Night's Landing Read online

  “I read the papers, that’s all.” Brooker opened the front door to the cottage, no sign he was veering out of control, ready to rip it off its hinges; but that could be his military training and experience. “Relax, Deputy, I’m on your side. Whatever’s going on, Sarah’s up to her eyeballs in it. Look after her. I’ll look after myself.”

  He walked into the cottage and let the door bang shut behind him.

  Nate returned to the house, going around to the back where a half-dozen fat bumblebees hovered in a sprawling rosebush thick with pale pink blossoms. He smelled frying onions, heard the sizzle of something Sarah had dumped into her frying pan. When he entered the kitchen, she smiled at him as if he’d just come in from working in the garden and all in her life was normal. A defense mechanism. Her hair was pulled back into a loose ponytail, her sleeves pushed up to her elbows as she broke up raw hamburger into her frying pan.

  “I found some hamburger in the freezer, so I’m making a casserole,” she said. “Egg noodles, hamburger, tomato sauce, cheese, green olives. It’s another of my grandmother’s recipes.”

  Nate said nothing. He could feel the weight of the bandage on his arm, a steady throb that reminded him he hadn’t taken any Tylenol that morning and that nothing about this scene was ordinary.

  “She lived well into her eighties,” Sarah went on. “I guess her cooking didn’t kill her. She worked hard all her life, right up to her last days. She endured so many tragedies.”

  The telephone rang, but Nate picked up the extension before Sarah could get to it. “Dunnemore residence.”

  “Nate? Hell, you sound like a butler.” It was Rob, more alert than he had since the shooting. “You’re the one I want to talk to, anyway. Juliet’s on her way down there. Getting snatched this morning threw her.”

  “What the hell does she want down here?”

  “To talk to you. You might want to sit on her when she gets there.”

  No kidding. Nate glanced at Sarah, who was now using a spatula to break up the hamburger in the frying pan. It was smoking, sizzling, but he had no illusions—she was listening to every word he said. He hadn’t told her yet what he’d learned about their “gardener” from his own sources. He wasn’t sure if he would, or if he’d tell Rob. He’d told Joe Collins, not that the FBI agent had returned the favor and told him anything.

  “Talk to me about Conroy Fontaine,” Nate said.

  He could see Sarah stiffen, but her brother didn’t seem to be caught off guard. “He checks out as a reporter from Memphis,” Rob said. “That’s as far as I got. I was going to dig deeper after he tracked my folks down in Amsterdam. Where is he now?”

  “Last we saw, smoking cigarettes with an old fisherman.”

  “What else?” Rob asked. “There’s more, Nate. I can tell.”

  “Fontaine had a picture of Nicholas Janssen with him. Name ring a bell with you?”

  “Yeah, sure. Rich tax evader on the lam in Switzerland.”

  “He and your mother and President Poe all spent their freshman year together at Vanderbilt.”

  Rob was silent. Sarah turned off the heat under her frying pan and shoved it aside, her attempt to distract herself obviously failing her. Her ponytail had nearly worked itself out of its covered rubber band.

  “Sarah?” her brother asked.

  “Hanging in there.”

  “My parents will be in New York tonight. Maybe they can straighten this out.”

  Nate went ahead and filled him in on what he’d learned about Ethan Brooker.

  “This all could be a coincidence,” Rob said quietly. “My parents have a way of attracting drama to them. A rich tax evader, a reporter looking for a bombshell, this character Brooker maybe grasping at straws—what a mess. But they don’t necessarily have anything to do with the attack on us. I get to sit here and blow into this air thing, and you get to hang out on the river and wait for Longstreet to show up. And the FBI. They’ll be back knocking on your door soon.”

  “I imagine so. Collins has everything I have. It’s up to him now.”

  Sarah ran out the back door. Nate tried to smile into the phone, hoping it’d somehow take the edge off his words. “Take care of yourself. I’ll be in touch.”

  Thirty

  Juliet tried to remember what Rob had told her about Night’s Landing. A wide bend on the Cumberland River east of Nashville, rural, picturesque, rolling fields and hills. She pictured the photographs he’d shown her. A John Wesley Poe campaign ad.

