Beckett's Convenient Bride (5 page)

Kit and Bambi regularly traded shifts, which enabled Kit to use mornings for scouting out locations and working on her drawing, evenings for writing and finishing up her watercolors. The tips at the Crab House were nowhere
near as good as the ones at the beach, but living was cheaper, she liked the place, liked the people and the flexible schedule suited her fine.

It had been the scheduling that had prompted her to move away from Nags Head once the season had ended last year. The work was grueling and by the time she finished her shift, there was never any energy left for her real occupation.

“See you in a few minutes. I'll pay you then,” she called over her shoulder.

Trotting along the wharf with the jar of soup clutched to her bosom, she greeted the few fishermen mopping down their boats and readying their equipment for the next day.

“You got car trouble?” one of them asked.

She shook her head. “I went to bring Ladybug back home, but forgot my keys.” It was a lie—not even a plausible lie, but she wasn't about to explain.

The young fisherman grinned and shook his head as if to say,
Just like a woman.

Kit jumped off the end of the wharf onto a well-worn path that wound its way past several ancient live oaks, a deserted house nestled in an overgrown yard and a cedar grove before reaching her unpainted rental. It had once been painted white, and the gingerbread trim was still mostly intact. One of these days she might use it as a location for a haunted-house story.

The soup was piping hot. Kit knew in advance that Jeff wasn't going to want to take her money. She had a feeling that with the least bit of encouragement, he would try moving their relationship to another level, but it wasn't going to happen. He was one of the nicest men she knew, but Kit wasn't up for anything even hinting at romance.

The late afternoon sun had already turned her tall win
dows to stained glass by the time she reached her front porch. As worried as she was about her car, she decided to let her guest sleep as long as he wanted to, leaving a note to let him know where to find the soup and a pot to heat it. If he was gone when she got back from work, so much the better.

If he was still here, then he'd better be ready to answer a few questions, she thought grimly, changing into her work uniform of white jeans and a Crab House T-shirt. She braided her hair neatly—or as neatly as possible, considering that her hair had a mind of its own.

On the way out she glanced in at her stranger.

Mercy, he was something. Kit didn't tempt easy—in fact, she could have sworn she was immune to temptation of the masculine variety. But this man was something else, with those incredibly blue eyes, that thick black hair and the kind of body—lean in all the right places and muscular in all the rest—that could make a grown woman weak in the knees.

She didn't need another event in her day, she really, really didn't. Uneventful suited her just fine.

I
t was dark when Carson awoke. His first thought was that his back was broken. His second thought was that he needed to locate the men's room. But then he took in his surroundings and it all came rushing back. After stops in Manteo and Nags Head, he'd ended up at one of those waterway stopovers that was so small it wasn't even on the charts, chasing an elusive woman with an obvious homicidal bent. A woman who drove an orange car painted to resemble an insect and who spoke in some code known only to the initiated. A woman with the face of a homemade angel, who might be missing a few gray cells up under that mass of curly auburn hair.

He sat up and rolled his shoulders experimentally, taking stock of his surroundings. Using the eerie glow of a security light down on the waterfront that came in through the windows, he located a lamp and switched it on. Then,
after flexing his bad knee experimentally, he stood and took a couple of test steps.

So far, so good. A few of his hinges might need oiling, but he was able to function. At least his head was no longer being attacked by a swarm of tiny demons armed with pickaxes. A smart man would find the john, leave the money and get the hell out.

Okay, so he wasn't too smart. He intended to hang around long enough to make sure all the loose ends were tied up before he left, because this was it, as far as he was concerned. Debt cancelled.

He limped carefully toward the room at the end of the hallway, half expecting his hostess to pop out from behind one of the closed doors. Had she said something about going to work? He couldn't remember.

Eying the claw-footed, iron-stained bathtub, he thought wistfully of a long, hot soak, accompanied by a couple of fingers of Jack Daniel's, with maybe a Don Williams CD in the background, or a pre-season ballgame on WSB radio.

Uh-uh, better not risk it, he told himself. It would take a block and tackle to get him out of the tub once the whiskey and hot water went to work on him.

Besides, the lady might misread his intentions.

After splashing his face and washing his hands with her scented soap, he felt slightly more human. Then, catching his reflection in the mirror, he grimaced. No wonder she'd been spooked. The face that stared back at him was not particularly reassuring.

On the other hand, he wasn't running for office. He was a cop. At the moment he wasn't even that, he was merely a guy on a personal mission, acting as an emissary from past generations of Becketts. Once he'd accom
plished his goal he'd be on his way home, stiff knee and all, ready to tackle his second objective.

Marrying Margaret.

Funny thing, though—now that he thought about it, he didn't recall feeling this reluctant a few days ago when he'd decided to put off setting a date until he'd wound up this reparations business for PawPaw.

