Copper Lake Secrets Read online

  He figured he already had a pretty good idea of why.

  Beside him, Mick gave a low whine. His ears were pricked, his tail stiff, his rough coat bristling. He was staring through the gate at the mists that formed, swirled, then dissipated, only to re-form a few steps away. Ghosts, essence, imprints—whatever you called them, Jones believed in them. His work took him to centuries-old houses all around the country, and every one housed at least one spirit. He didn’t bother them, and they returned the favor.

  Mick whined again as an insubstantial form separated from the shadows of the live oaks that lined the drive and stepped into the moonlight. Jones’s jaw tightened with annoyance. Who would have expected the elderly and recently widowed owner of Fair Winds to be out haunting the place at nearly midnight?

  She wrapped fragile fingers around one of the bars on the gate. “Who are you, and what are you doing on my property?”

  Mentally kicking himself for coming to the place unprepared, he slid from the tailgate to the ground, felt his wallet shift and immediately knew his approach. As he walked to the gate, he pulled the battered leather from his hip pocket and silently handed her a business card.

  It gleamed white as she tilted it to read his name, then tapped it on the bar. “I’ve heard of you.”

  He wasn’t surprised. The business of historic garden restoration was an insular one. Word of mouth was still the best advertising; a satisfied client was happy to pass on his name to anyone who might be in need of his services. The subject was likely to have come up at least a time or two with the owner of Fair Winds, once home to the most spectacular gardens in the South.

  “I’ve heard of you, too, Mrs. Howard.” Then he gestured behind her. “Actually, more of the gardens.” It was true. Because of the time he and Glen had spent at Fair Winds, he’d always paid attention when the name had come up. He’d researched the gardens while completing his degree, had seen plans, photographs and praise lavished by guests at the house during the gardens’ prime in the 1800s.

  “Humph. They haven’t existed in the fifty years I’ve lived here.”

  “But they’re legendary.”

  “That they are.” She tapped the card again. “But that doesn’t explain why you’re sitting outside my gate close to midnight.”

  “No, it doesn’t.” He shrugged. “I’m between jobs, and I found myself in this area. I was curious.”

  “Curiosity killed the cat, don’t you know?”

  His smile was cool. “Do I look like a cat to you?”

  She stared tight-lipped at him for a moment, then folded her fingers over the card. “Come back tomorrow. You can see more in the daylight.” Turning, she took four steps and disappeared into the shadows. The only sound of her passing was the crunch of footsteps on gravel that quickly faded away.

  Mick whined again, and after a moment staring into the darkness, Jones faced him. “You’re just a big baby, aren’t you? Come on. Let’s go back to town. We’ve got work to do.”

  When he opened the pickup door, the dog jumped into the driver’s seat and started to settle in, grumbling when Jones nudged him over the console to the passenger seat. Jones had picked up the shepherd mix at a job in Tennessee. One day he’d appeared at a stop sign, looking into every vehicle that came along before sinking back to the ground. He’d stayed there for days, growing thinner and more despondent, waiting for the owner who’d dumped him to return. Knowing what it was like to be alone and on your own and not sure you were up to the challenge, Jones had begun taking food and water to the stop sign.

  On the eighth day, after he’d delivered the meal, Mick had eaten, then walked back to the house with him. They’d been together since.

  He followed the hard-packed road to the highway, then turned south. Copper Lake was just a few miles away, but he and Glen had camped on Howard property for a month without going into town once.

  Not that it was a bad little town. Once past the poorer neighborhoods on the north side, the town was neat, easy to navigate and excelled at small-town charm. It was home to more than a few magnificent historic houses that made him itch for a sketchpad and pencil.

  If he couldn’t talk his way into Fair Winds, maybe he could drum up another job as an excuse for staying in the area awhile.

  Most of the motels in town were on the lower end, with The Jasmine Bed-and-Breakfast at the high end. He’d picked one in the middle—clean, comfortable, high-speed wireless—and they didn’t object to Mick. He parked in front of his end room, let the dog do his business in the narrow strip of grass nearby, then they went inside and he booted up his laptop, calling up the file he’d put together in college and carried with him since.

