Night Scents (7 page)

Piper sat at her picnic table with a cup of coffee, her portable telephone, and her binoculars. She thought she'd spotted a piping plover in the marsh from her bedroom window. It was an endangered species, distinguished by its unique, twisting flight, and it was rigorously protected on Cape Cod. Enough reason to breakfast outside. The glorious morning only added to her satisfaction. There wasn't a cloud in the sky, sunlight sparkled on the quiet bay, shorebirds plundered the marsh for food, bees buzzed in the flowering herbs around her. She'd planted ordinary, innocuous culinary herbs: several kinds of thyme, mint, basil, tarragon, oregano, sage. Nothing remotely poisonous. Sage supposedly was good for female complaints, but she just used it for stuffing.

She sipped her coffee, wishing she hadn't thought of Hannah. Not yet, not before her second cup of coffee at least. She'd had a good night's sleep. No predawn forays into her neighbor's yard for medicinal herbs or buried treasure. Even Hannah couldn't have expected her to dig for treasure last night. If Clate Jackson had caught Piper two nights in a row, there was no doubt in her mind he'd have her explaining herself to Ernie down at the police station.

After her yarn-dyeing class had let out last night and she'd cleaned up her studio, she'd pondered a delicate course of action that would manage to satisfy Hannah without further fueling people's concerns about her mental health. Without her aunt breathing down her neck, her sense of urgency almost palpable, Piper could think.

What she'd thought, quite simply, was that it wouldn't be smart to head next door with shovel in hand and start digging willy-nilly for buried treasure that might not even exist.

She snatched up her binoculars and scanned the marsh. She had a busy afternoon and evening ahead, but her morning was hers. She could head into town and sneak into a quiet corner of the library, away from prying eyes, and look up newspaper accounts of the shipwreck that had killed her great-grandparents. Maybe there'd be some long-lost hint that Caleb Macintosh really had rescued a Russian princess and Hannah's memory wasn't a fairy tale, a ploy, or a trick of her mind.

Her telephone rang, startling her. She picked it up, the binoculars still in place. "Hello."

"Stay off Clate Jackson's property if you know what's good for you."

She dropped her binoculars. "What? Who is this?"

"Do it."

The voice was muffled, gravelly. Piper felt a stab of fear and started to say something, but stopped when she heard a click and a dial tone.

She switched off her phone and stared at it. What the hell was that all about? Her hands shaking, she pressed the on button, hit the memory button for Hannah's number, and snatched up her binoculars while the phone rang. Her heart raced. Who would want to make such a call?

Hannah answered after four rings.

"That wasn't you, was it?"

"Who wasn't me? Piper? What's wrong?"

She ran a trembling hand through her hair. "I just got a weird phone call. I'm okay."

"Tell me about it."

Piper wanted to. A few months ago she would have, without thought or hesitation. Now, she reconsidered. "It was probably nothing. I should have listened to Andrew and Benjamin and never put my name in the Yellow Pages. I'll talk to you later."

"Piper—"

"Gotta run. Bye, Hannah. Love you."

She gathered up phone, coffee mug, and binoculars and charged inside, adrenaline still pumping. All right, so Hannah wasn't above sending her out for valerian root at the crack of dawn to force an encounter with Clate Jackson. She would never do anything deliberately to terrify Piper, just to encourage romance between her and the man of her destiny.

Unless Stan Carlucci was right and Hannah really was unbalanced.

Piper stopped in the middle of her keeping room, wide boards under foot, dried herbs and flowers hanging from exposed beams. What if it had been Clate Jackson on the other end of the phone?

No. That was absurd. He'd told her right to her face to stay off his property. Why be sneaky about it?

An associate?

"Geez," Piper breathed, "I'm losing it."

She grabbed one of the handmade baskets hanging amidst the bunches of herbs and flowers. The first of the strawberries were ripe. She'd planned to pick them this morning and make a batch of open-kettle jam, and that was just what she would do.

"Stay off Clate Jackson's property."

With a shudder, she slipped back outside and took several deep, cleansing breaths before heading to her strawberry patch. She needed to clear her mind and consider her options instead of doing something precipitous, like marching next door or, worse, calling her father and brothers or Ernie at the police station. Berry picking, she hoped, would do the trick.

