Night Scents (15 page)

But she found herself wanting Clate to understand why she'd put on a black dress and snuck onto his property in the middle of the night, why she was indulging her aunt in spite of threatening phone calls, him, her brothers, her father, and common sense.

"All right. I'll tell you."

He listened without interruption. He gave her that much courtesy. His expression remained neutral, even when she got to the part about the Russian princess and Faberge egg. But she had no illusions. This was a man who was concrete in the extreme, not one given to flights of imagination. He wouldn't easily accept that some things were not subject to logical explanation. Hannah's recovered memory and her firm belief in what she saw that night eighty years ago required a leap of imagination that even stretched Piper's capabilities.

"I've been dragging my heels," she said finally, "and Hannah knows it. She called me on it yesterday. I came out here tonight because I was more interested in pacifying her than finding buried treasure. I just had to act—results didn't matter."

"How far did you get?"

"I didn't even break ground."

"You were going for under the wisteria."

She nodded, suddenly feeling foolish. "If I was eighty-seven and believed the key to my parents' death lay under a wisteria, I'd want someone to dig for me and prove it one way or the other."

"What about the phone calls?"

"I can't explain them. I can't imagine why anyone would care if I were messing around on your property. Hannah says she didn't mention the treasure to anyone." Piper jumped up and returned her mug to the sink. A good thing she'd requested decaf. She'd have trouble sleeping as it was. She turned around and glared at Clate. "She has no reason to lie."

"I didn't say she did."

His tone was mild, not defensive. Piper reeled in her frustration. "I'm just so damned confused. I tried to do some research at the local library, but too many people I know were around. I managed to read one of the major accounts of how my great-grandparents died. People up and down the Cape were outraged and horrified that someone—probably one of their own —would lure two people to their deaths."

"Any proof that that was what happened?"

"A lantern was found on the beach, and an old fisherman said he'd seen a light waving in the fog. There were never any suspects, though."

Clate had his eyes narrowed, and Piper knew he was listening intently, that she had his full attention. "Is there any chance the ship wasn't purposely lured onto the sandbar? Could whoever had the lantern have been trying to help a lost ship and things just went awry?"

"I suppose it's possible, but it's unlikely. Presumably if it was an accident, this good Samaritan would have gone for help. Instead, it was hours before anyone realized a ship was stuck."

"All right. Suppose the guy with the lantern initially wanted to help. The ship hits the sandbar, he goes out to do what he can, but by the time he gets there, there's nothing he can do to help your aunt's parents. He's too late. He decides he might as well have a look at their belongings—"

"Finds the treasure and helps himself."

"Exactly."

"So he'd be a vulture stealing from dead people, not a murderer. I don't know. For the past eighty years, everyone around here has believed that Caleb and Phoebe Macintosh were lured to their deaths by a mooncusser."

He frowned. "A mooncusser?"

"They're sort of a Cape Cod legend. They'd use a lantern to deliberately strand ships, then rob them and leave them to fend for themselves. I'm not sure how many actual incidents of mooncussing occurred, but the legend persists."

"Your basic land pirate."

"I guess you could say that."

"No mention of Russian treasure in the account you read?"

Piper didn't like his disbelieving tone. "No, but I'm not finished with my research." She heard the defiance in her own voice and leaned against the counter, feeling her fatigue now, the aching in her mind and body. "Missing jewels and Faberge eggs. I know it sounds far-fetched. But Hannah—" She sighed. How could she possibly explain her elderly aunt to a man who had as low a tolerance for whim and fancy as Clate?

"Repressed memory is fairly unreliable from what I understand," he said, skeptical but not unkind. "This could be some fantasy your aunt's created to get closure on a traumatic event in her childhood. Her motives may be above reproach, but it doesn't mean she saw a thing that night."

"I think she knows that. I think she's just trying to sort out what's real and what's not."

"But it's been eighty years."

Piper thrust out her chin. "That's why she can't wait any longer."

