Night Scents (39 page)

"Paul, don't. You can't—he can't—"

He straightened, collecting himself. "I know it's hard for you, Piper. You finally find a man, and I kill him. I'm sorry. Truly. But I have work to finish, and I've just gone too far." He pulled his lips in between his teeth, as if to hold back his emotions. "I never planned for any of this to happen."

"Paul, I'm sure date's not dead." Piper spoke carefully, not wanting to spin him deeper into whatever vortex he'd created for himself. "I'm sure of it."

"Come," he said. He straightened, in control of himself, the man, she thought, on the other end of the phone yesterday before her house caught fire. "You can help me dig buried treasure."

Clate moaned. Even with his eyes shut, everything was spinning. His stomach rolled and lurched. Bile crawled up his throat and burned in his mouth. Sweat drenched his clothes, his hair. And the foulest smell on the planet seemed stuck under his nose. He couldn't escape it. Finally, he turned onto his side and heaved his guts out onto the floor. He saw, vaguely, that someone had put down newspaper as if he were a sick dog. He started to swear, groaned, heaved again.

"Jesus, Hannah." Andrew Macintosh's voice boomed through the haze of Clate's consciousness. "What the hell is that stuff?"

"It's something I made up when Jason was having those spells." Hannah's voice was as placid as ever.

"Well, don't tell the police. They'll dig him up and have his body tested, make sure you didn't poison the poor bastard."

"I had him cremated, remember?"

Clate tried to sit up, his stomach slightly less turbulent. Hannah had removed her vial of God-only-knew-what from under his nose. He had his eyes half opened. Where the hell was he? The library, he decided. Someone must have brought him there. Last he remembered, he was passing out on the kitchen floor.

"He'll be fine now," Hannah pronounced.

"Clate." Andrew's voice again. Clate hadn't brought him into his line of vision yet. "Jackson, where's Piper? She was supposed to be here for dinner."

Piper.
Clate staggered to his feet. A strong arm—Andrew's— caught him by the elbow and steadied him. His eyes focused. His vision was blurred still. "Piper?"

"She's not here and she's not at her house," Andrew said. "Her car and bike are still here."

Clate took in the words, took in Andrew's terror, even as he rolled off the couch and staggered out of the library, down the hall to the kitchen. His head throbbed, his legs shook, his stomach undulated.
Piper.
He turned the sink faucet on cold and stuck his head under. He soaked his hair, his face, the back of his neck. He switched off the water, stood up, and just dared himself to throw up.

Hannah was sniffing his iced-tea glass. "Don't wash this. We'll have it tested for poison."

Clate didn't argue. Even Andrew kept quiet.

"Jackson, Piper was pissed at you. I showed her a letter—"

"I haven't seen her. I was starting dinner when I collapsed. She's not—" He took a breath. "Hell."

Andrew straightened, his face pale. "I'm calling the police. Benjamin's at her house working on the roof. I'll get him over. Hannah, you can call Pop and Liddy, Sally and Paul, Carlucci, anybody you can think of. We'll find her."

But Hannah had sunk against the counter, her little bony hand shaking; her frail body looked bloodless. "Not Sally and Paul." Her voice quavered, yet her tone was confident. "That's what my dream meant." Her eyes focused on Clate, her mouth drawn down in a mix of determination and terror. "My God, we have to hurry."

"Clate's not dead," Piper said as she jabbed the spade into the hard ground. "You're bluffing."

"Hannah's missing herbs, Piper. The police will blame her. Either she made a mistake because she's old and crazy or she intentionally poisoned him to get her house back and stop him from putting in a resort. He is, you know. I've heard it on good authority. Men like that, nothing stops them." He spoke with a note of admiration, envy. "Keep digging."

Her arm and shoulder muscles screamed in agony, but she couldn't stop. If she did, Paul would kick her. He had several times already. "Paul, listen to me. You're not that desperate. Clate's not dead. I'd know it if he were. You can make a case that you were trying to disable him, not kill him. You don't have to do this."

"Shut up. Dig, damn it."

She could hear the panic bearing down on him. She continued digging. One spadeful at a time. Through roots and worms and rock. It was exhausting work, and whenever she tried to catch her breath, he kicked or hit her, not hard enough to disable her, just hard enough to scare her into thinking about what came after the hole was dug.

"I need water," she said.

