Clate Jackson seemed unimpressed by the desires of an eighty-seven-year-old woman. "Any particular reason you had to collect this root at four o'clock in the morning?"
"Yes, supposedly there is, only Hannah didn't give me the specifics." And Piper hadn't asked, having learned from hard experience that her aunt's reasoning often made sense only to her, which didn't make her any less tenacious. "I wouldn't have agreed to dig it for her, except I didn't think you were here."
"I see." A faint note of amusement had crept into his deep, rasping drawl. "Smarter to trespass when no one's around."
She checked her annoyance. "Really, I don't think of myself as trespassing."
"No?"
"No." Her tone was firm. He would not get to her. "It's sort of like the case of the tree falling in the woods. If there's no one to hear it, did it really make a noise? I figured, if you weren't here, I wasn't really trespassing."
"I am here, and you are trespassing."
"Then I should get out of your way and let you get back to bed." The problem was, he was blocking the gate. The fence was waist high and had spikes, tough to leap over. "If you'll excuse me."
He didn't move, just rocked back on his heels and studied her through half-closed eyes. She'd dragged herself out of bed after barely four hours' sleep and had brushed her teeth, splashed cold water on her face, and pulled on black leggings, her oversized Red Sox sweatshirt, sneakers, and her poncho. Not the sort of attire she'd have chosen to meet her new neighbor. Her hair—dark chestnut, long, and straight—hung in tangles.
"I can't imagine valerian root makes a very palatable tea," he said.
In other words, he didn't believe her story. "All of Hannah's teas taste lousy. One of the local selectmen swears she tried to poison him. But valerian is known to ease insomnia, headaches, nervousness—basically it's a mild sedative."
Jackson glanced away from his trespasser for the first time and took in the small, wild-looking garden. None of the look of the trim, well-planned Frye terrace gardens here. This one was pure Hannah Macintosh Frye. Each plant was carefully identified by its common and Latin names, the poisonous ones marked with a prominent skull and crossbones. Piper had helped Hannah paint each one.
Her neighbor turned back to her. "What is this, some kind of witch's garden?"
"My aunt has considerable knowledge of the medicinal qualities of many different plants." There. That was diplomatic. "Used properly, all of these plants have beneficial qualities, although some are quite poisonous if misused. Monkshood, for example. Even brushing up against it can cause topical numbness."
"Charming."
"My aunt couldn't very well have taken these plants with her to her new condo. She hasn't found a new source for valerian root, and probably a few other plants as well."
Clate Jackson's eyes fell on her. "Mrs. Frye doesn't own this property anymore."
Piper stifled a wave of irritation. This was no time to lecture him on the finer points of life in small-town Cape Cod. "Right."
A strained smile took a bit of the edge off his words. "I'm not being very diplomatic, am I? I didn't get in until after midnight, and I can't say I expected to be awakened by a woman stealing plant roots from my back yard."
Stealing? Stealing? Piper's spine straightened. "I wasn't stealing."
"You are removing something from my property. I consider that stealing."
His tone wasn't so much cold as firm, as if he wasn't accustomed to having his view of things countered. Piper had a good mind to shove the smelly, dirty, wet valerian root at him and let him stick it back in the ground or wherever he saw fit. He could have it for breakfast for all she cared. "I can't believe anyone would deny an eighty-seven-year-old woman access to a bit of valerian root. Mr. Jackson, around here it's considered the neighborly thing to do to—to—"
"To sneak onto someone's property before first light and dig up their crops?"
Amusement had crept back into his tone. It was even worse, Piper decided, than suspicion and irritation. Clutching the foul-smelling valerian root in one hand, her trowel in the other, she marched another few steps closer to him. He'd moved back from the gate. He would let her go home with fair warning. He wasn't going to turn his only neighbor in to the police on his first night in town.
As she shot him a sideways glance, she saw, against the slowly brightening sky, that he had a small scar on the outer corner of his left eye, another longer, deeper scar on his collarbone. She decided she might be wise not to make too many assumptions about Clate Jackson.
Nonetheless, she held her ground. "You're determined to put as negative a face on this as you possibly can, aren't you? My aunt planted every one of these plants—"
"And sold them to me. Look, I don't want to—"
Piper paid no attention to his conciliatory tone. "She lived in this house for twenty-five years, not counting the year she lived here after she was orphaned at age seven. She needs some time to adjust to her new life. Around here people understand that."