Night Scents (17 page)

When the Macintosh Inn was fully opened, that would change to a degree, but it was too small to make much of an impact. A Clate Jackson resort on his waterfront property could dramatically change the character of the town, and certainly of her quiet road, but Piper wanted to believe his declaration that he had no interest in building on Cape Cod.

By the time she coasted back along her road, she was sweaty and aching, but her spirits were revived. Seeing how Clate had already been out to see Hannah, Piper could put off her own visit to explain her abortive foray under the wisteria. Instead, she'd cut rhubarb, cap her strawberries, and round off a perfect afternoon with jam making.

Once she got rid of Paul Shepherd and Stan Carlucci, she thought with a groan as she spotted them standing in her gravel driveway. They'd come in Paul's car. They'd passed her on the dead-end road, but she'd hoped they were just checking on something in the wildlife refuge. Traffic wasn't unheard of on her road, and she seldom paid attention to cars belonging to locals.

Their grave expressions gave her a start. She pushed down her kickstand and climbed off her bicycle. Stan was a big, balding man in his late fifties. Although she disagreed with him on almost everything, and on a personal level considered him pompous and arrogant, she had to admit he cared about their town and was willing to do the difficult work of sitting on the board of selectmen. Hannah, as much as she grumped about not getting her way, had steadfastly refused to run for office.

"We need to talk to you, Piper," he said. "It's about Hannah."

Her stomach lurched. "Is she all right?"

"She's fine," Paul said. He was dressed casually and expensively, the typical Cape Cod inn owner. He gave Piper a weak smile. "It's Stan we should be worried about. He stopped by the inn with an alarming story. Uh—can we talk?"

Slightly calmer, but with a sense of dread, Piper led them inside, through her in-progress front parlor back to her keeping room. It still smelled of bread from her morning class. She offered the two men something to drink, but they declined. She poured herself a glass of water, noticing that Stan was tense and awkward as he scanned her cozy, unusual kitchen. One of her first tasks had been to uncover the plastered-over fireplace, where she'd discovered beehive ovens and even an old iron kettle. She'd since added more kettles and pans, storing them in and around the fireplace.

No one sat down. Piper leaned against the sink and drank her water, wondering what Hannah had done now.

Paul did the talking. He was tall enough that her dried herbs skimmed the top of his head. "Stan came to me because of Sally's and my close relationship to Hannah. Sally's gone to Hyannis for the evening or she would certainly have come with us. However, I don't think we're the ones who can help with this situation. You've always been the closest to her, Piper. If anyone can get her under control, it's you."

Piper could feel her leg muscles seizing up. She'd planned on a long session of stretching, an invigorating shower, then her jam making. "Has she done something?"

Carlucci took a breath. "She's tried again to terrorize me with her witchcraft."

He sounded like a Puritan prosecutor at a seventeenth-century witch trial. Piper gulped more water, trying not to let Stan's gravity and hyperbole affect her. "Hannah would never deliberately harm you or anyone else."

"Show her," Paul said to Carlucci, his tone resigned, even a bit depressed.

Stan withdrew a black velvet pouch from the pocket of his seersucker sport coat and tossed it on the counter. Piper eyed it, then him. Perspiration dotted his brow. "I hope there's nothing dead inside," she said, trying to inject a little levity into the conversation.

Neither he nor Paul responded. "Open it up," Stan said.

Piper's first impulse was to argue, but she thought better of it. Best to get this over with. Apprehensively, she loosened the string on the pouch and felt inside. No dead bat or anything, just a little bottle, about two inches tall. She lifted it out. It was made of brown glass, typical of what Hannah used for her various tinctures and essential oils. A simple label stuck to the outside identified the contents as tincture of bistort and agrimony.

Piper choked back a laugh.

"I'm glad you're amused," Stan Carlucci grumbled.

"I'm sorry. Really." But she had to cover her mouth to keep from sputtering from her laughter, prompted as much by relief as amusement.

"I take it you recognize the contents," Paul said seriously.

"Mmm. Bistort and agrimony are two common astringent herbs used in the treatment of diarrhea." The previous tea that Hannah had prepared for Stan Carlucci was to relieve constipation. Piper chewed on a piece of ice, trying to contain her inappropriate fit of giggles. "Maybe it's Hannah's way of making peace between you."

