Kiss the Moon

by Carla Neggers

  Penelope pushed her way through whiplike leafless brush, the snow shin deep in places, barely up to her ankles in other spots. It had melted to the ground around many of the trees. Before long, she’d be out cutting pussy willow.

  She heard a movement and stopped, listening. A squirrel? A bird?

  Silence. That made her suspicious.

  “Bubba?” she called softly.

  No answer. If it was Bubba, there wouldn’t be one.

  She wondered if he knew she’d changed her story, if he knew she’d told about the plane in the first place. She hadn’t been to his shack. For all she knew, he’d packed up and left before the reporters could find him, before she could renege.

  In a day or two, she would go and check on him.

  She started back, the cold air and exercise improving her spirits. When she climbed over the stone wall, a man emerged from behind a maple and stood in front of her. She yelled, startled.

  He held up both hands, palms forward. “Easy, there. It’s okay. My name’s Jack Dunning—Brandon Sinclair sent me up here.”

  She recovered quickly, nodding, as her heartbeat settled down. He was a fit, sandy-haired man in a shearling-lined jacket and a cowboy hat, and if he didn’t fit in the New Hampshire landscape, he didn’t look as if he gave a damn, either. If Wyatt would give her little benefit of the doubt, this man would give her none.

  “You’re Penelope Chestnut?”

  She nodded again, feeling faintly self-conscious. Had he deliberately snuck up on her? How long had he been out here? She shook off the rush of questions. “I was just checking my taps.”

  “Nice little hobby, maple sugaring. I’m kind of partial to the fake stuff myself. You mind if we talk?”

  His accent was a curious mix of southern—Texas?—and New York. Penelope tried to relax, not look as if he’d caught her doing something wrong. “No, of course not. I explained to Mr. Sinclair’s son—”

  He leveled flat, colorless eyes on her and said patiently, “Wyatt doesn’t represent Brandon Sinclair. I do.”

  “Okay. Fine.”

  She walked onto the road. The sun was hitting it, the temperature steadily climbing, and the frozen ruts were already softening. Jack Dunning followed her. His rented car was parked behind her truck in her short gravel driveway. She wondered if he’d just arrived or if he’d heard her calling Bubba. If it suited his purposes to tell her, presumably he would.

  “I can see why it’s been so hard to find that plane. It’s rough ground up here, lots of rocks, trees, undergrowth, steep hills.” He eyed her, and she decided she’d rather have a thousand reporters tramping through her woods than deal with Brandon Sinclair’s private investigator and his only son. Dunning added, “Of course, that’s if it crashed here.”

  “I’ve always thought they made it to Canada.”

  “I understand you’ve made a hobby of the crash,” he said.

  She wondered who’d told him, instantly hated the idea of him snooping among her friends and family. “I wouldn’t call it a hobby. That trivializes two people’s deaths. It’s an unsolved mystery here in my backyard. I’ve taken an interest in it, that’s all.” No point in mentioning Harriet. He’d probably know everything about her, too, before long. “Look, as I told Wyatt, you’re wasting your time. I’m as sorry as I can be for jumping the gun, but it was a dump I found in the woods, not a plane.”

  Jack Dunning studied her with open suspicion. The naked trees cracked and groaned in a gusting wind, and Penelope wished she’d thrown on more than her fleece jacket. She didn’t want Dunning to think she was shivering because of him. “Let me be clear,” he said. “I don’t care what you found. I represent a man who wants to know what happened to his only brother. It’s that simple. I don’t intend to leave here until I’m satisfied you didn’t change your story under outside duress or for your own personal reasons.”

  “And how will you be satisfied? I assume you won’t take my word for it.”

  A small, humorless grin. “I don’t take anyone’s word for anything. You’ll know I’m satisfied when I get in my plane and fly south. Now, why don’t you give me a general idea of where you found this dump.”

  “Out in the woods. Probably on Sinclair land. On a hill.”

  He inhaled through his nose; otherwise there was no change in his expression. “Well, Miss Chestnut, that leaves a lot of options.”

  “I’d work harder to pin myself down if I’d found a plane wreck instead of an old dump.”

