"I'd like that."
Piper saw her out, and they agreed that Sally would encourage Stan Carlucci to wait another day or two, at least to give Hannah a chance to fully recover, before he ratted her out to her doctors and the police. In the meantime, Piper promised herself she'd try to find the damned water jugs. Maybe she should talk to her father about Hannah's poison theory. He'd brought her the springwater and might remember what the jugs looked like, who might have had access to them.
After Sally left, Piper settled herself down by weeding her garden and picking a couple of baby zucchini for dinner. She wondered if Clate had already figured out that the private conversation she'd had with Hannah at the hospital had involved talk of poison. With Stan Carlucci thinking along those lines, it wouldn't be long before the whole town would be speculating.
Of course, Piper thought, she could walk over there and tell Clate herself.
She pitched an armload of weeds into her compost heap. She had no idea why she was so damned mad at him. It was as if she had all this pent-up anxiety that had to go somewhere, and he was just handy. Sure, in his zeal to keep an open mind, he was willing to suspect her brothers of terrorizing her. But that was nothing, really.
"You slept with him," she muttered. "Twice. That's what's bothering you."
And she was falling in love with him. Which was absurd. She knew next to nothing about his life in Tennessee and nothing at all about his life before the age of sixteen. She just thought she was falling in love with him because of the sex.
"That sure explains it," she said sarcastically, taking off inside. The temperature was still falling. The weather was never certain on Cape Cod.
What was worse, she decided as she tossed kindling into her big keeping-room fireplace, was that she didn't trust herself to know what in blue blazes she did feel. Love, anger, lust, anxiety. All of the above. If she fell in love with Clate, her life would change. There was no question of that. He was a rich, driven Tennessean who wasn't even sure he liked Cape Cod.
"Good, Macintosh. You don't know what you're doing in the next twenty minutes, and you're fretting about the next twenty years."
Twenty years. Her mind leaped into the future, tried to imagine it without Clate in her life, couldn't. Or didn't want to.
She struck a match, setting the kindling on fire. In a few minutes, she had a good blaze going. She added a small log, hoping for enough of a fire just to take the chill out of the air.
The telephone rang. She picked up the extension in the kitchen. "Piper Macintosh."
"Bitch. You're finished."
"That's it. I'm hanging up and calling the police."
"You're too late."
She slammed down the receiver. Too late or not, she'd had enough. A strange, vaguely threatening call was one thing. This was direct and to the point. She picked up the phone again, breathed in, and started to dial.
But she stopped, hand in midair.
Someone—something—was in the house with her.
Adrenaline sliced through her, but she didn't move. Had she heard a noise? Had the events of the past days made her hopelessly paranoid?
No. Someone was here.
Trying to pretend she was invisible wasn't going to help her situation. Grabbing an antique cast-iron poker from her fireplace, she started for her back door, the quickest route outside. She had her car keys in her pocket. She'd jump in her car, lock the doors, and either head next door or straight into town.
No, not next door. Clate might not be home. Straight into town made more sense. But she wanted him. Here, now. She wanted him desperately.
If she hadn't thrown her cell phone into the bay, she could have called the police. Her portable phone was out. No way was she doubling back a single step.
A gust of wind tangled her hair and penetrated her cotton shirt, sprouting goosebumps on her arms. She raced through her herb garden, out onto her lawn, and past her vegetable garden.
Where she stopped dead and breathed.
Smoke.
She stared up at her roof. Red-orange flames shot out of her chimney. Thick, black smoke billowed.
The presence she'd felt wasn't someone in the house with her. It was fire. Not a contained fire in her fireplace. A chimney fire. She knew the signs.
The poker fell from her hand. Her stomach lurched. A chimney fire was a nightmare for any house, but particularly an old one. Two-hundred-year-old timbers burned fast. Her father and brothers' services had been called upon after more than one chimney fire.