Читать книгу Dead Aim - Anne Woodard - Страница 8

Her call was picked up on the first ring.

“It’s me,” Maggie said.

There was a pause at the other end of the line as her listener confirmed there were no bugs on the line, then a brusque, “Talk.”

She shifted in the battered office chair to get a better view of the short hall outside the coffee shop’s cramped office. Steve was busy behind the front counter, but Sharon Digby, the other employee due on tonight, had a useful habit of coming in early.

“Dornier’s brother’s here,” she said, keeping her voice low.

That caught her listener’s attention. “Her brother? He was in Montana yesterday. We checked.”

“Yeah, well he’s here now, and he’s already been around town talking to people. His mother called him. He must have driven all night to get here.”

“Great. Just great.” Another pause at the end of the line. “Is he going to be a problem?”

The door from the shop opened. Maggie craned for a better look, then slid back a ways, out of sight. She waited until she heard the rest room door lock behind the customer before she spoke again.

“He hit the police station. Bursey spun him some story about college kids and hormones being more appealing than class work.”

“He talked to Bursey?”

“Bursey talked to him. Made a point of it.”

More silence while her listener digested that information. Then, “You think he knows anything?”

“No.” She thought about that, then added, “Not yet. Playing cop isn’t his thing, but he’s smart and tough.”

“Guess you’d have to be if you chase grizzlies for a living.” There wasn’t any humor behind the words.

“He’s worried about his sister.”

She fell silent at the sound of a toilet flushing, then water running. The rest room door opened, followed by footsteps heading back. The noise of conversation and the espresso machine working rose as the hall door opened, then dimmed as it swung shut. She craned to be sure the customer was gone, waiting for the confirming click of the latch as the door closed behind them.

“He’s planning on visiting Good Times tonight,” she said at last. “I’m going with him.”

“All right. But keep a sharp eye on him. We can’t afford to have any trouble at this point in the game.”

Maggie frowned at the cluttered bulletin board on the wall above the desk, annoyed. “Anything else you want to tell me? Like how to tie my shoes or blow my nose?”

“Don’t be so damned touchy. And yeah, there’s something I want to tell you. Don’t go off on your own. You’re not a superhero.”

She grinned. “Wanna bet?”

“Dammit!”

“You can say that again.” This time, she wasn’t smiling.

She set the receiver back in its cradle without bothering to say goodbye.

She knew exactly what he’d meant.

Dornier had his jacket on and was waiting near the counter when Maggie emerged. He looked a little tired, but Maggie would swear she sensed a tension in him that hadn’t been there a few minutes earlier. He didn’t say anything, however, and she didn’t ask.

“Steve, I’ve gotta go,” she said to the young man behind the counter. “Sharon should be in shortly. Think you can handle things until then?”

Steve grinned. “Sure. You know me.”

Maggie blew him a teasing kiss. Her odd hours and occasional, abrupt departures had raised a few eyebrows at the beginning, but everyone was used to them by now. She’d worked hard to make sure they were.

She turned to Rick Dornier and found him studying her.

Again there was that odd jolt of intense awareness.

There was nothing rude or even particularly sexual in the way he looked at her, yet still it unsettled her. It was one thing for him to be attracted to her—that might prove useful. But the last thing she needed now was to be as conscious of him as a man as he was of her as a woman.

She forced the feeling down. She couldn’t afford to let anything distract her or throw her off balance. Not right now.

Somehow, without even trying, Rick Dornier managed to do both.

“Ready?” was all she said.

“Ready.” Before she could stop him, he took her jacket out of her hands and held it up so she could slip it on.

Maggie hesitated, then turned to allow him to help her, silently chiding herself for letting so simple a gesture catch her off guard like that. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

She started to move away from him, but his hand on her shoulder stopped her.

“Hold on a second. Your collar’s turned.”

There wasn’t anything remotely sexual about the way he flipped her collar over, then smoothed it into place, yet her body tensed involuntarily and the back of her neck burned where he touched her. She would swear she could still feel the heat of his hand where it had rested on her shoulder.

He flicked her unruly curls out from beneath her collar and stepped back. “There. That should do it.”

She kept her head down and tugged up the zipper. Her throat felt tight and her breathing was fast and a little shallow, but she managed to keep her words light, teasing, in keeping with the Maggie everyone at Joe’s thought they knew.

