Kiss the Moon (21 page)

“You spending the night at the inn?”

She shrugged, and Wyatt could see how much she hated being run out of her own home. “Probably.”

McNally grinned, cuffing her on the shoulder reassuringly. “We’ll get to the bottom of this mess. I’ll have a beer with you tonight.”

“Thanks, Andy.”

“Don’t thank me. I still want to know everything you haven’t told me.”

He climbed into his car, but before he shut the door, he said, “You’re not in this thing alone, even if you’re trying to be. You take the world out to that plane wreck, this nutcase might stop pestering you.” She opened her mouth to protest, but McNally cut her off. “I’ll make sure a car drives up here a few times tonight.”

After the police chief left, Wyatt noticed Penelope had developed a little shiver. She saw him watching her and said, “Low blood sugar. It’s that stupid Indian pudding I ate for lunch. Gave me a sugar high, and now I’m paying for it. I need a piece of cheese.”

“You’re not just cold and a little unnerved?”

“Not me,” she said and headed inside.

Wyatt followed her. The place wasn’t torn apart—it had been searched, not vandalized—but things were not neat. Drawers opened, stuff hanging out, some of it scattered on the floor, couch and chair cushions askew. He checked her study and bedroom, saw that they, too, had been thoroughly explored. Penelope, however, was bent on food. She tore open her refrigerator, dug out a hunk of Vermont cheddar, and smacked it on the counter. With a paring knife from a drawer, she hacked off a piece of cheese. “Want some?” she asked. He shook his head, and she ate. “I love cheese, even if it’s not low-fat. Okay. So, what now? I need to water my plants and pack. One night at the inn should sufficiently calm everyone’s nerves.”

Wyatt helped her water her plants in the study. He noticed her hands, her long fingers, the delicate way she handled the tender green shoots, no sign of the restlessness or bridled energy he’d witnessed when he saw her after her troubled landing. It wasn’t anything that had happened in the past few days, he felt certain—it was simply the task at hand, the incongruities of her life.

“I’ll clean this mess up later,” she said, and went into her bedroom to pack. She emerged a few minutes later with a backpack slung over one shoulder. “Are you going to tell Jack Dunning about the plane?”

“I’m still debating. I might want to see it first before I tell him or my father.”

“Your father trust Dunning?”

“As much as he can trust anyone, I suppose. You see, I’m used to people who aren’t long on trust. I always look for the undercurrent, the unspoken.”

“So if our pal Jack seems to have taken a shine to Harriet, it could be a ploy to get something out of her?”

“That would be my suspicion.”

Penelope thought a moment. “Well, Harriet’s heart’s been broken by bigger bastards than Jack Dunning. Not that he’s any prize, but it’s not as if she really knows him. She’s just smitten.”

“She’s known Jack as long as we’ve known each other.”

Her green eyes fastened on him. “Who says I’m not just smitten?”

Penelope drove her truck, when her father had returned to the cabin, Wyatt his car, to the inn, where he went upstairs to make a few calls and she joined Harriet and her mother in the kitchen. She thought she heard sighs of relief when they saw her backpack and realized she was staying. She made her own pot of tea and warmed up two cinnamon nut scones while her mother tore spinach into a pitted aluminum colander, saying nothing. Harriet fluttered around with cloths and sponges. Penelope didn’t know if it would be a good thing or a bad thing to tell them she’d reformulated her plane wreck story. Probably best to keep her mouth shut.

“Harriet’s handling dinner tonight,” her mother said, still tearing furiously. “I’m just doing some of the prep work. We only have four guests, including Wyatt and Jack.”

“That doesn’t include me, does it? I’m staying, but I wouldn’t want to be considered a guest. But of course I’ll pay.”

“You don’t have to pay,” Harriet said.

“I paid when I stayed those two nights after the flea infestation.” She’d taken in a stray dog for a few days, fed him, cleaned him up and found him a home. He’d left her fleas. It reminded her of one of her mother’s favorite sayings—
Lie down with dogs, come up with fleas.
Penelope wondered if that was what she was thinking now. “Which room are you putting me in?”

