U. S. Marshall: Night's Landing Part 29

"Prune cake. I didn't want to prejudice you."

"Gross."

"You loved it."

She'd loved him. But it hadn't worked, the two of them in the same district. She was more ambitious than he was-h.e.l.l, a frog was more ambitious. "I'm glad we've stayed friends."

He winked at her in the way that used to make her want to jump his bones. It didn't anymore. It just made her feel good. "Me, too."

Twenty-Nine.

N ate left Sarah digging through old pictures and yearbooks and found Brooker on the small front porch of the cottage, a green-painted kitchen chair tilted back as he strummed on an acoustic guitar. It sounded as if he knew how to play.

"You want to tell me who you are?" Nate asked.

"I'm the gardener." Brooker looked up from his guitar, an old one, nothing about him suggesting he gave a d.a.m.n whether Nate planned to cuff him on the spot. "Go ahead. Check me out."

He already had. "The Dunnemores hired you in early April after they found you trespa.s.sing. What were you doing here?"

"Fis.h.i.+ng." He tweaked a middle string on his guitar, making a tw.a.n.ging sound, and dropped his chair back down onto all four legs. "I didn't shoot you. I was here with Sarah when her brother called. I didn't hire anyone to shoot you. What other people did or didn't do, I can't speak for."

"You were questioned in your wife's murder."

Brooker kept his stony gaze on Nate. "Well, good for you, Deputy. You've done your homework. I was questioned. Dutch authorities still don't have a suspect in custody." The muscles in his arms tensed visibly, as if he wanted to snap the guitar in two. "It's been eight months. Nothing's going to happen."

"Your wife was an army captain based in Germany. She worked in intelligence." Nate remained on the gra.s.s, still damp from overnight showers. "You're a West Point graduate and an army major yourself. Special Forces. Your missions are all cla.s.sified, but you're supposed to be one of the best at what you do."

Brooker got up with his guitar, holding it by its neck. "I'm not in the army anymore. I quit in March. I didn't give the Dunnemores my history because it's complicated and they didn't ask. I'm trying to get on with my life."

"You didn't use an alias."

"I have nothing to hide."

"Your wife was killed in Amsterdam. The Dunnemores-"

"I know. Amsterdam. They left town just before Char was killed. The rest is coincidence."

Nate didn't believe him. Brooker was an adept actor and liar. "Why Night's Landing?"

He shrugged. "I had reason to believe the Dunnemores were among the last people to see my wife alive. I wanted to ask them how she was, what they talked about. I never did."

"Doing a little investigating of your own?"

"Trying to make peace with myself. Char and I-we didn't see much of each other the two years before she died. Twenty-one days total, to be exact. I wanted to find a way to connect with her after she'd died. The Dunnemores took me for a down-and-out type. After meeting them, I realized they wouldn't know anything about Char, her murder. I don't know, I was a wreck. I just started in with the good ol' boy act, and here I am."

Nate didn't know what of what Brooker said was true and what was bulls.h.i.+t. The man had his own agenda, but who could blame him? "Nicholas Janssen?"

"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 eyeb.a.l.l.s 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 b.u.mblebees 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 ca.s.serole," 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? h.e.l.l, 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 s.n.a.t.c.hed this morning threw her."

"What the h.e.l.l 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 bombsh.e.l.l, 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.

J uliet tried to remember what Rob had told her about Night's Landing. A wide bend on the c.u.mberland 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 G.o.dforsaken 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 d.a.m.n 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-c.o.c.ked.

Well, maybe not half-c.o.c.ked. Maybe only a quarter-c.o.c.ked. 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 a.s.sholes s.n.a.t.c.hing 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 d.a.m.n road look like a dead end.

How fitting, she thought, pus.h.i.+ng 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. G.o.d, she hurt. She'd had her a.s.s 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 a.s.sume 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 a.s.sumed that next she'd get her a.s.s 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-s.h.i.+rt, his dark hair pulled back in a ponytail, his brown eyes sweeping over her in a frank, a.s.sessing 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 Was.h.i.+ngton, 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 h.e.l.l 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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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 d.a.m.n 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."