Kiss the Moon

by Carla Neggers

  A distinct movement several yards behind her. A shuffling sound in the snow, detectable only because she’d held her breath. It wasn’t an animal. She couldn’t explain why, but she knew it was human. Someone was out there in the trees and freshly fallen snow, watching her. She glanced around for tracks but saw only her own.

  Had someone followed her to Bubba’s shack?

  Was Bubba spying on her?

  She shuddered at the possibilities and used the jolt of fear to propel her through the snow.

  She moved as quickly as she could on her snowshoes, careful not to lose her balance or go head-over-teakettle or run out of steam. When she got to her land, she broke into a trot, pushing herself hard and fast, sucking in the cold air, her lungs burning, her face numb, her legs dead.

  She was running when she reached her dirt road, and Wyatt was there, standing in the shadows of a thick maple. She accosted him feeling wild, out of control. “Have you been following me? Damn you, Sinclair! I hate being spied on. I hate sneaky men. If you’ve got something you want from me, you say so. You don’t goddamned do an underhanded, slippery thing like that.”

  “Penelope, stop.” His voice was calm, serious. “I just got here. I saw your tracks and thought I might catch up with you. Which I did.”

  “You didn’t follow me?”

  “No.”

  “Then who—” She took in shallow breaths, panting from her mad race through the woods. “Do you see other tracks? Is Jack Dunning’s car here? Did you see it down the road anywhere?” She stopped herself, peeled off her hat and gloves and shoved them in her anorak pockets. God, she needed to get a decent breath! She could feel Wyatt’s dark gaze on her, probing, assessing. She had to calm down. “I suppose it could have been anyone. Someone else on snowshoes, enjoying the fresh snow.”

  Wyatt watched her silently as she unstrapped her snowshoes, clogged with wet, icy snow. Her fingers, shaking and stiff, had turned red with the cold, and if she’d had her jackknife, she’d have hacked off the damned bindings.

  She looked at Sinclair. “Well? Aren’t you going to demand answers?”

  “There are no other tracks here. Just yours.”

  “So you think I’m jumpy enough I made up someone following me?”

  “I don’t know. Did you?”

  She kicked off one snowshoe, then the other, and picked them up. She had to be a mess. Red face, runny nose, ice in her hair, wild-eyed. But she nodded, certain. “Yes. Someone was out there. I’m sure of it. But I’m not positive I was actually being followed.”

  He tilted his head, no snow in his dark hair, no wildness in his dark eyes. He was steady, controlled, not even breathing hard. His mouth was straight, neither smiling nor unsmiling.

  In two seconds, Penelope had had enough. “Okay, don’t believe me. I don’t give a damn. I’m sorry I ever let you get under my skin. I mean, it’s not like I didn’t know better. If you’ll excuse me—”

  He bit off a sigh, took her snowshoes from her and tucked them under one arm. “Okay. I believe you. You have no idea who followed you?”

  She shook her head. Her teeth started to chatter. It was humiliating, but she couldn’t stop them. She wasn’t that cold. It was nerves. Fear. Running through the snowy woods like the demons of hell were after her. “I suppose I could have imagined the whole thing. My imagination is running amok these days. It was probably Bubba.”

  “But you don’t know for sure.”

  Everything about him—his narrowed black eyes, his rigid stance, his self-control—served as a warning. She needed to remember he was a man of determination and energy, that even his obvious physical attraction to her would not deter him from his mission.

  Penelope attempted a smile, her heart rate slowly normalizing. “Right now I’d have to say I don’t know much of anything for sure, except that homemade maple syrup hot off the stove sounds good to me.”

  Just the barest ghost of a smile. “Maybe it’s a truth serum.”

  “Watch out. That’s a sword that cuts two ways.”

  Wyatt might have gotten all kinds of things out of Penelope if her parents hadn’t descended on them within minutes of her turning on the heat under the syrup and dashing into her room to change. Nothing was going on, they said. They’d just stopped by to say hello. Wyatt didn’t try to explain his presence in their daughter’s house. When she emerged from her bedroom—in dry clothes and remarkably calm—she gave them a bright smile and invited them to stay for pancakes. “I’ll just double the recipe.”

