Without a Past (16 page)

Harley made a dry sound. “I see your point.”

“Donnie said not to touch anything. We're just there to pick up Sarge.”

“The dog?” Harley's right eyelid quivered. He pictured the large slobbery animal quite clearly, and the image intensified the sudden pain in his head. “Why me?”

“He knows you. You lived with Lars after your accident. Sam figured he'd come to you. Margaret tried to coax him off the porch, but he wouldn't have anything to do with her.”

The theory had merit—except for one thing: Harley was feeling a reaction very similar to the acrophobia he'd felt when Andi had been dangling on a rope over the edge of the cliff. He couldn't explain it. He remembered Sarge as a friendly hound completely devoted to Lars. Not the least bit threatening, but now the idea of handling the dog was making him ill.

Andi, who was busy negotiating the turn that put them on the road to the mine, didn't seem to notice his distress. She said, “Sarge is a great dog. He's been living up there alone all this time. Mrs. Graham has been checking on him, supplementing his food, but she's going away for the weekend and she's afraid something will happen to him. She told Sam she heard a mountain lion the other night.”

Harley took a deep breath and let it go.
Focus.

“Is something wrong?” she asked.

Harley rolled his head to loosen the muscles in his neck. “I don't know.”

He thought back to his weeks of recuperation at Lars's cabin. The huge, floppy-eared mutt—part hound dog, part coyote, Lars used to say—had slept at Harley's side on a
braided rug on the plank floor beside the couch. Once Harley could handle the climb to the loft bedroom, Sarge had positioned himself at the foot of the ladder, as if guarding him.
Or making sure I didn't escape.

“Are you certain I'm allowed near the property?”

“I told you, Donnie gave me the go-ahead. But he did say to be careful. He said, ‘If Harley didn't kill Lars, then somebody else did. I don't want you up there alone.' That's another reason Mrs. Graham is leaving.”

“Couldn't
she
drop the dog off in town?”

“Not if Sarge won't go with her.” Andi's grin lit up her face. “Besides that, wait till you see Margaret's car. She never goes anywhere without her menagerie. Two birds—cockatiels, I think. Three or four cats, a snake and a standard poodle. Old Sarge would never fit.”

“She sounds like quite a character.”

Andi nodded. “She is. Just like Lars was.”

Harley closed his eyes. Lars was a recent memory. A good one, and returning to the small, rustic miner's cabin was going to hurt. Even if he did have Andi at his side.

 

A
NDI HADN'T VISITED
Lars's place in years. Not that it had changed one whit, she decided as Rosemarie approached the clearing. The tiny cabin sat at the edge of a meadow just as she remembered it—a lush green carpet dotted with blue lupines.

A recent rain gave everything a clean look, but there was a sad, abandoned feeling to the house, too.

As Andi had noted, the cabin looked unchanged—except for an obscene yellow necklace of crime scene tape around its middle. It flapped in the breeze with a ghostly crackling sound.

Harley had gone quiet the past few miles. He hadn't seemed as enthusiastic about their mission as she'd thought
he would be. She was trying to make herself think of him as Jonathan Newhall, not Harley Forester. But it wasn't easy.

Jenny—once the flower crisis had been solved—had taken a few minutes to give her sister some advice. “In a way, you've lost a friend. Even if he looks the same, his mind is changing. And, trust me, change, even good change, is almost always accompanied by a sense of grief.”

Andi believed her sister. She didn't know anyone better qualified to talk about loss and change than Jenny. “But maybe you're giving up too soon,” Jenny had said as she'd left for the ranch. “If you get to know him better, you might like this new incarnation as much as you liked the old one.”

Andi glanced at her passenger. She'd felt something in their few stolen kisses that she'd never experienced before. Was it love? She couldn't say for certain, but Jenny was right. Andi owed herself a chance to find out.

“Mrs. Graham's place is right around the corner,” she said, slowing for the railroad crossing. The traditional white X with the words
Southern Pacific
always made her smile since the narrow-gauge track only connected the mine to the stamp mill where the ore was crushed. “Her house sits up on the knoll, giving her a bird's-eye view of Lars's place—which is how she happened to see the Rocking M truck that fateful day.”

