There were moments when Clate felt as if he were caught up in one of the Miss Marple murder mysteries Irma liked to read, only without a murder. This wasn't one of them.
He walked on the beach right at the point where sand and water met and tried to concentrate on the soothing rhythms of the waves. The tide was in. After returning from the hospital, he'd walked down to the water. A sunset of vibrant oranges and reds fired the entire sky. This beauty and solitude were why he'd come to Cape Cod, not to get embroiled in Macintosh family troubles with a chestnut-haired woman he couldn't get out of his mind.
Tension gnawed at every muscle, every fiber of his body. Nothing about what was going on in Frye's Cove felt neat and tidy, eventually to be resolved in a drawing room gathering. He sensed that events were getting more and more unpredictable, on the verge of spinning out of control altogether.
Or maybe it was just having made love to Piper Macintosh. He was losing perspective, objectivity.
Ultimately, it was possible that everything could be laid at the feet of an eighty-seven-year-old woman whose body and mind were failing, and the difficulties her family, particularly her grandniece, had accepting that hard fact.
The calls were the most disturbing of the odd events of the past days. Buried treasure, rumors, mysterious digging and herb cuttings—connected or unconnected—weren't necessarily sinister. They could even, deliberately or not, be Hannah's doing. But the calls resisted easy explanation. As cynical as he could be about the bonds of family and community, Clate didn't believe that even a slightly dotty, ever-determined Hannah Frye would terrorize her niece.
With a snarl of impatience, he plunged up the narrow strip of beach into the far reaches of his land. No, an old woman's desire to see her niece hooked up with him didn't explain everything going on in pretty little Frye's Cove. He didn't need a body through the ceiling to convince him. He
knew.
The cool breeze off the water, the quiet of this unpopulated stretch of Cape Cod, finally penetrated, soothed. He came to a small inlet and could see across the calm water to the wildlife preserve adjoining his property. For a moment, he stood still, listening to the water and shorebirds, watching the scrub pine and oak and wild grasses shift in the breeze. He'd never been obsessive. He would look at the facts, consider theories and rumors, and decide what to do.
But he'd also never been one to meddle in other people's families. He preferred to act alone and trust his instincts, to maintain and use to his advantage the objectivity and perspective of an outsider.
In Frye's Cove, he was an outsider. He could move his entire company up here, bring up his dogs and every scrap of furniture he owned, and he would remain an outsider. The Southerner. That rich guy from Tennessee.
He smiled, surprisingly amused at the thought.
He returned to his house along the same route, half expecting to find the Macintosh men on his doorstep. If Piper told them even half of what had been going on out on her dead-end road, they wouldn't be pleased. But his doorstep was empty, and he was alone, dusk upon him.
He stood out on his terrace, swatting at bugs and wondering about buried treasure.
Then he spotted Piper slinking through the break in the hedges. She had a shovel slung over one shoulder and had on overalls and a flannel shirt that made her look like a lumberjack. Her hair was pulled back with a red bandanna. She hesitated for a half second, seeing him, then kept coming.
She stopped on the lower terrace and slid the shovel off her shoulder, jabbing it into the ground. Even from a distance of yards, Clate could see the paleness of her cheeks, the drawn look around her mouth. The determination.
"Hannah says I should try near the honeysuckle," she called to him. "She's not sure it was the wisteria after all."
"She's not," he said, keeping his tone mild.
"What does a seven-year-old know about wisteria?"
"A fair point."
She didn't seem to hear him. "I had a cup of coffee and a huge piece of strawberry shortcake before I came over. I'm hyper enough to dig up the whole yard if I have to."
"You think the treasure's here?"
"I think I have to prove to Hannah it's not."
Clate moved toward her, his muscles still loose from his long walk on the beach. "And yourself?"
She met his gaze. "And myself."
"I have a shovel in the shed. I'll help."
Her shoulders slumped. He could see the relief wash over her. She almost smiled. "We're crazy, you know."
"Ah-huh," he said, and fetched his shovel.
