Montana Connection

by B. J Daniels

  “Did you find out anything?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “Nothing more than I already knew.”

  Tracy lit another cigarette, took a drag and blew the smoke out into the rain. “There’s something going on. Something…odd.”

  “With Nina?”

  “With Nina, with Wade, with this place,” she said, and glanced over her shoulder. “Nina was no painter. She just showed up one day and Wade hired her. She acted like all she wanted was to learn how to paint decoys. That’s why she worked late all the time.”

  “You don’t think that was the case?” he asked.

  She let out an oath and shook her head.

  “Then why work late?”

  “I don’t know. The plant is deserted after six. She’d have the whole place to herself. Painters are pretty much allowed to work their own hours, but something else was going on with that girl.”

  “You think she was meeting someone here? Having an affair? Wouldn’t that make more sense at her apartment?” he asked.

  “She was living at Florie’s,” Tracy pointed out. Everyone in town knew how Florie was about minding everyone else’s business. It ran in the family. “If she didn’t want anyone to know, the plant would be the perfect place.”

  “No one checks after hours?”

  Tracy shook her head. “Doubt Wade’s ever needed to. The place is locked up so only employees have access. What employee would be stupid enough to steal a duck? Wouldn’t be worth it if you lost your job—plus, we get all the decoys we want at cost. Not that anyone who works here wants to even look at a damned duck after a whole day with them.” She took another long drag on her cigarette.

  “If Nina was using the plant, who do you think she was meeting here? Wade?”

  Tracy made a face. “He’s old enough to be her father.”

  Yeah, that was just what worried Mitch.

  “Is there anyone else she might have been romantically involved with?”

  Tracy snorted. “Have you seen the guys who work here? The ones who aren’t married are all like Bud. Enough said?”

  He nodded. “You didn’t like Nina.”

  Tracy looked startled. “I didn’t have anything to do with her disappearance, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  He said nothing, waiting.

  Tracy finished her cigarette, stubbed out the butt on the concrete and crossed her arms. She looked cold and he realized she’d come outside without her coat, but she didn’t appear ready to go back in yet. “I suppose you’ll hear about this sooner or later,” she said. “Nina and I hung out for a while after she first came to work here.”

  That surprised him, but he said nothing.

  “She befriended me and she dropped me as soon as I was no longer useful.”

  “Useful?”

  “She wanted to know a lot of stuff about Dennison Ducks and Wade and the family and everyone who worked here—you know, the good gossip.”

  He nodded.

  “Okay, I screwed up. She and I would have a few beers and I probably talked too much. Hell, I thought she was my friend, all right? How was I to know she would use everything I told her against me?”

  Tracy had just given herself a motive if Nina turned up dead, and she must have realized it. “Look, no one liked her. What she did to me was minor compared to the crap she pulled on other people here. She was a user. It made you sick to watch her. Especially the way she played up to Wade.”

  “She got special treatment?”

  Tracy rolled her eyes. “I’ll say.”

  “Why, if Wade wasn’t romantically involved with her?”

  Tracy shifted her feet and looked out at the rain for a moment. “It was more like Nina had something on him, you know? He treated her with kid gloves. So did Bud. But you know Bud—he does whatever Wade tells him to.”

  Mitch noticed that Tracy was talking about Nina in the past tense. “You make it sound like you don’t think Nina will be back.”

  “It would be like her to up and leave town. I always got the feeling that she wasn’t planning to stay long, anyway.” She glanced at her watch. “I’ve got to get back in. I need this job.”

  “Thanks for your help. Call me if you think of anything else.”

  She nodded, but he could tell she was already regretting talking to him. He wouldn’t be hearing from her.

  After she disappeared back into the building, he stood for a moment watching the rain before he sprinted to his patrol car. Once inside, he pulled the papers Wade had given him from his coat pocket, his fingers brushing the baby spoon.

  Slowly, he reached into his pocket and palmed the spoon. It felt cold and oddly heavy, a weight he desperately wanted to shed.

  He’d almost asked Wade about it. But the timing had felt wrong. There had to be way to find out if it was indeed Angela Dennison’s baby spoon, why Nina Monroe had it hidden under her bureau drawer and finally what, if anything, the spoon might have to do with Nina’s disappearance.

  Unfortunately all that would have to wait, he thought as a yellow VW bug whipped in behind his patrol car, blocking his exit. He dropped the baby spoon back into his pocket as Charity Jenkins in a hooded clear plastic raincoat with bright red ladybugs on it jumped out and ran through the rain toward his car.

  He groaned, struck as always with both desire and worry. What was Charity up to now?

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Charity saw the frown on Mitch’s face she associated with broccoli as he opened his door and climbed out into the pouring rain to walk toward her.

  “I was just mugged at the post office,” she blurted out. So much for her plan to remain calm, not to act hysterical, to keep that wonderful control she associated with normal.

  “Mugged?” After all, this was Timber Falls.

  She pointed at the mud on one side of her jeans as irrefutable evidence she’d been knocked down.

  He looked at her jeans, then at her.

  She could tell he was struggling with her story. “Someone knocked me down and tried to steal my mail!”