  Nothing helped.

  She was lost.

  She turned up a country-western radio station and tapped the steering wheel to the beat of a tune she’d never heard before. She was on some godforsaken back road. The river, wide and slow, snaked below her, intermittently visible through thick woods and fields. She finally pulled over in front of an abandoned brick house with an overgrown yard and, incongruously, white lace curtains in the windows. She needed to get her bearings. Her entire body was on fire with pain. She half wished someone had stopped her from heading south. But no one had. She’d been x-rayed and gooed up at the E.R. She’d answered every damn question Joe Collins snapped at her. She’d visited Rob and told him what she was doing. He was recovering from a serious injury—he couldn’t be expected to knock some sense into her.

  She’d stopped at the apartment to feed her fish and put on decent clothes and get her gun, all without anyone hog-tying her to keep her from going off half-cocked.

  Well, maybe not half-cocked. Maybe only a quarter-cocked. She wanted to talk to Nate. He was an experienced senior deputy who not only could advise her but would want to know what was on her mind.

  Something was off. The shooting, the guy Sarah Dunnemore had seen in the park, the anonymous letter, the parents missing their flight in Amsterdam, those assholes snatching her at the crack of dawn.

  Hector Sanchez.

  The tone and direction of Joe Collins’s questions.

  “Yeah,” she said aloud. “Something’s definitely off.”

  She switched off the engine of her rented car, a cheap compact—she was down here on her own nickel.

  The damn road look like a dead end.

  How fitting, she thought, pushing open her door and climbing out.

  The air was moist, warmer than New York. Fresher. She groaned in pain, leaning on the door as she gazed down at the river and tried to figure out where she’d gone wrong. God, she hurt. She’d had her ass kicked that morning in the city, and here she was in Tennessee. Her own doing. The truth was, she’d made sure no one dissuaded her. She’d all but lied to Collins, letting him assume she was going home to rest after her ordeal. She’d told him if he had any more questions he could reach her on her cell phone.

  She assumed that next she’d get her ass kicked by the chief deputy. Or Nate. She’d be seeing him sooner.

  She could just turn around and head back to New York.

  Nah. In for a penny, in for a pound. It’d always been her way.

  She walked onto the gravel driveway and stood in the shade of a tall oak tree. The ground was damp, the sky clearing with golden sunlight sparkling on a huge, scraggly pink azalea.

  “Can I help you, ma’am?” a southern male voice asked behind her.

  Juliet turned too fast, a bone-deep stab of pain shooting through her ribs. She almost doubled over, but the man didn’t make a move to help her. He had on muddy overalls over a T-shirt, his dark hair pulled back in a ponytail, his brown eyes sweeping over her in a frank, assessing glance. Despite his simple attire and deferential manner, she could see that he was thinking five steps ahead while remaining focused on the moment.

  She wore a pantsuit, her weapon, a Glock semiautomatic, concealed under her jacket. But she had a feeling he knew it was there. “I’m looking for the Dunnemore place.”

  He gave her a dubious look. “Lost, huh? Right. What are you, another reporter? Have fun.”

  He turned to leave.

  So much for deference. “I’m a deputy U.S. marshal.
”

  He glanced back at her, the brown eyes almost amused. “What, you want a quarter to call Washington, or do you have a phone in your shoe?”

  She probably wasn’t looking very marshal-like. “You couldn’t be more obnoxious, could you? I’ve had a hell of a rotten day.”

  She started to reach for her badge, but he grabbed her elbow before she’d even realized he’d moved. Normally she was more on the ball. She blamed the pain pill she’d let the doctor give her that morning in the E.R., the fuzzy head she still had from the flight down and her wanderings through middle Tennessee.

  She noticed the black tattoo on the man’s muscular upper arm. “Relax, okay? I’m just going for my badge.”

  “Save it.” He released her. “You can explain yourself to your buddy Deputy Winter. He’s pretty much in a rotten mood.”

  “That sounds like Nate. And you would be?”

  “Ethan Brooker. I’m the Dunnemore gardener.”

