Night Scents (18 page)

If Hannah wanted her niece to be happy, she should think up a new spell to send him back to Tennessee.

He glanced out his window, half expecting to see Piper's silhouette out under the wisteria. Instead he saw only the starlit sky, heard only the wash of the waves on the sand.

Isolation. Solitude. A retreat from the pressures of his life in Nashville, the cover articles in slick magazines, the constant speculation about his social life, his next goal, his next hill to conquer. That was what he'd expected from Cape Cod. Yet here he was, staring out his window for a woman digging treasure.

He cursed himself and climbed into bed, listening to the wind howl until sleep finally claimed him.

He cursed himself again, even more soundly, when morning came and he took his first mug of coffee out to the terrace with him. There, just inside Hannah Frye's peculiar little witch's garden, he found unmistakable signs of digging. Loose dirt, an overturned clod of weeds, a spot that looked as if it had been refilled and flattened by the back of a shovel.

"Piper."

Coffee in hand, he marched down the slope, through the break in the hedge, and along the path up to her house.

He stood on the spotty grass next to her vegetable garden with its flourishing tomato plants, its mounds of summer squash and zucchini, its rows of peas, their ripe, heavy pods hanging thickly, as if eager to be picked. Wind rustled in the tall marsh grasses, and he could hear the trill of a strange bird as he soaked in a world so very different from his own. He thought of his sprawling office high in the luxury hotel he had built, the bustle of staff, the high-tech equipment. Piper had made bread in a beehive fireplace oven yesterday morning.

"My mama don't cook much, Mrs. Bryar."

"I know she doesn't, Clayton. You just eat all you want. You picked that corn yourself. You should be proud. Enjoy your meal and be thankful for these little things in life."

His eyes stung, his pain so fierce, so unexpected, that all the fury went out of him. Irma Bryar had taught him the power of the individual, the strength that could come out of adversity. She had understood that he couldn't rely on his family, couldn't even rely on her. She was too old already when she'd taken him under her wing, too uncertain about her own future to do more than help him learn to rely on himself, to trust that courage and a sense of honor would see him through almost anything.

He walked around front and saw that Piper's bicycle was gone. She wasn't home. He finished his coffee breathing in the scent of her roses on her white picket fence. What did Piper Macintosh want from life?

"Drop it," he muttered under his breath.

He headed back through the hedges and examined the area of digging under tall, weedy-looking plants. If this was Piper's work, he thought he'd have sensed her presence during the night or that she would have seen to it he did. She'd have tripped, struck a stone with her shovel, accidentally whistled, somehow goaded him into coming out and catching her one more time.

She was like that, daring, willing to play with fire, never mind that she didn't know that the fire she was playing with this time was too damned hot for her own good.

For his, either.

He supposed the damage could be the work of dogs or raccoons or some other Cape Cod animal. That was how Piper would dismiss it. In her world, the idea that it could be the work of someone who didn't wish her well, who didn't have her best interests at heart, just didn't fit.

In Clate's world, it fit quite well. Whoever had made those calls warning her to stay off his property could easily have snuck into his yard last night and tried his hand at digging for buried treasure.

Piper eyed the something-or-other tea Hannah had served her on the deck of her townhouse. It wasn't tea colored. It was more the color of swamp water. Hannah had claimed it was ordinary herb tea, which could mean anything.

"Oh, stop glowering at it and drink it," she said, plopping down on a cushioned chair. She sat in the sun. She was old, she maintained, and got chilled easily, and she figured if she didn't have skin cancer by now, if she got it, she wouldn't live long enough to die of it. Not that she'd left much uncovered for ultraviolet light to do its damage. She had on a blue gingham dress and floppy hat that made her look a bit like Old Mother Hubbard. "It's a perfectly neutral tea."

"Why's it this color?"

Hannah leaned forward, peering at Piper's cup. "Hm. I'm not sure."

"That's encouraging."

"I wonder..." She frowned. "I might not have poured from the right pot. I'm trying a new tea for my digestion, and perhaps—I hope I haven't mixed them up."

"You and me both. Why are you so preoccupied with your digestion?"

"Ask that question when you're my age. Neither tea will hurt you. You know that. It's just an inconvenience if I've mixed them up. So just drink and enjoy."

Piper thought of Stan Carlucci. "There's nothing wrong with my digestion. Anyway, I'm not thirsty."

Hannah sat back in her chair, clearly disgruntled. "You always used to sample my teas. Even when you knew you wouldn't like one, you'd at least try it. Do you think I'd give you something that would harm you?"

"No, of course not." But she made herself add, "Not intentionally."

"Oh, I see. I'm just so dotty I can't be trusted."

"That's not what I said."

"It's what you meant."

Piper set her teacup on the small table between them. "Hannah, even you have to admit you're more into this herbal remedy stuff than you used to be. Before, it was a choice between Twinings and Celestial Seasonings. You know, Earl Grey or Red Zinger. Now..." She stared at her cup of swamp-colored liquid and teaspoon of honey. "I just worry that in your enthusiasm to apply this new knowledge, you get a little carried away sometimes."