As they drove past Lars's driveway, she frowned at the mournful baying coming from the front porch. A few seconds later, she cranked the steering wheel to the left and turned into a steeply banked driveway. The car rocked to a stop at a forty-five-degree incline. She put the gear into park, letting the car idle. “Before we go in, though, I'd like to ask you something.”

He sat up a little straighter. Wary.

“Are you planning to leave once the trial—if it comes to that—is over?”

“My father wants me to return to Florida with him. He thinks that by looking at family photo albums and spending time with his wife and daughters, I'll feel more…like my old self.”

The wry tone was pure Harley, and Andi could have kissed him. Would have, if he'd made any kind of signal that he'd welcome her kiss.

She gambled. “Do you have to go? I was thinking you might stay and take over the mine. It's yours.”

He looked doubtful.

“I don't mean actually mine it. I doubt if Lars made any money at that, but with a satellite dish, you could telecommute.”

He shook his head. “I'm out of the newspaper business.”

“Then write the great American novel.”

His snort was filled with skepticism.

Andi hadn't thought her suggestion would work, but she cared too much to just let him walk out of her life. She took a deep breath, then asked, “What about us?”

He kept his gaze on the view out his side window. “We already talked about this. I don't want you to get hurt. You've grown to care for a man who doesn't exist. Maybe he did for a while, but now I'm part Jonathan, part Harley.” He gave a small laugh. “I'm pretty sure I'll be in therapy for years.”

Andi scooted across the wide seat and draped one arm across his shoulders. “That's just it. You still
look
like Harley. And I can't shake the feeling that deep down you care for me too. Can we check my theory?”

He shrank back against the door. “I don't think that's such a hot idea.”

“Humor me.” She knew the risk. If the feelings that had
drawn the two of them together were still there, their relationship held potential. If not…

Just as she lowered her head, a horn sounded.

Harley moved across her protectively. “What is it?”

A gray Subaru Brat with an oversize wooden camper shell drew to a stop a bumper's width away from the nose of the Cadillac. Andi sighed in frustration. “It's Mrs. Graham's car—the Holyroller.” She slid back behind the wheel. “You'd think she could wait a minute.”

Andi tried to put the car in reverse, but the shifter on the column refused to budge. She put her shoulder into it, but to no avail. She'd forgotten that Rosemarie hated hills.

“Hello,” a voice hailed. A scrawny arm in red, white and blue waved from the window like a flag on the Fourth of July.

“Is that her?” Jonathan asked.

Andi returned the wave then sank her teeth into her bottom lip as she tried to coax Rosemarie into gear. Harley scooted over to add his help. When his fingers closed over hers on the shift knob, Andi's heart jumped in her chest. His hand was a little sweaty.
From the idea of kissing me?

At last, the lever gave. Andi shifted sideways and prepared to back up. His gaze, she noticed, was stuck on her bare legs.

He seemed to collect his thoughts and bulleted to his side of the seat. “What's this woman going to say when she sees me?”

“Who knows? She's a little weird. But in a good way.”

Andi backed up until she had a clear view of the road for a hundred feet in each direction. Mrs. Graham barreled down the driveway and pulled to a dusty stop just across from her. “You're late,” she complained. “But no matter. Katty-kit had anxiety diarhea, so that slowed us down.” She
used her index finger and thumb to mimic a clothespin and squeezed her nose.

Andi glanced at her passenger. He startled when a large apricot-colored poodle with a pompadour haircut suddenly poked its head out the vehicle's back window and started barking.

“Sorry for holding you up,” Andi shouted above the ruckus. “This old car isn't fond of mountain roads.”

“No bother. I'd have given Sarge a lift into town, but as you can see there's just not enough room. Even had to leave Joe Bob home so we could all fit.”

“Who's Joe Bob?” Harley asked, leaning closer to Andi so he could look out her window. His hand was almost touching her bare thigh. The skirt—Jenny's idea—had been a smart move after all.

“My boa,” Mrs. Graham answered. She didn't appear to recognize Harley as an alleged murderer. “I left him out of his cage so he could do a little mouse eradication. Gotta go.”