Stan was unpersuaded. "There's no note, nothing."

"Maybe she expected you to be home, and when you weren't, just left the tincture, assuming you'd figure out what it was for."

"Oh, I figured it out all right."

"Under the circumstances," Paul said, "perhaps Hannah should have at least called."

"She probably didn't think of it. She's eighty-seven. Allowances

Stan snorted. "She's had all the allowances I'm going to give her. The woman's a menace."

"Oh, come on, Stan." Piper set her glass down on the sink, ignoring a slight tremble in her fingers. "It's not as if she left a bag of henbane under your pillow. Now that would worry me. Henbane's highly poisonous, but tincture of bistort and agrimony..." She shrugged. "Sorry, but that just doesn't move my needle."

"It's harassment," Carlucci said, refusing to back down.

"How do you know? Have you talked to her? You know, if you're so worried about my aunt, why don't you ask her what she intended by leaving a tincture on your doorstep?"

Paul intervened before Piper could work up a really good head of steam in her aunt's defense. "We understand how devoted you are to Hannah, Piper. That's why we've come to you. Neither Stan nor I was ever worried the tincture was poisonous. But Hannah can't—she just shouldn't be doing this sort of thing. You can see that, can't you? People are going to get the wrong idea about her, or one day she
will
hurt someone, however unintentionally."

"She has to stop," Stan said, more reasonably. "For her own good and the good of the community."

Piper inhaled, every muscle in her body aching, her earlier sense of energy dissipating fast. "Leaving a common medicinal tincture on someone's doorstep isn't a crime. Anyway, who's to say it was Hannah? It's not exactly a secret she's into herbal remedies and tried one out on Stan. Maybe someone else who doesn't like his politics took up the cause." She threw up her hands, thinking on her feet. "Maybe it was a joke."

"It was no joke," Carlucci said.

"Well, if you want my advice, I say go ask her."

He looked as if he'd rather have tea with Medusa. Paul Shepherd didn't look much more enthusiastic. That was why, Piper realized, they'd come to her. She sighed, moving off from the sink. "All right, I'll talk to her. But if she says she didn't leave the tincture or simply meant it as a peace offering, I'm going to believe her. I'm not going to be a party to turning this into a witch hunt."

"Fair enough," Paul said. "We'll keep this among ourselves, then, for the time being."

Piper couldn't resist a wry smile. "Yes, I suppose it wouldn't be good for Stan's political career if people knew an eighty-seven-year-old woman in town offered him a little bistort and agrimony to help with his digestive problems."

"Which she caused," Stan pointed out, red faced. "My system has been off ever since I drank that woman's tea. I should have known better. She deliberately gave me...problems."

"She just believed your poor digestion was making you cranky and causing you to make unwise political decisions."

"My digestion is none of her damned business!"

Paul stepped between them, holding up one hand in a mollifying gesture. "Look, that incident's water over the dam. We're all just trying to do the right thing here. Stan, let's see what Piper can do. She has a good rapport with Hannah. Maybe this will all turn out to be an unfortunate misunderstanding."

With that, the two men departed. Piper followed them back through her parlor and out the front door. They complimented her on her roses and all the work she'd done on her little antique house.

"You've a talent for this sort of thing," Stan said. "Of course, things will change here if and when Clate Jackson decides to develop his property."

Piper tried to seem unconcerned, only mildly interested in her new neighbor. "He hasn't approached any of the selectmen yet, has he?"

Carlucci shook his head. "But I've made it known that I'm receptive to hearing his ideas. I'm not going to dismiss them out of hand before I've even heard them. It would ease the burden on Frye's Cove property owners to have more business in town. I believe in good growth, the wise use of our resources and natural beauty. From what I understand, Mr. Jackson could bring the kind of tasteful, upscale development this town would welcome."

He was off and running, still rhapsodizing about the virtues of a man he hadn't, as far as Piper knew, even met. Paul gave her a sympathetic smile as he climbed into his car, Carlucci still going on about development being good for democracy, allowing more people to see a part of Cape Cod most didn't even know existed. "Thank you, Piper," Paul mouthed, and they headed out.

