A Texas Ranger's Christmas

by Rebecca Winters

  “I’ll be by at ten with breakfast for you, Gracie.”

  “Promise?”

  “You can take it as a given.” He hung up, needing to run his plan past Mac before he left headquarters.

  WHILE BLAIRE WAITED FOR her partner, Perry, to get to the Austin office, she printed out two copies of her work sheet for the day and put one on Sheila’s desk. It was getting late. Something had held him up obviously. After phoning the Drummonds to let them know she was coming, she left for her first appointment.

  At ten o’clock she pulled into the Drummonds’ driveway and jumped down from the cab of the white truck bearing the Texas Forest Service logo. A guy who looked around thirty, close to her age anyway, walked over to her. The sixty-three-degree weather made it a balmy December day, the kind she liked since she worked out of doors year-round.

  Lighter streaks in her honey-blond hair attested to the fact that she spent a lot of her time in the sun. For practicality on the job she’d recently had it cut and layered.

  “I’m Blaire Koslov, coordinator for the Austin forestry office.” Since her husband’s disappearance five years earlier, she’d gone by her maiden name. Because of the horrendous publicity at the time, she’d done everything possible to keep a low profile and minimize public scrutiny.

  “Nice to meet you. I’m Jeremy Drummond. Sorry, but my wife waited as long as she could before she had to leave for work and couldn’t be here.”

  “I’m sorry I was late. I waited for my colleague who usually comes on calls with me, but something has held him up. Please forgive the delay.” They shook hands. “You’ve got a lovely stand of pecan trees around the side there.”

  “They’re part of the reason we bought this place in the spring, but we’ve noticed something’s wrong with several of them. I hope we didn’t make a mistake purchasing this property.”

  “Why don’t you show me the trees you’re talking about first.”

  “Sure.”

  She followed him across the front yard. Before they reached them, she saw the problem immediately and called to him. “I already know what’s wrong. Some of the trees have been attacked with webworm. Those unsightly webs look ugly, but it’s not serious if you take care of it now. If you have a broom handy, I’ll show you. Bring a box or a garbage bag, too.”

  His worried expression vanished. “Give me a second.”

  While he was gone, she walked around identifying the trees that were affected.

  “Here you go.”

  She took the broom from him and used the handle to break open some of the webs she could reach. Being five foot six meant she wasn’t short, but her height had its limitations. Still, she did her best. Soon the larvae fell out. “You want to get rid of these pests and prune any leaves that have egg masses. Since it’s fall, a lot of beneficial insects have already been feeding on the eggs. Such natural predators have helped cut down on some of the problem.”

  He looked up. “You think I can do all this myself?”

  “Probably, but you’ll have to spray on a pesticide to open up those webs at the top. If you’re not comfortable doing that, then call an expert who’ll know the right kind of spray and let them do the job. This isn’t a serious infestation. If you take care of it now, your trees will stay healthy.”

  A smile lit up his face. “I hope you’ll forgive me when I say this, but you don’t look like what you are. Whoops. That came out wrong. What I’m trying to say is, you don’t expect to see such an attractive member of the forest service arrive at your door. Am I terrible to say that?”

  She chuckled and started walking toward the truck. She wore hiking boots along with her green-and-khaki uniform. “Let me ask you a question before I answer. Are you a baseball player?”

  “No. A tile contractor.”

  “Well, there you go.”

  His mind soon caught up with her comment and he grinned. “You actually thought I played baseball?”

  “Let’s just say I could imagine it. You remind me of a couple of players.” He was cute.

  “You’re a baseball fan?”

  “No. To me it’s like watching paint dry.” That wasn’t exactly true. She used to love watching all kinds of sports, especially college football, but that was before her world had shattered. Her pleasure in just being alive had been stolen from her. Thanks to a good psychiatrist and her career, she was doing better these days.

  Mr. Drummond laughed as she climbed back in the truck and shut the door. “Thank you for your expertise, Ms. Koslov.”

  She waved to him. “Happy to be of help.”

  “My wife’s going to be greatly relieved. By the time she gets home, I hope to have most of those webs gone.”

  By the time she gets home…

  Every spouse had the right to presume his or her other half would come home at the end of a busy work-day. Five years ago Blaire’s husband had left the bank where he worked and had never come home to their apartment for their eight-month anniversary dinner.

  As Blaire backed out of the driveway and took off, she looked into the rearview mirror and saw Mr. Drummond get to work. She hoped his wife would be home on time tonight and every night for the rest of their lives. She hoped his wife would always be trustworthy.

  The second Blaire realized where her thoughts had led, her eyes narrowed and she gunned the accelerator. When she came to the first stoplight, she reached for her work schedule to see what address was next on the docket.

  With the doctor’s counseling and strategies, she was getting better at cutting off negative thought processes that dragged her into the hellish black void of a thousand what-ifs. She had to admit it helped when a colleague came out on the job with her.

  Since working for the Texas Oak Wilt Suppression Project, she often went out on assignments with one of the other five area resource foresters from the office. This week she and Perry Watkins had teamed up.

