“Did you forget to lock up last night?”
“I didn’t do the locking up. Your father did. When I got in this morning, everything was perfectly normal. I’d have Andy McNally up here if there had been any sign of a break-in.”
She frowned at her niece, her hands on her hips, suspicion etched in every line and feature of her round face. Aunt Mary had four kids of her own, all older than Penelope, all convinced she’d give their mother a heart attack one of these days. Yet they understood the special affection their mother and cousin had for each other, never mind that it was tried on a near-daily basis.
“Honestly, Penelope,” Mary Chestnut Feeney said. “You’ve been grounded for one day and you’re already acting crazy. This is an old machine. Sometimes it goes haywire. That’s all there is to it. For heaven’s sake, if you want excitement, I’d hope you find it somewhere besides a fax machine on the blink!”
Penelope smiled lamely. “You’re right, Aunt Mary.”
“It’s having these two New Yorkers in town. Harriet told me they’re watching you like hawks, thinking you found that plane on Sunday. I’ll bet they think you’ve looted it or you’re planning to write a book—”
“They can think what they want to think. Look, I just wanted to pop in and say hello. See you later. Don’t mention this fax machine thing to Pop, okay?”
“As if I would. I tell him this one, and I’ll be lucky he doesn’t fire me for talking him into grounding you for three weeks instead of four.”
“Pop can’t fire you. You’re partners.”
“Like you, Miss Hot Shot, he can find a way to get done what he wants to get done.”
Before she could paint herself firmly into a corner, Penelope made her exit. She drove straight to town and bought a jigsaw puzzle, milk, juice and bullets for her grandfather’s rifle. If common decency didn’t keep a New York Sinclair and a private investigator at bay, maybe a loaded gun in the kitchen would.
Wyatt arrived at her cabin first. He tossed his leather jacket over the back of a kitchen chair, his dark gaze taking in her birds of the northeast puzzle and her Winchester leaned against the table. She hadn’t loaded it yet. She said, “That’s my grandfather’s old rifle. He taught me how to shoot.”
He ran a finger over her new box of cartridges. “When’s the last time you loaded this thing?”
“About a year ago. We had a convicted murderer escape from the state prison. It can get creepy living out here, especially in the winter. There are more people around in the summer.” She dumped scoops of coffee—regular Colombian coffee—into a filter. “I don’t hunt, but I like to keep up my shooting skills. Figured I’d do some target shooting while I’m grounded.”
“And build a puzzle,” Wyatt said.
“There’s only so much shooting and sap boiling I can do. Television reception stinks out here, and I don’t have a dish.”
“I see.”
Controlled, watchful, taking in everything around him. Penelope was afraid he did see. Wondering how obvious she was, she shoved the filter into the coffeemaker, poured in water and flipped it on.
“I think I’ll get the sap boiling again while you two look over my research materials. I hope you’re not expecting a smoking gun—it’s mostly old newspaper articles and transcripts of interviews I had with people around town who remember Colt and Frannie or helped search for their plane. I have the original cassettes, too, if you want to listen to them.” She glanced at him, cool. “Of course, you already know that from your little look-see last night.”
Jack Dunning arrived, not looking like someone who relished digging through research materials, but Penelope supposed the job of private investigator involved plenty of dull, routine work. She sat the two of them down at the kitchen table, where she’d stacked all her materials. She removed her rifle to the study. Dunning hadn’t commented on it, and she wondered if the only point she’d made was that she was a lunatic. She set the cartridges on the kitchen counter and got her canner of sap bubbling, the steam and sweet maple smells soothing her nerves, making the place seem cozier, as if the two men at her table were playing cards or clipping coupons, not trying to catch her in a lie.
Twice she almost told them to strap on snowshoes and she’d take them to what was left of Colt and Frannie’s Piper Cub J-3. Just get it over with. What had seemed the right thing to do on Tuesday no longer was clearly so right on Thursday.
