Kiss the Moon (19 page)

Wyatt wasn’t even close as a candidate. Obviously, he didn’t regard her as a sister or one of the guys, but he didn’t want the same things out of life she did. A town like Cold Spring, New Hampshire, and a life like hers would never contain him. As notorious as she was within the boundaries of her hometown, she didn’t compare to Wyatt when it came to a taste for drama and adventure. It was one thing to get lost in the back forty once in a while and get a little distracted flying home from Plattsburgh. He’d watched a friend die and had nearly died himself on one of his expeditions.
That
was pushing the envelope.

Penelope had no illusions about Wyatt’s eighteen months in New York. They were a kind of penance, a self-imposed version of washing planes and sweeping out hangars. The demon was still inside him, biding its time. She’d had a little feel for it this morning, she thought uncomfortably but, to her surprise, without regret or embarrassment. She supposed she had a few demons of her own to exorcise.

Harriet caught up with her between jobs. She looked out of breath, her cheeks rosy. She had on her boots, her parka and her matching mittens and hat that she’d knitted out of fuzzy white yarn. Penelope frowned. “Harriet, it’s forty-five degrees out. You’re dressed to hike the Himalayas.”

She gulped for air. “I want you to take me to see Bubba Johns.”

“Bubba? Why?”

“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking.” She paused, agitated yet focused on what she had to do. “And I just do.”

Penelope sighed. “Harriet, if it’s because I stirred up things for you by bringing the Sinclair family to town—”

She cut her off with a tight shake of the head. “Things are always stirred up for me, Penelope, at some level. I just don’t always show it. Look, I know Bubba wasn’t here when Colt and Frannie disappeared. I just want to talk to him. If you can’t take me, I’ll go alone. I’m sure I can find his place. It’s not as if I’ve never hiked these woods.”

“Of course I’ll take you.” Penelope leaned her big broom against the wall. “Let me tell Pop. He’s keeping me under his thumb, but I’m allowed a lunch break.”

Five minutes later, they were in Penelope’s truck, Harriet tight-lipped and tense. She wasn’t an outdoorswoman. She loved her gardens and an annual swim or two in the lake, but treks over hill and dale weren’t for her. She tucked stray hairs into her hat. The white emphasized her paleness, the fatigue and fine lines around her eyes. She wasn’t wearing any makeup today, and her freckles stood out against her pale skin. Wyatt Sinclair and Jack Dunning had pushed fantasy into the realm of reality—or sheer foolishness. Yet if Harriet was private and often hard to gauge, she was no fool. Penelope knew that, although sometimes she had to remind herself she needn’t be protective of her cousin.

With the warm temperatures, evaporating snow and gray skies, there was a haze in the air, hovering over the lake and woods, everything damp and drippy with melting. The snow was heavier and wetter today, good for snowballs and snow forts and tough on electrical wires. Penelope and Harriet set off without benefit of snowshoes or supplies.

“I don’t know about you, Harriet,” Penelope said as they trudged along the path, “but I’m ready for daffodils.”

“Oh, me, too! But it’s so beautiful, isn’t it?” She beamed, breathless, and smiled at Penelope. She was more relaxed now that she’d gotten her way. “I really should get out here more often.”

“Any time.”

As they followed the trail, Penelope noticed fresh tracks. Both snowshoes and boots. She’d worn her day hikers and anorak. “I wonder where our Sinclair and PI are today.”

Harriet was breathing hard as they crossed onto Sinclair land. Penelope stayed a yard behind her, trying not to lose patience with her cousin’s slow pace.

“I don’t think they like each other,” Harriet said. “They certainly don’t seem to be coordinating their efforts.”

“That’s for sure. Well, they can spin their wheels until they give up and go home. I get the feeling the Sinclair family doesn’t operate the way we do. And that’s an observation,” she added quickly, before her cousin could spring to their defense, “not a criticism.”

Harriet made no comment. She was huffing and red-faced from walking at a fairly fast clip through snow from four to eight inches deep. But it was melting fast, and before long, the woods would be filled with ferns and wildflowers.

When they reached Bubba’s little homestead, all was quiet and still. Not even a curl of smoke was coming out of the chimney. Harriet sucked in a deep breath, surveying the place with her serious eyes. “It’s just what you’d expect, isn’t it? What a simple life.”

“Provided the Sinclairs don’t kick him off their land. I guess it’s a lot easier to give up the rat race when you can build yourself a little place on someone else’s land—not that I care. He must be out. Doesn’t look as if his dogs are around, either. He doesn’t always take them with him, but I think they’d be out growling and barking by now.”

