Mountain Sheriff

She stuffed the heart back into the box, hurriedly closing the lid. The defroster had finally cleared enough of her windshield that she could drive the two blocks to the post office. But as she started to pull out, she caught a glimpse of a black pickup one street over.

She shifted into gear and took off after it. As she reached the corner, she half expected the truck to be gone. But there it was, creeping along as if the driver was lost. Or sightseeing. Could she be wrong about it following her?

There was only one way to find out, she thought, as she floored the gas, roared past the pickup and then hit her brakes, skidding sideways to block the street.

She leaped from her car into the pouring rain, ran up to the driver’s side of the pickup and jerked the door open.

A startled gray-haired man stared out at her. Beside him, a younger woman with blond hair clasped both hands over her chest as if she was having a heart attack.

Too late Charity noticed that the windows on the pickup weren’t tinted. This wasn’t the black truck she’d seen earlier, the one she was sure had been following her. On closer inspection this pickup was a much newer model. Worse, she knew the driver.

“Charity?” the elderly man gasped.

She groaned. “Mr. Sawyer, I’m so sorry. I thought you were someone else.” He’d left Timber Falls about ten years ago after his wife died, but he’d kept the old Victorian house at the edge of town that had been in his family for generations.

“What in heaven’s name were you thinking?” the blonde next to him demanded.

“It’s all right, Emily,” Liam said to the woman. “It’s just Charity Jenkins. She’s a good friend of my daughter Roz’s.” He turned to Charity. “This is my wife, Emily. I’ve moved back home.”

He’d remarried? And come back to Timber Falls? Charity had noticed someone painting the old place just the other day, but never dreamed Liam Sawyer would return.

“Congratulations,” she said, trying to hide her surprise and embarrassment. “I hope that means Rozalyn will be coming up to visit.” She hadn’t seen her friend for several years now.

Liam smiled ruefully. “She’s awfully busy. You know she’s a famous photographer now.”

Charity nodded, the rain dripping off the front of her hood. “I have all her books.”

“Could we get going?” Emily asked Liam.

“I’m sorry,” Charity said again, realizing the rain was getting into the pickup. Liam seemed oblivious to it, though. “I’ll move my car.”

He smiled at her. “It is good to see you, Charity. Please stop by and visit.”

“Tell her to wait until we get settled,” Emily said. “The place is a disaster. It’s going to take months to get it into any shape at all.”

Charity sprinted back to her car and hurriedly pulled away, thinking about Roz as she drove to the post office to pick up her mail. She and Roz had been inseparable as kids. Of course Roz would be coming to visit her father, no matter how busy she was. It would be good to see her again.

Postmistress Sarah Bridges looked up as Charity came into the small post office. “Just got all the mail out,” Sarah said from behind the caged opening on the left. To the right was a row of mailboxes.

“Anything good in mine?” Charity asked as she walked down to her box and, using her key, opened it to see a stack of bills.

“You know I never pay any attention to who gets what,” Sarah called from behind the wall of boxes.

Uh-huh. Charity flipped through the stack as she walked back to where Sarah stood. Sarah was a good source of gossip.

“So what’s new?” she asked Sarah.

“Liam Sawyer’s remarried and back in town.”

Darn. Charity hoped she had the jump on that story. No such luck. “I know. I just saw them.”

Sarah shot her a look. “What do you think of the new wife?”

Charity might have shared her thoughts on Emily Sawyer if it hadn’t been for an old loyalty to Roz. “I only saw her for a minute.”

Sarah nodded, lips pursed, eyeing her as if she was holding out. “Well, you have a good day.”

Charity doubted that, given how the day had gone so far. She pushed open the door and made a run for her car through the rain. She hadn’t gone but a few steps when she caught a movement from the alley between the post office and bank.

An instant later she was hit by what felt like a freight train. Her mail went flying as she was knocked down in the mud by someone wearing a large dark raincoat. The cloaked figure stopped, back turned to her and knelt to hurriedly scoop up her mail from the wet ground.

She pushed herself up into a sitting position, too stunned to stand—until she realized the person in the dark raincoat wasn’t picking up her mail to give her, but going through it!

“Hey!” Charity cried.