“Are all you Montana guys so well mannered?”

He laughed. The sound of it set her pulse racing.

“Blame it on my dad. He was hell on good manners.”

He held the door for her, then automatically took the street side of the sidewalk even if there weren’t any cars to defend her from.

“My car’s parked just around the corner,” she said, forcing herself to look up at him.

She refused to admit that she was disappointed when she found he was scanning the street rather than looking at her.

“I’m a couple blocks farther down,” he said. Yet when she turned the corner, he turned with her.

“You don’t have to walk me to my car, you know.” She couldn’t quite suppress the irritation in her voice. “It’s not that late, and Fenton isn’t that dangerous.”

“That’s good. Which car’s yours?”

“The red Subaru.” She punched the automatic entry button on her key ring. The car beeped and unlocked the doors. The system was a safety mechanism, one she’d relied on more than once when she had to get away fast. Once, it had almost cost her her life.

He waited on the sidewalk while she walked around to the driver’s side.

“I’ll meet you at the bar, all right?” she said, silently willing him to go away now so she could get herself under control.

“Fine.”

He was still standing there when she slid behind the wheel.

Maggie switched the key in the ignition. The Subaru’s engine raced a little, then settled into a steady, comforting purr.

And he was still standing there.

Cursing herself for a fool, she leaned over and opened the passenger’s side door.

“Get in. I’ll drive you to your car.”

It figured. The one man who had the power to addle her wits just by looking at her was also well mannered and annoyingly overprotective. And that was dangerously appealing, too. She would have to be extra careful. She didn’t dare let herself get involved.

The Subaru was fairly roomy, but Rick Dornier took up a lot more space than she liked. She was finding it hard to breathe. The engine hadn’t warmed enough to put out any heat, yet she would swear the temperature inside the car was rising.

By the time she dropped him off at his pickup a few minutes later, her chest was hurting from the effort to breathe. She made sure he knew how to get to the bar, but didn’t wait for him even to unlock his door before her foot mashed down on the gas pedal.

Her tires squealed on the pavement as she roared away.

It was only the middle of the week, yet the parking lot at the Good Times bar was almost full when Rick arrived.

Maggie, shoulders hunched against the cold, was pacing in front of the door. He had the feeling she was regretting her offer to help, but before he could say a word, she yanked the door open and stepped inside. Frowning, Rick followed her.

Even in his college years, he hadn’t been much for bars and partying. His friends ribbed him about his unsociable ways, but these days he generally stuck to the unfashionable places where he could get a beer and maybe engage in a little conversation about whatever game was showing on TV.

Walking into Good Times was like walking into a wall of heat and humanity. The bar was everything he hated—loud, crowded and trendy. A sign outside had advertised a live band for the weekend, but right now a popular country and western pop hit was blaring from hidden speakers that almost, but not quite, managed to cover the deafening roar of conversation and laughter.

The crowd was mostly college kids and young professionals, with an occasional aging, desperate male here and there trying to pretend that the years weren’t catching up with him. Dress was everything from slick business suits to short tops, low jeans and navel rings. Judging from the expressions on their faces, all of these customers had one thing in common—a grim determination to have fun, no matter how much it hurt.

Rick tried to imagine Tina in a place like this and failed. Tina lived in the reverent quiet of libraries and museums, not this kind of insanity.

A tug on his sleeve drew his attention back to Maggie. He had to bend down to hear what she was shouting. She leaned closer, her breast touching his sleeve.

“I’m going to hit a friend at the bar, ask him about Tina, who all the regular patrons are, see if we can find someone who saw her. Order me a diet soda, will you?”

Her breath was warm on his ear. All he would have to do to kiss her was turn his head….

Before he could say a word, she’d handed him her jacket and slipped into the crowd, seemingly as comfortable in this madhouse as she was at the Cuppa Joe’s. Just walking into the place had brought the sparkle back to her eyes.

Before Rick could follow her, a harried-looking waitress dodged in front of him with an overloaded tray of drinks. He edged around her and ran into three giggling females who eyed him with a speculative interest that drove him in the opposite direction. By the time he’d worked his way through the outer fringes of the crowd, he’d shucked his own jacket and lost Maggie completely.

Rick stared about him, baffled. He hadn’t worked out any real plan, just figured he would talk to the bartenders and waitresses until he found someone who remembered Tina and the guy she’d been with. He hadn’t counted on having to deal with a crowd like this or noise levels that made it impossible to talk below a shout.

