Читать книгу: «Kiss the Moon», страница 2

Bubba Johns was as much a part of the landscape as the moose, deer, hawks and chipmunks, and like everyone else in Cold Spring, Penelope left him to his chosen life of isolation and solitude.

She turned and continued on her way, feeling the sun sinking in the west even as the sky melted into a pink so deep and dark and beautiful it made her want to lie on the snow and stare at it. But she kept walking, her head spinning, her legs leaden, her mind full of thoughts of Colt Sinclair and Frannie Beaudine buried in their twisted metal grave and Bubba Johns out there in the gathering darkness, waiting, perhaps, to see if once again he needed to lead her home.

Wyatt Sinclair gave up on sleep and kicked off his blanket sometime before dawn. He didn’t know the exact time because Madge, his ex-lover, had insisted on removing the clock radio from his nightstand. It was bad chi, she’d said. Apparently he was a walking time bomb of bad chi. That was spooky enough, but then she did his astrological charts using some computer program. She’d plugged in the date, time and place of his birth, and out popped stuff that had compelled her to pack up.

“I have to move out,” she’d told him, whipping things into her suitcase. “There’s just too much negative energy around you. You’re—well, to be very straightforward with you, Wyatt, you’re one scary son of a bitch.”

He’d grinned. “You needed a computer to tell you that?”

Ten minutes later, she was out the door. She’d left the cat. Allergies.

He stumbled out to his living room, tripping over the cat en route. It got up and did its cat-stretching thing. It wasn’t much of a cat. Short gray hair, yellow eyes, lean. Bad tempered. Madge called him Sarsaparilla, but Wyatt thought that was a hell of a name for a cat and just called him Pill.

A New York apartment, a cat, an ex-lover like Madge. No wonder he had sleepless nights.

He flipped on lights, put on coffee, poured some orange juice and clicked the remote. “Headline News” came on. He flopped on his couch, noticing on the TV clock that it was four-eighteen. Early, especially for New York. The city was strangely silent at this time of day, at least from the vantage point of his fourth-floor upper east side apartment.

He liked New York on and off. His mother, the first of Brandon Sinclair’s three wives, had raised him there through eighth grade. Then the Sinclairs had taken over, and it was off to prep school, Dartmouth and Wharton. He’d endured, struck off on his own for a while and returned to the city of his childhood eighteen months ago. Who’d have ever thought.

If Hal hadn’t died, Wyatt supposed he might still be tallying new bird and plant species in remote parts of Australia and South America. But Hal had died, and Wyatt had come home.

He stared at the reporter on the screen and yawned, not out of fatigue, he realized, but boredom. Stress was not a factor in his intermittent insomnia. He had money, food, lodging and—dear God, it was true—a good job. He would be at his desk on Wall Street in another five hours.

His office had a view of the harbor. It was something.

He watched a commercial pushing laxatives, then a report about the latest scandal in Washington, and he was about to flip to “Nick at Nite” when the anchorwoman started in on her next news item.

“The solution to one of the more tantalizing mysteries of the past half-century may be at hand. A New Hampshire woman claims she’s found the small plane adventurers Frannie Beaudine and Colt Sinclair were flying the night they disappeared.”

Wyatt sat straight and turned up the volume.

The woman was named Penelope Chestnut, she lived in Cold Spring, and she had stumbled on the wreckage while she was out hiking on Sunday, the report continued. She would be leading local authorities to the crash site today, Tuesday, for verification.

Contacted at his vacation home in St. Croix, Brandon Sinclair had declined comment.

Wyatt wasn’t surprised. His uncle’s disappearance was the most enduring and mysterious scandal involving a Sinclair, if hardly the only one. Or the most recent. Hal’s death and Wyatt’s near death—and presumed culpability—in Tasmania had garnered their share of headlines. His father maintained his only son was a throwback to previous generations of Sinclairs, who had been adventurers and daredevils since Roger Sinclair had taken on the English as a privateer in the American Revolution. Naturally, he’d made a fortune, pissed off friend and foe alike and died young.

“Headline News” put up the famous picture of Frannie and Colt taken the night of their ill-fated flight. Wyatt was struck by how young they looked. Frannie was from Cold Spring, a captivating mix of daring pilot and self-taught art historian whose exploits, intelligence and beauty had drawn her rich lover’s eye. They’d cut out of a reception at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, took off in Colt’s Piper Cub and were never seen again. No trace of them or their plane was ever found.

