She waited, giving him a chance to confess

She wanted him to offer a good excuse for why he’d screwed up his carburetor, why he’d pretended to need a mechanic, why he’d been looking for Charlie Larkin in the first place.

She could see the battle going on in his eyes. Deep dark blue eyes like the bottom of the ocean. She watched him clench his hands into fists, his broad, muscular back to her, suddenly making her take notice of his size. Her gaze dropped to the jeans he wore and the muscled legs she could make out through the denim. A flicker of heat a lot like desire found flame inside her. He walked away from her so swiftly that she was startled.

But she knew that wasn’t what she had to fear from Gus Riley. It was the way he made her feel. Vulnerable, the way an animal can sense weakness in his prey. It was as if Gus could see beneath the baggy clothing to that unfulfilled ache deep within her like an Achilles’ heel.

And that couldn’t have been more dangerous to her….

Premeditated Marriage
B.J. Daniels

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

B.J. Daniels sets her latest book in the backwoods of Montana, a place she knows well. She’s lived in Montana since she was five, when her family moved to a cabin her father built in the Gallatin Canyon.

A former award-winning journalist, B.J. had thirty-six short stories published before she wrote and sold her first romantic suspense, Odd Man Out, which was later nominated for the Romantic Times Reviewer’s Choice Award for Best First Book and Best Harlequin Intrigue.

B.J. lives in Bozeman with her husband, Parker, two springer spaniels, Zoey and Scout, and an irascible tomcat named Jeff. She is a member of the Bozeman Writers Group and Romance Writers of America. To contact her, write P.O. Box 183, Bozeman, MT59771.

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Augustus T. Riley—The true-crime writer specializes in women who kill their lovers, and now he has Charlotte “Charlie” Larkin in his sights.

Charlotte “Charlie” Larkin—She thought her luck with men was bad. But Augustus T. Riley proves it can get a whole lot worse….

Trudi Murphy—She has a lot to offer men—and does.

Quinn Simonson—He and “Charlie” were high school sweethearts until his car missed a turn on the lake road.

Phil Simonson—The chain-saw artist blames Charlotte for his son’s death.

Jenny Lee-Simonson—Jenny Lee was Charlotte’s best friend until she married into the Simonson family.

Forest Simonson—Is his hatred of Charlotte only because of his brother’s death? Or is there more to it?

Josh Whitacker—Everyone wants to know how his body ended up at the bottom of the lake.

Wayne Dreyer—He’s devoted to more than the old Chevy his father gave him.

T. J. Blue—Is he just the strong, silent type? Or is he hiding something?

Vera Larkin—Charlotte’s mother is sicker than she knows, and her daughter is determined to protect her.

Selma Royal—Everyone believes the old maid can see the future. But what does she see for her niece Charlie?

Rickie Moss—He learned the hard way what getting close to Charlotte “Charlie” Larkin could cost him.

Earlene Kurtz—Everyone in town knew she was pregnant with Quinn Simonson’s baby seven years ago, including Charlotte.

This book is dedicated to my Aunt Susie in Houston, Texas, in memory of the love of her life, her hero and husband, T. O. Gressett.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Epilogue

Prologue

Late September

The warm harvest moon cast a silver sheen over the lake and the naked young lovers standing waist deep in the still summer-warm water. Just yards away, crouched in the darkness of the pines, a lone figure watched, trying to decide whether to kill them both now—or wait.

They shouldn’t have been here.

No one came up the weed-choked road to Freeze Out Lake anymore. Not after all the tragedies. No one was fool enough to come near the place late at night—let alone swim in the eerie dark waters.

Except for these two.

They began to stroke each other, their mouths hungry as their hands caressed wet bodies shimmering in the moonlight, the boy’s shoulders muscled, the girl’s breasts large and white, bobbing in the water.

The boy lured her out deeper into the lake in a sort of sex-driven tag where he dived beneath the water, making the girl giggle and pretend to fight him off, daring her to swim farther and farther from the shore. The lake was low, lower than it had been in years because of the recent drought, making it dangerously shallow.

The boy swam away from her, calling for her to follow him as he dived and splashed. But a few dozen yards from the shore, the boy disappeared under the water and the girl slowed as if sensing the danger.

Suddenly the boy surfaced like a porpoise. “Hey!” he called, his voice a little unsteady. “There’s something out here!”

“What is it?” The girl stopped swimming.

Letting them live was no longer an option.

“What is it?” the girl called again, alarm in her voice.

“I don’t know.” He sounded scared now, his voice rising, echoing off the bank of trees that surrounded the small, remote lake. “Whatever it is, I’m standing on part of it.” Sealing his fate, he disappeared beneath the surface.

The girl continued to tread water, her attention on the spot where the boy had vanished, seemingly unaware of the movement in the trees behind her. A branch cracked in the underbrush.

She jerked her head around, her gaze riveting on a spot in the trees, a look of alarm skewing her expression as if she’d seen something moving through the darkness toward her and the boy.

The rumble of a vehicle off in the distance distracted her for just an instant—just long enough that when she focused again on the spot in the trees, it was clear she no longer saw movement. But it was also clear from the look on her face that she saw something. Maybe the shape of the person standing in the shadows of the pines at the edge of the moon-drenched shore. Or maybe just the glint of the filet knife’s long, sharp blade.

Abruptly the boy’s head broke the surface in a spray of silver droplets. He began to swim in wild, frantic strokes toward the shore and the pile of clothing so carelessly discarded earlier.

“What’s wrong?” the girl cried. “What is it?”

“Get out of the water!” the boy screamed, his moonlit face twisted in horror as he beat the water with his arms and legs, swimming madly for the shore and what he foolishly thought would be safety.

The sound of an engine grew louder. Someone was coming up the lake road. Lights flickered erratically through the dark branches just before a pickup burst out into the open, stopping at the edge of the water.

“Oh God, it’s my dad!” the girl gulped. She was still yards from shore and her clothing—trapped and naked as sin.

The unforgiving moon illuminated her as she sunk, neck deep in the water, neck deep in trouble. But she would never know just how much trouble she’d really been in—before her father had showed up.

He slammed out of his pickup, a shotgun in his beefy hands and guttural curses spewing from his wide mouth like bullets.

But the boy didn’t seem to notice the gun or his own nakedness as he lurched from the water, choking out something about a car in the middle of the lake—and a body.

In the dark shadows of the pines, the knife blade glittered for only an instant before disappearing back into its sheath. By morning the sheriff’s department would have dragged the car from the lake and found what was left of the body strapped behind the wheel. Nothing to be done about that now.

Chapter One

October 8

The headlights drilled a hole through the dark, exposing what finally looked like a place to pull over.

Augustus T. Riley braked and swung the rental car into the narrow patch of dirt on the right side of the highway. He hadn’t seen a car in hours—just miles of nothing but old two-lane blacktop banked by towering pines now etched ebony against the moonless sky.

Once stopped, he sat for a moment, the dark night closing in around him, the headlights doing little to ward it off. He’d never known such darkness, certainly not where he was from. And certainly not this early—just a little after seven. Over the murmur of the car engine, he heard the whoop whoop of wings an instant before something flew through the pale path of the headlamps and disappeared into the woods.

Damn, this country was desolate.

Turning on the dome light, he checked the map. He couldn’t be more than a few miles from the town. The drive had been long and gruelling, and not surprisingly, he was hungry and tired.

Once he got there, he’d have little to go on. Little more than a name and a phone number. But he’d gotten by with far less in the past.

Refolding the map, he shoved it into his briefcase out of sight and, leaving the engine running, climbed out. The night air was colder than he’d anticipated and cut through his lightweight jacket, sending a chill skittering across his skin. He caught the rank smell of something dead and decomposing. Roadkill. Fortunately, he couldn’t see what was lying in the tall weeds where the putrid odor emanated. Didn’t want to. Probably a wild animal. A coyote. Or a deer.

Whatever it was, it had been dead for some time.

He shivered as he went to the front of the car, popped the hood and leaned in.

From the darkness came a hushed moan that made him jerk up in surprise, banging his head on the sharp metal edge of the hood. He swore, then fell silent, listening for it over the thud of his heart.

There it was again. He looked up to see the wind move through the tops of the pines in a low, sensual moan, not unlike a woman’s.

He almost laughed. He hadn’t realized how nervous he was. How anxious. Still, it was a damn eerie sound, and as foreign to him as this landscape.