"Tough. Dig."

"There's no treasure."

"It's another eighteen inches down, Piper."

"The treasure's a myth. It's a story Hannah's father told her while he was off in the war. It doesn't exist."

He kicked her, harder this time, on the outside of her right shin. She bit back a cry of pain. She wouldn't give him the satisfaction. This whole thing was about him, his ego, his need to be the big man with the name, the reputation, the money. He was a sniveling, arrogant, miserable coward who'd turned a hunger for the easy way out—for treasure—into a campaign of terror. One mistake had piled onto another, until a neat, tidy operation was entirely out of hand, and he was willing to commit murder to get what he wanted and keep from owning up to what he'd done.

And he knew, she thought. He knew what he was. That was why he kicked her, hit her, enjoyed, on some level, having her in his power.

"The hole's too deep," she said. "I have to get down in it."

"Do it."

Once he took his eyes off her, the moment his attention flagged even for a split second, she'd have at him with the shovel. She was just waiting for her chance. She jumped down into the hole. This spot wasn't on Hannah's list. It wasn't even visible from the bedroom window from which she'd watched her shadowy figure. Jason Frye. Dead for nineteen years, and now his handiwork eighty years ago was causing more trouble.

If Hannah hadn't imagined the whole thing.

The muscles in her shoulders and arms aching, Piper hacked the shovel into the dirt. She was on relatively high ground, and the scrub trees and brush produced organic matter that had enriched the soil, making it heavier, denser, less sandy.

"I want the treasure, Piper. Don't mistake me. This isn't just to cover my tracks." His voice was hoarse, every fiber of him focused on her as she dug. "I want the money it'll bring. If Sally had more spark, I'd have the house, the land,
and
the treasure. But she's the Frye, and she doesn't care what I want. Thinks it's unseemly for someone of her social status to want anything."

"It's not wrong to want," Piper said carefully.

"Oh, it is if you're Sally Shepherd. Wanting implies you don't have everything already, that you need more. It's a reflection on your family, on your status in the community. That's why this damned house is so frigging pristine. Can't fix it up. That's for crass materialists."

"Paul, I consult with people all the time who have names and reputations, but who aren't snobs, who take pride in having their places looking nice. They don't not spend money just so people won't think they're crass. Sally never struck me—"

"Sally's a
cow."
Spittle flew out of his mouth, and when she shot him a glance, she could see the pain underneath the anger, the knowledge that there was no turning back. He'd gone too far.

Piper dumped a shovelful of dirt onto the pile she'd already dug and tried to appeal to what reason he had left. "I don't think she had a say in whether Hannah sold the Frye house or not. If you and she could have afforded to buy it—"

"Not with the Macintosh Inn dragging us down." He sneered, furious at the memory. "A nice, prestigious property that all our uppity friends approve of. We can be the proper New England innkeepers. No five-star hotel near the Grand Ole Opry for me."

So, he wanted to be a Clate Jackson. He was envious. Eaten alive by the realities of his life and his own inadequacies. He wanted to be a player, and instead he was leading a quiet life as a Cape Cod innkeeper. What had he thought when he'd married Sally? That her family name and reputation would launch him into commercial success? Later he'd discovered that she thought such success beneath her. Piper shuddered. What a reason to marry anyone.

She thought of the letter in her pocket. It wasn't the prospect of Clate Jackson doing what Clate Jackson did that had so irritated her. A resort on his particular Cape Cod property would never make it through the review boards. It was lying to her, manipulating her, making her believe in him.

But she did believe in him, she realized. Whatever lay behind the letter, it wasn't lying and manipulation. It was a mistake, it was the work of a subordinate, it was even Paul Shepherd's doing. Damn it, she wasn't being naive, not this time. She knew Clate. He wouldn't do something like this behind her back.

And he wasn't dead, she told herself again. She was sure of it.

"Dig," Paul ordered.

"How do you know the treasure's here?"

"Sweet Sally told me. It was her way of explaining why she didn't want to make a stink about Hannah selling the Frye house out from under her. Seems old Jason made a deathbed confession to her."

"Then it's true," Piper said. "He lured my great-grandparents onto that sandbar."

"Apparently he succumbed to the pressures of adolescence. He'd read the letters from Hannah's father to her, and he thought he was in some sort of adventure novel. He wanted to prove himself courageous and daring. A war was going on. He had to show he was a man."

