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."