Kiss the Moon

by Carla Neggers

  “My father,” Wyatt said. “Not Jack.”

  Penelope inhaled a sharp breath. “This is one hell of a turn of events. Diamonds. When were you going to tell me?”

  His expression didn’t change. “I didn’t know if I’d tell you at all.”

  “Damn,” she breathed. She straightened, cleared her throat, focused on the immediate problem of Bubba Johns. “Okay, I need to get moving if I’m to meet the rescue crew before they get impatient and get themselves lost. You’ll be here when we get back?”

  “I’ll be here.”

  She wanted to believe him. This morning, she had started to believe she could trust him, that they had a bit of a partnership going. But he hadn’t told her about a quaint little thing like ten million in stolen diamonds—and never mind that she’d taken days to come clean about the wreckage. That was different. He knew all along she was lying. She hadn’t had a clue he was holding something back.

  She left him the water and her wilderness medical kit and charged up the hill, retracing her steps, moving fast, trying hard not to think.

  It was ninety minutes before Penelope returned with the rescue team. Wyatt did what he could for Bubba Johns, and every time his mind conjured up images of Hal dying at his side, shivering, cold, beyond pain but lucid until the end, he pushed them back. This wasn’t the same thing. This was New Hampshire, they weren’t that far into the woods, the weather was good, help was on its way, and it was a remarkably fit old man who’d just been bonked on the head—not two thirty-two-year-olds who’d stepped off the edge of a mountain in the frigid Tasmanian wilds.

  By the time they heard the rescue team thrashing through the brush, Bubba Johns had regained consciousness and was sitting up. He was ashen, nauseous and incoherent enough that Wyatt didn’t try to interrogate him. He asked for his dogs, and the one mutt licked his face while Wyatt explained the other had made its way to his shack. The old man shut his eyes and collapsed against a rock, not complaining but clearly in pain.

  Wyatt stood out of the paramedics’ way. They descended on the old man, and for the first time he understood Penelope’s protectiveness of him. Bubba Johns was a stringy, harmless old hermit who apparently wanted nothing more than to live his life in solitude. That he’d been sucked into a decades-old mystery didn’t seem fair.

  The two paramedics treated his head injury with extreme caution, bracing his neck and doing the whole routine despite their semiconscious patient’s moaning protests. They and the young cop who’d tagged along knew Penelope and groused about expecting to be strapping her to a stretcher sled. She kept asking them if they thought Bubba would be okay. Finally, one, a heavyset woman, told her she didn’t think he was severely injured. He’d taken a good hit to the back of the head, but it looked like a concussion, not a fracture.

  “Still,” she added, “we need to get him to the hospital for the doctors to take a look.”

  “I don’t need a doctor,” Bubba muttered, barely understandable. “I just need my dogs.”

  They ignored him. The cop informed Penelope that Andy McNally and Pete were en route, and she and Wyatt were to stay there until they arrived. As an incentive, he was staying, too.

  Since his comments weren’t directed at him, Wyatt kept quiet.

  After the rescue team set off with Bubba, his mutt trotting alongside him, the cop grinned at Penelope. “We had a pool going for when your dump story would come apart. I lost. I was giving it through the weekend.”

  She scowled at him, and he grinned. He was young, probably in his mid-twenties, and he, like most males in Cold Spring, treated Penelope like a recalcitrant sister or a fishing buddy. Wyatt found this odd. He wondered how this penchant for being one of the guys affected her attitude toward him. Now that they’d slept together, was she figuring he’d gotten his sexual interest in her out of his system? Was she expecting him to offer to split a six-pack with her and fish off her dock?

  It was the only slightly amusing thought he’d had in the last hour. His sexual interest in her was not out of his system. Making love to her had only made him want her more. He found himself contending with a romantic interest, the lies and distrust between them notwithstanding. He was neither optimistic nor pessimistic about their prospects. He was simply determined to know this woman better.

  Ten minutes later, the chief of police arrived with his sole detective at his side. McNally must have been working up a good head of steam the entire trip. He was out of breath and out of sorts. He immediately pointed a finger at Penelope. “Goddamn it, I knew you were lying!”