  Wyatt wasn’t fooled. Anything to avoid being alone with him. Robby Chestnut didn’t look keen on the idea of pancakes, but Lyman accepted immediately. Four people in the front room were at least two people too many. Wyatt could feel the walls closing in on him. The three Chestnuts hovered over the boiling syrup, debating its grade and quality, and Penelope got down dented measuring cups and spoons, a mixing bowl from the thirties, a chipped crockery of flour, and pretty soon she was spooning pancake batter onto an ancient griddle, and her father was frying ham in a cast-iron pan.

  As she laid mismatched plates on the kitchen table, Robby gave Wyatt a tentative smile. “When Lyman’s father was alive, the three of them would spend a lot of time together up here. It felt more isolated in those days. It’s bad enough now—but Penelope seems to like it.”

  “It must be beautiful here in the summer,” he said diplomatically.

  “Oh, it’s gorgeous.”

  Wyatt considered telling her that her daughter had just been followed in the woods—or thought she had—and that Robby should ask her to show her the mysterious fax and tell her about the instant message she’d received. He would guess neither parent had a clue what was going on in Penelope’s life. Then he reminded himself why he’d come to Cold Spring. He wanted to learn his uncle’s fate, not get caught up in the schemes, troubles and charms of a blond-haired pilot.

  Dinner was good, not as interminable as he’d expected, and involved an exacting analysis of Penelope’s first batch of maple syrup and discussion of Robby’s projected yield at her sugar shack. Wyatt had never imagined so much could be said about syrup. He didn’t pay close attention, instead observing the dynamics of the nuclear Chestnut family. Robby and Lyman indulged their only daughter. No question about it. But she, in her own way, indulged them, granting them their need to be with her for whatever instinctive reasons, understanding their protectiveness.

  Her life was so unlike his. Syrup, pancakes, cob-smoked ham, parents in for dinner on a blustery March night. He would have chosen from a dozen favorite restaurants, possibly met friends or taken in a movie. He had no idea where the nearest movie theater was to Cold Spring. What did people do here? Boil sap. Get lost in the woods. Make up stories about famous missing planes.

  Once her parents had cleared the driveway, Wyatt stacked dishes in the sink, squirted in detergent and turned on the water. He said, “They don’t have a clue you’re receiving threats.”

  Penelope was wiping off the kitchen table. “I hope not. My mother sometimes can divine these things, but she didn’t this time—I think it’s just way more than she wants to know.”

  “Your father?”

  “He’d want to know, but he’s not intuitive about anything except flying. If I were flying today, he’d have figured out something was up.” She shrugged, joining him at the sink. “Of course, he did on Tuesday, and that’s why I’m grounded.”

  “You won’t confide in them?”

  She shook her head. “Not about this. This morning Pop told me to do what I felt was right, and that’s what I’m doing.”

  Wyatt swished a wet rag over a plate. No dishwasher. He hadn’t bothered to look, just assumed a place with a moose head on the wall wouldn’t have a dishwasher. “I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to spend the night here alone.”

  “Who am I going to get to come up here? Harriet? She’d tell Mother. Rebecca and Jane McNally would tell their father, and all my friends have kids or have to work or both�
�and it’d get around town and to my parents by ten o’clock.” She rinsed the frying pan in the other half of the sink. “I’ll just load the Winchester and keep it next to my bed.”

  “I’ll stay.”

  She gaped at him. “Oh, sure. That’d be around town by eighty-thirty.”

  “I can pretend to go up to my room for the night and sneak out.”

  “Under Harriet’s nose?”

  “It can be done,” he said, whipping through the dinner dishes.

  Penelope frowned. “What about Jack Dunning? He must be suspicious as it is.”

  “I don’t care if he’s suspicious or not, and I don’t have to explain my actions to him.”

  She wiped the frying pan with paper towels and set it on a hook above the stove. “Well, it doesn’t matter. I don’t need a Sinclair looking after me. My grandfather used to tell me that your grandfather had enough nerve to get himself killed a dozen times over. Half the time, it’d be someone else doing the killing. The other half, he’d just get himself killed through his own recklessness.”

  “It’s not a ringing endorsement,” Wyatt admitted.

  “No, it’s not.”

