"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."