Until Sunday, Wyatt thought, wishing they’d put up a picture of Penelope Chestnut instead of his uncle and Frannie Beaudine. He was generally an excellent judge of character, and if he could see what she looked like, he would be better able to assess if this was a hoax. But there was no picture, no footage, even, of Cold Spring, New Hampshire.

He debated calling his father. Colt’s disappearance was still a raw wound that infected everything Brandon Sinclair did, including raise his only son. He seldom talked about his brother, brushed off questions Wyatt would ask. Wyatt wasn’t sure whether his father’s reticence stemmed from the lingering pain and grief of losing his only brother or from embarrassment. Even after forty-five years, Colt could still attract national headlines.

To his credit, Brandon had worked hard to change the Sinclair way of doing things. He wanted to preserve their spirit of scholarship, exploration and adventure but without the penchant for scandal and premature death. He was determined his brother’s example would not extend to another generation. Colt would be the last Sinclair whose recklessness and zest for adventure would leave behind mourning parents, wives, children—and younger brothers.

Not that Brandon had ever told Wyatt he’d loved his older brother, missed him, felt hurt and betrayed because he’d abandoned him for Frannie Beaudine. But if he knew nothing else about his family, Wyatt knew that love was never enough for a Sinclair. That was their abyss. It was impossible to fill with money or adventures. No matter how many lions they shot or mountains they climbed or discoveries they made, the abyss remained unfilled.

He wondered when his father had realized his only son was that way, too. Another Sinclair destined for notoriety and adventure.

But no more. After the disaster in Tasmania, Wyatt had opted for the safe path. A desk, a suit, a job putting his MBA to use. He’d already thrown his trust fund in his father’s face, so there wasn’t that. But there was plenty of money. Even a disinherited Sinclair was good at making money.

The cat jumped up on his lap and started pawing, and Wyatt shut off the television and listened to Manhattan awaken on a dreary March morning. Garbage trucks, cabs, dog walkers, hospital workers, a siren off in the distance. He patted Pill, although he didn’t much like cats, and he told himself that Penelope Chestnut and her discovery in the woods above Lake Winnipesaukee weren’t his problem. His only problem was scrounging up enough energy and interest to get to work for nine o’clock.

By nine-fifteen Jack Dunning was standing in front of Wyatt’s office window high above New York harbor. Jack was a tall, rangy, sandy-haired man dressed in cowboy boots and jeans. Wyatt regarded him without comment. A Brooklyn native gone Texan. He’d worked as a private investigator in Dallas for years, apparently wore out his welcome and was back in New York. His chief client was Brandon Sinclair, a man not only very rich but also very suspicious, determined to protect himself, his wife, his two ex-wives, his son and his two young daughters from scoundrels, kidnappers, con men and lunatics. Jack seemed perfectly willing to oblige. As soon as he made enough money, he always said, he planned to buy a ranch in west Texas and retire. New York made him itch, and the women wore too damned much black.

He glanced at Wyatt. “Nice view.”

Wyatt smiled. “The Statue of Liberty reminds me of the virtues of tolerance.”

“Reminds me of the dangers of being a sucker.”

Wyatt couldn’t tell if he was serious. In his eighteen months back in New York, he’d come to believe Jack Dunning was a man not nearly as uncomplicated as he liked to pretend. His angular features and dead gray eyes made him difficult to read. He could be fifty—he could be sixty. It was impossible to tell. And Wyatt had no real desire to know. Jack worked for his father. If he was here, it was because Brandon Sinclair wanted him to be here.

“You heard about your uncle’s plane?” Jack asked.

“I caught it on the morning news.” Wyatt didn’t say how early that morning. Dunning would regard a sleepless night as a weakness and file it away as something he had on his employer’s eldest child.

“Then you haven’t heard the latest. The woman who said she found the plane—this Penelope Chestnut—she’s changed her mind. Says it was a mistake. She was hypoglycemic and on edge because she was lost.”

“Lost?”

“That’s how she found the site in the first place—she was out hiking on Sunday afternoon and got lost. Her folks were organizing a search party when she found her way out on her own. Claims she went back yesterday afternoon and saw it wasn’t a plane but just an old dump site, probably from the turn of the century.”

Wyatt rolled that one around in his mind. A mistake. Not what he’d expected from Penelope Chestnut, although he had no reason to expect anything. “So no Colt and Frannie, after all.”