After two hours, they had nothing to show for their efforts but a handful of old nails, rusted tin cans, and something Piper claimed was a Wampanoag arrowhead. They'd dug under the honeysuckle and all around the wisteria, still Hannah's best bet for where she'd seen the shadowy figure digging eighty years ago.
Clate was sweating, feeling strangely exhilarated as he leaned against his shovel, which looked old enough to have been the one Hannah's murdering thief had used. "Worked off your caffeine and sugar yet?"
"About an hour ago, I think." Piper was breathing hard, apparently undeterred by their lack of success. "You know, you could be right. Someone else could have known about the treasure eighty years ago and it's long gone."
"Or there was no treasure."
"Hannah saw what she saw that night. It just has to be explained to her satisfaction." With noticeable effort, she slung her shovel back over her shoulder. Even in the dark, Clate could see the sheen of perspiration on her arms and neck. There was none of the pale, drawn look of earlier. "I need to be up early to pick her up at the hospital. She won't want to stay a minute longer than necessary."
"Where were you earlier?"
His question had come out of nowhere, something he'd been saving up, and she responded with a jolt of surprise. "I was talking to my father and brothers."
"Afterwards. You didn't have your car. One of them must have driven you home."
"My father did. So?"
"So your car was gone when I got back from the hospital."
She gave him a deer-in-the-headlights look, then scowled. "I can't do anything in this town without someone breathing down my neck."
"Don't keep dragging that one out, Piper. It won't work. People have damned good reason to keep an eye on you and you know it." He gave her a long, probing look. "You're hiding something."
"Oh, all right. Geez, if I'm going to face the damned inquisition. I went by Hannah's, okay? I got her fresh clothes for tomorrow. A nice, comfortable calico dress and kerchief."
Clate didn't back off. "And what else?"
She pursed her lips. "Underwear."
"Piper, what did Hannah tell you when you were alone in her hospital room together?"
Her mouth snapped shut.
"You know," he said easily, slinging his shovel onto one shoulder, not feeling the fatigue of two hours of fruitless digging, "if I were one of your brothers, I'd have drowned you years ago."
She sniffed, about-faced, and marched down his sloping lawn. Clate felt a rush at the sight of her backside, her lean, trim legs moving fast.
So what had Hannah told her? Hannah, who, he reminded himself, hadn't told even Piper everything she knew.
"Bet you didn't tell your brothers either," Clate called to her.
She didn't even break stride.
"You're a devious woman, Piper Macintosh." Her gait faltered, but she still didn't turn around. The cool breeze felt good on his overheated body and was probably all that kept him from charging after her. "But I will allow that you lead a complicated life. I don't have to answer to anyone but myself. You've got your aunt, your father, your brothers, half the damned town."
She stopped, looked around at him. "I don't envy you, you know."
"No reason you should."
He saw her hesitating, that sharp Yankee mind debating, plotting, sorting through the complications and exasperations of her life. "I broke a lot of promises I made to Hannah tonight."
"By talking to your father and brothers?"
She nodded. "It felt necessary at the time. Right now, I'm not so sure. I need—" She glanced up at the sky, the stars just coming out, then back at him. "I need to keep this one promise. For now."
He left his shovel on a pile of dirt and started down the yard toward her. Now a good ache had started in his shoulders and arms. "Does this promise include spending the night alone?"
She smiled as he came up beside her, and a glimmer of real certainty sparked in her eyes. "No, as a matter of fact it doesn't."
Piper made coffee in her cozy kitchen and popped an English muffin into the toaster. She could hear the shower running upstairs. Not since moving into her crumbling little house three years ago had she had a man spend the night. The occasional friend from Boston would drive down for a weekend, but never anyone in whom she had a romantic interest.
A romantic interest. How innocent that sounded. She remembered aching spirals of need as they groped, tore, pounded, made love last night, until they were panting and slick and almost bruised. She'd held nothing back. Neither, she felt, had he.
No, nothing at all, she thought dryly as her muffin popped. Had he guessed her relative inexperience? Had he deliberately unleashed every last inhibition she had? Even now, with the morning light slanting through her windows, she quivered with anticipation at the mere thought of him walking into her kitchen.