All those miles without seeing another living soul— He felt as disconnected from civilization as if deployed into space. What he wouldn’t give right now to see the golden arches of a McDonald’s restaurant. Or an interstate. Even a 7-Eleven gas station would perk him up.

He ducked under the car’s hood again and quickly made a few adjustments until the engine ran so rough it barely ran at all. Satisfied, he slammed the hood.

Just a few more miles.

As he moved back along the side of the car, he became painfully aware of the darkness just beyond the glow of his headlights. This far north it got dark early and with no lights anywhere other than his headlamps… His step quickened only slightly, just enough to amuse him as he opened the car door and slid in, closing it firmly behind him. He actually thought about locking his door. This made him laugh.

But it was a short laugh; an oddly sad sound inside the rental car on this lonely stretch of highway just short of hell.

He started to pull back onto the highway. Something caught in his headlights, no bird this time. He threw the car into Reverse, the lights arcing back across the pines, coming to rest on a weathered-white sign standing at a skewed angle in the weeds just yards from where he’d pulled off. Freeze Out Lake. Five miles.

His breath caught as his startled gaze followed the partially obscured dirt tracks in his headlights to the point where the lake road disappeared into the black forest of pines. Not far up there was where the bodies had been found. The gruesome grizzly-bear attack years ago that had made all of the papers. He would never forget the photo of the tent where the grizzly had gone through to drag out the campers inside.

And just last week, Josh Whitaker’s car and body had been dragged from the same lake.

His hand actually shook as he shifted into first gear again. If a place could be cursed, it would be this one. The car engine tried to die. His pulse took off like a shot. For a moment he thought he’d overdone it under the hood, but the car moved forward, the engine still running. Just barely.

Once back on the pavement, he turned on the heater, as if mere heat could chase away the chill. Not a half mile up the highway, it began to rain. Giant, wet drops fell like buckshot, ricocheting off the hood, splattering against the windshield, making the already dark night even blacker.

The next sign he caught in his headlights was: Utopia, Montana.

Home of Charlie Larkin.

He’d expected the town to be small, but not just a few run-down buildings out in the middle of nowhere. If this was their idea of Utopia—

Through the curtain of rain, he spotted the garage first. Could hardly miss anything that big. Or that ugly. Plus, it sat right on the edge of town. And town, what there was of it, was perched on the edge of the highway as if pushed out there by the pines.

The once-red words Larkin & Sons Gas and Garage had faded on the side of the gray metal building. Not exactly an imaginative name, but definitely descriptive. Two ancient-looking gas pumps sat under an overhanging roof next to the gunmetal-gray garage. Several jalopies, stripped clean of parts, rusted under the encroaching trees.

He pulled in under the roof next to a pump. The rain pelted the metal roof loud as a drum. The hand-printed notice on the closest pump read Last Gas for Thirty Miles. He turned off the engine and looked expectantly toward the gas station office, wondering which of the Larkins were working tonight.

Unlike the lamps glowing over the pumps, no light shone in the office. It was empty—and dark—except for the round golden glow of a clock on the wall. Seven-thirty-six.

He hadn’t even considered the place might be closed. Not on a Friday night. Especially if it was the last gas for thirty miles.

He looked down the main drag through the rain. A few splashes of neon blurred in the wet darkness. Past that, he could see nothing but more highway and trees.

Swearing under his breath, he turned the key to start the car again, not sure what to do and certainly not where to go. The engine clattered to an uncertain life, ran just long enough to rattle his teeth, then quit. He tried it a couple more times without any luck before he turned off the key and slammed his palm against the steering wheel with an oath. Him and his great plan.

Rain beat on the metal roof and the night felt colder than his last stop beside the highway as he opened his door. He drew up the hood on his jacket, zipping the front closed, as he hustled to the front of the car. He’d just started to pop the hood when he heard music and the clank of tools over the sound of the rain on the roof. Glancing toward the garage, he noticed a sliver of light coming from under the second bay door.

He jogged to the office and found it unlocked. Moving toward the music, he stepped through a side door into a large empty bay. Past it, he could see the source of the light in the second bay.

A single bare bulb glowed under an old beat-up Chevy sedan in the second bay. Country music blasted from a cheap radio on the floor nearby. A pair of western boots were sticking out from under the Chevy.

“Hello!” he called over the radio to the soles of the boots.

From under the Chevy came a grunt and what could have been the word “closed.”

He’d come too far to be put off. Not only that, he couldn’t very well go out and fix his own car and risk the chance the mechanic would see him. Nor was he willing to give up his plan that easily.

“I need to talk to you about my car!” he called down at the boots, wondering if the small work-boot soles belonged to one of the Larkins. With a whole lot of luck, the feet in them would be Charlie’s.

This time he thought he heard the word “Monday” over the racket coming out of the radio and something about “gas” and “cash.”

He definitely had no intention of waiting a whole weekend without his car if he could help it. Nor was he about to wait that long to make contact with Charlie. He reached over and turned off the radio. “Hello!”

A loud painful thump was followed by the clatter of a wrench and an oath.

“If you wouldn’t mind giving me just a minute of your valuable time,” Augustus said sarcastically. This wasn’t going anything as he’d planned. But the loud country music had given him a headache and he’d had all he could take of being ignored.

An instant later, the mechanic rolled out from the underbelly of the car on the dolly, forcing Augustus to step back or be run down.

Silhouetted by only the lamp still under the Chevy, the short, slightly built mechanic got to his feet without a word and methodically began wiping his hands on a rag.

Augustus was determined to wait him out. He could feel the grease monkey giving him the once-over and was surprised that someone so insignificantly built could look so arrogant standing there in dirty, baggy overalls and a baseball cap. At six-two and a hundred and eighty pounds, Augustus knew he normally intimidated men twice this one’s size.

But if this was Charlie Larkin—

“Look,” Augustus said, trying to keep his cool. He’d been jumpy ever since the turnoff at Freeze Out Lake. Now he told himself that he was just tired and impatient. That was true. But he was also a little spooked, which, under most circumstances, was good. It gave him an edge.

“My car isn’t running,” he continued, “it’s raining like hell outside and I’ve been driving all day and I’m tired and hungry. If you could just take a quick look at the engine so I can go find a motel for the night.”

The mechanic let out a long-suffering sigh and slowly reached for the light switch on the pillar next to him with one hand and the brim of his baseball cap with the other.

“I’m sure it wouldn’t take you any—”

The cap came off in the mechanic’s hand as an overhead fluorescent flickered on, stilling anything else Augustus was going to say. A ponytail of fiery auburn hair tumbled out of the cap and a distinctly female voice said, “You just don’t take no for an answer, do you?”

Seldom at a loss for words, Augustus simply stared at her for a beat. In the light, it was obvious she was just a snip of a girl, eighteen tops, the cute little smudge of grease on her chin making her look even more childlike. The baggy overalls she wore seemed to swallow her. “You’re the mechanic?”

She looked down at the overalls that completely disguised anything feminine about her. “Don’t I look like a mechanic?”

Truthfully? No. She looked like a girl wearing her boyfriend’s overalls, just fooling around under his car while he went out to get burgers and fries.

She stepped past him and headed for the office, but not before he felt a small rush of excitement. The name stitched in red on the soiled breast pocket of the too-large blue overalls read: Charlie.

He hurriedly trailed after her, not sure where she was going or what she planned to do. “It says Larkin & Sons on the sign,” he noted. “I was hoping maybe one of the Larkins could look at my car. Maybe you could call one of them? Maybe this…Charlie, whose overalls you’re wearing?”

She stopped just inside the office and turned to look at him. “Is that your car parked next to the pump?”

Did she see any other cars out there? He nodded and she pushed open the front door and headed for his car. He followed.

She popped open the hood and, without looking at him, hollered for him to get in and try to start the engine.

Wondering what this would possibly accomplish, he slid behind the wheel, rolled down his window so he could hear her and turned the key.

The poor engine actually started, running noisily and jerkily, shaking the entire car—until she stuck her head around the open hood and motioned for him to turn it off.

“You drove all the way from—” she leaned over the front of the car to glance at the license plate “—Missoula with the car running like this?” she asked. She had a serious, concentrated expression on her face that made her look a little older.

“It just kept getting worse,” he lied, leaning out the window a little so she could hear him over the rain.

Her gaze came back to meet his. He hadn’t noticed the color of her eyes until then. They were a rich brown, the same color as the string of freckles that trailed across the bridge of her nose. He couldn’t help but wonder exactly what her relationship was with Charlie Larkin.

