Kiss the Moon (22 page)

“You’re in a good mood for someone who had her house broken into today.”

“Well, I’ve had a pleasant couple of hours. There’s something about a sugar shack. Mother doesn’t have a huge operation, but it’s way bigger than my fire by the driveway. I love sugaring. You know winter’s ending, and while I love snowshoeing and cross-country skiing and reading by the fire, by March I’m ready for buds on the trees and crocuses popping up.”

She sighed, smug and pleased. Wyatt was just perverse enough to wonder if this morning’s festivities in bed had anything to do with her mood. She ordered a Kahlúa and cream—she needed the protein, she said—and stifled a satisfied yawn. Wyatt decided he wasn’t going to throw her into a funk by telling her about the ten million in diamonds sitting in Frannie and Colt’s plane. Or not. He thought of the forty-five years it had been missing, the old hermit, the locals, the nasty messages Penelope had received—those diamonds could be long gone.

“Any leads on who broke into my house?” she asked after her drink had arrived.

“Not that anyone’s shared with me.”

“McNally usually comes around for a beer by now. Did you tell your father about the wreckage?”

He nodded. “He’s still absorbing it.”

“He’ll tell Dunning,” she said.

“That’s possible. He wants us to take Jack with us tomorrow. He doesn’t trust you.”

“Me? Why not, because I tried to protect the privacy of a hermit and an eccentric cousin?”

Wyatt suspected that was part of his father’s reasoning. But mainly his father thought Penelope Chestnut might have helped herself to a fortune in diamonds. “My father doesn’t know you. Are you going to tell McNally you fibbed about the dump?”

She sipped her rich drink, and after what she’d eaten that day, Wyatt half expected her to keel over. “He never believed me, anyway. I’ll wait until we check out the wreckage tomorrow. Maybe it’s a different plane—a less famous missing plane, one we didn’t even realize had gone down here. No point creating another tempest.”

“Whatever’s out there, I think you should tell the world about it tomorrow after we get back. It could discourage whoever’s harassing you.”

“That would be nice, but I don’t want him discouraged, I want him caught. Heck of a week.” She worked on an ice cube, as relaxed as he’d seen her. Her cheeks were still rosy from the heat of the sugar shack. “Grounded, a Sinclair in town, followed, weird anonymous messages, house ransacked. No wonder I slept with you. I’m addled.”

Wyatt grinned. “Now you’re sleeping one floor up from me.”

“With Harriet down the hall,” she reminded him, and cut him a quick smile. “She’s a light sleeper.”

“A pity.”

Andy McNally arrived later than usual, and he didn’t look pleased to see Penelope and Wyatt having a drink together. She leaned over and whispered, “I think we’re a poor substitute for Harriet.”

“She and Jack went for a walk.”

“I know. I saw them on my way back.”

“Jack’s not—” Wyatt hesitated, then said, “He’s here on a job. Harriet would be wise to keep that in mind. I could ask my father to rein him in, but I don’t know that it would do any good. He doesn’t control how Jack conducts his business.”

“Harriet’s a lot stronger than people give her credit for,” Penelope said, as if convincing herself, too. “Just because she’s single doesn’t mean she’s naive about men. In fact, quite the contrary. She probably knows more about men than a lot of women who’ve been married a million years. Besides, she’s kissed her share of frogs.”

Wyatt didn’t relax. “I hope to hell she doesn’t think Jack’s going to turn into Prince Charming.”

Penelope’s cheerful expression clouded, and she nodded. “I talk a good game, don’t I? She and Dunning—well, right now I’m having enough trouble living my own life, never mind hers. I suppose I should talk to Andy, tell him about the fax and the instant message. Get it over with. You sticking around?”

“No, I think I’d only complicate your discussion with McNally. I’ll head on up.”

“Stagger up, from the looks of you. How many martinis?”

“Just two.”

Her happy, irreverent mood reasserted itself. She grinned at him as she got to her feet. “There’s hope for you yet, Sinclair. If it took six martinis to get to you, I’d want more than one floor between us.”

She went to the bar, and Wyatt slid unsteadily to his feet, his stomach, his head, everything swooshing and spinning. He didn’t exactly stagger, but he wasn’t in top form. At least he wouldn’t have to contend with Penelope’s lumpy couch, her moose head, the thought of her in the very next room. A good night’s sleep was what he needed, one floor down from her or not. He glanced at her, saw her smiling at McNally as if that would soften the blow of withholding the messages from him, and he had his doubts about getting any sleep at all.

