Penelope took a breath and continued. “The most visible part of her pregnancy would have been during the winter months, when she worked on the Sinclair Collection.”
“From what I understand, she worked night and day.”
“That’s what I’ve heard, too. I suppose it’s possible she could have been concealing a pregnancy.”
“Or she was just obsessive about her work. It was an enormous opportunity for her.”
“There are a thousand reasons this scenario doesn’t work. That’s just one of them. Frannie and Colt didn’t officially start seeing each other until a month or so before they disappeared. For her to turn up pregnant, they’d have had to have some sort of relationship the previous summer.”
Penelope paused for more chili. Discussing a sexual relationship with Wyatt under the best of circumstances would be awkward, but alone in her cabin, at night, with him already convinced she was a liar, with him so focused on her every word—it was impossible.
He finished his chili and waited for her to continue.
“I hope you don’t think you’re prying this information out of me by being so patient.”
He stared at her, then smiled suddenly, devastatingly. “Penelope, I doubt anyone could pry anything out of you that you hadn’t already decided to give freely, if grudgingly. As far as my patience—what gave you the idea I’m being patient?”
Her mouth snapped shut, and instantly she knew there was no good way to answer that question. She went on quickly. “Frannie and Colt were both in Cold Spring that previous summer.”
“Simultaneously?”
Penelope nodded.
“You seem to know a number of details,” he said.
“Only because of Harriet.” She didn’t want him thinking she’d been eaten up with curiosity about his family. “We’ve always been close. She used to baby-sit me, and she’d tell me all kinds of stories. They were fascinating to a little kid. I ended up doing some investigating on my own.” She’d done a lot of investigating, but somehow she thought that would only add to Wyatt’s suspicions. “It’s far-fetched, but technically it’s possible that Frannie came back to Cold Spring, had a baby, and returned to New York—”
“With or without the baby? Was Harriet in the plane that night? If not, where was she? Who put her on the church doorstep? Did Frannie have help here in town? In New York? Did Colt know about the baby?” Wyatt shot out the questions rapid-fire, then exploded to his feet. “It’s damned far-fetched.”
Penelope nodded. “I know. We’ve all indulged Harriet. Please don’t embarrass her. She’s a lovely person, and she’s never hurt a soul—she never would.”
He grabbed up his chili bowl and set it in the sink, his movements abrupt, his frustration palpable. Penelope could feel her mouth going dry as she watched him pace her small house. Without his leather coat, she could see his slim waist, his flat stomach, and she tried not to think about all the things she knew about him—the triumphs, the tragedies, the rebellions—lest he read her mind and decide he was entitled to the mental files she had on him, too.
“It’s not as if Harriet plans to come after your family’s money or anything,” she said calmly. “She’s no threat to you.”
He stopped. He turned to her, his black gaze narrowed, suspicious, probing. Her stomach burned. She wished she’d heard him in her driveway in time to lock her doors, turn out her lights and hide under her bed.
Finally, he said, “Is your cousin why you changed your story about finding the plane?”
Back to the plane. Of course. Wyatt Sinclair would have a one-track mind. He was driven, relentless. Penelope got quietly to her feet and cleared her dishes, then flipped on the water in the sink. No dishwasher. Her grandfather didn’t believe in them.
Finally she turned to him. “You know, it’s wrong to accuse a woman of lying in her own home.”
His grin was so sudden, so unexpected, so sexy she could have melted onto the floor. He stood close to her, invading her space. “You’re right. I’ll wait until we’re on neutral ground.”
“There is no neutral ground, not around here. You Sinclairs might own the biggest tract of land in Cold Spring, but damned if—”
He touched one finger to her lips, silencing her mid-sentence. “I’m not ‘you Sinclairs.’” She could hardly breathe. The dark eyes, the half smile, the strong line of jaw, neck and shoulder fired her mind and senses with a kaleidoscope of images and possibilities. It was like getting sucked into some dangerous imaginary world. She jerked back and turned off the water, breaking the spell.
