Night Scents (8 page)

Clate sucked in a breath and started back down the sloping field, onto the worn path between their houses. Whatever her troubles, Piper just wasn't his problem.

Instead of taking her bicycle, Piper decided to drive to her three o'clock appointment with Sally Shepherd. She'd changed into nice pants and a silk blouse and was much calmer after her morning encounter with Clate Jackson. He'd already left for Tennessee. She'd driven past his house just to make sure. To accustom herself to his ideas about property, she'd even forced herself to turn around in the road, not his driveway.

She parked behind three trucks belonging to the men of Macintosh & Sons. She hadn't seen her father and brothers in days. Luckily she'd brought along extra jars of strawberry jam, still warm from the kettle—not that they'd be pacified. They would know why she was avoiding them: Clate Jackson and Hannah Frye. Both had her confused, disturbed, frustrated. She'd practically accused her new neighbor of making a threatening anonymous call. Of course he hadn't done such a thing! She had no reason whatever to suspect him, and now she'd succeeded in alerting him to just how jittery she was.

But something wasn't right with him, either. She suspected he'd left Cape Cod over something more serious than a business deal gone sour. Which was none of her business, of course, as he'd be the first to tell her.

She headed up onto the inn's front porch, with its rockers and potted plants, and into the entry, where the scent of old wood, lemon polish, and potpourri immediately soothed her spirits. After completing massive structural repairs on the historic old house, Macintosh & Sons had gone to work on its individual rooms, starting with the first floor. It was a century newer than her tiny Cape, with twin chimneys on either end and a beautiful center staircase. Additions and modifications had made it less a classic colonial, more a wonderful mishmash of a century and a half of American architecture. The ceilings were higher, the rooms bigger than a Cape Cod, the feel was richer, less claustrophobic, and purely functional.

Piper joined Sally and Paul Shepherd in the front parlor, where they sat together on a Queen Anne sofa, poring over stacks of fabric swatches, wallpaper books, and paint chips. They made all decisions about the inn together. Although they were committed to preserving the sprawling house's historic flavor, they weren't afraid to mix in contemporary touches, refusing to be stuffy or overly proper. Sally, known for her exquisite taste, had called on Piper to help her decide how to use and place various reproduction and original crafts she'd collected.

"Right on time," Paul said with a pleasant smile.

Piper laughed. "What, did my brothers bet you I'd show up late?"

He grinned, a dark, good-looking, charming man. "Early."

"They're such teases," Sally said. "You're lucky to have each other."

"Sometimes," Piper acknowledged. "Not that I'd know what life was like without them. They're working upstairs still? I'll have to stop up and see them after our meeting." She tried to keep any dread out of her tone. She did want to see her family, provided they didn't force her to talk about things that didn't concern them, like Hannah and Clate Jackson. "I made strawberry jam this morning. Here, I brought you a jar."

It was a deft change of subject. Sally beamed, taking the jar. "Oh, Paul, it's still warm! We'll have it with scones later on with tea. Have you heard we've hired a new chef, Piper?"

"No, I haven't."

"She's excellent. She worked at an inn up in Province-town. She suggests we serve afternoon tea on a regular basis. You'll have to bring Hannah by."

Paul cleared his throat pointedly, a glint in his dark eyes. "Not that we serve her kind of tea."

Sally flushed. She was a plain, fair-skinned woman with hair that was dyed too dark for her coloring and a wardrobe of sturdy, preppy clothes. She had married for the first time three years ago at age thirty-five. Both her and her husband's stock had gone up considerably in Frye's Cove when they hadn't made a peep about Hannah's inexplicable decision to sell her historic house and acreage. Sally was Jason Frye's only living direct descendant. Many in town considered her to have more claim to her grandfather's property—morally if not legally—than his wife of seven years. But Sally had long said she had no interest in the Frye House and was content with her and Paul's pretty house in the village and their up-and-coming inn.

"Oh, Paul, you're awful," she said affectionately. "Don't worry, Piper. We don't believe any of those silly rumors about Hannah trying to poison Stan Carlucci. She'd never deliberately hurt anyone."

"A pity," Paul put in, grinning. "I have a long list of people I wouldn't mind her treating to a pot of tea."