  She sniffed at him. Wyatt stayed out of it. She and McNally had been going toe-to-toe long before he’d wandered into Cold Spring, New Hampshire. He expected Penelope to launch into tales of stolen diamonds and missing bodies, but she didn’t, keeping her mouth shut while the cops got their bearings. McNally listened to the young cop’s report, then checked around the area where they’d found Bubba while Pete went up the hill and examined the wreckage, calling down to his boss, “Andy, there aren’t any bodies.”

  McNally shifted to Penelope. “You’ve got some explaining to do. First you hold back on those messages, now I’m out here with a possible assault and a plane wreck with no Colt Sinclair and no Frannie Beaudine.”

  “What, do you think I took the bodies? Come on, Andy. I didn’t even get close to the wreckage until today, and I had Wyatt with me the whole time.”

  But Wyatt could see that saying she’d struck off into the wilderness with him wasn’t any better than saying she’d struck off on her own. McNally gritted his teeth, his scar turning redder as he took in the complications of this latest chapter in Penelope Chestnut’s week-long troubles. An unconscious hermit. A forty-five-year-old plane wreck with no bodies.

  Pete made his way down the steep hill, and McNally stepped aside to let his detective question Penelope and Wyatt about how they’d come to be here. The police chief seemed of a mind to find a reason to lock them up for the night.

  Wyatt didn’t mention the diamonds. Neither did Penelope.

  Pete told them they were free to go, and he, his boss and the young cop started to the wreckage. Wyatt didn’t blame McNally for his foul mood. It was a long, arduous trek to the downed plane, and the circumstances of it could have been avoided if Penelope had been straight with him from the beginning. The man was flat out of patience.

  As they made their way through the woods, Penelope peeled off her anorak and tied it around her waist. She’d already done her share of hiking for one day. She said, “I didn’t tell him about the diamonds because I think it complicates things. They could have been stolen years ago. Frannie might have gotten rid of them before she got on the plane—we don’t have enough information at this point.” She squinted at him. “I wasn’t trying to spare you or your father.”

  Wyatt ignored her cool tone. “I wouldn’t expect you to.”

  “Besides, McNally’s irritated enough with a plane wreck and an unconscious hermit. He doesn’t need ten million in missing diamonds on top of it.”

  “Penelope…”

  She held up a hand. “I’m upset, Wyatt. I’m tired, and I’m upset. I know you were caught between a rock and a hard place and just did what you thought was right. Believe me, I understand how difficult that can be.”

  “But you’re still pissed,” he said.

  A faint smile. “Yeah.”

  He understood. Even if she had withheld the truth about the plane crash past any point he considered reasonable, he’d learned about the diamonds after she’d confided in him. She’d made the gesture of trust, and in effect, he’d thrown it in her face.

  But right now, they had more immediate concerns. Bubba’s scroungy dog trotted out to greet them before they reached his shack. He wasn’t barking and growling, but he seemed confused.

  “The rescue team must have managed to get rid of him,” Penelope said. “Give me a minute, and I’ll put out water and food for both dogs.”

  The second dog—older and mor
e independent—joined them, and both mutts followed her to the brook, where she dipped two pans of water, and to the garden shed, where she found a big barrel of dog food and scooped some into another two pans.

  “I guess I should just leave them out here,” she said tentatively, looking around the isolated homestead. “I can check on them later, in case Bubba has to stay at the hospital.”

  “If they’re used to Bubba, they’ll be able to fend for themselves.”

  Her green eyes focused on Wyatt, and he noticed her cheeks were pale in spite of all her hiking, the last few hours taking their toll. “What do you think Bubba was doing out there?”

  Wyatt shook his head. “I don’t know. He must have been hit before we arrived. Otherwise we’d have heard something.”

  “That seems logical, but right now I don’t know if logic holds. I see three possibilities. One, he went out on his own and tripped. Two, he went out on his own and someone hit him on the back of the head, which leads to another series of questions and possibilities. Or, three, he was forced to take someone to the wreckage and was bonked on the head for his trouble.”