"Okay." Some of his skepticism eased, but Piper had no illusions that he was relenting. He'd come to Cape Cod for privacy and quiet, not unraveling an old mystery. "Suppose I allow that she's really trying to sort out a haunting memory—even one she's only recently, and rather conveniently, recalled—it's still a big leap to think there's treasure buried under my wisteria. Even if she saw what she thinks she saw, the chances of that chest or whatever it was still being out there are next to none."

"I know," Piper said, fatigue overwhelming her. "I could have just told her I'd dug out there and didn't find anything, but—"

"But she deserves more than that from you," Clate finished.

His answer surprised her. "Yes, I guess that's it. She's always been there for me."

"And you for her."

Piper sucked in a breath. She was tired. That was why she was feeling so emotional. She knew Hannah wouldn't live forever. She only wanted her to live out whatever was left of her life happily, finally with the answers to what she'd seen, or what she thought she'd seen, that night at age seven. Piper knew she couldn't be objective where her aunt was concerned. But was her devotion to Hannah so obvious that even a man new to Frye's Cove, who wanted nothing to do with the people there, saw it?

He broke the silence. "Irma Bryar, the woman whose funeral I went home for, was that kind of presence in my life. I understand your loyalty, Piper."

"Was she your aunt?"

He shook his head. "Just an old woman in town, a retired teacher, who took an interest in a bad-mannered kid on all the wrong roads to all the wrong places."

"You miss her," Piper said with conviction, suddenly seeing past the hardness of the man, straight into his heart. An old friend had died, and he mourned her passing.

"We weren't as close as you and your aunt are. We had a different kind of connection." He got to his feet, moved toward her. "But if she'd asked, I'd have gotten my shovel and gone onto my neighbor's property to dig under a wisteria." A flash of humor. "I'm not sure I'd have worn a getup like yours, though."

As he came closer, Piper noticed the scars, the signs that life hadn't always been easy for him, Irma Bryar notwithstanding. She smiled. "I don't know. I can see you in a ruffled shirt—"

"You're exhausted, Piper." He touched her hair, trailed the back of his hand down her cheek. "Come on, I'll walk you home."

"I can manage on my own."

He laughed. "Don't get your back up, sweetheart. I'm not trying to snatch your independence from you. I'm not one of your brothers, I assure you."

"No kidding. They'd string up you and me both if they could see us now."

"Never mind the kiss?"

Her grin broadened. "They'd string us up and shoot us if they knew about the kiss."

"They look after you."

"They have their good points, meddling in my life not being one of them. Anyway, we can blame the kiss on adrenaline, circumstances, the night air. Whatever."

"Why blame it on anything?"

She licked her lips, remembering the taste of his. "Because it's the smart thing to do. Better yet, I'm just going to pretend it never happened."

Clate smiled knowingly. "Sure. You do that."

The Russian princess stuff almost had Clate on the phone with his realtor the next morning. He'd get rid of his place on Cape Cod and buy in Wyoming or Montana, find a quiet, peaceful Caribbean island. Hell, he'd do without a retreat. It was too damned complicated with his work and his dogs anyway. He belonged in Tennessee, not up here with all the sand and sea and crazy Yankees.

"Actually," Piper had said, "I doubt if she was a real Russian princess. She might have been just a baroness."

Gritting his teeth, he ducked under the rotting wisteria arbor in what purportedly was his back yard. It felt more like Hannah Frye's. He imagined her standing out on the terrace in one of her costumes, perhaps remembering yet not remembering the night her parents died.

A hell of a lot more convenient if she'd done her treasure digging before he'd moved in.

He wasn't convinced this sudden recovered memory wasn't just a ploy on the old woman's part to throw him and her niece together.

Still, here he was, under the wisteria.

The blossoms hung in thick, violet clusters, their sweet scent almost overpowering. Maybe Piper was humoring Hannah to keep her from finding someone else to dig for her buried treasure, meanwhile trying to establish some reason to believe in her recovered memory.

It wasn't treasure Hannah Frye wanted. It was clarity, answers, to what she saw that dark, terrible night eighty years ago. Clate could understand that compulsion. He remembered coming home from a solitary fishing trip when he was twelve and hearing his parents fighting, yelling, cursing, hitting, throwing things, both still just in their twenties. Alcohol, youth, ignorance, poverty, irresponsibility. They'd all taken their toll on them, on him. Yet he'd often wondered, less and less now, how it had all come to be. He'd tried to make sense where there was none to be made. In her own way, Hannah Macintosh Frye could be doing the same thing.

