Beckett's Convenient Bride (6 page)

“I left it there at the intersection—my car, I mean. Well, I had to get to work—there's only one of us working a shift since Jane left to get married. I was pretty sure no one would bother it, but—”

She whirled around and plopped down onto one of the room's two chairs. “Oh, Lawdy, there's so much I don't know,” she moaned, shucking off her sneakers to massage her bare toes.

Tell me about it, Carson thought wryly. “You want to start at the beginning?”

“Oh. That was this morning. You see, I do my sketches when I'm working the evening shifts, and then wait and add watercolor when I'm working mornings, because the light's just right. In the evening. For this book, I mean. All the illustrations for
Gretchen's Ghost
are set when the sun's just gone down and there are shadows, and—well, you're not interested in all that.”

Interested? Carson was fascinated. Genuine oddities always captured his imagination, and he had yet to make sense of a single thing the woman had said—unless it was about the chicken soup. And she was speaking English.

“You see, it all started when I heard these two men arguing.”

“Which two men?”

She flung out her hands. He'd noticed that about her, too—she used her hands when she talked, as if words alone couldn't convey the full message. “Well, if I knew that, then I could have told the sheriff and none of this would have happened. I mean, not the murder, of course—that had already happened, but my car. I need to know if it could be rigged to explode, only I haven't had time to find out. I couldn't leave Jeff without someone to cover for me, and like I said, Jane's married, and besides, the nearest garage is—”

Carson held up a hand. “Whoa. Back up.”

She frowned. On her, a frown was roughly the equivalent of a megawatt smile on any other woman. He could
almost see the wheels spinning. “My illustrations, you mean? Oh. You mean the murder.”

And so she proceeded in her own unique style to relate the happenings of the past few hours. “See, first I heard these two men arguing, only I didn't see anything because I was on the other side of the church in the cemetery and there's this big grove of cedars, but then I heard this shot. I thought it was a backfire—at least I did at first when I heard someone drive away. I thought the engine backfired. It had a funny sound, like it might be groaning.”

“The gunshot?”

“The engine. Sort of a zoom, zoom, and then a low whining noise like a jet plane flying really far away.”

Right. Muffler pack. Carson listened without further interruption, having gradually concluded that at least a portion of what she said made sense when taken in context.

“Only when I got to the parking lot, there was my car and this—this dead body. So I came home and called the sheriff. At least I called nine-one-one and…well, that's about all, really. Except for seeing a man messing around my car.”

He jumped on the simplest part of her statement. He did know she had a car—knew she'd left it out on the road. “You didn't retrieve your car yet?”

She shook her head. Now that she had decided to open up, she had that childlike expression of trust that gave him all sorts of misgivings.

“But it's locked and everybody here knows it belongs to me, so I was pretty sure no one would bother it.”

Don't trust me,
he wanted to say. Trust implied involvement, and involvement was something he didn't have time for. Under other circumstances he might have enjoyed indulging in a little meaningless sex—he'd been through a long dry spell where sex was concerned, and
as reluctant as he was to admit it, there was something about the lady. As long as you didn't try to make sense of what she was saying.

After a night of inventive, uninhibited sex, he could hand over the check and walk away. Limp away. Crawl away.

Only you didn't do that to someone who trusted you. At least, Carson didn't.

Back to the issue at hand. “In other words, you can vouch for the locals. What about strangers?”

“We don't get many of those, not this time of year. Boat traffic, mostly, but people who tie up to refuel and eat at one of the restaurants don't go any farther than the waterfront. Not that there's that much more to see, just miles and miles of wetlands with a few wooded knolls. We don't even have a gift shop. Jeff sells T-shirts and souvenir mugs and things like that, but most people stop farther south where there are better facilities and more to see.”

Carson had an idea that these small, hidden stops along the waterway served another purpose, but there was no point in bringing that up. Reluctantly, he gave up on the sex and set aside his reason for being there. It had waited a hundred years; it could wait another day. “Where's your phone book? First thing we need to do is make a few calls.”

Rotary dial. Why wasn't he surprised? This whole place was an anachronism. While he waited for the call to go through, Kit paced. She'd told him to call her Kit. It suited her, he thought, watching as she moved around the room, pausing now and then to glance out the window. Foxy lady.