Sally giggled, her husband's irreverence having a positive effect on her. She was more spontaneous and flexible than Piper remembered, less bound by her natural reserve and sense of propriety—simply put, less of a prude.

Piper tried to share their good-natured response to Hannah's latest eyebrow raiser. "I'm surprised Carlucci hasn't had her bound up and tossed into the bay as a witch by now."

Paul waved a hand. "She's an old woman, for heaven's sake. People tend to tolerate the eccentricities of old people. Stan got what he deserved, and he knows it—not that there's any proof Hannah's tea was responsible for his difficulties." He grinned, as most everyone did at the mention of Carlucci's cramps and diarrhea. "Last I heard, he's still not a hundred percent."

"I worry about her," Piper blurted.

"We all do," Sally cooed, immediately reaching over to pat Piper's hand. "But I've no doubt Hannah can handle Stan Carlucci or anyone else who'd dare to think she'd stoop to poisoning people. Now. Shall we get started?"

Paul bent down and kissed his wife on the cheek. "I'll leave you two to it. Piper, good to see you. Remember, tea and scones, okay?"

An hour later, her meeting with Sally successfully completed, Piper felt calm enough to venture up to the second floor, where Macintosh & Sons were working on a suite well to the back of the old inn. Of course, it wouldn't have mattered if she'd been keyed up and out of sorts. If she didn't pop in to say hello, her father and brothers for sure would know she was hiding something from them, which she was.

When he saw his daughter, Robert Macintosh grinned, dusted off his big, callused hands, and declared, "Time for a coffee break."

He looked every inch the carpenter with his overalls, tool belt, and muscular build. Flecks of white paint and a layer of plaster dust clung to his thinning gray hair and dotted his nose and bushy eyebrows. He was precise in his work, not his appearance. Despite an occasional relationship, he had never remarried after his wife's death in a car accident when Andrew and Benjamin were ten and twelve and Piper, who'd been in the car with her mother, barely two.

Andrew glanced up from a section of tile he was repairing on the fireplace. Piper immediately recognized his critical look. He knew about her valerian-root escapade. Hannah must have blabbed.

Before he could say anything, Benjamin spotted the jars of jam his sister was carrying. "All for me?"

Piper laughed. "No, you have to share."

"You're no fun."

"You do get an extra jar for Liddy and the boys."

Liddy was his wife, a fifth-grade teacher; they had two sons, eight and ten. Andrew had been married once, briefly, in his twenties and, at thirty-eight, seemed to have no intention of repeating the experience. Benjamin was taller and leaner than either Andrew or their father, his dark hair without a hint of red, his eyes more blue than green. He grabbed a squat jar from his sister and held it up to the light streaming in from the windows. "Color's perfect, kid."

Her father handed her a mug of coffee he'd poured from his ever-present Thermos. "Glad to see you making jam, Piper."

Andrew grunted, getting up from his work. "Better than letting Hannah lead you around by the nose."

Piper sipped the coffee; it was strong, rancid, lukewarm. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Means we heard you got caught trespassing the other night."

"Hannah told you?"

"She let a few clues drop," Andrew said. "I had to pry the rest out of her. Don't worry, I didn't get out the thumbscrews. Once she got started, she was happy to talk, damned proud of herself if you ask me. Jesus, Piper. What were you thinking?"

"I was thinking of her."

He snorted in disgust. "If you were thinking of her, you'd tell her you can't trespass and you can't steal on her behalf."

"Hannah can be damned persuasive," their father said mildly.

Benjamin sighed. "I have to agree with Andrew on this one, Piper. You're as crazy as Hannah is if you start listening to her."

"Hannah's not crazy. She's just eccentric."

"Tell that to Stan Carlucci," Andrew muttered.

Piper nearly spilled her coffee. "There's a big difference between a medicinal tea and poison."

"And there's a big difference between a doctor and an eighty-seven-year-old lunatic." Andrew was incensed. "Piper, I love Hannah as much as you do, but she's got to watch herself. I'm not even going to go into what all I've been hearing around town. She's going to land herself in a padded cell and you in jail if you're not careful."