If Wyatt was aware of the effect he was having on her, he gave no indication. “I’m not my grandfather. I’m not my father. I came here for my own reasons. I want to know why you’re lying, but not at any price.” He paused, and when she said nothing, he added, “And I want to know why you’re afraid.”
She spun around. “I’m not afraid.”
He smiled, not pleasantly. “You lie persistently if not terribly well, Miss Chestnut.”
“Oh. So you’ve been in town an afternoon and already you can tell when I’m lying.”
“Some things are obvious.” He started for the door, a breeze gusting outside. He glanced back at her. “If you’re afraid of me—”
“I’m not.”
“I didn’t think so. You’ll be all right here alone?”
She nodded.
“Good night, then. Thanks for the chili.”
After he left, she stood at the sink, up to her wrists in hot, soapy water, and didn’t move until she heard his car out on her dirt road. Then the tears came, and she did the dishes and cried until she’d just had it with herself and Sinclairs and the whole damned mess. It wasn’t just Harriet, it wasn’t just Bubba Johns—she didn’t know what all it was, but she’d had to change her story.
“Damn it, Sinclair, I had to lie.”
But Colt Sinclair had been Wyatt’s uncle, his father’s only brother, and she had the power to put to rest the mystery of his death.
Yet deep down, on a level beyond reason and calculation, she knew the Piper Cub J-3 in the woods was meant to be where it was. Its discovery would only bring heartache and pain to those who, unlike Colt and Frannie, weren’t past suffering. It was an understanding she wished she’d come to sooner, before she’d blabbed to the world. But she hadn’t, and now she had Wyatt Sinclair to deal with.
Harriet settled onto a stool at the bar and sipped a glass of house Chardonnay, as she did at the end of each day. Robby, Penelope’s mother, had chosen the inn’s wine list. Harriet couldn’t wait to see her in the morning. They would make apricot scones in the inn’s tidy, warm kitchen, and they’d laugh and work and talk. Harriet would tell Robby everything. Robby was a good listener, and she never judged. She would caution and worry—she had her opinions—but she wasn’t one to pass judgment. That was what Penelope didn’t understand about her mother, which was a problem for another day. Harriet had enough on her mind.
Wyatt Sinclair was everything she had imagined a Sinclair would be. Tall, dark, good-looking in an un-pretty sort of way. She smiled, knowing they were related. The Chestnuts were her family, but the Sinclairs—they were different. They were blood.
Absurdly, she’d found herself wanting to touch him when he’d come down to ask directions to Penelope’s house. It was as if touching him would make the connection between them more real. A Sinclair here in Cold Spring, in her house.
Then there was Jack Dunning, Brandon Sinclair’s private investigator.
“Lord,” Harriet breathed, feeling like a fainthearted heroine of Victorian stereotype instead of the capable, independent businesswoman she was. But what fun to have two such men under her roof. Jack Dunning wasn’t at all handsome, but he radiated strength and sexuality and a raw intelligence one would be loath to underestimate.
And the black cowboy boots, the cowboy hat, the put-on Texas accent. In New Hampshire in the dead of March. Harriet suppressed a giggle. She hadn’t expected that.
/> Andy McNally eased behind the oak bar and helped himself to a bottle of Long Trail beer, his nightly custom. He smiled at her. “Evening, Harriet. You’re looking like you swallowed the canary.”
She waved a hand. “Oh, it’s nothing. How are you this evening?”
“Not too bad.” He opened the bottle and poured the beer into a tall glass, letting it foam to a perfect head. “We pulled in extra speeding tickets thanks to your cousin.”
“She didn’t speed—”
“No, she wasn’t caught speeding.” Andy didn’t have much use for Penelope, which she and Harriet and everyone else in Cold Spring knew. “It was all those reporters she lured into town with that cockamamie story of hers.”
“It was an honest mistake, Andy.”
He frowned, and she could see the fatigue in his light-colored eyes, the strain of a long day. He was a big, burly, gray-haired man, born and raised in Cold Spring. He had lost his wife in a car accident five years ago. He’d almost died himself. A jagged, fearsome scar ran along his hair-line from the top of his head to his neck. Now he was raising two teenage daughters on his own and seeing to a small town as its police chief. He liked the image of Cold Spring as a quiet, safe lakeside village.
