as she opened the glove compartment, the bulb inside shone on the small fresh smudge of grease on the palm of her right hand. She looked from it to the steering wheel. He’d left more of himself here than he’d thought.
The rental agreement was right where she’d figured he would have forgotten it: folded neatly inside the glove compartment. Augustus T. Riley. He really called himself that? No street address. Instead, a post-office box in Los Angeles. A phone number.
She memorized the numbers, praying she would never need them, then carefully folded the form and put it back exactly as she’d found it. She’d learned that from her father the first time she’d taken an engine apart under his watchful eye. Remembering how you found it, how you took it apart was the key to putting each piece precisely back where it had been.
She closed the glove compartment and sat for a moment, expecting to feel guilty for this invasion of another person’s privacy. Wanting to feel guilty. She felt nothing. Augustus T. Riley had given up his rights to privacy when he’d brought her his tampered engine to repair. When he’d come looking for Charlie Larkin.
She opened the car door, hit the lock and, pocketing the key, started back toward the office. The rain had slacked off a little and the temperature had dropped. There would be snow on the ground by morning. She glanced up the highway toward Murphy’s, wondering where the stranger was now, concerned he was someone she had reason to fear but not knowing why.
She sensed, rather than saw, the furtive movement off to her left. A hooded figure came out of the darkness and the rain, barreling down on her. She half turned, her hand going to the wrench she’d slipped into the pocket of her overalls, stopping just short of the cold steel.
“Wayne,” she let out on a relieved breath.
He didn’t seem to notice. “Hey, Charlie.” As always, he looked embarrassed and apologetic at the same time. “I didn’t see you.” He took a swipe at his wet face with his sleeve. “Raining pretty hard.” He seemed to focus on her, his eyes always a little too bright. “I hope I didn’t keep you past your dinner.”
She shook her head and smiled her half smile. Friendly, but not too. “You know I stay open until nine on Friday nights.”
He nodded vigorously, obviously not knowing anything of the kind. She’d always closed early this time of year, and with everything that had been going on lately, she’d shortened the gas station hours even more.
“I got your car running,” she said as she led the way inside.
He pulled back his hood, throwing off a spray of rainwater as he trotted to keep up. “It’s a good old car.”
He always said that. She’d given up telling him he should look for something with a few less miles on it. She understood the sentimental value of a car, even one as bad-looking as this old Chevy. Wayne’s dad, Ted, had given him the Chevy when Wayne was seventeen—just before Ted had died. That had been five years ago, five years of trying to keep the old car running.
Water dripped from the dingy cap Wayne wore under the hood as he dug deep into his worn jeans and pulled out two crumpled bills. Charlie watched him smooth one of them across his thigh, his curly blond head bent with such concentration it hurt to watch him.
“I get paid next Friday if this isn’t enough,” Wayne said, working the wrinkles out of the second twenty. He sacked and stocked groceries and supplies at Emmett Graham’s small market.
“Actually, you could do me a favor,” Charlie said, looking at the old Chevy rather than at Wayne. “I heard your mother raised more winter squash than she could use this year. You could save me a trip and get me some in payment. Otherwise, I’m just going to have to drive over and buy them from her.”
Wayne looked up, both the surprise and confusion only momentary since this was how their conversations over the bill went every time. “Squash?”
“Aunt Selma has her heart set on winter squash for Sunday dinner.”
Wayne nodded vigorously. “Mom’s got lotsa squash.”
“Great.” She handed him the keys to the Chevy and touched the garage-door opener. The overhead rose slowly with a groan, letting in the wet and cold and dark. Just beyond the door, she could see puddles, night slick, but no rain dimpling the surface. Snow fell silent as death.
“I’ll get the squash and bring them right away,” Wayne said excitedly as he opened his car door.
Charlie started to tell him to wait till morning, but caught herself. Wayne would be back in a few minutes and she didn’t want him worrying himself all night about paying his bill. “That would be great.”
He drove off, hitting all of the puddles, reminding her he was part kid, part man, caught for this lifetime somewhere in between.
She started to close the bay door, then remembered the rental car. She still had the key in her pocket.
The interior smelled of Gus, even over all the others who had rented the car. Odd, she thought. A man who gave little away about himself and yet invaded whatever space he occupied—and didn’t give it up easily. A dangerous man.
She coaxed the engine to run long enough to get the car into the bay, hurriedly closing the overhead door behind it, feeling vulnerable again, as if she’d let in more than she knew, more than she could handle.
At the sound of Wayne’s old Chevy, she turned out the lights, left the rental car key on the counter in the office and stepped outside to find that he’d brought her two large boxes of produce, including apples and pumpkins. She helped him load the boxes into her van parked on the side of the building. Then watched him drive off before she went back in to lock up for the night.
Just inside the office, she stopped, chilled at the sight of the rental car in the second far bay—a small faint light glowing inside it.
The chill deepened as a knife of fear cut up her spine. She hadn’t left a light on inside the car. That she was sure of. She stood in the doorway, heart pounding so loudly she couldn’t hear over it. She breathed deeply, trying to still the cold dread as she caught the scent of Augustus T. Riley’s aftershave over the deep-seated smell of motor oil and cleaner. He was here.
Blindly, she reached for the overhead light switch, her free hand going to the wrench in her overalls even as common sense told her it wasn’t much of a weapon.
The fluorescents came on, illuminating both bays. He wasn’t here.
But he had been.
She turned to look back at the counter. The key to the rental car was gone.
She moved slowly across the cold concrete to the car. Even from a distance she could see that the glove compartment was open, the small bulb illuminating one dark corner of the car—and the garage.
Walking around to the passenger side, she opened the door, not surprised he’d left the key in the ignition. He’d wanted her to know that he’d been here. Because he’d left her something.
The clipping had been torn from the newspaper, the edges ragged, the paper still damp from the storm. He’d left it where she couldn’t miss the headline: Missing Missoula Man Found At Bottom Of Freeze Out Lake. Foul Play Suspected In Doctor’s Death.
Chapter