  He drained the dishwater. “I remember my grandfather as an old man who loved to read Rex Stout and tell stories about his adventures. He particularly enjoyed his archaeological expeditions in South America. He fancied himself an amateur archaeologist, but he had enormous respect for the real thing.”

  “I suppose most people have more than one side to them. My grandfather could be a cheap, rigid old cuss. It’s not like I’m saying he was a saint and your grandfather was a devil.”

  “You’re just saying you don’t want me spending the night.”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Penelope,” he said, “we can make up the couch. I’m not trying to rush you into anything.”

  Her eyes, so green even in the dim light, fastened on him, and he could see the whirl of emotion behind them—fear, uncertainty, determination, no small measure of desire. She said, “If you can sneak past Harriet, do it. If not, I’ll be fine tonight. Really.”

  “Give me an hour?”

  She nodded. It wouldn’t be easy for her to admit she wanted company. She was used to not needing anyone, or at least presenting that image to town and family.

  When he left, Wyatt wondered if she noticed the quiet, or if that was the way, deep down, she liked her life—quiet, simple, alone. Just her and her mismatched dishes, the stars, the woods, the lake.

  And whoever was trying to scare her.

  He found Jack Dunning in the Sunrise Inn bar, nursing a beer. The private investigator studied Wyatt and shook his head, for once a gleam in his gray eyes. “Nope. I don’t see it.”

  “See what?”

  “A resemblance to Harriet Chestnut.”

  Wyatt sat opposite Jack, motioned for the bartender to bring him a beer. “Did she tell you or did you find out on your own?”

  “She told me, which is a variation of my finding out on my own. If I don’t make the contact, I don’t get the information.”

  “You should go home, Jack. I should go home. These people don’t need us here. Colt’s fate has kept for this long. It can keep a while longer.”

  “If that plane’s out there, I’m going to find it.”

  “The plane and Harriet Chestnut don’t have anything to do with each other. She’s a sweet woman. Don’t belittle her fantasies.”

  “Fantasies, hell. She’s convinced she’s a Sinclair. Knows it in her gut. She told me so.” Jack drank more of his beer. His cheeks were rosy from the alcohol, the warmth of the inn, the long, snowy day. “If she can prove it, she’ll have her hand out for her share of the Sinclair trust. Mark my words. I don’t care how sweet she is.”

  “I’d hate to be as cynical as you are.”

  “You are as cynical as I am, Sinclair. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here.”

  Wyatt sighed. His beer arrived. He didn’t bother with the glass. A beer on top of pancakes and ham. He’d have to run a million miles tomorrow to burn it all off. “If Harriet’s a Sinclair, she deserves her fair share. I just don’t see how she can be. We don’t know for sure Colt and Frannie were lovers when they ran off, never mind that they had any kind of physical relationship before then.”

  “They were in Cold Spring at the same time for a few weeks the previous summer. If you do the math, it could work. You’re pregnant so you squirrel yourself away in some dank basement and catalogue bones, art and shit. Wear baggy clothes. Stay away from people you know.”

  “That’s pure speculation.”

  Jack shrugged. “Of course it is. I’m just saying that Harriet’s little fantasy isn’t as far-fetched as people might want to believe.”

  “Have you told my father?”

  “No point yet. As far as he’s concerned, Frannie Beaudine seduced his big brother and caused both their deaths—not to mention a family scandal. He’s not going to want to hear about a love child.”

  Wyatt drank his beer. The inn was quiet, and he could hear the fire crackling down the hall and the wind gusting against the windows. In changing her story, Penelope had undoubtedly hoped to spare her cousin the scrutiny she was under. A proverbial case of shutting the barn door after the horse had already fled.

  Finally, he said, “Maybe Harriet just wants answers about her birth, validation—”

  “Horseshit. She wants money.” Jack leaned back and folded his hands on his flat middle. He wasn’t being argumentative, just stating the facts as he saw them. “Frankly, I don’t blame her. I’d get every damned penny I could out of you Sinclairs. Jesus, it’s not like she’d have to fight you for it.”

  Wyatt smiled without humor. “True.”

  “How’s our Miss Penelope? Any closer to telling us the truth?”

  “It seems to me she’s bit off more than she can chew.”

