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  Shaking off his thoughts about Annie, about marriage, and how the two didn’t mix, Dane dialed the number for Hughes Chemicals and Plastics. He wanted to ask Dickie Hughes a few questions.

  Annie absentmindedly tapped her foot on the floor as she and Dane sat in the waiting area of the executive offices at the Hughes plant. Dickie’s secretary, Judy Cantrell, had asked them to wait, that Mr. Hughes would see them directly. That had been twenty minutes ago.

  Dane had awakened Annie at ten and shared with her the information his agency had given him over the phone earlier that day. After she’d showered and dressed, she had gone downstairs and found breakfast waiting for her. Waffles and sausage links. And a good cup of coffee. Dane Carmichael could cook, something no self-respecting good ole boy would dream of doing. Other than barbecuing, which was an acceptable manly chore. Every day she spent with Dane, she saw a new facet to his personality, a new trait she found endearing.

  Fidgeting, tired of waiting, Annie checked her watch. One forty-five! Just as she rose from her chair to protest to Dickie’s secretary, the outer door swung open and her uncle Royce entered.

  He paused, smiled at her, nodded to Dane and then told Judy that he was there to see Dickie.

  Judy glanced past him and smiled nervously at Annie. “Ms. Harden and Mr. Carmichael are waiting to see him, too.”

  Royce turned to them. “What business do y’all have with Dickie?”

  “We just need to ask him a few questions,” Annie said.

  “We’ve come across some information that we think might be linked to Halley Robinson’s murder,” Dane told him.

  “Really?” Royce asked. “What sort of information?”

  “It seems that Halley might have been given some evidence concerning the suicide of a man who was the plant manager here twenty years ago.” Studying Layman’s reaction, Dane noted a tightening in his facial muscles. “Do you remember Martin Edwards? He was supposedly guilty of allowing PCBs from the plant to be illegally dumped into the river.”

  The color drained from Layman’s face. His shoulders slumped. He cast his gaze to the floor.

  “Did you know Martin Edwards, Uncle Royce?” Annie asked.

  “Yes, I knew Martin. He was a fine man. A family man.” Royce walked across the room and gazed out the windows that overlooked the parking lot. “I suppose he just couldn’t live with the disgrace. Such a pity he chose that way to end things. We would have stood by him and seen him through. Richard had told him that the company would support him, pay all the legal costs. I’ve never understood why he…” Royce turned abruptly. Color splotched his cheeks. “What possible connection could Martin’s suicide have to Halley Robinson? What sort of information do you think she had?”

  The door to Dickie Hughes’s office opened. Jason Webber, his arm no longer in a sling, stood guard just inside the door. Dickie emerged, went straight to Royce Layman and shook his hand.

  “I’m afraid I’ll have to postpone our appointment a few minutes,” Dickie said. “It seems Annie and Dane have something urgent they want to discuss with me.”

  Annie had never paid much attention to Dickie Hughes. He was attractive enough, she supposed, if you liked the tall, slender type. However, his delicate features bordered on the feminine. In most instances, Dickie seemed to fade away alongside his handsome, manly, charismatic father.

  “They’ve got some ridiculous notion that Halley Robinson’s death might be somehow connected to Martin Edwards’s suicide,” Royce said. “You remember, don’t you, Dickie, you were staying with us that summer?”

  Jason Webber cleared his throat loudly. All eyes turned to him.

  “I think this discussion is best suited for the privacy of Mr. Hughes’s office,” Webber strongly suggested.

  Five minutes later, with everyone seated in Dickie’s office—everyone except Jason Webber, who stood behind Dickie’s chair, his pose that of a guardian protecting his charge—Annie felt a strange undercurrent in the room. For the first time since Dane had suggested the possibility that her uncle might somehow be involved, she wondered if Dane could be right. No, it wasn’t possible. Uncle Royce wasn’t the kind of man who would be involved in murder.

  Dickie Hughes placed his clasped hands atop his desk, straightened his shoulders and looked directly at Dane. “I have no idea how you made a connection between Martin Edwards’s suicide twenty years ago and Halley Robinson’s murder, but I can assure you that whatever your source of information, it’s incorrect.”

  “You remember Rene Martin, don’t you, Dickie?” Dane asked, and was rewarded with an indiscreet blush on his former brother-in-law’s hollow cheeks. “You and she dated that summer, before her father died.”

  “Yes.” Dickie cleared his throat. “I dated her a few times that summer. But I don’t see—”

  “Rene Edwards was in possession of some information that, according to her, proved her father’s death was not a suicide.”

  “That’s preposterous,” Jason Webber said, his voice deadly calm. “Martin was depressed and despondent. He was so ashamed of what he’d done, how he had betrayed Richard and the company, that he took his own life. The coroner ruled his death a suicide.”

  Suddenly a memory flashed through Dane’s mind. Let me handle this, Richard Hughes had told Dane when Lorna died. The coroner will rule Lorna’s death an accident. There’s no need to tarnish her family’s good name or put any of us through the humiliation. Believe me, son, Lorna would want it this way.

  If Richard Hughes had possessed the power to change a coroner’s findings from suicide to accidental overdose, then was it possible he’d had the power to have other findings altered from murder to suicide? No, Richard wouldn’t have covered up a murder! Unless— Dane knew that nothing was more important to Richard than his family’s good name. What if Richard had been protecting Dickie?

  Annie waited for Dane to speak up, but he remained silent. When she glanced at his face she realized his mind was a million miles away. Something Webber had said must have triggered a memory of some kind. Was he, at long last, questioning his former father-in-law’s integrity?

  “We have reason to believe that Rene Edwards sent Halley Robinson the proof she claimed she had,” Annie explained. “Whoever murdered Martin Edwards found out that Halley had this proof and he hired someone to retrieve the evidence and murder Halley to keep her quiet. But the killer didn’t get to Halley before she called me and told me…” Annie glanced at Dane. She took his nod as a signal to continue. “Halley mailed a package to me and I’m sure that package contains the information Rene gave her.”

  “If you have this information, then why haven’t you turned it over to the police?” Webber asked, his keen dark eyes narrowed on Annie.

  “I haven’t received the package, yet,” Annie admitted. “But that isn’t going to stop us from finding out the truth.”

  “If there is any truth to this wild story of yours, why would Rene send the information to Halley Robinson? Why not a newspaper reporter?” Dickie asked. “And why haven’t you contacted Rene and asked her if she sent Halley any type of evidence that her father’s death wasn’t a suicide? She’ll tell you that someone is fabricating vicious stories. Probably one of Father’s political opponents.”

  “Rene’s mother and Halley’s grandmother were first cousins,” Royce Layman said, as if thinking out loud. “I thought everyone knew. It’s common knowledge. If any such information exists, then Rene would have known she could trust her cousin.”

  “Whatever you think Rene knows, you’re wrong,” Dickie said. “I worked here the summer the PCB dumping scandal hit and Martin took all the blame for it. He held a plant meeting and told the employees that he and he alone was at fault. He couldn’t face a trial and more scandal for his family, so he killed himself. It’s that simple. There can’t be any proof that his death wasn’t a suicide!”

  “Rene Edwards has vanished, so we can’t ask her anything until she’s found,” Dane said. “She put her mothe