“Dad? How's Mom?” A long pause, and then, “Yeah, I found her.” Another pause while his father asked if he
was doing his exercises and had he known about the epidemic that had laid out half of Charleston's finest. He assured his father that he'd avoided that particular bug. And he had, for the most part, other than a few minor symptoms. His dad didn't need anything else to worry about.

“Look, I might be a day or so late getting home. How about calling the post office and—sure, that'll be fine. Thanks.”

He hung up after accepting the usual parental admonishments. He was thirty-seven years old, for cripes sake. His mama was still calling to remind him of his dental checkup. At least she had been until she'd all but forgotten he was her son.

Oh boy.

Riffling through the phone book he found the number for the sheriff's office and dialed. Kit's wide, rainwater gray eyes watched his every move, full of curiosity and something else he put down to wariness. After identifying himself, he said, “About the body found out on—” He cocked an eyebrow toward Kit.

“Cypress Mill Road,” she supplied.

“Cypress Mill Road,” he repeated, “I'd like to come in and—” He frowned. “What d'you mean, what body? You didn't get a call about a murder victim earlier today?”

Kit moved closer, her breath feathering his neck. As much as he liked the attention, he needed to concentrate, and she wasn't helping.

“It wasn't a prank, dammit, it was a—”

Glaring at Kit, he listened while the jerk on the other end read him the riot act, the gist of it being that no body had been found, and manpower had been wasted checking out a prank phone call.

Kit grabbed his arm the instant he hung up the phone. “What?” she demanded.

“They say no body was found. Are you, uh, sure you saw something? You said yourself you thought it might have been a shadow.”

Releasing his arm, she started pacing again, gesturing with her hands as if she were speaking aloud. He watched, fascinated, until she spun and glared at him as if he were somehow responsible for her predicament. “I know what shadows look like—they're a balance of alizarin crimson and thalo green.”

He didn't say a word. The Martians had landed and his translator was AWOL.

“This was no blasted shadow, I'm telling you! That's what I thought at first, too, but it wasn't all that late, and besides, shadows don't have holes in their forehead. Shadows don't—” She shuddered. “Shadows don't bleed from the nose. Darn it, I know what I saw!”

“Right.” God, Martian or not, he was tempted to hold her—forget the sex—he just wanted to hold her and tell her everything was going to be just fine, not to sweat it. Funny thing was, he was beginning to think she might really have seen something. Otherwise, why would she have called the sheriff in the first place? Whatever else she was, Kit Dixon struck him as the kind of woman who didn't like getting involved in anything rough.

Trouble was, she was already involved right up to her pretty pink ears. Something had happened, because she was obviously scared, and he'd lay odds she didn't scare easy.

Which meant that they were both involved. Temporarily involved, he stipulated silently. He could hardly hand over the check and take off, not until he was sure she'd be all right. Because he was a cop, sworn to protect and
defend the innocent. Or maybe because he was a Beckett, and the men of his family believed in that old-fashioned thing called a code of honor.

Pain in the arse, is what it was. “So here's what we'll do then,” he said, mentally laying out a plan as he spoke. “First thing tomorrow we'll check out your car—that is, if you're sure no one will bother it tonight.” He wasn't about to go snooping around with a flashlight if there was the least possibility of a bomb.

Not that he thought there was—there hadn't been time. But if this turned out to be what he was beginning to suspect, it would pay to be cautious. Sooner or later the DEA would probably be involved, but it wasn't his call to make.

Her face was a shade or two paler than it had been a few minutes earlier. A handful of freckles stood out across her nose, making her look younger than he knew she was. According to the genealogist's chart she was twenty-five.

Too young for you to be thinking what you're thinking, good buddy.

He cleared his throat, which was still on the raw side. “When do you have to work tomorrow?”

“Same shift. Five to nine. I usually go in a few minutes early and stay after to set up for the morning trade.”

“Good. First we'll check out your car and then we'll drive out to this church of yours and look around. After that, we might drop by the sheriff's office. And if you don't mind, I'll borrow your couch again tonight. Six a.m. suit you? It ought to be light enough by then, but a flashlight would come in handy.”

