The Cabin

by Carla Neggers

  Jack took in a sharp breath, his eyes very dark on her now. She knew she wasn't making any sense. She just wanted out of there with her children and her grandmother. She wanted them safe. She didn't want them hurt. Which was Jack's motive, too. But he was including her among those he didn't want hurt, not among those who would do the protecting, and it made her feel helpless—and even more vulnerable.

  Sam rocked back in his chair and said calmly, "I was hoping I'd get to try snowshoeing while I was up here. Maybe see a moose."

  "You go right ahead." She was on a roll now, unable to stop herself. "Snowshoe, track moose, track criminals. I'll leave you the cabin keys. You and Jack can lock up when you head back to San Antonio."

  "It wouldn't work out that way," Sam said calmly.

  Susanna instantly knew what he was telling her. "You mean you'd follow me home?"

  "Sure, all the way back to San Antonio if that's where you want to go." His reference to San Antonio instead of Boston was deliberate, provocative, Sam Temple's way of warning her not to underestimate his resolve. It was understood between the two Texas Rangers that Sam would look after Jack's family, and look after them he would. He took another sip of his coffee, his manner unchanged. "Makes no difference to me."

  Jack stood behind Susanna, and she could feel his absolute self-control when he touched her shoulder and said tightly, "Susanna."

  She kept her gaze pinned on Sam. "You two cooked this up last night."

  Sam shrugged, no sign of remorse. "You were asleep."

  "No, I wasn't. I was tossing and turning, trying to figure out how to keep you two from taking over my life. If Beau McGarrity wanted to harm me, he's had the chance. He's had over a year, for God's sake. He had me alone in my house, and he didn't touch me. He watched me prune my garden, and he didn't touch me." But she could see she wasn't getting through to either man, maybe not even to herself. "What if he's innocent? What if Alice is trying to frame him?"

  "Nobody's taking over your life or telling you what to do, Susanna." Jack's tone was still calm, if not gentle. "We're just telling you what we're doing."

  "You're not including me in the decision-making."

  But he'd had enough. "That's because there are no decisions here for you to make." He started through the kitchen and glanced back at Sam. "A couple hours."

  He left without another word, and Susanna kicked a chair and debated picking it up and throwing it out the window.

  "I thought he might not wake up so crabby when I got the sofa bed and he didn't." Sam got to his feet and walked to the kitchen, refilling his mug with stale cof

  fee. "What did you do, make him sleep on the floor?"

  "Shut up, Sam."

  "He has a one-track mind. Right now, he's focused on Alice Parker, this Destin Wright character and Beau McGarrity. He's got me focused on them, and he's going to get local law enforcement focused on them." Sam sat back down with his coffee. "You're just balking and being a pain in the ass because you're scared and pissed off this has happened. That's understandable."

  She watched out the window as her husband backed Davey Ahearn's truck out of the driveway. "That's his idea of communicating. Damn him."

  Sam shrugged. "Well, it's not as if you met him halfway."

  "Why should I?"

  "Susanna," he said softly, and she knew it was an appeal for common sense.

  But she wasn't ready yet, and she swore under her breath and stormed into her bedroom, slamming the door and pacing hard to keep herself from breaking something. Or starting to cry. Worry. Totally freak out.

  She'd known last night. Even as she'd felt herself drawn toward him, when Jack slipped into bed with her after plotting her marching orders with Sam, she could feel his remoteness. He was pulling back from her, shutting her out of his worries, his fears, even as he'd slid his hand up her leg. Instead of calling him on it then and there, she'd made love to him, saying nothing.

  She splashed her face with cold water and returned to the kitchen. Sam was still drinking his coffee at the table. She dropped into her chair and sighed, if not contrite at least with a little self-awareness. "I know what you're saying, Sam. He's going to be short-tempered and focused until all this gets settled."

  "You two are something."

  She managed a small smile. "I suppose I don't have to be a horse's ass about him going Texas Ranger on me."

  Sam smiled back. "I suppose you don't."

  "You used to call me ma'am."

  "That was before you turned back into a Yankee."