The dark raincoat didn’t turn. Behind her Charity heard Sarah come out of the post office. “Charity?”

The figure dropped the mail and took off at a run down the alley.

“What in the world?” Sarah demanded, charging out to scoop up the wet mail and help Charity to her feet as the dark raincoat disappeared around the corner.

Charity took the mail from Sarah, her gaze still on the street where the figure had vanished. She heard an engine start in the distance. A few seconds later, a black pickup with tinted windows roared off two blocks away.

MITCH TUCKED the baby spoon in his pocket as Florie swept back into the bungalow on a gust of wind and rain.

“How’s the client?” he asked, trying to cover the fact that she’d startled him.

“Problems of the heart,” she said with a wave of her hand. “She’s going to call me back. Have you figured out where Nina has gone?”

He shook his head. “When she arrived she didn’t have a job, you said.”

Florie nodded. “She asked me about a bungalow, I said I had one, she said she’d take it and then she asked me how to get to Dennison Ducks.”

So Nina had been confident she was going to get a job at the decoy plant. It was the biggest business in town, and maybe Nina had experience that made her confident she’d be hired. But Mitch also knew jobs at the plant were hard to come by. Nor were there many openings, because wages and benefits were good and with so few jobs in Timber Falls, employees tended to stay.

“What kind of paperwork did you get her to fill out before you rented her the bungalow?” Mitch asked, hoping for a clue as to Nina Monroe’s life before she showed up here.

“None, other than her name,” Florie said with a shake of her head. “I just go by whatever vibe I pick up.”

“Vibes, instead of a former address or references?” he asked, unable to hide his disbelief.

“I’ll have you know vibes are much more reliable than references.”

He sighed. “But you told me her vibes were bad.”

Florie flushed. “Actually, no, I said they were weird. I remember thinking she was awfully nervous. From her aura I could tell she had man trouble. But with women that’s usually the case, isn’t it?”

“But you rented to her, anyway?”

“She had cash,” Florie said with an embarrassed shrug.

He counted to ten. “She get any phone calls while she was here?”

“Just one. From some woman. Sounded old. Maybe her mother, or grandmother. Nina didn’t want to the take the call but finally did. I heard a little of it. Nina said, ‘How did you find me? I told you to leave me alone.’ She paused, then said, ‘Right, you’re worried about me. That’s a laugh. Don’t call here again. You’re just going to mess things up.”’

Not bad for hearing only a “little” of a one-sided conversation. “The woman ever call again?”

Florie shook her head. “And before you ask, the number was blocked. You know, on my caller ID. I only checked because I didn’t like the vibes I got from the caller. Just like what I’m picking up now about Nina. Worse vibes than before, you know?”

He knew, thinking of the missing woman and the baby spoon in his pocket.

Chapter Four

Back at his office, Mitch closed the door and went straight to his computer. He typed in Nina Monroe’s name and her social security number Wade had given him—not surprised by the results.

Nina Monroe had lied about not only her social security number, but her name, as well.

“I’m going to get some doughnuts,” Sissy said, sticking her head in the door.

“Lemon-filled?”

She nodded and smiled. “You need anything be fore I go?”

He shook his head and waited until he heard her leave before he went down to the basement where the old files were kept.

He dug out Angela Dennison’s file, dusted it off and took it back upstairs.

Sheriff Bill “Hud” Hudson had been like a father to Mitch, as well as a mentor and friend. Hud had also been a first-rate sheriff and the reason Mitch had taken the same career path, instead of following his father’s example and becoming a drunk.

Hud had been sheriff at the time of Angela’s disappearance. At first, it was believed that the baby had been kidnapped. But no ransom demand was ever made and no body was ever found.

Not far into the file, Mitch started seeing a pattern, one he didn’t like. In these types of cases, the parents are usually the first suspects, and Wade and Daisy Dennison were no exceptions.

In Sheriff Hudson’s interview with Daisy, she testified that she didn’t recall seeing Wade until the baby was discovered missing the next morning. She’d said she’d gone to bed early and didn’t know when Wade had gotten home.