He drank some of his beer, sighing into the glass. “Penelope makes too many honest mistakes, Harriet. One day they’re going to catch up with her. I don’t care how optimistic and brazen she is.”
He wasn’t the only one in town who shared that opinion. But Harriet didn’t want to let go of her bubbly mood. “You’re tired. Drink your beer and relax.”
He narrowed his eyes. “You’re not going to tell me why you’re about ready to chortle?”
She could feel her cheeks warming. For once, she wasn’t turning red simply from embarrassment or standing over a hot stove. But she said coyly, “It’s been an interesting day, that’s why.”
“You’ve been making money off those reporters.” Andy came around with his beer and sat on the stool next to her, as he did most nights. He would walk from his house in the village, taking a half hour from his roles as chief of police and widower father of two. “Nothing you like better than a positive cash flow, except you won’t admit it. You sit there pretending to be the lady of the manor when you’ve got that calculator mind of yours working up figures.”
“You think you know me so well.”
“Nah, Harriet.” He grinned at her, looking less tired. “I don’t know you at all.”
“Oh, Andy.”
He swallowed more beer, his steady presence helping to calm her happy jitteriness and anchor her in reality. “That nut cousin of yours has asked Rebecca and Jane to help with her sap collecting tomorrow after school. I hope things have settled down enough. I don’t want them involved in this plane wreck business.”
Harriet smiled reassuringly. “Penelope corrected her mistake as soon as she could. You can trust her with your daughters, Andy. You know that.”
“Lyman grounded her today. You heard?”
“Of course.”
“It’s long overdue, if you ask me. The thought of that woman in the skies above this town scares me to death.”
“Andy, she’s a fine pilot. You think of her as the twelve-year-old you pulled out of the lake.”
He grunted, a gruff man who was all bluster. “It’s not something I’ll ever forget. Ungrateful little snot. She was a skinny hothead, kept yelling and kicking because she could have rescued herself. She was half a second from freezing to death, her skin was blue, her teeth were chattering, but it didn’t affect that mouth of hers.”
Harriet smiled. “I remember. That’s what kept her alive, you know. That sheer willpower of hers.”
“It’s also what got her into trouble in the first place. She acts, then thinks.” He sighed heavily, finished his beer. “You know, I was just a kid myself when that plane went down. I helped my father comb the woods for it. I wanted to be a hero. We looked everywhere. The Sinclair family wouldn’t rest until we’d covered every square inch of those hills. If Colt’s Piper Cub was up there, we’d have found it.”
“Maybe not,” Harriet said. “If it was tucked on a hillside amidst rocks—”
“That’s another thing.” He leveled his cop’s gaze on her. “Who’d put a dump on a steep, rocky hillside? Doesn’t make sense.”
Harriet felt her heartbeat flutter. “Andy…”
“If she’s lying, I don’t want to know about it. Honest to God, Harriet. My opinion, Penelope didn’t find anything in the woods on Sunday. She just can’t admit she was seeing things entirely.” He eased off the stool. He looked tired again, as if the pressures of life were too much for him. Then a spark came into his eyes, a touch of the wry humor Harriet had seen in him for as long as she could remember. “Did I hear a Sinclair was in town?”
She giggled into her wineglass. She couldn’t help herself. Andy McNally knew about her fantasy. Everyone in Cold Spring did. Most didn’t believe it, of course. That was to be expected. It didn’t matter to her—it was her fantasy, her life. Her parents had never discouraged her from finding a way to make sense of being left on a church doorstep on a chilly April night. “Yes,” she said primly. “Brandon Sinclair’s son, Wyatt, came up from New York today.”
“He talk to Penelope? Think he believed her?”
“I didn’t ask.”
“Ask,” Andy said. “Last thing I need is a Sinclair stirring up trouble in town. Bad enough we’ve got Penelope. Look, Harriet—” He took a breath and shook his head. “Never mind.”