“That’s what she says. Here’s the thing.” Jack turned from the window. There was no indication he felt out of place in the elegant wood-paneled Wall Street office, which Wyatt had leased furnished, down to the brass lamps and slate blotter. If he were to play the venture capitalist, he needed a robber baron office.

Dunning stayed focused on his reason for being there—Penelope Chestnut. “Now she’s also claiming she can’t find the dump site again,” he said.

That tweaked Wyatt’s interest. “How’s that possible?”

“She says she was able to follow her tracks in the snow yesterday, but it was tough even then because of all the daytime melting. Says she planned to take people up today to prove it, but it snowed last night and covered what was left of her tracks. She got up at the crack of dawn this morning and says she can’t find the site. Says she wandered around and just can’t find her trail or figure out how to get back there. Maybe she can find it in the spring.”

Wyatt tilted in his buttery leather chair and considered this twist. At first blush it sounded like bullshit. “What do you think?”

“I think it’s hogwash. This girl’s lived her whole life in those woods. She can find her way back, snow or no snow. I’d bet my molars on it.”

“What does my father say?”

Jack gave a small grin. He was a striking man, but not handsome. Wyatt sensed he liked his employer, despite the vast difference in their manner and sensibilities. “Your daddy’s more diplomatic than I am. He asked me to go up there and check out this girl’s story. New Hampshire in March. Just where I want to be. But I’ll do it and see what’s what.”

“And why tell me?” Wyatt asked.

The grin turned to a smirk. “Because your daddy asked me to.”

As Wyatt had expected. “Okay. Thanks for the report. If you need my help for anything, let me know. You have my number.”

Jack winked. “I have all your numbers, Sinclair. See you around.”

Thirty minutes later, Wyatt was still staring at the same printout. He’d had his secretary hold his calls. He got up from his desk and walked to the window, the Statue of Liberty shrouded in a sudden fog. He agreed with Jack. Penelope Chestnut’s story didn’t wash.

He called his father, knowing already he was making a futile effort. His father would tell him nothing, possibly less than he’d told his personal private detective. Jack was a professional. He could be controlled.

“Wyatt—good to hear from you. How’s the weather in New York?”

“Foggy. Jack Dunning was just here. He told me you’ve sent him to New Hampshire to check out this woman’s story about Colt’s plane. Anything I need to know?”

“It’s just a precaution. If she made a mistake and is doing what she can to save face, so be it. But if she’s lying, I want to know why. And, of course, if she’s lying, I want to find my brother’s plane.” He paused, no chink in his self-control. They might still have been discussing the weather. “After all these years, I’d like to know what happened to him.”

“You trust Dunning?”

“I’m paying him well enough.”

Wyatt didn’t comment. As far as he was concerned, money and trust had nothing to do with each other. “I guess that’s your call. Anything else?”

His father was silent for half a beat. “What else would there be?”

“I don’t know. I’ve just always had the feeling there’s more to Colt and Frannie’s disappearance than you’ve said.”

“There’s nothing more, Wyatt. If you can, come down this weekend. Ann and I would love to have you, and you know the girls would be thrilled to see you.” Ann was his third wife; they had two daughters together, Ellen, nine, and Beatrix, eleven. “March isn’t my favorite month in New York.”

“Thanks for the invitation. I’ll let you know if I can wiggle loose.”

“It’s best I sent Jack up to Cold Spring, Wyatt. The people there tend to blame Colt for what happened. Frannie Beaudine was one of their own.”

“No problem.”

When they disconnected, Wyatt didn’t hesitate. He told his secretary he needed to go out of town and asked her to keep her finger in the dike for a few days, possibly longer. He caught an elevator to the lobby of the 1920s building and hailed a cab to take him to his apartment. He fed the cat and called Madge. “I’m going to be out of town for a few days. Can you tend to Pill?”

“You know I’m allergic.”

“Wear gloves and a mask.”

“You’re a heartless bastard, Wyatt. Just because you can climb a rock wall with your bare hands doesn’t mean the rest of us are weaklings. My allergies are serious.”

“If you can’t take care of Pill, say so and I’ll get someone else.”

“Can I stay at your place while you’re gone?”

His apartment was bigger and in a better location than hers. “Sure.”

“I’ll take medication for my allergies,” she added quickly.

Within the hour, he was on the Major Deegan Express-way heading toward New England.