But she resisted—if only because the two men at her kitchen table were so obviously not interested in her research materials. Jack was there to scope her out, Wyatt to scope out her and Jack. Newspaper articles from the 1950s and interviews with old people weren’t going to do them any good. She was the one who’d found the long-missing plane. They were the ones looking for it.
As she busily stirred the syrup—it was looking like syrup now—and washed canning jars, Penelope speculated about what Jack knew that Wyatt didn’t know and vice versa. Or what each thought the other knew, whether in fact he did or didn’t.
She frowned. She was getting way ahead of herself. They could just be two frustrated men stumbling their way through a problem not of their own making. They suspected her of lying, and they were trying to get her to feel comfortable enough to change her story back again.
Which didn’t explain the fax. Maybe she should ask them who’d messed with Aunt Mary’s fax machine.
Jack Dunning sat her at the table and asked her several questions about interviews she’d conducted. Then, calmly, he asked her about several glaring omissions. “You didn’t interview your father, your aunt or your grandfather. The newspaper articles indicate they were all actively involved in the search efforts, particularly your grandfather.”
“I didn’t get started on the interviews until he was sick. As for my father and Aunt Mary—I haven’t asked.”
The flat, almost colorless eyes narrowed on her. “Why not?”
“Family protocol, I guess. They know about the interviews. If they want to participate, they’ll say so. Now that I have three weeks to kill, I might make it clear that even if they don’t think they have anything to offer, I’d like to get their perspective.”
“Going to write a book?”
Maybe Aunt Mary had been on to something. “No.”
She glanced at Wyatt, saw he was absorbed in a transcript of Uncle George’s memories of those first weeks after Colt and Frannie’s disappearance. Her uncle had been careful, she recalled, not to say too much about the baby he’d found in the apple basket on the church doorstep. Penelope hadn’t asked, but she assumed he didn’t want to draw any more attention to the unsettling coincidence of Colt and Frannie’s ill-fated flight and the mysterious appearance of an infant.
“This dump you say you found,” Jack Dunning said, segueing into the subject that really interested him. “Would there be any record of it?”
Penelope shook her head. “It’d just be stuff an old farmer hauled off into the woods from time to time.”
“Then why isn’t it on a trail or old logging road?”
“I don’t know. When I was a kid, I used to pick through some of the old dumps in the woods for bottles. I had a collection.”
“But you never ran across this dump before?”
“Not that I recall.”
He got to his feet, his gaze more amused than challenging, as if he really didn’t care if she lied to him or not. Either way, he’d get to the truth. “It’s been interesting. Thanks for your time.”
“You’re welcome. Will you report to Mr. Sinclair today and head home?”
He smiled. “Not yet.”
Penelope followed him to the door and shut it hard behind him, then spun around to Wyatt. “Why doesn’t he give up and go back to New York?”
“Same reason I don’t.”
“Because you’re both waiting for me to miraculously drop Colt and Frannie’s Piper Cub in your laps.” She groaned, frustrated, the thought of the fax folded in her underwear drawer and the car outside her house la
st night interfering with her thinking, her mood. So was being alone with Sinclair. “Can’t you fire him?”
“He’s not my employee.” Wyatt brought his and Jack’s mugs to the sink, checked the bubbling syrup. Without looking at her, he said, “I want to know what’s going on here, Penelope—and I’m not talking about Colt and Frannie’s plane. I’m already fairly confident you found it.”
“Then what are you talking about?”
He stirred the syrup with a long-handled wooden spoon. “You didn’t buy ammo and clean the Winchester because I came on a little strong.”
She said nothing. She stood in the middle of her kitchen, watching Wyatt stir her syrup. Her life wasn’t spinning out of control. It had already spun.
“Penelope…” His voice was low and seductive, but not patient. “Something’s going on.”
