Night's Landing (2 page)

Somewhere nearby, a mockingbird sang.

Sarah had warned herself to be prepared for the worst when she came home. Leaks in the roof, unmowed grass, bats, mice, food rotting in the refrigerator—her parents had last been in Night’s Landing in early April, though they wouldn’t necessarily notice such things or have them tended to. But they’d hired a new “gardener,” as her mother called the property manager, and he seemed to be working out. He hadn’t disappeared yet, as so many of his predecessors had, and he was good at his job. The lawn was manicured, the flower and vegetable gardens were in top shape, and the house was in good repair on what was a perfect early May afternoon.

The Dunnemores had arrived on the Cumberland River in the late eighteenth century and had been there ever since, sometimes eking out a living, sometimes managing quite nicely—always having adventures and too often dying young.

After just one sip of her tea punch, Sarah resolved not to drink the entire pitcher by herself. It was even sweeter than she remembered. She’d come home last at Christmas, but tea punch was a summer treat. She’d only made it to Night’s Landing once the previous summer, a whirlwind visit that did not involve a leisurely afternoon on the porch.

The porch was shaded by a massive oak that she and her brother, Rob, used to climb as children, but even the lowest branch was too high now. They’d sneak up there and spy on Granny Dunnemore and their father, arguing politics on the porch, or their mother as she snapped beans and hummed to herself, thinking she was alone.

Sarah had made the tea punch herself, dunking tea bags into Granny’s old sun-tea bottle and setting it out on the porch for an hour, then adding the litany of ingredients—frozen orange juice and lemon juice, mint extract, spices, sugar. She knew not to ponder them too much or she’d never drink the stuff. She never had an urge for sweet tea punch except when she was home in Tennessee.

Her friends in Scotland had made faces when she’d described Granny’s recipe. “Do you waste proper tea on it?”

Well, no. She didn’t. She used the cheapest tea bags she could find.

She took her friends’ chiding in stride. It wasn’t as if they didn’t have oddities in their comfort cuisine.

She’d spent two weeks in Scotland in the fall and then the past three months straight, working nonstop, completing—yes, that was the word, she told herself—the final project in a series of projects under one huge heading: the Poe House. How dry and ordinary it sounded. Yet it had consumed her since high school, before she even knew what historical archaeology was.

The Poes had arrived on the Cumberland River not that long after the Dunnemores. Sarah knew their family history, the history of their post—Civil War house just downriver, of the land it was built on, better than she did her own. She’d written articles and papers, she’d done interviews and research; she’d organized archaeological digs on the site; she’d preserved documents and artifacts; she’d scrambled for grants; she’d helped create a private trust that worked with the state and federal government to preserve the Poe house as an historic site; and now she’d produced a documentary that took the family back to its roots in Scotland.

It was time to move on. Find something else to do.

She had no idea what but pushed back any thought of the possibilities before it could explode into a full-blown obsession, as it had on the long trip home from Scotland. What would she do
now
? Teach full-time? Work for a foundation? A museum? Find a new project?

Have a life?

Sarah yanked her cinnamon stick out of her glass and licked the end of it, watching the dappled shade on the rich, green lawn. She wondered if her grandfather, who’d built the log house in order to attract a bride, had ever imagined that dams would raise the river and bring it closer to the front porch, if he’d ever pictured how beautiful the landscape would be almost a hundred years later—if he’d ever guessed that his family would become so attached to it. Sarah had never known him. He’d died an early and tragic death like so many Dunnemores before him.

When she was a little girl, she’d believed stories that the logs for the house had come from trees cut down, blown down or otherwise destroyed when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers dammed up the Cumberland for flood control and hydroelectric power, until she realized that the dams had been built decades
after
the house.

More than most in middle Tennessee, her family had a flare for storytelling and would go to great lengths, including embellishment, to make an already good story better.

She was convinced it was one of the reasons her father was such a natural diplomat. He didn’t necessarily believe anything anyone told him, but at the same time, he didn’t condemn them for stretching the truth, exaggerating, tweaking and otherwise making what they had to say suit their ends. To Stuart Dunnemore, that was all perfectly normal.