She smiled. “It’s okay, Andy. I won’t make a fool of myself. I promise.”
“It’s not that,” he said, awkward.
But it was, and they both knew it. He asked her to put his beer on his tab, as he did every night, and she told him to tell Rebecca and Jane hello, as she did every night. When he left, she poured herself another glass of chardonnay—an indulgence—and sat in the empty bar, sipping her wine and imagining.
Six
P enelope was up, dressed and ready to go by seven o’clock. At 7:05 it hit her that she had nowhere to go. Her father had called last night and told her not to show up at the airport for a few days. “Take a break. Get used to terra firma. Then you can reacquaint yourself with washing planes and sweeping out hangars.”
She turned on the “Today” show, turned it off again. She still had plenty of wood after last night’s panic. She built a nice fire in her potbellied stove and listened to it crackle for a few minutes before she was climbing the walls again.
What was she going to do for three weeks?
She didn’t want to get on her computer. Maybe the weirdo would be there again. She’d reassured herself overnight that her nasty message was a simple prank from some nutcase. She would dismiss it. She needn’t mention it to anyone.
She walked onto her deck. It was cold this morning, maybe not even twenty degrees. Twenty-degree nights and forty-degree days were perfect for sap. It’d be running by midday. At least she had Rebecca and Jane McNally coming over this afternoon to help her boil sap.
What to do until then?
This part of the lake was still, silent, motionless beneath the layers of snow and ice, which glistened in the bright sunlight. Here, there were no fishing shanties and few other year-round houses. She breathed in the cold air, imagining summer, boats humming on the water, kayakers and canoeists paddling along the shoreline, neighbors opening their camps for the season.
She envisioned herself in her kayak on the cool, clear water, staring straight down to the sandy, rocky bottom. There was plenty to do in the lakes region during the summer. Even in the dead of winter, she could ski and snowshoe. Now her options were more limited. Maybe she could talk her father into postponing her grounding until warmer weather.
“Fat chance,” she muttered and went inside.
She checked the weather channel. Yes, it would get into the forties this afternoon. Satisfied, she flicked off the television.
It was seven-forty.
She contemplated her options. Spring clean her house. She glanced at the simple furnishings, peered into the kitchen, her bedroom, her study. Well, yes, she could spring clean, but it wasn’t a spring kind of day, not with the thermometer stuck at nineteen Fahrenheit. And who could spring clean with a fire in the wood stove?
She could drive into town and offer to help Harriet and her mother at the inn. There was always something to do. They’d put her straight to work. She could clean, paint, water plants, help in the kitchen.
She could spy on Wyatt Sinclair.
That settled her down. She flopped onto her couch and pictured his black eyes and skeptical frown, the shape of his chest and shoulders under that black leather jacket. He must have chosen the black shirt and jacket deliberately, to square it in the minds of the people of Cold Spring that, indeed, he was a Sinclair. Possibly he’d done it to square it in her mind in particular.
Spying on him didn’t seem like a bad idea.
“Good God, you’d better do something before you get yourself into real trouble.”
She popped off the couch, energized. Ten minutes later she had her hair up in sticks her mother had given her and was crossing the frozen ruts in the dirt road to check her sap buckets. The air was bright and cold under a cloudless blue sky.
Huge, old maples lined the road, looking picturesque and majestic with their galvanized buckets hanging from their taps. Farther into the woods, she used plastic milk jugs, cheap, efficient, not as high a capacity as the buckets but quite workable. She was meticulous about not drilling too many taps—the trees could easily replace the small amount of sap she took. Gravity tubing would be more efficient, but she wasn’t making syrup commercially, just for the fun of doing it.
She checked a few buckets, the void of the next three weeks yawning before her. She needed to fly. Didn’t her father understand? She loved Cold Spring, but it couldn’t contain her.
But she’d run out of gas. “I’d have grounded you, too.”
She climbed over the stone wall that ran alongside the road and checked a few more taps, noticing footprints and trampled brush. Possibly Bubba, more likely reporters. They’d wanted footage of the landscape for their reports. They didn’t need to go onto Sinclair land—this was good enough.
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