Night Scents (23 page)

She waved a hand in dismissal. "I only speak the truth."

Piper groaned, exasperated.

Clate laughed. "Mrs. Frye, if you're asking me to drive Piper home, I'd be happy to."

"My bike won't fit in your car."

"We can leave the trunk open." His voice was liquid sand; he was enjoying himself. "It's not that far to your house."

She opened her mouth to argue about taking her chances, but Hannah gave her a shove, putting all of her insubstantial weight into it. "Piper, for heaven's sake. Get in the man's car and go home."

"Or get struck by lightning," Clate muttered.

Piper made a face. "I've been plotted against."

"You've just come up against common sense," Hannah said, pushing her out the door. "Now run along. I'm falling asleep on my feet."

She wasn't. She was having a grand time. She waited on her doorstep until Piper's bike was safely crammed into Clate's trunk and she was sitting next to him in his front seat. "She doesn't look tired to me," Piper grumbled.

Clate started the engine, his casual attire in contrast with the plush interior of the car. "So far as I can see, you two deserve each other."

She waved stiffly to her aunt as he backed out. "She's going to go right back in there and work on her computer or watch 'Bewitched' reruns or stew up some herbs. She doesn't take naps."

"She's having fun."

"At my expense."

"Well, you've no business riding a bike in the middle of a thunderstorm."

Piper gave him a sideways look, noticed the way the muscles in his forearms worked as he drove. "The thunderstorm was just a convenient way to get me in this car with you."

He tossed her a sexy grin. "Worked."

"I'm still mad at you."

"No kidding. Well, I called my office. No one's admitting to asking anybody anything up here, but if anyone was considering it, they'll think again."

"Then you're saying you didn't put someone up to it?"

He sighed. "I've been saying that."

"And you didn't do it yourself?"

"You'd have heard if I had," he said dryly.

True, she would have. This was her town, not his, which, she reminded herself, was exactly the way he wanted it. "Then Andrew and Benjamin were wrong on this one. Or someone's pulling a fast one on you down in Nashville."

He gave a nearly imperceptible shake of the head. "That wouldn't happen."

"Oh, I see. I'm supposed to entertain every manner of farfetched explanation for a handful of nasty phone calls, but you can't entertain the idea that someone who works for you has stepped over the line."

"Point well taken."

"But you still think you're right?"

"Yes."

Piper settled back in her seat, strangely comfortable. She appreciated his certainty. It meant he believed he hired good people, that he trusted them. In her view, trust was a positive sign of character. But she decided to change the subject. "I told Hannah you didn't find anything under the wisteria."

"She has new ideas about where to dig?"

Prioritized from one to forty-seven. Piper smiled. "She's a Macintosh. She always has a plan."

"According to what I've learned of your family's history," Clate said, "this isn't necessarily a good thing. Macintosh plans have a way of going awry."

"That's why we've learned to keep them to ourselves."

He glanced at her, the corners of his mouth twitching. "You must have been hell as a little sister. Luckily," he added, "I don't think of you that way."

Chapter 11

Rain slashed the windshield, lightning flashed, and thunder rumbled, but so far as Clate could see, Piper still wished she'd ridden her bike home. "I'll get my bike. No need for you to get wet."

She slid out of the car into the pounding rain. Clate waited two seconds, then decided to hell with it and climbed out, basically ignoring the rain as he joined her at the trunk. She was wrestling with her bike, which had twisted around on itself and didn't exactly fit anyway. A determined woman. He eyed her clamped jaw, the tensed muscles in her arms, her soaked hair and shirt, and wondered why in hell he didn't just scoop her up and carry her inside.

Without asking, he grabbed hold of the handlebars and helped her pull the bike out of the trunk. "I can do it," she said.

"Just smile and say thank you."

She scowled at him, and he laughed. That defiant pride and independent streak were something they had in common, although they'd developed the qualities for different reasons. He because he was alone in the world, she because she wasn't.

"You're getting wet," she said.

"I'm from the South. Thunderstorms don't bother me."

"I'd like to see the South."

Lightning and thunder came together in a crash, the storm moving over their heads. The hard, steady rain dripped off her nose and her hair and made her skin seem paler. They were both drenched. "You'll have to come to Nashville. It's a good city. There's more to it than country-and-western music."

"Are you a fan?"

They were standing in the pounding rain, discussing Nashville. "Absolutely. I'm also a fan of the long, beautiful Nashville springs."

"Summers are hot."

"Hot and humid."

An unexpected flash of memory, Irma serving him fried apricot pies on a hot, still summer night when he'd refused to go home ever again. Thirteen years old and he'd had enough. He'd ended up walking home in a thunderstorm, bringing his mother one of Irma's pies, because Irma had taught him—had almost made him believe—that kindness was its own reward. His mother had cried, sobbing over her own inadequacies and dashed dreams.

"I have a place on the Cumberland, a couple of dogs." With one ringer, he flicked rainwater off the end of Piper's nose, then skimmed along her cheek to her dripping hair. He kissed her lightly, softly, tasting the cool rain on her, on himself. "You'd better get inside before you get struck by lightning."

