exactly a hotbed of crime. Oh, there were the occasional domestic disputes, petty larceny and disorderly-conduct arrests, but the downtrodden Polk clan usually figured in most of those. Certainly, no secret agent was necessary to deal with the Polks!
That left the other side of the law.
Was Matthew Granger a criminal who’d chosen to hide out here at the boardinghouse? Laying low until the heat is off, as a movie gangster would say. It occurred to Hannah that the only things she knew about gangsters were from the movies because she had never met a bona fide mobster in her life.
But here was Matthew Granger, dressed all in black, projecting an aura of danger, demanding and insolent and secretive. He definitely had not wanted her to see what was in that canvas bag of his, although why a criminal would take pains to hide his reading material escaped her. Unless the titles offered some sort of clues or evidence against him? Perhaps the books were simply decoys, hiding the real secrets in the bottom of the crammed satchel? Drugs?
Hannah shivered. What else did racketeers do? Laundering money, bookmaking, loan-sharking. Murder-for-hire? She flinched. She did not want Matthew Granger to be a criminal! A telling insight that unnerved her as much as the possibility that he was one.
Nervously, Hannah hung the suits back in the closet. She didn’t want Matthew Granger—if that was his real name—to know that she knew he had a gun. She heard his voice and Katie’s outside the room and quickly slammed the closet door.
“I have your shirts,” she sang out, hurrying into the hall, where she came face-to-face with Matthew. “They go to 206, right?”
“You have amazing recall, little girl,” he growled.
She met his eyes—they were dark and hot and challenging—and a sharp thrill tore through her. What she should be feeling was fear, Hannah admonished herself as she fairly ran down the hall to room 206. She would not be attracted to a gangster! Not even Grandmother, the soul of patience and understanding, would condone such lunacy.
She hung his shirts inside the closet in his new room and turned to see the canvas bay lying on the floor beside the bed. A quick peek assured her that there was no one in the hall, so Hannah succumbed to temptation, pulled the zipper half open and reached into the bag.
She examined the hardcover titles first. Inside the Criminal Mind, a textbook written by a psychiatrist. Three other books on the personalities of serial killers by three different criminologists. Was Matthew Granger a criminologist or psychologist himself, taking a vacation in Clover? If he was accustomed to the crime-infested urban scene, Clover would be a welcome change of pace for him. Her anxiety began to dissolve; she preferred this new, favorable theory.
She next turned her attention to the paperbacks, which were all bestselling thrillers. Hannah recognized the names of the authors but hadn’t read any of the books. She preferred historical novels with plenty of romance. There were none of those in the bag.
Delving deeper, she pulled out a beat-up copy of The First Families of South Carolina, a privately published book that also graced the shelves of the Farley family library, although that particular copy was in mint condition. There was a thick piece of folded paper in Matthew’s tattered copy, perhaps marking a page?
Hannah turned to it. The heading at the top of the page read “The Wyndhams.” That family, who was so important, wealthy and influential within the state that they rated two entire chapters in the book, had a major branch in Clover. The collective Wyndham tribe boasted judges and senators, past and present, along with the usual assortment of attorneys and financiers. All the Wyndhams were well educated and cultured, sophisticated and socially prominent, a credit to their glorious name and history.
Hannah knew them, of course. While the Farley family did not possess the enormous wealth and political power of the Wyndham family, the Farleys were well-bred and well connected and therefore considered worthy to socialize with the grand Wyndhams. Hannah’s oldest sister, Sarah, had gone to school with Esme Wyndham Chase; now their young daughters were friends.
The closed and clannish upper-class social scene had never appealed to Hannah. She stared at the book and wondered why on earth Matthew Granger was reading about it.
Her eyes flicked over the thrillers and the behavioral studies of real-life criminals. One thing was certain; he had wildly divergent tastes in books. And there wasn’t a thing in the bag having to do with insects, either. He had been kidding her and Katie, though he teased so seriously, it was difficult to tell.
And then she saw the map. It had been there all along, although it hadn’t registered until right now that the thick folded paper, marking the chapter on the Wyndhams, was a map. She unfolded it. A map of Clover.
Her eyes immediately focused on the red circle drawn near the outskirts of town. Beside it, handwritten in the same red ink were the words “Wyndham estate.”
Hannah drew a sharp breath. Why would he mark the Wyndham estate on this map? It wasn’t as if it was a tourist attraction! Her imagination began to conjure up yet another scenario, supplanting her comfortable criminologist-on-holiday theory.
What if Matthew Granger was a cat burglar who’d come to Clover to rob the Wyndhams? She had been to the family mansion and knew it was a virtual treasure trove filled with priceless antiques and paintings and objets d’art, which had been collected by generations of Wyndhams. It was an antiques dealer’s dream, though Hannah had never, ever approached any Wyndham about selling anything. They would’ve considered any commercial interest crass and ill-bred, and Hannah knew it.
But suppose Matthew Granger had been hired by some fanatical dealer or collector determined to possess what the Wyndhams would never sell? Or perhaps he was acting on his own, hoping to make a killing in the black market, which thrived on stolen treasures? Every cat burglar she’d ever seen in the movies dressed in black, just like Matthew, the better to sneak around on rooftops in the dark, she presumed.
And then there were the Wyndham jewels, a fabulous collection that had graced the throats and wrists and fingers of generations of Wyndham women. Just last month at a charity ball, Hannah had seen the stunning heirloom emerald necklace and matching earrings worn by the incomparable Alexandra Wyndham, that genteel paragon of beauty and class.
She swallowed. That necklace alone could secure a jewel thief a luxurious retirement—if he could remove it from the Wyndham estate. Was Matthew Granger here to try?
Hannah closed her eyes and tried to still the wild pounding of her heart. What should she do? Alert Sheriff Maguire to warn the Wyndhams? But she had no evidence of any wrongdoing or even potential wrongdoing, only her own anxious speculations. She could almost hear Ford Maguire tell her so. It didn’t help that he still thought of her as a flighty little schoolgirl who’d played with his younger sister, Lucy.
Matthew’s and Katie’s voices sounded in the hall. Hannah glanced down at the map and the book in her hand. She couldn’t let him catch her going through his things!
Just as she slipped the map back into the book, she noticed a name written in ink at the bottom of the chapter’s opening page. Alexandra Wyndham. Hannah gasped. She’d envisioned Alexandra in her emeralds, and now her name had turned up in Matthew Granger’s book. As his primary target? The coincidence was creepy enough to make her hair stand on end!
Matthew and Katie were very near, practically outside the door. Hannah had just enough time to rezip the bag and plop down on the edge of the bed. She crossed her legs, affecting a languorous pose while studying her crimson-painted fingernails.
Matthew’s