“Hmm,” Harley said, leaning forward to watch the odd car disappear. “Definitely unique.”

Andi knew at that moment the feelings she'd felt for Harley could easily pass over to this new man. With a vocabulary as extensive as his—she'd read a few of his editorials—he could have chosen any one of a hundred adjectives ranging from bizarre to deranged to describe the old lady.
Unique—a Harley way of putting it.

Instead of trying to back all the way to Lars's cabin, Andi pulled ahead as she had the first time so she could maneuver the car into a downhill position. The Caddie lunged forward, then rocked back and forth while Andi tried pushing the lever upward. “Come on, Rosemarie, you can do this.”

“Maybe it needs transmission fluid.”

“Well, unless that's an item you carry with you in your pocket, I think we're screwed.”

He looked askance at her snide tone. “Lars had cases of the stuff around.”

Before she could comment on his resourcefulness, he got out of the car and set off down the road. Andi could have taken the shortcut between the two homes, but she followed him instead. Not such a chore considering how sharp he looked in his new clothes. Navy Dockers with an off-white cotton shirt with rolled-up sleeves that revealed his muscular arms. He'd left the brown windbreaker in the car.

He walked fast. Seemingly unconcerned that a misstep in one of the muddy puddles might ruin his leather topsiders. His legs looked long and powerful. She had to hustle to keep up with him.

“I've got the cell phone in case Donnie gets a break and catches the killer,” she said, patting her pocket.

“Won't happen.”

“Today, you mean?”

“Here. Lars told me his place was impervious to cellular reception. Sam said he tried to outfit Lars with some kind of two-way radio system years ago and nothing ever worked. Which suited Lars fine. He didn't like people and he didn't trust anybody. Except Sam.”

“And you.”

He missed a step. “He took pity on me.”

“Maybe, at first, but then he got to know you. And like you. Lars was good at reading people.”

His shoulders stiffened. “He didn't know me from Adam.”

“Then why'd he leave you the mine?”

He stopped so abruptly she almost plowed into him.
Accidentally on purpose,
as Kristin used to say. Just so she
could feel his body against hers. “I don't know what he was thinking. I wish to hell I did.”

Andi sobered. She'd been so wrapped up in the murder and the bike and her own feelings, she hadn't given much thought to Harley's sense of loss. He'd cared for the old man who'd rescued him, and now Lars was dead.

“Sorry,” she said. “That was insensitive.”

He started to say something but the woeful baying began again, making the hair on her arms stand up. Sarge might not have been a purebred, but his vocal genes belonged to the Baskervilles.

“If I check the machine shed for the transmission fluid,” Harley said, his tone strained, “could you deal with the dog?”

The dog? Andi didn't understand this sudden tension in his voice. She remembered seeing Harley interact with Sarge the day Lars dropped off Harley at the Rocking M. Perhaps not as enthusiastically as a dog-lover might, but certainly there'd been no antipathy between him and Sarge.

Puzzled, she walked to the house. With its aged timbers and thick, uneven mortar, the cabin oozed charm—and neglect. As she neared the building, Sarge's long, sorry howl turned to frantic barking. The dog put his forepaws on the railing and watched her approach. Andi could tell by his nervous posturing, he was hoping someone—probably Lars—would come to relieve him of duty.

“Hey, there, Sarge. Good boy. It's me, Andi. Remember? You're my pal, aren't you, Sarge?” She said his name over and over and approached cautiously until she saw his skinny tail start to swish back and forth. “Come here, sweetheart. Let me give you a hug.”

Starved for attention, Sarge's hug became a body slam that knocked her on her butt. His sloppy kisses covered her
face, then her hands, which she used as a shield. She was laughing too hard to scold him.

“Sarge,” a stern voice barked. “Sit.”

Immediately, the dog backed away and dropped his rear end to the ground. Andi sat up, too, brushing her hair out of her eyes. She'd lost her keys in the tall grass and had to stretch to reach for them. Harley made a funny sound, and when she glanced at him and saw his gaze on her bare legs—and no doubt immodest pose—she hastily drew her knees under her. The dampness sent a chill through her.