  Gardener? She snorted in disbelief. “Trust me, it’s more believable that I’m a federal agent. You always manhandle Dunnemore visitors?”

  “Only lately.”

  “Where is their house?”

  “You drove right past it.”

  “The log house? I guess I was expecting something fancier. Well, I can find my way back. A pleasure, Mr. Brooker.”

  She didn’t bother making it sound like she meant it. She started for her car, but winced, her road rash killing her. She had no reserves. She might have even moaned.

  “You going to pass out?” Brooker asked. “Because if you are, give me your car keys. I’ll drive you and your car down to the house. Easier than having to haul you on my shoulder. Looks like you carry some muscle.”

  Had he just called her fat? “I’ve never passed out in my life.”

  “Who hit you?”

  She automatically touched her swollen lip—she’d given up too soon on icing it. “Long story. Let’s just say it wasn’t a guy wearing overalls.” She pulled on a low branch of the oak. “Nice beech tree. Beautiful area to work.”

  “Yes, ma’am, it’s a real pretty place to work.”

  He’d amped up the down-home accent and manner, but he was no damn gardener. Then he leaned toward her. “Don’t get excited, Deputy. It’s an oak tree. You’ll have to do better than that to trip me up.”

  She ignored him. “Is this the house where President Poe was raised?”

  “It is.”

  “I guess you don’t keep up this place, do you?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  She rolled her eyes and climbed back into her car, giving a shudder of pain when the wheel brushed against her bruised rib. Brooker frowned at her through her open window, a spark of concern in his brown eyes. “You look like shit, Deputy. Want me to drive you to the Dunnemores’?”

  “That good ol’ boy act comes and goes, doesn’t it?”

  He grinned at her. “Two minutes, you’ll be talking to Deputy Winter.”

  “He’s not going to tell me a posse’s out looking for you, is he?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  She thought he winked. She started the engine and pulled farther into the driveway to turn around. Brooker walked alongside her, toward the river. He was a buff gardener, that was for damn sure. A danger-courting type, never mind the overalls.

  He got close to her car and tapped the roof. “Hold on, Deputy.” His voice was quiet, serious. “We’ve got a problem.”

  She’d seen it at the same moment he had. Two bodies were sprawled on the edge of the bluff above the river.

  Juliet stopped the car and drew her weapon. “Keep your hands where I can see them.”

  Brooker didn’t argue.

  Ignoring her pain, she got out of the car and had him lead the way through the tall grass to the bodies.

  Both were men. Obviously dead. White.

  One blond, one dark haired.

  Christ.

  They were the two men who’d snatched her on the Upper West Side that morning. The blond one was facedown in the grass, one foot hanging over the edge of the bluff, at least forty feet above the river. The dark-haired man—the one who’d stuck the gun in Juliet’s gut and hit her when she didn’t answer his questions right—was on his back, his chest covered in blood.

  They must have dumped their car at LaGuardia, caught a flight just ahead of hers and arrived in Tennessee in time to get shot dead.

  “You hear any shots fired?” she asked Brooker.

  “No.”

  Neither had Nate and Rob in Central Park. “These two guys attacked me this morning in New York.” Damn. “I’m going to pat you down.”

  “I’ve got a thirty-eight in an ankle holster. Right ankle.”

  “How convenient.” She confiscated the weapon and finished patting him down. Hard body, lots of muscles. He must have worked his butt off as a gardener. “We’re going to the Dunnemore house. We’ll call the police on the way. I’d better not find anymore dead people there.” Nate. Sarah.

  “I didn’t kill these men.”

  She heard something stir in the brush behind her and started to swing around. The cool barrel of a gun touched her right ear. She could see it out of the corner of her eye and went still. “Drop your weapon now.”

  It was another southern male voice. A county sheriff who’d answered a local’s call about the bodies?

  “Look, I’m the good guy—”

  “You’re Deputy U.S. Marshal Juliet Longstreet. I knew you’d come.”

  She got it now. He wasn’t a local sheriff.

  “One more time,” he said. “Drop your weapon—away from our Mr. Brooker, if you please.”

  She tossed it lightly to her right.

  “Brooker’s weapon,” the man with the gun said.