  "I'm not a Yankee. I grew up all over the country, and I've lived almost half my life in Texas—it's home. I love Texas."

  "Where were you born?"

  "Boston."

  "I rest my case." He leaned across the table toward her, his expression intense, reminding her of his intelligence and professionalism. He was not a man to underestimate. "Stop fighting so hard, Susanna. Stop putting all your fears and frustration onto Jack."

  "I hate this," she said, her voice choked.

  "Sure you do. It makes you feel vulnerable and out of control. It forces you to think about what you usually take for granted. You're mad at Jack because you want it all to go away. Nobody blames you for that."

  "If McGarrity was stalking me before his wife's murder—"

  "That's not your fault. It's not Jack's fault."

  "I didn't see him," Susanna whispered. "Not until that day in my kitchen."

  "Don't get ahead of yourself. Alice could have lied about him looking you up before Rachel McGarrity's

  death."

  "You don't think so."

  He shook his head, shrugged. "No."

  "I keep thinking about it," Susanna said quietly.

  "Then you should understand where Jack's coming from."

  She nodded. "I do."

  Sam settled back in his chair. "You going to cut him some slack?"

  "It's not like he's cutting me any—"

  "You? Hell, woman, he's cut you more slack than I ever would. I told him. Handcuffs."

  "Sam."

  He slid to his feet and gave her one of his heart-stop-ping smiles, adding as if she hadn't spoken, "Ma'am."

  * * *

  Paul and Sarah Johnson greeted Jack warmly, but with a touch of wariness he could understand. The local police had stopped by yesterday looking for Alice Parker and Destin Wright and told them about the break-in at the cabin. Now here he was, a Texas Ranger who wanted to ask them questions. He made sure they understood talking to him was a courtesy.

  "We'll tell you anything we can, Lieutenant Galway," Paul Johnson said. They were in a wide hall toward the back of the house, with a fireplace, a rolltop desk, two love seats and a six-foot-tall chainsaw carving of a bear. Another shorter hall led to a back door and out to Blackwater Lake. "Miss Parker checked herself and Mr. Wright out after lunch sometime. I helped her with her luggage, and she paid in cash—and she thanked us, said she loved the inn."

  Jack nodded, trying to help the couple relax. "I can see why. It's a nice place."

  Sarah Johnson fingered the cording on a love seat. "Mr. Wright left earlier in the day, not long after your wife and her grandmother were here. He was dressed for a hike, but I didn't actually see where he went. He didn't say where he was headed. He made a few comments comparing our inn to other places he's stayed, obviously more expensive. He wasn't obnoxious or rude. I think he just wanted us to know he could afford better than we had to offer."

  Not anymore, Jack thought.

  But she reddened, embarrassed. "Normally wouldn't speak this way about a guest, but under the circumstances—"

  Her husband broke in. "If you've met him, I'm sure you understand."

  "I've met him." Jack stayed neutral. "Can you tell me anything else he and Alice did or said while they were here?"

  "Destin was out a lot," Paul Johnson said, dropping his formality. "He said he was going to Lake Placid to check out the Winter Olympic training facilities, but I don't know if he did. Alice
seemed very pleased with her room and spent a great deal of time there. She was an undemanding guest."

  Compared to prison, Jack thought, the Blackwater Inn was paradise. He withdrew Sam's photo of Beau McGarrity and laid it on the rolltop desk. "Have you by any chance seen this man?"

  Paul picked up the photo and peered at it. His wife came over and looked over his shoulder, gasping suddenly. "Yes!Yes, I've seen him. Paul, you remember, don't you? Not this past summer—the summer before—"

  "That's right," Paul said. "Damn. You're right, Sarah. That's the same guy."

  "It was August, a year ago this past August," Sarah said with conviction.

  Jack remained silent, absorbing the couple's words, containing his reaction. Beau McGarrity had turned up on Blackwater Lake in the Adirondack Mountains two months before his wife's murder in south Texas.

  "I remember," Sarah Johnson went on, "because he was so interested in all the old stories about the lake and the inn, which we just love ourselves. He only stayed one night, as I recall. That's unusual. Our guests generally stay for several days at a time."

