A woman of a certain integrity. She'd trespass and swipe valerian root from her neighbor's garden, she'd withhold critical information from her family, but she was honest with her emotions. Brutally so at times.
Clate touched her damp hair, kissed her softly on the cheek. "Drink your tea. I'll make another pot. I'm expecting a Macintosh onslaught at any moment."
Her eyes—green, clear, determined—focused on him, and a smile tried to work its way through to him, but didn't quite get there. "Better make coffee, too. My brothers aren't tea drinkers."
"Why doesn't that surprise me?"
He got coffee out of the refrigerator and set it on the counter, then raked a hand through his hair, his back still to Piper. She deserved to know. The calls, the strange goings-on with treasure and poisons and missing herbs and now possible arson—he couldn't not tell her about his conversation with Hannah.
He filled the carafe to his coffeemaker with water, debating. No. Piper wouldn't prefer to sit quietly and drink her tea when there was information to be had. He was doing her no service by holding back.
He poured the water into the coffeemaker, then turned to her. "Hannah stopped by earlier. Remember when I told you I had the feeling she was holding back on you?"
Piper's eyes narrowed, cautious, suspicious. "Yes."
"She was. You'll understand why in a second. Piper, she saw the shadowy figure that night. Or thinks she did."
"It was in her dream?"
He nodded. "She's convinced this dream is really her memory— her seven-year-old self talking to her eighty-seven-year-old self, I guess."
"Then she recognized this figure? She knows—"
"She recognized the man who was out there that night, in her dream, burying a chest in the Frye back yard."
"Good God. Who?"
"Jason Frye."
Piper didn't respond. Clate wasn't sure she was even breathing. She simply stared at him, not a tear in either green eye.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I should have waited to tell you."
"No." She shook her head. "No, you shouldn't have waited. I'm just—I just don't know what to make of this one. I don't know if I believe Hannah more or believe her less now. I mean, she and Jason were married for seven years."
"That could be the whole point."
Piper frowned, rubbed her forehead. "Yes, she could be having this dream now that she's out of her husband's house as a way of coming to terms with some new realization that she married the wrong man. This treasure stuff could all be metaphorical."
"A trick of the mind to get her to acknowledge that she and Jason weren't happy together?"
"Exactly."
He got a filter down from the cabinet, set it in the coffeemaker, and scooped in coffee grounds. "And it's something she couldn't do until she'd moved out of here and I'd moved in."
"Apparently not. Her subconscious wouldn't let her deal with the fact that she and Jason weren't happy together while she was still living in his house."
"So why have you hunt treasure?"
Piper's shoulders sagged, making her look even smaller in his robe. She turned back to the window and his miraculous view. Some of the spark of energy had gone out of her voice. "She doesn't know if her dream's a trick of her imagination or if it's real, an event that actually happened. Maybe she wants me to prove it wasn't Jason that night. I don't know. Why didn't she just tell me?"
"To keep you objective. It's nothing that we can solve now." He flipped on the coffeemaker, half an eye on Piper. He was still worried shock would settle in. "Drink your tea. Your family will be descending at any moment."
Liddy arrived first with a suitcase of clothes and two preadolescent boys who wanted to know all about the fire. Were you really up on the roof, Aunt Piper? Did anything blow up? They pelted her with questions, and she tried to answer them, until their mother ran them outside.
"Jesus, Piper," Liddy Macintosh breathed. "The whole town's hopping over this one. Stan Carlucci flagged me down and told me to tell you he'll help you in any way he can."
"He can stop saying Hannah's trying to poison him."
Liddy managed a weak grin. "I think he was thinking more in terms of a basket of fruit. Here." She dropped the suitcase onto the floor. "I'm bigger through the behind than you, but I think most of this stuff 11 fit. I brought a couple of pairs of shorts, jeans, sweatshirts, Tshirts. I called a friend, and she's off to the store to pick you up some new underwear." She glanced at Clate, who busied himself getting down mugs, then shifted her gaze back to her sister-in-law. "No fun wearing baggy undies."
"Thanks, Liddy."
"No problem. I also grabbed an extra toothbrush and some cleansing cream Hannah gave me." She smiled encouragingly. "That should help you feel at home."