Sarah had no intention of making researching her own family her next career. It was enough to have researched her Night’s Landing neighbors—especially when the last of the Poes had just been elected to the White House. She’d promised John Wesley Poe—President Poe—that he could be the first to view her documentary, which was finished, edited,
done
. But he couldn’t ask her to change anything. That was the deal.

A mockingbird was singing somewhere nearby. Sarah smiled, watching a boat make its way upriver along the steep bluffs on the opposite bank, and drank more of her tea. Maybe it wasn’t too sweet, after all.

Maybe, despite having nothing particular to do, this time she wouldn’t get herself into trouble. She’d never done well with time on her hands. She hated being bored. She liked the independence her work afforded her, being her own boss, making her natural impulsiveness a virtue rather than a liability. Some of her best work had started out as wild-goose chases. But when she had no focus, nothing to anchor her, her impulsiveness hadn’t always served her well. Once, she’d tried building her own boat and nearly drowned. Another time she’d tried her hand at frog-gigging and came up with a leg full of leeches. Then there was the time she’d ended up, on a whim, in Peru with nowhere near enough money to get by.

No affairs, anyway. She’d learned not to be impulsive with men.

The telephone rang, interrupting her mind-wandering. She set her glass on a rickety old table and reached for the ancient, heavy dial phone that had been wired up for use on the porch for as long as she could remember. It would never die. The phone company would have to come for it and tell them they couldn’t use it anymore.

It was probably a solicitor. Not many people knew she was home. Her parents, but they were in Amsterdam. Rob, but he was on duty in New York—she’d promised to get up there soon to see him. Her Scottish friends.

The president, except Wes Poe didn’t call that often.

Virtually none of her Tennessee friends and relatives knew she was back in Night’s Landing. It had only been a week—she had only just recovered from jet lag.

She lifted the receiver but didn’t get a chance to say hello. “Sarah.” She barely recognized her brother. “God…” His voice was weak, breathless.

Sarah gripped the phone hard. “Rob? What’s wrong? What—”

“I made Nate call you. I…
damn
.”

“Are you in New York?” She could hear sirens in the background, people shouting, and felt panic rising in her throat. “Rob, talk to me! What’s going on? Who’s Nate?”

A fat bumblebee landed on the rim of her glass. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, as she waited for her brother to answer.

“I’ve been shot. I’ll be okay.”

“Rob!”
She jumped to her feet. “Rob, where are you? What can I do?”

Another voice came on the line. “Miss Dunnemore? Nate Winter. I work with your brother. Is someone with you?”

“No. No, I’m here alone. Rob—”

“He wanted you to hear the news from him. A paramedic’s with him now. We’ve got to go. I’ll call you as soon as I can with more information.”

“Wait—don’t hang up! Where was he shot? How bad is it?”

“He took a bullet to the left upper abdomen.” Nate Winter’s voice was professional, unemotional, but Sarah thought she heard a ripple of something else. Pain, dread. “Paramedics are coming for me. Sorry, I’ve got to go. We’ll get you more information. I promise.”

His words sank in. “Have you been shot, too? My God—”

The line went dead.

Sarah’s hands shook so badly she had trouble cradling the receiver. Was Nate Winter another deputy U.S. marshal? She knew very little about her brother’s work. He knew even less about hers. Historical archaeology—he’d say he didn’t even know what it was.
Traditional archaeology studies prehistoric people and cultures. Historical archaeology is a subdiscipline of archaeology that studies people and cultures that existed during recorded history
.

She’d given Rob that explanation dozens of times.

He chased fugitives. Armed and dangerous fugitives. She knew that much.

Had one just shot him?

Her teeth were chattering, and she was pacing. Gulping for air.

“Ma’am?”

Ethan Brooker, her parents’ new property manager, walked slowly up the porch steps, his concern evident. He had on his habitual overalls and Tennessee Titans shirt, his dark hair pulled back into a ponytail, at least a two days’ growth of scruffy beard along his square jaw. He was tanned and muscular and had a black graphic tattoo on his huge right arm.

“Miss Sarah, you don’t look so good.” He spoke in an easy, heavy West Texas drawl. “Is there anything I can do for you?”