  He’d decided not to tell Jack about the messages or the incident—real or imagined—in the woods. Jack grunted in agreement. “She’d have been a lot smarter if she’d said she’d created a Piper Cub out of nothing when she was lost, tired and hungry. She could have taken us all out to a pile of rocks and said, See?”

  “Would that have satisfied you?”

  He grinned. “Not a chance. Either way, her goose is cooked. Her only option is to tell the truth.”

  “You aren’t helping her to see that, are you?”

  Jack’s gaze sharpened instantly, a reminder that he was a professional, experienced investigator, not a wannabe Texas good ol’ boy doing Brandon Sinclair a good turn. “I’m doing my job. Why? What’s going on?”

  Wyatt shook his head. “Nothing. I’m probably seeing things myself.”

  “Well, if you get in over your head, ace, you know where to find me. Your daddy’d have my ass if I let something happen to his boy.”

  “Is that what he said?”

  “Some things don’t need to be spelled out.”

  “This does.” Wyatt leaned over the table and said in as clear and straightforward a manner as possible, “I am not your concern. You do what you have to do on my father’s behalf with regard to my uncle’s fate. You do nothing on my behalf. I don’t need your protection, and I don’t want you breathing down my neck.”

  Jack had no visible reaction. He drank the last of his beer and got to his feet. “Fair enough. So let me be straight with you. If you get in my way, I’ll mow you down. And when it’s all over, your father will believe my version of events, not yours. I’m the pro. You’re the black sheep son.” He straightened abruptly and grinned at Wyatt. “Seeing how you’re a fucking Sinclair, you can buy me my beer.”

  Jack walked out of the bar as Andy McNally walked in, and Wyatt began to wonder how in hell he was going to sneak out. McNally got himself a beer and pulled out a chair at Wyatt’s table.

  “You mind?” Not waiting for an answer, he sat down. He looked tired, gray around the eyes, and his scar was more prominent, almost seeming to pulse. “I heard you
and the Chestnuts all had pancakes and fresh syrup at Penelope’s.” He grinned at Wyatt’s surprise. “No secrets in a small town. I stopped by a few minutes ago. Damned near gave her a stroke. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen her this jumpy.”

  “Too much syrup,” Wyatt suggested lightly.

  “I hope you and that PI aren’t trying to get under her skin. I’ve known Penelope Chestnut since she was in diapers, and she’s not going to do anything she doesn’t want to do. Trying to intimidate her is just going to get her back up that much more.”

  “I’m not here to intimidate anyone. I don’t speak for Jack.”

  The police chief drank some of his beer, his exhaustion hanging on him, dragging down his big shoulders. “I ran into Harriet in the hall. She looked a little shaken up, too. She’s a good kid, you know. She has some odd ideas, but she’s one of the nicest people you’re ever going to meet, here or anywhere else.” He leveled his cop eyes on Wyatt. “You and that private dick know, don’t you? That she thinks she’s Colt and Frannie’s daughter? It’s nothing we make fun of around here.”

  “I would hope it’s nothing anyone would make fun of, anywhere.”

  “If she meant to make a claim on your family, she’d have done it by now. She just wants—” He paused, searching for the right words. From what Wyatt had observed, extensive analysis of people’s deepest feelings didn’t come easily to the naturally stoic population of Cold Spring, New Hampshire. McNally finished, “I guess she just wants to know who she is.”

  Wyatt shrugged, wishing he’d skipped the beer. The snowstorm must have made everyone morose. “I suppose that’s what we all want.”

  The chief grinned unexpectedly. “Not me. I’ve known who I am since my mama slapped me on the behind and said, ‘You’re Andrew James McNally.’ No mystery. The last year of her life, she didn’t know who I was. That was tough.” His eyes went distant, and he inhaled sharply through his nostrils. “But there are tougher things. She was old. It was her time.”

  He drank his beer, and Wyatt had the feeling the chief was waiting for Harriet to come into the bar. When she didn’t and his beer was finished, McNally got stiffly to his feet. “Hell of a day today. The storm snuck up on us. We had a lot of ice on the roads. A dozen stupid little accidents—but no deaths.” He pushed a big palm through his gray hair, struggling, it seemed to Wyatt, to shake off his melancholy. “You know, they can do a lot with DNA these days. Christ, you leave an eyelash at a crime scene and we’ll nail you.”