Clate rose, his knitting needle at the ready. "Up on your feet, O'Rourke. One wrong move, and I'm cutting loose."
"All right, all right. Jesus." Tuck climbed unsteadily to his feet. His breathing was ragged, and he wiped a big hand across his mouth and beard as he kept a wary eye on Clate. "You're one crazy bastard, you know?"
"My chief asset in business. Now, turn around and walk— slowly—up to the house. We'll call the police, and you can explain to them."
Piper laid Tuck's shovel on her shoulder and followed the two men up the sloping lawn. Some pieces started fitting into place, others didn't. "Why was he digging in my yard? Why not over here?"
Clate answered. "Hell if I know."
Tuck snorted ahead of them. "Because I listened to your lunatic aunt, that's why."
"Hannah?" Piper asked, mystified.
"Yes, Hannah," Tuck growled in disgust. "Hell. I should have known never to listen to anything that crazy bitch says. She told me on my way out last night that you'd found an old map in the wall of your house after the fire—"
"I didn't find any map."
"No shit. If I'd been thinking straight, I'd have realized she was telling me a lie, setting me up. She said the treasure had been moved into your yard, that it was buried down at the end of the hedges."
Piper held her shock in check. That explained Hannah's troubled look as she'd left last night. Something had made her suspect Tuck—something he'd said, something she'd dreamed up —and she'd made up the map to manipulate him into coming out here tonight.
"Crazy bitch," Tuck repeated under his breath.
"We can't all be crazy," Clate said in that easy southern drawl, but he glanced at Piper and shook his head as if to reconsider his statement. "It would have been nice if she'd warned us."
"She tried, but she didn't have a chance," Piper said. "Too many people around who'd have argued with her and blown the setup, alerted Tuck that she was on to him. There's not much room to maneuver in my family. You either tell all, or you keep your mouth shut. If she tried to call after everyone was gone, well, we were in the tent."
Clate didn't look particularly satisfied. "Just keep moving, O'Rourke."
"You're lucky I'm cooperating. I outweigh you by fifty pounds. I could take you down."
"Maybe," Clate said calmly, "but I have my knitting needle, and Piper, here, she has your shovel. I'm sure she wouldn't need much of a reason to hit you over the head with it. You almost got her killed yesterday."
Tuck's step faltered. "That wasn't me." His voice was strangled, less cocky, but he talked fast, panicked. "I didn't do anything but try to get to the treasure before you did. My daddy told me about it. He'd heard talk from back after the shipwreck, only he didn't believe it. When I started working here, I put two and two together, figured Piper was after the treasure, and—"
"And you decided to get to it first."
"Yeah. But I just snuck over and dug that one time, when you thought it might have been her or animals. Then now."
"In the meantime, you terrorized her to keep her from digging on her own."
He stopped, turned. His big, amiable face was pale under his beard. "No. I didn't. Look, I don't see eye to eye with the Macintosh bunch. Andrew and Benjamin didn't think I was good enough to date their little sister. Well, screw them. Screw her. If I could get my hands on the Macintosh treasure, I'd hock it and bank the money. I'm not saying I wouldn't. But I didn't make those phone calls, and I didn't try to burn down her house."
Clate was unmoved. "Tell it to the police."
Twenty minutes later, he did. Ernie himself turned up at the police station and listened to what happened from Tuck's point of view, Clatc's, and Piper's. Tuck, waiving his right to an attorney, maintained he'd done nothing more nefarious than trespass.
Ernie sent him home. "Hell, he could just say he was out digging clams," he told Piper and Clate. "Look, go home. Get some rest. We'll sort this out in the morning."
One the way home, Clate had such a tight grip on the steering wheel of his expensive leased car that his knuckles turned white. Piper settled back in the comfortable seat, wishing away her fatigue and confusion and yet determined to look with clear eyes at what was in front of her. "Ernie's right. Tuck's not our guy."
"Agreed."
"At least he's not the guy." She breathed out, suddenly feeling exhausted. "I think he's telling the truth. I wonder if Hannah— what tipped her off. He must have said something and she just took the bull by the horns, told him that phony story about the map, and prodded him into coming out here."
Clate glanced at her. "No question, Piper. You and your aunt are related."
When they got back to his house, they discovered that Hannah had indeed called while they were off pitching their tent. In Hannah's crisp, confident voice on Clate's answering machine was her warning: "I think you'd better expect company in Piper's yard tonight."
Clate stared at the machine. "Has she always been like this?"