Wade, however, said he returned home at his usual time to find that Daisy had been drinking. They’d argued. She’d gone to bed. He’d slept in the den until he was wakened by the nanny early the next morning screaming that the baby was gone.

The nanny, Alma Bromdale, said she’d put the baby to bed about eight that night and gone to bed early herself. She’d taken some cold medicine that made her drowsy and thought that was why she hadn’t heard anything in the adjacent room where the baby was sleeping.

That meant none of the three had an alibi.

Alma Bromdale. Mitch wrote down the name in his notebook. The nanny had been with the Dennisons for more than two years. She’d been hired just before the Dennisons first daughter, Desiree, was born. Alma was twenty-five at the time, from Coos Bay and had listed her job experience as one previous nanny job, baby-sitting and a nanny course through the adult-education program at the high school. She must be about fifty-two now.

Alma had been fired the day after the presumed kidnapping and had left Timber Falls. Mitch checked the telephone directory online. There was only one Bromdale in Coos Bay—Harriet Bromdale. A relative? He wrote down that name, as well, wondering what in the hell he was doing.

So he found an old baby’s spoon with a Dennison duck head and “Angela” engraved on it. And so Nina Monroe was the right age and was now missing. Did he really think Nina might be the missing Angela?

He looked down at the file again, shaking his head. He didn’t know what to think. Hud had noted in his interview with Alma that she’d seemed scared and upset, both natural for someone who’d just learned that the baby she was responsible for had been stolen—and from the adjacent room.

Alma had admitted that Wade and Daisy fought and, yes, she’d overheard them arguing about the paternity of the baby. Wade didn’t think it was his.

Mitch swore under his breath.

The alleged kidnapper had climbed the trellis to the second-story room, but was believed to have taken the baby down the back stairs and out through a rear door on the first floor. Unfortunately, Sheriff Hudson had noted Wade had initiated a search of the area, using a few Dennison Duck employees, before calling the sheriff, and they’d tracked all over and destroyed any evidence there might have been outside the baby’s bedroom window.

Baby Angela had been wearing a pink nightshirt. The only other item taken from the room was the quilt from her bed. Nothing else. No baby spoon, but Mitch knew that the spoon could have easily been overlooked.

He continued down the list of suspects to the live-in housekeeper who’d been fired a week before the abduction, a woman by the name of Georgette Bonners.

Georgette had been angry and, like Alma, had nothing good to say about the Dennisons. She had also alluded to the fighting and the question of the baby’s paternity.

On the night of the abduction, Georgette said she was with her husband, Tim. He confirmed it. Both were now deceased.

Mitch closed the file, telling himself he was probably barking up the wrong tree. But there was that damned spoon. And Nina Monroe was missing. He put the file in his drawer and locked it.

As Sissy came in with the doughnuts, he grabbed his coat and headed for the door, taking the lemon-filled doughnut she shoved at him on his way out with a grin and a thanks.

The road to Dennison Ducks was narrow and dark, ten miles carved through the forest. Today, with the rain beating down, the road was even darker, gloomy somehow.

Or maybe it was just his mood, which hadn’t been helped by the thought of that damned present someone had left for Charity. She’d sounded so excited. He wondered now what the gift had been.

Dennison Ducks was Timber Falls’s claim to fame. Of course, if Wade Dennison had his way, the town would be renamed Dennison. Or even Dennison Ducks. Fortunately Wade didn’t have his way all the time.

The decoys were sold in a small outlet store in town next to the Timber Falls Courier office, from mid-April to mid-October. But few people knew where the ducks were actually carved, since none were sold on site at the plant. There wasn’t even a Dennison Ducks sign on the large metal building, just a small sign at the gravel parking lot that read Employees Only.

There was no gate. No security guard. And since no one lived on the premises, no one had seen Nina Monroe arrive or leave last night, according to Wade.

This morning there were a half-dozen cars in the lot. Mitch had called on the way to make sure Wade was in his office. He was and had told Mitch he could talk to any of the workers he needed to. Earlier Mitch had suspected Wade hadn’t been telling him everything. Now, after seeing Nina’s ransacked bungalow, he was convinced of it. He parked and rang the bell at the employee entrance. The door was opened by Bud Farnsworth, the production manager.