“Nothing may be going on. I just—” She plopped on the chair he’d vacated, her Colt and Frannie materials neatly stacked around her. When she’d started, she’d fantasized about discovering their fate. She’d fantasized about meeting her first Sinclair. It just wasn’t Wyatt she’d expected. She shut her eyes briefly, tried to calculate the consequences of giving in to her impulse to tell him everything, then blurted, “I’ve been receiving unsettling messages. They’re more odd than anything else. One came by an instant message while I was on-line, the other by fax. And last night someone spied on me. I think. I’m not positive. It could have been kids.”
“One at a time. Stick to the basics. When, what, where, how. The why is fairly obvious. You said you found a famous missing plane and then said you didn’t.”
“Yes, but this guy’s motive…I don’t know.”
“The instant message came first?” When she nodded, he said, “Tell me about it.”
His tone was encouraging and even tender, not the least bit dictatorial. But his eyes—those black, incisive Sinclair eyes—gave him away. Inside, she knew, he was pulsating with the urge to take her by the shoulders and shake the information out of her, syllable by syllable if necessary. It was just the warning she needed. Wanting to slip inside this man’s soul for a look around was crazy and dangerous—like doing a preflight check, discovering mechanical problems and going up anyway, even when she knew the plane wasn’t airworthy. Some things you just didn’t do.
But she told him about the instant message, the fax, the car. She focused on the facts and didn’t mention flipping on lights and ducking under windows and sleeping on the couch. Fear had always been a private issue for her. When search parties had found her, when Andy McNally had pulled her out of the lake, she’d never admitted her terror.
When she finished, Wyatt set the spoon down and returned to the table. The snow was piling up outside her cabin. March snows were often wet and deep, but not long-lasting. Penelope imagined her deck brimming with summer pots of flowers, herbs, tomatoes. Everything changed. Nothing lasted forever.
She said, “You should know I’m not operating under the assumption that you’re not responsible. I don’t think either you or Jack Dunning has an ironclad alibi, should I report these incidents to the police. You both have motives for wanting to spook me into showing you the dump—or the plane, seeing how you both think I lied.”
His jaw was set tight, controlled. “Fair enough. But we’re hardly alone in thinking you changed your story.”
“Who else cares about finding the plane? You care because Colt’s your uncle. Jack cares because it’s his job.”
“Frannie’s from Cold Spring, and she and Colt most likely went down in this vicinity. There could be parties unknown with motives unknown who want to manipulate you. The fax said not to show anyone what you found in the woods.”
“That could be reverse psychology.”
“It could be a lot of things. You still have it?”
She nodded. “I’ll get it.”
With sudden energy, she shot up from the table, but stopped halfway to her bedroom. She turned, saw he was watching her. She forced herself to concentrate. “Aunt Mary’s fax machine was messed up this morning.”
The black eyes showed no emotion. “And you think it was our mad faxer?”
“Why not? He could have snuck in last night and popped off the fax to me. There was no sign of a break-in, but he could have had a key, stolen a key, picked the lock, snuck in when Pop and Aunt Mary weren’t looking. The airport office isn’t exactly Fort Knox.”
“He—or she—could have seized the moment.”
“Right. I know it’s hard to swallow, but so’s a threat by fax. I suppose whoever sent it could have used his own machine and messed up Aunt Mary’s just so I’d think it came from hers. But that’s getting labyrinthine.”
Wyatt thought a moment. “It’s always possible your aunt messed up her fax machine without any help.”
“I guess. A few years ago, you could count the number of fax machines in town on one hand. Now, I wouldn’t be surprised if Bubba Johns had one.” Before Wyatt could jump in, she added, “And no, I don’t suspect him.”
She darted into her bedroom, located the fax, returned to the kitchen, and handed it to Wyatt. While she paced, he unfolded it, read it, and pinned his gaze on her.
“You should have Jack take a look at this. He’s an experienced investigator. My father wouldn’t have him on retainer if he weren’t discreet.”