She nodded, a dazed look on her peaked, not-really-pretty-but-beautiful face. “I feel like I'm on a runaway escalator. Sooner or later I'll either have to get off or crash. Trouble is, there's no getting-off place.”

Carson wanted to touch her, to reassure her. He lifted a hand and let it drop. Don't go there, Beckett.

Hell, he was probably contagious, anyway. The last thing she needed was what ailed him.

The moment passed. “What do you eat for breakfast?” she asked.

“Cold pizza. Barring that, coffee and whatever.”

“Yeah, well, it'll probably be whatever,” she muttered as she shrugged and headed down the hall. “Turn off the light before you go to bed, okay? I don't like to waste electricity.”

L
ong after she had cleared the bathroom and closed her bedroom door, Carson lingered in the kitchen, washing the few dishes he'd left in the sink, which she had ignored. Then he rummaged around until he located a box of baking soda, mixed some in a glass of water, and used it to swallow a few more aspirin. His mama's favorite cure-all. Had something to do with the pH factor, not that Kate had ever put it in those terms, bless her sweet soul.

He wished to God it would help her now, but there wasn't enough aspirin and soda in the world to bring back a woman who was slipping a little farther away each day.

He yawned and went out to retrieve his overnight bag. He needed to get out of here, like yesterday. Yawning again a few minutes later, he switched out the lamp and reminded himself that this wasn't his case. He had more on his agenda than delivering a long overdue payment for a debt that wasn't even his own. But the lady needed a
hand, and he happened to be on the scene. As a man, as a Beckett and as a cop, he owed her whatever assistance he could provide.

His body cried out for sleep, but his brain was still too wired to surrender, and so he lay awake thinking over the things she'd said, slotting them into the things he'd observed. Which wasn't a whole lot, in either case.

Still, whatever else she was, the woman was not quite the flake he'd first thought her. Taken in context, most of what she'd said even made sense. But what the devil was a woman like Katherine Dixon doing in a place like this, waiting tables at a restaurant that probably would see no more than a couple dozen customers on a good day? Maybe not even that many.

According to her, she'd had two books published, for cripes sake. Outside his mother's church circle and their fund-raising cookbook, he didn't know anyone else who had actually written a book and had it published. And this was no homemade job. Even he had recognized the name of the publisher.

He had offered to set an alarm clock, but she'd told him not to bother. “I never need an alarm, not even when I'm on early shift.”

“Your call,” he'd told her, being none too fond of the things, himself. The last twenty-four hours had been a real rat race. Napping through the late afternoon and waking up after dark had only screwed up his internal clock. Now, at barely 11:00 p.m., he was wiped out, but too wide-awake to fall asleep.

Switching on the radio, he searched for a news station. If she had a TV it must be in her bedroom. He'd seen no sign of one anywhere else. Personally, he could think of better things to do in a bedroom—especially hers—than watch TV.

Country music, preaching, and some nasal jerk selling an herbal cure-all. Stuff evidently worked on everything from jock itch to hiatal hernia. After a few minutes he gave up, dug his cell phone out of his jacket pocket and punched in Margaret's number. For reasons he didn't care to examine too closely, he needed grounding in reality.

After nine rings he gave up. He didn't know if she was a heavy sleeper or not, they didn't have that kind of relationship. If the guys knew he was about to marry a woman he'd never even slept with, he'd never hear the last of it. He was considered something of a connoisseur when it came to women, but they were rarely the kind of woman a man took home to meet his family. And he'd mostly quit that stuff since making up his mind to marry Margaret.

It occurred to him that it might be a good idea to invite Margaret to move in with him for a few weeks before they made it permanent. As well as he knew her—hell, they'd grown up next door—there were still a few things he didn't know about her. A lot of things, come to think of it.

He considered trying her number again on the off chance he'd woken her up with the first call, but decided against it. She was probably out of town. The decorating business involved a lot of traveling. Buying trips, trade shows, out-of-town clients.