"Too late," she said under her breath, and kissed him hard, fiercely, before darting off into her house.

Reeling, Clate climbed back into his car. He could pour water out of his shoes. The air-conditioning gave him a much-needed chill. When he arrived home, the storm had abated, the rain already dying down to sprinkles, bringing out the smell of roses, honeysuckle, mint, wisteria, grass, pine pitch, seawater. The mix of scents swirled around him as he walked out back and stared out at the bay, choking back the sudden sense of isolation, of strangeness. He didn't belong here any more than he belonged anywhere else. With sheer will power and brute force, maybe he could carve out a place for himself, as he had in Nashville, when he'd arrived with nothing but a tent and a determination that nothing,
nothing,
would stop him.

No, Cape Cod wasn't home. He couldn't squash the urge to head out to the airport, climb in his plane, and get the hell off this elbow of shifting sand and knotted scrub trees and green-eyed, chestnut-haired women who made his blood boil. Put up a For Sale sign on his house and land. Let Hannah Frye conjure up some other poor bastard for her niece to love. Someone who did belong here. Someone who could love her in the way she deserved to be loved, who believed in family and community the way she believed in them.

"Mr. Jackson?"

He started, whipping around at Tuck O'Rourke. "Tuck. I didn't hear you."

"Sorry."

"No, it's okay. I was lost in thought." He got control of himself; he wasn't going anywhere, not today. "And call me Clate, will you?"

"Sure." Tuck scratched the back of his neck. He smelled like dirt and sweat, no problem for Clate, whose first jobs had been working with his hands. He had the scars to prove it—and to prove he'd learned the hard way to control his temper. Tuck cleared his throat. "I worked out here this morning, before the rain. You weren't around. Figured I should stop back and show you what I found."

He led Clate over to Hannah Frye's charming little garden of poisonous and medicinal plants and pointed to an area that looked like every other area. Clate saw no difference.

"That wasn't there last time I was here," Tuck said. "You do it?"

Upon closer inspection, Clate saw that about a dozen of the bushy plants had been cut back, almost to their roots. He glanced at their markers. Monkshood, foxglove, soapwort. The extravagant skull and crossbones on their markers indicated that misused, they could be deadly.

"No," Clate said. "I have no use for any of these plants, but I didn't bother cutting them down."

O'Rourke screwed up his face. "Wasn't animals. Piper?"

"It's possible."

"You know..." He breathed in, then out again, before continuing. "I'm not accusing anybody of anything, but I hope to hell Mrs. Frye didn't cut these plants or put Piper up to doing it."

"What are you saying?"

"I'm not saying anything. I'd just hate to see somebody end up poisoned."

Clate eased back, distanced himself from images of Hannah and her niece; he needed objectivity. "Be careful of what you're saying, Tuck. Giving a town selectman diarrhea's one thing—"

"I know, I know." Tuck flushed, rubbed his beard awkwardly. "I've got no business saying any of this without proof, and I'm not making any accusations. I hope I'm way off base. But Mrs. Frye's been acting weird lately, you know?"

"No, frankly, I don't. I've only recently met the woman. What is she normally like?"

He shrugged his big, beefy shoulders. "She's always been one to speak her mind, that's for sure. My father worked for Mr. Frye before he and Hannah got married, maybe a few months after. I'd come out with him sometimes, and she'd be out here fussing with the flower gardens. She wasn't in to herbs in those days. She really settled in here. Didn't take long for her to feel at home."

"She'd lived here for a time as a child, didn't she?"

"Oh, yeah. I forgot about that. The Fryes were taking care of her when her parents died in that shipwreck. Hell, that must have been awful. Maybe that's why she's getting goofy now, who knows? I mean, all that tragedy so young."

"I understand the shipwreck is one of the Cape's most celebrated mysteries, that her parents' ship was intentionally led onto a sandbar."

"That's what everyone says. It was—what, eighty years ago? Hannah's about the only one around here who'd even remember."

And Clate wasn't sure her memory was entirely accurate.

"Look," Tuck went on, "Mrs. Frye and I haven't always seen eye to eye on everything, but, hell, she's an old woman. I don't wish her any harm. But if she's planning to sprinkle a little monkshood on somebody's pizza..." His voice trailed off, and he appealed to Clate with a sheepish gesture; gossip embarrassed him. "You know what I'm saying?"

"I do indeed. Thanks for coming to me with this, Tuck. If you find anything else, let me know, okay? Meanwhile, I'll see what I can find out."

After Tuck left, Clate headed inside, changed into dry clothes, and poured himself a glass of iced tea. If there were ghosts in the Frye house, he could feel their presence, and he could imagine it if there weren't. Had Jason and Hannah Frye loved each other? Or had Jason Frye taken pity on her, remembering the little girl who'd waited in vain for her parents to come home? The man had been dead almost twenty years, Caleb and Phoebe Macintosh eighty. Whatever had happened, the past was past and there was no undoing it, only accepting it.