CHAPTER TWO

 

 

The Pickwick estate.

 

Gripping the bars of the gate, I look between them at the driveway and rolling acreage illuminated by the headlights at my back. At the top of that long, winding driveway, at the top of that hill, sits the mansion. I’m only able to pick it out against the dark sky because I know it’s there and because the enormous white columns frame the entryway against the gray stone.

 

What happened to the lights? And the gate ought to have been left open—or at least unlocked. I shake the iron bars.

 

“Some welcome.” And some day—a tractor-trailer accident on the highway causing me to miss my flight, two hours waiting for a seat on another plane, my late arrival in Asheville making me miss Uncle Obe’s hospital visitation hour, driving to Pickwick in a rental car that made strange noises throughout, missing the new downtown Pickwick exit and having to take the old Pickwick Pike. And now I’m on the wrong side of a locked gate without a battering ram. Hmm…

 

I peer over my shoulder at the car’s front bumper. It seems sturdy—

 

No, crashing the gate would not be a good idea.

 

I did purchase the optional insurance—

 

That would be wrong.

 

So I’ll have to drive into town and get a room as planned before I received Artemis’s message yesterday. I thought it strange that, considering my uncle’s privacy issues, he wanted me to stay at the mansion, but I agreed to. And now this.

 

I size up the gate. I’m fit enough to climb it despite a few pounds I’ve put on over the last couple of months (stress eating). But there’s one problem—my linen pantsuit, new and specifically chosen for my meeting with Artemis. A meeting that didn’t take place because when I called to tell him I would be four hours late, he refused to budge on his office hours.

 

“A man’s gotta get his sleep, Piper Pickwick—pardon me, Wick. I’ll see ya Monday mornin’.”

 

“But that’s three days away!” 

 

“Well, God may have set aside one day a week for rest, but I always take two, especially now that I’m nearin’ eighty. A man’s gotta be good to himself. Uh-huh.”

 

Frustrated at having dropped everything to fly out two days after his call, I reminded him of the urgency of the situation. He informed me that though Uncle Obe is still hospitalized, there’s no cause to worry as Artemis has been able to drag out the process of changing the will. He then said he would leave a key under the welcome mat. Too bad he didn’t leave the gate open.

 

I smooth my waist-length jacket and consider its fate. I’ll just have to be careful. I return to the car and cut the lights, and night rushes into the spaces and corners I’d briefly ruled.

 

My scalp prickles. It’s just darkness. No one’s there. I’m far from alone out here in the middle of what once was next to nowhere. My companion, the working-late-woman’s best friend, sits at the bottom of my oversized Rebecca Minkoff purse.

 

Fondling it through the leather, I lock and close the door, then cross to the gate. The iron fence surrounding the estate is eight feet tall beside the arched nine-foot gate, but the latter is the obvious choice due to foot- and handholds courtesy of bottom, middle, and top rails and the spear points projecting from each.

 

I remove my two-inch heels, shove them into my purse, place a foot between the spear points on the bottom rail, and begin my ascent. Piece of cake. Unfortunately, it gets tricky once I reach the top. While the spear points are decorative, they could still cause me a world of hurt.

 

Oops. A Southern thought. It’s a good thing I won’t be staying long. The last thing I need is to return to L.A. walking and talking Southern—especially talking, since I don’t have time for further voice coaching. Get In, Get Out must be my motto.

 

I grip the top rail, then heave myself onto my arms to get a leg over, but there is only enough space between the spear points for my hands. Maybe they aren’t purely decorative, after all.

 

I return my feet to the middle rail and peer at the iron fence to the left. No spear points mean a resting place. Holding on to the gate, I sidestep, boost to the top of the fence, and swing a leg over. After a brief pause, I twist, drag the other leg over, and reach a toe to the gate’s middle rail. Contact.

 

“Good job,” I say as I transition back to the gate. I’m overstating my accomplishment, but it’s been a rough day. Fortunately, it’s looking up.

 

“Don’t move!”

 

The barked command rattles me so deeply I lose my grip. The burst of light makes me startle so hard my foot slips. Then the weathered bars slip through my hands as I slide down the gate toward the concrete driveway.

 

Impact. Or not. 