Must be the flu bug. It sure as hell wasn't the love bug that had bitten him. To be perfectly honest—and at the moment, his brain wasn't up to being anything else—the last thing he felt like doing was tying himself down to a lifetime of city living, business entertaining, weekly golf and the occasional cruise.

Carson had his own ideas when it came to business entertainment. Beer and barbecue in the backyard with Mac and his wife and kids a couple of times a year suited him just fine. As for golf with his country club buddies, he didn't have any, didn't want any. His favorite sports were baseball and fishing, with NASCAR running a close third. As for any cruises he took, he would prefer a bass boat on Lake Moultrie.

On the other hand, his mother was counting down the days. Now and then she might lose count, but the gleam was still visible in her eyes whenever Margaret dropped in while he happened to be there. Kate—his mother—spent hours each day cutting pictures from bridal magazines, sticking them in an album and carefully decorating each page with hand-drawn orange blossoms. She still knew him most of the time, but the companion they'd hired for her had told the family that sooner or later she might need to be moved to a facility that specialized in Alzheimer's patients.

God, he felt like crying, just thinking about it. It had crept up so silently with no warning at all. The odd para
noia, the sudden lapses of memory, the pauses in the middle of a conversation when she would smile as if she'd lost her train of thought. Which, of course, was precisely what had happened. And was continuing to happen with more and more frequency.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, he told himself mimicking the format of an old TV show called
Mission Impossible,
is to marry Margaret as quickly as possible, have hundreds of photographs taken and give your mother the task of arranging them all in one of her albums.

It might be the last thing he could do for her that would give her real pleasure. And he couldn't put it off much longer.

Sighing, Carson switched off the bathroom light and headed for the kitchen. The first thing he spotted was the note on the table, weighted down by a chunk of clam-shaped marl. Following his hostess's instructions, he located a pot and set about reheating the chicken soup he found in the refrigerator. Ten minutes later he was back on the couch, his feet on a newspaper on the scarred coffee table, a bowl of the best chicken soup he'd ever tasted on a tray in his lap. He'd match it against his Aunt Becky's cooking any day, and Rebecca Beckett, Lance's mother, had been winning awards for her cooking ever since she'd mixed up her first batch of oyster fritters.

Relaxing in the shabby, surprisingly comfortable living room, Carson wondered what Margaret would make of Kit's decorating skills. The blue Mason jar of Carolina jasmine was a nice touch, although half the blossoms had fallen off. He even liked the basket of dried weeds in the corner. The unframed pictures on the wall lent a whimsical touch, although he doubted if Martha Stewart, let alone Margaret's fancy decorator friend from New York,
would approve of kid art thumbtacked to unpainted walls, minus so much as a mat.

Still, he kind of liked the place—maybe because he was feeling considerably better. Bare wooden walls, bare wooden floors. At least there were no clothes piled on top of beer-can tables like the Nags Head duplex.

His gaze moved back to the plank-and-cinderblock bookshelf. Evidently the lady was a reader. Suspense, nature guides, murder mysteries, art books and…

Children's books?

Hmm. Matlock at the seafood place hadn't mentioned any kids. But then, he'd been more interested in her car. Maybe she had a kid, and said kid was staying with Daddy, as Mommy obviously had a few problems to work out.

In his line of work he saw too many such cases. In most of them, there was no good answer. Usually, though, if a family functioned at all, it was better to leave a kid in the home than to remove him and turn him over to an overworked, understaffed system. Some kids didn't take to fostering. He'd seen bad results from either decision, including a few that just plain ripped his heart right out of his chest.

When it came to family relations, he'd been spoiled, and was smart enough to know it. There weren't many Becketts left, but the few that remained were close, getting together for holidays, birthdays and anniversaries. Lance and Liza would be adding to the roster most any time now.

It was those close family ties that kept him sane on his worst days as a cop. They also kept him humble, because he knew too well that not everyone was so fortunate.

At any rate, whether or not Ms. Chandler had any off-spring, it shouldn't affect the reparations. His generation
was repaying hers. Once it was done, if she wanted to pass it on, that was her decision. Ten grand wasn't much in today's world, but judging from the way she was living, it might provide a small cushion to fall back on. He might even suggest ways of investing it. PawPaw would have approved. He'd been a big-time investment banker in his day.

On the other hand, he thought, grimly amused, better not. This whole bizarre situation had started when a Chandler had handed over some money and asked a Beckett to invest it for him.

Carson finished the soup, considered seconds and decided there was no point in asking for trouble. Whatever bug Mac had handed off apparently affected different people in different ways. Headache, fever, congestion and muscular aches he could handle. Nausea was another thing altogether. As much as he loved fishing, if he'd ever been seasick a single time, he would have been a bank fisherman for the rest of his days. Lucky for him, he had an industrial grade stomach lining.

