Night Scents (6 page)

"A trunk," Piper repeated.

"Correct."

"Did you mention this trunk to anyone at the time?"

"I told you, I've only remembered seeing in the past few weeks."

"So after eighty years, you suddenly, out of the blue, recall a scene you witnessed on the most traumatic night of your life." Piper didn't bother hiding her skepticism. "Hannah, repressed memory is a tricky thing."

"Of course it is. That's why I'm dispatching you instead of calling the police. My parents were murdered, and I think it's because of the gems and Faberge egg—the treasure—the Russian princess gave to Father. Piper, someone else must have read my letters and known about the treasure, and then deliberately set out to rob him and Mother that night."

There were a million holes in Hannah's story. Caleb and Phoebe were off course. How could the perpetrator have known where to find them? Even if they hadn't been that far off course, how could he have known it was their boat in the fog? Premeditation made little sense—not, Piper thought, that happenstance made any sense, either.

And treasure buried for eighty years in the Frye back yard made no sense whatsoever. Why risk being seen by a Frye, never mind a seven-year-old?

Even if Piper indulged Hannah and chose to believe in her conveniently recovered memory, any treasure would have to be long gone by now. Whoever had buried it surely would have dug it up some time during the past century.

But Hannah was visibly tired and shaken after telling her story, and Piper didn't have the heart to blow holes in her theory. "Well, I just wish you'd thought of digging up this treasure of yours during the umpteen years you lived in the Frye house."

She sniffed. "I didn't think of it then."

Piper had sighed, exasperated, worried, haunted by the palpable horror of that night almost a century ago.

"I know nobody's going to believe me," she said calmly. "That's why you have to find the treasure first, Piper. Discreetly. Then I'll know for sure. You do see, don't you? I have to know what happened to my parents. Before I die, I have to know."

Getting morbid had always been one of Hannah's last-ditch ploys to persuade Piper to do her bidding. This time, it had the ring of authenticity. She'd convinced herself the notorious mystery of her parents' deaths was within her power to solve—with Piper's help, of course.

"It's as if I couldn't let myself remember while I was living in that house."

"But you didn't live there until you and Jason were married. You were sixty-two! You had a lot of years you could have remembered—"

"Ah, but I was in love with Jason from the time I was seven. His hold on me was staggering."

Piper had lurched forward in her chair. "You don't think a Frye killed your parents, do you?"

"I only know what I know."

Drama—or evasiveness. Hannah wasn't above holding back pertinent information as a ploy to get her way. "Are you sure you didn't recognize this shadowy figure?"

"I never saw his face."

"But it was a man?"

Suddenly her bony shoulders sagged, and she seemed little more than a pile of bones in cornflower calico. "I don't know. I've told you everything. After a lifetime, I finally remember that night, the scent of roses and the sea, the sound of digging—" She'd swallowed, tears in her eyes. "The shock of losing my parents must have blocked my memory all these years. But now—now, Piper, I remember."

And so it was that Piper had agreed to check into the possibility of treasure buried in her neighbor's back yard.

She breathed in the cool June air as she pedaled toward home, noticed the scent of roses and the sea even as she tried not to think of a seven-year-old girl staring out into the night while her parents died together on the other side of the windswept peninsula.

Unless the whole story was a tactical move on Hannah's part to throw her grandniece and the Tennessean together. But as devious as Hannah Frye could be, Piper didn't believe she'd stoop that low. Hannah really believed she'd seen someone in the Fryes' back yard that night.

Still, with any luck, her aunt would move on to something else before Piper got to the point of digging under Clate Jackson's wisteria.

Clate squinted out at the tall hedges dividing his property from that of his closest and only neighbor. He couldn't see her house from the stone terrace where he stood. On his way home, he'd slowed in front of her little Cape and had taken note of the rambling pink roses on the white picket fence, the terra-cotta pots of wispy flowers, the spikes of pink and yellow and white and orange in gardens all around the old house, and the trim, pretty shed that served as her studio. To live and work out here by herself had to require a certain courage and independence, something he wondered if her brother Andrew recognized in his little sister.

Well, it wasn't his problem.

He could smell the sweet scents of his own flower gardens. He distinguished honeysuckle and wisteria among them, and for a moment he might have been home, not in Nashville, but in the Cumberland hills where Irma Bryar's honeysuckle and wisteria grew in unmanageable tangles. Spring came late to New England and lasted only a short time, unlike the long, slow, fragrant spring of Tennessee. Cape Cod was foreign territory for him. The locals had little interest in celebrity, none at all in his particular brand. He grimaced at the thought of his unsmiling face on a recent cover of a slick Nashville magazine touting him as one of the chosen new architects of the growing, changing city.
He's
rich, he's successful, he's respected... So why isn't Clate Jackson smiling?

A
dumb-ass headline if he'd ever read one.

He tore his gaze from the hedges. To have his place on Cape Cod be what he wanted it to be—what he needed it to be—he would have to keep the locals at arm's length, Piper Macintosh most especially.

She'd looked preoccupied standing by her bicycle, looking out at the water. Troubled.

The rattle of a truck engine interrupted his unwelcome thoughts. Company? More Macintosh men to warn him off? He headed around to the gravel driveway and garage at the side of the house.