 

My progress arrested, I stare through the bars. I’m still vertical, thanks to a belt loop caught on a middle rail spear, meaning I’m hanging like a Christmas wreath months past its use-by date. That explains the discomfort between my legs, but what about the guy at my back? Why is he creeping around at night on private property? It can’t be Artemis because this voice is twangless.

 

Not again. But this time I’m prepared. Pulse pounding in my ears, I uncurl my right hand, then reach for my purse and my faithful companion within.

 

“I said, don’t move!”

 

Lord, please help me reason with him, or at least distract him.

 

I draw a long, slow breath, then gaze over my shoulder and narrow my lids against the light beyond which I glimpse a shadowed figure—on the tall side and broad. “Look, if you don’t mind—”

 

The sound of tearing fabric is followed by a lurch, then my bare feet hit concrete and I fall backward. 

 

The light jerks and swings, and I hear a clatter as a hand closes on my arm and yanks me up. I get my feet under me, but my back slams into a wall of muscle and bone. Meanwhile, my heart starts making plans to relocate without me.

 

Oh no! This can’t be happening— 

 

Hysteria will not get you out of this. Easy does it.

 

I track the beam of light that illuminates the lower half of the gate back to its source—my assailant’s dropped flashlight. He doesn’t have that advantage anymore, and soon he’ll find out that muscle and bone aren’t much of an advantage either. Oh please, Lord.

 

“Are you all right?” His gruff voice is so near I practically seize up.

 

I ease my free arm up my side, then touch the bulge at the bottom of my purse as I glance over my shoulder into his shadowed face. “I…”

 

He could be kin to a Neanderthal! I lurch forward, breaking his grip on me, plunge a hand in my purse, and pull out the pistol. Amazed at how light it feels—must be the adrenaline—I whip around and point it at my assailant.

Oh my, I’m aiming, and not at a paper target. The guy has to be scared to pieces, but why isn’t he running?

 

“That looks dangerous.” He sounds as if he might laugh. The sicko!

 

“It is dangerous, so don’t think I won’t use it.”

 

“You must be Piper.”

 

He knows me? I strain to pick out his features, but the flashlight on the driveway points opposite and provides only enough light to confirm that my imagination is not in overdrive. He is big, buff, and hairy. “Who are you?”

 

“The name’s Axel.”

 

Dangerous name.

 

“I’m the gardener.”

 

Unlikely occupation.

 

“I live here.”

 

He does? Though Uncle Obe always employed groundskeepers, they never lived on the estate. “Where?”

 

“In the guesthouse.”

 

I blink as memories of the cottage arise. On more than one occasion, Mom and I accepted Uncle Obe’s offer of a place to live. We never stayed long, but it was a comfort to have somewhere to go when things got rough.

 

“Now that we’ve established that neither of us is trespassing, you can put your shoe away.”

 

I startle. “What?”

 

“I commend you on your resourcefulness.” He steps past me in the direction of the flashlight. “I certainly never saw that coming.”

 

I lower my gaze. Despite the dim light, even I can see it’s not a pistol I’m clutching. No trigger—how did I miss that? No barrel—how did I mistake a two-inch heel for a piece of deadly steel?

 

My cheeks warm, and suddenly I’m grateful for the dark. But does this Axel not realize how close he came to being on the receiving end of a bullet-firing weapon? I’m pretty sure he does, but it’s hard to believe he would then walk away. Of course, he did establish who I am. The problem is, I have only his word as to who he is.

 

The flashlight’s beam crisscrossing me as he returns, I dig out my other shoe. That’s when I notice my scraped fingers and palms, courtesy of my slide down the gate. Which reminds me… A whimper escapes me as I take in the snags and rust marks on my jacket. Then there’s the torn belt loop. Lovely.

 

“You messed up your clothes,” Axel says, reminding me there are worse things than a ruined outfit, like letting one’s guard down in front of a dangerous stranger.

 

I shove my shoes beneath an arm, plunge a hand into my purse, and grip—

 

Oh no, not making that mistake again. I release the spine of the go-anywhere Bible I tossed in this morning, and finally lay a hand to the cold steel that snuggles alongside God’s word. (There’s something not right about that.)