“I need—” She took in another breath, but couldn’t seem to get any air. It was as if her entire body was trying to absorb the shock of Rob’s call. “I need to wait for a phone call. My brother…” She couldn’t finish, just kept trying to get air into her lungs.

The old porch floor, painted a dark evergreen, creaked under Ethan’s weight. He was a year or two older than she was at thirty-two and taller. Her parents had found him down on the dock fishing when they were home for a few days. Trespassing, really, but he’d explained that he’d just moved to Nashville and was looking for work. Since they’d come home to a leaky ceiling in the living room and an overgrown yard, they offered him a job. He’d worked hard every day since Sarah had arrived in Night’s Landing a week ago. He lived in Granny Dunnemore’s old cottage down by the river, close to the woods between the Dunnemores and the Poes.

Granny had lost a husband in a logging accident, a son in World War II. Her surviving son’s first wife had died after a long struggle with multiple sclerosis. Granny had built the cottage for herself after insisting he and his very sick wife move home.

Sarah knew the story of how her father had almost withered away here in Night’s Landing after his wife’s death, until he met her mother, twenty-two years his junior, the young and vibrant Betsy Quinlan, a woman even Granny Dunnemore had come to believe had changed the Dunnemore luck.

Sarah could feel her heart thumping in her chest.

Not another Dunnemore tragedy…not Rob…

“What about your brother, Miss Sarah?”

Ethan was invariably polite and deferential. She suspected he was a country-western musician looking for his big break in Nashville. She’d heard him playing acoustic guitar on the cottage porch early in the morning and late in the evening.

“Ma’am?”

“Rob—he’s been shot.”

The words felt no less surreal now that she’d said them herself.

Biting back tears, trying to breathe normally, she told Ethan about her brother’s call from New York, Nate Winter, his promise to call her as soon as possible.

“What a shame, Miss Sarah. What a crying shame.” He shook his head and exhaled forcefully, as if it would ease his own tension. “Who’d want to shoot two people like that?”

“Rob’s a deputy U.S. marshal. They’re called deputies. I didn’t know that when he first started. A U.S. marshal heads up each district—they’re not deputies. They’re appointed by the president. I—” She didn’t know what she was saying. “I don’t know what Rob was doing.”

“The marshals must have an office in Nashville. They’ll send someone out here. You just sit tight.” Ethan spoke with confidence as he withdrew a faded red bandanna from his back pocket and wiped away the dirt and grease stuck between his fingers and under his fingernails. “You’re your brother’s closest kin in the country, aren’t you? The marshals will take good care of you.”

Sarah’s stomach twisted. “My parents. They’re in Amsterdam. Oh, God. Who’s going to tell them?”

“Let the marshals do it. You don’t have enough information yet. If you try calling now, you’ll just scare them, maybe unnecessarily.”

Ethan’s steady manner helped her to regain her composure. She felt as if someone were standing on her chest—she couldn’t get air—and made herself breathe from the diaphragm, counting to four as she inhaled through her nose, then to eight as she exhaled through her mouth.

“Rob was able to talk,” she said. “That’s a good sign, don’t you think?”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself. Why don’t you go inside and throw some cold water on your face? That always helps me when I’ve had the rug pulled out from under me.”

Cold water. She wondered if she looked as if she was going to pass out.

“Go on,” Ethan said calmly. “I’ll go down to the cottage and get cleaned up, then come back here and stay with you until the marshals get here or this deputy you talked to calls back.”

“You don’t think he will, do you?”

“Not if he was shot, too, ma’am. Doctors and FBI will have him sewn up. Now, go on. One step at a time, okay?”

Sarah nodded. “Thank you. Rob and I are twins. Did you know that?”

“I think your mother told me that, yes, ma’am.”

“She almost died when she had us.”

Supposedly. It could have been another in a long string of Dunnemore enhancements. Although not a blood Dunnemore, Betsy Quinlan had fallen right in line with that particular Dunnemore tradition. Even letters and diaries from the nineteenth century that Sarah had uncovered in her Poe research had mentioned the Dunnemores and their zest for drama and adventure. They’d made so many bad, romantic, impractical decisions that had led to disaster—which was exactly how their father had viewed Rob’s decision to become a marshal. A bad decision that would lead to disaster.