She continued looking at him as if waiting for him to say something more.

Under other circumstances he might have felt guilty about what he was doing. But he’d made a rule years ago: the end would always justify the means. No exceptions. And in this case, it was personal, so God help Charlie Larkin.

“Won’t be able to get it fixed tonight,” she said at last, then slammed the hood and turned away from him.

What? He knew it was just a simple matter of adjusting the carburetor. Any mechanic could do it. Obviously she was no more a mechanic than he was and knew a damn sight less about car engines than even he did.

“Leave the key in the office and check back in the morning.” She started for the office.

He stared at her back for a moment as she headed for the gas-station office door. “Wait a minute!” He scrambled out of the car and after her. She was already through the office headed for the bay and the vehicle she’d been under when he’d found her. Along the way, she’d put her baseball cap back on, the ponytail tucked up inside it again.

“And what do you expect me to do tonight without a car?” he called to her retreating back. “It’s raining! Couldn’t you call Charlie to fix my car tonight?”

His words seemed to stop her. She turned around slowly to look at him, tilting her head as if she hadn’t quite heard what he’d said.

He rephrased his question, reminding himself this was his own fault. He should never have fiddled with the engine until he was sure Larkin was around to repair it. Now, more than ever, he couldn’t go out there, adjust the carburetor and drive off.

“You’re sure there’s no chance of getting it fixed tonight?” he asked.

“No chance.”

He swore silently. Okay. “Is there anywhere in town I could rent a car until mine is repaired?”

She shook her head, giving him a look that said he should have known that after one glance at the town.

“Well, is there somewhere I can stay for the night, a hotel or bed-and-break—”

“Murphy’s, about a quarter mile up the road, only place in town.”

“Fine,” he said, resigned to the quarter-mile walk in the rain. He wasn’t about to ask her for a ride and there was no telling when the man who belonged in those overalls would be back. “You’re sure Charlie or one of the Larkins will be able to work on my car in the morning?”

“You can count on it.”

He was.

She turned her back on him again and headed for the old Chevy.

He bit back a curse. “Don’t you at least want me to leave my name? It’s Augustus T.—”

“Gus,” she said, cutting him off. “Got it. Just leave your key on the counter in the office.” She snapped on the radio as she went by it. A country-western song echoed loudly through the garage.

He could hear her putting away tools as he left and wondered if Charlie Larkin worked tomorrow. Or if it would be one of the other sons or the father who’d be working on his car.

Leaving his key on the counter, he went out to pull his briefcase and bag from the car, glad he traveled light. Then he started down the highway toward the far neon, the rain quickly drenching him to the skin.

He hadn’t gone but a few yards when he felt the glare of headlights on his back and the sound of a car braking. It stopped next to him. He bent down in the rain to look in as the driver leaned over to roll down the passenger-side window a crack.

“Need a ride?” asked an elderly man.

The rain alone would have made him accept. “As a matter of fact—”

“Get in. I would imagine you’re headed for Maybelle Murphy’s, right?” the gray-haired, wizened man asked as Augustus shoved his bag into the back seat and climbed into the front. “Not a night for man nor beast,” the driver said as he started back down the highway. “Car trouble, huh?”

It was warm in the car and smelled of pipe tobacco, the kind his father used to use. The man didn’t give him a chance to answer.

“Name’s Emmett Graham, I run the only mercantile here in town. If you haven’t eaten yet, the special at the Pinecone Café tonight is chicken-fried steak. Stays open till ten.”

His stomach growled, reminding he hadn’t eaten since morning. Emmett didn’t seem to notice when he didn’t reciprocate and introduce himself. “Sounds like you know the town and probably everyone in it.”

“Hell, you’ve already met half the people here.”

Augustus knew the man was exaggerating, but not by much. He was curious about the girl he’d met—and the man whose overalls she’d had on. “Well, you’re definitely the friendliest half I’ve met so far.”

The old man nodded with a smile. “Charlie ain’t too hospitable at times.” He pulled up in front of Murphy’s.

Through the rain Augustus could see a short row of small log cabins set in the pines. “I haven’t met Charlie yet. I assume he’s one of the sons, but if he’s anything like the girl I just saw at his garage—”

“Girl?” The old man let out a laugh. “Just goes to show that you shouldn’t believe everything you read. There is no Larkin & Sons. Burt and Vera never had any sons. Burt just got all fired up when Vera finally got pregnant. He had a fancy-pants sign painter from Missoula come in and change the name to Larkin & Sons.” The old man was shaking his head as if this wasn’t the first time he’d told this particular story. “But after Charlotte was born, Vera couldn’t have any more kids. Not that a half-dozen sons would have made Burt more proud than his Charlie. He died a happy man, knowing that Charlie would always keep the garage going. She quit college after his heart attack—he just fell over dead one day while working on a car—and Charlie took over running the garage.”

Augustus stared at Emmett, telling himself the old man must be mistaken. That couldn’t have been the Charlie Larkin he’d come two thousand miles to find. “She’s just a girl.”

The old man smiled. “Only looks young. She must be twenty-five by now—no, more like twenty-six.” He looked up at Murphy’s blinking neon. “Shouldn’t be a problem getting a bed.” There were no cars parked in front of any of the cabins. “Maybelle will see you’re taken care of tonight and then Charlie will get your car running in the morning.” Emmett glanced over at him and must have misread his expression. “Don’t worry, Gus. Charlie is one hell of a mechanic.”

Augustus wouldn’t put money on that. But he nodded, thanked Emmett and, taking his bag from the back, climbed out. He stood in the rain, hardly feeling it, watching the old man drive away as he realized that Emmett had called him Gus. Only one person in this town even knew his name and she called him Gus.

He felt a chill quake through him that had nothing to do with the rain or the cold as he glanced back down the highway toward Larkin & Sons Gas and Garage.

Charlotte “Charlie” Larkin.

His killer was a woman.

Chapter Two

Charlie Larkin stood in the dark of the office watching the stranger through the rain and night, wondering who he was and why he’d come here. Especially now. More to the point, she wondered why he’d pretended he’d driven the rental car all the way from Missoula with the engine running that badly.

He’d lied about it getting worse. But why? A carburetor just didn’t get that out of adjustment. Any decent mechanic would know at once that the engine had been fooled with.

She glanced out at the car. A tan sedan with a Missoula, Montana, license-plate number and a car-rental sticker on the back bumper.

A set of headlights blurred past, the rainy glow changing from a wash of pale yellow to blurred bright red as the car braked. She watched Emmett Graham offer the stranger a ride down to Murphy’s, wishing perversely that she hadn’t called Emmett and asked him to give the guy a lift. Maybe a walk in the rain would do the man some good. But she knew Emmett would be headed home and that he wouldn’t mind and she didn’t have the patience to wait for the man to walk that far.

She waited until she saw Emmett’s car turn off the highway into Murphy’s before she slipped the heavy wrench into the pocket of her overalls, then picked up the key from the counter and headed for the rental car.

No reason to look under the hood again. She didn’t expect any more surprises with the engine, nothing more to learn there about the man than she already had.

She opened the driver’s-side door and slid in, closing it firmly behind her, feeling vulnerable for those precious seconds when the dome light illuminated her through the rain. Now in the dark again, she saw Emmett back out of Murphy’s, the right side of his car empty. The stranger would be checking in. She had time.

“HOW LONG WILL YOU be staying?” the elderly desk clerk inquired as she peered at Augustus through the lines of her trifocals with obvious curiosity. The air around her reeked of cheap perfume. Gardenia, maybe. Whatever it was, it made his eyes water.

It seemed Maybelle Murphy had been in a hurry. Tendrils of bottle-red hair poked out from under a hastily tied bright floral scarf. Her freshly applied red lipstick was smeared into the wrinkle lines above her lips and her cheeks flamed at two high points along her jawline where she’d slapped on color. She seemed a little breathless.

He could only assume guests at the motel were so infrequent they’d become an occasion. He couldn’t imagine that her getting all dolled up had anything to do with him since she’d been behind the desk when he’d entered the office and she couldn’t have known he was headed this way since he hadn’t known himself until fifteen minutes ago.

She cocked her head at him, making the tarnished brass earrings dangling from her sagging lobes jingle, as she waited for his answer.

How long would he be staying? He’d planned to stay in different hotels as he always did, having found that was the safest—and the most private. But it obviously wasn’t going to be an option in Utopia.