  She enjoyed the married man’s upbeat spirit. A colleague’s presence served as a great preventative against introspection. But he’d just left her a text message telling her not to expect him to join her. Earlier this week he’d complained of a toothache. His dentist could fit him in for a root canal. He didn’t know how long he’d be.

  You’re on your own today, Blaire.

  She turned on the radio, but the Rachmaninoff concerto playing on the classical FM station touched her core too deeply to keep listening. Blaire had grown up playing the piano. On their first date, Nate had taken her to the symphony where they’d heard “Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini,” one of her favorite pieces.

  Her parents had given them a baby grand for their wedding present. After they were married, she went on playing and teaching the children from her old neighborhood while she finished up her college studies. With the extra money she’d bought season tickets for the symphony. If Nate couldn’t go, she took a friend or family member. But since the day joy went out of her life, she hadn’t touched the piano or attended another concert.

  Pressing the scanner, she came to a country-and-Western station, but the poignant lyrics talked about loss. Blaire could have written them.

  Other stations were playing nonstop Christmas music. Certain times of the year were more oppressive than others. The thought of Christmas depressed her. She skipped those stations. The scanner stopped on a talk show.

  Politics.

  Someone else’s rage was just the thing to prevent her from dwelling on her eternal state of limbo. She turned up the volume.

  CAIGE APPROACHED THE redheaded police officer. “One breakfast coming up. A steak burrito and a lemonade.”

  Gracie lifted her head. “You’re a sweetie!” She got to her feet. “Good luck wading through these.” She pointed to five files sitting on her desk. “You can stay in my office. I’m going to the lunchroom to make everyone envious.”

  He chuckled. “Thanks. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  She took the sack and drink from him. “I’d like to think that’s true. It w
ould vindicate my existence,” she bantered. On a more serious note she asked, “How’s Josh?”

  “He’s terrific.”

  “And his daddy?”

  Caige gave her a frank stare. His black hair was showing glints of gray at the temples. The same gray of his eyes was discernible in the bits of dark stubble on his jaws when he got up to shave every morning. He was close to thirty-four years old, going on a hundred, and she knew it. “He’s doing okay.”

  “I’ll take okay, for now.” She winked. “We’ll be putting up a Christmas tree this week. When all the decorations are done, Sam and I want you to bring Josh over to the house. The girls will love to play with him. I’ll call you in a few days.”

  He felt his throat swell. “That sounds wonderful.”

  “If I’m not back when you’ve finished going through these, just leave them on the desk.”

  “Will do.”

  “See you later.”

  After she shut the door, he sat down at her desk. She kept pictures of her husband and two daughters in plain sight. Tricia was ten, Mandy twelve. Both were friendly like their mom. Josh could use all the warmth they were willing to give.

  His son didn’t have close friends. He’d been only five when the accident had happened. Gracie had been right there with her daughters for support. He honestly didn’t know what he would have done without a friend like her.

  Mac and the other men in the office had done everything possible to help him out and still did. But a child needed friends his own age. Mrs. Wright assured him the children in his class at school provided a certain amount of necessary interaction. Still…nothing replaced a mother’s love.

  No matter how much love Caige gave his son, Josh would always need more. When he thought about the future and how uncertain it was, his stomach clenched.

  Caige had set his financial affairs in order so that Josh would always be taken care of. But who would love his boy if something happened to him in the line of duty? He’d been thinking that maybe he should quit the Rangers and move to Naylor, a small town northeast of Austin. An hour’s drive.

  His parents and married siblings lived there. Josh had three cousins he’d played with over the Thanksgiving weekend. Everyone loved him. Caige’s parents had been encouraging him to bring their grandson home where they could be on hand all the time. His sister, Rosie, had assured him the Naylor elementary school had an excellent special-education program.

  Maybe it was a solution Caige hadn’t wanted to accept because it meant a total life change. But he’d do anything for Josh, whose needs would only increase as he got older. During Christmas vacation Caige would have the freedom to set things in motion for the two of them if he decided to move.

  It wouldn’t alter the situation for Liz, who would always have access to Josh if she wanted. He’d never stop praying for that to happen. As for Caige, he could put the house on the market and buy another one in Naylor. Instead of doing Ranger business, he’d go back to ranching alongside his brother, Kip. The two would also help their father with his ranching as they’d done in their teens.

  He stared at the five files, wondering if the Farley case was going to be the last one he ever worked on as a Ranger.

  The first case in the stack dealt with a female victim who’d been working at a dry cleaners and had been shot at close range. The other four cases involved male victims; a prisoner being transferred, a security guard at a warehouse, a Realtor found shot in his own office and a golfer found shot on a golf course.

  Caige vaguely remembered hearing talk about the death of an Austin golfer who’d turned pro, but Caige had been out of town on another case and hadn’t learned the details.

  He went through each file making copies of the ballistics reports. When a gun was fired, it left a unique microscopic marking on the bullet and shell casing, much like a human fingerprint. He would ask Dirk in forensics to fire Mr. Farley’s gun with Farley’s own ammo and compare the bullet and shell casing to the ones in these reports. Maybe there’d be a match. With no leads, it was worth investigating.

