Night's Landing Read online

  “It represents almost a hundred and fifty years of middle Tennessee history,” she said. “Leola and Violet Poe made very few improvements in it over the years. There’s still no central heat and only cold running water.”

  “President Poe’s a wealthy man—”

  “It wasn’t about money. Leola and Violet didn’t embrace change.”

  Nate followed her onto a stone path that led through the overgrown grass to the porch. “I like my hot water.”

  “They had hot water. They just had to boil it.”

  “Wes Poe didn’t have a typical baby boomer upbringing, did he?”

  “He was born during the war, so technically he’s not a boomer, but, no, the Poe sisters weren’t exactly Ward and June Cleaver.”

  Sarah trotted up the steps onto the porch, more at ease than Nate had seen her since he’d arrived in Night’s Landing. It wasn’t just being on familiar turf—it was having told someone else about the letter, calling the bluff of the asshole who’d written it. He joined her on the porch, feeling as if he’d just stepped back in time.

  “When I was growing up,” she went on, “I’d sneak up here every chance I got and sit out on the porch and listen to Leola and Violet tell stories. When I was in high school, I started videotaping them.”

  “Did you include some of the footage in your documentary?”

  She nodded. “They’re incredible, so natural and real. Every story is priceless, whether it’s something ordinary like picking blackberries and going to church suppers, or something melodramatic, like hiding in the cellar during a tornado, or finding my grandfather dead. They were elderly by the time I was a teenager, but they had such vivid memories. Their stories helped me get to know them as children and teenagers themselves, as young women.” She gazed out at the knee-high grass and weeds popping up through the rosebush. “I miss them.”

  Nate knew she was seeing more than an empty historic house. “I imagine people will be most interested in what the Poe sisters have to say about the president.”

  “I’m not his biographer. I don’t focus on him. His is a fascinating and unique story, but it’s not the only one.” She straightened her spine and seemed to make an effort to return herself to the present. “I’ve been working on one aspect of the Poe house or another since high school. But I’m done with it now.”

  “What’s next?”

  “I’m supposed to be taking a break and figuring that out.”

  “What happens to this place?”

  “It’ll open to the public at some point. There’s still a lot to be sorted out. Parking, visitors’ center, rest rooms. Who does what. The trust, the state, the federal government.”

  “Wes Poe didn’t want it?”

  She shook her head. “He thinks Leola and Violet would have approved of its fate in their own way. Imagine. They opened their door one morning and found him right here on this porch.”

  “In an apple basket,” Nate said, remembering their conversation from the other night in New York over beer and her half-eaten quesadilla. He leaned against the porch rail, still feeling their kiss, the eagerness of her mouth on his. But she was off in Poe land, the house a living and breathing entity to her. “Think one of the sisters had him and just didn’t want to admit it?”

  “It’s possible, but very unlikely. They were both well into their forties when they found him.”

  Conroy Fontaine rounded a mass of red roses. “And our Dr. Dunnemore no doubt knows more than she’ll ever tell,” he said pleasantly. “I should practice my eavesdropping skills and see what I can learn.”

  Sarah’s laugh struck Nate as polite more than heartfelt. “I had a professor who often said that one can tell a good paper as much by what’s not in it as what is. I imagine I know more about this land and the people who’ve lived on it than anyone in their right mind would ever want to know. But, everything I have, I’ve turned over to the Poe House Trust.”

  Fontaine leaned on the rickety rail of the porch steps. “I’ve heard you picked through the Poe family dump.”

  “The word is excavated.”

  He grinned at her. “Find any old diaries?”

  “You are hopeless, Mr. Fontaine,” she said in an exaggerated Scarlett O’Hara accent.

  Fontaine looked at Nate, then motioned vaguely up the river. “My fishing camp’s just up the road. It has a tricky gas stove. I almost blew myself up just now trying to light the pilot and decided to take a walk to calm my nerves. I heard you two out here.”

