Premeditated Marriage

“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.