Eighteen months ago, Paul and Sally Shepherd had stunned Frye's Cove when they purchased the crumbling colonial, which had become a village eyesore. Sally was the only grandchild of Hannah's late husband, Jason Frye. He and Hannah had married late in life. Jason, who'd lived in the Frye House his entire life, had a grown daughter by his first marriage. She'd stayed in Boston after college, married, and raised Sally in an upscale suburb. No one, apparently least of all Sally, ever expected she'd come to live on Cape Cod year round. But she and her new husband, Paul, a Boston attorney, couldn't resist the charm and potential of the Macintosh Inn.
Ironically, the Shepherds had called upon the expertise of the descendants of the original owners of their Cape Cod inn to help in its renovation and restoration. Macintosh & Sons, experts in old houses, did the carpentry and construction work; Piper, an expert in early American crafts, consulted on the decor. She was emphatically not in business with them. Life in the same town with them was claustrophobic enough without having to work side-by side with her father and two older brothers.
Macintosh Inn had opened for limited business Memorial Day weekend while work continued. Piper recognized the Macintosh trucks out front, signaling another day on the job. They liked the work, they liked the Shepherds, and any hard feelings a Macintosh had had about losing the inn had been dealt with a hundred and fifty years before.
She decided not to pop in to say hello. Andrew and Benjamin, and maybe even her father, would sniff out the foul-smelling valerian root or ask about her obvious lack of sleep or otherwise guess that Hannah had put her up to another wacky scheme. She could never explain her encounter with Clate Jackson. They simply wouldn't understand.
Or maybe they would, she thought dryly, remembering Jackson's expression as he'd stared at her in the milky darkness. Nope. Her overprotective father and brothers didn't need to know about that particular predawn escapade.
She climbed back onto her bike and pedaled along the green and out to the main road, following it to the edge of town where a full-care, upscale housing complex for elderly people had gone in two years before. Few locals lived there or knew anyone who did. Nestled amidst lilacs and rhododendrons, with trim shrubs and decorative maples and oaks, the complex was determinedly Cape Cod with its clusters of cedar-shingled, white-shuttered townhouses and its small, tasteful nursing home. Strict rules about plantings, exterior decorations, and curtains were enforced by a committee of residents. To Piper's surprise, her independent-minded aunt, who ordinarily balked at anyone telling her what to do, didn't object. She'd even cheerfully removed a pot of peppermint from her doorstep when it didn't meet the committee's standards. As far as Piper was concerned, this was just another sign that Hannah Frye's mental state needed watching. Her aunt just wasn't herself these days.
Piper stood her bicycle in the short, smoothly blacktopped driveway and took the stone walk to Hannah's brass-trimmed front door. She hated the creeping doubts about her aunt. If she reached eighty-seven, she wouldn't want people thinking she'd gone daffy just because of a few odd incidents.
But there had been more than a few, chief among them selling the Frye House to a cranky, reclusive Tennessean. Grimacing, Piper pressed the doorbell, which was just a courtesy. Hannah had presented her with a key when she'd moved into her new home, insisting she was long past getting into compromising positions and never had cared if anyone caught her in her skivvies.
Without waiting, Piper unlocked the door and pushed it open. "Hannah? You up and at it?"
There was no answer. Hannah's hearing wasn't the best. Piper slipped inside and shut the door hard behind her, her usual way of alerting her aunt that she had company.
The pungent odor of some concoction drifted in from the kitchen. The townhouse was a one-floor design: two small bedrooms down the hall to the left; combination living-dining room to the right; den and kitchen in back, where sliding glass doors led out to a shaded deck. The interior was traditional Cape Cod with its muted, gray colors, tab curtains, and mix of Queen Anne and Shaker furnishings, every stick of it fresh off a furniture showroom floor. Hannah hadn't kept so much as a silver teaspoon as a memento of her twenty-five years in the Frye House, eighteen of them after her husband's death. All the Frye family antiques, such as they were, now belonged to Tennessean Clate Jackson.
As Piper approached the kitchen, the smell of whatever Hannah was brewing got stronger and nastier.
"I have your valerian root," she said from the doorway. The kitchen was done in white and gray-green, pleasant, sunny, fresh, everything sparkling and new, a radical departure from the old Frye kitchen with its views of the bay.
Hannah glanced up from the steaming, shiny pot she was stirring with a long-handled spoon. "Excellent. You didn't wash it, did you?"
"It's fresh out of the ground."
"Good. I have special springwater I want to use."
"Hannah, I could have rinsed it off at home. I have a well."