Copper Lake Secrets

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 buildings—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 Grandmother’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.

But appearances, he well knew, were often deceiving.

Deliberately he changed the subject. “Do you know much about the old gardens?”

Despite the change, the stiffness in her shoulders didn’t ease a bit. Would she be against the project? Was she envisioning her inheritance being frittered away on flowers and fountains? “No, Grandmother’s right. I didn’t learn the family history the way a proper Howard should.”

History could be overrated. He knew his own family history for generations, but that still didn’t make them want any contact with him. They didn’t feel any less betrayed; he didn’t feel any less rejected.

“I’ve seen photos from as early as the 1870s,” he went on, his gaze settling on the fountain beside them. Built of marble and brick, with a statue in the middle, it was silent, dirty, the water stagnant in the bottom. “They were incredible. Fountains, pools, terraces.

Wildflowers, herb gardens, roses … They covered this entire area—” he waved one hand in a circle “—and extended into the woods for the shade gardens. Fair Winds once had more varieties of azaleas and crape myrtles than any other garden in the country.”

“And you’re going to replant all that.” Her tone was neutral, no resistance but no enthusiasm, either.

“Probably not all, but as much as we can. We have the original plans, photographs, detailed records from the head gardeners. We can make it look very much like it used to.”

“What happened to the gardens?”

He shrugged. “Apparently, your grandfather had everything removed. The pools were filled in, the statues taken away, the terraces leveled. Miss Willa didn’t say why, and I didn’t ask.”

Reece muttered something, but all he caught was mean and old. She’d missed the funeral, Miss Willa had said. Grandfather or not, apparently Reece wasn’t missing Arthur Howard.

Shadow fell over them, and the wind swirled with a chill absent a few seconds earlier. A few brown leaves rattled against the base of the fountain, then grew still as the air did.

As Reece did. She sat motionless, goose bumps raised all the way down her arms. He considered offering an explanation—a cloud over the sun, though there were no clouds in the sky; a gust of mechanically-cooled air from an open window or door, though he could see none of those, either—but judging by the look on her face, she didn’t need an explanation. She knew better than him the truth behind the odd moment.

Here there really were ghosties.

Did she know what he’d come to find out? Was one of them Glen’s?

Before he could say anything else, the door to the house opened and Miss Willa hustled out, her arms filled with ancient brown accordion folders and books. He rose to carry them for her, but she brushed him off and set them on the table. “These are all the records I could lay my hands on at the moment. Clarice may be able to find more in her grandfather’s boxes while she’s here.”

A look of distaste flashed across Reece’s face—at the use of her given name or the thought of digging through her grandfather’s files?

“Here’s the code to the gate—” Miss Willa slapped a piece of paper on top of the stack, then offered a key “—and the key to the cottage.”

Surprise replaced distaste in Reece’s expression, and witnessing that took Jones a moment longer to hear the words than he should have. Frowning, he looked at Miss Willa. “What cottage?”

“That one.” She pointed across the road. “There’s no place in town worth staying at for more than a night or two besides The Jasmine, and I certainly don’t intend to subsidize The Jasmine when you can stay here and keep your attention on your work.”

He generally liked staying at or near the job site. On long-term jobs, he often moved into a small trailer, which beat a motel any day. But he didn’t particularly appreciate being told where he would stay, or the assumption that he needed to be told to stay focused on his job. He was a responsible man, and while Miss Willa might well be accustomed to giving orders, he wasn’t accustomed to following them, except in the narrow scope of the job.

But he wasn’t stupid enough to argue, not when her high-handedness fit right in with his needs.

“I appreciate the invitation.” His sarcasm sailed right past Miss Willa’s ears, but earned a faint smile from Reece. “I should warn you, my dog travels with me.”

“Keep him quiet, keep him away from my house and clean up after him, and we’ll be fine.” Miss Willa shifted her gaze then to Reece. “Lois is fixing dinner. We’ll talk when that’s over.” With a nod for emphasis, she returned to the house.

The action surprised Jones. Miss Willa hadn’t seen her only granddaughter in years, and yet she casually dismissed her?

But wasn’t that what his own father had done with him? Hell, Big Dan hadn’t just dismissed him; he’d sent him away. Though Jones had betrayed Big Dan. Did Miss Willa think the same of Reece? And was there more to it than Reece missing the old man’s funeral?

Reece wasn’t surprised. Idly she opened one of the books on the table, an oversize title with musty yellow pages and decades-old plates of the most impressive gardens of the post–Civil War South. Jones had a copy in his office back in Louisville. “Grandmother doesn’t like to discuss unpleasant matters at the dinner table,” she said by way of explanation.

“What could be unpleasant about her granddaughter coming for a visit?”

“A long-neglected visit. I haven’t been here since …” Her attention shifted from the book to the house, her gaze taking in the three stories of whiteboard siding and dark green trim, the windows staring back like so many unblinking eyes. “Since I was thirteen,” she finished, the words of little more substance than a sigh.

The summer he and Glen had been there. Why? What had happened to keep her away all that time? A falling-out between her mother and grandparents? A petty argument that had grown to fill the years?

Or something more?

With a slight tremble in her fingers, she closed the book and smiled, but it lacked depth. “Fair Winds isn’t my favorite place in the world. It’s …”

He let a heartbeat pass for effect. Another. Then he softly supplied the word. “Haunted?”

She startled. Her gaze jerked to him and her arms folded across her middle as if to contain the shiver rippling through her. “You believe in ghosts, Mr. Jones?”

