Beckett's Convenient Bride

by Dixie Browning

  It was perfect. She could easily visualize ghosts rising like smoke from the ancient graves. Now that the last sketch was done, she was ready to bring her watercolors. Atmosphere was far more important than getting a perfect drawing. During that fleeting time before nightfall she could sweep in the values and the muted colors—fifteen or twenty minutes for each illustration, and she’d be finished. After that she’d give the manuscript one last polish, hand it over to be typed, and Gretchen’s Ghost would be finished. It wasn’t even due at her publisher until the first of April.

  Brushing the leaves and dried grass from her seat, Kit paused to touch a leaning marker, worn far too smooth to read. “Who are you?” she wondered aloud. “If I knew your name, I’d use it in my next story.”

  She often used names she found on tombstones or on mailboxes, mixing first names and last. It gave her a sense of being connected to the past. And although she hated to admit it, she desperately needed to feel connected to someone—to something solid. She wondered sometimes if everyone felt that way, especially as they grew older.

  But then, most people she knew had someone, somewhere.

  Kit had someone. She had her paternal grandparents. She would probably even put in an appearance at their fiftieth anniversary party. She made a habit of dropping in unannounced every few months, partly out of a sense of duty, but mostly because it irritated her grandfather so. She would stay for half an hour and then leave. Leaving was the best part of all, because she could.

  And because she knew it drove her grandfather wild. It wasn’t his granddaughter he wanted, it was what she represented—the last link with his only son. And she ought to feel sorry for him, she really should, only she couldn’t. She knew him too well.

  So maybe she’d skip the party and get herself a dog.

  Maybe she’d get a dog and take it to the party.

  Or maybe she’d invite Keefer, the surf-bum she’d shared a house with last summer. It would serve him right. Her grandfather, not Keefer, who wouldn’t have been impressed if she’d told him she was a royal princess. Three things impressed Keefer. Good grass, big surf and big bazongas.

  Kit didn’t have big bazongas. She practically didn’t have any at all, not that it mattered. An author-illustrator of two published children’s books with another one almost finished, her first book, Claire the Loon, had been optioned for television. When she’d first been notified, she hadn’t believed it. When it had sunk in, she’d walked three feet off the ground for a week.

  Of course nothing had come of it so far. Odds were, nothing ever would. She’d been told by her agent not to get her hopes up, as far more books were optioned than ever made the final cut, so other than treating herself to a mammogram, an eye exam and half a gallon of Tin Roof Sundae ice cream, she hadn’t spent a penny of the option advance. It was in the bank earning a pathetic rate of interest.

  Her real bread and butter, not to mention her rent and her art supplies, came from waiting tables. It was the perfect job. In season, the tips were easily enough to live on, yet the hours allowed her plenty of time to write. As there were usually job openings all up and down the Outer Banks in season, she was able to pick up and move as often as she liked if she needed a fresh locale.

  That was just one more thing her grandparents disapproved of. No permanent address. They called her lifestyle immature, among several less flattering things. Perhaps it was. More likely it was her own brand of claustrophobia. Whatever it was called, she had a deep-seated need to prove her independence, and for the last seven years she’d been doing just that.

  Not the way her mother had, with alcohol and lovers. Her grandparents never failed to remind her of her mother’s twin weaknesses at every opportunity. Both, Kit was convinced, were a result of being married to a man who had all the warmth of an empty igloo. The irony was that Kit had just enough of her father in her—not his cruelty, but his steely determination—to defy her grandparents and build a life for herself. And although she felt justly proud of her small publishing accomplishments, there was no room in her pragmatic, hardworking, self-supporting lifestyle for artistic temperament.

  Okay, so she enjoyed being able to dress any old way she pleased. So she liked old cemeteries. After working eight hours a day in a noisy restaurant, with clattering cutlery and people constantly making demands, she found old burial grounds restful.

