Kiss the Moon

by Carla Neggers

  Penelope sat at the table with her bowl of soup. She was so stiff, her muscles aching—and not just from being knocked on her behind at Bubba’s. There was last night, too. She felt warm thinking about it, and a little self-conscious. She told Wyatt, “I haven’t noticed you fretting over every word. Seems to me you speak your mind.”

  He shrugged. “One of my rebellions.”

  “But you and your father love each other—”

  “That’s one thing you don’t seem to know about my family, Penelope.” He pulled out a chair, sat down. “Love is never enough for a Sinclair.”

  “Is that another of your rebellions?”

  His black eyes held her. “I could only wish.”

  She put her spoon down and leaned over the table, her mouth finding his. She didn’t give a damn if love wasn’t enough for a Sinclair, if tomorrow he’d pack up and head to New York. All that mattered was feeling his mouth on hers, touching his hair, his jaw. If he didn’t have dinner plans with his father, she was certain they’d have ended up in her bedroom.

  Finally, she sat down to her soup. “It was Bubba on my deck,” she said.

  As demonstrations of love and trust, it wasn’t much. But Wyatt’s dark eyes flashed. “And?”

  “The diamonds have been gone for twenty years or more.”

  Wyatt went very still. “Anything else?”

  She shook her head.

  “All right. You have two choices. Either I come back here tonight or you stay at the inn. You can’t stay here alone, Penelope—hell, I wouldn’t stay here alone myself.”

  “I’m used to it. It’s my home.” She sighed, glancing at the little kitchen and the living room with their mix of old-man lakeside cabin and her. She hadn’t bothered with a fire in the wood stove. The dogs had settled next to it, anyway. Her gaze shifted to Wyatt, and she smiled. “I guess it’s a weird home, isn’t it?”

  His gaze softened. “It’s a little eccentric.”

  “Oh, God. Harriet’s eccentric. I’m just a pilot who can’t afford to tear this place down and build my dream house.” Without thinking, she shot to her feet and grabbed her fleece pullover off the back of the chair. “Dinner at the inn sounds good, after all. If you and your father want to have a private dinner, that’s fine by me. I can eat in the kitchen with Harriet and my mother—or help out. With all these reporters in town, they must be swamped.”

  “And tonight?”

  “I have to come back here. This place isn’t much, but it’s all I’ve got. I’m not leaving it to Bubba’s dogs and a bunch of reporters.”

  Wyatt got to his feet. “Then I’ll pack my toothbrush and razor and join you.”

  She smiled, nodded. “That would be nice.”

  As he observed her during dinner with his father and Jack, Wyatt came to understand something about Penelope Chestnut. He wasn’t sure she would agree with or approve of his insight. He didn’t care, either. Because he knew he was right. She was a woman who’d put herself out there—say anything, do anything—for the people she loved. That was one thing. That gave her an air of determination, courage, impulsiveness, even stubbornness. But when it came to asking for or accepting help, she was uneasy. She didn’t like other people to see her vulnerabilities, her fears, her deepest longings. She preferred to be the rescuer, not the rescued.

  Wyatt understood. It had taken a tragedy in the southwest Tasmanian mountains to get him to acknowledge that he wasn’t invulnerable, that his body and soul could break. His body had mended just fine. He wasn’t so sure about his soul. But that was another problem for another time. Now it was enough to have his insight into Penelope.

  Her mother had seated them up in a small, private sitting room off the front room that looked out on the porch and lake. Reporters and a few curiosity-seekers occupied the Octagon Room. Robby winced at the bruise blossoming on her daughter’s cheek but said nothing about her choice of dinner companions.

  Jack had already lectured Penelope on her recklessness, which from his tone was another word for stupidity. She was a woman not accustomed to being chewed out. She let Jack have his say while she buttered a small slice of warm pumpkin bread. Wyatt’s father seemed more ill at ease with Jack’s tirade than she did. That, Wyatt assumed, was because he didn’t yet know Penelope.