“Look,” Harriet said, pointing, “he has bird feeders. It reminds you the best things in life are free, doesn’t it?”

“I guess so.” Penelope scooped up a handful of snow and fashioned it into a snowball, just to give herself something to do. Without gloves, her fingers got cold fast. She tossed the snowball against a tree. It hit with a soft thud. “Well, we’ve seen it—”

Harriet averted her gaze. “Maybe we could take a look inside.”

“You mean just walk in?”

Her cousin spun around to her, her eyes a little wild, her intensity palpable. “Why not? Penelope, what if he knows where Colt and Frannie’s plane is? If it’s out here, he
must
have found it. I’m not saying you did—I don’t know—but it’s all got me thinking.”

“Harriet, we can’t just walk into Bubba’s house and have a look around.”

She pursed her lips, her only indication she didn’t like Penelope’s tone. “What if he looted the wreckage? You know what a scavenger he is.”

“I can’t imagine he’d find anything of use in an old plane wreck.”

Harriet didn’t give up. “What if he’s in there, dead?”

“His dogs would be out here chewing our legs off.”

Her cousin spun around and focused on the shack, her arms folded on her chest. She was fast going into a snit. Her moods could last days. She didn’t indulge them often, but when she did, she wouldn’t say a word or argue. She’d just get silent and what Aunt Mary called pissy.

Penelope started around her. “Come on, we can at least take a look at his garden.”

“You think I’m ridiculous,” Harriet said behind her.

Penelope stifled a groan. Her cousin’s tendency toward self-pity was the one trait that irritated her. “No, Harriet, I just don’t want to be a party to searching Bubba’s place. That’s all. We can wait for him, if you’d like.”

“He could be gone for hours. I’ve got scones to make.” Her arms sagged to her sides, and her eyes shone with tears. She went from stubborn determination to whiny self-pity to remorse in a flash. She sniffled. “I’m just so…so…I don’t know! I can’t think straight. Sometimes it’s as if I can’t breathe.”

Seeing how she’d made love with a Sinclair that morning, Penelope could be sympathetic. “You don’t have to explain or apologize to me, Harriet. I’m not trying to climb on my moral high horse—”

“Hey, kids.”

They both jumped, and Jack Dunning stepped from behind the rickety garden shed and tipped his cowboy hat. “I thought I heard something.” He grinned. “Afraid it might be the bogeyman.”

Harriet blushed fiercely. “We were just—I just—”

She was so flustered she couldn’t finish, but Jack spared her. “Our old hermit seems to have cleared out for the day. I took a peek inside his place here. Neat as a pin, chives on the windowsills. Quite the stack of books.”

“Once or twice a year he trades at yard sales,” Penelope said. She was unreasonably irritated with Dunning for committing the invasion of privacy Harriet had considered. It wasn’t as if Bubba Johns was her responsibility. “I can’t believe you just walked right in.”

He shrugged. “No locks.”

“Aren’t private investigators supposed to uphold the law?”

“Sure, and I do.” He walked on Bubba’s icy path to join her and Harriet. “Private investigators are also supposed to find answers to gnatty questions, such as whether or not our hermit friend had anything to do with why you changed your story. I think he did. I didn’t find any souvenirs from a Piper Cub in there, but I bet he found that plane long before you did.”

“Jack,” Harriet said, “Penelope is the most honest person I’ve ever known.”

He shook his head, and Penelope was glad he couldn’t read minds, because she was thinking that if Harriet turned over a rock in Bubba’s brook, she’d find Penelope slithering there. Dunning seemed mercifully oblivious. “I didn’t have time to do a thorough search. I heard you two coming over the hill and slipped behind the shed.”

Penelope had heard enough. She about-faced and started up the trail. “I’m going back to work. My lunch hour’s over.” She stopped abruptly, looking at Dunning. The sun tried to burn through the haze, and she squinted against the glare. “I didn’t see your car at my place.”

“I parked on the main road and walked in from there. Apparently it’s Bubba’s route to town.”

His tone was steady, but there was a not-that-it’s-any-of-your-business edge to it. Penelope could feel her jaw clenching. This man worked for Wyatt’s father, and she didn’t want to alienate him. But she wasn’t going to let him roll her, either. She turned to Harriet. “You coming?”

Dunning stepped next to her. “Harriet, you can go with me if you want, and I’ll drive you to town. Let Penelope get to work.”

Harriet smiled almost giddily, and Penelope wondered if she looked as dopey-eyed around Sinclair as her cousin around this PI. “Are you sure you don’t mind?”

