Montana Connection Read online

  “Is there something going on I should know about?” she asked, always on alert.

  “No,” he said quickly. Probably too quickly. “I just don’t want anything to do with this article. You know how I feel about these damned Bigfoot sightings. Fools seeing things that we all know don’t exist and then shooting off their mouths.”

  “Can I quote you on that?”

  “No! And speaking of fools, make sure there is no mention of my father and Bigfoot this time. I mean it, Charity.”

  She made a disgruntled sound. “You really are no fun.”

  “Yeah, so you keep telling me.” She’d always said he had no imagination because he didn’t buy into flying saucers, ghosts or marriage. If she hadn’t already, she could add Bigfoot to that list.

  “Well, all right, if you’re sure. By the way,” she said in that seductive soft tone of hers, “thanks for the present.”

  “Present?”

  “The one you left on my doorstep?” She didn’t sound very sure.

  “Charity, I didn’t leave you a present.”

  “Oh, I thought…”

  He heard the disappointment in her voice. He hated hurting her. It was one of the reasons he would never have left her a present. “Sorry, it wasn’t me.”

  She let out a small sigh as if she should have known. Just as she should have known not to set her heart on marrying him. But she had, anyway.

  Despite his feelings for her, he couldn’t marry her. Couldn’t marry anyone. But especially Charity. Just the thought of mixing their genes made him break out in a cold sweat.

  “I wonder who could have left the present, then?” she said more to herself than to him.

  He wondered the same thing. Hadn’t he known it was only a matter of time before some man swept Charity off her feet? Knowing it was one thing. Having it actually happen… It surprised him how much the idea of Charity with another man rattled him.

  “I almost forgot,” she said. “Didn’t I just see Wade Dennison come out of your office a few minutes ago? Something going on at Dennison Ducks I should know about?”

  This Charity he could deal with. “Not everything is a news story. Or any of your business.”

  Charity laughed. “We both know better than that.”

  He hung up and saw Sissy in the doorway again, giving him one of her why-don’t-you-do-something-about-that-woman? looks. “Let me ask you something,” he said before she could start to nag him about his personal life. “Do you think Wade Dennison is handsome?”

  “Not my type.”

  “No, I mean, do women find him…attractive?”

  She snorted. “He’s got money, so hell yes, women find him attractive.”

  Mitch shook his head, wondering why it was so hard to get a straight answer out of a woman. “Is it possible that Wade and a twenty-something woman might—”

  “I see where you’re going with this,” she interrupted impatiently. “Would he be interested in a woman young enough to be his daughter?” Her brows shot up. “Wade Dennison is a man, isn’t he?” With that she turned and marched back to her desk.

  Mitch shook his head and looked at the information Wade had given him. But his thoughts veered off again to Charity and the “present” some secret admirer had left her. It bothered him that the man didn’t have the guts to come forward and make his intentions known. He wondered who the guy was. And what his intentions were.

  With a curse, he again looked at what Wade had given him, focusing on Nina Monroe’s address. He groaned when he saw who her landlady was—Charity’s Aunt Florie. This town was too damned small, and it only seemed to get smaller when the rainy season began.

  * * *

  CHARITY JENKINS took a bite of the banana-cream pie, closed her eyes and instantly conjured up the image of Mitch Tanner. Something about the combination of sugar, cream and butter…

  Of course, she’d been thinking about Mitch since she was four, so it came pretty easy after twenty-two years.

  It was odd, though, the way she saw him in her daydreams. If she was eating something rich and wonderful, like banana-cream pie, then Mitch always appeared in snug-fitting worn jeans and a T-shirt that accentuated his broad muscled chest and shoulders. Without fail, he would be smiling at her, the sunlight on his tanned face, his eyes as blue as the Pacific.

  Other foods, however, such as vegetables or anything low-fat, had Mitch in his sheriff’s uniform, scowling at her in disapproval. For obvious reasons, she avoided those foods.