It occurred to him that this would be the perfect time to leave the cashier's check and the stock, and disappear. A receipt would have been nice, but a cashed check would be all the proof he needed if repayment ever became an issue.

So why not just do it and leave, Beckett?

The answer was a little too elusive for his foggy brain to wrestle with at the moment. For starters, the lady intrigued him, and he wasn't easily intrigued. She was a looker, if you liked wild hair, colorful, freewheeling clothes and earrings that looked more like fishing lures than jewelry.

Picturing Margaret's discreet silver studs and his mother's screw-back pearls that she called earbobs, he
shook his head. He knew very well his own family was no gauge of today's fashions. The Beckett women were typical of their social class maybe fifty years earlier. Housedresses and straw hats for working in the flower garden, flowered dresses and flowered hats for afternoon affairs; dark crepe with pearls for more formal affairs. His mama still wore white gloves and a hat to church, although some of the younger ladies of the congregation wore slacks and none of them wore hats.

He tried and failed to imagine his mother's reaction to Katherine Dixon. Fortunately, the two women would never have occasion to meet.

Reheating the coffee that was left in the pot, he turned over in his mind what he remembered of their initial contact. The woman had been ranting some wild gibberish after she'd tried and nearly succeeded in running over him. Something about not seeing something or other. And cemeteries?
Gunshots?

Whatever it was, it obviously held meaning for her. She'd sounded frightened and angry, and so far as he could recall, he'd done nothing to frighten or anger her. Okay, so he'd approached her car—he hadn't come closer than ten feet. Not close enough to cause her to feel threatened.

All evidence pointed to the lady's being a certified flake. Granted, her looks and the gracefully awkward way she moved, like a foal just getting the feel of his legs, were enough to capture the attention of any man with a viable hormone in his body, but once she opened her mouth, all bets were off.

Yeah, so why didn't he stop thinking about her and get on with what he'd come here for?

He rinsed his bowl and cup, poured the rest of the soup back in the container and put it in the refrigerator, then
ran water in the pot. Dish-soaking was one of the first laborsaving devices he'd acquired after leaving the police academy, buying a house and setting up housekeeping. No self-respecting cop still lived with his parents, and he didn't like renting. Needed his own space, no matter how humble.

He was headed out to the car to bring in the briefcase containing the check and stock certificates when he caught sight of a figure jogging up the path, silhouetted against the pink security lights.

Too late, he thought, not even wondering why he wasn't more disappointed.

“Oh, good, you're awake! I was afraid you'd be gone—by the time—I got off from work,” she panted. “I need to know—how can you tell if a car's been rigged to blow up? I mean, where do you look and what does a car bomb look like? Is it that plastic goop or does it have wires? I've read about it—well, you know—on shoes and things—but I don't know what it looks like.”

Wacko. Batty as a cave.

She came to a halt a few feet away. He could smell the not-unpleasant essence of fried onions and something fruity and sweet. “Uh…you are a policeman, aren't you?” she asked hesitantly.

She was wearing red sneakers, a pair of plain white jeans, a T-shirt advertising Jeff's Crab House and a pair of earrings that would make any largemouth salivate. If there was a single flaw on that long, lean figure, it was well hidden. Her hair had been confined—more or less—in one long braid.

Carson found the total package fascinating, tempting and uncomfortably young. He felt ancient in comparison.

“Well? Are you?”

Am I what, dazzled? Oh, yeah. Tempted? Ditto. Sus
ceptible? At any other time, and under any other circumstances—like a few years added onto your age and a few subtracted from mine—that would definitely be an affirmative.

“Police detective Carson Beckett, at your service.” He thought he remembered introducing himself earlier, but he might have forgotten. And hers probably wasn't a retentive mind. “The soup was great, by the way. I left the dishes to soak.”

“Oh, good. Not the dishes, I mean—well, I'm glad you liked the soup, but I mean about being a real policeman. Did you say a detective? That's even better. Come on back inside, this time of year it gets cool once the sun goes down, and I don't think anyone will bother it for the next few minutes.” It was probably in the low sixties. Cool was the last thing he felt.

But she wasn't through. “It's been there all this time— I hated to leave it, but I didn't know what else to do. Maybe there's nothing wrong with it. Sometimes I tend to dramatize things.”

That, he could believe. “You didn't think anyone would bother what?”

“The Ladybug. Do you drink coffee at night? Do you feel up to talking, or would you rather go back to bed? Well, to couch, at least.”

Carson had a feeling that a third party refereeing their conversation would shake his head and walk off the field. He knew
he
made perfect sense. She probably thought she did, too, but they might as well be speaking two different languages.