  They discussed the situation in broad terms. Anything specific Brandon Sinclair would have considered a breach of etiquette. Neither Wyatt nor Penelope mentioned Bubba Johns’s visit to her deck, although Wyatt wasn’t sure why. “I want you people to let me do my job,” Jack said over dessert. “If I need to question the old man and tear his place apart inch by inch, that’s what I’m going to do. It won’t help if you get in my way.”

  Brandon Sinclair regarded his investigator with a calm that, from long experience, Wyatt knew he wasn’t feeling. “Jack, I won’t have you doing anything illegal on my behalf.”

  Dunning turned to him, the muscles in his neck and jaw visibly tense. “I was speaking figuratively. I know my parameters.”

  Penelope cut through the awkwardness with a bright smile. “You boys can discuss tactics. I think I’ll go say good-night to Mother and Harriet in the kitchen.”

  “Thank them,” Brandon said, “for the lovely meal and for allowing us to dine in here. It’s worked out beautifully.”

  Wyatt could see Penelope was smitten. Now he’d have to hear what a charming man his father was and what a beast he, the only son, was. It had happened with women before. They seemed to ignore the history of three wives and many lovers, the undercurrent of repressed emotion that Wyatt had sensed even as a child. His father seemed happy enough with his third marriage and two daughters, but Wyatt knew there was a yawning abyss in him, a cavern of unrecognized dreams and deep pain that, he suspected, went back to the abandonment of an older brother when he was just eleven.

  After Penelope left, Jack filled his wineglass and said coolly, “You need to be careful with that woman, Wyatt. We don’t know how much of her story holds up. She could have found the plane years ago and made off with the diamonds.”

  “And done what with them?” Wyatt asked. “Stuffed them in her moose head? Come on, Jack. Penelope’s not living the lifestyle of someone with ten million dollars in diamonds at her disposal.”

  Jack didn’t back off. “You know these people up here. They don’t trust money.”

  “The Chestnuts are frugal,” Wyatt said. “That doesn’t make them cheap or anti-money. If Penelope could, she’d build her dream house, buy a plane, probably make a bid for the Sinclair acreage.”

  “You’re biased. But that’s neither here nor there.” Jack got to his feet, nodded to his boss. “I’ll let you know if anything develops.”

  After he left, Wyatt studied his father across the table. There was a tightness around his eyes, but otherwise no indication of the stress of the past twenty-four hours. “Bubba Johns stopped at Penelope’s earlier this evening. He told her the diamonds have been missing for more than twenty years and then took off.”

  His father lifted his wineglass, a slight tremble in his hand. “Will she tell the police?”

  “Probably, but that’s just a guess. She’s protective of Bubba. She doesn’t want to violate any trust he’s developed for her. That’s why I didn’t mention it with her there. Also, frankly, I’m not sure I want Jack to know.”

  “This hermit’s life could be at risk,” Brandon said simply.

  Wyatt nodded. “I know. Father, could he be Colt?”

  “Good God, no. Colt had a family. Whatever happened, whatever he did, he would know he could come back to his family.”

  “Would he?”

  His father was silent a moment, his eyes narrowed to slits. “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying your father was not a forgiving man. If Colt didn’t measure up to his standards of a Sinclair, I’m not sure he’d expect to have all forgiven and forgotten.” Wyatt shifted in his chair, debated having more wine, then rejected the idea. “Everyone believes Colt was an
adventurer and scoundrel. But I’m not so sure.”

  “He would read to me.” His father’s voice was quiet, the emotion buried deep, but there. “He loved adventure novels. Jack London, Alexandre Dumas. And he loved to draw. I remember once he took me to the Museum of Natural History and showed me a stuffed eagle and how he’d done a charcoal drawing of it. He wasn’t…” He paused, whatever battle he was fighting within himself brought under control. “My brother wasn’t a man of action.”

  “But he felt as if he should be,” Wyatt said.

  The smallest, driest of smiles. “Don’t all Sinclairs?”

  “You did?”

  “Of course. But I made a conscious choice to honor Colt’s memory by not giving in to my impulses. My father knew what I was doing. He was ambivalent. He wanted me to take physical risks—to have the grand adventures. He’d have respected me more if I had.” He finished the last of his wine, set the glass down, gazed at it. “But he also wanted me to live.”

