the Aries bungalow just happened to be the only unit I had open when she showed up.”
He reminded himself that Charity shared Florie’s genes. All the more reason to keep Charity at arm’s length. Several car lengths would be even better. “So what was Nina?”
Florie shrugged. “She wouldn’t tell me her birth sign. Can you believe some people aren’t interested in enlightenment?”
He could. “Nina rented the bungalow in September?”
“Drove up in that little red compact of hers looking for a room. September nineteenth. I remember because she didn’t even have a job yet. But that very afternoon, she got one at Dennison Ducks. Kismet, I guess.”
Or something like that. “No need for you to come out in the rain with me.”
Florie took a bright purple raincoat from the closet and a pair of matching purple galoshes. “I wouldn’t dream of letting you go alone. I’ve been picking up some really weird vibes from that girl,” she said, and stepped past him and out the front door.
He followed her around back through the rain to the first of twelve bungalows, the one with the Aries symbol on the door.
Standing on the small porch, he felt a sudden chill as if someone had walked over his grave. Florie knocked, then cautiously unlocked the door.
“Oh, my!” she cried as the door swung open on the ransacked bungalow.
“Stay here,” he ordered, and stepped inside to look for Nina Monroe’s body in the mess.
Chapter Three
“You all right?” Betty asked, looking concerned.
Charity turned back to the counter as the black pickup disappeared from view in the steady torrent of rain. “I just thought I saw…” She shook her head, catching herself. “Nothing.”
She didn’t want it all over town that she thought somebody in a black pickup was following her. Or that she’d found a present on her doorstep, a palm-size heart-shaped red stone in a small white box with a bright-red ribbon and a small card that read THINKING OF YOU in computer-generated letters. No name.
“Is it me or is the whole town on edge today?” Betty said. “Kind of gives you the creeps thinking that Frank might really have seen Bigfoot.”
“Yeah.” Charity turned again to look through the rain to the dense forest beyond the street. The foliage was so thick that not even light could get through in places. Who knew what lived there?
Charity shivered. “Frank’s a pretty reliable witness,” she said. “He saw something. Something he thought was Bigfoot, at least.”
Betty nodded and moved away. Behind Charity, several other diners began arguing amongst themselves.
“All Frank saw was a bear,” said one.
“A bear that walks on its hind legs?” said another.
“It was dark,” a third put in. “Probably just saw a shadow move across the road.”
“I say it’s some ancient ancestor. You know, a former race of giants.”
“Who just happens to live in the Timber Falls mountains and never comes out? Puh-leeze.”
Charity had heard these arguments for years.
She went back to thinking about Mitch. No hardship there. She’d so hoped he’d left the present. Just as she hoped he’d change his mind about marriage. She knew he wanted her, but just not on her terms. If she’d settle for anything else…
Well, she wouldn’t. Couldn’t. No matter how tempted she was. She was the one in the family who was going to do it the right way, not like her mother, who had three daughters—Faith, Hope and, what else, Charity—and hadn’t bothered to get married until all three were old enough to be bridesmaids.
It was embarrassing to come from a family of not just old hippies but screwballs. Was it any wonder Mitch was scared to death to marry her and have children, given her genes?
That was why she had to show him. He’d been surprised when she’d gotten her journalism degree and started her own newspaper. Now all she needed was a Pulitzer-prize-winning story. She would change the family’s image, even if it killed her, by doing everything the way it should be—right down to the wedding in white.
“Charity, tell them,” Betty called to her from across the café. “Tell them about all those Bigfoot sightings going years back and all over the world.”
“It’s true,” Charity said, pulling herself away from her daydream. “A creature like Bigfoot has been reported in every state except Hawaii and Rhode Island. More than two hundred sightings going back to ancient man and probably untold numbers of people who have seen something and kept it to themselves because they were afraid of being ridiculed.”
“Yeah, then how come no one’s ever found any Bigfoot bones?” another customer asked.
“Maybe they bury their dead,” someone replied.
“Or the bodies decay too quickly in this kind of climate,” someone else suggested.
“Or Bigfoot is nothing but a myth,” still another said.
“Charity, you really believe Bigfoot exists, don’t you?” Betty asked as she refilled her diet cola.
A woman who hung on to the belief that one day she’d get Mitch Tanner to marry her? Oh, yeah. “He not only exists, but one of these days I’m going to prove it.”
“You do that!” Betty said, and shot an indignant look at the customers who laughed.
Charity could just imagine a photo of Bigfoot on the front page of her paper. Imagine the look on Mitch’s face. He’d have to take her paper seriously then, wouldn’t he? And her, as well.
But he’d also have to apologize to his father. Lee Tanner had become the laughingstock of Timber Falls a few years ago when he’d stumbled across a Bigfoot on his way home from the bar—and reported it. No one had taken him seriously because he’d been drunk. But Charity had seen the truth in his eyes. Lee had seen something out there that night. Something that scared the hell out of him.
“A confirmed Bigfoot sighting could really put Timber Falls on the map,” said Twila Langsley.
Twila had put Timber Falls on the map six years back when Charity and Mitch had discovered some of Archibald Montgomery’s mummified remains in the huge carpetbag Twila carried, the rest of him in a trunk at the end of her bed.
Archibald had been Twila’s beau, and she, it seemed, had killed him more than fifty-odd years ago to keep him from running off with her best friend, Lorinda Nichols. Archie, the slick devil, had been romancing them both.
Twila did five years at the state pen. She got out on good behavior in time to celebrate her ninetieth birthday.
No one in town felt any ill will toward her. She just wasn’t allowed to bring