Hannah snorted. "Nonsense. If anything, I'm overly cautious."

Piper didn't remind her about her doubts about which tea was in which cup. "Well, you know I love your spiced tea with a cinnamon stick for a stirrer. It's my favorite, and I don't care if it's good for me or neutral."

But Hannah wasn't mollified. "You know I hate being humored, Piper. If you don't want to drink my tea, don't."

"I'm sorry. I certainly didn't come here to harass you. I wanted to ask you something. Have you made any tincture of bistort and agrimony recently?"

"No, but it's a staple. I have plenty. Why, are you having problems?"

Only Hannah, Piper thought. She shook her head, and with as little emotion as possible, related the basic facts of her visit from Paul Shepherd and Stan Carlucci.

Hannah reacted with neither annoyance nor consternation. She simply gave a flip of her bony hand and dismissed the whole thing as absurd. "First of all, I no longer concern myself with Stan Carlucci's health. He can consume Pepto Bismol for the rest of his life for all I care. Secondly, if I did want to help him, I wouldn't leave a vial of bistort and agrimony with no instructions."

"Hannah, he doesn't think you want to help him. He thinks you want to poison him."

"With tincture of bistort and agrimony? Phooey." She sniffed. "I assure you, if I were trying to poison Stan Carlucci, I wouldn't use anything that benign. And leaving it on his doorstep...I might be old, Piper, but I'm capable of devising a less self-incriminating plan than that."

Piper hoped she wouldn't feel called to the test. "Then who did it?"

She shrugged. "Someone who doesn't like him any more than I do, which is a growing number of people, I might add."

"Or someone who doesn't like you."

She seemed shocked at the idea. "Me?"

"Someone who knew Stan would hold you responsible for the tincture and wanted it that way. Even if it's harmless, it's harassment, scaring Carlucci, setting him up as the butt of jokes, making people think he's preoccupied with his digestion."

"He
is
preoccupied with his digestion. Why do you think I gave him that tea in the first place?"

"Nonetheless," Piper said, careful not to revisit Hannah's defense of her original run-in with Stan Carlucci. "I don't like this, Hannah. Maybe I should talk to the police. Between this and the phone calls—"

"Have you had another?"

"No, but that doesn't mean I've forgotten the two I did get."

Hannah shot to her feet as nimbly as a woman half her age. "There's no need to involve the police. Someone just got the idea for the tincture after my incident with Stan and seized the moment without thinking. I wouldn't make too much of it."

"You wouldn't, and maybe I wouldn't, but Stan and Paul—"

"I'll speak to Sally. She'll understand, and she'll calm Paul down, and he can calm Stan down." She took a breath, calmer herself. "There. Now. Come inside. I want you to test a new insect repellent I've mixed. It's a blend of pine oil in a carrier of sweet almond oil."

"Hannah—"

"We're finished discussing tincture of bistort and agrimony, Piper."

"Hannah, not everyone understands you."

She glanced back, a tiny scarecrow of a woman in a high-collared, Ma Ingalls dress. "No one understands me."

"I do."

"You love me. There's a difference. I hope you'll understand that one day soon."

Chapter 9

Piper was shelling peas at her picnic table when Clate walked up from the marsh. "Funny," she said, "how this trespassing thing only works one way."

"You can post your land, same as me."

"Would it stop you?"

He slid onto the bench across from her. "I'm not trespassing, I'm coming over for a visit."

"Good. Be neighborly and help me shell these peas."

Her basket was overflowing, picking peas her second act after arriving home from town. Her first had been to listen to her messages. A mistake.

Clate studied her from across the table she and her brothers had made when she'd first moved in. He had on jeans and a black polo shirt, and something about the light—or maybe just her mood—seemed to bring out the scars on his face and arms. He'd come up in the world the hard way. That much was obvious.

"Something's happened," he said, studying her.

She grabbed up another handful of pea pods, laid them on the tabic, lifted up one, split it, shelled it into her colander.

"Piper."

"There's a message on my machine. You can go in and listen to it if you want."

He didn't answer, didn't immediately head into her house and invade her message machine. She continued to shell her peas. Her hands were trembling. Her stomach ached. She was glad for his company, yet disconcerted by his presence. Hannah, the treasure, the phone calls—they were her problem, not his.

Finally, he said, "I'd rather have you tell me about this message."

She scooped up empty pods and flung them into her herb garden, where they could rot. She had a proper compost pile. Another of her many undertakings. Maybe she'd just sell the place and buy a condo. She could understand Hannah's sense of freedom. No more leaky roofs, no more mice in the bathroom, no more fretting whether the furnace would last another winter.

"It's a line from a recording," she said. "A rap song, and not one of the good ones. But I got the message. Whoever's calling me wants me scared enough to stay home and—and shell peas, I guess."