  “The third scenario would mean he definitely knows who hit him. The second one, he might or might not.” Wyatt paused, welcoming the gusting, cooling breeze. “I still don’t buy the first scenario.”

  She squeezed her eyes shut. “God. We need to talk to Bubba and get him to tell us what he knows, if anything.”

  They made their way to her house and drove to the hospital in Laconia. Jack Dunning met them in the emergency room. He had on his jacket, his jeans, his cowboy boots. No hat. “The old bastard checked himself out. He got a nurse to give him a ride back to town.”

  “He’s okay?” Penelope asked.

  “He’s got a bitch of a concussion, but he shook it off. He’ll be fine in a day or two.” The flat eyes settled on her. “He says he slipped. No one pushed him.”

  “That’s bullshit,” Wyatt said calmly.

  “Well, it’s not the first bit of bullshit we’ve heard around here, is it?” Jack kept his gaze on Penelope, but she wasn’t one to squirm. “So, you found the wreckage, after all.”

  She shrugged. “Changing my story seemed like a good idea at the time. All things considered, if I had to do it over again I’d just come up with a better story. The turn-of-the-century dump was pretty lame.”

  “The wreck’s picked clean, Jack,” Wyatt said. “No remains, no personal effects, nothing. It might have fallen out of the sky by itself without a damned soul in it.”

  Dunning’s expression didn’t change. “I’ll take a look myself.”

  “I can draw you a map,” Penelope said, adding none too subtly, “unless you don’t need one.”

  Jack grinned. “I like how your mind works, Miss Chestnut. It’s almost as devious as my own.”

  But she didn’t grin back. She was pale, shaken and very serious. “Did you follow Bubba? Did you force him to take you out to the wreckage? Did you leave him for dead?”

  Ignoring her, Jack turned to Wyatt. “This thing’s going to hit the news wires before too long. Do you want me to call your father about the plane?”

  “No, I’ll do it. If you have anything to add—”

  “If I have anything to add, I’ll call him myself. Don’t worry, Sinclair. I’ll do my job.”

  Behind him, Penelope said, “You didn’t answer my questions.”

  Jack shifted to her, winked. “Sorry, toots. It’s not my job to answer your questions.”

  He walked out of the emergency room, and when Penelope started after him, Wyatt scooped one arm around her middle and stopped her. “It won’t change a thing. He’ll just make you madder.”

  Her jaw was set, and even as she glared after Dunning, she said, “Bubba can’t stay out at his place alone.”

  “He’s been there alone for more than twenty years.”

  “But not in this condition—”

  “How do you know he hasn’t had worse concussions? Penelope, let the man live his life the way he sees fit.”

  She turned to him, her eyes gleaming with fear and more unspent energy than she had a right to. “What if someone did attack him today and comes back? Wyatt, I couldn’t stand it if something happened to him.”

  He nodded. “I’ll go over there this evening and check on him.”

  “I’ll go, too.”

  “Haven’t you done enough hiking for one day?”

  She managed a smile. “I’m just getting started.”

  When they arrived at the inn, Lyman was pacing in the parlor, an unlit cigar in his mouth, his wife and cousin nowhere in evidence. He paid Wyatt no attention and pounced on his daughter. “Goddamn it, Penelope, this is just what got you grounded. You’re reckless. You don’t think. What the hell were you doing, going off into the woods with Sinclair? You don’t know his motives!”

  She thrust her chin out at him. “I don’t? Money, adventure, thrills. A Sinclair’s motives are easy. It’s everybody else’s motives I don’t get, like whoever would hit an old man on the back of the head and leave him for dead.”

  Lyman growled at her. “This has all gone too damned far.”

  “No kidding.”

  He sighed. “You’re okay?”

  She nodded, and Wyatt could see her biting her lower lip, could sense her determination not to fall apart now that the worst was over. “Bubba—”

  “Bubba’s a crusty old goat. He’ll be fine.”

  Wyatt turned to Lyman, who was visibly calmer now that he’d seen his daughter face-to-face. “Is word out yet about the wreckage?”

  “It’s starting to go around town. Won’t be long before it’s on CNN and the damned wires.”