  She took another bite of pie, closed her eyes and was startled when Mitch popped up in her daydream wearing a black tuxedo and standing at an altar.

  Her eyes flew open, her heart pounding. Her wedding? The one she’d imagined and planned since age four?

  On this, she was not mistaken. Mitch in a black tux, she in white satin. Or maybe white silk. Or lace. The imagined wedding changed, depending on her mood. But the groom never had.

  “The pie all right?” Betty asked as she stopped on the other side of the counter.

  “De-e-elicious,” Charity said, closing her eyes again and licking her lips in true delight, hoping to see Mitch in that wedding tux again. No such luck. She opened her eyes as Betty refilled her diet cola.

  Betty Garrett was a pleasingly plump bottled-blond on this side of fifty but who could pass for thirty-five in a pinch and had a talent for attracting the wrong men the way a white blouse attracts blackberry jam. She’d married and changed her last name so many times that most people in town couldn’t tell you what it was at any given moment. Right now Betty was between men, but it wouldn’t last long. It never did.

  “I just put a couple of lemon-meringue pies in the oven in case you’re interested,” Betty said.

  Interested? Lemon meringue was her second favorite.

  “I figure this Bigfoot sighting will bring ’em in for sure. Did last time,” the older woman said. “I decided I’d better make some extra pies.”

  Bigfoot sightings packed the town. The curious drove up to Timber Falls in hopes of seeing what some called the Hill Ghost or Sasquatch.

  “I heard the No Vacancy sign is already on at the Ho Hum and a half-dozen campers are parked over by the old train depot,” Betty was saying. Everyone wanted to see Bigfoot and prove the legendary creature’s existence.

  None as badly as Charity Jenkins, though. Every journalist dreamed of that one big story. The Pulitzer-prize winner. Charity yearned to write about something other than church dinners and wooden decoys. The truth was, she desperately needed one big story. It was the only way she could make everyone in this town see that she wasn’t like the rest of her family, she was a normal level-headed woman and a serious journalist. All right, she didn’t care about everyone in town. She just wanted to prove it to Mitch.

  She took the last bite of her pie, savoring it, eyes closed. No Mitch in jeans or a tux. She opened her eyes, disappointed.

  “Where do you put it all?” Betty asked with a shake of her head as she took the empty plate.

  Charity was blessed. Probably because she was a fidgeter. She couldn’t sit still. Nor did she ever stop thinking. Like right now. Between planning how to play the Bigfoot sighting in tomorrow’s paper, she was thinking about Mitch and if her banana-cream-pie fantasy had any credibility.

  Just the thought of Mitch standing next to her at the altar was enough to burn up a whole day’s worth of calories. She and Mitch had a history, an off-and-on-again attachment that went as far back as shared glue in kindergarten.

  Right now they were at a slight lull in their relationship: he pretended he was a confirmed bachelor and she pretended she was going to let him stay that way.

  This morning she’d been so excited when she’d seen the present on her doorstep. She’d been so sure it was from Mitch. Who else? But he’d sworn it hadn’t been him. And why pretend he hadn’t left it if he had? Then again, why pretend he wasn’t wild about her when he obviously was? She’d never understand the man.

  “Would you
look at this place?” Betty said, shaking her head. The café was full, everyone talking about the Bigfoot sighting. “I can’t believe these fools are still arguing over Bigfoot after all these years.”

  Charity glanced around the small café. It was the only place in town to sit down and eat, plus it was the place to get homemade pies and cinnamon rolls and the latest scuttlebutt.

  As she picked up her diet cola, she had an eerie feeling that someone was watching her. It wasn’t the first time, either. She turned and caught a flash of black on the street outside. Her breath caught as a black pickup drove by. It was the same black truck she’d seen last night by her house and again on her way to Betty’s this morning. Both times she’d had the feeling the driver was watching her.

  She shivered as she watched the truck disappear up Main Street. While she could only make out a large shape behind the dark-tinted windows, she could feel the driver watching her through the rain. Her stomach tightened, remembering the present she’d found on her doorstep this morning. Could one have anything to do with the other?