  “Is this a joke?” He smiled, making those little crinkles she loved around his incredible sky-blue eyes and those deep Tanner dimples. Rain dripped from his hat and his raincoat. As annoyed as she was, she wished he’d take her in his arms and hold her. For a moment she thought he might.

  But then he said, “Let’s get out of the rain. Climb in the patrol car and you can tell me what happened.”

  Brushing a wet lock of hair back under her raincoat hood, she stepped around to the passenger side, opened the door and slid in, steeling herself. Whenever she got within two feet of the man, sparks flew—one way or another.

  It was exactly as she knew it would be inside his patrol car. Warm, dry and intimate, with just the hint of his scent, a mixture of soap, rain and maleness. Lots of maleness.

  She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying to keep her equilibrium. This man was like a washing machine’s spin cycle.

  He climbed in and started the engine, kicking up the heater. “Okay, you say someone took your mail?”

  “Someone knocked me down and then started going through the mail I’d dropped as if he was looking for something.” It sounded so improbable to her she couldn’t imagine Mitch believing it, which he obviously didn’t, judging from his expression.

  Which made her all the more determined to make him believe her. “Sarah saw it. She came running out and he took off!”

  “With your mail?”

  “No,” she said. “He dropped it.”

  “You’re sure he was going through it? He wasn’t just picking it up and the two of you scared him? There wasn’t any yelling or screaming involved, was there?”

  He knew her too well. “You know Sarah. She yelled at him. But he was going through my mail looking for something.” Mitch was starting to irritate her. “That isn’t all. I’m pretty sure he took off in a black pickup—the same black pickup that’s been following me.”

  “A black pickup’
s been following you? Since when?”

  “I saw it the first time last night just before I went to bed. It followed me to Betty’s this morning. And while I was there, it came by twice more, real slow, and I could feel the driver staring at me.”

  “You saw the driver?”

  “Well, no. The truck has dark-tinted windows, but I could feel him looking at me.”

  Kind of the way Mitch was right now. Only Mitch was frowning, too. “Charity,” he said with obvious patience, “there are a lot of strangers in town because of this Bigfoot thing, people just driving around, looking around.”

  There was no convincing him. Worse, she wondered now if he could be right. But then, that would make her wrong. “The truck was definitely following me.”

  “Charity, how can you be sure if you didn’t even see his face? He could have been looking for someone in the café. Someone other than you.”

  “Right. And he was looking for that same person in front of my house last night? Why is it so hard for you to believe me?” she demanded, annoyed with him, annoyed even more that her story did sound hard to believe, now that she’d said it out loud. Not that she would admit it to him. “The driver of the pickup was following me and then he attacked me outside the post office.”

  Mitch sighed. “You said you thought the man who knocked you down got into a black pickup?”

  “I didn’t see him get in it, no. But I saw a black pickup down the street a few moments later.”

  He raised a brow and she wondered if someone had told him about her earlier mistaken encounter with the wrong black pickup. Liam wouldn’t tell on her. But that Emily would.

  “Fine. Don’t believe me. But I think the driver is the same person who left the present on my doorstep.”

  “I thought you were convinced I left it.”

  “Well, you obviously didn’t, so now I think it was the guy in the black truck.”

  “You noticed this pickup last night, you say? But you didn’t bother to mention any of this when we talked earlier this morning. Maybe the present was left on your doorstep by mistake.”

  Oh, that was so like him. “You just can’t believe that I might have a…a…secret admirer, can you?”

  “That’s not it,” he said.

  She opened the passenger-side door. “I thought you might want to find this black pickup before he does more than mug me and try to steal my mail, but since you don’t believe me—”

  “Hold on,” Mitch said, his voice low and soft and sexy as ever. “Give me a description of the person who knocked you down at the post office.”

  “Mugged me. He was big or at least his raincoat was big. He had his back to me and his hood up, so I never saw his face or his body really.”

  “It was a man? Not some kid?”

  “Yes, it was a man. A big man. Or a really big woman.”

  Mitch groaned. “Were there any checks or money orders in your mail?”

  “I don’t know. I just glanced at it. I didn’t see anything interesting. I’m pretty sure it was all bills.”

  He nodded, obviously wondering why anyone would steal her bills. Good question. “So he looked through your mail.”

  “He dropped it when Sarah came out.” She knew what Mitch was thinking. That the person hadn’t meant to knock her down, that it was just an accident.

  But that didn’t explain the black pickup following her. “Just forget it.” She shoved open the door and propelled herself out into the pouring rain. “I’ll find the truck myself.” She slammed the door and stomped toward her car.

  “Charity!” he called after her.

  She heard his door open, but she didn’t turn. She climbed into her VW, her hands shaking with anger as she fumbled for the key. That man was impossible. Worse, she feared she’d done it again. Acted irrationally and confirmed Mitch’s suspicions that she was a flake just like the rest of her family.

  Was it possible that the truck wasn’t following her? That the man at the post office had accidentally knocked her down and was only picking up her mail when she and Sarah yelled at him? Was it possible she, Charity Jenkins, had overreacted?