"By robbing two innocent people and leaving them to die?"

Paul shrugged, and Piper could see that the horror of that night —what Caleb and Phoebe Macintosh must have suffered—didn't reach his soul. It was all an intellectual exercise that had nothing to do with him. "He never meant for them to die. He thought someone would save them before the elements did their work. He'd disguised himself so they wouldn't recognize him. When his plans went awry, so to speak, he was distraught, racked with guilt. He buried the treasure out here and left it."

"But Hannah saw him from her window. It couldn't have been here."

"My lovely Sally was a step ahead of her. She suspected Hannah might have seen something that night and would eventually remember, or had already. Either way, Sally wasn't willing to take the risk. The Frye name and reputation, of course, had to be preserved at all costs. After her grandfather's sordid confession, she came out here, dug up the treasure—"

"It was under the wisteria?"

"Yes. Sally moved it. She never even looked inside. She insists she was trying to preserve her grandfather's honor and refused to profit from what he'd done." Paul regarded Piper with smug, miserable satisfaction. "I had to persuade her to tell me where she'd buried it. This took time. In the meanwhile, I needed to keep you from stumbling on it first. If I'd known it was way out here, I wouldn't have worried so much."

"So the calls, the attempts to discredit Hannah—"

"Very clever, I thought." He leaned over the hole and touched her hair, and it was all she could do not to pull back in revulsion. "I discovered I enjoyed threatening you. I liked hearing the fear and the anger in your voice. The edge of danger, every moment thinking I'd be caught spying on you out here in the middle of nowhere, sneaking into your house. I'll bet Jason Frye was more intoxicated with what he'd done than he ever wanted to admit, no matter what price he paid. Two lives in his hands. Think of it. Sally says he led a tortured life. I don't believe it."

Piper grimaced. "You're disgusting."

He laughed, but even then, his eyes didn't leave her. And she knew. When she found his damned treasure, he was going to smash her over the head with the shovel and bury her in its place. In his own mind, he'd left himself no other way out.

Clate scanned the horizon from his upper terrace, his eyes throbbing, his throat on fire. The sun had dipped low, the sky was a soft, lavender-blue as dusk settled. If Piper had a letter proving he was a snake in the grass, she'd have marched straight over with it and shoved it under her nose.

Something or someone must have distracted her.

"She's in the woods."

He turned, and Sally Shepherd emerged from the kitchen, ghostlike. If he had tried to touch her, Clate wouldn't have been surprised to see his hand go through her. She had no color in her face. He noticed a swollen, colorless bruise at the corner of her right eye. Yet her mouth was set, a grim dignity about her.

"At least that's where I expect she is." She breathed, maintaining the set of her mouth. "My husband left the house about an hour and a half ago. If Piper saw him—if he—" She swallowed, faltering.

Andrew and Benjamin were searching their sister's property; their father and the police were on their way. Hannah came out onto the terrace. She hugged a shawl around her slim, old woman's body. "I understand now. Before he died, Jason told Sally what he'd done. Sally, please. Take Clate to your husband. Hurry."

"I moved the chest," she said in a clear, steady voice. "I—I had to. But I never looked inside. I couldn't. It was all I could think to do at the time. I didn't want to know if there was treasure inside. My grandfather was so horrified by what had happened to Hannah's parents. He'd lived an exemplary life. It didn't seem to me that whatever was inside that chest made any difference."

Neither Hannah nor Clate spoke.

Sally swallowed, her dignity ragged but in place. "I was wrong."

"You were young," Hannah said, touching the other woman's hand. "Sally, dear, where did you move the chest? Take Clate. Now."

Lifting a hand, Sally pointed across the marsh. "It's out there. Paul made me tell him. He hit me."

Clate straightened, ignoring the residual effects of his poisoned iced tea. If Paul Shepherd was out there, Piper was in danger. "Show me."

Nodding, summoning the last shreds of her dignity, Sally led him off the terrace and down across the lawn, past the grape arbor, and into the woods. Scrub trees gradually gave way to larger pine, cedar, oak. He could see where deer had been chewing on trees. Mosquitoes buzzed in his ears. Fresh assaults of nausea threatened to drop him to his knees. His throat burned. He pushed on, gripped in a terror he'd never known, not even when he'd gone down to the county hospital and identified his mother's body.