Fifteen

P
enelope awoke to the sun streaming through translucent curtains, the sounds of birds outside the window and the scent of the unlit lemon candle on the bed stand. Life could be good, she thought, then rolled over and called Steve, a guy she knew from high school who worked at the local hardware store. He liked to come to her cabin to go fishing. “I need new locks for my doors,” she told him.

“Penelope, you need new doors. That slider belongs in a museum.”

“I could use a new house to go with the new doors, too, but today I’ll have to make do with locks. Can you stop by and see what you can do?”

“Yeah, yeah. No promises.”

“Today?”

He sighed. “I’ll try.”

“Good. I probably won’t be around. If anyone asks, just say I sent you.”

“No, I’ll tell them I’m breaking in. I’ve always wanted Andy McNally and the Sinclair family on my case. You owe me, Chestnut.”

The thought of fresh locks made her feel more in control of her life. She showered, put on her hiking clothes—trail pants, expedition shirt, good socks—and slipped downstairs and out the main door without being seen. Wyatt might manage on the inn’s continental breakfast, but after yesterday’s carbo load, she needed eggs and bacon. Listening to the birds and exulting in the springlike temperature, she scooted up Main Street to Jeannie’s Diner.

Wyatt was at one of the booths, digging into a ham and cheese omelette and Jeannie’s incomparable, decadent home fries. He had on his hikers, jeans and a canvas shirt. No leather jacket to be seen. He must be acclimating, Penelope thought with amusement.

She slid onto the bench opposite him. “I’m surprised Jeannie let you sit here by yourself. Usually it’s a minimum of two people to a booth.”

“There’s not exactly a crowd.”

“This is Jeannie’s empire. You live by her rules.”

“Jeannie would be my waitress?”

“And the co-owner with her grandfather, Ed, who only comes around to make sure she’s keeping the grill to his cleanliness standards. He was always a maniac about a clean grill.”

He studied her. “You’re in a good mood this morning.”

“It’s the thrill of getting into the woods. I can only stand staying in one spot so long. And it’s a gorgeous day. The brooks will be full, the water rushing over the rocks, everything melting. A good hike’s the only thing that comes close to flying.” At that remark, his eyebrows rose provocatively, and she laughed. “Well, not the only thing.”

Jeannie, rail-thin and moving fast, flipped over Penelope’s mug and splashed in coffee. “Heard your place got broken into yesterday. Can’t be anyone from around here. We all know you don’t have anything worth stealing, except my grandfather. He’s always kind of had an eye for that moose head of yours.” Ed had been known to stop at her place with his fishing pole. Jeannie set the coffeepot on her skinny hip and leaned back, eyeing Penelope. “You okay?”

“I’m fine. Thanks. Just hungry.”

“Good, because I’ve got a mess of food to get rid of. I put in an extra order with all those reporters crawling around. They stayed ten minutes and went home. I sold out of pies, and that was that.”

“I’m sorry—”

“Not your fault. What can I get you?”

Penelope ordered scrambled eggs, toast and orange juice, and Jeannie added an order of sausage to it and tore off behind the counter. “She never does anything at a leisurely pace,” Penelope said. “You know, if you weren’t here, she’d have interrogated me about you and Jack Dunning. Nothing happens in this town that she doesn’t know about.”

“You seem well-informed yourself.”

“Only by default. I don’t ask. Jeannie asks. Trust me, everyone who comes in here today will have to fill her in on what they know about you and me now that we’ve had breakfast together.”

“You could have pretended you didn’t know me.”

“Uh-uh. She’d have made me sit at the counter, and I really like a booth.”

After breakfast, they took Penelope’s truck to her place. Steve had been by and put a perfunctory new lock on her side door. He left an envelope with the key inside and a note saying the slider was totaled. She examined the lock. “It doesn’t look like much, does it? It’s shiny, anyway. Of course, all anyone has to do is walk around to the deck and come in through the slider. Maybe I’ll get a big dog.”

She and Wyatt loaded two hip packs with food, water, cell phone and her wilderness day-trip medical kit, complete with its own little instruction manual. “After Sunday,” she told him, “I’m not taking any chances.”