  Besides, it came under the heading of research. Both her published books had been ghost stories, involving pirates and shipwrecked sailors as well as children and animals. It was her thing. Her bag, as Keefer would say. Start with a quirky animal personality, throw in a large helping of local history and a dash of fantasy, and voilà. Gretchen’s Ghost was going to be her best yet.

  After repacking her backpack, checking to see that she’d left nothing behind, Kit headed for the parking lot on the other side of the church. She had just reached the old wrought-iron gate when the stillness was rent by the sound of a single gunshot.

  Startled, she froze and waited. A hunter? In March? At this time of evening? Wasn’t that illegal?

  Besides, who would hunt in a place like this?

  When she heard the sound of someone speeding away she let out the breath she’d been holding. That’s what it had been—an engine backfiring. That funny whining sound it had made when it was racing off probably meant it needed tuning.

  Admittedly, one of the occupational hazards of being a writer of fiction, especially fiction that edged over into fantasy, was that a single backfire could instantly become a pirate landing or an invasion from another planet.

  The church was used only for summer revival meetings, but the security light was still in service. Now the pink glow shone down on the graveled parking lot, empty except for Ladybug, her orange-and-black, hand-detailed VW. So much for the invasion from Mars, she thought ruefully as she dodged a patch of weeds.

  She was nearly halfway to her car when she spotted what appeared to be either a shadow or an even larger clump of weeds.

  Not a shadow. There was nothing nearby to cast such an oddly shaped shadow. And not weeds, either, it was too solid.

  A trash bag? A big, injured dog? A deer?

  Oh, no—someone had shot a deer!

  Maybe the poor thing wasn’t dead—maybe the Fish and Wildlife people could…

  After the first few steps she froze. Then, sick with dread, she crept closer. “Omigod, omigod, no, please,” she whispered, backing away.

  It was an old man, and he was obviously dead. There was a black hole in the middle of his forehead and a dark trickle of something that looked like blood trailing down his cheek from his left nostril.

  Kit’s snack of almonds and dried apricots threatened to turn on her. She swallowed hard and muttered, “Gotta get help, gotta get help!”

  But where…? Who? Murder didn’t happen in a place like Gilbert’s Point, it just didn’t.

  But it had. And suddenly she realized that whoever had done it had to have seen her car. There couldn’t be more than one like it in the entire county—maybe in the entire world.

  She stared at the vanity plate she’d bought with part of her first advance: KITSKIDS. If anyone wanted to find her…

  Edging around the still form lying on the weedy, badly graveled parking lot, she hurried to her car. Throwing her pack onto the other seat, she locked the doors, keyed the ignition and ground the starter.

  Don’t panic.

  Cell phone. Why the devil hadn’t she bought herself one of the pesky things and learned how to use it. Everyone knew how to use a cell phone.

  Everyone but Kit.

  But even if she’d had a phone, she didn’t know the sheriff’s number. Wasn’t there some automatic gizmo you could punch to get help in an emergency?

  One of the reasons she didn’t own a cell phone or a computer or any of the other gadgets everyone else in the world took for granted was that she was no good with gadgets.

  “Nine-one-one, you ninny!” Any child knew how to dial nine-one-o
ne. Don’t panic, don’t panic.

  She would go home and dial nine-one-one and tell whoever answered that there was a dead man out at the old church on Cypress Mill Road. And they would ask her name, and she would have to go in and testify, and her grandfather…

  Oh, shoot.

  There was no one in sight when she raced up the steps and slammed inside the unpainted frame house she’d rented only a few months ago. Slinging her backpack toward the table, she grabbed the phone and started dialing, hardly remembering to breathe.

  Answer, answer, answer the blasted phone!

  Someone answered. A woman who sounded as if she resented being disturbed. “There’s a dead man in the cemetery—no, I mean in the church parking lot out on Cypress Mill Road!”

  “Name, please?”

