Night Scents (41 page)

Sally Shepherd was cooperating with the investigation of her husband's activities, neither rising to his defense nor condemning him. She was calm and dignified, throughout. Piper couldn't decide if this was a result of Sally's nature, or if she just didn't feel any real emotion where her husband was concerned, as if the last drop of any passion that had ever been there had drained out of their relationship long ago.

When Clate left for Tennessee, he promised to return soon. He indicated that business duties called, but Piper suspected otherwise. Not that he was lying to her, precisely. Just that he wasn't telling her everything. She sensed unfinished business that concerned not just him, but
them.
Which, in her view, made it her business, too.

So, she decided to let her curiosity get the better of her.

She discovered he didn't fly commercial. He had his own plane at the airport in Hyannis. He flew it himself. A pilot. Every time she thought she had the man figured out, she learned something new about him.

When she decided to follow him to Tennessee, she bought her ticket through a travel agent, drove to Boston, and climbed on a Boeing 737 at Logan Airport. She'd had to pay top price because she had only had fourteen hours' notice. Her flight was uneventful, which was just fine with her, and when she landed, she hoisted her borrowed overnight bag on her shoulder and marched out to the taxi stand, suddenly realizing she hadn't the vaguest idea where to go.

She didn't know the name of Clate's company. She didn't know the address of his house. She didn't even know the name of his hotel.

So she climbed into a cab and asked the driver, "You know Clate Jackson's hotel?"

"Yes, ma'am."

She loved the South already. "Take me there."

Nashville occupied a basin of rolling hills of oak and cedar and hickory between the Cumberland plateau and the higher plains of western Tennessee. It was pretty country, and as her cab shot out onto the bustling interstate, Piper could feel its energy. Clate must have responded to that energy when he'd wandered down from the hills at sixteen. Through hard work, drive, and nerve, he'd survived. Now he owned a company that employed hundreds. And it still wasn't enough, not because it was wrong, but because he'd hoped it could do what it couldn't do. In her mind, commerce was never a good substitute for family. More manageable and less intrusive in some ways, but no substitute.

The hotel was on a tree-lined road off the interstate, an impressive building of contemporary design and convenience and old-fashioned service and sensibility. Hard to believe the builder and owner was only in his mid-thirties. Piper overpaid the driver, since he'd known Clate Jackson, and slid out, turning down a doorman's offer to take her bag. Doors opened, and she heard more "ma'am's" than she had since she'd turned old enough to be called ma'am.

She walked up to the front desk and asked for a room.

There were no rooms. The hotel was booked. They were sorry, ma'am, but would be happy to direct her to another hotel.

She frowned. So much lor Plan A. "Do you know ii Clate Jackson's here?"

"Ma'am?"

"The owner," she said blithely. She was small-town Cape Cod. This was big-city South. She wasn't sure how things worked down here, but she was pretty sure front desk clerks would know the name of the owner of the hotel that employed them. "I figure there's no point in trying to find his office if he's not even here. He's why I came to Nashville. I'm his—he's my—" She sighed. "We know each other."

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw one of the clerks motioning for someone, probably security. Plan B wasn't working, either. Her case might have been strengthened if she'd combed her hair and reapplied lipstick after she'd landed. As it was, she was a still-bloodied-and-bruised, chestnut-haired woman in a Red Sox T-shirt with a borrowed overnight bag slung over her shoulder, asking about a man who owned an opulent southern hotel. She'd worn traveling clothes. Her new Tennessee outfits were in her bag.

"We do," she said. "Give him a buzz and ask him. My name's Piper. Piper Macintosh. I'm from Cape Cod."

A big man in a dark suit touched her elbow. "May I help you over here, ma'am?"

Ten minutes later, she persuaded him to call Clate's assistant. A minute after that, he installed her on a polished elevator while eyebrows raised all through the lobby. She was to get off on a high floor, and a woman would be there to greet her.

The woman was named Mabel Porter, all of twenty-four, smartly dressed, professional, and very surprised, except she tried not to show it. She apologized, for what Piper wasn't exactly sure, and explained that Clate was out of town, but that he'd be back later that evening. "He'll be so surprised to see you," she said.

Piper grinned, pleased with herself. "This is true."