  Fair Winds Plantation.

  The place where his life had changed. Where his brother’s life had ended. Where he intended to find the truth.

  A horn blared, long and angry, as a logging truck blasted past, the winds buffeting Reece’s small SUV. Dawdling on a two-lane highway wasn’t the safest driving she’d ever done, but she couldn’t seem to help it. Every time she saw a mileage sign for Copper Lake, her foot just eased off the gas on its own.

  Taking a deep breath, she loosened her fingers on the wheel and pushed the gas pedal harder. Once the speedometer reached the posted limit, she set the cruise control. There. The speed was out of her foot’s—or subconscious’s—control.

  She’d spent last night in Atlanta, sleeping badly, tossing through one dark, malevolent dream after another. She was tired, her body hurt, and she had the king of bad headaches. If it were any farther to Copper Lake, she’d be physically ill before she got there.

  And yet here she was doing her best to make the trip last.

  As the road rounded a curve, a beautiful antebellum mansion appeared on the left, and Reece’s fingers tightened again. That was Calloway Plantation. According to the map she’d studied, the turn to Fair Winds was less than a half mile south of Calloway.

  Sure enough, there it was, identified with plaques set discreetly into the brick columns on either side. She braked, turned onto the broad dirt road, drove a hundred feet and stopped.

  Could she do this?

  Evie thought so. Martine did, too. The only one with doubts was Reece herself. Hand trembling, she reached inside her shirt to lift a thin silver chain that Martine had given her. Dangling from it was a copper penny. Appropriate, she thought unsteadily, since she was outside Copper Lake and the taste of both blood and fear, according to people who knew, was coppery.

  Evie’s calm, confident voice sounded in her head. If you ever want answers…

  She did. Desperately.

  If you need me, I’ll come.

  And Martine: I’ll have everything you need.

  “Except courage.” Reece’s voice was shaky. “But Grandfather’s dead. I’m not thirteen. I can handle this.”

  She repeated the words in her head as she slowly got the car moving again. Tall pines grew dense on either side of the road, testament to the lucrative logging business that had taken the original Howard’s fortune and increased it a hundredfold. As far as she knew, Grandfather had never worked in logging or any other business. He’d managed his investments from his study on the first floor and done whatever caught his fancy. She vaguely remembered fishing poles and rifles and shovels, and the glare every time he’d looked at her…

  Before she realized it, she’d reached the gate. It stood open in welcome. She drove through, and the hairs on her nape stood on end. Was it quieter inside the gate than out? Did the sun shine a little less brightly, chase away fewer shadows? If she rolled the windows down, would the air be a little thicker?

  “Oh, for God’s sake. Valerie’s right. I am being melodramatic. It’s a house.” As it came into sight, she amended that. “A big, creepy, spooky house, but still just a house. I haven’t entered the first circle of hell.”

  At least, she prayed she hadn’t.

  Live oaks lined the drive, huge branches arching overhead to shade it. The house and its buildi
ngs—a guest cottage, the old farm manager’s office and a few storage sheds—sat at the rear edge of an expanse of manicured lawn. The brick of the pillars that marched across the front of the house had mellowed to a dusky rose, but there was no fading to the paint on the boards. The colors were crisp white and dark green, but still looked unwelcoming.

  A fairly new pickup was parked near the cottage—silver, spotless, too high for a woman of Grand mother’s stature to climb into without help. Its tag was from Kentucky, and she wondered as she pulled in beside it if some stranger-to-her relative was visiting. The recent generations of Howards hadn’t been eager to stick around Copper Lake. Her father had left at twenty, his brother and most of their cousins soon after.

  When she got out of the car, Reece was relieved to note that the sun was just as warm here as it’d been outside the gate and the air was no heavier than anywhere else in the humid South. It smelled fresh like pine and muddy like the Gullah River that ran a hundred feet on the other side of the gate.

  She was closing the door when she felt eyes on her. Grandmother? Her housekeeper? The driver of the truck? Or the ghosts her father insisted inhabited Fair Winds?

