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schedule at any time, just by stopping at the office. Reynolds was making it too easy for her. It was tough to foil a stalker when you advertised your every move.
    Then again, foiling a stalker wasn’t Reynolds’ job. It was hers.
    She adjusted her position on the bench and thought about the congressman. His story made a rough sort of sense, but she still had the uncomfortable suspicion that he was hiding something. He’d claimed not to have a single photograph of his housekeeper—no snapshot taken at a family dinner or holiday get-together, no picture of her with the kids. Unlikely. Then there was the protective-father act. He wanted to keep his son out of the headlines. Very noble, but Reynolds didn’t strike her as the noble type. He was calculating and shrewd, genial when he needed to be, but cold to the touch if you got too close.
    She made her living with her intuition. Other people might rely on linear, left-brain thinking, but she’d always been more of a right-brain gal. She saw things holistically. She trusted her inner voice. And her inner voice was saying that Reynolds needed to be handled with care.
    Shortly past seven, cars started arriving for the event. Abby pretended to read a copy of the
Orange County Register
in the slanting sunlight while surreptitiously checking out each vehicle as it drove in. To keep herself alert she counted the cars. With number thirty-eight, she hit the jackpot.
    A white Chevrolet Malibu, not new. The blond woman at the wheel. Abby saw her clearly as the car slowed to roll over the first of several speed bumps in the parking lot.
    She kept her eye on the Malibu as it crept through rows of parked cars and found a space. The woman got out and headed into the high school. She went quickly, head down, shoulders hunched, as if walking into a strong wind—but there was no wind. She was just someone who liked to keep her head down, someone who might have something to hide. She wore a coat that was a bit too heavy for a summer evening, and Abby was glad there was a metal detector at the door.
    Abby waited until the full crowd had arrived—a decent turnout, at least a hundred people. No TV news vans, though. The Southern California media were continuing their tradition of ignoring local politics, a policy that suited a community built on narcissistic self-absorption. Abby couldn’t complain. She paid no attention to politics, either.
    The last person to show up for the event was Reynolds himself. In the movies, politicians were always riding around in limousines, but real life was more prosaic; Reynolds drove a Ford minivan. Stenzel, she noticed, was his passenger. Abby watched them go in.
    She left the bus stop and sauntered into the parking lot, holding her key ring as if she were looking for her car. Actually her car was parked around the corner. It was the Malibu that interested her.
    She memorized the tag number—a California plate, no surprise. The license plate frame advertised a dealer in the San Fernando Valley, the vast smoggy basin north of the Hollywood Hills. Possibly the owner lived there. If so, she wasn’t one of Reynolds’ constituents.
    Abby took a peek through the side window. A schedule of Reynolds’ public appearances, identical to the one she’d taken from the campaign office, lay on the passenger seat. Next to it was an Orange County map book, turned to the Laguna Hills page. Apparently the woman wasn’t familiar with the area—more evidence she lived outside Reynolds’ district.
    Of course, there was one easy way to find out where she lived, and that was to follow her home.
    ***
    The town hall meeting broke up just before nine. By then, even the long summer twilight had yielded to darkness.
    Abby liked the dark. It cloaked her.
    She had picked up her car and parked down the street from the high school, where she could watch the departing vehicles. A street light at the exit of the parking lot made it easy to spot the white Malibu as it pulled out. Abby