No Sinclair had ventured to Cold Spring, New Hampshire, since Colt and Frannie had disappeared—unless his father had lied about that, too. Because something—maybe a lot, maybe not a lot—was missing in Brandon Sinclair’s rendition of the events of forty-five years ago. Wyatt had believed that for years, but hadn’t pushed, hadn’t confronted his father out of respect for the loss he’d suffered. Some things, he’d decided, just weren’t a son’s business.

But as he drove north against a hard wind, he wondered if he and his father could ever make their peace if he didn’t learn, finally, the truth about the night Colt Sinclair and Frannie Beaudine took off into the darkness.

Two

Penelope tried to ignore the clicking of a camera three yards behind her. Another reporter. Most of the swarm of reporters—print, television, radio, tabloid, mainstream—that had flocked to Cold Spring had gone home after hearing the discovery of Colt Sinclair and Frannie Beaudine’s plane was a mistake. A few lingered, angling for whatever news and gossip they could find while they were there. Penelope didn’t know what good a picture of her preflighting her Beechcraft would do anyone.

It was a breezy, chilly morning, and she couldn’t wait to get into the air. She’d pulled her hair into a sort of braid, put on a functional flight suit that always, rather ridiculously, made her feel like the Red Baron and packed herself some cheddar cheese a friend had made on her own farm, an apple and a bit of this season’s maple sugar. Decadent. In twenty minutes she was saved. No more questions, no more doubting eyes.

“You know, Penelope,” the reporter called, using her first name as if they were pals, “I drove all the way up here from New York to cover this story. Colt and Frannie are, like, icons on the upper east side. Rich, good-looking, adventurous, intellectual, fucking doomed. Now, here I am, and what do I have? A dump. A fucking dump.”

Penelope ignored him. A turn-of-the-century dump was the best she could do. It was lame, and it wasn’t sexy at all, but it explained the metal. She had decided pegging the whole thing on a mirage was just too much to swallow.

The reporter didn’t quit. He was lanky, bearded and obnoxious. “You should get your facts straight before you go to the media.”

She turned from her plane. She was at the tail, trying to concentrate on her checklist. “I didn’t go to the media. They came to me. Look, stop at Jeannie’s Diner on Main Street for pie, or if you want to hang around until three o’clock, wait and stop at the Sunrise Inn for tea and scones. My mother and my cousin Harriet make the best scones in New Hampshire. The inn’s on the lake. Just take a left off Main.”

“I didn’t come to fucking New Hampshire for pie and scones. Jesus. This weather. You know, we have daffodils in New York.”

“Send me some when you get back.”

He let go of his camera and let it hang from his neck. It was a small, cheap camera on a thin black cord. He was probably freelance. He certainly wasn’t from Newsday or the Times. “You’re not very contrite,” he said.

“I made a mistake. You guys jumped all over this thing before anyone could verify what I’d found. It’s not my fault you got the cart before the horse.”

The guy went red. Penelope thought he might throw his camera at her, but then she saw her father marching toward them. He had on his work pants and wool work shirt, and he didn’t look as if he knew as much about airplanes and flying as he did. People underestimated Lyman Chestnut all the time. He was the quintessential hardheaded Yankee, a gray-haired, craggy-faced man of sixty who was the law at Cold Spring Airport. It was a small, uncontrolled airport with three hangars, one runway and three full-time year-round employees: Lyman, his sister Mary and Penelope. What they couldn’t do they hired part-time help to do or contracted out. Winter and early spring were their slow seasons. Come summer and autumn, the place hummed.

Lyman jerked a thumb toward the parking lot. “Out. Let Penelope do her job.”

“I was just—”

“You’re compromising safety.”

The reporter sputtered, then gave up and retreated.

Penelope grinned at her father. “Why didn’t I think of that?”

“You’ve done enough thinking for this week, I expect.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing. Finish your walk around.”

He about-faced and returned to the office in a corner of one of the hangars. Penelope watched him in frustration, then resumed her preflight. She knew what he meant. He meant he didn’t believe her dump story, either. No one believed her dump story.

But this morning when she woke before dawn, she realized she had no choice. She had to undo what she’d done. Brandon Sinclair, contacted in St. Croix, was sending his own investigator to represent his family’s interests. It was a Sinclair plane found on Sinclair land, and it had been a Sinclair in the cockpit. As Penelope had said yesterday afternoon to Andy McNally, the local police chief, “Who’s looking after Frannie’s interests? What if Colt killed her before the plane crashed? Then we have an unsolved murder. There’s no statute of limitations on murder, you know.”