  "Was he interested in any stories in particular?" Jack asked.

  The couple exchanged glances, and Sarah Johnson went slightly pale. Paul cleared his throat and said, "He wanted to know all about Iris Dunning."

  Paul Johnson handed Jack the photo, and he slipped it into his jacket, remembering Iris's haunted look last night, her conviction that her past had somehow collided with her granddaughter's life and was doomed to bring tragedy to them all.

  It was different, interviewing witnesses when the subject was his family. When they were at the center of violence, lies, obsessions. Murder. He had to fight hard to keep his focus. Yesterday, finding Susanna's cabin tossed, seeing Ellen's panic, Maggie's terrified determi-nation—making love to his wife through the night, desperate to penetrate her fog of fear and vulnerability, her anger at what had infected their lives. He had to call on his training, his professionalism, his ability to distance himself from the raw emotions of the people directly involved in a crime. The victims. He had to stay objective, focused, and as a result, he hadn't been very nice to Susanna that morning.

  "Iris Dunning is one of our beloved local legends," Sarah said. "I don't know if she fully realized that yesterday when she was here with your wife. Her affair with Jared Herrington was a scandal at the time, but people don't remember it that way. We think about her finding his body when she was hiking all alone in the dead of winter—"

  "She was almost six months' pregnant," Paul added.

  His wife nodded. "She was very sick in the early months. We have a picture of the two of them together. I didn't think of it when she was here. Would you like to see it?"

  "I would," Jack said, and he followed the Johnsons down the short back hall, its papered walls covered in framed pictures.

  Paul pointed to a five-by-seven, black-and-white photograph almost in the center of the wall. "There, that's it."

  Jack leaned in close and studied the old photograph. It was just the two of them, an impossibly young Iris and her rich lover, standing on a rock outcropping above the lake, smiling at the camera as if they didn't have a care in the world. Iris wore her hair in a long, thick braid over one shoulder, and Jack thought she was beautiful in her shorts and camp shirt, her big old hiking boots. He smiled, imagining what she must have been like as a young woman.

  Next to her, Jared Herrington was rakishly handsome, right out of the pages of an early twentieth century Princeton yearbook.

  Sarah Johnson sighed beside Jack, shaking her head. "They say Jared was so in love with her. What hap-pened—it's just unbearably sad."

  "Iris has lived a good life," Jack said. "I think it's been a happy one, even if it's not what she envisioned when this picture was taken."

  He read the caption at the bottom of the picture, handwritten in neat black print. Iris Dunning, Adirondack guide, and Jared Rutherford Herrington of New Canaan, Connecticut.

  "The Herrington family still owns property on the north end of the lake." Paul spoke quietly, as if he was trying somehow to respect Iris's privacy, acknowledging the tragedy of that time in her life. "They haven't been up here in years. Jared's widow remarried after he died and moved to Philadelphia with their son. Apparently she had nothing more to do with the Herringtons, but I imagine her son inherited the property—"

  "Philadelphia?" Jack asked, interrupting. "Are you sure?"

  He nodded. "Yes, we've made it a point to learn as much as we can about the history of the lake, the people…" But he stopped, apparently sensing Jack's increased urgency.

  Rachel McGarrity was from Philadelphia. A month before she was murdered, her new husband visited the Blackwater Inn in the Adirondack State Park without her and asked the innkeepers about Iris Dunning.

  Jack knew he'd missed something. All along, he'd known, but he couldn't grasp it, couldn't figure out the connections. But he'd been looking strictly at Alice Parker, not at his own family. "Thanks for your time," he told the Johnsons.

  Sarah inhaled sharply. "If we see this man—"

  "His name's Beau McGarrity, and if you see him, call the police."

  "Is he dangerous?" Paul Johnson asked.

  Jack decided not to screw around with niceties. "Yes."

  He was halfway to his borrowed truck when Sarah Johnson ran across the sanded parking lot, clutching the picture of Iris and Jared Herrington. She thrust it at him. "I should have given it to her yesterday. They say this is the only picture of the two of them together." Her face was ashen, and she was near tears. "You get into the history of this place, you hear the stories, and they're so dramatic, so interesting, and then an old woman walks into your inn—" Her lips trembled. "I'm sorry."