  Sarah sat on the top step. “What were you planning to cook?” she asked.

  “Your prune cake got me hankering for real southern food. I was going to try my hand at fried apricot pies.”

  “Fried apricot pies—oh, Conroy! I adore fried pies.”

  She was into the southern thing. Nate watched her cheeks go from dead-pale to rosy. Next time, he thought, amused, instead of kissing her, he’d bring up southern food. But he understood—it was a distraction.

  Conroy was having fun, too. “I like them still warm, sprinkled with confectioner’s sugar—”

  “They’re not easy to make. I tend to burn them.”

  “If I bring you fried apricot pies for breakfast, will you get me an interview with your friend the president?”

  “You are incorrigible, Mr. Fontaine.” She was good-natured about his relentless, open push for her to trade on her friendship with John Wesley Poe—it seemed to be a conversation they’d had before. “It used to be that not many people even knew we were friends. Now—well, that’s changed, hasn’t it?”

  “People knew,” Conroy said, suddenly serious. “They just have such enormous respect for your family that they didn’t want to intrude. Even nosy reporters like me.” But his seriousness didn’t last. “Deputy Winter, you work for the president, don’t you? Technically. The Marshals Service is part of the Department of Justice. Your boss is the director, his boss is the attorney general—and his boss is the president. There. You could introduce me.”

  Nate didn’t respond. He’d never met any of the presidents in office during his years as a deputy, and he didn’t joke about them.

  “Ah. I see I stepped over the line. Well, I don’t want to get anyone into trouble, least of all me.” Fontaine patted his stomach. “I think I’ll go wrestle with my stove and try my fried pies again. I’ll bring some by if they come out.”

  “I hope you will,” Sarah said.

  After he was gone, she leaned into Nate and whispered, “I know where there’s a key.”

  Great. He was going to get a tour. “What about the alarm system?”

  “I have the code. If I told Conroy, he’d want a personal tour. At this point I think most of what he has on President Poe is off the Internet, although I understand he’s interviewed most of the neighbors, even ones who moved in long after Wes left.”

  “Your family?”

  “He’s tried. My parents don’t give interviews about President Poe.”

  “What about Rob?”

  “He doesn’t, either. Nor do I. We made that decision a long time ago, before Wes went into politics. He had an unusual background, and we all adored Leola and Violet—we knew sooner or later someone would take an interest in his story.”

  “I think your buddy Conroy has the hots for you.”

  She blushed. “Not everyone thinks that way.”

  Fontaine did. Nate didn’t know yet about the property manager.

  The house was cool and elegant, furnished in a mix of country and Victorian antiques, as if the two maiden sisters had just stepped out. Not much dust. Sarah explained that it was cleaned and the yard mowed on a regular, if not totally adequate, basis.

  On a marble mantel, there were pictures of Leola and Violet Poe, two ordinary-looking women who’d raised a president, and of John Wesley Poe as a little boy, a teenager, a college graduate—and as the governor of Tennessee.

  “They never wanted him to leave Night’s Landing, but they were proud of him,” Sarah said. “They
and my grandmother died within two years of each other when I was in college. You passed the little church cemetery where they’re buried.”

  Nate wandered with her through the drawing room and the library, the kitchen, the butler’s pantry, and upstairs to the bedrooms. “Did the family have money?” he asked.

  “When they built this house, they did. It didn’t last. Leola and Violet weren’t ashamed of it. They had a small inheritance, but they both worked in a local bank for years. They were very pragmatic when it came to money.” She caught herself. “I’m sorry. I’m boring you.”

  “Not yet. You’re passionate about your work. I can see that.”

  “This house, Leola and Violet—” She glanced around the small room, not seeing what was there now, Nate thought, but what had been there. “It really is hard to believe I’m done with all this.”

  “Did you interview your father?”

  “Definitely. He’s between the Poe sisters and Wes in age. People have even speculated that he could be Wes’s father, but—” She shook her head. “He’s one in a long, long line of possibilities. There’s just no evidence. It could have been anyone.”

