"But you didn't live there until you and Jason were married. You were sixty-two! You had a lot of years you could have remembered—"
"Ah, but I was in love with Jason from the time I was seven. His hold on me was staggering."
Piper had lurched forward in her chair. "You don't think a Frye killed your parents, do you?"
"I only know what I know."
Drama—or evasiveness. Hannah wasn't above holding back pertinent information as a ploy to get her way. "Are you sure you didn't recognize this shadowy figure?"
"I never saw his face."
"But it was a man?"
Suddenly her bony shoulders sagged, and she seemed little more than a pile of bones in cornflower calico. "I don't know. I've told you everything. After a lifetime, I finally remember that night, the scent of roses and the sea, the sound of digging—" She'd swallowed, tears in her eyes. "The shock of losing my parents must have blocked my memory all these years. But now—now, Piper, I remember."
And so it was that Piper had agreed to check into the possibility of treasure buried in her neighbor's back yard.
She breathed in the cool June air as she pedaled toward home, noticed the scent of roses and the sea even as she tried not to think of a seven-year-old girl staring out into the night while her parents died together on the other side of the windswept peninsula.
Unless the whole story was a tactical move on Hannah's part to throw her grandniece and the Tennessean together. But as devious as Hannah Frye could be, Piper didn't believe she'd stoop that low. Hannah really believed she'd seen someone in the Fryes' back yard that night.
Still, with any luck, her aunt would move on to something else before Piper got to the point of digging under Clate Jackson's wisteria.
Clate squinted out at the tall hedges dividing his property from that of his closest and only neighbor. He couldn't see her house from the stone terrace where he stood. On his way home, he'd slowed in front of her little Cape and had taken note of the rambling pink roses on the white picket fence, the terra-cotta pots of wispy flowers, the spikes of pink and yellow and white and orange in gardens all around the old house, and the trim, pretty shed that served as her studio. To live and work out here by herself had to require a certain courage and independence, something he wondered if her brother Andrew recognized in his little sister.
Well, it wasn't his problem.
He could smell the sweet scents of his own flower gardens. He distinguished honeysuckle and wisteria among them, and for a moment he might have been home, not in Nashville, but in the Cumberland hills where Irma Bryar's honeysuckle and wisteria grew in unmanageable tangles. Spring came late to New England and lasted only a short time, unlike the long, slow, fragrant spring of Tennessee. Cape Cod was foreign territory for him. The locals had little interest in celebrity, none at all in his particular brand. He grimaced at the thought of his unsmiling face on a recent cover of a slick Nashville magazine touting him as one of the chosen new architects of the growing, changing city. He's rich, he's successful, he's respected... So why isn't Clate Jackson smiling?
A dumb-ass headline if he'd ever read one.
He tore his gaze from the hedges. To have his place on Cape Cod be what he wanted it to be—what he needed it to be—he would have to keep the locals at arm's length, Piper Macintosh most especially.
She'd looked preoccupied standing by her bicycle, looking out at the water. Troubled.
The rattle of a truck engine interrupted his unwelcome thoughts. Company? More Macintosh men to warn him off? He headed around to the gravel driveway and garage at the side of the house.
A big, muscle-bound man stepped out of a rusted pickup. He looked about thirty, give or take a year, and had tawny, curly hair, a tawny beard, and a meaty, friendly face. "You Clate Jackson? Hi. I'm Tuck O'Rourke. Figured I'd stop by, see if you could use someone to take care of your place here. I can do pretty much whatever you need doing. Cut grass, prune, trim, odd jobs. Don't matter."
After less than twenty-four hours up north, Clate was having his doubts about tales of standoffish Yankees. "You have references?"
"Yeah, sure. You got a minute? I can look around the place, see what needs to be done, and maybe we can work something out. Probably should have called, but I didn't know if you had a phone yet."
He did. The number wasn't listed. But hiring a caretaker was on his to-do list, and he supposed he should look upon Tuck O'Rourke's visit as a convenience rather than an intrusion. He motioned for the big man to go on ahead of him, and they walked around to the back yard together, Tuck explaining that Jason Frye had employed his father as a caretaker. "When Jason died, Mrs. Frye let Pop go. She never liked the idea of someone else doing work on the property."
"She did it herself?"