Her cousin floated by with her sponge. “The Tower Room.”

Her and Ann Boleyn. Penelope wasn’t fooled. The Tower Room was in an odd nook on the third floor, just down the hall from Harriet’s suite. Harriet was a light sleeper. One creak of the floorboard and she’d be poking her head out the door.

“Penelope,” her mother said, “I’m going out to the sugar house in a little while. Would you care to join me?”

It was the
last
thing she wanted to do. “Do you need my help?”

“I could use someone to keep the fire going. Rebecca and Jane are stopping by, too.”

Good. At least she and her mother wouldn’t be alone. If things were hopping at the sugar house, it could be a pleasant diversion. Her, her mother, friends, all that heat and boiling sap. If things were slow, it could be deadly. Her, her mother, all that gaping silence. She said she’d go, and, tea and scones consumed, apple in one hand, she grabbed the key to the Tower Room at the front desk and headed up the stairs.

Her room was the most unusual in the inn, with its dormer and slanted ceilings and odd little corners. It was done in shades of dark blue, with lots of wood and a touch of green. A window seat piled with pillows looked out on the lake. Penelope felt herself drawn to it, ready to just flop out and read a book, listen to music, forget the questions and fears and longings that had plagued her for days. Instead she made herself unpack, change into a fresh turtleneck and sweater, and scoot down to meet her mother.

Except she got distracted at Wyatt’s room.

She could hear him talking through the door but was unable to make out words. Leaning closer, she clearly distinguished, “All right, I’ll call you tomorrow,” and suddenly the door opened, throwing her off balance. She jerked back, but before she could make good her escape, Wyatt grabbed her wrist and dragged her inside.

“Listening at keyholes, are we?”

“I was just about to knock when the door opened—”

“You are the worst liar.”

He kicked the door shut with one foot, and his arm went around her, pulling her close. In that half second before his mouth found hers, she could have protested, bolted or otherwise said no, but she didn’t. The kiss was long, tender, the urgency of this morning banked back, and she felt herself melting into him, wanting nothing more than what that moment offered.

But her mother was waiting downstairs, and for once Penelope exercised prudence. “Who were you talking to on the phone?” she asked, straightening her shirt and sweater.

“My office in New York.”

“Is being here costing you money?”

“Millions,” he said, “billions.”

“Here I’ve slept with you and I barely know what you do. I don’t usually do that, you know. Sleep with a man and then get to know him.” She went still, all the way down deep, and studied him. The dark hair, the dark eyes, the slices and hard angles of his face. “Of course, I thought I already knew you.”

He smiled, a twitch of amusement at one corner of his mouth. “Is that an admission that you’ve fantasized about having sex with a Sinclair?”

“It’s nothing of the kind, and you’re a horrible man for suggesting such a thing,” she said airily, stifling a laugh. “Lucky for you my mother’s waiting downstairs. We’re off to the sugar house. What will you do?”

“Have dinner and fantasize about having sex with a blond Yankee pilot.”

“I’m serious.”

He laughed. “So am I.”

The man was impossible. Irresistible. And she had no expectations about where their attraction would land them down the road. “Have you decided what to tell Jack?”

“I haven’t decided anything except I’m trying Harriet’s Indian pudding for dessert.”

Fourteen

“T
he Sinclairs didn’t buy their land in Cold Spring until the nineteen thirties,” Harriet said as she and Jack Dunning walked up Main Street after dinner. It was dark, not too cold. “My mother’s family came here in the seventeen hundreds. My father’s family came in the mid-eighteen hundreds. Robby moved here from Massachusetts when she was ten.”

Jack smiled. “I can’t imagine sitting in the same town for two or three hundred years. I knew my grandparents on my father’s side. That’s it.”

“Are you interested in finding out about your ancestors?”

“Don’t know what difference it’d make. I consider Texas my home now, but I don’t expect I think about home the same way you do, Harriet. When I’ve put aside enough money, I’m going back to Texas, buying a piece of land, building a house. I’d like to own a ranch.”