Andy had calmly told her, yes, he knew, and she should mind her own business. The story was out, reporters were on the way. That was when Penelope realized she had no control. She’d been booted to the back of the raft, and someone else was negotiating the rapids.

Except for one thing. She knew where the wreckage was. No one else did, besides Bubba Johns, who presumably wasn’t about to talk.

Late yesterday, when she’d found reporters skulking around on her land discussing getting shots of her sap buckets and hunting up “that hermit,” Penelope had realized the extent of her folly. If she didn’t do something fast, dozens of reporters, the police and Brandon Sinclair’s investigator would descend on poor Bubba Johns. Even if by some miracle he had never noticed the plane wreckage, he was a colorful addition to the story. A wild-haired hermit living on Sinclair land. It was a nice contrast to the scandal and tragedy of the missing daredevil heir and his beautiful, intelligent, adventurous lover.

And then there was Harriet. Only humiliation and embarrassment waited for her.

So Penelope had made up her mind. The wreckage became a small, turn-of-the-century dump, and she couldn’t find it again. She pretended she’d made her way to it late yesterday and tried to thrash her way back first thing this morning. The light covering of snow gave her a touch more credibility, although apparently not enough for her father.

“Well,” she said to herself, “first things first. The heat’s off Bubba for now.”

She climbed into the cockpit and took a breath, focusing on the task at hand. She was transporting a time-sensitive package to Plattsburgh, New York, from a management consultant who worked out of his home on Lake Winnipesaukee. It had to be there this afternoon, not tomorrow morning. Her father had canceled her passenger charter yesterday. He didn’t like the way she was flying, hadn’t for weeks, and getting herself lost in the woods on Sunday proved she was distracted and bored. She’d had a few semi-close calls in a row, and he’d decided she wasn’t taking her job seriously enough. He couldn’t put his finger on what was wrong, but he wasn’t happy. And finding a forty-five-year-old plane wreck that turned out to be an old dump hadn’t done a damned thing to get her with the program.

She hoped by the time she returned, Brandon Sinclair’s investigator and the last of the reporters would all have turned around and gone home. Then she could take her time and figure out what, if anything, to do about the downed Piper Cub J-3 in the hills above town.

There were no bolts of lightning and no men with tar and feathers to greet Wyatt when he crossed into Cold Spring, New Hampshire. It was late afternoon, and the landscape was bleak. Pretty, but bleak. The White Mountains looming in the distance, rolling fields, winding roads, stark, leafless trees, lots of pine and fresh, clean, white snow clinging to everything. The snow was melting rapidly in the above-freezing temperatures, and the roads were clear. The only signs of spring he could see were the potholes and frost heaves.

The sun was out intermittently, and a persistent breeze made the temperature seem colder than it was. Wyatt had pulled over once to consult his map. Damned if he’d give the locals the satisfaction of seeing him get lost his first day in town. He had climbed the White Mountains, including the infamous Mount Washington, during his four years at Dartmouth, but at his father’s request, he’d avoided Lake Winnipesaukee. He’d had other things on his mind at twenty besides the fate of an uncle he’d never known. He’d never seen his family’s land in New Hampshire and couldn’t understand why they hadn’t sold it or donated it as a nature preserve.

A two-lane road led into the village of Cold Spring, a few picturesque streets nestled along the western shore of Lake Winnipesaukee. Twenty-seven miles long, Winnipesaukee was the largest lake in the state, formed by glaciers and famous for its crystal-clear water and three hundred islands. At this time of year, it was still an expanse of snow and ice, although only a few ice-fishing shanties dotted inlets close to shore. Winnipesaukee, Wyatt had learned from his map, was Abenaki for “beautiful water in high places.”

Like most of the other villages on the lake, Cold Spring was busiest in the summer and fall, but from the mix of shops on its maple-lined Main Street, Wyatt guessed it had a strong year-round population. Signs were discreet, storefronts neat and pretty even on a dreary March afternoon. Wyatt noticed shops that sold antiques, vintage clothing, quilts, gifts and the like, which the tourists would enjoy, but he also saw a pharmacy, a diner, a photo and print shop, a clothing store—the sort of shops one needed when a mall wasn’t close at hand.