  “Name! I don’t know his name! I just told you, he’s dead! Someone shot him! Oh—” Cold sweat beading her forehead, Kit slammed down the receiver. She took several deep breaths, her hand still on the receiver. All right, she’d done her duty. She had reported the crime; it was out of her hands.

  Name. The woman had wanted her name, of course. “Idiot,” she muttered, feeling the horror of it all over again.

  Should she call back and give her name? But if she did that, she might have to go in and answer all sorts of questions, and the story would get in the papers and old Cast Iron would be after her again to come to her senses, and she didn’t feel like brawling with him right now, she really didn’t.

  On the other hand…

  All right, Katherine, for once in your life, think logically.

  Had she done everything she could?

  Absolutely. She had reported the crime. Knowing her name wouldn’t help anyone solve it.

  Was she in any personal danger?

  How could she be? She’d only done her duty as a citizen.

  On the other hand, her car had been the only one in the parking lot. It was certainly easy enough to identify, even without the vanity plate. For all the killer knew, she could have witnessed the whole thing instead of only hearing it.

  Maybe she should go stay with her grandparents until the murderer was caught. She could even go on with her job, for that matter. Regardless of how often she moved she was never more than forty-five minutes or an hour away, depending on season and time of day.

  There was probably some murky psychological reason why she’d untied the apron strings, but never quite cut them entirely, but she didn’t need to delve into that now. Taking a deep, steadying breath, Kit weighed her options. She could disappear. All she had to do was pack up and move again. But that would leave her boss in the lurch, and it would mean starting a whole new set of illustrations for Gretchen somewhere else.

  She could go back to Nags Head. She knew the area, knew where the best jobs were, and where she could probably find an affordable room this early in the season, maybe even her old one.

  Taking another deep breath—at this rate, she’d be hyperventilating—Kit glanced despairingly around at the shabby old house she had rented semi-furnished. It was just beginning to feel like home. She had even named the raccoons that regularly raided her garbage can.

  Face it, Katherine—the gypsy life is losing its appeal.

  Reluctantly, she dragged out her suitcase and the banana boxes she used for packing her painting equipment, copies of her books and all the messy details of her profession. The legal pads, which she bought by the score; the bulging files of correspondence and another file, pitifully thin, of royalty statements.

  Could she be exaggerating the risk? The gunman was probably a hundred miles away by now. Why on earth would he come back to the scene of the crime, knowing he might have been seen?

  All right, so she was thinking logically. That didn’t mean the killer thought logically.

  On the other hand, she really liked Gilbert’s Point. It was much quieter than Nags Head, which was a circus during the peak season. She liked the people here. She had a decent job that allowed her plenty of free time for her real career. Not all employers were as understanding, but Jeff Matlock at Jeff’s Crab House was proud of her. Even though he was a bachelor, he’d bought copies of both her books.

  Besides, her rent was paid through the end of March. And unlike the beach area, Jeff’s season was just getting started. The snowbirds—the semiannual flight of yachtsmen fleeing the snow and ice via the inland waterway, and returning in the spring once the north began to thaw—were beginning to migrate.

  Kit stood at the door of her closet, staring at the eclectic mixture of grunge clothes—her tie-dyes and hand-embroidered jeans that her grandparents so despised—and the few decent dresses she’d kept for emergencies. Weddings, funerals, autographings and anniversary parties. Somewhat to her disgust she’d discovered that she was too much her father’s daughter to dress inappropriately for public occasions.

  With a sigh of resignation, she closed the closet door. She would stay, but she would definitely be on her guard. If nothing showed up in the paper tomorrow indicating that the murderer had been caught, she would call the sheriff and offer to come in for questioning. Not that there was anything else she could tell anyone. She’d heard voices, she’d heard a shot, she’d seen a body.

  And she’d run away.

  Two

  “Are you sure she’s not here?” Carson asked the white-haired kid with the mahogany tan. He’d arrived at Nags Head just before dark the day before and spent a miserable night in a hotel, wondering if he was coming down with whatever bug Mac McGinty had been generous enough to share with him.