“I’m not sure,” he admitted, just anxious to get a room, a hot shower, dry clothes, food. Mostly, he needed time to think. About Charlie. He was still shocked she was the one he’d come so far to find.

“It’s cheaper by the week,” the woman offered sweetly.

It was cheap enough by the day and he doubted this would take a week. “Let’s just start with one night.”

She nodded. “Car’s broke down, huh.”

Either news traveled fast or car trouble was the only reason anyone slowed down, let alone stopped, in Utopia.

“Yes, car trouble,” he said, sliding his credit card across the worn counter toward her, hoping to hurry her up.

She pushed his card back without even bothering to look at it. “Sorry, we don’t do credit.”

Of course not. He opened his wallet, took out three tens and handed them to her, putting his credit card away. “I’ll need a receipt.”

“Oh, so you’re here on business, Gus?” the woman said as she counted out his change.

“No, I just like to keep track of my expenses,” he snapped, annoyed that, like Charlie and Emmett, she’d called him Gus. Then remembering she hadn’t even bothered to glance at his credit card, figured Charlie must have called Maybelle just as she had Emmett.

“Well, you’re obviously not a hunter and it’s the wrong time of year for a vacation up here, so…” She eyed him closely. “That doesn’t leave a whole lot.”

Nosy little busybody, wasn’t she? “Just passing through,” he said coldly and scooped up the room key, catching sight of a newspaper out of the corner of his eye, the headline bannered across the top: Missing Missoula Man Found At Bottom Of Freeze Out Lake. Foul Play Suspected In Doctor’s Death.

“If you give me just a minute, I’ll have that receipt you asked—”

He tuned Maybelle out as he snatched up the newspaper and quickly skimmed the story. Maybelle put the receipt and room key on the counter. He grabbed up both.

“Now let me show you how to find number five. It’s—”

“I can find it,” he said, tossing two quarters on the counter for the newspaper and drawing up the hood on his jacket as he pushed his way back out into the rain.

CHARLIE SAT perfectly still in the darkness of the rental car, listening to the rain hammer the metal roof over the pumps, wishing she could get a sense of the man. A different impression of him than the one she’d picked up earlier in the garage.

The car smelled of his aftershave. A scent as masculine and confident as the man himself. She took hold of the wheel and closed her eyes for a moment, searching, as if he’d left something behind she could sense, something that would reassure her.

After a moment, she opened her eyes to the rain and the night, feeling empty and cold inside as she let go of the wheel. She’d been spending a lot of time alone in the dark lately.

Turning on the dome light, she quickly glanced around the car, not surprised to find it immaculate. No personal possessions of any kind. No beverage containers, spilled chips or empty fast-food bags with cold French fries in the bottom. The car looked as clean as when he’d rented it. Too clean for a drive halfway across Montana. He was a man who didn’t like leaving anything of himself, she thought as she snapped off the light.

But as she opened the glove compartment, the bulb inside shone on the small fresh smudge of grease on the palm of her right hand. She looked from it to the steering wheel. He’d left more of himself here than he’d thought.

The rental agreement was right where she’d figured he would have forgotten it: folded neatly inside the glove compartment. Augustus T. Riley. He really called himself that? No street address. Instead, a post-office box in Los Angeles. A phone number.

She memorized the numbers, praying she would never need them, then carefully folded the form and put it back exactly as she’d found it. She’d learned that from her father the first time she’d taken an engine apart under his watchful eye. Remembering how you found it, how you took it apart was the key to putting each piece precisely back where it had been.

She closed the glove compartment and sat for a moment, expecting to feel guilty for this invasion of another person’s privacy. Wanting to feel guilty. She felt nothing. Augustus T. Riley had given up his rights to privacy when he’d brought her his tampered engine to repair. When he’d come looking for Charlie Larkin.

She opened the car door, hit the lock and, pocketing the key, started back toward the office. The rain had slacked off a little and the temperature had dropped. There would be snow on the ground by morning. She glanced up the highway toward Murphy’s, wondering where the stranger was now, concerned he was someone she had reason to fear but not knowing why.

She sensed, rather than saw, the furtive movement off to her left. A hooded figure came out of the darkness and the rain, barreling down on her. She half turned, her hand going to the wrench she’d slipped into the pocket of her overalls, stopping just short of the cold steel.

“Wayne,” she let out on a relieved breath.

He didn’t seem to notice. “Hey, Charlie.” As always, he looked embarrassed and apologetic at the same time. “I didn’t see you.” He took a swipe at his wet face with his sleeve. “Raining pretty hard.” He seemed to focus on her, his eyes always a little too bright. “I hope I didn’t keep you past your dinner.”

She shook her head and smiled her half smile. Friendly, but not too. “You know I stay open until nine on Friday nights.”

He nodded vigorously, obviously not knowing anything of the kind. She’d always closed early this time of year, and with everything that had been going on lately, she’d shortened the gas station hours even more.

“I got your car running,” she said as she led the way inside.

He pulled back his hood, throwing off a spray of rainwater as he trotted to keep up. “It’s a good old car.”

He always said that. She’d given up telling him he should look for something with a few less miles on it. She understood the sentimental value of a car, even one as bad-looking as this old Chevy. Wayne’s dad, Ted, had given him the Chevy when Wayne was seventeen—just before Ted had died. That had been five years ago, five years of trying to keep the old car running.

Water dripped from the dingy cap Wayne wore under the hood as he dug deep into his worn jeans and pulled out two crumpled bills. Charlie watched him smooth one of them across his thigh, his curly blond head bent with such concentration it hurt to watch him.

“I get paid next Friday if this isn’t enough,” Wayne said, working the wrinkles out of the second twenty. He sacked and stocked groceries and supplies at Emmett Graham’s small market.

“Actually, you could do me a favor,” Charlie said, looking at the old Chevy rather than at Wayne. “I heard your mother raised more winter squash than she could use this year. You could save me a trip and get me some in payment. Otherwise, I’m just going to have to drive over and buy them from her.”

Wayne looked up, both the surprise and confusion only momentary since this was how their conversations over the bill went every time. “Squash?”

“Aunt Selma has her heart set on winter squash for Sunday dinner.”

Wayne nodded vigorously. “Mom’s got lotsa squash.”

“Great.” She handed him the keys to the Chevy and touched the garage-door opener. The overhead rose slowly with a groan, letting in the wet and cold and dark. Just beyond the door, she could see puddles, night slick, but no rain dimpling the surface. Snow fell silent as death.

“I’ll get the squash and bring them right away,” Wayne said excitedly as he opened his car door.

Charlie started to tell him to wait till morning, but caught herself. Wayne would be back in a few minutes and she didn’t want him worrying himself all night about paying his bill. “That would be great.”

He drove off, hitting all of the puddles, reminding her he was part kid, part man, caught for this lifetime somewhere in between.

She started to close the bay door, then remembered the rental car. She still had the key in her pocket.

The interior smelled of Gus, even over all the others who had rented the car. Odd, she thought. A man who gave little away about himself and yet invaded whatever space he occupied—and didn’t give it up easily. A dangerous man.

She coaxed the engine to run long enough to get the car into the bay, hurriedly closing the overhead door behind it, feeling vulnerable again, as if she’d let in more than she knew, more than she could handle.

At the sound of Wayne’s old Chevy, she turned out the lights, left the rental car key on the counter in the office and stepped outside to find that he’d brought her two large boxes of produce, including apples and pumpkins. She helped him load the boxes into her van parked on the side of the building. Then watched him drive off before she went back in to lock up for the night.

Just inside the office, she stopped, chilled at the sight of the rental car in the second far bay—a small faint light glowing inside it.

The chill deepened as a knife of fear cut up her spine. She hadn’t left a light on inside the car. That she was sure of. She stood in the doorway, heart pounding so loudly she couldn’t hear over it. She breathed deeply, trying to still the cold dread as she caught the scent of Augustus T. Riley’s aftershave over the deep-seated smell of motor oil and cleaner. He was here.

Blindly, she reached for the overhead light switch, her free hand going to the wrench in her overalls even as common sense told her it wasn’t much of a weapon.

The fluorescents came on, illuminating both bays. He wasn’t here.

But he had been.

She turned to look back at the counter. The key to the rental car was gone.

She moved slowly across the cold concrete to the car. Even from a distance she could see that the glove compartment was open, the small bulb illuminating one dark corner of the car—and the garage.