As she’d predicted, the snow was melting fast, the sap was flowing, and the brooks were running high. All around were the sounds of birds and water. With the soft snow, much of it melted already, they didn’t bother with snowshoes and just trekked along in their boots. Penelope noticed that Wyatt’s hiking was smooth and strong, totally confident. She debated bringing it up and finally asked, “Have you missed hiking?”

He glanced at her, the sunlight catching the ends of his dark hair. “Often.”

“Will you go back to it?”

“Not at the same level. I’m not as restless and driven as I was ten years ago, and not just because of Hal. He was my hiking buddy, and I miss him—I’ll never get over what happened to us in Tasmania. I don’t want to. I intend to remember every second of our ordeal for as long as I live.” He paused, his gaze settling on Penelope, and she had no idea if he was seeing her or his dead friend. “It’s a part of who I am.”

“But he’s not the only reason—”

“No. He’s not. I don’t have to keep climbing tall mountains. I don’t have to keep proving myself. For better or for worse, I’m comfortable in my own skin. I choose not to be my grandfather, or Sinclairs before him, always needing the next challenge, the next enemy to conquer.”

“Then why did you come up here?”

He stopped, stared at her. “Because Colt’s my uncle, and no matter how much he pretends otherwise, I know my father is still haunted by not knowing what happened to him.”

“But Jack Dunning could have handled the situation,” Penelope said, ignoring the sense this was none of her business. “You didn’t need to get involved. Why did you?”

He gave her a quick, irreverent, unexpected smile. “Karma. I needed to meet you.”

She shook her head, staying on her point. “I just think you were bored.”

With that in-your-face remark, she pushed ahead on the path. She could feel his black eyes boring into her. He hadn’t liked what she’d said—probably because it had cut too close to the bone. The man was bored stiff on Wall Street with his numbers and money. Ebenezer Scrooge he was not.

Behind her, he said, “You’re feeling damned smug, aren’t you?”

She turned to face him, walking backward. “You just hate it because I’m right. You might not need to climb Everest, but you needed to confront a nice, hardworking New Hampshire woman you thought was lying through her teeth.”

“Which I was right about,” he reminded her.

She shrugged. “As comfortable as you might be in your own skin, Sinclair, you need a little adventure once in a while.” She grinned at him, suddenly feeling energetic in spite of the grim task ahead. “You just got more than you bargained for when you headed north.”

“And you got more than you bargained for when you lied.”

With a rush of awareness, she remembered yesterday morning. “Checkmate,” she said, and about-faced.

There was no sign of Bubba Johns at his hillside shack. One of his mutts charged out of the shadows, barking and panting, foam around his mouth from running. The other dog didn’t seem to be around. They checked outside, but no Bubba, no second dog.

“I’ll take a look inside,” Wyatt said, “just in case.”

He opened the door and, without leaving the threshold, peered inside the small shack. “Anything?” Penelope asked.

He shook his head.

She tried to ignore her growing uneasiness. “Bubba usually takes both dogs with him, but maybe this one’s out of sorts for some reason. Well, I’m no expert on hermits or dogs. I expect Bubba changed his mind about taking you to the wreckage or figured I would and he was off the hook.”

“You’re probably right.”

But she could sense his continued uneasiness.

They made their way down the hill and crossed the brook deeper into the Sinclair woods. Although, prior to Sunday, she’d never been to the ravine where she found the Piper Cub, Penelope was confident she could find it. On her way home on Sunday, she’d thrashed around in the woods for an hour before hitting familiar landmarks. Then it was a straight shot back.

Once they left the main trail and familiar ground, she had to stop several times to think, orient herself, remember. “It’d be a damned dirty trick if I can’t find my way back, after all.” She glanced around her. Wyatt said nothing, obviously not wanting to break her concentration, and in another second, she had it. “Left and over that rise.”

Soon they were at the rock where she’d paused to catch her breath and wish she’d had another Nutri-Grain bar. Directly below them was the ravine. To their right and down the steep hillside was the twisted heap of metal she’d found Sunday, presumably the wreckage of Colt Sinclair and Frannie Beaudine’s plane.

“Over there.” Penelope pointed, out of breath more from anticipation than exertion. “The sun’s not hitting it—
there.
I see it.”

Wyatt didn’t. He squinted, following her pointed finger. Then he went rigid, his jaw setting hard, and he nodded. “I’ve got it.”