A big, muscle-bound man stepped out of a rusted pickup. He looked about thirty, give or take a year, and had tawny, curly hair, a tawny beard, and a meaty, friendly face. "You Clate Jackson? Hi. I'm Tuck O'Rourke. Figured I'd stop by, see if you could use someone to take care of your place here. I can do pretty much whatever you need doing. Cut grass, prune, trim, odd jobs. Don't matter."

After less than twenty-four hours up north, Clate was having his doubts about tales of standoffish Yankees. "You have references?"

"Yeah, sure. You got a minute? I can look around the place, see what needs to be done, and maybe we can work something out. Probably should have called, but I didn't know if you had a phone yet."

He did. The number wasn't listed. But hiring a caretaker was on his to-do list, and he supposed he should look upon Tuck O'Rourke's visit as a convenience rather than an intrusion. He motioned for the big man to go on ahead of him, and they walked around to the back yard together, Tuck explaining that Jason Frye had employed his father as a caretaker. "When Jason died, Mrs. Frye let Pop go. She never liked the idea of someone else doing work on the property."

"She did it herself?"

"Or didn't do it at all."

Added insight into the Macintosh personality. Clate let Tuck take him around the lush, old yard as he pointed out its many problems. Rotted trellises, bees' nests in inappropriate places, brick that needed replacing, cracked stone, washed-out spots along the foundation, a robust crop of poison ivy vying with grape vines off along the far edge of the yard. When they finished, they returned to the stone terrace, which was in danger, apparently, of eroding and washing down into the marsh.

O'Rourke shrugged his massive shoulders. "Sorry for all the bad news. I guess Mrs. Frye didn't keep up the place that well."

"Did she decide to sell because upkeep was getting out of hand?"

"I don't know. I just heard it had to do with one of her spells."

"One of her what?"

"Spells. She's a witch." He spoke in that blunt, Yankee manner, then grinned at Clate's mystified look and rubbed his short beard. "You didn't know, huh?"

"No, I didn't." Although the skull and crossbones in the enclosed herb garden should have been a tip-off, he supposed. "Well, that's her business. It has nothing to do with me."

Tuck shifted, suddenly looking uncomfortable.

Clate felt a twist of foreboding. "There's something I should know, isn't there?"

"It's just idle talk."

"I'll take it in that light, then. I've had experience with gossip and rumors."

Avoiding Clate's eye, O'Rourke mashed the toe of a work boot into a crack in the terrace. "I've heard Mrs. Frye put a spell on you."

Clate nearly choked. "On
me?'

Tuck nodded.

"Why in hell would she do that?"

"Don't know. Some say because she thinks one of your ancestors is haunting the house."

"My family came to this country via Baltimore and headed south from there."

Tuck squirmed, and Clate could see that he was a taciturn man by nature. "I just hear things, you understand. Doesn't mean I believe them."

"Acknowledged. What else do people say about this supposed spell?"

"I guess some folks are saying the devil himself made Mrs. Frye put a spell on you to get you to come north, buy this place, and develop it."

Clate couldn't stop a grin. "The devil, eh?"

"Yeah." Tuck wasn't grinning back. His idea of witches seemed rooted in horror movies and popular stereotype, not contemporary understanding of witchcraft as one of the world's oldest religions. "I mean, I don't believe any of that."

"That's it, then? I'm here either because of ghosts or devils?"

"Or Piper," O'Rourke added almost inaudibly.

Clate didn't know why he wasn't surprised. "Mind elaborating?"

"There's talk—I know it's crazy—" He flushed, his cheeks red above his tawny beard. "There's talk Mrs. Frye's been working her magic to try and get a man up here for Piper, seeing how she hasn't had any luck with the guys around town."

"I beg your pardon?"

"It's just crazy talk. Small town, you know?"

Witches, ghosts, devils, romance. Small-town talk indeed. Clate took a breath. No wonder Andrew Macintosh had made a point of introducing himself. If even a scrap of this crazy talk was accurate, his aunt was a lunatic. And his sister wasn't far behind if she was indulging the old woman.

"I suppose." He tried to sound good natured about the whole thing, but he hadn't considered the possibility of an eighty-seven-year-old woman casting spells on him when he'd tried to understand his impulse to buy property up north. "Thanks for stopping by. Let me know what you can and can't do around here and how much you'll charge, and we'll talk."

O'Rourke still was looking awkward and embarrassed. "I wouldn't worry about Mrs. Frye, really. I've been talking out of turn. I've known her all my life. She's harmless." He started off the terrace, apparently wishing he'd kept his mouth shut. "I'll get you that bid by tomorrow."

"Thanks."

Clate waited until he heard Tuck O'Rourke's truck rattle off down the road before he headed back inside. If he were smart, he'd pay no attention to local gossip. An eighty-seven-year-old widow and her green-eyed, chestnut-haired niece living alone out on this road were bound to stir up imaginative talk, especially in a small town. Add him to the mix, and the talk could get interesting. It wasn't every day that a rich Tennessean bought a two-hundred-fifty-year-old house and thirty acres in Frye's Cove.

He checked his voice mail, his mind still on his bizarre conversation with Tuck O'Rourke. Most of his messages were routine.

But there was the one he'd expected, dreaded. His assistant, the young, smart Mabel Porter, delivered it in her polished eastern Tennessee accent.

"She's gone, Mr. Jackson. I'm sorry."

Chapter 4