  * * *

  RAIN HAMMERED the roof of the Sheriff’s Department patrol car, mist rising ghostlike from the drenched pavement, as Mitch drove out to the address Wade had given him for Nina Monroe. A swollen gray sky hung low over the pines as if closing in the tiny town, limiting more than visibility.

  Mitch dreaded another rainy season in Timber Falls, especially one that appeared to be starting a month early and could last until at least April. It wasn’t just the endless rain or the dull overcast days. Without fail, the rainy season seemed to bring out the worst in the residents.

  One year, Bud Harper hung himself from a beam in his garage just days before the sun shone. Another year, a local guy shot up the Duck-In bar when he caught his wife there with another man. And twenty-seven years ago, during the worst rainy season of all, Wade and Daisy Dennison’s baby girl Angela disappeared from her crib, never to be found.

  It was always during the rainy season that strange and often horrible things happened in this small isolated town deep in the Cascades. It was as if the gloomy days, when the rain never stopped, did something to make the residents behave more oddly than usual. As if on those days, the only place to look was inward. And sometimes that was as dark as the day—and far more disturbing.

  And if the rain wasn’t bad enough, there was the forest that surrounded Timber Falls, imprisoned it, really, and constantly had to be fought back as if it was at war with the tiny town. As he drove past the city limits, the forest formed almost a canopy over the two-lane highway, a tunnel of green darkness over the only road out.

  To the clack of the wipers, he turned off in front of a cottage-style house with a dozen smaller bungalows lined up behind it. Years ago, the place had been a motel. But not long after Wade Dennison started his decoy factory, Florence Jenkins had taken down the motel sign and started renting out the bungalows as apartments.

  It was about the same time that Florence discovered her hidden powers. The sign out front now read: Madam Florie’s. Under it was her Web site address.

  Nina Monroe had been renting from Charity’s Aunt Florie, Timber Falls’s self-proclaimed clairvoyant.

  Mitch braced himself then climbed out of his patrol car and hurried through the pouring rain to the front door.

  When an elderly woman opened the door, he tipped his hat, dreading this more than he’d imagined. “Mornin’, Florie.”

  “Sheriff. I’ve been expecting you.” She smiled knowingly, her eyes twinkling in her lined face. “Saw that you’d be by in my coffee dregs this morning.”

  He nodded. If Florie could see the future in her coffee cup, more power to her. He just didn’t want to hear about his own future. He wanted to be surprised.

  She motioned him in with a dramatic sweep of her arm, reminding him of some exotic, brightly feathered bird. Florie was sixty if she was a day. Her dyed flame-red hair swirled around her head like a turban. She wore a flamboyant caftan, large gold hoop earrings, several dozen jangling bracelets and a thick layer of turquoise eye shadow.

  Florie and her much younger sister Fredricka, Charity’s mother, had been raised by hippies in a commune just outside of town. Freddie still lived on the old commune property with a dozen other people but seldom came into town. While Freddie raised organic vegetables, Florie predicted the future to tourists in the summer and locals during the rainy season—another reason Mitch had cause for concern during the rainy season.

  The old motel office was painted black and had recessed lighting that illuminated the only piece of furniture in the room—a purple-velvet-covered table with a crystal ball at its center. Florie had had the ball shipped in from a store in Portland. It gleamed darkly, as if mirroring the weather outside.

  “I suppose your coffee dregs also told you why I’m here,” he said as he entered. “Or maybe Wade mentioned it when he called you about Nina Monroe not showing up for work?”

  Florie gave him an annoyed look and pointed to a sign on the wall in the entry that read No Negative Thoughts. A series of other small signs advertised palm, tarot and crystal ball readings.

  “I was concerned after what I saw in my cup this morning,” she said, lifting one tweezed dyed-red brow as she waited for him to ask.

  No way was he going there.

  “It involved my niece Charity,” she added, not a woman to give up easily, a trait she shared with her niece.