He breathed in the sweet smells of the wisteria, remembered the rambling wisteria Irma had on sagging trellises. He'd talked over these same issues with her on her front porch, after she'd insisted he wash up and dispose of any gum, cigarettes, and chewing tobacco. Instead of discussing his parents, she'd discussed books. Instead of answering his questions, she'd asked more. Clarity, she would say, was something one discovered, not something one had imposed upon one.

He shook off his sudden nostalgia, the nagging grief he felt for a woman he'd seen only sporadically in the past eighteen years. What if he'd seen her every day, as Piper Macintosh and Hannah Frye saw each other?

"Hell," he grunted, tearing himself back to the present. The salty breeze, the cloying wisteria, the prospect of a treasure chest buried under his feet. He saw that Piper had left her shovel behind after all. He thought of her anonymous caller. Hannah might not be interested in gems, gold, Faberge eggs, but that didn't mean someone else wasn't.

He grabbed the shovel and stabbed it into the soft ground, not sure what the devil he thought he was doing. The day was warm, a bit cooler under the wisteria. Piper's shovel was well worn, and he imagined her tilling her garden with it, imagined the tightening of the muscles in her legs, the perspiration beading on her brow.

He turned over a spadeful of dirt, then another. The soil was sandy and porous, not hard digging. He pulled off his shirt. If he'd shipwrecked, robbed, and left two people to die, he wouldn't have buried his bootie in someone's damned back yard. He'd have gone out into the woods, far away from the prying eyes of a lonely seven-year-old. And if he had been dumb enough to leave treasure buried under a wisteria, he wouldn't have left it there for eighty years.

Before long, he had a three-foot hole dug. Sweat poured down his back, bugs buzzed around him. He was breathing hard. He'd worked fast, furiously, as if physical exertion alone could keep him from applying the slightest bit of logic to what he was doing.

He threw down Piper's shovel and slipped out from under the wisteria, where the air seemed clearer, less cloying. He sat in the grass and let the sounds of sea and wind and birds soothe his raw nerves. Cape Cod was a pretty place. He'd give it that.

He checked his watch. Past noon. He had a conference call in an hour. Work beckoned. It always did. He hadn't learned the fine art of delegating. He suspected there were those in his company eagerly anticipating the day he did. He had good people, a handful he'd trust as chief executive.

He breathed a long sigh, staring at the hole he'd dug.

There was no treasure buried under his wisteria.

Piper must have guessed as much, or she'd have been out here at her aunt's first mention of what she'd seen that night. She wasn't one to wait. First chance he got, here he was digging a hole big enough for a dead elephant. A wonder he hadn't gone out before dawn. That Piper had been more deliberate and cautious than he had didn't sit well with him at all.

Pride compelled him to fill his hole. No need to have his neighbor slip through the hedges and discover he'd gotten caught up in her aunt's dotty ideas, too.

"Russian princesses," he muttered, stabbing at the mound of dirt. "Hell."

He'd get cleaned up, he'd do some business, and then maybe he'd wander into town and pay old Hannah Frye a visit.

Piper taught her open-hearth cooking class, picked a quart of strawberries, and was off to town on her mountain bike by four o'clock. Her life wasn't ordered, but it was endlessly stimulating.

She was not encouraged when she arrived at the Macintosh Inn and found four trucks outside belonging to her father, her brothers, and Tuck O'Rourke, and one BMW belonging to Clate Jackson.

In her experience, nothing good came of that many men conferring in one place, particularly when three were Macintoshes and one she'd kissed within the past twenty-four hours.

She ran into Sally Shepherd in the front lobby. "I suppose you're looking for your father and brothers. They're all in the tavern."

Even worse. With foreboding, Piper headed back to the tavern, a dark, wood-paneled room that called up images of revolutionaries plotting mischief against the British and sea captains telling tales of far-off lands. There was one notorious whaling captain in the Macintosh family tree. Piper sent in a donation to the New England Aquarium every year in his name.