  “I need to talk to Harriet,” Penelope said, suddenly white-faced.

  Her father nodded. “She’s making scones.”

  “Is she mad at me for lying about the plane?”

  “You can’t tell with Harriet. One thing, though.” He gave Penelope’s hand a quick squeeze. “Be straight with her, kid. She’s a big girl. You don’t need to take her problems onto your shoulders.”

  “I wouldn’t patronize her—”

  “No, but you’d go to the ends of the earth for her. Go on. You two talk.”

  After Penelope charged off, Wyatt said something about going to call his father, but as he started for the stairs, Lyman said quietly, “My daughter’s only problem before you came to town was distractibility and a touch of recklessness. Now she’s got a half-dead hermit in the woods, she’s getting threats, her place has been ransacked.” He paused and sighed audibly. His taciturn nature made such conversations difficult for him. “I’m thinking you’re bad luck at best, Sinclair. Same as your uncle was for Frannie Beaudine.”

  “You could be right.”

  “I don’t want to be right. I want my daughter to stay safe.”

  “If it’s any consolation, so do I.”

  Sixteen

  P enelope found Harriet chopping nuts on a wooden cutting board with a huge butcher knife. She liked the control of a knife, she’d often said, and preferred the texture of the nuts when cut with a knife instead of a machine. She’d heard about the plane, about Bubba. When Penelope pulled up a chair at the kitchen table and started to apologize about lying, Harriet cut her off, her eyes widening, making her look a little crazy. “If there were no bodies, then Colt and Frannie might still be alive.”

  Penelope shook her head before things could get out of hand. “I think that’s far-fetched, Harriet. From the condition of the plane, I’d have to say this was no soft landing.”

  Harriet hacked at the hazelnuts, her knife gleaming in the waning late afternoon light. “Then where are their bodies?”

  “There’s still a lot of snow out on the hill where they crashed. We might find them when the weather warms up. It’s just too early—”

  “Why didn’t you tell me you’d found their plane? Didn’t you think you could trust me?”

  “Harriet…”

  “No,
” she said moodily, “obviously you didn’t.”

  “It was never a question of trust. It was just a question of judgment—my judgment. I was in a sticky situation, and I did the best I could.”

  “I don’t see what’s sticky about it. It seems straightforward to me. You either found Colt and Frannie’s plane or you didn’t.”

  “The reporters—”

  She stopped, her knife poised in midair. It was a sharp, eight-inch deal. Harriet kept all the knives scrupulously clean and sharp. “Were you afraid I’d make a fool of myself?”

  Penelope sensed this conversation was going nowhere fast. She was tired, more than she’d realized. “No, I was afraid they’d try to make a fool out of you, or they’d just upset you—and Bubba. It wasn’t just you. To be honest, I didn’t see what it would accomplish to have the whole world parade out to the site of a tragic, forty-five-year-old plane crash. Frankly, I still don’t.”

  Harriet pursed her lips, going snappish and pissy—her defense, Penelope knew, when she was feeling hurt and frightened. “Well, it seems you’ve only made things worse for everyone.”

  “I suppose I have. I’m sorry.”

  Harriet’s eyes filled with tears, and she carefully set down her knife and collapsed onto a chair. She stared at the pile of nuts on her cutting board. “I know you were just doing your best, Penelope. Really, I do.”

  “But you expected when Colt and Frannie’s plane was discovered, you’d have an answer, one way or another, about whether or not they were involved with leaving you on the church doorstep—if they really were your birth parents. Now…I don’t know.” Penelope heaved out a breath, wanting nothing more than a hot bath, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich—and Wyatt, she thought. In spite of everything. The ten million in stolen diamonds, the fact that he was everything she’d told her father he was. A man of action, adventure, thrills, drive. “Well, at least we know their plane went down, and we know it went down here in Cold Spring.”

  Harriet nodded dully, staring at her little pile of hazelnuts.

  “The Sinclairs will have investigators comb through the wreckage. Maybe they’ll find out how the plane went down. That might lead to clues about what Colt and Frannie’s relationship was really like. It’s too early to jump to any conclusions.”