 

But I don’t pull out the pistol. After all, it’s not as if I couldn’t shoot through my purse as they do in movies.

 

I release the safety (didn’t think to do that with the shoe). “How do I know you are who you say you are?”

 

His stride falters…falters again… Did he twist an ankle when he snatched me from my fall?

 

He halts three feet from me. “Obviously, Artemis neglected to mention me.”

 

He knows Uncle Obe’s attorney. I peer closely at him. The angle with which he holds the flashlight reveals more of his features, and I’m relieved he isn’t as frightening as he first appeared. Still big, buff, and hairy, but his resemblance to a Neanderthal was overimagined. In fact, he might be all-right looking.

 

He tilts his goateed, long-haired head. “Neither did he inform me of your arrival.”

 

I frown. “He didn’t tell you I was coming?”

 

“He did. He didn’t say when.”

 

“But he’s known for two days.”

 

Axel shrugs. “Artemis is getting up there in years.”

 

And this man is just the gardener. 

 

Just the gardener? Somehow that doesn’t fit him, particularly in light of Uncle Obe’s past hires, who were more often old and doddering. I would be surprised if this man is much past thirty-five. “How long have you worked here?”

 

“A couple of years.”

 

I wait for him to elaborate, but he seems content to let the silence play out. I’m not. He may not be the missing link, but he’s still a stranger. “What about the lights? Uncle Obe always kept the house and driveway lit.”

 

“Which I’ve continued to do since his hospitalization. However, when I returned from town a while ago, the power was out. I was attempting to determine if it was intentional when I saw your headlights.”

 

A chill skitters through me. “Intentional?”

 

He hesitates. “Once I’ve determined the cause of the outage, we’ll continue this conversation up at the house.”

 

He thinks I’m going to invite him in? Just the two of us? “Let’s continue it here.”

 

“All right, but is the safety on?”

 

I knew he knew. I thumb the lever and consider returning it to its safe position. After all, he hasn’t made an untoward move.

 

“A spooked woman with her finger on a trigger makes me uneasy, especially when the barrel is aimed at me.”

 

I stand taller. “What makes you think I’m spooked?”

 

“That would be the shoe I was staring down the heel of a short while ago.”

 

He has a point. Keeping my finger on the trigger, I put the safety on.

 

“Thank you.”

 

He heard that? I barely heard it. “Explain intentional.”

 

“Since your uncle was hospitalized, we’ve had some uninvited visitors.”

 

Another chill. “Burglars?”

 

“If so”—there’s a derisive edge to his voice—“not your garden variety.”

 

The chill dissolves. “Which Pickwick?”

 

“The first time it was your cousin Bart. He broke the lock on a side door and had just entered when I showed up.”

 

Good ol’ Bart, who never met a stimulant he didn’t like.

 

“After I ran him off, Artemis asked me to keep a closer eye on the estate.”

 

“Then you aren’t just a gardener.”

 

“I suppose not. I also ran off your cousin Luc.”

 

The only surprise is that Luc was caught. He was always too clever for his victims’ good. “So that’s why the gate is locked.”

 

“One of the reasons. Of course, it won’t keep people out, as you know firsthand, but it will slow them down.”

 

In other words, whatever they’re hoping to take out of Uncle Obe’s home won’t be removed by the truckload.

 

“And the intercom system allows your uncle to verify his visitors’ identities and admit them without leaving the house—when the power is on.”

 

“Intercom system?” There wasn’t anything like that in use twelve years ago. And there wouldn’t have been since the gate was never locked.

 

“You didn’t see it when you drove up?”

 

“No.”

 

“Hard to miss.” Axel turns toward the gate. “Let’s get your car inside, Miss Pickwick—”

 

“The name is Wick.”

 

He looks around. “I did hear that about you.”

 

I bristle. “Heard what?”

 

“Your embarrassment over the family name and that you dropped the first part of it after you and your mother left Pickwick.”

 

Artemis must have told him. With a toss of my hair, I lift my chin. “You wouldn’t understand.”

 

He stares at me, and despite the darkness, it makes me uncomfortable.

 

“How are we going to get my car inside with the power out?” 

 

“I have a key for rare occasions like this.” His flashlight illuminates posts on either side of the gate—the intercom system—and he walks away with that hitch.