  Ghosts that might have been joined a few months ago by Grandfather’s malevolent spirit.

  Evie’s voice again: Spirits generally won’t harm you.

  Oh, man, she hoped that was true. But if Arthur Howard’s ghost lived in that house, she’d be sleeping with one eye open.

  The gazes, it turned out, were more corporeal. Seated at a table on the patio fifty feet away, just to the left of the silent fountain, sat a frail, white-haired woman and a much younger, much darker, much…more…man, both of them watching her.

  Reece stared. Grandmother had gotten old, was her first thought, which she immediately scoffed at. Willadene Howard had been frail-looking and white-haired for as long as she could remember, but the frailty part was deceiving. She’d always been strong, stern, unyielding, and in spite of her age—seventy-seven? no, seventy-eight—she certainly still was. She didn’t even show any surprise at Reece’s appearance out of the fifteen-year-old blue as she rose to her feet. When Reece got close enough that Grandmother didn’t have to raise her voice—Howard women never raised their voices—she announced, “You’re late.”

  Maybe she didn’t recognize her, Reece thought. Maybe she was expecting someone else. She thought of the responses she could make: Hello, Grandmother. It’s me, Reece, the granddaughter you let Grandfather terrorize. Or Nice to see you, Grandmother. You’re looking well. Or Sorry I missed your birthday party, Grandmother, but I thought of you that day.

  What came out was much simpler. “For what?”

  “Your grandfather’s funeral was four and a half months ago.”

  There was nothing Reece could say that wouldn’t sound callous, so she said nothing. She walked closer to the table, knowing Grandmother wouldn’t expect a hug, and sat on the marble rim of the fountain.

  Grandmother turned her attention back to the man, who hadn’t shown any reaction so far. “This is my granddaughter, Clarice Howard, who pretends that she sprang full-grown into this world without the bother of parents or family.” With a dismissive sniff, she went on.

  “Mr. Jones and I are discussing a restoration project we intend to undertake.”

  Reece’s face warmed at the criticism, but she brushed it off as the man leaned forward, his hand extended. “Mr. Jones,” she greeted him.

  “Just Jones.” His voice was deep, his accent Southern with a hint of something else. Black hair a bit too long for her taste framed olive skin and the darkest eyes she’d ever looked into. Mysterious was the first descriptor that leaped into her head, followed quickly by more: handsome. Sexy. Maybe dangerous.

  She shook his hand, noting callused skin, long fingers, heat, a kind of lazy strength.

  He released her hand and sat back again. She resisted the urge to tuck both hands under her arms and laid them flat on the marble instead. Rather than deal with Grandmother head-on, she directed a question to the general area between them. “The house appears to be in good shape. What are you restoring?” Left to her, she would be tearing the place down, not fixing it up.

  “You can’t judge a house by its facade. Everything gets creaky after fifteen years.” Grandmother’s tone remained snippy when she went on. “Mr. Jones is an expert in garden restoration. He’s going to bring back Fair Winds’ gardens to their former glory. Not that you ever bothered to learn family history, Clarice, but a few generations ago, the gardens here were considered the best in all of the South and the rest of the country, as well. They were designed by one of the greatest landscape architects of the time. They covered fourteen acres and took ten years to complete.”

  She waited, obviously, for a response from Reece. The only one she gave was inconsequential. “I go by Reece now.”

  Grandmother’s lips pursed and her blue gaze sharpened. Across the table from her, Jones was making a point of gazing off into the distance, looking at neither of them.

  “Gardens. Really.” Too little too late, judging by Grandmother’s expression. The only flowers Reece had ever seen at Fair Winds were the wild jasmine that grew in the woods. Her mother had told her their name and urged her to breathe deeply of their fragrance. Not long after, Valerie had left, the emptiness in Reece’s memory had begun and the smell of jasmine always left her melancholy.