"Hannah's been taking care of herself longer than you and me put together. She's just trying to stay interested in life. And I'd hardly call helping myself to a bit of valerian root a major crime."

Andrew inhaled, ready to go off again, but Benjamin got in the next shot. "Never mind Carlucci. I'm worried about you and this Clate Jackson character, Piper. He put up those No Trespassing signs for a reason, you know. He guards his privacy. They say his place in Nashville's like a damned fortress."

Piper had heard enough. "Then I'll watch for land mines next time I sneak onto his property."

Benjamin hissed through clenched teeth, and Andrew glared at her. Piper took their irritation in stride. At least Hannah hadn't blabbed about her buried treasure. Her brothers would have been even more insufferable. They'd never sympathize with the poignant emotions, the tantalizing mystery of what had happened to their great-grandparents eighty years ago.

Their father held up a hand. "All right, all right. The boys have a point, Piper. I'm not sure I like the idea of you out on that road with just this guy for a neighbor. It probably makes sense for you not to go digging up herbs for Hannah in the middle of the night."

What about digging under his wisteria for treasure? But Piper had been dealing with her father and brothers' protectiveness since she was a tot. She smiled. "That's just what I told her."

Benjamin wiped his hands with a dirty rag. "Hannah could have stayed put if she'd wanted to keep her herb garden."

Piper resisted comment. She didn't know for sure if anyone in town had dared relay to her brothers the rumors about Hannah's efforts to lure a man to Cape Cod for her niece. She was betting not. Andrew and Benjamin would have mentioned it by now, even if they wouldn't want to do anything to encourage their sister to think about Clate Jackson in romantic terms.

"I don't trust Jackson," Andrew said. "Guys like that don't sit around on their back porches watching the tide roll in. They thrive on the next deal."

"Well, I only met the man for two seconds." Not counting yesterday on her bicycle and that morning while picking berries, and never mind her reaction to him.

"Point is, you should watch yourself with this guy."

As far as her brothers were concerned, there wasn't a man alive she shouldn't watch herself with. She'd heard that advice from high school on. When she returned to Frye's Cove after college, she'd taken great pains to fashion an independent life for herself. To a large degree, she'd succeeded. Still, her social life largely consisted of dates that didn't go anywhere.

Tuck O'Rourke was one example. Two movies with her, and the prospect of dealing with her brothers if he tried anything they didn't like inhibited him to the point that he simply didn't call again. Andrew and Benjamin Macintosh cast long shadows. They knew too much about the men in town.

Of course, so did Piper. Sometimes it was convenient to use her brothers and even her father as an excuse, thus enhancing their reputations for being overprotective. Her last real relationship was with an oceanographer in Falmouth, with whom she shared a love of Cape Cod but little else. She couldn't have said what was missing and sometimes wondered if what she wanted in a relationship, in a man, was unrealistic, unattainable, ridiculous.

Hannah said she just hadn't met the right man.

Piper groaned to herself and changed the subject, allowing her father and brothers to show her their work on the Macintosh Inn. Whatever project they were involved in captured their full attention, no detail too small for their notice. When she said goodbye, their talk was of floorboards and plaster, not stolen valerian root and cranky Tennesseans.

Once home, Piper checked the answering machine in her borning room office. There was just one message. "Piper, it's Hannah. I understand Clate's out of town. It's a perfect night to dig under the wisteria. Call if you need my help."

Piper sank into a chair at her worktable. A small window looked out onto a sunny garden of pink and blue bachelor buttons, old-fashioned white nicotiana, a half-dozen kinds of poppies. She'd scattered the seeds herself in early spring.

So, Hannah didn't mind her digging when Clate wasn't around. Did that mean her tales of buried treasure weren't meant to force another encounter between him and her niece? Or were Hannah's tactics more labyrinthine than usual?

Piper just couldn't see how she could trust a suddenly resurrected memory of a night eighty years ago.

"Stay off Clate Jackson's property if you know what's good for you."

Who had made that call?

Why?

She stared out at the riot of June colors. She was afraid if she didn't cooperate, Hannah would find someone else to do her bidding, and that could be disastrous. So long as Piper could get her aunt to filter her increasingly odd behavior through her, she figured she could keep Hannah happily making her decoctions and infusions in her new townhouse.