A Texas Christmas: True Blue / A Lawman's Christmas: A McKettricks of Texas Novel

He owed her a lot. He’d been orphaned in junior high school and Barbara Ferguson, who’d just lost her husband in an accident, and suffered a miscarriage, had taken him in. His mother had once worked for Barbara at the café just briefly. Then his parents—well, his mother and stepfather—had died in a wreck, leaving a single, lonely child all on his own. Rick had been a terrible teen, always in trouble, bad-tempered and moody. He’d been afraid when he lost his mother. He had no other living relatives of whom he was aware, and no place to go. Barbara had stepped in and given him a home. He loved her no less than he’d loved his real mother, and he was quite protective of her. He never spoke of his stepfather. He tried not to remember him at all.

Barbara wanted him to marry and settle down and have a family. She harped on it all the time. She even introduced him to single women. Nothing helped. He seemed to be an eternally on-sale item in the matrimonial market that everybody bypassed for the fancier merchandise. He laughed shortly to himself at the thought.

Gwen watched him leave and wondered why he’d laughed. She was embarrassed that she’d thought he was asking her to lunch. He didn’t seem to have a girlfriend and everybody joked about his nonexistent love life. But he wasn’t attracted to Gwen in that way. It didn’t matter. No man had ever liked her, really. She was everybody’s confidante, the good girl who could give advice about how to please other women with small gifts and entertainments. But she was never asked out for herself.

She knew she wasn’t pretty. She was always passed over for the flashy women, the assertive women, the powerful women. The women who didn’t think sex before marriage was a sin. She’d had a man double over laughing when she’d told him that, after he expected a night in bed in return for a nice meal and the theater. Then he’d become angry, having spent so much money on her with nothing to show for it. The experience had soured her.

“Don Quixote,” she murmured to herself. “I’m Don Quixote.”

“Wrong sex,” Detective Sergeant Gail Rogers said as she paused beside the newcomer. Rogers was the mother of some very wealthy ranchers in Comanche Wells, but she kept her job and her own income. She was an amazing peace officer. Gwen admired her tremendously. “And what’s that all about?” she asked.

Gwen sighed, glancing around to make sure they weren’t being overheard. “I won’t give out on dates,” she whispered. “So men think I’m insane.” She shrugged. “I’m Don Quixote, trying to restore morality and idealism to a decadent world.”

Rogers didn’t laugh. She smiled, very kindly. “He was noble, in his way. An idealist with a dream.”

“He was nutty as a fruitcake.” Gwen sighed.

“Yes, but he made everyone around him feel of worth, like the prostitute whom he idealized as a great lady for whom he quested,” came the surprising reply. “He gave dreams to people who had given them up for harsh reality. He was adored by them.”

Gwen laughed. “Yes, I suppose he wasn’t so bad at that.”

“People should have ideals, even if they get laughed at,” Rogers added. “You stick to your guns. Every society has its outcasts.” She leaned down. “Nobody who conformed to the rigid culture of any society ever made history.”

Gwen brightened. “That’s true.” Then she added, “You’ve lived through a lot. You got shot,” Gwen recalled hearing.

“I did. It was worthwhile, though. We broke a cold case wide-open and caught the murderer.”

“I heard. That was some story.”

Rogers smiled. “Indeed it was. Rick Marquez got blindsided and left for dead by the same scoundrels who shot me. But we both survived.” She frowned. “What’s wrong? Marquez giving you a hard time?”

“It’s my own fault,” Gwen confided. “I can’t wear contacts and I hate glasses. I tripped in a crime scene and came close to contaminating some evidence.” She grimaced. “It’s a murder case, too, that college freshman they found dead in her apartment last night. The defense will have a field day with that when the perp is caught and brought to trial. And it will be my fault. I just got chewed out for it. I should have, too,” she said quickly, because she didn’t want Rogers to think Marquez was being unfair.

Rogers’s dark eyes searched hers. “You like your sergeant, don’t you?”

“I respect him,” Gwen said, and then flushed helplessly.

Rogers studied her warmly. “He’s a nice man,” she said. “He does have a temper and he does take too many chances. But you’ll get used to his moods.”

“I’m working on that.” Gwen chuckled.

“How did you like Atlanta?” Rogers asked conversationally as they headed for the exit.

“Excuse me?” Gwen said absently.

“Atlanta P.D. Where you were working.”

“Oh. Oh!” Gwen had to think quickly. “It was nice. I liked the department. But I wanted a change, and I’ve always wanted to see Texas.”