  “It took courage to carve out your own identity against that kind of pressure.”

  “Ah, yes. The pressures of family tradition and a man who measures another man’s worth by the physical risks he’s willing to take. My brother knew he fell short. I was determined to prove to our father that what Colt wanted to be—what he was—was every bit as good and worthy as the Sinclairs before him.”

  Wyatt saw it. “So you sacrificed your own desires.”

  “Yes, I did. I’d have climbed Everest, Wyatt. I’d have explored the Amazon. I’d have put together expeditions to support scholarship and research. I chose not to because I knew—I know—that my brother was every bit as good and courageous as any Sinclair. It was my personal, private rebellion.”

  “Father…”

  But that was the end of the discussion. His father snapped to his feet, his back straight, his patrician reserve in place. “You should see to Penelope before she lands herself in another tight spot.” He gave his son a faint smile. “For years, Wyatt, I’ve hoped you’d end up with a woman who’s just as reckless and high-spirited as you are, just so you could begin to understand what your mother and I have endured. It seems that’s one wish of mine that’s come true.”

  “I’ll be staying at her place tonight.”

  “Yes. You should.”

  His father started across the small, pretty parlor. Wyatt turned in his chair and said, “What do you think Colt would have done if Frannie Beaudine duped him and played him for a fool, if she stole the diamonds without his knowledge and then she died when their plane crashed and he lived? You knew him. Could he have faced your father?”

  “I don’t know. But it’s been forty-five years, and Father’s been dead for ten. He had to know he could have faced me.”

  Nineteen

  F irst thing in the morning Penelope went onto her deck and looked at the mushy ground and patches of snow for Bubba’s tracks. He couldn’t have materialized out there. He had to have come from somewhere.

  Wyatt joined her, thrusting a mug of coffee at her. “Anything?”

  She shook her head. She felt tight, keyed up, as if she’d slept two inches above her bed. “I’ve made such a mess of things. Harriet’s a wreck, and Bubba’s been run out of his home. If I was trying to protect anyone, it was them.” She added bitterly, “I’m sure they’re very grateful.”

  “Your intentions—”

  “Oh, my intentions be damned. As my mother is fond of telling me, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

  “No, it’s not.” His eyes were distant, even blacker in the morning sun. “It’s paved with neglect, inattention and thoughtlessness.”

  “I didn’t think.”

  “But you’re not thoughtless.”

  She smiled at him, welcoming the feel of the hot mug in her hands, the briskness of the morning air. A high in the fifties today. “You’re not a bad guy to wake up with in the morning.”

  He leaned over the deck rail, listening to the birds on the quiet lake. “This is a nice spot.”

  “It’s very different in the summer. I often get up early and take my kayak out for a spin before I head to work. There are camps all up the road. You can hear kids and smell the barbecues from here.”

  “You don’t mind?”

  “I love it—it’s a refreshing change from winter. I’m not a recluse. I can understand Bubba on one level, the peace and satisfaction he must feel at living such a simple, independent life.” She sipped her coffee, staring across the lake. “But I’m more of a people person. As much as my family and friends can get on my nerves—and vice versa—I have no desire to run away from them.”

  “Do you think that’s what Bubba did?”

  “One way or another, I expect so. Who knows, maybe he needed to run away in order to survive. We don’t know what his family and friends were like.”

  Wyatt was silent, and Penelope knew that he, too, suspected Bubba Johns of being his uncle. The age, the lean physique, the gray eyes. He could be a Sinclair.

  “I’ve been thinking,” she said. “Since we’ve got ten million dollars worth of missing diamonds and a hermit, I figure why not a secret baby? It’s all so flipping far-fetched right now. Let’s say Harriet is Colt and Frannie’s daughter. It means Frannie would have to have given birth to her here, in Cold Spring.”

  Wyatt digested that one. “Why not New York?”

  “Too complicated. She’d have to tuck her away somewhere, pick her up en route to the airport—and then somehow the baby survived the crash and so on and so on.” Penelope drank more coffee, her heart thumping, not from caffeine but from thinking too damned much. “But here in Cold Spring, Frannie had friends.”