  “Kit? Man, she’s long gone. Got a Christmas card from some place called Gilbert’s Point.”

  “You got any idea where it is?”

  “Across the bridge, I think.”

  “Which bridge?” According to the map, the place was full of bridges.

  “Hey, dude, geography’s not my gig, y’know? Sorry. She was a cool roomie, too, but I mean, it happens, y’know?”

  Dude knew. He was a cop, after all. When it came to education, a degree in criminology was nothing compared to thirteen years on a big-city police force. Ignoring the view through the open door of a coffee table made of beer cans and layered with dirty clothing, and the smell of pot and old pizza, Carson was tempted to forget the whole thing. He’d woken up feeling like leftover hell, but as long as he’d come this far, he might as well see this business through.

  Dude? he thought, his footsteps gritting on sandy broken concrete on his way to the car. Was that retro, or had it never quite gone away? At the advanced age of thirty-seven, he was beginning to notice a few recycled trends.

  Obviously Kit Dixon’s lifestyle was nothing at all like that of her cousin Liza. Not that it mattered. He didn’t have to approve of the woman, he had only to find her and hand over the money and the bundle of worthless stock certificates, in case she was into collecting useless antiquities. Some people collected “collectibles,” which could cover almost anything.

  It was nearly noon when, with the help of aspirin and his GPS unit, Carson reached Gilbert’s Point, which consisted of a few old frame houses, several shabby restaurants, a crab processing plant and a dozen or so boats tied up at the plank wharf. Squinting against the harsh sunlight reflected off the inland waterway, he surveyed the scene, wondering where to start.

  Or even whether to start.

  He could always bundle up the stock certificates and the cashier’s check for ten grand and address it to Katherine Dixon, in care of general delivery, Gilbert’s Point, North Carolina. The post office would do the rest. If they even had a post office.

  Not a chance. The Becketts’ buck-passing days were over. Besides, the job was already half done—he was here. With just a slight additional effort, he could wind things up. Case closed, only a hundred years late.

  But the three days he’d allowed himself were getting used up in a hurry. At this rate he’d be lucky to get back home by the weekend. It would help if he didn’t feel so lousy. Hot, cold and sweat
y at the same time, with a head that was threatening to self-destruct.

  It occurred to him that some real food might help. Not that he was particularly hungry, but the combination of too much coffee, too much greasy fast food on the road and too little sleep didn’t help what else ailed him. Besides, at a local restaurant he could probably kill a couple of birds with a single stone.

  He struck pay dirt at the first place he stopped. After ordering hot clam chowder and a fresh tuna sandwich at a waterside restaurant called Jeff’s Crab House, he popped the question.

  “You happen to know a woman named Katherine Dixon?”

  Instead of answering, the waitress called over the owner, a tall, loose-limbed type with a handlebar moustache, who took his time crossing the empty room that was just now being set up for lunch. “Jeff, this guy wants to know where to find Kit.”

  Jeff looked him over before replying. “You a friend of hers?”

  Carson stretched a point. “Friend of the family. I was in the area and thought I’d look her up.”

  Another minute passed. Carson appreciated what the other guy was doing—sizing him up. Under other circumstances, they could have swapped credentials, IDs—hell, the whole bag of tricks, but his head was throbbing, his throat was getting rawer by the minute and every bone in his body ached.

  “You want to hang around, she’ll be working the five-to-nine shift,” the proprietor finally said, “I don’t reckon she’d want me giving out her whereabouts. Probably not home yet anyhow.”

  He was tempted to flash his badge, but that might give the wrong impression. He didn’t want to get the woman in trouble, he just damned well wanted to find her so he could go home and go to bed for the foreseeable future.

  And anyway, in a place this size, he could knock on every door in less time than it took to search through the phone book.

  “Okay. Uh…like I said, our families are connected.” In a manner of speaking, he added silently. “We’ve never actually met, though, so would you mind telling me what she looks like, in case I run across her?”