“It’d be my pleasure,” he said, the wannabe southern gentleman and New York detective all mixed into a disconcerting, charming package Penelope wasn’t sure she or her cousin should trust.

But there was no stopping Harriet, and Penelope wasted no time getting to her house. She didn’t even check her taps. She
had
to get these two out of town, Wyatt and Dunning both. But how to satisfy them short of taking them to the wreckage?

It was an option. A serious option. She didn’t want to not do it out of a sense of defiance. She needed to be practical and focus, as her father had said, on doing the right thing.

But what about whoever had sent the messages? What was
their
point? And Bubba and Harriet—she’d confused their lives enough as it was.

She’d think over her options—and their consequences—while she washed planes this afternoon.

Twelve

W
yatt couldn’t believe what he was thinking.

He stood in front of Penelope’s cabin, her sap-boiling woodpile charred and cold, and debated the pros and cons of slipping inside for a thorough search. He’d start with her computer. He wondered what secrets it might dish up. Then he’d work his way through her closets and drawers.

“What a bastard you are.”

Last night, sprawled on her lumpy, ancient couch with the smell of mothballs in his nostrils and thoughts of her snuggled under her comforter in the next room, he’d stared at ol’ Willard and contemplated how to get Penelope to trust and confide in him. After all, the woman kept a dead moose on the wall and lived alone in a place not much better than Bubba Johns’s shack.

He’d had no such yearnings for intimacy and trust with Madge. She was content to feng-shui his apartment, spend his money and share his bed. No demands from her, none from him.

The air was damp and chilly, the kind that got into the bones. Wyatt forced himself to acknowledge a certain uneasiness regarding his motives toward Penelope Chestnut. He’d acted on blind instinct this morning, but he wondered if, deep down, making love to her had been a cynical ploy to get the truth out of her. She’d become a challenge, and there was nothing he liked better than a good challenge.

He wondered what would happen if he did succeed in earning her trust. Would he throw it back in her face? He did not have a sterling record in that regard. When it came to love and trust, he was more Sinclair than he liked to admit.

He swore under his breath. He was a man of action. Introspection bored the hell out of him. What he wanted from Penelope was clear enough—answers and sex. The rest was self-delusion. Love, romance and intimacy were not part of this particular equation.

He heard a car negotiating the ruts and bumps and quicksand of the dirt road, and in another minute it rolled in behind him. A black sedan with Andy McNally behind the wheel. He got out, his demeanor all cop. The terrible facial scar only added to his air of authority. “How long have you been here?”

“Five minutes, tops. Something up?”

“I got a call to come check things out up here. Anonymous. It came on my private cell phone, so we didn’t get it on tape. Cute, huh? If someone’s jerking my chain—” He started across the driveway, a mix of melting snow, mud and gravel. “Let’s just say I’m not amused.”

“You think it’s a prank call?”

“I’ll find out. Wouldn’t be the first. Penelope’s got her name in the papers, stirred folks up. I wouldn’t put it past someone to drag me out here just for grins.” He narrowed his eyes at Wyatt. “Or to harass you.”

“Me? Why?”

“You probably have a damned good idea why. You’re a Sinclair, you don’t believe our sweet Penelope’s story—a lot of reasons.” He mounted the steps to her side entrance and peered inside. “Shit.”

Wyatt stood on the bottom step. “What is it?”

“Goddamn it, it wasn’t a crank call. Looks as if someone’s been through her place.” He glared at Wyatt. “If it was you, Sinclair, I’m going to find out and nail your ass. Understood?”

“It wasn’t me,” he replied calmly.

“Door’s still locked. A miracle she bothered. She must be more spooked having you in town than I realized. Whoever it was probably came in from the deck. Less chance of being seen this time of year—no boats on the lake.” McNally was grinding out his words, growling, thoroughly annoyed by the turn of events. “I’ve got to get a detective up here. Goddamn it, Sinclair, don’t touch anything while I call this in.”

“I can go around and look at the deck—”

He shook his head. “There might be footprints.” He clomped down the steps and looked at the lake. A neatly shoveled path led to the deck. “Penelope would get ambitious and shovel. I swear, I’m beginning to think we’re all safer with her in the air. Scariest thought I’ve had in a month.”

Since it was his fourth day in Cold Spring, Wyatt had a fair understanding of how the chief of police could be irritated with Penelope because her house had been broken into. Things tended to happen to her, and people tended to blame her because they did. She was a catalyst for action and drama in her small hometown.