Mitch was assaulted by the heavy scent of freshly cut pine as he entered the building. From deep inside came the drone of band saws, carving machines and sanders. Ducks in various stages of production lined the tall metal shelves that ran the length of the room.

“Wade said you’d be coming by.” Bud didn’t sound happy about that. “You know this is our busiest time of the year, gearing up for Christmas.” He was a burly fifty-something man with receding dark hair and small dark eyes that always seemed to be squinted in a frown. Like most of the employees, he’d started working at the decoy plant in high school and had worked his way up.

Bud drank on his time off and it showed in his ruddy complexion, as well as in his cranky demeanor, probably the result of a hangover. “Before you bother to ask, I don’t know anything about Nina Monroe. She didn’t work for me. Never said two words to her.” Bud’s crankiness verged on hostility. “Paint department’s down there.” He pointed between the shelves of ducks.

“If you think of anything that might help, give me a call,” Mitch said to the man’s retreating back.

Bud gave no sign he’d heard.

Mitch rounded the end of the last shelf to what was obviously the paint department. Three artists were seated at a large wooden table next to a window. Both the table and the floor around them were covered in dried paint. One of the four chairs at the table was empty. Nina Monroe’s.

Mitch made his way to the painters, recognizing all three women. The thing about living in a small town like Timber Falls was that everyone knows everyone else—and their business. For most people, that was a curse. For the town sheriff, it was a mixed blessing.

Sheryl Bends didn’t look up as he dragged out the empty chair next to her and sat down. He’d gone to school with Sheryl, even kissed her once in junior high. She was divorced from Fred Bends, a local logger, had worked at Dennison Ducks since high school and spent most evenings at the Duck-In Bar.

She had a narrow face with strong features and wide pale-green eyes, and wore her brown hair in a single braid that fell to the middle of her back. She often invited him over for dinner at her place. He’d never accepted, although he’d been tempted on occasion—usually when he just couldn’t get Charity off his mind. But he’d never been tempted enough to actually accept.

Sheryl wore her usual outfit—a Western shirt, jeans, moccasins and long beaded earrings. Both the shirt and jeans seemed to be fighting to keep her ample breasts and bottom from bursting out.

“Hello, Sheriff,” Sheryl said, giving him one of her slow sexy smiles.

“Sheryl.” He felt his face warm a little.

From across the table, Tracy Shank seemed amused to see him flustered. Tracy was thirtysomething with cropped brown hair and close-set eyes. She gave him a nod and kept working.

Next to her sat Pat Ames. She was fiftyish with a head of gray curly hair and a small delicate frame.

“Sheriff,” Pat said, and kept painting the drake decoy in front of her.

He turned his attention to Nina’s workspace, hoping to find some personal item that might give him a clue as to her whereabouts. But while the other women had photos of husbands or boyfriends or kids, there was nothing personal at Nina’s end.

Mitch watched the women work for a moment, wondering if he should talk to them separately. He hoped they’d be more honest as a group. Also, he was still expecting Nina to turn up. It wasn’t as if he had a murder investigation on his hands.

“I suppose you heard I’m looking for Nina Monroe.”

They had. He went through his questions with Pat and Tracy, who told him what they knew, with Sheryl nodding in agreement. According to the women, Nina stayed to herself, didn’t talk much, didn’t socialize with her fellow workers, didn’t even eat her brownbag lunch with them.

“Where’d she eat lunch?” he asked, having noticed what looked like a coffee-break room on his way in.

The women shrugged. “She’d leave the building,” Pat said quietly as she carefully painted a patch of Mallard green on her duck decoy.

“She ate outside?” he asked.

Pat shrugged and whispered, “Wade usually left for lunch right after her.” Pat didn’t look at him, just kept working.

“You think there was something going on between them?” he asked, keeping his voice down, too.

No answer.

Sheryl glanced past his shoulder. He followed her gaze to the large plate-glass window of Wade’s office on the second floor. The office was situated so that it overlooked the plant floor, giving him a view of the entire production area. Wade stood at the window, watching.

Mitch shoved back his chair, stood and thanked the women before heading upstairs.