  “You’ve been grounded for three weeks. You’ve got time on your hands. Why don’t you and me take a walk up on Sinclair land this afternoon and see if we can refresh your memory?”

  “I’m boiling sap this afternoon.”

  He grinned at her, winked. “You’re living up to your reputation, darlin’.” He continued across the road toward his car, glanced back. “I’ll come by another time and you can show me your research into Mr. Sinclair and Miss Beaudine.”

  “Call first,” she said. “I’ll put on coffee.”

  “You’re a pistol, all right. I’ll be in touch.”

  Penelope gave Jack Dunning a fifteen-minute head start before she jumped into her truck and raced to town. She had no plan in mind. She knew she couldn’t stay in her house another minute, not with a private investigator skulking around town. As if a Sinclair weren’t enough.

  She found Harriet and her mother in the inn’s gleaming, spotless, sun-filled kitchen, chopping vegetables for their famous curried chicken salad. During the off-season, they served a limited lunch menu in the Octagon Room. When the tourist season kicked into high gear, they’d hire more help.

  Robby Chestnut carefully chopped a rib of celery at the butcher-block table. She greeted her daughter with a curt nod. Penelope had anticipated her mother’s mood. It was only Wednesday, and so far this week, her only child had gotten lost in the wilderness, brought on the national media and the Sinclair family and earned herself a grounding after one episode too many of inattention. Her mother, Penelope knew, would prefer she do just about anything but fly planes and wander around in the woods by herself. She would rather she chop vegetables and bake scones, help design the inn’s gardens and choose new furnishings and incidentals, learn how to do needlework or just sit in front of the fire and read a book. It wasn’t that Penelope had to take up innkeeping. She could be a doctor, a lawyer, a teacher, an accountant—anything that didn’t involve her running out of gas at five thousand feet and getting lost on snow-covered hills.

  Penelope pulled up a chair at the table. Her mother was two inches shorter, rounder, attractive in a more delicate, feminine way. Her hair was a tone lighter than Penelope’s, liberally streaked with silver these days and kept short. She wore zero makeup. Soap, water, moisturizer, and Robby Chestnut was ready for the day. She’d had two miscarriages before her only daughter was born, and one after. The miscarriages, Penelope often thought, helped her tolerate the natural fight in her daughter. Otherwise she and her mother would probably have butted heads even more often than they did.

  “He came down for breakfast an hour ago,” Harriet said from the counter, where she was running carrots through the food processor.

  Penelope feigned ignorance. “Who?”

  “Wyatt Sinclair. Isn’t that why you’re here?”

  Robby continued chopping celery without comment. Some things she didn’t want to know. When they could, her husband and daughter spared her those things. For example, there was absolutely no point in Penelope telling her mother about last night’s e-mail message or this morning’s visit from Jack Dunning. It wasn’t that she would meddle. Robby fully recognized and accepted Penelope as an adult. She’d fret, retreat into paralyzed worry or go out and buy yarn and knitting needles with the hope her daughter would find an alternative to scaring the living daylights out of her poor mother.

  “I’m here to help,” Penelope said. “Pop won’t let me near the airport today, and I’m already stir-crazy. I thought I might clean rooms or wash
windows or something.”

  The two women exchanged knowing looks. They were no fools, their expressions said.

  Penelope wondered if her mother had met Sinclair. Best not to ask. “Look,” she said, “I’d be here even if you didn’t have a Sinclair under the roof. But it’s occurred to me—well, what if he’s not really who he says he is? If I clean his room, maybe I can…I don’t know, verify his identity.”

  Harriet spun around, paring knife in hand. “Penelope, good heavens! You plan to snoop!”

  “Of course, she does,” her mother said, unsurprised. “You don’t believe Penelope would voluntarily clean a man’s bathtub without ulterior motives, do you?”

  Penelope snatched up a rib of celery and bit off the end. She hadn’t fully thought this through. Snooping in Sinclair’s room was one thing. Cleaning his tub was another. Still, she couldn’t accomplish one without enduring the other.

