The Cabin (23 page)

else, just paid for his beer and left.

Davey half turned on his stool and looked out at the

door as it shut. “Think I should follow him?”

“Jesus, Davey, no. Why would you do that?”

“You look suspicious, Jimmy.”

“You think that was a Texas accent?”

“Hell if I know. If it was, we’ve got too damn many

Texans showing up here, if you ask me.”

“Yeah.” Jim frowned, staring at the closed door.

“Cops were in earlier, asking about Jack Galway and

last night at Iris’s place.”

Davey nodded grimly. “Maybe you should give them

a buzz.”

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“Why, because a man with a Texas accent ordered a

beer and congratulated my daughter on expecting a

baby? That’s thin.”

“Jack leave you his cell phone number?”

“No, and I didn’t ask for it.”

“Three Texans in a row. The ex-con, the Ranger, and

now this guy with the ring. I don’t know, Jimmy. I’m

starting to think you should tack a Lone Star on the

front door.”

Jim ignored him and put another pie in the oven, but

he ended up burning the meringue on this one, too.

��

Twelve

Susanna splashed her face with cold water in her lit-

tle cabin bathroom and recovered her composure. In all

the months she’d pictured herself telling Jack about her

encounter with Beau McGarrity, she’d said to her-

self—for God’s sake, don’t cry. Just tell him straight

up and let him get all official and try to tell her he

should arrest her for withholding evidence. She’d be

objective, calm and reasonable, understanding of the

anger and sense of betrayal he might feel at her long

silence.

That plan had gone to hell when she found out he’d

known about Beau McGarrity practically all along.

In hindsight, she should have told Jack what had

happened. It had been her first instinct, and she should

have followed it. But clarity was so much easier now

when he was here. She wasn’t dealing with the reality

of a stranger in her kitchen. There’d been so much at

stake. The Rachel McGarrity murder investigation.

Maggie and Ellen’s safety. Her own. Once Jack told her

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about Alice Parker, it had seemed safer, simpler, better

for all concerned for her just to say nothing.

She noticed in the mirror that her eyes were red-

rimmed and puffy. Tough to blame that on the snow, the

cold, the face wash. Damn, she’d held back on that cry

for far too long.

Jack was right. That moment she’d decided not to tell

him about Beau McGarrity, she hadn’t wanted to be

married to a Texas Ranger. She’d have taken an accoun-

tant, a social studies teacher, a construction worker—

except she knew better. Violence could strike anyone,

anytime. She’d learned that in her years married to Jack

Galway. And she loved him.

She’d seen him cry once, at his mother’s grave in San

Antonio. She was killed in a car accident when he was fif-

teen and his younger sister was just nine. His father worked

two jobs and pushed both his son and daughter to excel,

to open up their world and possibilities. Jack had gone to

Harvard, Kara toYale—and both had come home to Texas,

although Kara only recently. Bill Galway had remarried

and moved to Corpus Christi, satisfied to spend his re-

tirement fishing and telling people he had one kid who was

a Texas Ranger, another who was a lawyer, so between the

two of them, no matter what happened, he was all set.

The Galways were a tough lot, that was for sure.

Susanna splashed her face once more, dried off and

headed back into the kitchen. Jack and the girls were

making dinner—spaghetti, salad, garlic bread. He

glanced at her but said nothing, and she could tell his

mood was definitely dark. At least with her. He seemed

fine with Maggie and Ellen.

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193

She joined Gran at the puzzle table. “We should go

to England,” Gran said, “and look up this castle.”

Susanna smiled. “I thought you didn’t like to travel.”

“Well, England might be nice.” She glanced up at her

granddaughter and whispered, “You told him?”

“He already knew.”

“Ah.”

Gran was aware some of the details about what had

happened with Beau McGarrity, but not all of them. If

she knew everything, she’d have likely gone to Jack

herself long before now. Susanna didn’t know how she’d

managed to keep any secrets, much less a few big ones,

given the Dunning propensity for getting everything out

in the open. Her work had taught her how to keep con-

fidences—so had Jack’s. But that was professional, not

personal, and a confidence was different from a secret.

Susanna put in a couple of pieces of the rose garden

before Maggie called them to the table.

During dinner, they talked about snowshoeing, the

weather and food, and Susanna could feel the isolation

of her cabin with nightfall, the quiet all around them.

There were no street noises, no city lights—in summer,

the windows would be open, with crickets and owls to

listen to, but now, there was just the occasional whis-

tling of the wind as the snow fell. Jack sat next to Gran

at the other end of the table, and Susanna managed not

to make eye contact with him through dinner. After-

ward, she ran everyone out of the kitchen and cleaned

up the dishes.

Gran, Maggie and Ellen resumed their Scrabble tour-

nament once the table was cleared. Jack brought in

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wood, one load after another, until the wood box was

overflowing. Susanna knew he was climbing the walls.

“You could go out and look for moose tracks in the

dark,” she said as he started out for another load.

He gave her a short, intense look, and she knew he

had two things on his mind. One was Alice Parker, Beau

McGarrity and the missing tape. The other was her. Nei-

ther made hanging around a mountain cabin easy to do.

“Mom,” Ellen said from the table, “you should join

our Scrabble tournament. We can have four players.”

“It’s too late to add a new player,” Maggie said.

Gran drew her wool shawl around her thin shoulders.

“Susanna can take my place.”

Ellen shook her head. “No way. You can’t quit while

you’re ahead. You’re winning, Gran.”