Her lack of sleep and her worries about her aunt suddenly overwhelming her, Piper went back inside, stretched, took a shower, and headed out to cut rhubarb, never having felt so damned alone and isolated. What if Clate were right and Hannah was holding back something? What if Paul and Stan were right and she was a menace to herself and the community?

She brushed back tears, remembered a long-ago foggy Cape Cod morning when Hannah had taken her by the hand and walked with her along the beach, showing her horseshoe crabs, bits of kelp, oyster and clam shells, and sea urchins, understanding what it was like to grow up without a mother. They did share a special bond. Because of that bond, Piper was not prepared to lose her aunt to the eroding effects of time, mental illness, disease, or her own nutty ideas. Bad enough that Hannah had sold her house and moved across town.

"Bistort and agrimony," Piper muttered, hacking at a long, tender stalk of rhubarb. "Geez, Hannah."

Best, she decided, to let this one run itself out before sharing Stan Carlucci and Paul Shepherd's suspicions with anyone else, especially the man who had bought Hannah Frye's pretty Cape Cod house—he said—as a refuge.

Clate sat up late into the night watching "The Three Stooges" on the ancient black-and-white television that came with his house. It was in the library, a small, fireplaced room of musty glass-fronted bookcases, stuffed raptors, and threadbare couches and chairs. Give him a pipe and a smoking jacket, he thought, and he could pass for a turn-of-the-century gentleman, except, of course, for his choice of entertainment.

Hannah Frye had a new, nineteen-inch color television with remote control, stereo sound, and a VCR. She'd had an afternoon talk show on when he'd arrived at her townhouse. He was struck by the contrast between her elegant, modern surroundings and her hand-stitched, anachronistic attire, the wisps of white hair straying from a crocheted snood. Comfort, she explained, was the motivation for the way she dressed, not coyness, eccentricity, religious belief, or a need for attention.

In their hour together, Clate came to see Hannah Frye as a woman who would stop at virtually nothing to see her grandniece happy. "We're not the same, Piper and I," she said. "Only sometimes I think Piper believes she needs to be like me."

As content as she was with her own life, as satisfied with the choices she'd made, she didn't believe that Piper's destiny was to live alone, marry late in life, have no children.

No. She believed
he
was her niece's destiny.

She'd smiled at his reaction. "That makes you uncomfortable, does it?"

"You're welcome to your beliefs, Mrs. Frye."

"It's not what I believe, Mr. Jackson. It's what I know."

And how far would she go to make sure she wasn't proved wrong?

Clate shook off the uncomfortable thought. Hannah Frye would never deliberately terrify her niece, even as a means to an end. She would find other ways, like the predawn foray for valerian root, to throw him and Piper together.

Did Piper suspect her aunt, even a little?

It was possible. More likely, she would worry that someone else in town would, especially given Hannah Frye's well-known eccentricities. That would explain why she hadn't told her father and brothers by now. The Macintosh men seemed friendly enough, just wary of him, an outsider, the sole neighbor of their daughter and sister.

Clate had no doubt that between them, Piper and her aunt had given the men of the family plenty of reason to keep an eye out.

With a growl of impatience, he switched off the old television. Sitting around watching "The Three Stooges" wasn't going to get him any answers. He headed up to bed, noticing the darkness of the old house, the eerie shadows, the creaks and groans of its centuries-old beams and floorboards. He could imagine a little girl wandering these halls eighty years ago, out on this lonely strip of land, waiting for parents who would never come home.

If her elaborate tale of buried treasure and a rescued princess was a way for Hannah Frye to cope with the horror of her parents' deaths, Clate could understand. He could even understand if she truly believed it. But if it was a way to ensure her niece's so-called destiny, then she'd gone from being harmless to being manipulative and potentially dangerous.

He'd tried to impress upon Hannah Frye that he wasn't the right man for her niece. Piper had faith in family and community. She would turn to them, no matter how much her father and brothers bugged her, in times of stress, pain, suffering.

He didn't share that faith. He'd learned at a very young age that his family caused most of his pain and suffering, and his community, poor and isolated as it was, could do damned little to help him. It wasn't a question of self-pity but of taking a hard, cold look at reality and seeing it for what it was. Pure, dumb luck had thrown him in with Irma Bryar, but she couldn't change what was. She could only help him accept it and move on.