  After putting back the ballistics report in the last file, he happened to glance at some photographs. There was a graphic picture of the twenty-eight-year-old pro golfer Daniel Reardon Dunn shot in the heart. On the sixth of September he’d been found dead at the eighteenth hole of the Hilly Heights golf course in Austin.

  There was another photograph taken at the graveside service for him. Sometimes a detective on a homicide case would decide to take a few pictures at the funeral knowing that a certain percentage of killers showed up to see the victim buried. Among the crowd of thirty or so people standing in the background with the other mourners he spotted Nathan and Blaire Farley.

  He made a low whistle. “Well, what do you know.”

  The photograph hadn’t produced results for the other detective, but Caige was encouraged by this find. If Farley was a killer—this golfer’s killer—not only would it solve the Dunn murder, it would change the whole complexion of the Farley case itself.

  He copied the photo, then headed back to the office, catching up with Mac in the hallway. “Can we talk?”

  “Sure. Come on in my office.”

  He followed his boss inside and shut the door. Without preamble he told him what he’d found in the files and handed him the papers. Mac whistled when he saw the photocopy of the Farleys at the graveside service. “Sometimes you come up with something so fast, you give me gooseflesh.”

  “It may be nothing.”

  His boss made a strange sound in his throat. “Don’t you ever quit on me.”

  Caige averted his eyes. “Let’s get that gun and ammo over to forensics, stat.”

  “I’ll take care of it. Now, tell me about your plan because I know you have one.” After working together for so long, there were no secrets between them.

  “I’m thinking two weeks undercover as a forester should be enough time for me to get inside Mrs. Farley’s mind. If she’s innocent, then she doesn’t know what she knows and it will be up to me to pick her brains. But if she did have something to do with her husband’s disappearance, then I’m counting on her being less paranoid after five years. She’s bound to make a slip that’s significant.”

  Mac nodded. “I’ll talk to her supervisor and make arrangements for you to chat with him later today if possible. I’ll tell him we’d like you on board there by Monday morning.”

  “Good. However, that means I’ve only got this weekend to absorb the fundamentals that took her a college education to learn.”

  “For you it’ll be a piece of cake. The rest you can pick up as you go, but I realize you’ll be spending most of your time with Josh until Monday. If you want, Mona and I will come over on Sunday and give you a break.”

  Nobody came any better than Caige’s boss, who had grandchildren of his own. “I appreciate the offer, but I’ll work it out. Josh loves the park. I can do some studying while we’re there. Thanks, Mac.”

  “HEY, BLAIRE!”

  Blaire came all the way into the office and spotted the secretary. “Hi, Sheila! How was your weekend with Tim?” They’d gone to San Antonio.

  “Fabulous. I bought a new painting with a Southwest flavor to match my decor.”

  “That’s terrific!”

  Blaire’s gaze swerved to one of her other colleagues. “Out with it, Marty. How many football games did you watch this weekend?”

  “Pam let me see three.”

  “For that sacrifice, what did you have to do for her?”

  “The kids and I went Christmas shopping with her. We hit every store in the Barton Creek Mall.”

  Blaire chuckled. “I’m sure that made her day.”

  In truth, Blaire needed to get started on some shopping of her own. Besides her parents, she had her grandparents who lived in Houston; a younger married sister, Gwen; a brother-in-law, Jim; their new baby, Christopher, and the people in her office to buy for. As for her brother, Mark, who’d joined the navy and wasn’t married
yet, she needed to get gifts off to him right away or he might not receive them by Christmas.

  Marty grinned. “So what did you do?”

  “I’ve been refinishing a pair of end tables and a coffee table for my living room.”

  “And?”

  “There’s no and.” Marty never tired of trying to line her up with a great guy he knew. But to date a man who was interested meant having to tell him her situation. Nothing would kill that interest faster, which was all right with her. Blaire wasn’t interested, either.

  In two more years, if no evidence came forth to the contrary, her father reminded her, she could have Nate declared legally dead. Then at least she could be considered a widow and would be able to marry again if she wanted to, which she didn’t.

  But there would always be a few people who wondered what had happened to Nate, and still weren’t sure how much she really knew about his disappearance. In her case, she didn’t need to wear a scarlet letter to be treated with a certain amount of caution and speculation.

  She sat down at her desk to check her emails. By the time she’d finished setting up her appointments for the day, the other staff had come through the door. Blaire looked up. “Did you see Perry on your way in?”

  They shook their heads.

  “He’s not coming,” Sheila announced. “I just got off the phone with the boss. He said Perry’s personal leave came through. He’ll be gone for the next two weeks.”

  “Wow, and right before Christmas. That’s amazing.”

  “Yup. Too bad we can’t all be that fortunate.”

  “I hear you.”

  Since the guys in the office already had their rotations for the week figured out, it appeared Blaire was going to be on her own. Their boss, Stan Belnap, preferred they work in pairs, but sometimes it wasn’t possible.

  “In that case, I need to get going, and I’ll leave a copy of my appointment sheet with you.” She put it on Sheila’s desk and headed toward the door. “See you all tomorrow. Everybody have a great day.”