“Why did you move back to New York?”

He walked close to her, close enough that she could smell his sharp cologne and occasionally brushed against his arm. He wore his shearling-lined jacket, his cowboy hat and boots. He couldn’t have looked more out of place on Main Street in a small New England village if he’d been naked. He said, “I pissed off a lot of people in Dallas. Figured I could make some money in New York, let things cool off. Brandon Sinclair’s not my only client, but he’s got the kind of dough that if he says hop, I hop.”

“I’ve never met him. Wyatt’s the first Sinclair to come to Cold Spring since Frannie and Colt disappeared.”

“Wyatt’s a throwback,” Jack said. “Except for not making a marriage stick, Brandon’s a gentleman. He doesn’t seem to need to slay dragons and climb tall mountains. I think losing his brother sucked most of that Sinclair bullshit right out of him.”

Harriet hunched her shoulders against a sudden stiff breeze. She hadn’t worn a hat or gloves. She’d have red ears by the time they returned to the inn. “The Sinclairs have always been considered outsiders here. Owning land didn’t make a difference. Willard Sinclair—Brandon’s father—used to hunt and fish with my uncle, Penelope’s grandfather, but it’s not as if they were friends. Willard was the rich outsider, my uncle was the local.”

“Then Frannie Beaudine crossed the big divide,” Jack said.

“Yes, she did. But so did Colt. They both broke the rules.”

“The forbidden relationship.”

Harriet gave him a sharp look but saw that he wasn’t mocking her or Frannie and Colt. They kept walking, crossing a side street, moving away from the village shops. “I suppose Frannie might not have considered herself a local anymore, but she was hardly in the Sinclairs’ league. She was an adventurer herself, and a scholar—she just wasn’t rich.”

“Who do you think was in charge? Colt or Frannie? He was the rich boy, but she was older.”

“I’m not sure either was in charge. It could have been a partnership.”

“That’s nowadays. In the fifties—”

“My parents have always had a partnership, and they’re almost eighty.”

“Then they’re lucky.”

He walked a few paces, his boots clicking on the pavement. The street sweepers would be out before too long, clearing the roads of the sand that had accumulated over the winter. Harriet felt a sudden, deep yearning for spring. She would dig in her garden and serve tea and scones on the porch.

“Okay,” Jack said. “Let me put it another way. Who took the lead? Who was the first to let the other know the interest was there? Frannie or Colt?”

“It could have been mutual, one of those moments where you just don’t know…”

Jack shook his head, holding back a laugh that somehow wasn’t patronizing. “For a Yankee innkeeper, Harriet, you’re a hell of a romantic.”

She glanced at him. “Has your work made you cynical?”

He shrugged. “I think of myself as a realist.”

“That’s what all cynics say.”

“All right, in my work I’ve found that to unravel a crime, you have to unravel the relationships of the people involved. Sometimes it’s easy—sometimes it’s dicey.”

“But there was no crime. Frannie and Colt took off, presumably to elope or at least be together, and their plane went down. That’s a tragedy. It’s not criminal.”

Jack paused at a corner. Across the street, partially lit, was the First Congregational Church of Cold Spring, a pristine, traditional, white New England church built in the early nineteenth century. His face was lost in the dark shadows. “We don’t know why their plane went down. We don’t know why they picked that particular night. Until we have the plane and the bodies, it’s an open investigation as far as I’m concerned.”

Harriet felt a chill. “You can’t believe—you can’t think their plane was sabotaged or anything of the sort!”

“I don’t believe or disbelieve anything. I could tick off an easy dozen possibilities for what happened that night. Until I know what
did
happen, I don’t rule anything in or out.”

“I suppose that’s sensible, from your point of view. After all, you’re a detective. You’re not a participant.”

“That’s right.” His voice had softened, its deep tone like warm liquid down her spine. He touched her arm. “This is the church where you were found? Come on, show me that doorstep.”