  “There’s DNA these days.”

  She smiled slightly. “Yes, there is. Shall we go, or do you want to hear more? I hope it’s been a distraction, at least.”

  “I could do worse for distractions.” And better, he thought, noting the curve of her hip. “My uncle would have me wallpapering my sister Carine’s old room.”

  “Wallpapering could be therapeutic.”

  “You haven’t seen Gus’s taste in wallpaper.”

  She headed across the lawn and back onto the path along the river, warning him about mosquitoes, chiggers and ticks, telling him how the river was higher now, because of the dams, than it had been when the Poes had built the house after the Civil War.

  No more pleasant, exaggerated southern accent. No more charm and laughter and relaxed talk.

  Something about him had gotten under her skin. Nate had no idea what.

  Finally she spun around at him on the narrow path, her face flushed with exertion and emotion. “Has it occurred to you that the letter from New York has nothing to do with me and everything to do with you? That it’s a ruse—the shooter or whoever sent it saw me in New York and decided to throw you off the scent.”

  “I’m not on the scent. I’m one of the victims.”

  “You don’t expect me to believe that, do you? You’re not here just out of a noble concern for my safety, or to put Rob’s mind at ease. You’re here because you think Joe Collins and his team are on the wrong track.”

  Nate hated to see the fear back in her gray eyes. “I don’t know what track they’re on.”

  “Hector Sanchez. Agent Collins hasn’t given up on him.”

  “Because witnesses place him—”

  “It doesn’t matter. You think the answers to the shooting are here.”

  “It’s not that clear-cut,” Nate said. He found himself wanting to see her smile, to ease her tension and fear—maybe because it would help ease his own. He smiled. “Except for one thing. I doubt I’m putting Rob’s mind at ease. He thinks I’m here because you’re pretty.”

  She gave him a direct look. “Are you?”

  He met her gaze, one she’d probably used to wither more than a few men by now, and shrugged. “It doesn’t hurt.”

  She sighed. “I see now why Juliet warned me about you.”

  “Juliet? What did she say?”

  “That you’re hell on women.”

  She turned and started back down the path, the late afternoon sun catching the pale highlights in her hair.

  He grunted. “And exactly what are you on men?”

  She glanced back at him and smiled. “Nothing. I’ve been too busy for men.”

  Afraid of men, maybe. At least distrustful. She must have had a man or two who’d wanted her because of her looks and never saw beyond them to the woman underneath. Nate wasn’t so sure he wasn’t one of them—although the past few days had been a crash course in what made Sarah Dunnemore tick. The trauma of the attack on her brother had stripped away her defenses. Nate didn’t know what the hell it had done to him.

  “You’re not busy anymore,” he said to her back.

  She stumbled, but grabbed a thin tree and righted herself. And pressed on without so much as a backward glance. Which was a good thing, because Nate didn’t think he could hide just how much he wanted her. But she was a smart woman. She probably knew that.

  Seventeen

  Even before Claude Rousseau spoke, Janssen realized the news from New York wasn’t good. “Nate Winter left for Tennessee this morning,” Rousseau said without preamble. “I don’t know why.”

  Nicholas sat back in the black leather chair in the sitting room of his Herengracht suite. It was time to leave Holland and go back to Switzerland. But the Dunnemores were still here. Betsy.

  “Sarah Dunnemore’s a pretty young woman,” he said.

  “Agreed.” But Rousseau, a meticulous though unimaginative man, would be merely stating a fact, not extrapolating from it any reason for Winter to head south. “Do you want me to go down there?”

  “If you have to. What’s Rob Dunnemore’s condition?”

  “Improving.”

  Why had someone shot him? Janssen stood up under the low, slanted ceiling and looked out his window at the street, bicyclists pedaling past the picturesque canal. His instincts seldom lead him astray.

