Racing the Hunter's Moon (Entangled Bliss) (5 page)

“No.” Joe was adamant. “This isn’t one of your detective novels. Leonora’s no Miss Marple. The more people we involve, the more likely it is that a mistake will be made.”

Betty’s heart dived. He wanted to run every single element of the investigation—thought he had all bases covered and certainly wouldn’t approve of the steps she was taking behind the scenes. The bureau had let Charmers walk before. Much as she wanted to, confiding in him was too risky.

“It’s dangerous, too,” Joe added. “Charmers could be dangerous when crossed.”

“Not all women are delicate flowers who need to be protected at all costs.”

Joe’s jaw tightened, but he said nothing.

Betty puffed out a breath.
Maybe all FBI agents have hero complexes…
“So you build a relationship with him, get him to trust you over the rally, and let him know you have money to invest. In time—”

“I don’t have time. If we don’t act quickly, we may lose him.”

Chapter Five

The cars were lined up along Meadowsweet’s Main Street. The route books had been handed out, and Betty and the other navigators sat at long tables next to the starting line, plotting the route from the instructions onto their maps.

The rally organizers had arranged a bus to transport everyone’s luggage to each night’s stop, so all they had to worry about was supplies for the day. Betty had taken care of that too. The tiny backseat held a cooler with drinks and snacks, and she had mounted a tray on her side of the dashboard to hold the route book and map.

Joe glanced over and watched her work. She wore a denim shirt with a large pocket over her breast, which held highlighters and pens. Her chestnut hair was pulled up in a high ponytail, and glinted in the sunlight. There was a tiny wrinkle between her eyebrows as she expertly traced the route, then broke off to highlight certain portions of the route book.

If things were different, spending three days driving through the mountains with her at his side would be fun. They’d reached an easy understanding—a mutual respect over the past few days—and after he’d confessed his plan to catch Charmers they seemed closer, a team.

She glanced up. Found him. Then picked up the sheaf of paperwork and started to walk his direction.

“I’m ready.” She went up on tiptoe, and kissed him smack on the mouth.

Shocked, Joe just stood there. Her mouth was soft. The scent of flowers drifted from her hair, from her warm skin.

“Put your arms around me. We’re meant to be a couple, remember?” she whispered against his mouth. “Charmers is watching.”

Damn. He’d wanted to kiss her again ever since that night at Mark’s house. And now that he had to, it was impossible to pretend to himself it didn’t mean anything. He snaked an arm around her, pulled her close, breathed in her summery, lemon scent, and kissed her back.

She tasted just as he remembered. Her arms went around his neck, and she pressed herself against him, giving Charmers and the entire population of Meadowsweet a show they wouldn’t soon forget.

Joe’s head swam.

“Woo-hoo!” A cheer from somewhere in the crowd broke the spell.

Betty pulled back. “That should do it.” She grabbed his hand. “Let’s get our card stamped and get going.”

Joe looked around. The sidewalks were packed with enthusiastic spectators. Alice and Mark stood at one side, Alice holding up a makeshift banner she’d painted with
Go, Joe and Betty!
in giant letters, while Mark and some of the garage’s customers waved little flags with Under the Hood’s logo—a ’50s housewife holding a wrench—in the air.

Alice was grinning—more than likely that “woo-hoo” had come from her. She jiggled the banner and Mark gave him the thumbs-up.

With a weak smile, Joe returned it and climbed into the MG. He squeezed his hands around the leather steering wheel, drove up to the start, and waited while time control wrote their start time on the time card.

Betty grabbed two bottles of water from the cooler and dropped them on the floor at her feet. She clutched the map.

“Ready?” She turned to him, a wide smile on her face.

“Ready.” The moment time control handed her back their time card, he gunned the engine and they were off.

Betty kept up a running commentary as they sped down the road. There were spectators all the way down Main Street and on the road out of town.

“Wow, this is great.”

Betty laughed. “Isn’t it? Mark said the rally was popular, but I hadn’t expected everyone to turn out for us.” The staff had come out of every store and coffee shop along the route. Even the customers from the salon came out, some of them in curlers or with their hair stacked in shiny foil layers, and waved as they went past. Betty waved back, with delight on her face. “I love this. We should do it every year.”

Every year.
Joe’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. If he were just a carpenter, if he really lived in Meadowsweet, there wasn’t anything he would enjoy more. The joy that glowed from Betty was infectious. When she’d kissed him, he’d let himself imagine they could be together—had let himself get swept away in her crazy fantasy. “Watch your speed,” Betty tapped the speedometer. “And take the next left ahead. They’re very sneaky—they plotted a route we haven’t practiced. It’s going to be tricky.” She pulled a calculator out of the bag on the floor and started tapping keys. “I’m trying to calculate our speed until the next control point. I need to calibrate our speedometer with the rallymeister’s too. There’s bound to be some variation.”

