"What are you trying to be, for God's sake? Are you trying out for a part? You want to be Barbara Waawaa? Get off me a minute."

"I want us both to get everything clear."

"Hooray for clarity. You have a gold badge in there. Wear it in some kind of visible place on that ragbag blouse. You have the ID card with your picture. On the back of the card are the places you can't get into. The money room. The computer rooms. Upstairs in the Manse. Otherwise you can go clopping around in your army boots anywhere you please, and the hell with you!"

Pennymark smiled.

"Hey, there's a living person inside there, huh? Thanks for all your help, Jenny baby. Anyway, don't sweat it. If anything gets published out of this, we can both be surprised."

"Mr. Efflander's arrangement with Mr. Rosen is that they will publish whatever you wish to write about the Meadows Center."

"How nice! I don't have any angle at all."

"Don't expect one from me."

"I wouldn't even ask. Lindy Rooney Owen is stale news. She has slipped off the end of page eighty-five. They teamed us three times, God only knows why. She never did hard news in her life. She was the kind that, on a paper, you would send her to cover the school board budget meeting. On Out Front they'd send her to find out why a star walked off a set and cost Warner's five mil, or if Rod Muscle in his new underwater special is futzing around with Marilyn Boobs who was all set to get married to Vinnie Invincible."

"So what are you doing on that magazine if you are such a red-hot investigative reporter, dearie?"

She smiled again.

"God only knows. They must have bought me with all that money. Or maybe they wanted to look as if they had something to do with real news. Anyway, we've got no clue why Lindy Prettypants came down here. It was a self-assignment. And it probably had something to do with some kind of tea party or gala on the green. They told me at the office her husband is down here."

"I wouldn't know about that."

"Of course you wouldn't know about that because it doesn't have anything to do with PR. I know where he's staying."

"I'll tell you one thing that has to do with PR, Miss Pennymark. The Meadows family has always been totally cooperative with the media. There was no reason for her to use an assumed name and some kind of cover story down here."

"The reason would be what a pal of mine calls dramatic ignorance. That's what happens when people try to spice their lives with what they see on the tube. Cops try to act like Hill Street. PR ladies try to be Leslie Stahl. What's the generally accepted version around here of what happened to Lindy?

That is, if you're not too pissed at me to tell me."

"I'll answer your questions because that's my job. I don't have to enjoy it. Nobody has any proof, of course, but the thing that seems most likely is that she left Saturday night or early Sunday morning to drive down to the city and catch her flight. Somebody got in the car with her somehow. Maybe she had car trouble. Maybe somebody forced her off the road. So they raped her and robbed her on some little lumber company road, buried her and her suitcases and stuff, then looked at the rental papers in the glove compartment and took the car down and left it in the airport parking lot and walked away."

Pennymark made a face, twisting her mouth.

"Christ, what a dingy way for Miss Priss to die. Lindy was the kind of person, if there was a full-length mirror, she'd undress in the closet."

"Excuse me, dear, but you won't get much cooperation from the Church people here if you take the name of the Lord in vain, and if you use generally foul language."

Carolyn gave her a long expressionless stare, and then said, too sweetly, "Oh, do forgive me!"

"Of course." She looked at her watch.

"And I've got miles to go before I sleep. I left you lots of background material. Just sign for anything you might want to eat or drink. I really think it would be very helpful to you to read the material, no matter what you think of the whole operation here. It will give you an. overview that will save you time."

' "Overview." I like that. That's real classy. I'll read it, just the way I've been reading everything I could get my hands on about all these electronic preachers ever since I found out I might be coming down here. My own overview. Of Falwell, Jim and Tammy Baker, the Armstrongs, the Crystal Cathedral and all the rest of them."

"Maybe you should stay in this afternoon and this evening.

The weather is looking terrible. I can pick you up for a helicopter ride tomorrow if you like."

"No like," Pennymark said.

"I'll rip through this stuff and then maybe you can fix up a car for me to rent and a map of the area."

"Driving could get very difficult."

"Everything in this world can get very difficult sooner or later, love. Thanks for all the attention."

Carolyn Pennymark finished her coffee and went up and inspected her small suite. It looked out on heavy rain coming down, rain heavier than she had seen in a long time. She unpacked with the speed and efficiency of long practice, trying to remember the last time she'd had a suite all to herself. She stretched out on the bed nearest the window and called the office, asking the switchboard for Marty Gehman's extension.

This is me, old buddy, down here in Bible country, with it all arranged for God to pick up the tab for everything. You wouldn't have been in on that, would you?"

"No way. It all went on at a level I will never attain, Carrie.

So enjoy. It could never happen again."

"What I've got here is a darling little suite. Blue and gray and rugs you can lose your feet in, and big windows and a bathroom bigger than my place on Fifty-eighth. I was met by PR. Why do all the PR women look alike?"

"Like what?"

"You know. Every one I've practically ever met is blonde with long elegant legs, cornflower eyes, golden hair, big round boobs and a round little ass, both in constant bobbing motion.

As many white teeth as a harpsichord. An infectious grin. And everything they say has an exclamation point after it."

"Baby, you sound like you were back to practicing your Joan Didion imitation."

"Okay, so I should save it for my book. Good thinking.

Anyway, I had a note on my desk about where Lindy's husband is staying down here and I need it. It's the top sheet on the blue memo pad, okay?"

He came back on the line in a couple of minutes.

"It is called the County Line Motel. And you got a pencil, I'll give you the number." After she had written it down, he said, "Otherwise, how are things?"

"I've got a lot of material here I am going to read. It is raining outside as hard as I ever saw. I keep hearing thunder bumping, and I can hear the chimes in their big Tabernacle through the sound of the rain. My early impression is that the money comes into this place like it was coming down a coal chute."

"You old enough to remember coal chutes?"

"Marty, I am old enough to read about everything. You know, it's kind of nice country around here. Rolling hills, meadows, orchards, reminds me of a part of France I was in once. It ought to be pretty when the sun comes out. If it ever does again."

"Carrie, you get any feeling of cover-up there?"

"They seem to be straining to prove there's nothing to hide.

And all of us big-time magazine persons know that means one of two things. Either they have or they haven't."