  Harriet and her mother called her bluff and sent her to the cleaning closet. There were two other guest rooms occupied, one by Jack Dunning, the other by a businessman from Massachusetts who, Robby Chestnut said, had never even heard of Frannie and Colt. Penelope would have to clean their rooms, too.

  Well, she told herself, there was no shame in an honest day’s work.

  Penelope was almost as interested in Brandon Sinclair’s private detective as she was in his son, but she approached the idea of snooping through Dunning’s things with a bit more trepidation. She wondered if he’d come armed.

  She gritted her teeth and did Dunning’s room first. Naturally, he hadn’t left so much as a pair of socks as a clue to the scope of his intentions in Cold Spring. He struck her as the kind of man who trusted no one, including the local chambermaid. She made up the bed, scrubbed the bathroom, vacuumed, dusted and was finished in no time.

  Wyatt’s room was just down the hall. Key in hand, Penelope tucked her ear against the closed door before knocking. He was in. She could hear him talking in a low voice on the phone. Sounded like business. She didn’t want him to know she was the one scheduled to clean his room, so she headed to the Massachusetts guy’s room. He’d checked out. No tip. She flipped on the radio and did a thorough cleaning job to a political talk show that set her teeth on edge.

  She lost track of time, her mind racing with thoughts and possibilities about the unintended consequences of her lie about Colt and Frannie’s plane. When she stood from wiping down the TV, dust rag slung over one shoulder, furniture polish in hand, Sinclair was in the doorway. He had on a charcoal gray shirt that somehow made his eyes seem blacker than yesterday. And he looked taller. She had no idea how long he’d been standing there.

  A corner of his mouth twitched in amusement. “I see you’re a woman of many talents.”

  “I’m just helping out Harriet and my mother.”

  “With the hope of searching my room, I presume.”

  She scowled at him. “You know, I’ve always hated a know-it-all.”

  “Some things are obvious.”

  “I woke up this morning thinking you might not be a Sinclair, after all. I take it back.”

  “Who did you think I’d be?”

  “An impostor of some sort. A reporter. I don’t know.”

  He stepped into the room, making it seem immediately smaller, more intimate. “Well, I’m not an impostor, although there’ve been times my family’s wondered, I’m sure. I was just heading out to take a look at my family’s land. Since you seem to know your way around it fairly well, maybe you could point the way.”

  “You mean go with you or draw a map?”

  “Go with me,” he said.

  Go with him onto Sinclair land. She glanced around the pretty Victorian room with its rose theme. It was pure Harriet, but Penelope had it gleaming. A beam of sunlight penetrated the frothy curtains, inviting her outside. “You have proper attire? If you get lost, you could freeze out there.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  Of course. He was Wyatt Sinclair, outdoorsman extraordinaire. His Tasmanian tragedy notwithstanding, a little trek through the New Hampshire wilds wouldn’t intimidate him.

  She thought of Bubba Johns and wondered what he’d do if Wyatt stumbled onto his shack. What Wyatt would do. The Sinclair land would be crisscrossed with Bubba’s melting footprints. Wyatt could even stumble on remnants of her prints from Sunday, and if he did, he might end up finding the plane. Then she’d be back to Go. Reporters, investigators, Bubba’s life never the same. Harriet’s never the same. Her own. With a pang of fear, she thought of last night’s instant message. What if it hadn’t been a nut?

  It was a long shot, but Penelope didn’t want to risk Wyatt stumbling on the crash site. She preferred to show him around herself. There were risks there, too. She remembered the crackling atmosphere between them last night. Well, it was too cold and windy for those kinds of urges.

  “Okay, sounds good,” she said, maybe a little too brightly. “I’ll be your guide. I’d be more efficient than a map, anyway.”

  He eyed her, instantly suspicious.

  “What?” she asked.

  “I’m trying to figure out your motive for being so agreeable.”

  “That’s simple. I’d rather be out in the woods than polishing furniture and listening to Harriet and my mother try not to be obvious about lecturing me on my flying, my love life and where I live.”

  “In that order?”

  Penelope ran her dust cloth along the footboard of the cherry bed. Just as well he hadn’t caught her in his room. This was dangerously intimate enough. “In that order today. Other days, maybe not.”