As if reading his mind, McNally glowered at him. “This is vintage Penelope Chestnut, I want you to know. Damn it, even when she said it was a dump she found and not Frannie Beaudine’s plane, I knew we were still in for trouble.”

“Are you going to notify her?”

“I’ll call her father after I get a detective up here. You,” he said, glancing back en route to his car, “stay put.”

Wyatt gave him a thin smile. He had no intention of going anywhere.

While they waited for the sole detective on the Cold Spring police department to arrive, McNally studied the driveway and the woods across the road for tire marks and footprints. “Looks as if Penelope’s been out checking her taps,” he said. “Lyman was trying to keep her busy today, but I heard Harriet and she took off for a noontime jaunt.” He paused, frowning as he stared down the quiet, narrow road. “I wonder if they came up here, saw anything.”

Wyatt debated telling McNally about the fax and the instant message. Then again, Penelope was on her way, and
she
could tell him. Some snake pits he managed to skirt.

The detective rolled in, a young guy named Pete who seemed to share his boss’s opinion of the victim of the break-in. Before McNally could follow him up the steps, Penelope bounced down the road in her mud-splattered hunter-green truck. Her father jumped out at the same time she did, cigar stuck in his mouth, repressed agitation adding more lines to his face.

“He insisted on coming,” Penelope told McNally. She looked pale but in control, and Wyatt tried not to think about how he’d left her that morning. “What’s up?”

“Looks like your place has been ransacked. Whoever did it broke in from the deck. Pete’s up there now.”

She glared past him to Wyatt, her jaw set, fear—possibly unacknowledged—etched in every angle of her face. “It wasn’t you?”

Wyatt had expected as much. Considering his earlier quandary, her suspicion was hardly out of place. “It wasn’t me,” he told her, as he’d told the police chief. “And I didn’t see who it was.”

Lyman Chestnut removed his cigar from his mouth, noxious fumes drifting into the damp air. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Andy, you said you got an anonymous tip?”

The chief nodded grimly. “I thought it was a crank call.”

“Do you think it was whoever did this,” Lyman went on, “or just a passerby who saw something and didn’t want to get involved?”

“Damned if I know, but it’s not like Penelope gets many passersby out here.”

Penelope clearly hated having them discuss her as if she weren’t standing there. Before she could make her displeasure known, Pete pushed open the kitchen door. “Jesus Christ, Penelope, you keep a Winchester in your goddamned bedroom?”

Andy McNally and her father turned to glare at her. She sputtered. “It’s not loaded. I’ve got all the cartridges in my pocketbook. Look, I’m the
victim
here. Mind if I go in and see if anything’s missing?”

“Do what Pete tells you,” McNally warned her. “I’m not kidding around here.”

“Who the hell’s kidding?” she snapped.

Wyatt figured her father’s patience had to be exhausted, but Lyman tossed his cigar into a snowbank. “Penelope, you sure you want to keep saying it was a dump out in the woods on Sunday and you can’t find it?”

She stopped on the mushy, icy walk and thrust her hands on her hips as she looked at her father. She was clear-eyed and more scared than she’d want to admit. “It was a dump site out in the woods on Sunday and I can’t find it.”

Wyatt had to give her credit for holding her own against her father, the chief of police, a detective and him. Four men, and not one of them believed her. She knew it, and she didn’t give a damn. She was hanging on to the shreds of her lie as if they were a lifeline.

She trotted up the steps as if she were going in to open a can of soup.

“Damned stubborn—” Lyman cut himself off with a growl. “She’s always been that way, even before she could walk.”

“You want to call Robby?” Andy asked.

“No, she’s a nervous wreck as it is. She still hasn’t gotten over having to call out a search party when Penelope missed Sunday dinner. That girl’s worried her mother for years.”

Andy sighed, nodding. “I’ll tell Harriet myself.”

Lyman attempted a feeble grin. “You do that.”

Wyatt stood back, not wanting to interfere with relationships forged long before he waltzed into town. He noted that, while Lyman had insisted on accompanying his daughter, he was standing back, not interfering or trying to take charge. On some level, he seemed to understand that she was her own woman, even if he didn’t like her choices or trust her decisions—and worried about her and loved her. There were no conditions on their father-daughter relationship. It just was what it was, something Wyatt found rather amazing to witness.

McNally went inside, and Lyman paced in the driveway. Finally he glanced at Wyatt. “Where’s your buddy the PI?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t seen him since this morning.”

“Think he did this?”

Wyatt had already considered that scenario. “It’s possible.”

Lyman’s gaze was steady. “It’s possible you did it, too.”