 

He seems harmless, at least as harmless as a broad, five-foot-tenish, undergroomed man can be. I lower the pistol to the bottom of my purse and step into my heels. “When did Uncle Obe have the system installed?”

 

“Several years ago, to keep out Pickwicks’ growing populace—a curious bunch intent on invading his privacy.”

 

My own curiosity perks up. Because of the extensive arrangements required to leave L.A. on short notice, I had little time to research Pickwick’s revitalization that has transformed it from the dying town I left into one of the fastest-growing communities in North Carolina. I wish I hadn’t missed the downtown Pickwick exit, where I could have gauged the growth for myself. 

 

“Why are they so interested in my uncle?”

 

Axel halts at the gate, and I hear the clink of keys. “They’re drawn by the historical value of the Pickwick estate. Some believe it has the potential to become another Biltmore Estate—on a smaller scale—and attract tourist dollars.”

 

“Not much chance of my uncle allowing that, wouldn’t you—?” I shake my head. “Of course, how would you know?”

 

He doesn’t comment. When he pushes the gate inward, his slightly uneven gait is more pronounced.

 

“Did I cause that?” I step forward.

 

“What?”

 

“Your limp.”

 

“You?” He sounds incredulous.

 

“When I fell from the gate and you caught me.”

 

Leaving the gate gaping, he follows me to my car. “It’s an old injury, or will be given a few more years.” 

 

I pull the keys from my purse. Uncomfortably aware of my scraped palms and fingers, I unlock the door.

 

“Drive up to the house, but stay in the car until I get there. I still need to find out what’s responsible for the power outage.”

 

I resent the fear crawling up my back. Uncle Obe may be odd and not the best of hosts, but I never knew fear when I was here before. “Do you think someone’s up there?”

 

“If the outage was intentional, whoever is responsible would be foolish to still be hanging around. Of course…”

…foolishness is not alien to the Pickwicks. But if a Pickwick is lurking up there, I have nothing to fear, other than embarrassment at having once shared a last name with the perpetrator.

 

“All right, I’ll see you up there.” As I slide into the car, he moves toward the gate, and I’m flushed with guilt at the thought of him walking up the hill, especially with that limp. He does know Artemis, has had run-ins with two of my male cousins (not a bad thing), and his behavior thus far has been aboveboard.

 

I close the door, start the engine, and switch on the headlights, causing the shadows around Axel to flee. I’m surprised by what I see. His long, sandy-colored hair isn’t gnarled or knotted but falls back from his face, as if recently released from a ponytail. As for his facial hair, it isn’t all that hairy—a connecting mustache and goatee. Though I can’t tell what color his eyes are, they don’t look crazed. In short, the guy is good looking, in a G.I.-Joe-action-figure way.

 

I lower the window as I pass through the gate. “Do you want a ride?”

 

He peers in. “That was easy.”

 

“What?”

 

“To gain your trust. And you, a gun-toting woman from the big, bad city of Los Angeles.”

 

He knows where I live, more evidence he’s legit. If he hadn’t just called me gullible, I’d feel even better about him. “I’ll see you up there.”

 

He steps back, and as the aggregate rumbles beneath my tires, my headlights pass over the estate’s landscape—acres of lawn mown at light and dark angles, bushes and trees trimmed and mulched, and colorful flowerbeds set on either side of the driveway. Uncle Obe’s gardener is no slacker.

 

At the crest of the hill, the grade is so steep that my headlights spotlight a stretch of roof before moving down the stone face of the house, its wide-eyed windows staring back at me from high above and on either side of massive carved doors. I brake on the incline to take in the magnificence of the place where my father and his three brothers were born. Uncle Obe may refer to it as a house, but it’s nothing short of a mansion.

 

Gazing up at the enormous white columns, I’m swept with a sensation not unlike falling—but falling up. As I lower my eyes, I’m flooded with the expectation that my uncle will stick his head out the door and impatiently beckon me inside.

 

My throat tightens. I hardly know Uncle Obe—the only Pickwick worthy to carry on the family name, according to my grandfather—and yet memories fly at me. I shake my head, but the day of the Easter egg hunt when I was six seeps through me like water on parched earth.