They crossed the street, and Harriet brought him to the side entrance. The main entrance was reserved for Sundays and major church functions. “I was found right here,” she said, pointing to the welcome mat. “I was in an apple basket, sleeping.”

“What were you wearing?”

“A warm sleeper. It was red. And I was wrapped in a white blanket.”

“Store-bought?”

She nodded. “My parents still have it. The police took everything as potential evidence—but none of it helped. They never had any credible leads.”

“Incredible ones?”

“Just that I turned up the night after Colt and Frannie disappeared.”

“Hell of a thing, leaving a baby on a doorstep. You still a member of the church?”

His question caught her by surprise. She nodded. “Yes, although I’m not very active.”

“Is it tough, being the daughter of the retired minister?”

“It could be awkward—my father cast a long shadow. But I try to stay out of the way. I think by now people realize that anything I say isn’t necessarily the voice of my father.”

“He’s a good man?”

She smiled. “The best.”

“You’re a good woman yourself, Harriet. Come on, let’s head back before I freeze my ass off. Damned northern springs. In Texas, the bluebonnets are blooming.”

She smiled. He was a Texan at heart, but with a New York upbringing.

“They must be beautiful.”

He shot her a quick look, the streetlight catching his face, and she saw the spark in his eyes, the sudden warmth. “You’re right. They are. You should see them sometime.”

“Maybe I will,” she said, and they walked to the inn.

Wyatt was almost finished with his second martini, which, under the circumstances, was two martinis too many. His head was spinning, his ability to function impaired. He didn’t need alcohol. But he wasn’t going anywhere, not tonight. He was the sole patron at the Victorian bar at the Sunrise Inn. The only other occupant was the bartender, who made a hell of a martini.

For the past hour, Wyatt had replayed the conversation he’d had with his father after dinner. It had been difficult and revealing, and Wyatt had been unrelenting, brutal in his determination to get to the truth.

He was not proud of himself. He was not proud of his father. Tonight, not for the first time in his life, he didn’t much like being a Sinclair.

“Tell me what Jack Dunning knows that I don’t know. Goddamn it, tell me what you’ve been holding back all these years.”

His father had taken in a short breath, said quietly, “You don’t trust me.”

“This isn’t a question of trust. You dispatched Jack up here, not me. He’s paid, I’m not. He’s not family, I am. Therefore, I presume you’ve told him things you haven’t told me.”

Brandon Sinclair’s enviable reserve had snapped. “You think you’re such a smart son of a bitch, Wyatt. You throw my money in my face and go out and make your own. You throw my sensibility in my face and go off and have your goddamned adventures, get this family’s name in the papers again for their recklessness.”

“And that I did on purpose. I killed Hal and almost killed myself just to embarrass you.”

Even with two martinis swimming inside him, Wyatt regretted that comment. The pettiness of it. Letting his father get to him. Playing out the father-son battles all over again when they were both adults now. It was time to let go of their past failings and transgressions.

“Whether you like it or not, Wyatt,” his father had said, tight, clipped, “you’re a part of this family.”

“Father, I need to know the truth. Even before I came up here, I sensed you were holding back. Now I’m convinced of it.”

They’d gone back and forth like that, his father not budging. He didn’t persist in making denials, but simply, in effect, told Wyatt to mind his own business, pointing out that nobody had asked him to go to New Hampshire. But it was too late for him to pull back. He was here, and he was in deep.

Finally, he gave up. He couldn’t compel his father to talk. He could only do what he thought was right. And what was right, he knew, was to tell Brandon Sinclair that Penelope Chestnut had found a plane on Sunday, not an old dump.

“There’s no guarantee it’s Colt and Frannie’s plane,” Wyatt said, “but I don’t know what else it would be. She’s taking me out there tomorrow.”

“Have you told Jack?” His father’s voice was calm. The only indication Wyatt’s news had any impact was a slightly strangled quality to it. “I’d like you to take him with you. I don’t trust that girl.”

“I’d rather wait until I see what’s out there before I tell anyone. And Jack’s not my employee or my partner. Whatever you want him to know, you can tell him yourself.”