Carson had never been particularly interested in her work, because in his family, decorators weren't needed. Furniture and paintings and such were handed down from generation to generation, a system that suited him just fine. When he'd moved out on his own, he'd taken whatever he needed from the attic. His Aunt Becky and Uncle Coley had filled in the empty spots from their attic. It was a continuity thing, passing on what was no longer needed
to other family members who could make use of them. That way, nobody had to feel guilty over paying less than proper respect for the past.

He fell asleep picturing Kit, minus the purple shirt, white jeans or tie-dyed tights, sprawled across the ugly old sleigh bed he'd hauled down out of his folk's attic, that with a new mattress, suited him just fine.

Oh, yeah…

 

The unearthly cry came out of a dream. Carson sat up, taking only a split second to assay his surroundings. Situation awareness could save a man's life.

The penetrating cry came again, and this time he recognized it for what it was. A damned cat. If he could have located the boots he'd kicked off last night he'd have thrown both of them at the damned thing, yowling its lungs out under the front window.

Instead, he limped to the front door and let him in. “How the hell did you know where I was sleeping?” he growled as the ragged-ear tomcat wrapped himself around his bare leg.

“He knows, even when the windows are all closed. If you don't let him in he'll climb up on the roof and hang over the eaves and sing to you.” Kit wandered in, rubbing her eyes.

“You call that singing?”

Instead of answering, she tipped a container of dry food into a bowl on the front porch, then poured canned milk in another bowl. “He's not my cat, he just visits occasionally. You ready for whatever?”

His eyes widened. If “whatever” included tumbling back into bed with a dewy-faced temptress wearing an oversize T-shirt he was more than ready. Early mornings
were tricky for a man, especially one who'd been through a long dry spell.

“Breakfast,” she said dryly. Her expression implied that she knew exactly where his mind had been. “You said last night you'd eat whatever. You can have your choice of dry cereal, leftover crab cakes from the restaurant—they're a couple of days old, so maybe you'd better not. Let's see, there's…hmm…” She stared in the open refrigerator. “Chicken soup?”

Forcefully removing his gaze from the shapely backside visible through the thin cotton knit—oh, wow, he could see the shape of everything!—Carson said gruffly, “Coffee's fine. I'd better take a look at your car before any kids start messing around with it.”

She straightened up and sighed, shoving her hair away from her eyes. It obviously hadn't seen a brush recently. On the other hand, it was the kind of hair that looked pretty much the same, brushed or unbrushed.

They decided to hold off on breakfast and walk down the road instead of driving his car. That way, he figured, although he didn't voice the thought, whatever happened, they would still have one good vehicle.

“Are you sure you know what you're doing?” Kit asked when they were halfway across the front yard. She was wearing the tent-sized purple shirt and red sneakers again, completing the visual assault this time with a pair of lime green tights. Subtle, the woman was not.

“We'll soon see, won't we?”

She grabbed his arm, jerking him to a halt. “Look, if you have any doubts, let's call the sheriff. He's trained, he'll know what to do. I don't want you getting hurt on my account.”

If he'd been feeling up to par he could have either laughed or taken offense. He might even have played on
her fears just a little bit, ignoring for the moment his personal honor code. But he wasn't, and so he didn't. “Let me check out a few things before we call in the experts, okay.”

Experts, he thought wryly, who'd probably had neither the training nor the experience that he'd had. He appreciated her concern, however. That hand-on-the-arm stuff was pretty heady.

After a walk of no more than five minutes they reached the intersection where she'd left her car. “Stand back,” he said when she handed over the keys.

“Aren't you going to look first?”

“With binoculars, you mean?” he teased. “Hey, I'm looking.”

Moving like a ninety-year-old man, he knelt on the dusty marl, rolled onto his back and flashed a light up underneath the chassis. Everything there checked out. After taking a moment to catch his breath, he rolled up onto his knees and pulled himself to a standing position. Wanted to tell her to turn around, to quit watching him with that look in her eyes, but he didn't.

“Next place,” he muttered half to himself, “driver's side door.”

Instead, he unlocked the passenger door and leaned across, searching for traces of plastic or anything the slightest bit out of alignment. He wasn't going to find anything because in the first place, she was probably paranoid, and in the second place, the guy hadn't had time to do much in plain sight of anyone who happened to be working on the waterfront a few thousand feet away.