“From your point of view, I imagine it is. From mine, no.”

“Penelope’s my only kid. My wife and I lost two before we had her, and one after. We spoiled her, I admit it. We wanted her to have a mind of her own—” He took a breath, asserting his natural stoicism. “And by God, she does.”

Wyatt smiled. “That’s obvious.”

She emerged from her kitchen a little paler, a lot shakier. She had to grab the handrail on the way down, and it wasn’t because the steps were icy. Wyatt could see the unsteadiness, the shock registering of someone breaking into her place, searching her things. “Jeez,” she said, “the bastard even went through my underwear drawer.”

“We’ll catch him,” her father said, leaving it at that. She nodded, looking somewhat reassured. He wasn’t minimizing her fears—she was accustomed to his taciturn nature. If her father had fallen apart or gone into a rage, Wyatt thought, Penelope would have really worried. She expected that stoicism, was comforted by it.

“Anything taken?” Wyatt asked.

She shook her head. “Not that I can see. Granddad’s rifle, my gold jewelry—everything’s still there.”

Lyman frowned, jerked a thumb at her house. “They going to be in there long?”

“Pete’s debating whether or not to dust for prints. He doesn’t think he’ll find any, and since nothing’s been stolen and no one was hurt, it’s not that high a priority.”

Lyman drew his mouth into a straight line. “I don’t want you staying here by yourself. Go down to the inn and stay with Harriet or come up to the house and stay with your mother and me. And why the hell did you get your grandfather’s rifle out? You going to tell us that?”

McNally’s brows drew together. “Good point, Lyman.”

Penelope, however, wasn’t going to tell them about the vaguely threatening messages—yet. Wyatt would talk to her and perhaps insist. But right now, with the police and her father breathing down her neck, she focused on where she’d sleep. “I’m not going to be run out of my own home.”

Her father bit off an annoyed huff, one more in a long series of toe-to-toe battles with his daughter. “You want to be asleep in your bed next time this guy comes around? Eh? Is that what you want?”

Wyatt shook his head in amazement. “The more scared and worried you two are, the more you yell at each other.” They both turned and glared at him, and he laughed. “I knew that’d unite you. Penelope, if your police pals are finished with you, I’d be happy to drive you to town for something to eat before your blood sugar bottoms out. Your father can take your truck to the airport, and I’ll drop you off when we’re finished. How does that sound?”

She opened her mouth to protest—just because she was in the protesting mode—but shut it and nodded. “That sounds fine.”

Her father’s eyes widened. “Just like that?” He turned to Wyatt and gave a short laugh. “You Sinclairs.”

“I’d like to wait here a little longer,” she said, more subdued but far from meek.

Wyatt nodded. “I’m not going anywhere.”

She attempted a smile. “Why don’t I find that comforting?”

Oh, but you do, he thought. If her father wasn’t standing there, he’d have said it. But it didn’t matter—he’d tell her later. Because what worried her right now, maybe more than having her house broken into and someone sending her peculiar messages, was how comforting she found his presence to be.

Penelope couldn’t stop shaking. It was almost like the time Andy McNally had pulled her out of the lake and she shivered so badly she loosened a tooth. But she was twelve then, and she’d had hypothermia. To his credit, Wyatt didn’t comment.

When they arrived at the Sunrise Inn, they found Jack Dunning chatting with Harriet at the front desk.

“Harriet just told me about the break-in,” Jack said.

He’d addressed Penelope, but Wyatt said, “I hope it wasn’t your doing.”

Jack shrugged. “I’m not that subtle.” He gave Penelope an unsubtle wink. “Maybe you ought to come clean about what you found in the woods.”

“The break-in wasn’t necessarily related—”

“Bullshit. You know it was. So do the police and everyone else in town.”

His tone was matter-of-fact and very certain, the professional at work. Penelope didn’t take offense. “It might be indirectly related. My name’s been all over the media—it could have prompted someone to see what they could find of interest in my home.”

“But they didn’t steal anything,” Jack pointed out.

Penelope figured Harriet must have gotten the whole story from Andy, then told Dunning. She said, “That’s because I’m not a rich woman. I don’t have anything worth stealing.”

Dunning leaned toward her, his gaze direct and unflinchingly to the point. “That’s because they didn’t find directions to Frannie and Colt’s plane. Think about taking Wyatt or me out to the crash site, Miss Chestnut. Take your father, take a friend. I don’t think you want to be the only person around here who knows where that plane went down. Whoever ransacked your house today could be ready to play hardball. Who knows what he’ll do next.”