A narrow, well-traveled footpath took Clate through a break in the hedge that divided his and Piper Macintosh's property, then up through tall, wild grasses, the marsh creeping further up the gentle slope toward her house. None of the Frye House's terraced gardens and lush grass here. The marsh gave way to a yard that was more meadow than suburban lawn. He noticed wild-looking gardens of vegetables, herbs, flowers, trellises of pink roses, a grape arbor, bird feeders, a rooster weather-vane, a neatly stacked woodpile. A brightly colored windsock danced in the breeze from a low-hanging branch of an oak.

Clate spotted her in her vegetable garden, a floppy straw hat protecting her face from the strong midmorning sun. He didn't think she'd seen him. She seemed absorbed in her work. As he came closer, he saw that she was picking strawberries, her small hands moving rapidly, surely, among the low vines.

"Nice garden," he said.

Her head shot up, and her hat fell back off her head as her eyes, their green blending in with their environment, focused on him. Her hat had a long, loose, ropy tie that kept it from falling into the strawberries. The sunlight struck her chestnut hair, and she stood up and brushed her hands on her berry-stained shirt, sending an arrow of lust straight to its mark. Clate felt his throat tighten. Shapely breasts, flat stomach, taut legs. A pity the eighty-seven-year-old aunt wasn't his neighbor instead of the niece. He hadn't come north for this kind of distraction.

"Thank you." But her smile didn't quite reach her eyes, and he remembered her troubled look yesterday when he'd stopped alongside the road. "It's just enough garden for me to manage on my own."

He pushed back questions about her troubled state; it was none of his business. "It's organic?"

She nodded, some of her obvious distress easing. "A lot of it's just knowing what to plant where to discourage pests and promote growth. Synergy. That and a few of Hannah's natural remedies work fine for me. But I can always run down to the grocery if the deer and the bugs get everything."

"Your strawberries look as if they've done well. I didn't mean to interrupt."

"No problem. My back was starting to give out anyway. What can I do for you?"

Picking strawberries in the June sun, Cape Cod Bay sprawled at her feet. Clate inhaled. Life could be worse. He remembered Irma ladeling sweet, juicy strawberries onto warm biscuits, lecturing him about family and community and duty, ever the idealist, ever the believer in what he could do and who he could be, and he felt himself withdraw into a grief that had caught him by surprise. Irma Bryar's death at eighty-nine was not unexpected, and yet she had been a presence in his life for so long, she'd cared about him in a way his own parents were incapable of caring, that he simply couldn't imagine what his life was going to be like without her. Never mind that he seldom saw her, that he'd gone way beyond even what she'd imagined he could do with his life. Irma had always been there. And now she wasn't.

He saw Piper's eyes narrowing on him, knew he must look haggard and on edge.

"I came to ask your opinion, if you don't mind." He straightened, reined in his grief, his purely physical reaction to her. That had been a distraction, nothing more. "I need to leave town today."

"Business?"

"No. Personal."

"Oh." She wanted to ask more; he could see it in her expression. But his tone had cut off further questioning. "Well, I can look after your place while you're gone."

"That's not necessary. I just wanted your take on a man who stopped by yesterday and offered his services as caretaker. Tuck O'Rourke. Do you know him?"

"Sure, I know Tuck." She scooped up her basket of strawberries, snatched up a fat one and twisted off its green top, popping it into her mouth. He watched her swallow. "He's a good guy. Solid, hardworking, not a whole lot of imagination."

"Honest?"

"So far as I know. You want him just to mow and stuff like that or really do some work on the place?"

"I'm considering having some landscaping and other work done."

She frowned. "Landscaping? Like what?"

Her matter-of-fact curiosity took on a proprietary tone. Clate cursed himself for asking her opinion. He'd operated on gut instinct from the time he could walk. He could have decided about Tuck O'Rourke on his own. "I'm not sure yet. The place needs a lot of work."

She flipped the strawberry cap into the dirt. "Well, if you're going to start digging stuff up, I hope you'll let me know before you throw anything out. Some of the Fryes' flower varieties are really old. I'd hate to see them land in a compost heap."