Penelope shook her head. “I think this is a case of the more you stir it, the more it stinks. There’s no overt threat. It could be a reporter trying to goad me into changing my story—it could be Jack Dunning for all I know, or you, or some idiot relative of mine having a laugh at my expense. Look, I’ve already had a search party formed to come after me, turned an old dump into a plane wreck and got myself grounded. This time I’m looking before I leap.”
Wyatt smiled. “You do have a reputation for putting people around here through their paces. But what do you believe right now? What do your instincts tell you?”
Her instincts had already told her not to get into an alliance with this man, and a fat lot of good that had done her. “My instincts told me to get out Granddad’s Winchester and buy bullets. Just in case.”
“You could move in with your folks for a few days,” Wyatt suggested, “or take a room at the inn with your cousin.”
“Are you kidding? I’d never live it down. You just said you know my reputation. Something happens in Cold Spring, New Hampshire, people look around to see where I am. They’re still ticked about the search party the other night.”
“That shouldn’t matter—”
“It does matter.”
“You don’t strike me as the type to worry about what other people think.”
“I have to live in this town. I don’t get to go back to a life of anonymity in New York.” She snatched up her wooden spoon and stirred the syrup, smelling the maple, feeling the steam on her face. It was almost time to pour it into a smaller pot. “This is my house, and I’m staying here.”
“At least get a friend to stay with you.”
His tone was neutral, but he joined her at the stove, standing close, and she could feel the fear welling up, her uneasiness about him, her attraction to him. A swirl of conflicting questions and emotions had her head spinning. Outside, the wind was gusting off the frozen lake, whipping icy snow against her cabin windows.
She kept stirring the syrup. It still had a ways to go. If she cooked it too much, it would crystallize. “I’m just trying to make the best decisions I can and not give in.”
“Not give in to what?”
“I’ve always been restless, I’ve always needed a lot going on in my life—the adrenaline, the excitement. I do impulsive things. I get distracted and forget what I’m doing and—and…”
“And pretty soon you’re lost in the woods or plunging through thin ice.”
“But I’m capable,” she said. “I know what I’m doing. I don’t need to be hovered over and protected. I’m not an idiot, and I’m not reckless. And damn it, it’s not that I’m
looking for drama, that I need that kind of rush.”
He smiled, and this time it reached his eyes. “You sound like a Sinclair.”
She grinned. “Horrors. But Sinclairs aren’t hovered over and protected and told they should just sit home. Not the men, at least.”
“No, we die prematurely instead. Or others die in our place.”
She remembered his friend, the awful circumstances of his death. A fall, bad weather, no help. Accomplished hikers, he and Wyatt had underestimated the Tasmanian mountains, the potential for extreme changes in climate, and their hubris had cost Hal his life. Penelope could only speculate about the effects of Wyatt’s ordeal—his guilt—on him. His experience could have colored his move to New York, his decision to come to New Hampshire, his reaction to her messages and the idea of someone spying on her. It could even muddy how he saw her. If he saw in her the same qualities that in him had led to tragedy, he could go all self-controlled and distant and fight any attraction to her—or he could want her all the more. Either way, he was looking at her through a clouded lens, not seeing her for who she was.
Of course, she was doing the same to him. He was a Sinclair, and she knew Sinclairs. She sighed, wishing she could stop trying to sort everything out. “I suppose I should keep in mind that you Sinclairs are human beings, not just the sum of my prejudices. We have ideas about you here because of the past. In any case, I’ve hardly had the kind of adventures you’ve had—I’ve just had to be pulled out of the lake a few times too many.”
“You get in over your head.”
“At times. We all do. I’m not now,” she added quickly, and if he’d asked, she couldn’t have told him if she meant in over her head with him or with the story she’d told about Frannie Beaudine and Colt Sinclair. But he didn’t ask, and his mouth found hers as he brushed the tips of his fingers along her jaw and into her hair until she thought she’d melt right into the sap pot.
She moaned softly, their kiss deepening, his arms around her, drawing her against him. He was all hard muscles and warm, soft fabric, and when his hands slipped under her shirt, she could have crawled right inside him.
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