“I see.”

No, she didn’t, Gwen thought, and thank goodness for that. Gwen was keeping secrets that she didn’t dare divulge. She changed the subject as they walked together to the parking lot to their respective vehicles.

Lunch was a salad with dressing on the side, and half a grilled cheese sandwich. Dessert, and her drink, was a cappuccino. She loved the expensive coffee and could only afford it one day a week, on Fridays. She ate an inexpensive lunch so that she could have her coffee.

She sipped it with her eyes closed, smiling. It had an aroma that evoked Italy, a little sidewalk café in Rome with the ruins visible in the distance …

She opened her eyes at once and looked around, as if someone could see the thoughts in her head. She must be very careful not to mention that memory, or other similar ones, in regular conversation. She was a budding junior detective. She had to remember that. It wouldn’t do to let anything slip at this crucial moment.

That thought led to thoughts of Detective Marquez and what would be a traumatic revelation for him when the time came for disclosure. Meanwhile, her orders were to observe him, keep her head down and try to discover how much he, or his adoptive mother, knew about his true background. She couldn’t say anything. Not yet.

She finished her coffee, paid for her meal and walked out onto the chilly streets. So funny, she thought, the way the weather ran in cycles. It had been unseasonably cold throughout the South during the spring then came summer and blazing, unrelenting heat with drought and wildfires and cattle dying in droves. Now it was November and still unseasonably warm, but some weather experts said snow might come soon.

The weather was nuts. There had been epic drought throughout the whole southern tier of America, from Arizona to Florida, and there had been horrible wildfires in the southwestern states. Triple-digit temperatures had gone all summer in south Texas. There had been horrible flooding on the Mississippi River due to the large snowmelt, from last winter’s unusually deep snows up north.

Now it was November and Gwen was actually sweating long before she reached her car, although it had been chilly this morning. She took off her jacket. At least the car had air-conditioning, and she was turning it on, even if it was technically almost winter. Idly, she wondered how people had lived in this heat before air-conditioning was invented. It couldn’t have been an easy life, especially since most Texans of the early twentieth century had worked on the land. Imagine, having to herd and brand cattle in this sort of heat, much less plow and plant!

Gwen got into her car and drove by the crime lab to see if Alice had found anything on that digital camera. In fact, she had. There were a lot of photos of people who were probably friends—Gwen could use face recognition software to identify them, hopefully—and there was one odd-looking man standing a little distance behind a couple who was smiling into the camera against the background of the apartment complex where the victim had lived. That was interesting and suspicious. She’d have to check that man out. He didn’t look as if he belonged in such a setting. It was a mid-range apartment complex, and the man was dingy and ill kempt and staring a little too intently. She drove back to her precinct.

Her mind was still on Marquez, on what she knew, and he didn’t. She hoped he wasn’t going to have too hard a time with his true history, when the truth came out.

Barbara glared at her son. “Can’t you just peel the tomato, sweetie, without taking out most of it except the core?”

He grimaced. “Sorry,” he said, wielding the paring knife with more care as he went to work on what looked like a bushel of tomatoes, a gift from an organic gardener with a hothouse, that his mother was canning in her kitchen at home. Canning jars simmered in a huge tub of water, getting ready to be filled with fragrant tomato slices and then processed in the big pressure cooker. He glared at it.

“I hate those things,” he muttered. “Even the safest ones are dangerous.”

“Baloney,” she said inelegantly. “Give me those.”

She took the bowl of tomatoes and dunked them into a pot of boiling water. She left them there for a couple of minutes and fished them out in a colander. She put them in the sink in front of Rick. “There. Now they’ll skin. I keep telling you this is a more efficient way than trying to cut the skins off. But you don’t listen, my dear.”

“I like skinning them,” he said with a dark-eyed smile in her direction. “It’s an outlet for my frustrations.”

“Oh?” She didn’t look at him, deliberately. “What sort of frustrations?”

“There’s this new woman at work,” he said grimly.

“Gwen.” She nodded.

He dropped the knife, picked it back up and stared at her.

“You talk about her all the time.”

“I do?” It was news to him. He didn’t realize that.

She nodded as she skinned tomatoes. “She trips over things that she doesn’t see, she messes up crime scenes, she spills coffee, she can’t find her cell phone …” She glanced at him. He was still standing there, with the knife poised over a tomato. “Get busy, there, those tomatoes won’t peel themselves.”

He groaned.