He wished Maggie were beside him. She seemed to be at home in a place like this.

He would swear he could still catch her lingering scent on his jacket sleeve where she’d inadvertently pressed against him.

Too much time in the wilderness, Dornier, he chided himself, ruthlessly squelching the thought.

Because Maggie was already talking to the people tending bar, and because Rick couldn’t think of anything else to do, he stopped the next waitress and asked if she knew a Tina Dornier. She looked at him as if he’d lost his mind.

“It’s all I can do to remember the drink orders.” She glanced at his empty hands. “You want one?”

He didn’t. It was only after she was gone that he remembered he was supposed to order Maggie a diet soda.

He scanned the crowd, struggling against dismay. What in hell had he been thinking? He dealt with grizzlies, not humans engaged in modern courtship rituals. Maggie had been right—there were a lot of good-looking guys here, any number of whom could have given Tom Cruise a run for his money. The last thing people at a place like this would pay attention to was a quiet woman talking to a man nobody knew.

Was there something else he could do to find out the name of that stranger Tina had been talking to the last time anyone had seen her?

Or, at least, admitted to having seen her.

That thought made him flinch.

As it turned out, the people came to him. The women, anyway, many of them younger than Tina. Several offered to buy him a drink. Not one remembered his sister, let alone the stranger.

Desperate, he grabbed a small table that was just opening up. He draped Maggie’s jacket over the back of the second chair, then stopped another passing waitress and ordered a beer and diet soda.

She was back sooner than he’d expected.

“Tina?” she said in answer to his query. She set the soda on the table. “Sure, I know her.”

She handed Rick the beer, deftly pocketed the twenty he handed her, then brightened when he refused any change. Thus encouraged, she set down her tray and slid into the empty seat across from him.

“Tina’s two years ahead of me, but she helps me and a couple of friends with art history papers sometimes. Real nice. And she’s your sister?” She eyed him assessingly.

Rick found himself blushing. “She was in here a couple weeks ago. Talking to some stranger, according to her roommate.”

The girl frowned. “I remember Tina being here. Good Times isn’t, like, exactly the sort of place she hung out. Know what I mean? But a guy…?”

She scanned the crowd as if hoping for inspiration. “I sorta remember seeing her with someone, because Tina wasn’t really interested in guys. You know? I remember he was good-looking, but there’s, like, lots of good-looking guys here.”

“Her roommate said he looked like Tom Cruise,” Rick offered helpfully.

“Tom Cruise?” She frowned, considering, then shrugged. “I don’t know. We don’t get many guys that old in here, you know?”

Rick managed not to laugh.

Karin stood. “I’d better get going or my boss’ll dock my pay or something. You got a number I can call if I think of anything?”

“Not yet. I haven’t had time to get a hotel room. But here’s my business card.”

“What about your cell phone?”

“I don’t have a cell phone.”

She stared at him as if he’d suddenly grown two heads.

It was a look Rick had seen before. His friends thought he was a Neanderthal, but he’d never understood the modern passion for instant communication. Besides, cell phones weren’t all that useful in Montana’s backcountry—too many places where you couldn’t get a signal. “Can I leave a message for you here?” was all he said. “To let you know where you can reach me if you remember anything?”

“Sure. There’s always someone here who can take a message if I’m not working. My name’s Karin. With an ‘i.’”

“Thanks, Karin.” He smiled. “I’ll remember the ‘i.’”

A couple of minutes later, Maggie slid into the chair Karin had vacated. She snatched up the soda and took a couple big gulps.

“Thanks! Trying to carry on a conversation in this place is hard work.”

Like Karin, she had to lean halfway across the table and shout to make herself heard over the noise. You could plot a bank robbery here and the folks at the next table wouldn’t hear a word you’d said.

“Find out anything?”

She shook her head. The movement made a stray curl on her forehead bounce. “How about you?”

Rick repressed an urge to brush the curl into place.

“Nothing. One person who knows Tina and remembers seeing her here, but that’s it.”

He had to fight not to shove his chair back and put as much distance between him and Maggie as he could.

He hadn’t thought twice about getting close enough to Karin so they could talk, but, then, she hadn’t made his pulse rate soar just by looking at her.

“It would be easier if I had a better description of the man she was talking to,” he said.

