The Cabin (30 page)

pose she did mean it?”

But they all laughed, and he knew it was tough treat-

ing Maggie and Ellen like adults—damn tough. Proba-

bly would take him a few more years to get used to it.

They piled back into Davey’s truck. Maggie made

exaggerated gagging noises at the stale smell of ciga-

rettes, as she had when she’d climbed in the first time.

Ellen brought up Davey Ahearn, Tess Haviland and the

dead body in Tess’s dirt cellar last spring, another re-

minder of Susanna’s life without him. Jack remembered

she’d called and checked with him about how long it

took a body to decompose. He should have known

something was up.

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249

When they got back to the cabin, Susanna’s car was

still gone. All in all, Jack preferred taking Maggie and

Ellen cross-country skiing to escorting Iris to a cemetery.

As they charged into the cabin, nestled cozily amidst the

trees and lake, he could feel the ache, knew he wanted to

stay here and break in his new snowshoes, maybe try a

little ice-fishing. He wanted to spend time with his fam-

ily. But he had to check with Sam and see about Beau

McGarrity, Alice Parker and, perhaps, Destin Wright.

“Dad! Oh, my God!”

Maggie. Jack ran for the cabin. Ellen was yelling

now, panic raising the pitch of her voice. “Dad, Dad—

no, Maggie, don’t!
What if they’re still here?”

He grabbed a ski pole in the mud room. Ellen, white-

faced, burst from the kitchen. She was hyperventilating.

“Dad, Maggie went upstairs. Someone—someone’s—”

He reached into his pocket for his cell phone. “Call

the police.”

She was blinking rapidly, gulping in air. Purple and

white blotches had broken out on her face. “They took

the place apart. Maggie…” Suddenly she was a little girl

again, hanging on to his hand.
“Daddy.”

Jack curled her stiff fingers around the cell phone.

“911. Go.”

She nodded, damn near passing out, and headed

outside.

The kitchen was tossed. Cupboards opened, drawers

pulled out, towels, food and utensils thrown on the floor.

In the living room, the couch cushions were off, the

throw blankets scattered, the bookshelves dumped. Half

the castle puzzle had ended up on the floor.

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Carla Neggers

“Maggie, where the hell are you?”

“It’s okay, Dad.” She appeared at the top of the stairs,

as pale as her sister, but glaring down at him with a greater,

more immediate sense of indignation. She clenched the

handrail. “Whatever
bastard
did this is gone.”

“Maggie.” Jack started up the stairs with his ski pole.

“Go outside with Ellen. She’s calling the police. Then

call your mother. Wait for me.” He thrust the truck keys

at her. “If anyone but me comes out of this cabin, get

out of here.”

“Dad, I checked up here—there’s no one—”

“Downstairs. Outside. Now, Maggie.”

Her mouth snapped shut, and she complied, her feet

barely touching the steps as she slid past him. No ski

pole for her. She’d done her checking unarmed, which

Jack knew was just as well given her inexperience.

Whoever had tossed the place had lost steam by the

time they reached the second floor. Given his daughters’

level of neatness, Jack couldn’t tell what all had been

dumped and gone through in their shared bedroom and

what they’d done themselves.

In Iris’s room, the mattress was askew, and her

clothes were hanging out of her dresser drawers, her

empty suitcase upended.

The sofa bed in the loft was similarly roughed up.

An amateur. Someone who wanted to make it look

as if he’d done a thorough job.

Jack checked Susanna’s bedroom downstairs. The

same thing.

He went back outside and found the girls in the truck,

both doors wide open. Ellen was behind the wheel,

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251

calmer now but still shaken. “I got through to the po-

lice,” she told him. “It took a couple of tries. They’re on

their way. Dad…”

“Are you two okay?” he asked, standing at the open

driver’s door.

They nodded. Maggie looked at him, her dark eyes

serious, angry and scared, even if she’d never admit to

being afraid. She was like her mother in that. “This is

about Alice Parker and that murder investigation, why

you and Sam are here, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know what it’s about,” Jack said. “We can

guess, but that won’t do any good. It could be a coinci-

dence for all we know.”

“Is that what you believe?” Maggie asked.

He shook his head. “No.”

Ellen started gulping for air again. “Dad, what about

Mom? What if whoever was here went after her?”

“Let’s not get ahead of herself. Your mom’s with Iris.

They’re looking at old tombstones. I’m sure they’re fine.”

Maggie hunched her shoulders. She’d taken off her

coat and had to be cold. “Mom and Gran’ll be pissed at

the mess we have to clean up.”

Jack knew both girls would be all right. “Do you two

mind if I take a look around out here?”

They shook their heads. Ellen managed a wan smile.

“No, Dad, go ahead. Go be a Texas Ranger.”

When she arrived at the cabin and found Jack build-

ing a snowman, Susanna knew something was wrong.

He had the bottom done and was working on the mid-

dle, and he didn’t stop when she and Gran got out of the

252

Carla Neggers

car and he told them about the break-in. The local po-

lice had been and gone. He’d told them about Alice Par-

ker and Beau McGarrity. And Destin Wright. They were

nonetheless inclined to believe it had been a local

scrounging for cash, probably thinking the cabin, only

recently sold, was still on the market.

Iris, her blood up, retreated inside to help the girls

with the cleanup.

Susanna scooped up a handful of snow, which was

just wet enough to hold together. “Alice Parker is stay-

ing with Destin at the Blackwater Inn,” she said. “Gran

and I just talked to her. I should have come straight here

and told you, but I’d promised to take Gran to the cem-

etery. It’s just as well, I suppose. We could have walked

in on this guy tossing the cabin.”

Jack remained silent as he carefully patted more

snow onto the middle section of his snowman.