  “Charity.” Mitch was at her side window looking down at her, water pouring off his hat, his expression pained. “Roll down your window. Please,” he said through the drumming rain.

  She finally found the key and turned it. The VW engine started. She wanted to throw the car into reverse and go racing out of there, but she rolled down her window.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, then looked past her to the passenger-side seat. “Is that the present?”

  “Yes.”

  “Let me see it.”

  She carefully handed the box with the stone heart in it to him and he stuck it inside his coat.

  “Did you handle the stone?” he asked, then looked at her and groaned as if he knew she had. “Well, there might be other prints.”

  Rain was coming in the window but she hardly noticed. “Yeah, maybe.” She was touched that he was at least acting as if he was taking her seriously. That was something, right? Even if he was just humoring her?

  “Can you think of any reason someone would be following you? Have an interest in your mail? Or leave you this?”

  “No.”

  “What does this black pickup look like?”

  “Older model, black with dark-tinted windows. I didn’t see the plate. There was too much mud on it.”

  He looked at her and she could feel that old chemistry bubbling between them and knew he could, too. But chemistry wasn’t the problem. It was the M-word: marriage. She had to hold out for it. No matter how strong the pull. She couldn’t let Mitch talk her into anything short of holy matrimony. But right now, just the thought of being snuggled in his arms…

  “If you see this pickup again, try to get a license-plate number for me. Or a description of the driver. But don’t take any chances. Call me at once.”

  She nodded, then remembered Wade Dennison had been seen coming out of Mitch’s office earlier. Wade, according to her source, had looked upset, and Mitch was up here at the plant. Now why was that?

  “Something’s going on with Wade Dennison, isn’t it?” she asked, and saw his expression change ever so slightly. Oh, she did love it when she was right. Something was up! Her journalistic nose for news smelled a story. “What’s going on?”

  “How did you know I was out here?” he asked, frowning through the rain.

  “I can’t reveal my sources. Pretend I followed you.”

  “Speaking of being followed by a dangerous person…” He shook his head as if he’d finally figured out that lecturing her was a waste of breath, but the corners of his mouth turned up a little. His warm fingers squeezed her shoulder. “Call me if you see the truck,” he said, and trotted back to his patrol car.

  Charity drove back into town, warmed all over even though still muddy and wet from being attacked at the post office—and sitting with her window down talking to Mitch. His touch always sent sparks shooting through her body and a warmth better than her VW heater.

  She had interviewed Frank, the Granny’s bread deliveryman late last night, but she hadn’t written the story yet. She reminded herself that she had a paper to put out, but first she needed to change into some dry clothes. Then she could worry about what Mitch was doing at Dennison Ducks.

  Meanwhile, she kept an eye out for the black pickup. There was always the chance she wasn’t overreacting.

  * * *

  MITCH WATCHED Charity drive away, remembering what she’d said about the person who’d knocked her down outside the post office. It had to have been an accident. This was Timber Falls. People didn’t get mugged.

  But as he glanced over at the red heart-shaped stone in the package on the seat next to him, he couldn’t shake the bad feeling he had. Charity in some sort of trouble? What were the chances?

  He started the patrol car and followed her at an inconspicuous distance back into town. She went straight home. Since he lived just next door, he pu
lled into his own driveway and waited until she was safely inside her house. But even then he couldn’t bring himself to leave and kept watching the street behind him for a black pickup.

  Fifteen minutes later, she emerged in clean jeans, climbed into her VW and drove to her office uptown. If she noticed him, which she must have, she didn’t let on.

  He figured she’d be safe at her office since she was only down the block. He needed to find out more about Nina Monroe.

  Back at his own office, he double-checked Nina Monroe’s social security number from her Dennison Ducks employment application. Same as the invalid one Wade had given him earlier.

  He called her references. The manager of Doodles, the craft shop where she said she’d worked, had never heard of her. Nor did the woman recognize the description Mitch gave him. The same with The Cove in North Bend and Seashore Views apartment complex in Lincoln City. He hung up, wishing he had a photograph. But he doubted it would have done any good. Obviously all the information on Nina’s application was bogus. So who was she?

  He hated to think.

  After he’d exhausted all law-enforcement avenues, he put on his coat again and headed for the door, knowing the one person who might be able to help him.

  * * *

  WADE DENNISON’S secretary lived in a big old Victorian at the end of Main. Ethel Whiting’s roots could be traced back to before Timber Falls was even a town, when it was nothing more than a logging camp. Her father had been one of the town’s founders. He’d married well, but brought only one child into the world, a daughter, Ethel. His only heir.

  Ethel still lived in the house where she was born. In fact, she’d never left. Right after high school, she’d gone to work and taken care of her aging parents, until both passed on.

  Now in her early seventies, Ethel didn’t need to work—at least not for the money. She was probably the richest woman in town. It was rumored she’d helped Wade Dennison start the decoy plant years ago. Others swore it had been Wade’s new bride, Daisy, who’d footed the bill. Either way, Ethel had been a permanent fixture at Dennison Ducks ever since.