Walking around to the passenger side, she opened the door, not surprised he’d left the key in the ignition. He’d wanted her to know that he’d been here. Because he’d left her something.

The clipping had been torn from the newspaper, the edges ragged, the paper still damp from the storm. He’d left it where she couldn’t miss the headline: Missing Missoula Man Found At Bottom Of Freeze Out Lake. Foul Play Suspected In Doctor’s Death.

Chapter Three

Augustus brushed fresh snow from his jacket as he stepped through the door into the Pinecone Café. He should have been freezing cold. He definitely was wet, first from the rain, then the snow. Obviously, he wasn’t prepared for this kind of weather, but he didn’t care. He was on the chase—and he loved nothing better.

A hush fell over the café as everyone turned to look at who’d come through the door. He shrugged out of his lightweight jacket, realizing his dress shirt and slacks made him conspicuous enough, but now they were wet. He could feel all eyes on him. Forget anonymity in Utopia, he thought as he hung the jacket next to five tan canvas coats in various sizes, styles and stages of decline.

Feeling as if he was on center stage, he turned slowly to take in the café—and its customers. The Pinecone was just a hole-in-the-wall with three booths and a half-dozen stools along a worn counter that faced the grill. A middle-aged couple sat in the first booth, two men in the next, the third empty.

At the counter, an elderly woman knitted, her large bag on the stool next to her. A middle-aged woman in a waitress uniform and nurse’s shoes stood across the counter from her smoking a cigarette, looking as if she owned the place. At the far end of the counter, a lone man sat bent over his coffee. He didn’t look up.

“Good evening,” Augustus said to the curious faces.

“Evenin’,” the woman behind the counter replied. All except the guy at the counter gave him a nod, the women a polite smile as he worked his way past them to the empty booth. Friendly little place, wasn’t it?

He slid in, his back to the wall so he could watch the door, an old habit.

Conversations resumed. The two men in the next booth talking about a tractor that the one named Leroy couldn’t get to run. The middle-aged couple eating in silence, a sure sign they were married, and at the counter, the older waitress chatting with the knitter about a sweater she’d started for her granddaughter. The lone twenty-something man seemingly in his own world.

“Hi!” A perky young bottled blonde in a too-tight uniform came out of the kitchen to slide a plastic-covered menu across the table at him. “Our special is chicken-fried steak. Comes with soup, salad, mashed potatoes, gravy, peas, a roll and dessert for six-fifty.”

Amazing. “Sold,” he said, smiling as he slid the menu back at her without opening it. She looked to be in her late twenties, about Charlotte “Charlie” Larkin’s age, if Emmett was to be believed, and she was a hell of a lot friendlier, both things Augustus hoped to use to his advantage.

She gave him the full effect of her smile. “Can I get you some coffee?”

“I’d love a cup. It’s a little damp out there.”

She laughed at that, considering he was soaked to the skin and wearing the least appropriate clothing possible. Everyone else in the place had on jeans or those tan canvas pants that seemed to be so popular in this town along with flannel shirts and winter boots.

“It’s going to get a whole lot damper,” she said, coming back with the coffeepot and a cup. She poured him some and said, “Supposed to drop a good eight inches of snow before morning.”

Just what he needed. He’d have to buy a coat and boots. Fortunately he’d had the sense to bring a pair of jeans. “Isn’t it too early in the year?”

She laughed. “This is Montana. It can snow any month—and has.” She left and came back with a bowl of steaming vegetable soup. It smelled wonderful and tasted even better.

He ate his soup quickly, needing the warmth and hungrier than he’d been for a while. His clothes were starting to dry out, and while he was more comfortable, some of his earlier elation was starting to wear off and he wasn’t sure why. He suspected it was because Charlie Larkin wasn’t at all what he’d expected—and not just because she was female. He’d known his share of female killers and knew that they came in all sizes and shapes. Some were even as cute and innocent-looking as Charlie.

No, something else about her bothered him and he couldn’t put his finger on it.

He blamed his sudden uneasiness on the fact that, while what evidence there was pointed to Charlie Larkin—it was only circumstantial. Nor was this the way he normally operated. All the other times, he’d come in after the arrest had been made, after the killer was behind bars—or out on bail. This time he was going after the murderer himself. This time, it was personal.

Taking a sip of his coffee, he reassured himself that he was dead-on with this case. What evidence there was had led him straight to Charlie Larkin—and his gut instincts hardly ever let him down. Except for that one time, which he tried not to dwell on.

But that one mistake had taught him well. He’d trusted one of his subjects and it had almost cost him his life—and his career. That’s why he would never let himself get emotionally involved with a suspect, again.

Not that there was any chance of that with this case, he thought, remembering the churlish young woman in the baggy overalls he’d met at the garage. So at odds with her angel-cute face, the freckles, the big brown eyes, framed by all that dark-flame hair. Oh, yeah, he could see how a woman with her looks and spunk would be like honey to bears to most men.

But he wasn’t most men. So what was it about Charlie Larkin that had him worried? Something about her reminded him of Natalie. The thought shook him to his core. He glanced out the window, feeling too isolated, too ill-prepared for the weather—and this dinky little town. How was he going to be able to accomplish anything without even rudimentary services? He’d tried to make a call from his motel room, which—big surprise—had no phone and he got no service on his cell phone.

He’d seen two pay phones so far, one tacked on the wall a few feet inside the café door and a primitive-looking one outside Larkin’s. Neither exactly private. And the one was out in the weather and way too close to Charlie Larkin.

The conversation at the all-male booth had changed to the price of lumber and those damn tree huggers who were ruining the logging industry.

The woman in the waitress uniform put out her cigarette. “So, Leroy, did I hear you’re still trying to get that old tractor running?” she inquired of the suspender-wearing man in the booth. She had a face with a lot of miles on it and a voice gravelly from smoking.

“Got to, Helen. Can’t afford a new one. Goin’ to have to plow snow with it pretty darned soon. Maybe Charlie’ll have a look at it when she gets the time,” he said, wagging his head.

Helen, who no doubt was the café’s owner, looked over in Augustus’s direction. “Get settled in at Murphy’s, Gus?”

Gus. It wasn’t bad enough that Charlie Larkin had told everyone in town about him, she hadn’t even gotten his name right. “It’s Augustus,” he said and gave Helen a smile to soften it. “Augustus T. Riley.”

She chuckled as if he’d said something funny, obviously not recognizing the name. “Well, welcome to Utopia. You’re the big news of the day.”

“Slow news day, huh,” he said, seeing an opening. “I would think that fellow who got pulled out of the lake would still be news.”

“Shoot, that was over a week ago. Old news now and not the kind we like to be known for.” She stepped back into the kitchen and proceeded to finish up some cooking she had going on. “Trudi, your orders are up.”

He wondered what kind of news Utopia liked being known for.

“Here ya go, T.J.,” Trudi said cheerfully as she slid a plateful of food across the counter to the guy sitting alone. She wasted a big smile on him. He didn’t even bother to look up at her, just grunted something Augustus couldn’t hear.

Trudi stood there for a moment, then went to deliver a couple of burgers to Leroy’s table and brought Augustus his salad. “Was creepy though, you know, if you think that his body was in the lake all this time,” she said, picking up the thread of the earlier conversation.

“Since last fall,” he agreed, trying not to think about it. “So, did you know him?”

She shook her head. “He wasn’t from around here.”

Augustus knew that. Josh Whitaker had been an emergency-room doctor in Missoula at the hospital. He was thirty-four, two years younger than Augustus, single and lived with two other residents in a large house near the hospital. His death was being investigated as possible foul play after the coroner reported Josh had been hit in the back of the head with a blunt object, his car then pushed into the lake where it sank from view.

No one knew what Josh Whitaker was doing in Utopia, thirty miles from the nearest real town. In this part of Montana, that thirty miles felt like three hundred. Augustus had never felt such isolation and couldn’t imagine why Josh had come up here all the way from Missoula. Josh had been missing for almost a year, his body finally discovered in late September by two local teenagers, just before the cold spell.

But what Augustus knew that the press didn’t, according to phone company records, was that Josh had received two phones calls from Utopia just before he disappeared. Both from the pay phone outside Larkin & Sons Gas and Garage. He’d almost placed several phone calls to that pay phone, along with another to a C. Larkin that same day, the call to C. Larkin less than a minute in length, making Augustus wonder if Josh had reached Charlie. Her name had also showed up in an old date book of Josh’s with a notation beside it: help line.

