now they were at a slight lull in their relationship: he pretended he was a confirmed bachelor and she pretended she was going to let him stay that way.
This morning she’d been so excited when she’d seen the present on her doorstep. She’d been so sure it was from Mitch. Who else? But he’d sworn it hadn’t been him. And why pretend he hadn’t left it if he had? Then again, why pretend he wasn’t wild about her when he obviously was? She’d never understand the man.
“Would you look at this place?” Betty said, shaking her head. The café was full, everyone talking about the Bigfoot sighting. “I can’t believe these fools are still arguing over Bigfoot after all these years.”
Charity glanced around the small café. It was the only place in town to sit down and eat, plus it was the place to get homemade pies and cinnamon rolls and the latest scuttlebutt.
As she picked up her diet cola, she had an eerie feeling that someone was watching her. It wasn’t the first time, either. She turned and caught a flash of black on the street outside. Her breath caught as a black pickup drove by. It was the same black truck she’d seen last night by her house and again on her way to Betty’s this morning. Both times she’d had the feeling the driver was watching her.
She shivered as she watched the truck disappear up Main Street. While she could only make out a large shape behind the dark-tinted windows, she could feel the driver watching her through the rain. Her stomach tightened, remembering the present she’d found on her doorstep this morning. Could one have anything to do with the other?
RAIN HAMMERED the roof of the Sheriff’s Department patrol car, mist rising ghostlike from the drenched pavement, as Mitch drove out to the address Wade had given him for Nina Monroe. A swollen gray sky hung low over the pines as if closing in the tiny town, limiting more than visibility.
Mitch dreaded another rainy season in Timber Falls, especially one that appeared to be starting a month early and could last until at least April. It wasn’t just the endless rain or the dull overcast days. Without fail, the rainy season seemed to bring out the worst in the residents.
One year, Bud Harper hung himself from a beam in his garage just days before the sun shone. Another year, a local guy shot up the Duck-In bar when he caught his wife there with another man. And twenty-seven years ago, during the worst rainy season of all, Wade and Daisy Dennison’s baby girl Angela disappeared from her crib, never to be found.
It was always during the rainy season that strange and often horrible things happened in this small isolated town deep in the Cascades. It was as if the gloomy days, when the rain never stopped, did something to make the residents behave more oddly than usual. As if on those days, the only place to look was inward. And sometimes that was as dark as the day—and far more disturbing.
And if the rain wasn’t bad enough, there was the forest that surrounded Timber Falls, imprisoned it, really, and constantly had to be fought back as if it was at war with the tiny town. As he drove past the city limits, the forest formed almost a canopy over the two-lane highway, a tunnel of green darkness over the only road out.
To the clack of the wipers, he turned off in front of a cottage-style house with a dozen smaller bungalows lined up behind it. Years ago, the place had been a motel. But not long after Wade Dennison started his decoy factory, Florence Jenkins had taken down the motel sign and started renting out the bungalows as apartments.
It was about the same time that Florence discovered her hidden powers. The sign out front now read: Madam Florie’s. Under it was her Web site address.
Nina Monroe had been renting from Charity’s Aunt Florie, Timber Falls’s self-proclaimed clairvoyant.
Mitch braced himself then climbed out of his patrol car and hurried through the pouring rain to the front door.
When an elderly woman opened the door, he tipped his hat, dreading this more than he’d imagined. “Mornin’, Florie.”
“Sheriff. I’ve been expecting you.” She smiled knowingly, her eyes twinkling in her lined face. “Saw that you’d be by in my coffee dregs this morning.”
He nodded. If Florie could see the future in her coffee cup, more power to her. He just didn’t want to hear about his own future. He wanted to be surprised.
She motioned him in with a dramatic sweep of her arm, reminding him of some exotic, brightly feathered bird. Florie was sixty if she was a day. Her dyed flame-red hair swirled around her head like a turban. She wore a flamboyant caftan, large gold hoop earrings, several dozen jangling bracelets and a thick layer of turquoise eye shadow.
Florie and her much younger sister Fredricka, Charity’s mother, had been raised by hippies in a commune just outside of town. Freddie still lived on the old commune property with a dozen other people but seldom came into town. While Freddie raised organic vegetables, Florie predicted the future to tourists in the summer and locals during the rainy season—another reason Mitch had cause for concern during the rainy season.
The old motel office was painted black and had recessed lighting that illuminated the only piece of furniture in the room—a purple-velvet-covered table with a crystal ball at its center. Florie had had the ball shipped in from a store in Portland. It gleamed darkly, as if mirroring the weather outside.
“I suppose your coffee dregs also told you why I’m here,” he said as he entered. “Or maybe Wade mentioned it when he called you about Nina Monroe not showing up for work?”
Florie gave him an annoyed look and pointed to a sign on the wall in the entry that read No Negative Thoughts. A series of other small signs advertised palm, tarot and crystal ball readings.
“I was concerned after what I saw in my cup this morning,” she said, lifting one tweezed dyed-red brow as she waited for him to ask.
No way was he going there.
“It involved my niece Charity,” she added, not a woman to give up easily, a trait she shared with her niece.
“I understand that Nina Monroe rents from you and she didn’t come home last night,” he said, cutting to the chase.
Florie nodded, obviously disappointed by his lack of curiosity about those telltale coffee dregs.
“How do you know she didn’t come home last night and then leave again before you got up?” he asked.
“Because I was up until daylight.” At his surprised look, she added, “My Internet business—horoscopes, tarot cards, psychic readings, all by e-mail. You really should get your chart done. I’m concerned about your aura.”
He had worse things to worry about than his aura right now. “I need to see Nina’s bungalow.”
Florie stepped behind a dark-velvet curtain. She came back with a key attached to a round small cardboard tag.
When he reached for the key, she took his hand and turned it palm up.
“Ah, a long life line with a single marriage.” She beamed and dropped the key into his palm.
He shook his head. His palm lied. His parents’ marriage had more than convinced him what his future didn’t hold—a wedding.
“‘Aries’?” he asked, reading the lettering on the key’s tag.
“I