“Goddamn it, Wyatt.”

He’d hung up. On his own father. It wasn’t done in his family. He thought of Penelope going toe-to-toe with her father, sticking her tongue out, arguing openly and vigorously. But there was affection there, respect, trust. Wyatt had never known what there was between him and his father beyond tension and mutual suspicion. If his parents hadn’t divorced, if they’d spent more time together when he was growing up, maybe they’d have worked things out. But Wyatt didn’t think so.

Two minutes after his son hung up on him, Brandon Sinclair called back. Without preamble, he said, “Colt and Frannie left that night with a fortune in cut diamonds. Frannie found them in the warehouse when she was putting together the collection your grandfather donated to the Met. In today’s market, they’d be worth in the neighborhood of ten million dollars.”

“Jesus,” Wyatt had breathed. “A hell of a nest egg.”

“The family decided—my father decided—to keep the theft a secret. It wasn’t pride. He blamed Frannie entirely and assumed Colt was an unwitting participant. He and Colt…” He hesitated, reluctant to speak of a beloved, long mourned older brother. To Brandon Sinclair, it was unseemly to speak of personal matters. “They had a difficult relationship. The public perception of Colt aside, my father didn’t consider him capable of engineering anything that happened that night. In any case, he kept quiet about the diamonds in an effort to discourage treasure seekers. He didn’t want someone to find the plane, loot it and then not report it as a way of covering their tracks.”

“They’d be the prime suspect.”

“Precisely. Also, if Frannie and Colt were still by some miracle alive—” He took a breath, almost as if he were eleven again, praying his brother was still alive.

“Revealing the missing diamonds could have put them at risk. My father was a tough, unemotional man, but Colt’s death shook him to his core. He never got over it.”

“You?” Wyatt asked quietly.

“I worshiped my older brother, but I’m not sure I ever really knew him. Losing him has left a hole in me, an emptiness that I’ve learned to live with.” He stopped abruptly, and Wyatt could feel his embarrassment. “Well, that’s not important at the moment.”

Wyatt didn’t push him. “How did you find out about the diamonds? Did your father tell you?”

“No, oh, no,” Brandon said, as if that were unimaginable. “I was a boy in a repressed household that was nonetheless filled with high emotion and drama. I was adept at listening at keyholes. When he was dying, I confronted my father, and he admitted everything—he seemed relieved to tell me. But he asked me not to speak of the diamonds, and I promised I wouldn’t.”

“And Jack? What does he know?”

“I told him it’s probable something of tremendous monetary value is in the wreckage. I couldn’t—” He sighed, sounding tired. “I suppose it’s splitting hairs, but I didn’t want to break that promise to my father prematurely. Well, then. You have your information, Wyatt. If this girl found the plane, she could have helped herself to the diamonds. I’d keep up my guard if I were you.”

“I will.” Then he added, “Thanks.”

“I only want to know what happened to Colt. I don’t give a damn about the diamonds. If Penelope Chestnut or anyone else stole them, so be it. Just let me bury my brother.”

Wyatt drank the last of his martini. Stolen diamonds. Ten million dollars. Definitely not on his list of what his father had been keeping from him. He had no idea what he’d have done in his father’s place. Maybe the whole damned mess
was
none of his business, and he should just go home.

Ten million. That was a hell of a lot of money.

Penelope materialized at his table and dropped onto the chair opposite him. “Do I smell like maple syrup?”

“You smell…steamy.”

“That sounds suggestive. I helped at the sugar shack. We all had biscuits and maple syrup for supper. I’m going to have to reform after the way I’ve been eating the past few days.” She peered at him, frowning. “Are you all right?”

He smiled. “It’s been a long day, and the dark New Hampshire nights are getting to me.”

She took him seriously. “No city lights. But this is nothing—you should be here in January. Zero degrees out, darker than the pits of hell at four-thirty. Eek. I have friends who swear by Saint-John’s-wort for SAD. Seasonal Affective Disorder. I think my flying keeps me from getting too squirrelly.”