He'd probably been checking out an abandoned car, one that might even be a collector's item. Perfectly normal reaction.

On the other hand, he'd run away when she had called
out. If he'd been interested in her car, wouldn't he have hung around to ask questions?

With Kit hovering anxiously in the background, Carson went over the vintage Beetle carefully, up and down, in and out, sniffing and testing and double checking in case he'd missed something the first time around. Wiping his hands on the seat of his khakis, it occurred to him that he was becoming entirely too familiar with the dirt around this particular intersection.

“She's okay. I'll drive her home for you,” he said. “You can ride or walk, your call. We'll take my car to the sheriff's office.”

“Do we have to?”

“To what, take my car?”

“Talk to the sheriff. I mean there's nothing wrong with Ladybug, so we don't really have anything more to report. The man already thinks I'm a nutcase.”

She had a point. Funny thing, though—after knowing her for less than twenty-four hours, Carson was pretty sure she'd seen something. “Then let's drive out to this church of yours first. You can show me where you were when you heard the argument, when you heard the shot, and where the body was lying when you saw it.”

She looked at him as if she were about to burst into tears. “You do believe me, then.” It was a statement, not a question.

Something inside him twisted almost painfully. It had nothing to do with the state of his health. He held the door and she slid onto the passenger's seat. Wedging his six-foot-two frame under the steering wheel, he turned and looked at her pale profile. Funny, the way certain faces could draw a man's gaze like a magnet. “I believe you saw something,” was all he was willing to admit at that point.

Back at the house, while he was waiting for Kit to do whatever she had to do to get ready, Carson ate one of the crab cakes. She was probably keeping them to feed to her critters, but he was running on empty and crab cakes were among his favorite foods.

As was just about everything else except maybe liver and strawberries. Last night's chicken soup had evidently cured what ailed him, but it lacked any real staying power.

“I'm ready,” Kit said. She'd braided her hair, which made her look younger than ever. Carson told himself he ought to be ashamed of the lecherous thoughts that kept sneaking into his mind. Hell, he was practically a married man. Besides, he was old enough to be her…uncle.

She snagged a straw hat and a pair of oversized, orange-framed sunglasses. His mother would have loved the hat. Both the crown and half the brim were covered with big, frowsy fake flowers.

“If I'd known it was going to be formal, I'd have brought along a tie,” he quipped, ushering her out the door.

Unassisted, she climbed up into the four-wheel drive vehicle without comment. Margaret always made an issue of his choice of wheels, claiming it was a juvenile hold-over from his days playing at being a NASCAR driver.

She was probably right, but he liked to think it was more a practical choice than a matter of testosterone. He lived in the sticks, after all. Some of his favorite fishing spots weren't exactly on the beaten track.

“Wow, I really like this thing,” Kit commented, wriggling her shapely behind on the bucket seat. She twisted around to look over the spacious cargo area. “It would hold practically every thing I own, Ladybug included.”

“Comes in handy. I live out in the country.” Something else Margaret held against him. They still had a few
issues to settle before they tied the knot. “You want to point me in the right direction?”

She leaned forward and turned on the radio, touching first one button, then another. “My mother drove a Mercedes. That is, she lost her license, but we still had it when…” She cut her eyes at him, those rain-soft, laser-sharp gray eyes that seemed to see right through him. “This is a lot more practical, though. You probably won't believe me, but I'm actually extremely practical.”

Yeah, right. A woman who drove a thirty-five-year-old car that held roughly the same amount of cargo as a road bike. “You want to clue me in on where we're going?”

And while you're at it, stop wriggling around on my front seat, smelling like sugar and spice and everything nice. I don't need the distraction, he added silently.

She faced forward, all business. “Go past the wharf and take a left. It's not paved, but it's usually passable unless we've had lots of rain or the wind's blown the water up the creeks.” After a while she said, “Jeff says the village used to be a lot bigger than it is now. His family's been here forever. Now, though, about the only thing left out in this area we're going to is the church, the cemetery, a few old ruined houses and some sunken boats.” She twisted around and flashed that guileless grin that made her look too damned young. That and the freckles and the braid. “That's what makes it so perfect for
Gretchen's Ghost,
” she said ingenuously.