The drive here had taken fifteen minutes but it had been a long ride just the same: the guy with the short black hair and mustache and black-and-white striped tie did not introduce himself and did not speak for the ride’s duration; he did push a tape into the player in the dash of the company car: Willie Nelson. Crane had hoped people in the East didn’t listen to Willie Nelson; no such luck. He felt a nervousness in his stomach, like opening-night butterflies. But he wasn’t scared. He knew that if Mary Beth had been murdered, Patrick Boone was very likely, in some way, shape or form, involved. But he didn’t fear for his life, not sitting in a Chrysler with a Willie Nelson fan in a tie; not pulling up in front of a chemical plant that in the daylight looked anything but ominous. Anxious was what he felt. He wondered why Boone’s ex-husband had called him out here. Was the man really onto what he and Boone had been doing? Would he toss Boone’s empty Nikon in Crane’s lap? Or maybe one of the people he’d been asking questions of called up Patrick Boone and informed him somebody named Crane was nosing around; Mrs.