  “What’s wrong with where you live?”

  “Dirt road, cabin, too far out of town.”

  “I see. Your flying—”

  “Mother doesn’t like it that I fly at all. It’s not that she thinks flying’s unsafe. She thinks I’m unsafe.”

  “Ah.”

  “And my love life is no one’s business,” she added quickly, before he could ask.

  The dark eyes sparked, but whatever he was thinking he kept to himself. “Of course. Shall I wait downstairs while you search my room? It really doesn’t need cleaning.”

  This wasn’t a man who rattled easily. He was self-controlled, self-possessed—he’d kept his wits when he and his friend lay dying on a Tasmanian ledge. That he’d survived and his friend hadn’t wasn’t his fault, despite lurid headlines that had intimated the contrary. Yet beneath the calm Penelope sensed a cauldron of emotions that made her not want to be around when he lost patience. “I can just leave fresh towels and call it a day.”

  “Do that.”

  She started toward the door, feeling as if Sinclair had won this round—as if he’d planned it all before he’d appeared in the doorway. He might have spotted her in the supply closet or cleaning Jack Dunning’s room. It was unnerving to think he’d figured out how her mind worked.

  “By the way,” he said behind her. “Just for the record, no one around here believes your story.”

  She glanced at him. “Which part?”

  “Any part. They think you either found the plane or didn’t find anything and made up the dump to save face.”

  “If I found the plane, why wouldn’t I say so?”

  “That’s the question of the hour, isn’t it?”

  Penelope refused to squirm. “It was late, and the light was funny, and I had low blood sugar. I could just have easily thought I’d seen a yeti out there that turned out to be a deer. I was there. No one else was. Are you going to pester me with questions and watch me like a hawk in the woods or just relax and enjoy yourself?”

  He settled on his heels, eyes narrowing, mouth twitching ever so slightly. “Maybe I can do all three.”

  Seven

  O nce Wyatt mentioned he was heading into the woods for a few hours, Harriet insisted on packing him a lunch. When he said Penelope was going with him, she grudgingly packed her one, too—cob-smoked ham, sharp cheddar cheese, French bread, Granny Smith apples, grapes
and a stack of warm chocolate chip cookies. She put both lunches into a hip pack and warned him not to let Penelope carry it, because she’d forget and everything would end up getting squashed.

  Penelope was into the cookies even before she and Wyatt reached her dirt road. They’d decided to take her truck, and she used one hand to lurch around potholes and frost heaves and the other to rummage through their lunch. “That Harriet. She gave you four cookies and me just three.”

  “How do you know?”

  “She marked one bag with a big black W. I expect that means you.”

  He grinned. “I like Harriet.”

  “Well, she must think I’ll expend less energy climbing hills than you will. Do you want to stop and rent snowshoes or will you be okay in those boots?”

  He was wearing water-resistant hikers. Nothing fancy, but adequate for the conditions. “I’ll be fine.”

  “It could be rough going in places, but I guess you’re used to hanging from cliffs by your fingernails. A little snow down your ankles’ll be nothing.”

  At least, Wyatt thought, whatever had scared her last night no longer seemed to be troubling her. He’d decided not to disabuse her of her ideas about him. The more the devilish Sinclair she thought him, the more on her guard she was. And the more on her guard, the easier, oddly, she was to read. This was not a woman accustomed to having to play her cards close to her chest. Whether she appreciated or even realized it, she was accustomed to living her life fully and openly, saying her piece, arguing with those who loved her and in general getting away with murder.

  On the other hand, the people in her life did exactly the same with her. They had no practice in hiding, dissembling, keeping secrets and out and out lying. Which was about all that gave Wyatt any hope of his job getting even the slightest bit easier.

  They drove a half mile beyond her tiny lakeside house and parked alongside the dirt road in front of a small field, the sun bright on the smooth, stark white snow. Penelope had put on sunglasses, and she gestured with one hand. “Your land’s across that field, to your right and left as far as you can see and up and over the hills—you just keep going until you get to state land. It’s enough land to keep you busy for a while. For the most part, nobody’s touched it since your father and grandfather gave up the search for Colt and Frannie and left town.”