He pulled into a parking space in front of the diner, fed the meter and went in for a very late lunch and whatever local gossip he could pick up about one Penelope Chestnut. So far, no sign of Jack Dunning, not that Jack would willingly share his findings with his boss’s son.

The diner was crowded for four o’clock on a bleak Tuesday afternoon. A plump waitress with perfect mauve nails was moving down the counter with a pot of coffee. Five booths lined the opposite wall, three of them filled. Reporters, Wyatt guessed. They’d be up from Boston and New York and God knew where else to check out the sighting of Frannie Beaudine and Colt Sinclair’s plane. The story had probably evaporated before they’d arrived, and now they were having a bite to eat in a country diner before heading back to the city.

Wyatt slid onto the one unoccupied stool at the counter and listened.

“Of course she’s lying,” a middle-aged man at the other end of the counter said. “The question is why.”

A skinny woman yawned. “No one gives a shit, ace. The people don’t care about Penelope Chestnut. The people care about the fate of Frannie and Colt.”

“One of these days I want to meet ‘the people,’” an older woman grumbled, “because I don’t give a rat’s ass about Frannie and Colt, either. I just care about that last piece of coconut pie sitting over in that case.” She raised her voice. “Miss, you earmark that pie for me, okay?”

Wyatt managed to get in an order of grilled ham and cheese on rye and coffee while listening to the reporters grouse and catching the locals—two men in flannel shirts at one of the booths—grinning at the wild-goose chase Penelope Chestnut had put them on. From what he gathered, she’d done this sort of thing before. Maybe not this precise thing—crying wolf about a famous long-missing plane—but stirring up trouble in her small lakeside village.

Then he got it. A scrap of conversation, a link between what was being said on one end of the diner and the other.

Miss Penelope was a pilot.

Wyatt smiled. Pilots he understood. He wasn’t one himself, but he’d hung out with them, used their services and appealed to their sense of adventure for most of his twenties and the first two years of his thirties. Now he was thirty-four, a suit behind a desk. He grimaced and drank his coffee and ate his sandwich. When he paid his tab, he got directions to the airport from the waitress.

“Penelope won’t be there,” she said. “She’s flying today. And she’s not talking to reporters.”

Wyatt didn’t disabuse her of her notion that he was a reporter. As instructed, he followed the main road the way he’d come, turned left at a flower shop, followed that road—its massive potholes and frost heaves required bright orange warning signs—until he came to a perfunctory green sign that said Airport. Bingo. He turned onto a barely paved country road, bounced over it until he came to a precious stretch of flat land. The Cold Spring Airport. It wasn’t much of an airport, but he hadn’t expected much. The one runway and three small hangars fit with his image of the woman who said she’d found Frannie and Colt’s plane, then said she didn’t.

He rocked and rolled over the undulating dirt parking lot and did his best to avoid the huge holes that had opened up with the warming temperatures. They’d filled with water that, presumably, would ice overnight and melt again tomorrow. Leaves on the trees, flowers and green grass all seemed a long, long way off.

Wyatt parked next to a mud-spattered hunter-green truck. It had four-wheel drive. So did the SUV next to it. His car did not. The air was damp and cold, the kind that got into the bones. He picked his way through water-filled holes to a small, squat building with a crude sign indicating Office. People did get to the point around here.

A sixtyish man stood out front, glaring at the gray tree line. Without even glancing at Wyatt, he said, “If you’re from the press, the story’s over. You can go home.”

“I’m not a reporter.”

He turned, but Wyatt sensed his mind was still on whatever he expected to find on the tree line. “What can I do for you?”

“I’m looking for Penelope Chestnut. As I said, I’m not a reporter, but I would like to talk to her about what she found in the woods.”

The older man’s eyes narrowed slightly. “You’re a Sinclair.”

His tone hadn’t changed. He fit the stereotype of the naturally stoic, taciturn New Englander. Wyatt checked his surprise. “Yes, I’m Wyatt Sinclair. Colt was my uncle.”

“You’re Brandon’s boy.”

It wasn’t a question, but Wyatt said, “That’s right.”

A heavy, fatalistic sigh, as if he should have expected a Sinclair to wander into town. “Your father sent his own investigator, you know. Jack Dunning. He’s flying up—he’s taking a detour over your family’s land first. I suppose he’ll try to spot Penelope’s dump.”