What Augustus needed was to find out what Charlotte “Charlie” Larkin’s relationship had been with Josh Whitaker, how they’d met no doubt through Josh’s statewide help line program, why Josh might have come to Utopia to see her and why she might want him dead. No small task.

But hadn’t Emmett mentioned that Charlie Larkin had to quit college when her father had his heart attack? Was it possible she and Josh had met while she was attending the University of Montana in Missoula? That was where Josh had started his first help line.

“What a terrible way to die,” Trudi was saying. “Drowning.” She shivered.

“I heard it’s not that bad, like going to sleep,” the knitting woman said.

“Marcella, I think you’re confusing drowning with hypothermia,” Helen said.

“Starvation,” Leroy said. “I guess that or a quick heart attack is the way to go.”

“Beats putting a gun to your head,” Helen agreed.

An argument ensued over what caliber gun worked best. Augustus tried to steer the conversation back to the body in the lake. “Do they know what the drowned guy was doing here?”

The customers looked to Helen as if anyone in town would know, it would be her. She shrugged.

“Isn’t this lake off the beaten path?” Augustus asked.

“Yeah, but maybe he’d heard about those campers that were eaten by that grizzly and wanted to see the place,” Trudi said, all big-eyed.

Helen grimaced. “That’s pretty morbid and it was years ago. I can’t imagine he would have even heard about it.”

Augustus remembered from the national news stories when he was a senior in high school and working on the school newspaper. Mostly he remembered because there were only a few things that ate you. Sharks. Gators. Grizzlies. “Didn’t I read in the paper that he was seeing a local woman?” he lied, drawing the conversation back to Josh Whitaker.

“Wouldn’t know anything about that,” Helen said, going back to the kitchen to check on his chicken-fried steak. A few minutes later she handed Trudi a huge plate overflowing with meat, gravy and mashed potatoes and a side of canned peas through the pass-through.

“Charlie fixing your car, huh?” Helen asked him, returning to her spot at the counter across from Marcella.

“In the morning,” he said, taking the opening. “I heard she’s a pretty good mechanic.”

“Best in five counties,” Helen boasted as she lit another cigarette, definitely at home with the place, with herself.

Best in thirty miles, he could buy. Five counties though? That he seriously doubted.

“If anyone can get your car running, it’s Charlie,” Leroy agreed.

Anyone with even a little mechanical training could get his car running, if they wanted to. And if Charlie Larkin was as good as everyone in this town claimed, she would know that. The thought disturbed him.

“Yep, they don’t come any better than Charlie,” Helen agreed. “I wouldn’t be surprised if she was over there right now working on your car.”

He wouldn’t put money on that.

“Like that time she found that family broke down outside of town,” Marcella said, knitting as she talked. “Remember that bunch? Must have had a dozen kids in that old motor home. Charlie took them food and got the rig running, though heaven only knows how.”

Helen was nodding, obviously savoring the story. “They didn’t have two nickels to rub together, had spent all their money on gas trying to get to the coast—and a job the father said he had waiting for him. Sounded like a story to me, but you know Charlie.”

He didn’t. But he sure wanted to. He took a bite of the steak. It was delicious.

“Charlie told him he could pay his bill after he got settled.” Helen shook her head. “I would have sworn she’d never see a dime of that money, but a year later she gets a check—with interest. Don’t that beat all?”

“That’s one hell of a story,” Augustus agreed, wondering how much of it was now Utopia legend and how much of it was true.

“Oh, we could go on all night about Charlie,” Helen said.

“Like the way she’s helped Earlene with that baby,” Marcella said. She glanced back at Augustus. “Earlene’s a single mother. The baby’s father’s dead.”

Charlie Larkin sounded like a saint. He’d found out a long time ago, though, that the nicest, most charitable person in the world was still capable of committing murder. But it certainly made him all the more curious about Charlie. And all the more determined to get her.

The twenty-something man at the counter Trudi had called T.J. suddenly pushed his half-full plate back, slapped down some bills on the counter and stalked out, grabbing his coat before disappearing through the door without a word.

“Who was that?” Augustus asked Trudi quietly when she came over to his table to refill his coffee cup.

She glanced toward the closing door. “Oh, that’s just T. J. Blue.”

“He seemed upset.”

“He’s always upset when Charlie Larkin’s name comes up,” she whispered and then went off with the coffeepot to refill cups.

Upset when Charlie Larkin’s name came up, was he? Augustus made a point of reminding himself to have a talk with this T. J. Blue who hadn’t said a word when Helen and everyone else were going on about the virtues of Charlie Larkin. Interesting.

“Emmett told me that Charlie had to come home from college early and take over the garage after her father’s heart attack,” Augustus said to Helen who was clearing away T. J. Blue’s dishes after his abrupt departure.

Helen nodded, but said nothing, as if he was on the verge of asking too many questions.

“She worked in the garage alongside her father every summer,” Leroy said. “Burt insisted she get an education although everyone in town knew he hoped she’d come home and work with him after she graduated.”

“What was she majoring in at Missoula before she had to quit?” he asked casually, taking a bite of his steak. It could have been cardboard for all the attention he paid it as he waited for someone to confirm his theory that Charlie Larkin had gone to college in the same town Josh Whitaker was a doctor.

Helen frowned, looking suspicious.

“Business, wasn’t it, Helen?” Marcella asked, looking up from her knitting. “But she didn’t go to school in Missoula. She went to Bozeman.” Miles apart.

“I thought Emmett told me—never mind,” Augustus said. “I must have heard wrong.” So how had they met?

Charlie had to be the reason Josh Whitaker had come to Utopia and ended up in Freeze Out Lake last fall. Augustus would stake his reputation on it. But what was their connection? The obvious female-male one? Or something else?

A thought struck him like a brick. The use of the pay phone at the garage—rather than her home phone. “Charlie isn’t married, is she?”

Helen studied him for a long moment. “No.” Her gaze said he’d just asked too many questions.

“She sounds like someone I’d like to get to know better.” He shrugged and grinned his you-know-us-guys grin.

Helen seemed to relax a little. She obviously knew how men could be. She went around the counter to sit next to Marcella and proceeded to tell her about some yarn she’d found on sale in Missoula.

“Got all that firewood split and stacked yet for winter?” Leroy asked the man across from him.

“See ya, Helen,” the woman in the first booth said as she and her husband left, leaving money on the table.

“Take care, Kate. You, too, Bud.”

Augustus concentrated on his food, listening to the conversations move from one mundane topic to the next. No one paid him any attention. He must be old news.

But he saw Trudi watching him when she thought he wasn’t looking and he knew, the way he always knew, that here was someone who had something she was dying to tell him.

The chase always made him ravenous and this one was no exception. It wouldn’t be easy with most of the town trying to convince him Charlie Larkin was a saint. But at least one person in town wasn’t wild about Charlie: T. J. Blue. And Augustus had a feeling he’d find more. He smiled and dug into his dinner.

HE’D EATEN all he could and shoved his plate away when Trudi came over to his booth. She was all business, making a project out of writing up his bill, then taking his napkin to write something on it before sliding it and the bill under the edge of his saucer. She refilled his cup with coffee he’d just said he didn’t want. She seemed nervous.

He could feel Helen’s gaze on them, watching eagle-eyed, and Trudi must have felt it, too. She huriedly cleared up his dishes, everything but his coffee, and disappeared back into the kitchen again.

He stared after her for a moment, then plucked the bill and napkin from under the edge of the saucer. Along with the six dollars and fifty cents he owed for dinner, she’d written on his napkin: “I get off at ten.”

He glanced at his watch. That would give him time to get ready for her. He pulled out his pen and wrote, Murphy’s, No. 5 on the napkin, then dropped a ten on top of the bill. With luck Trudi had something good to offer him.

As he left the café, Helen called after him, “See ya, Gus.” He could feel her watching as he walked past the front window of the café. He wondered how long it would take her to call Charlie Larkin and tell her he’d been asking personal questions about her. The thought pleased him, since he’d only just begun.

I’m coming for you, Charlie.

Chapter Four

Charlie pushed through the kitchen door of the old farmhouse she shared with her mother and aunt, a huge box of produce in her arms.

“Let me guess. Wayne Dreyer’s old Chevy broke down again.” Aunt Selma shook her freshly-permed, gray head as she walked over to the table to peer inside the box Charlie set down. Her aunt looked small and frail next to the huge box, older somehow.