“Yeah. I tried that ‘Tom Cruise look-alike’ line on one of the bartenders.”

“And…?”

“He laughed at me.”

Rick stared at her, unsmiling. She stared right back, quietly assessing.

“I’m running out of options here,” he grimly admitted, more to himself than to her.

She considered that, then shook her head. “Not quite. Let’s go talk to Grace, again.”

Maggie stood abruptly, reaching for her jacket. “Come on. We might get lucky and catch her at home.”

“I didn’t get the impression Grace was all that serious about her studies.”

There wasn’t any humor in the look Maggie gave him.

“I didn’t say anything about interrupting her studying.”

Rick followed Maggie as she worked her way through the crowd. He was going on two days without sleep, and the noise of Good Times had given him a headache, but he didn’t even consider finding a hotel. Not yet. There wasn’t much hope they would get anything useful out of Grace—even if they found her home, which he doubted. She was probably so stoned by now that she didn’t even remember who Tina was—but he couldn’t think of anything else to do, and he had to do something.

They were almost to the door when Maggie stopped in her tracks.

Rick placed his hand at the small of her back in an instinctive, almost protective gesture. He could feel the tension in her body even through the thickness of her jacket.

Standing just inside the entrance, watching them, was Fenton chief of police, David Bursey.

Maggie moved forward, deliberately casual. “Chief Bursey.”

Bursey touched the brim of his Stetson politely. “Ms. Mann.”

“Your hat’s still on. Are you coming in or going out?”

“Guess that depends.”

Maggie ignored that barb. “I don’t recall seeing you here before.”

His gaze flicked from Maggie to Rick and back again. “Rumor has it you’re here quite a bit.”

Maggie’s chin came up. “That’s right. Even a coffeehouse waitress likes a little action now and then. Anything wrong with that?”

“Not usually, no.”

Bursey’s tone was casual, bland, even, yet Rick heard the warning beneath the surface. But what was Bursey warning them against?

He shifted to let a patron get past him. The rush of air from the open door was cold and clean, welcome after the stale air of the bar. He caught a glimpse of a man in the doorway, head lowered, his shoulder raised as he awkwardly shrugged into his coat. Then the man was gone and the outer door swung shut.

Beside him, Maggie settled her own jacket more comfortably on her shoulders. “See you around, Dave.”

It was a challenge, not a question.

The police chief nodded. “Sure, Maggie. You know what I think of you and the Cuppa Joe’s.”

“Yeah,” said Maggie coolly. “I know.”

“And you, Dr. Dornier,” the chief added, shifting his attention to Rick. Beneath the broad brim of the Stetson, the man’s eyes narrowed. “You hear anything about your sister, you let us know.”

Rick held that hard gaze for a minute, fighting down anger. What in hell was all this about? More important, what did it have to do with Tina?

“Yeah,” he said. “I’ll do that.” He turned to Maggie. “Ready?”

She was out the door before he could open it for her, her car keys in her hand. Swearing, Rick pulled on his own coat and started after her.

From the far side of the lot came the sound of an engine starting. It wasn’t enough to drown the voice from the doorway behind him.

“Mr. Dornier? Rick? Rick! Wait up!”

It was the waitress, Karin. She hadn’t even bothered to grab a coat before rushing outside. From the corner of his eye, Rick saw Maggie stop, then walk back toward them, but he wasn’t concerned about her right now.

Karin came to a panting halt beside him. “That man you were looking for? The one Tina was talking to? I saw him!”

He stiffened, the cold and Bursey both forgotten. “What? Where? He’s inside?”

She shook her head, then wrapped her arms around her body, shivering. “I’m not real sure, you know? But I’m pretty sure it’s him. I noticed him because he’s really good-looking? And then I noticed that he was watching you and Maggie and I thought, Wow! That’s him!”

Rick gritted his teeth against the urge to shake her. “Where is he now?”

Karin was almost dancing from cold and excitement. “He left. Right before you did. He walked right by you. I thought sure you’d see him!”

At the far side of the lot, a black Ford pickup pulled out of its space. The driver, invisible at this distance, pulled into the street without stopping and sped away.

Maggie was already running. Rick caught the beep of the electric door locks on her car.

“Come on!” she shouted. “My car’s closest!”

He barely managed to squeeze into the passenger seat and slam the door shut before she roared out of the parking lot after the pickup.