Meg pointed to a tattered rug hanging on the wall in the window. "See that? Price tag looks like it says sixty. Wrong, that's six hundred. They'll sell it for that too."

"What's that supposed to be on there, a dog?"

Meg looked at it closely. "Could be. Maybe a cat. I don't know."

"Dinner was nice," he said. "I enjoyed it."

She lifted an eyebrow. "I did too." She'd chosen the pronoun carefully.

"Your house is beautiful. That was the first dinner I'd had in a house, I mean a real house, in over a year."

"No kidding," she said, though she wasn't surprised. "Sam's done nothing but talk about you. You better make good on that promise."

Pellam said, "The practice bombs. I haven't forgotten."

They walked past another real estate office. Pellam looked at some of the listings.

Meg's voice dropped a half octave. "I've got some wonderful properties, Mr Pellam. Owner financing is available…"

They laughed.

Eyes were on them. Cars slowed as they passed. Meg thought, Go to hell. But the defiance was shaky. She felt vulnerable, like the time she found herself at a Florida resort wearing a new bikini that turned out to be more see-through than she was comfortable with. As she did then she now crossed her arms over her chest.

"I guess I better get going," she said.

Pellam touched her arm. She froze, then stepped back casually. He said, "I'd like to ask you a question. In confidence."

Her thoughts raced but she just nodded slowly.

He asked, "There any reason why somebody might not want a movie made in Cleary?"

"We say no to drugs."

"Beg pardon?"

"There's some talk that there might be bad influences if your company came to town."

"Okay, granted. I've heard that before… But let me be a little blunter. There any reason why somebody might kill my friend to keep a movie from being made here?"

Meg turned to him, her mouth open in shock. "You're serious, aren't you?" She turned back to the window. "That was a stupid thing to say. Sure, you're serious."

"This is off the record?"

"Sure," she said.

"Okay, Marty did have some pot. Except, it was in the camper. Along with the rolling papers-"

"What's that?"

"Rolling papers? Cigarette papers."

"Oh. Right."

"So it wasn't in the car with him when it blew up. Somebody planted those drugs on him."

She shook her head, but noncommittally, as if he were a lawyer taking down her reactions.

"Then I looked over the car a little while ago."

"You did?"

"And I found two bullet holes in it."

"Bullet holes?"

"I think so. Near the gas tank. I think that's what happened. Somebody shot the tank, it exploded and then they planted the drugs and left before the fire truck got there."

At first she thought this was impossible-in Cleary. But then she remembered the darker side of the town. The murders of those businessmen, the occasional rapes, two high school boys had driven into a tree at eighty miles an hour-they were both stoned on heroin, of all things.

He continued. "I was hoping I could talk to Keith. Maybe there's a test he could do. On the metal. See if they were bullet holes."

Meg said, "Why don't you talk to Tom? Didn't he investigate…" Then she understood. "I see. You think he's involved in some way, do you? The sheriff?"

"I just want to keep it low-key."

Nodding. She opened her purse and handed him one of Keith's business cards. "Well, sure. Give him a call. He liked you."

Across the square she saw a couple staring at them. The woman leaned toward the man; there was an extended whisper going on. Meg felt the burst of discomfort again.

Life in a small town…

I've lived here for five years, Pellam. But it feels like ten.

"Lunch?" he asked.

She hesitated. Yes, no, yes, no… she said, "Uh, I don't think so."

"Why not?"

Don't Do a Don't. She said, "Because this is Cleary."

He nodded and said, "Got it."

"Good luck, Pellam." She walked to the coffee shop.

"Uhm, one thing… All I'm interested in is lunch. Nothing more or less than that."

Meg lifted her hands and dropped them to her sides with faint slaps. "You maybe have the most honorable intentions in the world…" She paused, and for a millisecond tried to read his face for his reaction to this. She couldn't tell. She added, "but Cleary's still Cleary."

"Suppose that doesn't change."

"Not in your life or mine," she said and walked into the diner. The screen door snapped shut with a wooden slam.

M &T Pharmaceutical was a one-story cinder block square outside of Cleary. Prefab. It was surrounded by a gravel parking lot, in which sat thirty or forty cars-a lot of old ones, Torinos and Novas, as well as newer Japanese imports. And, Pellam noticed, pickup trucks galore-many of them with back windows smeared from the noses of excited hunting dogs.

Near the main entrance were several marked parking places. Mr Torrens was the first. Beside it was an empty space with a sign that had been painted over. It was probably the spot reserved for Keith's late partner. This had been L.A., Pellam thought cynically, that space would have been appropriated five minutes after the funeral.

It was late afternoon, dusky, and just as he eased the Winnebago into two of the visitor's slots, a sodium vapor light on a pole in the middle of the parking lot came on. He walked past the company sign, a swirling design of an M and a T, backlit.

A young receptionist, hair shooting up in a frothy tease, smiled and shoved the Juicy Fruit into the corner of her cheek.

"Hello, Darla," Pellam said, reading the name off her gold-plate necklace.

"Help you, sir?"

"John Pellam to see Keith Torrens."

"Yessir, have a seat."

Pellam sat and thumbed through a pristine copy of Chemical Week. In three minutes, a grinning Keith Torrens walked into the reception area.

"John." They shook hands. "Good to see you."

"Thanks for taking the time."

"Come on, I'll give you the fast tour."

Factories generally depressed Pellam-the regimentation, the way machines dictated where people stood and what they did (reflecting some kind of fear, he decided, that if it all fell apart, he'd end up on an assembly line somewhere twisting sheet metal screws into Whirlpools for the rest of his life). M &T, though, was a surprise. It was bright and clean. Filled with spotless white tile, brilliantly lit. The workers wore white jackets, pants and shoes and transparent bluish hats, like shower caps. It looked like a kitchen. Many of the people were bent over conveyor belts, checking machinery, packing cartons, reading computer screens. The machinery was stainless steel and white.

"Quite an operation."

Keith said, "I'm a small guy. To compete with the Pfizers and Bristol Meyers-Squibbs, you've got to be efficient. That's the key word." Light brown cardboard cartons rose to the ceiling on small elevators and moved along a conveyor overhead until they vanished into the shipping department.

Keith was so excited to show off his company that he talked very quickly; that speed, together with the loud pulse from a dozen different kinds of machines, made it impossible for Pellam to catch more than a few phrases. Still, he smiled and nodded enthusiastically.

They finished the tour and ended up outside Keith's office. "It's small but we're proud of it."

Pellam said, "I'll buy your cough syrup next time I get the flu."

"I'll give you enough samples to last for two years." He vanished into a corridor.

Five minutes later-throat lozenges, cough syrup, nasal spray stuffed in Pellam's jacket pockets-they walked into Keith's office, a large sparse room, done in cheap paneling. Keith seemed like the sort who'd sink most of his money into the factory itself. Pellam shut the door and said softly, "I'd like to ask you a favor."