“I told you, it’s just Jones. No Mister. Why wouldn’t a house like this have ghosts? It’s nearly two hundred years old. Dozens of people have lived and celebrated and suffered and died here. Some of those spirits are bound to remain.”

“You’ve encountered such spirits before?”

“I have, and lived to tell the tale.”

He grinned, but the gesture didn’t relax her at all. Instead, a brooding darkness settled around her. “Wait until you’ve met Grandfather, if he’s still here. He might change that.”

Jones tucked the security code into his hip pocket, picked up the books and papers, then twirled the lone key on its ring around his finger. “He can’t scare me too much,” he said mildly as he started across the patio to the road. “After all, he is dead.”

Dead, but not forgotten, and still possessing the ability to frighten.

At least, he could still frighten Reece.

She watched until Jones had disappeared inside the cottage, wishing she could have claimed it for herself before Grandmother offered it to him. It was a miniature replica of the house, with a huge difference: it was memory-free and nightmare-free. Reserved for visitors, it had been off-limits to her and Mark that summer. At the moment it seemed the only safe place on all of Fair Winds.

But Jones had it, so she was going to be stuck in the house where Grandfather had lived.

And expected to go through his boxes, too. A shudder tightened her muscles as she recalled the one time she’d gone into his study. Only in the house a few days, she’d still been learning her way around, and Mark had told her that heavy dark door that was always closed led into a sunroom filled with beautiful flowers.

There’d been nothing sunny or beautiful about the room. Dark drapes pulled shut, dark paneling, the thick, heavy smell of cigars and age, and Grandfather, glowering at her as if she’d committed an unpardonable sin. He’d yelled at her to get out, and she’d scurried away, slamming the door, to find Mark laughing at the bottom of the stairs. Grandmother had chastened her, and Valerie had, too, and she’d felt so lost and lonely and wanted her dad more than ever.

Oh, God, she wasn’t sure she could do this, not even to find out what had happened those three months. Over the course of her lifetime, they added up to what? One percent of her time on this earth? Nothing. Inconsequential.

Except the months did have consequences: the nightmares, the fear, the distrust.

She breathed deeply. Across the drive, Jones came out of the cottage, climbed into his truck and drove away. She felt his leaving all the way to her bones. Aside from Lois, who must be Grandmother’s current housekeeper, there was no one left on the property but her and Grandmother.

Not a thought to inspire confidence in a drama princess.

Another deep breath got her across the patio and into the door. Dimness replaced bright sun; coolness replaced heat. Instead of pine, the lemon tang of wood polish drifted on the air, along with the aroma of baking pastry. A voice humming an old gospel tune came from the kitchen, ahead and to the right. Lois, Reece was sure. She’d never heard Grandmother hum or sing, had rarely seen her smile and couldn’t recall ever hearing her laugh.

No wonder Daddy had left the first chance he got.

She ventured farther along the hallway that bisected the house north to south. A glance through the first set of double doors showed the table in the formal dining room, set for two. Opposite was Grandmother’s study, a small room with airy lace curtains, a white marble fireplace and delicate-appearing furniture that looked hardly a year of its century-plus age.

The rooms were small, the ceilings high, the furnishings mostly unchanged. A broad hallway, easily as wide as the rooms themselves, cut through in the middle from east to west. The stairs rose from this hall, and portraits of early Howards—and, in one case, an early Howard’s prized horse—lined the walls. None of Grandfather, Reece noted with relief. His memory was enough to haunt her. She didn’t need portraits, too.

The salon was empty, the door to Grandfather’s office closed. Presumably Grandmother was upstairs. Readying a room for her? Gathering items Jones might need in the cottage? Or getting ready for the noon meal? After all, Howard women dressed for meals.

Reece paused outside the study door. The house was oppressive. So many rules, so little laughter. Her father had loved to laugh. Elliott Howard hadn’t taken anything too seriously. He must have felt so stifled within these walls.

She was about to go upstairs, left hand on the banister, right foot on the first tread, when a creak came from the study behind her. Another followed it, then more: the slow, steady sounds eerily similar to a person pacing. Her fingers tightened around the railing until her knuckles turned white, but she couldn’t bring herself to let go, to turn around and walk across the faded Persian rug to the door.

It was probably Grandmother, looking for more papers for Jones, having thought better of the idea of trusting the search to her. If she’d wanted company, she would have left the door open; she would have—

“Well, don’t just stand there. Either come up or get out of the way.”

So much for the theory of Grandmother. The old woman was standing on the stair landing, hair brushed, makeup freshened, a string of pearls added to the diamonds she always wore.

Reece glanced over her shoulder at the study door. The room was silent now. Just her imagination running wild. It always had, according to Grandmother. That girl lives in a fantasy world, she’d often complained to Valerie. Thinks she sees ghosts everywhere.

Heard them. Reece had never seen a ghost. She’d simply heard them, and felt them.

She loosened her grip on the banister and backed away as Grandmother descended the stairs.

“Dinner is served promptly at 12:30. Supper is at 6:30. If you miss the meal, you fend for yourself—and clean up after yourself.” With an arch look, Grandmother passed her and headed for the dining room.

Reece followed her and took a seat at the polished mahogany table as a woman about her mother’s age began serving the meal. There was iced tea in crystal goblets that predated the War, salad and rolls served on delicate plates her great-great-and-so-on grandfather had brought from France when he was still a sea captain in the early 1800s, roasted chicken and vegetables, and pie. Much more than the po’boy or muffuletta she usually had for lunch back home.