Irene wasn’t a tough kid. She was a sweet teen who spent most of her spare time in the library. She was absolutely shattered the night her father went crazy and did what he did. Doubt if anyone can ever really recover completely from something like that. But it must have been even harder on a nice, innocent, sheltered girl like Irene.”

“You’re trying to tell me that she’s probably got issues.”

“Anyone who went through what she did at the age of fifteen would have issues. I was the first responder that night.” Sam looked away toward the water. “When I went into the kitchen she was standing there in the middle of the room, staring at me with those big, terrified eyes. Poor kid had been trying to do CPR on her folks. There wasn’t any point. They both must have died instantly.”

“Where was Elizabeth Stenson shot?”

“In the head and chest.” Sam’s jaw flexed a couple of times. “Like she’d been executed, you know?”

“What about Hugh Stenson?”

“After he did her, he put the gun to his own head.”

“The side of his head?”

“That’s how it looked to me, yeah.”

Luke thought about that. “Stenson didn’t eat his gun?”

Sam turned his head to look at him. “What?”

“Most men who know something about firearms and
who decide to use one to commit suicide put the barrel of the gun into their mouths. Less chance of botching the job and ending up a vegetable that way.”

Sam took his hand off the side of the SUV and straightened. “You want to know the damned truth? I can’t recall all of the details very clearly. I was shaken up bad. I was twenty-three years old. It was the first time I’d seen anything like that. After Bob Thornhill got there and we put Irene into his car, I went out into the trees and puked my guts out.”

“Who wrote up the report for the department’s files?”

A great stillness came over Sam. “Bob Thornhill. He was next in line in the department. Took over the chief’s job for a while.”

“What happened to him?”

“He died about six months later, right after his wife. Heart attack. He went off the road into the lake.”

“And suddenly you were the new chief of police in Dunsley.”

“I was the only one left on the force.”

“I’d like to read the file on the Stenson case.”

Sam’s mouth tightened. “Not possible.”

“You want me to go to the trouble of filing a Freedom of Information Act request?”

Sam exhaled deeply. “It’s not possible to get you a copy because there is no file.”

“What happened to it?”

Sam’s face reddened. “The damned file, along with a lot of others, was accidentally destroyed by a temporary secretary who worked for the department for a while.”

“Bullshit.”

“It’s the truth, damnit. When Thornhill took over the chief’s job, the first thing he did was hire some short-term help to clear out the old files. The woman screwed up, okay? It happens.”

Luke whistled softly. “No wonder Irene’s cooked up a conspiracy theory to explain the killings. She’s had plenty of ammunition to work with, hasn’t she? No file on the
case. The chief who took over after her father dies rather conveniently six months later—”

“Don’t drag Bob Thornhill into this. He was a good man who got nothing but a lifetime of bad luck. He spent a year taking care of his wife while she died of cancer, and then the poor guy gets hit with a heart attack, goes off the road and drowns.”