  “The FBI agent in charge of the investigation went to see Deputy Dunnemore again today,” Rousseau went on. “I doubt it was a courtesy call.”

  “You think something’s up?”

  “I don’t have any additional information. Until I do, it’s my advice that you go back to Switzerland and lay low until this thing gets cleared up.”

  Always the thundercloud. It was why Rousseau would never be a real player. Nicholas opened an expensive humidor and lifted out a fat, fragrant cigar. “Find out why Sarah Dunnemore went back to Night’s Landing. Find out why Deputy Winter is there. I don’t want any interference in what you have to do. Again, no footsteps back to me. None. Understood?”

  “Of course.”

  Janssen hung up and lit his cigar. Europeans, at least, weren’t as fixated as Americans were on tobacco as one of the world’s great evils—a small consolation to living in exile.

  He had to trust that Rousseau was up to the job. Tax evasion was a nonviolent crime, one for which many people had at least some sympathy, but the attempted murder of two federal agents and the fear generated by a sniper attack in Central Park weren’t something he wanted tied back to him in any way, even peripherally. He was under enough federal scrutiny as it was.

  Rob Dunnemore and his sister were children of privilege and position, if not of immense wealth. Nicholas didn’t know what to make of them. They’d never had to struggle. Neither had Betsy, but she was naturally gracious and well-mannered.

  It was possible Sarah had seen him at the Rijksmuseum. Likely, even.

  Did it matter?

  He was a fugitive simply because he’d failed to turn up for his trial on tax charges.

  But the Dunnemores were friends with the president. They had their own reputations to protect. Having a wanted man turn up out of Betsy’s past would be a cause for concern.

  Nicholas savored the flavor of his cigar as he put his questions out of his mind. He debated whether he should take the risk of hiring a prostitute tonight, then envisioned himself with Betsy, beautiful Betsy.

  Oh, God.

  Choking on a mouthful of smoke, he ran into the bathroom and stabbed out his cigar in the sink. He drank from the faucet, pushing back the image. Even now, he could see her at eighteen, smiling at him, taking an interest in him. What a misfit he’d been. An outsider.

  The tension of not knowing what was happening in New York was getting to him. He hated waiting.

  A prostitute, even in permissive Amsterdam, brought with it certain hazards,
to his health, to his mental well-being—to his freedom if he had the wrong prostitute, one who recognized him, who talked. It had happened once. But he’d dealt with the problem before it had got out of hand. As he had Charlene Brooker.

  As he would deal with any problem in New York.

  His phone rang again. It wouldn’t be Rousseau. He had his orders. But few people had Janssen’s number in Amsterdam.

  He picked up the extension but said nothing.

  “I’m going to have something you want within forty-eight hours,” the voice on the other end, indistinguishably male or female, said. “Be prepared to wire five million U.S. dollars into my account. I’ll call with the number when I have what you want.”

  Janssen sank back onto the leather chair. “Brooker?”

  But the person on the other end had already disconnected.

  Nicholas tensed the muscles in his hands to keep himself from throwing the phone across the room, instead carefully, quietly cradling it. Control was essential. He had to maintain his grasp of the situation at all times, or he’d never win.

  What did the caller expect to have that was worth five million dollars?

  Nicholas regretted having blurted a name. His men had lost track of Ethan Brooker weeks ago.

  Was he responsible for the Central Park attack?

  Was it a trap he’d set?

  In hindsight, Janssen knew he’d handled the former Special Forces officer badly. By not presenting authorities with a suspect for Brooker’s wife’s death, Nicholas had put his entire operation—he’d put himself—in jeopardy. The only answer now was to have Ethan Brooker killed. The sooner the better.

  Five million dollars. It was ridiculous.

  Janssen didn’t call Rousseau back to tell him about the anonymous call. It wouldn’t affect his orders. He knew what he needed to do. If the trail in New York led to Ethan Brooker, distraught widower, army officer bent on revenge, then Rousseau would deal with it.