Penelope’s mouth had gone dry, but she didn’t reach for her water bottle. “You can see why I didn’t risk getting close to it on Sunday. It’s rough going, and it was late, and I was already lost. The last thing I needed was to slip down the hill and bang my head on a rock.” She swallowed, her throat tight with tension. “Wyatt—I could be wrong.”

“We’ll know soon. We can make our way along the top of the hill a few more yards and work our way down at an angle. It shouldn’t be too difficult.”

“I agree.”

He glanced at her, everything about him contained, controlled. “It must have been a hell of a thing, spotting the wreckage out here by yourself, lost.”

“It was definitely eerie. Everything was so quiet that day. Now…” She paused, listening. “I can hear birds, and there’s a breeze. On Sunday it was as if I’d stumbled into a tomb. Afterward—I saw Bubba’s footprints. I didn’t know for sure he’d seen the wreckage or me, but it was a good bet.”

“I wonder why he’s been silent all these years.”

“Because it was none of his business,” Penelope said.

“Maybe.”

Wyatt abruptly jumped off the boulder and pushed through the tangle of brush, whiplike without its foliage. He didn’t say a word. Penelope followed, trying not to let his rigid self-control get to her. This was his uncle, she reminded herself. His family. They were on the verge of writing the last chapter on the most stubborn and mysterious Sinclair scandal of the past century. If Wyatt had to go inside himself to get through it, she could at least cut him some slack.

The soft, wet snow was deeper on the steep, north-facing hill, and their clothes—Wyatt’s in particular—weren’t especially suitable for the conditions. Soon they were soaked to the knees. But with temperatures in the low fifties, Penelope wasn’t too worried about hypothermia. They pushed and ducked through skinny birches and evergreens, climbed over granite boulders, then made their way carefully, at an angle, down and across the steep hillside, over more rocks, ice and patches of slippery, wet leaves left by the melted snow.

They reached the main body of the wreckage. It was in the shadows at this time of day, and Penelope could feel the isolation, as if she’d stepped into a grave.

There wasn’t much left of the vintage Piper Cub. Time and the elements had done their work. Yet the frame was still clearly visible, rusted engine parts, sections of the wings. One wing was farther down the hill, a possible indication of how the crash had occurred. Even forty-five years ago, this would have been a tree-covered hill. The plane could have clipped a wing on a tree, on its approach, gotten hung up in another tree, then smashed into the rocks.

Whatever happened, it hadn’t been pretty.

Wyatt’s slow, methodical movements gave way once they were upon the wreckage. He leaped over several rocks and stood in the midst of the twisted metal. Penelope followed cautiously, giving him time. She was on the last boulder when he turned to her, his face white. A surge of adrenaline boosted her heart rate. “What is it?”

“Penelope—my God. There aren’t any bodies.”

She gasped.
“What?”

Wyatt remained grim-faced, in control. “No remains. Nothing. They’re not here.”

Penelope’s stomach lurched. “Maybe animals…”

He made no reply.

There would have been
something,
Penelope realized. Bits of clothing. Bones. Evidence that two people had died here. She shuddered, feeling nauseous.

Wyatt squatted on a small boulder and surveyed the wreckage. “It seems so damned small, doesn’t it? You get it in your head that all the questions will be answered if only you find the plane itself. Now…” He sighed, rising. “Hell, we could just end up with more questions. Tougher ones.”

“There must be an explanation about the bodies. Maybe Colt and Frannie fell out of the plane, or jumped. Their bodies could be somewhere on the hill. We might have to wait until spring, when the snow’s melted, to get a good look.” She paused, having to catch her breath, although she hadn’t moved in several minutes. “I’m sure your family will want a thorough investigation.”

A dog barked, startling her and Wyatt. They could see it at the bottom of the hill, staying close to a hemlock.

“I think it’s Bubba’s other mutt,” Penelope said. “I don’t know his name. I wonder where—” She stopped when she saw a figure in the snow, partially hidden by the sweeping branches of the hemlock. “Oh, God. It’s Bubba.”

She spun to Wyatt, saw that he’d seen Bubba, too. He said, “Careful, Penelope,” and she didn’t know if he meant be careful not to jump to conclusions or be careful racing down the hill, because she was on her way, her legs moving before she had consciously decided that was what she needed to do. Instincts, impulse, fear for Bubba—they all came together to propel her off her rock.