She was totally focused on the task at hand. Probably hadn’t given a second thought to that kiss, when it was all he could think about. Joe forced himself to concentrate on the road. “How many control points?”

“Just two in this stage.” She gazed out the windshield. “Here comes that left.”

He took it, and she ticked it off in the route book.

“Okay, we’re going straight for five miles.” She glanced across at him. “This is fun, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.” She was having such a great time. Her hair bobbed every time she looked down at the map, and then up at him or out the window. He couldn’t help but get into the spirit too. “When are we stopping for lunch?”

“You hungry already?” She grinned. “You ate enough breakfast.”

Before the race, the competitors had been treated to a full breakfast in the Meadowsweet Hotel. “Who could resist those pancakes?”

“Not you, obviously.” She laughed. “I don’t know where you put it. If I ate that much I wouldn’t fit my butt into this car.”

He was still thinking of her butt when they rounded a bend to see an old Corvette with a cloud of smoke coming from the tailpipe.

“They’re in trouble. We should stop.”

Betty shook her head. “Can’t. It’s against the rules to stop to help another driver. We have to leave that to the support team. They’re following.”

“How far back?”

“At the end,” Betty admitted.

Joe hit the turn signal, then passed the stricken car. The navigator was shouting at the driver, who climbed out and slammed the door hard. Looking in his rearview, Joe saw him kick the tire.

“Ouch. Promise you won’t go crazy if we break down?”

Betty was bent over the map as the road snaked in a long curve around the side of the mountain. “Promise. If we break down, I’ll fix us.”

…

It was a glorious day. The sun wasn’t harsh and glaring, like the rays of summer, but bathed the road ahead in a golden glow that painted the dappled undergrowth. There were no distinct clouds in the sky, merely the occasional film of white, as if sprayed by a fine airbrush. Betty’s mood soared like the birds overhead. She cranked down her window a tad, breathed in the crisp air, and let the pure joy of being out in the elements overtake her. “This beats being in the office any day.” She glanced across the car. “In your real life, is carpentry just a hobby, or did you used to work as a carpenter?”

“I used to make furniture, and fitted kitchens,” Joe said. “But it’s a cutthroat business if you’re doing it for money. There are a hell of a lot of carpenters out there, and there’s no way to compete with the ready-to-assemble sellers. I wasn’t interested in selling something below what it cost me to make it, and I couldn’t live on what I made for my work, so I moved on.”

“To the FBI.”

“Yeah.”

“It’s not a natural progression from carpentry.” She examined his face for a trace of emotion, a hint to what had propelled him into this different career. “Although I guess in both you spend a lot of time alone.”

“I’m not really a people person. And I guess I like bringing people to justice. There are a lot of con men out there. Charmers is the tip of the iceberg.” His mouth tightened. “Not everyone is capable of the detachment involved in tracking someone. They get emotionally involved, and being invested in the outcome makes them reckless, liable to screw up.”

His words struck a note, deep within. She’d do anything to get Charmers. The changes he’d wrought in her mother had ignited an anger inside that was all-consuming. “He really did a number on my mother. Before him, she was sort of naive—she believed the best of everyone. I was away at college—I thought she was safe.” Her chest ached. “Now she doesn’t trust easily. She’s guarded. I hate to see that in her.”

“It wasn’t your fault.” Joe glanced over. “You know that, don’t you? I’ve looked into a lot of his previous scams. Charmers is a master at deceit. Even if you’d been around, you wouldn’t have suspected anything.”

Her heart tightened. Despite his words she did feel guilty, did in some way feel responsible. There had been only the two of them for years now. She’d been so anxious to get on with her own life, she had been casual about her mother’s. Christine had asked her to come home to meet her new boyfriend, and she’d been too busy. Maybe if she’d made the time…

“Don’t blame yourself.”

Ahead, the road snaked to the left. Betty checked distances and ticked off the latest section on the map. “There’s a right turn half a mile ahead. Then we should be arriving at the first control point. We’ll stop and hand the card out of the window to be time-stamped, then we’re on our way again.” She checked the stopwatch, then the speedometer. “We’re running a couple of minutes late, up the speed a little.”