  She pulled out the thirty-eight and tossed it, too. She felt adrenaline surge through her, obliterating the pain from her injuries.

  Brooker stood very still, again with that steely look that said he was thinking five steps ahead of what was going on. Juliet didn’t know what to make of him.

  “Don’t be a hero, Deputy,” the man behind her said. “You’re in no condition to take me on and risk Brooker’s life, not after what those idiots did to you this morning. Brooker, I’ll kill her if you flinch.”

  Brooker hadn’t so much as let an eye flicker. “Did you kill my wife?”

  “No. The men I just killed did.”

  “Janssen’s men?” he asked stonily.

  “Indeed. They killed your wife on his orders.” The man behind Juliet seemed almost charming, as if they were gossiping about a couple of locals. “He sent them down here to kill all of us. Clean things up.”

  “Your real name isn’t Conroy Fontaine,” Brooker said.

  “It’s Poe. John Wesley Poe.” He spoke proudly, the gun moving a few millimeters just below Juliet’s ear. His tone suggested he was just waiting for anyone to contradict him. “My mother gave me the same name as the women who stole my older brother gave him.”

  President Poe? This son of a bitch had just killed two men in the backyard of the house where the president was raised, and now he was saying they were related?

  Ah, hell.

  Juliet felt a wave of dizziness. She couldn’t breathe. She started to topple forward, tried to stop herself, then thought—why not? She went all the way, pretending to faint from her injuries, and fell against Brooker’s knees. Fontaine. John Wesley Poe. Whoever he was, he grabbed her by the hair and pulled her off Brooker, throwing her aside. She landed hard on the gravel driveway, right on her road rash, and screamed out in pain, tried to yell to Brooker to duck.

  But he’d gone over the edge of the bluff.

  Who the hell is this guy?

  Her mind was all over the place. Her body was reeling from the fresh waves of pain. Her ribs, her head. The damn road rash.

  Fontaine jerked her to her feet. He looked awful. Her stomach lurched and she threw up on him, noticing that he had on green camouflage pants and jacke
t as she heaved. She was dizzy, reeling from pain.

  He sneered in disgust. “I can kill you with my bare hands.” There was no lilt to the accent now, no charm, however incongruous, to his tone. “Do you understand? I don’t need a fucking gun.”

  Juliet nodded, then felt another wave of nausea and knew she really was passing out.

  Thirty-One

  Sarah loaded up a big wooden tray with glasses, a bowl of ice, a sugar pot, spoons and a pitcher of tea—regular tea, not tea punch—and carried it out to the porch. She abandoned the casserole. She wasn’t hungry. Whenever she was stressed out, she’d tackle one of her grandmother’s recipes. It wasn’t just the comfort food, it was the inevitable images that came with it of her grandmother chopping onions, rolling out biscuit dough, cutting ripe peaches—losing herself, perhaps, in the ordinariness, the simple necessity, of putting a meal on the table.

  But Sarah couldn’t have concentrated on another recipe. Not now.

  Joe Collins had called from New York. Again, her parents hadn’t made their flight. He’d sounded faintly annoyed, as if the Dunnemores might be sucking him into some kind of drama unrelated to his investigation. Clearly, he didn’t see what role a rich tax evader, even if he was a fugitive, could possibly have played in the shooting in Central Park.

  Despite his obvious doubts, Collins had assured Sarah that the FBI was leaving no stone unturned and promised to call the minute he heard anything.

  Before his call, she’d found an inscription in her mother’s freshman yearbook from Nicholas Janssen, telling her he would miss her and appreciated her for being his friend. Sarah had looked him up on the Internet and found the same picture Conroy Fontaine had—a wanted poster on the FBI Web site. But Janssen was just a tax evader, if a very wealthy one. He’d made his money in real estate and had homes in Virginia and south Florida. He was divorced with no children, the only child of a northern Virginia pharmacist and a homemaker. He was just eighteen when his father died—it was the reason he’d had to drop out of college.

  Sarah doubted her mother had done anything illegal in talking with this guy at the Rijksmuseum. That he also knew Wes Poe had set off alarm bells, but nothing explained what had happened to her parents.