“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.