“I made a seven-letter word,” she told Susanna,

pleased with herself.

“She did, Mom,” Maggie said. “
Avenues.
Can you

believe it? It’s such a city word for up here.”

Susanna let them play their game and retreated to the

couch in front of a fire, trying to concentrate on a book.

Jack dumped his last load of wood and tried working

the puzzle. He put in one piece and gave up. “I never

did like puzzles.”

“Not if they don’t involve criminals.” Susanna didn’t

think there was an edge to her voice, but he shot her a

look as if he thought he’d heard one. She shrugged under

her warm fleece blanket. “You are a Texas Ranger.”

“Am I?”

He wasn’t back to neutral. He was still in interroga-

tion mode. Still angry with her—and himself. An ex-

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195

convict he’d put in prison had insinuated herself into his

family’s life for
weeks,
he’d been hit on the head and he

hadn’t known about the tape. There was still an un-

solved murder in Texas. His professional and personal

lives had collided, and Susanna knew he didn’t like it.

Neither did she. But instead of facing it, she’d fled. It

wasn’t her style, which made reconciling herself to the

past months even more difficult.

That didn’t mean she liked having the professional

Jack Galway turned loose on her. Intellectually, she un-

derstood her culpability in their current standoff. Emo-

tionally, she was still raw and hurt and furious with

him. He’d
known
about Beau McGarrity.

Under the circumstances, she felt no obligation to tell

him about the ten million. Not yet. Maybe not until his

lawyers came hunting for it.

But the thought of divorce brought an instant tight-

ness to her throat, and she could feel the tears brimming

again. She was exhausted, wrung out from the turmoil

of her emotions, lack of sleep, snowshoeing, the cold

air—just the edge of having her husband back in her life.

She flipped a page in her book, not that she was able

to absorb a single word she read. Jack bit off a sigh and

abruptly headed for the kitchen. “Where are you

going?” she asked.

“Star gazing.”

“It’s snowing. The stars won’t be out.”

“Then I’ll count snowflakes.”

She heard the mud room door shut hard and pulled

her fleece blanket up to her chin, debating whether to

go out and offer to count snowflakes with him. Maybe

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not, she thought, and flipped another page while Mag-

gie and Ellen groaned when their great-grandmother

put the
Q
on a triple-letter score.

Alice wrapped her damp hair in a soft, warm towel

and sank onto her bed in her room at the Blackwater Inn.

She could live in this room for the rest of her life. Never

mind Australia. Just give her maid service, pretty-smell-

ing soaps and a beautiful view right here in the Adiron-

dacks. She’d be fine.

Her skin was plump and wrinkled from her long,

scented bath. She’d snuggled up in the natural cotton

terry-cloth robe that came with her room, feeling pam-

pered and special. They had a fire in the living room

downstairs, but she was content staying up here in her

room, enjoying the quiet and a few minutes of freedom

from Destin.

Jack Galway was up here. That wasn’t good news.

“He scares the hell out of me,” Destin had told her when

he’d come in from his excursion out to Susanna’s cabin.

But if Jack’s presence put more pressure on her and

Destin, Alice thought, maybe it put more pressure on

Susanna, too. It could work to their advantage.

Destin was down in the living room, yapping with the

innkeepers. Alice stared at the shifting shadows on her

ceiling, the swirling plaster strokes. She remembered

Rachel McGarrity telling her that the best part of being

rich was always having quality. She’d loved fine linens.

Egyptian cotton towels, 300-count cotton sheets, Ana-

chini bedspreads, merino and cashmere blankets. Alice

tried to learn what the best brands and fabrics were. She

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197

wasn’t jealous, just curious. Rachel never lorded her

wealth over anyone. She was born with a silver spoon

in her mouth but had been raised to be gracious and

kind. Alice’s grandma had always set stock on good

manners as the true tell of character.

Rachel wasn’t perfect, but never pretended to be, not

that Alice had seen. Beau hadn’t wanted to know about

her imperfections, just as he hadn’t wanted to know

about his first wife’s cancer, like it was her fault—a

character flaw.

Philadelphia blueblood or not, Rachel Tucker McGar-

rity had bled like anyone else. The medical examiner said

she’d died within a minute. She probably hadn’t suffered.

But had she known what was happening to her? Did

she know she’d been shot, even if she didn’t really feel

it? Did she know her husband had just killed her?

Did she know Alice had inadvertently provoked him?

Alice knew there were things Rachel had never told

her. Why her interest in Susanna Galway, what she was

working on. They were getting to that—she’d promised

Alice more answers, soon.

Had she thought as she died,
I should have told

Alice more?

Alice shut her eyes, trying to block out the unwanted

thoughts and images. She didn’t know what the mind

could absorb in the last seconds before death. Had Ra-

chel seen Alice’s change purse on the driveway and

thought it was her friend who’d killed her? Was Beau

that evil to have wanted Rachel to believe it was Alice

who’d killed her, not him? Would that have given him

some kind of sick satisfaction?

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Alice knew she should have secured the crime scene

and let the investigative team figure out that her change

purse was planted. Instead she’d grabbed it—she’d had

to move Rachel’s arm—and scoured the area for other

evidence that would lead the detectives back to her,

trampling evidence in the process.

What a mess.

She got up and walked over to the mirror above her

dresser, letting her towel drape over her shoulders. She

liked her red hair. She might keep it. She’d never really

expected the slight changes in her appearance to keep

Ranger Jack at bay. Maybe they were simply a start to

adopting a new identity. Leaving behind Alice Parker of