  "You don't have to apologize," Jack said, meaning it. "I'll give Iris the picture."

  "Thank you. She's a remarkable woman." She shoved her hands into the pockets of her hiking pants. She hadn't bothered with a coat, but the cold didn't seem to bother her. A fine snow had started to fall, the wind gusting on the frozen lake. "There's something else I remembered, just as you headed out the door. The Herrington teahouse. Alice Parker was very interested

  in it."

  "Where is it?"

  She perked up and seemed pleased to be of help. "I have a geological survey map inside. I can show you."

  Nineteen

  Susanna gathered up two pairs of snowshoes and ski poles while Gran pulled on a pair of insulated gloves she'd borrowed from one of the girls. Sam leaned against the door to the mud room, watching them. "Stay within shouting distance," he said. "Don't go taking off for Greenland."

  "Gran just wants to get back on snowshoes." Susanna tucked them under one arm, the poles under the other, wishing she could contain her restlessness now Jack was gone. "She used to do it all the time."

  "That was a while ago," Sam said.

  "Sixty years since I snowshoed on Blackwater Lake," Gran said. "Just twenty years since I've snowshoed at all."

  Susanna glanced at her grandmother, who was less pensive than earlier but still not herself, and smiled at Sam. "We'll stay right around here."

  "Don't make me come after you."

  She nodded without argument. Sam Temple was committed to being suspicious of everyone and everything, and she'd done nothing to exempt herself.

  She had on her ski hat, wind pants, high-tech long underwear, heavy socks and layers of thermal shirt, fleece vest and shell. The snow and the wind had both picked up, Gran's storm starting to move in.

  "We'll be fine, Sam" Gran said.

  He winked at her. "At your word, Sasquatch. Off you go."

  Iris headed outside, and Susanna followed, dumping the snowshoes and poles on the driveway. There was already an inch of fresh snow on the ground, more coming down. Gran strapped on her snowshoes with little difficulty, just needing to hang on to Susanna's arm a few times to maintain her balance. She took the ski poles, beaming as she gazed out at the falling snow. "This is wonderfu
l." She smiled at Susanna, her eyes shining. "These new-styled snowshoes are so light and maneuverable—I could climb Whiteface in them, even at my age."

  Susanna laughed, her grandmother's enthusiasm infectious. "I don't think Sam would approve."

  She waved a gloved hand in dismissal. "He and that husband of yours have to be careful their law enforcement mindset doesn't squelch their sense of adven-ture—or other people's." She sighed, a snowflake melting on her nose. "A little rule-breaking is good for the soul."

  "Gran?"

  "Come with me," she said and set off along the trampled path through the side yard. She moved steadily, rhythmically, if not quickly.

  Susanna followed her down to the lake, welcoming the exercise and the brisk air. She assumed Gran would want to tramp around for a while, and then go inside and sit by the fire. But when they came to the lake, she wasn't satisfied staying in the open area in front of the cabin. With a remarkable burst of energy, she shot up the loop path that Susanna, Maggie and Ellen had taken to break in their snowshoes on Saturday morning.

  "Let's not get too far afield," Susanna called to her.

  Either Gran hadn't heard her over the gusting wind or was ignoring her. Susanna wasn't about to let her grandmother go off on her own, but when she caught up to her, Gran was already detouring off the path, using her poles to help her descend a gentle slope that led to the icy shore of the lake.

  Susanna stayed after her. "Gran, what are you doing?"

  "There," she said, pointing with her pole. "Do you see it? It's a boot print. I knew it. Destin came this way."

  "But the inn is back the other direction—"

  "I'm right," Gran said. "It's Destin. Alice checked out by herself yesterday, didn't she?"

  "That's what the police said, yes." Susanna frowned. "You're thinking she and Destin had a rendezvous point somewhere."

  "I told her stories about the old days out here," Gran said, leaning against her ski pole, staring out at the snow and the frozen lake. "She was so good at acting interested in every word I had to say."