“She said Beau McGarrity checked me out before his

wife was killed.”

Jack stopped then, his dark eyes boring into her.

“Jesus, Susanna.”

“She never told the detectives. I don’t know if she

didn’t think it mattered—he parked across the street

and watched me in the front garden. One day he fol-

lowed me out to the school.”

“And this was before his wife was murdered?”

“That’s what Alice said. Jack, I don’t know what to

believe. I don’t know if she’s up here to get under my

skin, or if she’s after McGarrity somehow, thinks I can

help convict him of murder.
I don’t know.
”

“You don’t have to know. It’s not your job.”

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253

His tone wasn’t antagonistic, which somehow only

made Susanna feel worse. “And Destin—who knows

what he and Alice have cooked up?” She watched a

chickadee perch on the very top branch of a spruce tree,

then swoop off into the woods. “If I did anything to

cause that woman’s death—if she died in any way be-

cause of me—”

“Tell me everything Alice told you,” Jack said.

Susanna nodded. “Gran was there, too. She can help

fill in any blanks. Jack—” She added her snow to his

snowman-in-progress. “There’s something else I

haven’t told you. I don’t know if it has any role in what’s

been going on—I’ve told myself a million times that it

can’t possibly, but…my God, Jack, that man followed

me
before
his wife’s death.”

He slid that hot, dark-eyed gaze at her.

She jumped back, as if she’d been seared. “You al-

ready know?”

“I told you. I always know.”

“
Damn
it, Jack. You
know?
”

He lifted his snowman’s middle off its base, adjust-

ing it, patting the snow smooth. He focused on his work,

as if the damn snowman had his full attention. “Ten mil-

lion dollars isn’t that easy to hide.”

“I wasn’t hiding it—I was just not telling you about it.”

“Sam’s been guessing five million. I think he has a

pool going.”

“But you knew?”

He scooped up a palmful of snow and dumped it into

a crack in the middle section. “It’s an educated guess. I

take it I’m not far off?”

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Carla Neggers

“No.”

His eyes lifted to her. “Miffed?”

“Miffed. What kind of word is that?” Her throat was

tight, and she could feel tears welling. Not this time. She

was
not
going to cry this time, not when someone had

just ransacked her cabin and scared the hell out of her

daughters. She had to stay focused, like Jack on a case.

“It trivializes the importance of how I feel.”

“Sort of like saying I’d taken your virginity.”

“What? Where did
that
come from? We’re talking

about money—” She took all of him in, this tall, dark-

haired, dark-eyed man in his western-cut suede jacket

and his new insulated gloves and boots. No hat. He was

the only man who’d ever made love to her, the only man

she’d ever wanted in bed with her. She didn’t know

what she’d have done if she’d lost him at nineteen, if

he’d gone home to south Texas without her. But she

shook off the thought, because he was here, twenty

years later. “Forget it, Jack. You’re not going to distract

me by talking about sex. Why didn’t you say something

if you knew?”

“You’re the one who made this fortune.” He took a

step back and admired his handiwork, still as if his

snowman were all he had on his mind. “You’re the one

who turned it into a problem for yourself. So, I figured

you could be the one to decide when you were ready to

tell me about it.”

“But you knew—”

“That’s beside the point.”

“Jack, that
is
the point. Damn it, you left me to ago-

nize over how to tell you—”

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255

“As I told Sam this morning, you don’t agonize, Su-

sanna.” He scooped up more snow, building a head for

his snowman. “You strategize. You were waiting for the

right strategic moment to tell me, and this was it.”

“Oh, it is, is it? When my cabin’s just been ransacked?”

“Apparently so.”

Susanna felt blood rushing to her cheeks. He was

being deliberately maddening. “It’s our money. It’s not

just my money. I invested a chunk of your paycheck

every month.You signed things. And we’re still married.”

“Yes, we are.”

“Once it started happening, it happened fast.”

He shrugged. “You’re good at what you do.”

She stood still in the snow, aware of the silence

around her. She needed to go into the cabin and see what

had been done to it, talk to Maggie and Ellen. She didn’t

know what she and Jack could accomplish now, with the

pressure of a break-in and Beau McGarrity’s disappear-

ance on them. “Money’s never been the most important

thing in my life. I enjoy investing, and I enjoy working

with my clients, helping them figure out their relation-

ship with money, what they want it to do for them. Peo-

ple always come first.” She glanced at her cabin. It was

the first big thing she’d done with her money, and the

police had just been here. “I didn’t follow my own ad-

vice. I amassed a fortune without knowing why, what I

wanted to do with it. What we wanted.”

“Not having money was never a problem for us,” he

said. “Why should having money be a problem?”

“I don’t know.” Her eyes connected with his. “You

tell me.”

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Carla Neggers

“No, ma’am.” He held his oversized snowball—his

snowman’s head—at arm’s length in one hand, assess-

ing it. “I’m not the one with the problem. You are. That’s

why I haven’t said anything. I decided you needed the

space to work this out for yourself.”

“Oh, I see. You were being
nice.
”

“Damn nice, I think.”

“You know what I think? I think you just didn’t want

to say out loud that you have a rich wife. I think you

didn’t want to have to think about what having money

might mean to you. I was wrong not to ask you if you

wanted to get rich, it was easier for you to ignore what

I was up to—”

“You’re not the easiest woman to ignore, Miss Su-

sanna.” He added more snow to his snowman’s head, but

the way he patted it suddenly struck her as remarkably

sexual. No doubt he intended it that way. He went on,

his voice steady, “My life hasn’t changed because of the

ten million. Yours has. You moved north, you bought a

cabin. It wasn’t all Beau McGarrity and the tape. It was