Mabel showed her to a suite whose living room alone was bigger than the downstairs of Piper's eighteenth-century house. There were also a bedroom, a bathroom, and a bar area. The decor was Southern in flavor, very expensive, flowery, and tasteful. No layers of paint to scrape off the wainscoting, no creaky wide pineboard floors. Piper thanked Mabel, then asked, on sudden impulse, "Are you the one who inquired about the history of the Frye house?"

Mabel's mouth dropped open and her face paled.

Piper smiled brightly. "Oh, don't worry. I think it took initiative on your part. You were anticipating your boss's needs. He —well, I am sure that if he hadn't caught me stealing valerian root a couple of weeks ago he'd have thought resort sooner or later."

"I don't think so. He—that kind of development isn't his sort of thing. I know that now. I hope you don't—I didn't mean any harm. Mr. Jackson—"

"It's okay, Mabel. If I know Mr. Jackson, he figured it was you when I first showed him the letter from the research historian. He crumpled it up, tossed it in the fireplace, and forgot about it. I think he's probably more forgiving these days than he used to be." She liked this impulse thing. Maybe she'd be as good as Hannah in another fifty or sixty years. "Anyway, I was just curious."

"I see." Mabel regarded her with fresh appreciation. Here was not just some crazy Yankee, but a woman who understood the fundamentals of business, which, when it came down to it, was just having good instincts about people. "You're not what I expected, Ms. Macintosh. If there's anything you need, please don't hesitate to let me know."

After Mabel left, Piper threw open all the drapes and drank in the view while hot water poured into her enormous, spotless tub. She'd added a few drops of Hannah's infusion of meadowsweet to help her relax. Wherever Clate was, whenever he returned, she wanted to be ready.

She smiled as she sank beneath the water. It didn't occur to her that he might not be happy to see her.

Summer had arrived in the Cumberland hills, hot and humid, thunder rumbling in the distance. Clate could smell the sweet, overpowering scent of Irma's honeysuckle as he stood with one foot on the bottom step of her front porch. Hers was a little yellow clapboard house, simple and pretty. In her final effort to get him to understand right from wrong, she had left her house to Clayton Jackson, Sr., and his new family. At her insistence, they'd moved in when she'd had to go into the nursing home in the weeks before her death. The senior Jackson had been helping her out for years, without pay.

Clate heard the kids out back, had seen them when he'd pulled in. A boy and a girl. Dark haired, tanned, barefoot. They were squealing as they ran through a sprinkler. He couldn't stop staring at them. Beautiful kids. More than he could have ever expected.

A crow cawed overhead, bees hummed in the honeysuckle. He could hear his car engine running behind him. Security. He needed to know he could leave fast, in case coming here was a mistake.

The old screen door opened, and a thin, wiry gray-haired man walked out. Clate recognized the loping gait. He had gotten his own thick build from his mother's side of the family.

Family. No, that wasn't what they'd been. Three people caught in the same horrible windstorm was more like it. A couple of troubled teenagers with a baby they didn't know how to raise properly. They'd done their best. And their worst.

The door shut. His father walked down the steps. He wasn't much over fifty, still young. He rubbed the back of his neck, awkward, even afraid. "Hello, Clate."

"Hello."

"Reckon you heard about the house. I did some work for Miss Irma from time to time, but other'n that—" He shrugged. "I don't know why she did half the things she did. But I thank the good Lord she was here for you."

Clate managed a smile. "Me, too. Mabel Porter, my assistant in Nashville, told me about the house. But that's not why I'm here. I just—" He stopped, squinting in the heat, trying to put words to the sense of urgency that had gripped him in the past three days, since he'd watched Hannah Frye pull an old doll out of her treasure chest and he'd fallen in love with her niece. Somehow he had the feeling if he didn't come here, if he left now, that whatever he had with Piper would slip through his fingers. He licked his lips, sighed. "I just wanted to come by and say hello."

His father cleared his throat, shoved his knotty hands into his threadbare pockets. "Well, I'm glad you did. You want a drink or something? I've got iced tea inside. Francie, she likes those flavored teas—you know, mango and raspberry and things—but I just like regular old tea. She's a nurse up at the county hospital. She'll be back home soon." He took a breath, awkward, trying so damned hard. Clate could sense his father's nervousness. "You don't have to drink it inside. I can bring it out."