“I’ve got another one in the van,” Charlie said and went back out to get it through the falling snow, thick as cotton ticking, the old farmhouse and the surrounding trees a blur of white.

Her aunt was giving her that look when she came back in.

“Winter squash, apples and pumpkins,” Charlie said, sliding the second huge box onto the table next to the first.

“I can see that,” Selma said. “There’s enough squash alone to last three winters. And pumpkins—Land-sakes, what will we do with all of them? You’d better hope that boy’s car doesn’t break down again until berry season.”

“He got the idea that we eat a lot of pumpkin pie,” she said, shrugging out of her coat. This time last year the water pump had gone on Wayne’s Chevy and she’d taken pumpkins as payment, going on about her Aunt Selma’s need for fresh pumpkin for her pies.

Her aunt shook her head. “You remind me of your father.”

“Thank you,” Charlie said, going to hang her coat on the hook by the back door.

“That wasn’t a compliment.”

Charlie turned to smile at her.

Her aunt’s gaze softened. “Is anything wrong?”

“No.”

Selma waved that off. “I know you, girl,” she said, frowning. “Something’s happened.”

Some people in town said Selma had The Gift, that she could practically look into your head and see things that no one else could—including the future.

There had been times when Charlie wasn’t so sure they weren’t right. But mostly she believed her aunt just paid more attention to the little things, things other people maybe didn’t take the time to notice. Not that it wasn’t damn eerie on occasion. And a real pain if you preferred to keep your problems to yourself.

The phone rang. Charlie tried to hide her relief as she gave her aunt a shrug and picked up the receiver from the wall phone.

“That guy whose car broke down—Gus—he just left,” Helen whispered. “I thought you’d want to know.”

“Really?” she said and smiled at her aunt, knowing there was more.

“He was asking a lot of questions.”

“About what?” she asked, trying to keep her voice light.

“About that man who drowned in the lake and about you.”

Charlie let out a little laugh and turned away from her aunt. “Well, you know what they say about curiosity.”

“That’s not the worst part,” Helen said. “Trudi warmed right up to him. You know how she is.”

Everyone knew how Trudi Murphy was. The stranger probably would know soon enough.

“I think you should try to find out something about him,” Helen said. “I don’t like the looks of him.” She didn’t like the looks of most men. Blame it on four bad marriages and a weakness for losers. “What’s he wanting to know about you for anyway?”

“I don’t know, but I’m sure it’s nothing.” She wished that were true.

“I hope you’re right,” Helen said. “Once his car is fixed, maybe he’ll leave. Maybelle said he only paid for one night.”

“That’s good.” But she had a feeling it didn’t mean a thing. “Thanks for letting me know.” She hung up and turned, feeling her aunt’s intent gaze.

“Charlotte—” Selma began.

“What in the world?” her mother said from the doorway. Vera’s eyes widened with wonder, as if the boxes on the table were brightly wrapped presents instead of vegetables from the gourd family and the fruit that destroyed Eden.

Her mother was smaller than Selma and lacked her sister’s strength. Vera had always been the fragile one, her pale skin almost translucent, her hair now downy feather white.

Aunt Selma gave Charlie a warning look, one she knew only too well. Don’t upset your mother. The words should have been stitched on their living-room pillows.

“I’ve been wanting to make some pumpkin pies,” Selma said.

Vera Larkin smiled dreamily. Her cardigan sweater had fallen off one shoulder. “I do love pumpkin pie. With ice cream.” She frowned. “Or is it whipped cream?”

“Either sounds good,” Selma told her as she pulled her sister’s sweater around her thin shoulders.

Charlie noticed that her mother’s slippers were on the wrong feet as she watched the two leave the room. She closed her eyes, the pain too intense. It broke her heart to see her mother like this and growing worse each day.

If it wasn’t for Aunt Selma… It was hard to believe that Selma was almost seventy, the older of the sisters. She’d never married. When Charlie was a child, she’d found a yellowed wedding dress in the attic. Her mother had told her a romantic story about Selma falling wildly in love with a soldier. They were to be married, but just days before he was coming home, his plane was shot down. Devastated, Selma had sworn never to love another man.

Of course, there were people in Utopia who swore the story was as phony as Trudi Murphy’s bust. But then how did Charlie explain the wedding dress still in the attic? If Selma’s “sight” was to be believed, maybe Selma had known long ago that Vera was going to need her and that’s why she’d never married. Maybe Selma had called off the wedding after another one of Vera’s miscarriages had laid her up. It would be like Selma.

Vera had never been strong, according to Selma. She’d married Burt at eighteen full of hope, but quickly became weakened both physically and spiritually by miscarriages and disappointments, until finally Charlie was born. Vera was almost forty by then.

Just twenty-one years later, she lost Burt to a heart attack. It had been a blow that had left her mother crippled emotionally and brought Charlie racing back from college to take over the garage. That had been four years ago. Aunt Selma had been there, though, each time Vera needed her. It wasn’t surprising that Selma had been the one to notice Vera’s Alzheimer’s first.

“Are you warm enough?” Selma was asking Vera in the living room. “It’s snowing out. Maybe I should throw more logs on the fire. Would you like that?” Selma glanced over her shoulder as she helped Vera into a wingback chair in front of the fireplace, her look clear: We will talk later.

Charlie had no doubt of that. Selma and Vera had already eaten dinner. Charlie could smell the chicken and dumplings Selma had saved her. There was a warm apple pie, too.

Charlie had tried to get Selma to slow down.

“Cooking and caring for my sister is what I’ve always done,” Selma had snapped. “Let me enjoy myself and don’t get in my way.” She’d softened the words with a smile. “You know how much I love doing this.”

Charlie had nodded and stayed out of her way, helping out as much as she could behind the scenes.

While Charlie ate, Vera chattered away about things that had happened forty years ago. Selma was too quiet, as if she could read Charlie’s thoughts, which kept returning to the stranger in town.

After dinner and dishes, Charlie got her coat from the peg and went out on the porch, hoping the cold night air would clear her head. It wasn’t long before she heard the soft creak of slipper steps on the floorboards behind her.

“Well?” Selma’s voice sounded hoarse with worry.

She didn’t turn around. “It’s nothing.” She tried to sound unconcerned.

“Then why do you seem…scared?”

Scared? Is that what this was? This quaking inside her. This high-frequency jitter, like being connected to a high-voltage battery all the time. She wouldn’t have been surprised if she started throwing off sparks. At first it had been a low buzz. Almost a nervous energy. Anxiety. Worry. But now she vibrated with what had to be more than fear. She hugged herself as if that would still her terror. At least long enough to reassure her aunt.

“There’s something I need to ask you.” Selma seemed to hesitate. “Does this have anything to do with that young man they pulled from the lake?”

Charlie turned slowly to look at her aunt. Selma stood in a pool of light from the kitchen window wearing a thick wool sweater over her polyester pantsuit. Charlie remembered her mother secretly knitting the sweater several years ago. A Christmas present in Selma’s favorite colors, browns, golds and reds.

Even from here Charlie could see the mistakes in the pattern. The signs had been there that long ago, only Charlie hadn’t recognized them. But then, it was so hard to admit that someone you loved was losing her mind.

“Yes,” Charlie said. It had everything to do with Josh Whitaker.

Selma reached for the porch railing and closed her eyes, her bare hand pale and bony, veins blue against the white skin, frail.

Charlie started to reach for her, afraid her aunt was going to collapse. But she drew back her hand at the last minute as Selma’s eyes snapped open.

Before she saw the tears, Charlie was going to tell her aunt everything. The weight of holding something like this inside just seemed too much to bear alone any longer. But the tears stopped her. Selma had always been strong, but this was too much of a burden for anyone, especially someone you loved.

“I’m just upset because the death reminds me of when Quinn was killed,” Charlie said quickly.

The relief in Selma’s expression was worth the half lie Charlie had had to tell.

“You still think about Quinn Simonson?” her aunt asked, sounding surprised but stronger. “That was so long ago and I didn’t think your relationship with him was that serious.”

Charlie shook her head. “No, but he was my first boyfriend.”

“The Simonsons aren’t giving you a hard time again, are they?” Selma demanded fiercely, reminding Charlie of a bantam rooster. “Those people. They just want to blame someone for their golden boy’s death and you’re an easy target.”

Golden boy only fit Quinn because of his blond good looks and because Phil and Norma Simonson had put him on a pedestal above even their oldest son, Forest. To them, Quinn could do no wrong. Unfortunately, Charlie knew better.

