Mountain Sheriff. B.J. Daniels

a sitting position, too stunned to stand—until she realized the person in the dark raincoat wasn’t picking up her mail to give her, but going through it!

      “Hey!” Charity cried.

      The dark raincoat didn’t turn. Behind her Charity heard Sarah come out of the post office. “Charity?”

      The figure dropped the mail and took off at a run down the alley.

      “What in the world?” Sarah demanded, charging out to scoop up the wet mail and help Charity to her feet as the dark raincoat disappeared around the corner.

      Charity took the mail from Sarah, her gaze still on the street where the figure had vanished. She heard an engine start in the distance. A few seconds later, a black pickup with tinted windows roared off two blocks away.

      MITCH TUCKED the baby spoon in his pocket as Florie swept back into the bungalow on a gust of wind and rain.

      “How’s the client?” he asked, trying to cover the fact that she’d startled him.

      “Problems of the heart,” she said with a wave of her hand. “She’s going to call me back. Have you figured out where Nina has gone?”

      He shook his head. “When she arrived she didn’t have a job, you said.”

      Florie nodded. “She asked me about a bungalow, I said I had one, she said she’d take it and then she asked me how to get to Dennison Ducks.”

      So Nina had been confident she was going to get a job at the decoy plant. It was the biggest business in town, and maybe Nina had experience that made her confident she’d be hired. But Mitch also knew jobs at the plant were hard to come by. Nor were there many openings, because wages and benefits were good and with so few jobs in Timber Falls, employees tended to stay.

      “What kind of paperwork did you get her to fill out before you rented her the bungalow?” Mitch asked, hoping for a clue as to Nina Monroe’s life before she showed up here.

      “None, other than her name,” Florie said with a shake of her head. “I just go by whatever vibe I pick up.”

      “Vibes, instead of a former address or references?” he asked, unable to hide his disbelief.

      “I’ll have you know vibes are much more reliable than references.”

      He sighed. “But you told me her vibes were bad.”

      Florie flushed. “Actually, no, I said they were weird. I remember thinking she was awfully nervous. From her aura I could tell she had man trouble. But with women that’s usually the case, isn’t it?”

      “But you rented to her, anyway?”

      “She had cash,” Florie said with an embarrassed shrug.

      He counted to ten. “She get any phone calls while she was here?”

      “Just one. From some woman. Sounded old. Maybe her mother, or grandmother. Nina didn’t want to the take the call but finally did. I heard a little of it. Nina said, ‘How did you find me? I told you to leave me alone.’ She paused, then said, ‘Right, you’re worried about me. That’s a laugh. Don’t call here again. You’re just going to mess things up.”’

      Not bad for hearing only a “little” of a one-sided conversation. “The woman ever call again?”

      Florie shook her head. “And before you ask, the number was blocked. You know, on my caller ID. I only checked because I didn’t like the vibes I got from the caller. Just like what I’m picking up now about Nina. Worse vibes than before, you know?”

      He knew, thinking of the missing woman and the baby spoon in his pocket.