  “Careful, Penelope. You don’t want to leap too far ahead of the facts.”

  She raised her eyes to him, said quietly, “You’re right. Look, I should go out to the airport. I want to talk to my father. If reporters have his kingdom staked out, too, he’s going to be fit to be tied. Are you going to see your father and Dunning?”

  “They’ll keep. I’ll tag along with you.”

  “Because you’re being protective or don’t exactly trust me?”

  He grinned, and with two fingers snatched a few stray hairs and tucked them into her hasty braid. “How about because I enjoy your company?”

  “I think I’ll go with ‘all of the above.’”

  They found her father drinking coffee with his older sister, complaining about the taste. “If I can put up with your cigars,” she told him, “you can put up with my coffee.”

  Penelope sat in a metal chair with a vinyl seat. Wyatt wandered around outside, looking at Jack Dunning’s plane and generally making himself scarce. She shook her head at Aunt Mary’s offer of coffee and said, “Pop, did you know that Frannie made off with ten million dollars worth of stolen diamonds?”

  “Oh, good Lord,” her aunt breathed.

  Her father, in his flannel shirt and work pants, drank some of his coffee, made a face, and said, “I expected something like that. Maybe not ten million, maybe not diamonds. But money had to be involved somewhere—the way Willard Sinclair acted at the time and with what’s been going on the past few days. It wouldn’t happen for a couple of people who’ve been dead for almost fifty years.”

  “If they are dead,” Penelope corrected.

  He shrugged. “All right. If they are dead.”

  “So, if Frannie stole diamonds, the question is, why? I have a hypothesis. Do you want to hear it?”

  “I have a choice?”

  She tried to smile, couldn’t. “Let’s say Frannie Beaudine is also Harriet’s birth mother. If that’s the case, someone in Cold Spring must have helped her deliver her baby. It doesn’t make sense she’d have had the baby in New York. Once the baby was delivered, someone had to take care of her while Frannie went back to New York.”

  Her aunt jumped up. “I have errands to run. I’ll leave you two to talk. I’ve listened to every possible scenario for forty-five years. If you want my op
inion, not every mystery needs to be unraveled.”

  Neither Penelope nor her father made an attempt to stop her. Aunt Mary had no patience for this kind of talk. When she had gone, Penelope resumed, her father steely-eyed, listening with apparent patience. “So Frannie’s back in New York, and she and Colt come forward with their relationship. It’s met with hostility—she’s not the sort of woman Willard Sinclair wants to marry his eldest son. Frannie’s pissed. She knows she has this baby and she feels entitled to a share of the Sinclair fortune. And she can’t count on a future with Colt. So she helps herself to some diamonds.”

  She paused, hoping her father would tell her she was making sense or no sense at all, but he merely said, “Go on.”

  “Let’s say Colt finds out, or guesses—something happens that makes him agree to run away with Frannie. He knows he’ll be disinherited or whatever it is Sinclairs do to their own who stray, but she’s not worried.”

  “Because she has the diamonds.”

  “Exactly. So they fly off to reunite with their baby. Only the plane goes down, and they’re lost. Meanwhile, her helpers here on the ground in Cold Spring have this tiny baby and no knowledge of the diamonds. When it’s clear Colt and Frannie can’t have survived the crash, they have no choice.

  “So they leave the baby on the church doorstep for my uncle to find.

  “That’s my hypothesis.”

  He nodded thoughtfully. “Do you have a hypothesis about the helpers on the ground?”

  “I do.”

  “And?”

  She met his clear, unswerving gaze. “I think it was you and Granddad.”

  “Why? Because we wouldn’t sit for one of your interviews?”

  “Partly. Also because if I were twenty-five and in trouble, I would go to someone like you and Granddad for help. I would know I could trust you, and I would know you’d do the right thing. And in my hypothesis,” she went on, hanging on to the last shreds of self-control, “the right thing clearly would be to make sure the baby had a chance at a good life and happiness. With Frannie and Colt dead, nothing else mattered.”