“It’s not the Simonsons,” Charlie said. “This latest accident at the lake just brings back all the awful memories from before.” Not that the Simonsons had let her forget for a moment over the past seven years what they believed she’d done—killed their son.

“I’m so sorry this had to happen now,” Selma said. “You have enough to concern yourself with.”

“I’m fine.” She hugged Selma, tears springing to her eyes at the frailty she felt in her aunt’s wiry-thin frame.

“Oh, Charlie.” Her aunt brushed a dry kiss across her cheek. “You have taken on so much with your mother and me.”

“That’s not true,” she said. “You and Mom have always taken care of me and now you have Mom to take care of as well.”

Her aunt pulled her sweater around herself, her expression unconvinced. How much did she know? Or did she just suspect the truth?

“It’s cold out here,” Charlie said. “You should get back in before Mom misses you.” She knew that, more than the cold, would get her aunt back inside, keep her aunt from asking any more questions.

With obvious reluctance, Selma scuffled back into the house without another word.

Charlie turned to look out at the snow, filled with relief—and regret. The snow had begun to stick and pile up. The way a lot of things in life tended to pile up. When Josh’s body was pulled from the lake, she’d felt paralyzed with fear. She hadn’t known he was in town. Still didn’t understand what could have brought him up here considering that she hadn’t seen or spoken to him in four years.

She shook her head, the horror of his murder almost more than she could bear. She closed her eyes. She had just let things happen and now she’d have to pay the price. But she wouldn’t make that mistake again. She had to protect her family, no matter what it took.

From somewhere out in the snowy darkness came a low growl. Charlie moved down the porch toward the sound, trying to see the dog through the falling snow. Spark Plug, the name her father had given the puppy just before his death, growled again, this time the growl lower, more serious.

Something was out there. Someone. Charlie felt the soft hair on her neck stand up. Moving silently, she retraced her footsteps and opened the back door. The shotgun was high up on the top shelf, out of her mother’s reach—even with a chair. Charlie pulled it down and dug out two buckshot shells from the kitchen drawer. She loaded the gun and stepped back out onto the porch.

By now, snow blanketed the yard and fell in a wall of white. She stood in the dark under the porch roof, staring out into the snowfall. Who was it she had to fear? Augustus T. Riley. What was he anyway? A cop? A private investigator hired by Josh’s family? Did it matter?

Spark Plug growled again, only this time farther away, then began to bark. Past the barking, Charlie heard an engine turn deep in the pines somewhere on the county road. It sounded like a pickup with a bad muffler, one of a half dozen around town.

Spark Plug quit barking and after a few minutes wandered out of the snowstorm. He was a true mutt, shortlegged, with a spotted white, brown and black short-haired coat and big floppy ears. When he saw her, he wagged his stubby tail and climbed up the steps to the porch.

Charlie put the shotgun aside to brush snow from the dog’s back. She waited until the sound of the truck died away, then she took him inside where Aunt Selma pretended to scold him softly for not coming home sooner for dinner.

“Spark Plug barking at another coyote?” Selma asked as Charlie returned the shotgun to the top shelf and the shells to the kitchen drawer.

“Sure seems that way.” Charlie took her time cutting three pieces of apple pie, thinking about the truck she’d heard leaving and Spark Plug’s worried growl.

Then she took the plates of pie into the living room where her mother was surprised all over again to see her.

Chapter Five

Augustus heard the tap at his door just after ten. He’d give Trudi one thing, she hadn’t wasted any time.

He took one quick glance around the cabin to make sure he hadn’t left anything important lying around—like his notebook. The cabin was straight out of an old Western. Knotty-pine walls, horse-motif bedspread, antler lamp and lonesome-cowboy painting on the wall. Hee-haw!

No one back in L.A. would believe a town like this still existed. He hardly believed it himself.

She knocked again, this time more insistent. Anxious, wasn’t she? He doubted it was his charm. Some people took a malicious delight in dishing dirt about other people. As ugly as that trait was, it sure made his job a lot easier.

He swung the door open.

She stood on the tiny porch in an unbuttoned long camel-colored wool coat over a short, low-cut dress and black boots. She bit nervously at her lower lip as she shot periodic glances behind her.

“Hey,” he said, a little surprised by the way she was dressed. Even more so by the suspicious way she was acting. Did she think she’d been followed? Or was she just afraid someone would see her coming here? Why was that? “Jealous boyfriend?”

She swung around, obviously startled, and quickly smiled. “I don’t have a boyfriend. I mean not a steady one. I like my freedom,” she said all coy.

He wished there was another way to get what he needed from her. Obviously she had something different in mind than he did. He leaned against the doorjamb, not wanting to ask her in but knowing that if he didn’t he might never know what she was dying to tell him. But at what price?

The snow had stopped falling, the ground glittering cold and white behind her. And just when he thought Utopia couldn’t be any more alien to him.

Reluctantly, he stepped aside. “Come on in.” As he started to close the door, he looked out in the snowy darkness to see a pickup slow as it passed on the highway. The truck was a dark color, loud—and while he couldn’t see more than a silhouette behind the wheel, it was obvious the driver had been looking this way. Looking for Trudi? Or him? The pickup sped up and on past, kicking up snow.

He closed the door and turned to find Trudi sitting on the end of his bed, her coat off, legs crossed, exposing a lot of skin. The little flowered dress was even skimpier than he’d thought.

Sometimes he hated the things he had to do to get what he wanted. But all that mattered was the end result, right? Right. “Can I offer you something to drink?” he asked. “I’m afraid all I have are plastic glasses and tap water.”

She smiled and reached into the pocket of her coat, pulling out a bottle of beer. She handed it to him and dug out another from the other pocket. “I hope you like Moose Drool.”

He glanced at the beer. “Who could pass up a beer with such an appealing name.”

She laughed at that. In fact, she laughed at everything he said. It made this a whole lot harder.

He pulled out the straight-back chair from the small oak desk. “Are you old enough to drink alcohol?” he asked, straddling the chair to rest his arms on the back.

She gave him an “oh-you-tease” look and took a sip of her beer. “I’m twenty-six.”

Charlie’s age? “So you must have gone to school with Charlie Larkin.”

She nodded and glanced around the cabin. It wasn’t that interesting. Then her gaze settled on him. She wet her lips and gave him a come-hither smile. “Is that the only reason you asked me here? To talk about Charlie?”

He must be getting old, because he just wasn’t up to this game tonight. He cut to the chase, unable to bear dragging it out any longer. “I got the impression at the café that there was something you wanted to tell me about her.”

She seemed startled and suddenly ill at ease. “I can’t imagine what it could have been.”

He watched her dig at the beer label with her thumbnail. “Give it a little thought, I’ll bet it will come to you.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Are you a cop or something?”

“Something.” Giving her his backup story would be a waste of a good lie. And there seemed little reason to tell her the truth since it would be out soon enough.

She took a drink of her beer, eyeing him over the bottle. “What’s in it for me?”

Finally, solid ground. “Depends on if I find the information of value.” When she didn’t bother to nail him down on a price, it became apparent she wasn’t in it for the money—just as he’d originally suspected.

She sat up straighter on the bed. “You were asking about the guy they found in the lake.”

He said nothing.

“He wasn’t the first, you know.”

His heart kicked up a beat. “First to what?”

“End up dead at the lake. Quinn Simonson was killed leaving Freeze Out Lake right after high-school graduation. His car went off the road.”

Augustus shook his head. “What does that have to do with—”

“Quinn was Charlie Larkin’s high-school boyfriend. She was there that night. They had a big fight and—”

“What about?”

“Earlene Kurtz. Charlie found out that Earlene was four months pregnant with Quinn’s baby.” Augustus wondered if Trudi hadn’t helped Charlie find out about the pregnancy. He let out a low whistle. “Charlie was mad?”

Trudi snorted. “She was furious. She refused to get back in the car with Quinn even though he promised to take her straight home. He was pretty upset about everyone knowing about Earlene and the pregnancy. He left and crashed his car on a curve coming off the mountain.”

“Right, so I don’t see—”

“Charlie did something to the car.”

He took a breath. “Like what?”

She shrugged. “Something to make it crash. She’d just worked on his car the day before the accident—and that night at the lake, she was over by it just before he left.”

He shook his head. “If she’d done something to the car, the cops would have found it and she’d have been arrested.”

“No one suspected her at the time, everyone just thought it was an accident because Quinn had been drinking. By the time Phil Simonson—”

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