She scooped up empty pods and flung them into her herb garden, where they could rot. She had a proper compost pile. Another of her many undertakings. Maybe she'd just sell the place and buy a condo. She could understand Hannah's sense of freedom. No more leaky roofs, no more mice in the bathroom, no more fretting whether the furnace would last another winter.
"It's a line from a recording," she said. "A rap song, and not one of the good ones. But I got the message. Whoever's calling me wants me scared enough to stay home and—and shell peas, I guess."
"Any mention of staying off my property?"
"Not specifically. The general idea is for me to pay attention to previous warnings and keep quiet and mind my own business."
"Your aunt—"
Tears welled; Piper sniffled angrily. "There's a reference to crazy old bitches. I don't know if it means me or Hannah."
"Anything about treasure?"
She shook her head. "I can't even imagine this bastard's motive. Is he just guessing or does he know I've been over digging on your property? How would he know? Is he—" She gulped for air. "Is he watching me?"
Clate's expression hardened; he didn't move. It was as if he'd withdrawn into a cold, dark place where self-control meant the difference between life and death. "Do you want to call the police?" he asked quietly.
"Of course I do! I want to find this bastard and knock his damned head in!" She snatched up more peas, dropped them on the table, isolated one, split it, crushing half the tiny peas inside. She flung it, peas and all, into the garden. No self-control for her. She didn't care. She looked around at him and sighed, trying to penetrate the fog of emotion—fear, anger, the humiliation of having her space violated by the vile message on her machine—to the calm island of common sense. "But the police can't do anything, and neither can I. All I have is a nasty message on my machine. It could be from a kid and I'm reading into it what's just not there."
"The police might have similar incidents that they could link with this one."
"It's unlikely. I'd have heard."
"Maybe they're not confined to Frye's Cove."
She stared at him. "Clate, do you really believe these calls are a coincidence? That they have nothing to do with you, me, Hannah, or eighty-year-old Russian treasure?"
His expression didn't change. "No."
Her energy was flagging. "Somehow, I figure the police'll just end up pinning everything on Hannah."
Clate watched her with narrowed eyes, his gaze unyielding. "Are you afraid they'll be right?"
"No, I'm afraid of what everyone in Frye's Cove, from Ernie at the police station to my father and brothers, will say when they find out Hannah's talked me into digging for buried treasure. They'll think I'm crazy and she's crazier."
"But the calls are real, Piper."
"I know they are."
"If Hannah didn't place them—"
"She didn't."
"Then she has nothing to worry about. And neither do you."
"You don't know Ernie," she said lightly, as if being flip could help her make sense of what, ultimately, made no sense. She should call the police. Something in her tale of threatening calls might lead them to the culprit. But it was too slim a hope for her to risk having Hannah's deepest, most private yearnings splashed across the front page of the local newspaper.
Clate reached into her basket. Some of the hardness had gone from his expression. He seemed less stiff, less tightly controlled. His hands were bigger, more tanned, more scarred than hers. But as he pulled out a palmful of peas and started snapping off their ends, opening them up, releasing their contents into the colander, Piper noticed that his movements were sure, experienced. He worked automatically, without thinking, without awkwardness. It wasn't that it was a tough job. It wasn't that she didn't expect him, or any man, not to know how to shell peas. It was that he did it as if he'd been doing it since he was a kid, as she had. Maybe they weren't as different as she thought.
"Someone was out digging on my property last night," he said without preamble. "It wasn't you, was it?"
She watched his thumb run across the bumpy shell of an overripe pea, felt a flutter of awareness. "No," she managed. "It wasn't."
"I checked with Tuck in case I'd missed something he'd done. It wasn't him. It could have been animals, but I don't think so." He heaped his empty pods into a neat pile. "I can't imagine it was your aunt."
"Neither can I. I mean, she gets around well for her age, and she certainly knows your property—"
"And she's getting impatient with you."
"True."
"Could she have found someone else to do her digging for her?"
He was like a hound on a trail. Focused, relentless. Suddenly Piper imagined going to bed with such a man, having all that drive and concentrated energy centered on making love.
She wriggled on her bench, shook off the image. What was the matter with her? They were discussing threatening phone calls, mysterious signs of digging, and here she was, thinking about sex. It was a defense mechanism, she rationalized. Perfectly normal.
"Piper?"