"Get a grip," she murmured. "Liddy will be here soon."
Yet she knew she'd never get enough of him. A dangerous thought, that. Even as they'd whispered to each other in the dark, she'd sensed that Clate Jackson was a solitary, skeptical, difficult man, never mind that last night he'd wanted her every bit as much as she'd wanted him. In fact, she'd tried to suggest he sleep on the parlor couch. He'd laughed, sauntered across the room, trailed one finger slowly, torturously across her lower lip, and had asked her if she expected him to stay on the couch.
"Do you always do what's expected of you?" she'd asked.
"Almost never." His eyes had seemed more black than blue. "Except tonight. Tonight's your call."
And she'd made it. "Not the couch, then."
With a shaking hand, she slathered peanut butter and her homemade strawberry-rhubarb jam on the halves of her muffin. She wasn't a bit fatigued. Treasure digging and lovemaking half the night had led to the sleep of the dead. She felt unreasonably refreshed, her muscles loose, just a touch of soreness where soreness was not a problem.
He materialized in her kitchen, smiled a good morning as he took down a mug and poured himself coffee. Then he saw she had none, and he poured her a mug. It was the sort of thoughtful, intimate gesture that fired the imagination. Yet Piper had no illusions. This man wanted entirely different things out of life than she did. Sex to him was easy, casual, done without much consideration of the past or the future, even if proper physical precautions were observed. He enjoyed sex. Absolutely no question there. He'd fallen on her with a hunger and need that were unmistakable, dizzying. But his lovemaking was rooted in the present only and didn't mean anything.
The point was, she'd be a fool to fall in love with a man like Clate Jackson, to demand from him—or herself—what neither could give, or could give up. Enjoy what he had to offer, she warned herself, and leave the rest to fate.
Which would undoubtedly please Hannah no end.
Thought of her aunt sobered Piper. She straightened, thanked Clate for the coffee, and offered him an English muffin. He shook his head. "Coffee first." His eyes had turned to slits as he studied her. "Piper, last night—"
"We don't need to talk about last night." A quick thought jarred. "Do you have regrets?"
He smiled. "Only that it had to begin with two hours of digging. I can think of several ways we could have spent that time."
A shudder of pleasure ran through her, just imagining the possibilities.
He seemed to read her mind. "And
I'm
the rogue."
"You are, for stirring me up that way."
It hadn't exactly left him unstirred, she noted. But he laughed and moved off to the terrace, giving her his back. "I'll take my coffee and clear out before your sister-in-law arrives. Give my best to Hannah. I trust that whatever you two are cooking up now, you won't let it get out of hand."
And that was the first time that morning that Piper remembered the poison. She'd searched Hannah's townhouse kitchen the night before—and found nothing incriminating. No extra jug of springwater. No old jug of springwater. Either Hannah had tossed them out and forgotten, her father had collected them for refills, or someone had stolen them.
Piper had checked the entire kitchen while she was at it. No decoctions, tinctures, or teas that were anything out of the ordinary for Hannah's pantry and refrigerator.
Before she talked to anyone else about the missing water jugs, Piper wanted to talk to Hannah. Maybe she'd want to change her poison story or abandon it altogether now that she was feeling better and could admit she'd passed out for possibly no reason at all beyond the infirmities that came with advancing years.
Liddy Macintosh arrived well after Clate had slipped back through the hedges. But Piper's sister-in-law had a nose for romance, or perhaps just a lot of common sense. "I can't believe you'd spend the night out here alone with some sicko calling you. I can't believe Andrew and Benjamin let you."
"They told you everything?"
"Benjamin was up half the night ranting and raving. Of course he told me. I think the more he thought about it, the less he liked it."
"It referring to—"
"These phone calls, first of all. Hannah's behavior secondly. Yours thirdly."
"Mine?"
Liddy laughed. "You know, I take your side a lot. Benjamin and Andrew do treat you as if you're twelve half the time, even if they know better. But I think sometimes that's easier for you. Having two older brothers to call upon when the going gets tough helps to keep the going from getting tough. If you know what I mean."