Wade was still standing at the glass looking down when Mitch stepped into his office. He turned, not looking happy. But then, he seldom did.

“Have you found out anything?” he demanded.

“Not much. I’d like to see Nina’s employment file.”

“I don’t know what help it’ll be.” Wade motioned for Mitch to draw up a chair in front of his desk as he stepped into the reception area outside his office, opened a large file cabinet and pulled out a file folder. His secretary’s desk was empty, Mitch noted.

On a high shelf that ran the circumference of the office were samples of every decoy ever made at Dennison Ducks, all painted, all different sizes, shapes and types of ducks. The light made the dozens of eyes glitter as if watching him.

Wade handed Mitch the file and returned to his big black leather chair on the other side of the desk.

The folder had little in it. The Dennison Ducks employment application was one page. Under Former Employers, Nina had named a craft shop in Lincoln City called Doodles and a restaurant called The Cove in North Bend along the coast where she’d been a waitress. Not exactly great references for decoy painting, which he’d always heard took a great deal of artistic talent. So why had Nina been hired so quickly at Dennison Ducks?

Nina had left the phone numbers of her past employers blank. Under the space for her former address, she’d just put Lincoln City and the name of a motel or apartment building there, Seashore Views. No address. No phone number.

“There isn’t much here,” Mitch agreed. “And it doesn’t look like she had any experience as a painter.”

“She’d done some painting at the craft shop where she worked.” Wade sounded defensive. “She just didn’t put it down.”

Uh-huh. There was nothing about painting experience on her application. Nor was there anything under next of kin or a number to call in case of emergency. “What do you know about her personally?”

Wade looked surprised. “Personally? I don’t know anything about her.”

“You must have talked to her,” Mitch said.

“I might have complimented her on a couple of the designs she came to me with, but nothing other than that. I let my group leaders or my secretary handle all personnel problems.”

“Were there problems with Nina?” Mitch had to ask.

“None that I know of.” Wade seemed to avoid his gaze.

Mitch didn’t like the feeling he was getting. “You told me earlier that she didn’t have any family or friends or boyfriends.”

“That’s just what I heard.” He straightened several items on his desk, obviously nervous.

“Who is the group leader in the paint department?”

“Sheryl Bends.” Sheryl who hadn’t said squat the whole time Mitch had asked questions.

“Do you have a photograph of Nina?”

Wade seemed startled by the question. “Why would I have a photo of her?”

“I thought maybe you had some sort of employee card with her photo on it or possibly a photo that was taken at some Dennison Duck function,” he suggested.

Wade shook his head. He was perspiring, although the office was quite cool. There were large patches of sweat darkening the underarms of his shirt. “Nina had only worked here a month. She missed the company summer picnic.”

Mitch asked for a copy of the one-page application and a W-9 form she had filled out stating only one deduction, everything that had been in her file. Wade made the copies himself on a small copier just outside his office.

“Where’s Ethel?” Mitch asked, wondering where Wade’s secretary was today.

Wade blinked as if he’d been a thousand miles away. “She’s off sick.” He handed him the copies, his fingers shaking as he did.

The man was awfully upset about an employee he’d hardly known and who’d only worked for him a month.

“Wade,” he said folding the copies and putting them into his coat pocket, “I need you to be honest with me. If there’s something more going on with Nina—”

Wade waved him off. “I’ve got a lot on my mind today, some personal things I need to tend to. I’m just concerned about her, that’s all. I don’t want anything to have happened to her.”

“Why do you think something has happened to her?” Mitch asked. Wade didn’t know about Nina’s ransacked bungalow. Or did he? Wade knew something. That much was clear.

“I just think about Desiree…” Wade broke off, shook his head and looked away. “You know, if she was the one missing…”

“How is Desiree?” Mitch inquired, pretty sure he already knew the answer. Desiree was twenty-nine and pretty wild.

“Fine,” Wade said quickly. “Desiree is fine.”

Mitch studied him for a moment. “Okay,” he said, and got to his feet, thinking about the baby spoon in his pocket, wondering how to ask about it, deciding now wasn’t the time. “If you hear anything…”

Wade glanced at his phone. “I’ll call you,” he said, seeming anxious to get Mitch out of his office.