  “I understand that Nina Monroe rents from you and she didn’t come home last night,” he said, cutting to the chase.

  Florie nodded, obviously disappointed by his lack of curiosity about those telltale coffee dregs.

  “How do you know she didn’t come home last night and then leave again before you got up?” he asked.

  “Because I was up until daylight.” At his surprised look, she added, “My Internet business—horoscopes, tarot cards, psychic readings, all by e-mail. You really should get your chart done. I’m concerned about your aura.”

  He had worse things to worry about than his aura right now. “I need to see Nina’s bungalow.”

  Florie stepped behind a dark-velvet curtain. She came back with a key attached to a round small cardboard tag.

  When he reached for the key, she took his hand and turned it palm up.

  “Ah, a long life line with a single marriage.” She beamed and dropped the key into his palm.

  He shook his head. His palm lied. His parents’ marriage had more than convinced him what his future didn’t hold—a wedding.

  “‘Aries’?” he asked, reading the lettering on the key’s tag.

  “I try to match my guests and their bungalows based on their horoscopes. Better karma.”

  “So Nina was an Aries?”

  “No, the Aries bungalow just happened to be the only unit I had open when she showed up.”

  He reminded himself that Charity shared Florie’s genes. All the more reason to keep Charity at arm’s length. Several car lengths would be even better. “So what was Nina?”

  Florie shrugged. “She wouldn’t tell me her birth sign. Can you believe some people aren’t interested in enlightenment?”

  He could. “Nina rented the bungalow in September?”

  “Drove up in that little red compact of hers looking for a room. September nineteenth. I remember because she didn’t even have a job yet. But that very afternoon, she got one at Dennison Ducks. Kismet, I guess.”

  Or something like that. “No need for you to come out in the rain with me.”

  Florie took a bright purple raincoat from the closet and a pair of matching purple galoshes. “I wouldn’t dream of letting you go alone. I’ve been picking up some really weird vibes from that girl,” she said, and stepped past him and out the front door.

  He followed her around back through the rain to the first of twelve bungalows, the one with the Aries symbol on the door.

  Standing on the small porch, he felt a sudden chill as if someone had walked over his grave. Florie knock
ed, then cautiously unlocked the door.

  “Oh, my!” she cried as the door swung open on the ransacked bungalow.

  “Stay here,” he ordered, and stepped inside to look for Nina Monroe’s body in the mess.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “You all right?” Betty asked, looking concerned.

  Charity turned back to the counter as the black pickup disappeared from view in the steady torrent of rain. “I just thought I saw…” She shook her head, catching herself. “Nothing.”

  She didn’t want it all over town that she thought somebody in a black pickup was following her. Or that she’d found a present on her doorstep, a palm-size heart-shaped red stone in a small white box with a bright-red ribbon and a small card that read THINKING OF YOU in computer-generated letters. No name.

  “Is it me or is the whole town on edge today?” Betty said. “Kind of gives you the creeps thinking that Frank might really have seen Bigfoot.”

  “Yeah.” Charity turned again to look through the rain to the dense forest beyond the street. The foliage was so thick that not even light could get through in places. Who knew what lived there?

  Charity shivered. “Frank’s a pretty reliable witness,” she said. “He saw something. Something he thought was Bigfoot, at least.”

  Betty nodded and moved away. Behind Charity, several other diners began arguing amongst themselves.

  “All Frank saw was a bear,” said one.

  “A bear that walks on its hind legs?” said another.

  “It was dark,” a third put in. “Probably just saw a shadow move across the road.”

  “I say it’s some ancient ancestor. You know, a former race of giants.”

  “Who just happens to live in the Timber Falls mountains and never comes out? Puh-leeze.”

  Charity had heard these arguments for years.

  She went back to thinking about Mitch. No hardship there. She’d so hoped he’d left the present. Just as she hoped he’d change his mind about marriage. She knew he wanted her, but just not on her terms. If she’d settle for anything else…