As many of the cars and owners were older, there was nothing taxing about the first morning’s drive. The rally was more like a huge Sunday outing where enthusiasts took their cars out. By the time they arrived at the end of the first stage, the sun was high in the sky, and she was more than ready for lunch. They got their time recorded on the card, parked the MG, and walked across the grass to the front door of the restaurant that was hosting their lunch.

A large sign in the lobby proclaimed, “Welcome Meadowsweet ralliers! Lunch is served in the MacKenzie Room.” They followed the arrow pointing the way into a large dining room. A buffet lunch was set up on tables on the right, and clusters of smaller tables were dotted around the room.

“There’s Leonora.” Betty grabbed Joe’s hand. “Come on.”

“Hi, Betty,” the older woman greeted them as they approached. She waved to some empty chairs. “Do join us.”

Charmers wore a polite smile. His gaze flickered to her, to Joe, and then to their linked hands. Betty pulled out a chair. “Leonora, Alexander, I don’t think you’ve met Joe?” Nerves shimmied in her stomach being so close to Charmers. “The first stage was easy enough, wasn’t it?”

“It was for some.” Leonora darted a look at a couple just entering the dining room. “Ed Fleming and his wife had some problems.”

Betty followed Leonora’s gaze. The couple driving the smoking Corvette didn’t seem to be talking. The driver was scowling and his wife was patently ignoring him. “That’s Ed Fleming?” She’d heard that the reclusive writer lived in Meadowsweet, but hadn’t met him. “I love his books.”

“I don’t know his work,” Joe said.

“Yes, you do,” Leonora replied. “Everyone does. I’ve never read them, but I watch the TV series they made. It’s called
Crime Bite
.”

“It’s damned good.” Betty leaned close to Joe. “You know the way I love crime shows? Well,
Crime Bite
is my favorite.”

“Is that the one about the vampire private investigator?” Joe grinned. “The one who seems to remove his shirt at every single opportunity?”

“He’s a serious investigator.” She couldn’t help grinning. The show was great, with lots of clever twists, but he was right. The lead actor did strip every episode.

“Oh yeah. Obviously.” Joe smiled.

“I’m starving,” Charmers said. “Can I get you something from the buffet, darling?” He placed a hand on Leonora’s, focused his entire attention on her, in a way that he must at one stage have done to Betty’s mother. Betty gritted her teeth.
What a creep.

“Let’s all go.” Leonora stood.

Over lunch, they made casual conversation about the race and the challenges ahead. Charmers discussed politics, the state of the economy, but never once veered into personal territory. All Joe’s attempts to deepen the conversation led nowhere—the older man was charming, attentive to Leonora, yet reserved. His dark eyes never strayed from her face, and although he smiled politely at Betty’s jokes, he didn’t laugh. He was a difficult nut to crack.

The coffee had been served and drunk—there was no excuse to stay.

Betty unhooked her bag from the back of her chair and stood. “See you at dinner.”

…

Their time was recorded on the card again, then they were off.

“This next stage will bring us up to the ridge,” Betty said, examining the map. “It’s only seventy miles, but the road winds and the speed limit is low. The rallymeister has estimated two hours in all for this stage.” She marked the route book. “You want to drive straight for three miles, then turn left just before what looks like an old farmhouse.”

“Okay.” Joe concentrated on the road ahead. Charmers was canny and cautious. He had no reason to trust either of them, and was obviously reluctant to. Leonora, though, had been friendly. As one of Under the Hood’s long-term customers, she knew Betty well, but he’d been pleasantly surprised that she’d invited them to join their table for lunch, and asked them to join her and Charmers for dinner as there were plenty of participants she seemed to be friends with.

Making the first meeting had been easier than he’d thought, but Charmers’s natural caution would be difficult to overcome—especially in such a tight time frame.

“Here comes the farmhouse—take the turn to the left just before it.” Betty ticked off the direction with her pen. “Straight on from here. Slow down a little. Keep our speed to about forty.”

“Right.” He edged off the gas and breathed deeply.

“I wanted to be a private investigator when I was a kid,” Betty said. “I always thought it would be so glamorous, creeping around, trying to catch bad guys. I used to make invisible ink with vinegar and write secret messages everywhere.”

A long-buried memory surfaced. He’d only been six or seven, and even though his father must have been living with them at that time, he was absent from the memory—making it a good one. “I did the same. My mom found me crying in the kitchen clutching a knife. I remember the look on her face—she thought I’d hurt myself.” He glanced over, couldn’t stop the smile that spread across his face at the memory. “The only thing I’d hurt was an onion. I chopped it to bits and mashed up the pieces in a bowl, trying to make ink from onion juice. My eyes itched, so I rubbed at them, making the whole thing worse.”