"It's okay. I'm not that thirsty."

Finally, his father's watery eyes focused on him, and he said, "I think about you every day, Clate. Have for years. You're in my prayers and have been ever since I got sober. Before that—" He shook his head. "The devil had hold of me, son. That's all I know. But I gave him the hold on me. I gave it to him, and I know I did. I can't say it any plainer than that."

He wasn't going to beg forgiveness. In all Clate's youthful fantasies of what his father would do when—if—they saw each other again, he had him on his knees, begging. And Clate would refuse. Deny him that easing of his guilt and misery. Only now, his father wasn't asking for forgiveness. He wasn't asking for anything.

"Regular iced tea?" Clate asked.

"Lipton. I bought the tea bags myself."

"The kids?"

"I made a pitcher of Kool-Aid for them."

Clate rocked back on his heels, and he breathed in the sweet honeysuckle. Vengeance. Irma Bryar had warned him against its seductiveness, its power to deceive, warp, destroy. Now, finally, he understood.

He looked back at his father. "I need to turn the car off."

"Go ahead. I'll pour the tea and call Sammy and Miranda."

No fear that he'd get in his car and drive back to Nashville. Whatever he chose to do, his father would accept. "Sammy and Miranda. Nice names."

"Francie picked 'em out. Me, I'm no good at that stuff. They're good kids. Like you were."

When he sat behind the wheel, felt the hum of his car's engine, Clate knew he could drive on down out of the hills and wind his way back to Nashville. He didn't have to have iced tea with his father. He didn't have to meet his brother and sister. He could get out of here, go back to his work, his meetings, his responsibilities— to the status quo of his life. He had a choice.

But if he went back, he'd lose Piper. She hadn't asked him to come here. She didn't even know he'd come. Yet he knew, with a certainty that Hannah herself would have understood, that he would lose her. The status quo was no longer enough.

He climbed back out of the car, and he walked up onto the front porch where Irma Bryar had sat in her rocking chair for so many decades. He could see her now, that worn, wise woman so willing to give of herself. She knew he'd be back. One day, he would have to come home and see his father.

A head popped up over the porch rail, and a gap-toothed smile flashed at him. "Arc you my brother?"

"You must be Miranda."

"He's your half-brother, nit." Another head popped up, the grin snaggle toothed on the older child, Sammy. "Aren't you?"

"Yes, I am. My name's Clate."

"Like Daddy's," Miranda said.

"I think your father—" He stopped himself, instantly noting their confusion. "I think our daddy's pouring us drinks."

"Kool-Aid, Kool-Aid," they chanted, giggling, and clattered up onto the porch, and Clate followed them inside.

Clate had asked that unless there was a bomb in the hotel, no one disturb him until he returned to Nashville. When he did, he immediately knew something was up. He could feel it in the air as he walked through the lobby. Then he noticed the odd looks, the quickly suppressed smiles. He started for the elevator, and stopped.

Piper.

She was here.

"Hell fire," he muttered, figuring Hannah was having her effect on him. He was thinking he knew things that he couldn't possibly, on any rational basis, know.

But she was here. He knew it.

It was late, and Mabel had gone home, but she'd left a message and a key on his desk. "A woman who says she's Piper Macintosh arrived at 3:40 p.m. Red-brown hair, slim, Red Sox shirt, nasty bruise on her right eye, very smart. Enjoy, Mabel."

Taking long strides out of the office and down the hall, he was at her door. He knocked, and her voice called, "I'll bet our Miss Mabel left you a key."

He used it, and when he pushed open the door, he heard soft music and the pop of a champagne cork. Piper walked over to him in a sleek black dress, a cameo necklace, and sparkly black velvet shoes. "The shoes are a bit big," she said, handing him a glass of champagne. "A woman in my open-hearth cooking class insisted I borrow them once she saw the dress. Anyway, there's not much opportunity to wear sparkly shoes in Frye's Cove. The necklace is Hannah's. She says—well, you can imagine."

"Something about the love of your life being drawn to cameos?"

"Something."

"The dress?"

"It's mine," she said. "It's my Tennessee dress. I bought it just for you. I wanted you to see that I can—" She struggled for the right words. "That I can make a place for myself in your life here."