Not that she wouldn't help herself if he neglected to include her in his plans. Clate didn't wonder that the locals were speculating about her aunt resorting to magic to lure a man to Frye's Cove for her niece. Even if the rumor were wholly untrue, he could see that the local male population wouldn't have an easy time of it romancing Piper Macintosh. She was direct, determined, insistent upon seeing people as they were, not simply as they wished her to see them. A man would have to have a good opinion of himself to stand up to her scrutiny—not to mention that of her father and two brothers.

A rough lot, the Macintoshes.

But Clate was unintimidated. He considered asking Piper about O'Rourke's tales of witches, ghosts, devils, and romance. He'd like to see her squirm her way out of that one, whether fact or mere gossip. He decided against it, only because he didn't want to get Tuck O'Rourke in hot water with a woman who knew her way around poison herbs. The poor bastard could never hold his own with Piper Macintosh.

"About Tuck O'Rourke," he said curtly, putting aside speculation about his neighbor's love life. "Any hesitations?"

"No, he'll do a good job. When are you leaving?"

He thought of Irma in her rocking chair on her front porch, needlework and a book always at hand. "Immediately."

He could see the spark of curiosity in Piper's eyes, watched her force it back. "I'll keep an eye on Tuck and make sure he does right by your lawn and gardens."

"I wouldn't ask you—"

"Of course you wouldn't." She grinned, the distress he'd seen when he first arrived completely gone now. "Afraid I'm going to become a pest, Mr. Jackson? Not to worry. I've plenty to do without interfering in your affairs."

He sighed. The woman saw too much, and yet not nearly enough. He'd wager she had no idea he found her attractive. "I just don't want to put you out."

"You're not." She scooped up a handful of berries, let them fall one by one through her splayed fingers, a gesture Clate found impossibly erotic. "Have a good trip."

"Thank you."

"Oh, and if your place starts smoking or something or you remember you left the coffeepot on, I still have the key my aunt gave me. Unless you've changed your locks."

"I haven't," he said, "but perhaps I should."

She gave him a mystified look, as if she couldn't imagine what he'd find wrong in her having a key to his house. "Do you practice getting on people's nerves or is it just a gift?"

"I say what's on my mind."

"Well, that's something we have in common. If it makes you feel any better, there's probably a key to my house tucked away in your kitchen somewhere. Frye's Cove is a small town. Neighbors rely on each other, and it's just you and me out here."

He gave her a slow smile, just deliberately sexy enough to knock her off her high horse. "So it is."

She popped a strawberry into her mouth, stem and all. "How long will you be gone?"

He was unaccustomed to answering such questions. "Four or five days."

"That's all? It's not as if your place'U go to hell in just four days."

"Thanks for your help, Piper. I'll call Tuck O'Rourke before I leave."

She tilted her head back, studying him. A bit of color went out of her cheeks, and she seemed to have tightened her grip on her basket of strawberries. "You didn't happen to call here a little while ago, did you?" she asked suddenly.

Clate shook his head, saw the fresh signs of strain in her expression. He went still, sensing something was wrong. "No, I didn't. Why?"

"It's nothing, never mind." She took a deep breath, her hat hanging down her back as the breeze caught the ends of her dark, straight hair. "Tuck'll be fine, and I'm sure you won't leave the coffeepot on. Have a good trip."

Dismissing him, she negotiated her way through neat rows of strawberries, peas, new onions, tiny stalks of corn, and feathery carrot tops. Clate didn't move. She was barefoot, he saw. And shaken. Something about this mysterious phone call.

Why hadn't she known who it was?

"Are you sure you're all right?" he called.

She glanced back at him, smiled a phony smile. "Nope. I'm crazy. I picked too many strawberries and now I have to do something with them. Maybe I'll save you a jar of jam for when you get back."

"That would be nice."

But his words were distracted. She wasn't telling him the whole story, not even half of it. He had a mind to call her brother, put Andrew Macintosh on the case—a notion he immediately rejected. If Piper was in trouble, she would know where to find her family, and she had an entire town of friends who would help her, even if they believed she needed a witch's spell to improve her love life.

First she'd have to ask for their help. Piper Macintosh didn't strike him as a woman who would want to admit there was anything she couldn't handle on her own. She lived alone at the end of an isolated road, after all, and had her own woodpile, her own vegetables, her own quiet, independent life.