  A shiver passed over her, like a cloud over the sun, but she ignored it, focusing on the stranger again. Did just Jones look like a landscape architect, or whatever his title would be? She’d never met a landscape architect, but she doubted it. He seemed more the outdoors type, the one who’d do the actual work to bring the architect’s plans to life. His skin was bronzed, his T-shirt stretched across a broad chest, and his arms were hard-muscled. He was a man far better acquainted with hard work than desk-sitting.

  “Sit,” Grandmother commanded, pointing to an empty chair as she got to her feet without a hint of creakiness. “Entertain Mr. Jones while I get some papers from your grandfather’s study. We’ll let him get started, and then we’ll talk.”

  Reece obediently moved to the chair, automatically stiffening her spine, the way Grandmother had nagged her that summer. Howard women do not slump. Howard women hold their heads high. Howard women—

  The door closed with a click, followed by a chuckle nearby. Her gaze switched to the gardener/architect wearing a look of amusement. “That last bit sounded like a threat, didn’t it?”

  And then we’ll talk. It was a threat. And even though she’d come there just for that purpose, at the moment, it was the last thing in the world she wanted to do.

  Swallowing hard, she tried instead to focus on the rest of Grandmother’s words. She might have trust issues and abandonment issues and a tad of melodrama, but she could be polite to a stranger. Her mother required it. Her job required it. Hell, life required it. But the question that came out wasn’t exactly polite.

  “So…is Jones your first name or last?”

  Chapter 2

  “Does it matter?” Jones asked, aware his lazy tone gave no hint of the tension thrumming through him. She didn’t appear to recognize either him or his name, didn’t appear to realize she’d asked him that question once before, the first time they’d met. Had he been so forgettable? Considering that he and Glen had saved her life, he’d think not…but she was, after all, a Howard.

  Or was she just damn good at pretending? At lying?

  He’d thought he’d lucked out when he returned to the farm this morning to a job offer that would give him virtually unlimited access to the Howard property, but having Clarice Howard show up, too… If there were a casino nearby, he’d head straight there to place all sorts of bets because today he was definitely hot.

  He’d looked for her on the internet and had found several Clarice Howards, just not the right one. He’d asked the gossipy waitress at the restaurant next to the motel about her, but the woman hadn’t recognized the name, didn’t
know anything about a Howard granddaughter. She’d had nothing but good, though, to say about the grandson, Mark, who lived in Copper Lake.

  Mark, who, along with Reece, was the last person Jones had seen with his brother. Mark, who had threatened both Glen and Jones.

  “I take it you don’t live around here,” he remarked.

  “No.” That seemed all she wanted to say, but after a moment, she went on. “I live in New Orleans.”

  “The Big Easy.”

  “Once upon a time.” Another moment, then a gesture toward his truck. “You’re from Kentucky?”

  “I live there.” He was from a small place in South Carolina, just a few miles across the Georgia state line. He’d been back only once in fifteen years. His father had begun the conversation with “Are you back to stay?” and ended it a few seconds later with a terse “Then you should go.” He’d followed up with closing the door in Jones’s face.

  Big Dan was not a forgiving man.

  “What brings you to Georgia?” he asked.

  Reece didn’t shift uncomfortably in the wrought-iron chair, but he had the impression she wanted to. “A visit to my grandmother.”

  “She was surprised to see you. You don’t come often?”

  “It’s been a while.”

  Then her gaze met his. Soft brown eyes. He liked all kinds of women, but brown-eyed blondes were a particular weakness. Not this one, though. Not one who, his gut told him, was somehow involved in Glen’s disappearance.

  “What made you think Grandmother was surprised?”

  “I’m good at reading people.” Truth was, he’d heard Miss Willa gasp the instant she’d gotten a good look at Reece. Lord, she looks like her daddy, the old woman had murmured. I never thought…

  She’d ever see her again? The resemblance to her father couldn’t have been that surprising. She looked the same as she had fifteen years ago, just older. She still wore her hair short and sleek; she still had that honey-gold skin; she still had an air about her of…fragility, he decided. She was five foot seven, give or take an inch, and slender but not unappealingly so. She didn’t look like a waif in need of protection, but everything else about Reece Howard said she was.