The Cabin

Who was the one still pretending she wasn’t worth millions? He got to his feet. He should have ended this conversation the minute they’d said “woo.” It could go nowhere he wanted to go. He started for the kitchen. “Your mother knows the score with me and my work. I don’t need to tell her. She knows where she stands.”

“Yeah,” Maggie said half under her breath, “she sure does.”

His spine stiffened, but he decided to pretend he hadn’t heard that one, if only because he was putting his daughters on a plane in less than twenty-four hours. They’d be off on their own soon enough. They weren’t kids—they were young women. He couldn’t control their every word, thought and deed. Sometimes he wished he could. Like now.

At least their instinct was to defend their mother. Even if he were willing to fall on his sword over the problems in their marriage, take the blame for her move to Boston, say everything was his fault, it wouldn’t solve anything. It was going to take a hell of a lot more than lavender sachets and fresh roses to repair what they’d had.

He stormed out to the patio and kicked a chair. “A little goddamn honesty wouldn’t hurt.”

And he knew where it would begin—with his wife, not himself.

He could be stubborn, too.

Wooing Susanna. Taking her for granted. What did that mean? Susanna was about as unsentimental and unromantic as he was. What would she do if he started writing her poetry? He stared up at the clear south Texas sky and thought about Boston and its high today of eighteen degrees.

Maybe he didn’t get it.

He was still thinking about kicking more chairs when Maggie and Ellen headed out to the mall with a couple of their friends. Two minutes after they pulled out of the driveway, Alice Parker showed up at his front door. He’d forgotten how small she was. It was a wonder she’d made it through the police academy. She looked pale and tentative—the effects of her months in prison. Her blond hair was longer, pulled back in a prosaic ponytail, and she wore a white T-shirt, jeans and a lot of inexpensive gold jewelry.

“Afternoon, Miss Parker,” Jack said, his voice steady, formal. “If you have something to say to me, it can wait until I’m on duty. Not now. I don’t want you at my house.”

“I know—I know. I tried calling you, but they said you were off today.” Some of the tentativeness went out of her gray eyes. She was attractive—cute—but she looked tired, even drained. She met his eye. “I served my time, Lieutenant.”

“All right. What do you want?”

“To apologize.” She breathed in, her jaw set hard, as if the words were hard to get out. “I shouldn’t have asked you to look the other way. That was out of line.”

“Apology accepted.” He didn’t ask about the rest of it—the trampling of evidence, the witness tampering, the sense he had that she was still holding back on him. A murder remained unsolved at least partially because of her actions. “Get yourself a job, Miss Parker. Move on. Rebuild your life.”

“Beau McGarrity—he’s still a free man.”

Jack said nothing.

“I guess I’ll have to live with that. My police department—they’re not going to solve the case. You know that, sir. They don’t want it to be Beau, they don’t want to stir things up again. You know, people think I tried to frame him.”

“Miss Parker—”

“I’m thinking about moving to Australia.”

“Good luck.”

She smiled bitterly. “You don’t mean that. What do you hate worse, Lieutenant, that I paid a guy to lie about seeing Beau in the azaleas—or that I’m a royal fuck-up?”

“What I hate is seeing Rachel McGarrity’s murder go unsolved.” Jack narrowed his eyes on the younger woman. “There’s nothing else you want to tell me, Miss Parker?”

“Like what?”

“Why did the anonymous call to check out the McGarrity ranch come to you that night? And your relationship with Rachel McGarrity. I think you two were better friends than you’ve let on. Her murder isn’t my case, but you still haven’t told the whole story as far as I’m concerned.”

“Like you said, some things you just have to live with. See you around, Lieutenant.”

“Stay away from my house,” he said. “I don’t want you near my family.”

She shrugged. “Understood, sir.”

She left.

Jack decided it might be just as well that the girls were heading back to Boston in the morning. That Susanna was there. Alice Parker obviously hadn’t put Rachel McGarrity’s murder behind her. She’d had a year in prison to stew. Now she was free, and if she wanted to knock on his door on a warm January afternoon, she could do it. It didn’t break any laws.

Three

She couldn’t breathe.

Alice Parker had to pull over and concentrate on the breathing exercises she’d learned in prison to stop her panic attacks. She hated being cooped up. Even as a little kid, she couldn’t stand sleeping with the door to her room shut.

Ranger Jack scared the living shit out of her. He always had. She remembered the day he’d shown up to ask her a few questions. She’d known her goose was cooked. He was a hard man.

He’d never forgive her. She didn’t even want his forgiveness—she didn’t know what had possessed her to go out to his house. She just wanted money. A chance to start over in Australia and forget who she was, a little screw-up cop who’d made sure a murderer walked. Beau McGarrity had killed her friend and mentor, and he’d never be brought to justice for it.

Yeah, learn to live with it. Forget that. She planned to get some money off the murdering son of a bitch.

Feeling better, Alice drove to the small town where she’d spent all her life, except for her year in prison. She was driving a rusted little tank of a car that she’d bought from a fellow inmate’s mother for seven hundred dollars. She had to watch her finances. She’d been out of prison three days, and she’d already plowed through a good chunk of her savings. She had a job waiting tables downtown, but that was more for show than real income—it sure as hell wasn’t going to get her to Australia.

She gripped the steering wheel with both hands, feeling the familiar tightness in her chest, the physical longing, whenever she thought about Australia. She’d gotten as many books out of the prison library as she could on Australia and dreamed of it every night from the moment she’d decided that was where she wanted to be, where she wanted to start over. Sidney, Melbourne, Perth, Adelaide—any city would do. They’d talked to her in prison about setting attainable goals. Australia seemed attainable to her. She just needed the money to get there and get started.

The McGarrity ranch was out of town. It hadn’t changed in the past year. There were still the pecan and cypress trees, the live oaks, the huge azalea bushes in front of the sprawling, one-story house. Alice turned onto the long, paved driveway. Before she’d discovered Australia, she used to dream of living in a place like this and being a Texas Ranger. She’d downloaded the names and pictures of all hundred-plus Texas Rangers off the Internet and memorized them. Rachel McGarrity used to tell her about how, if she wanted something, she needed to visualize it, make it real to her. Then it was more likely to come to be.

Alice wasn’t so sure about that anymore. She’d never visualized herself in prison, but she’d sat in a cell for a year. The stink of it was still on her, and her skin was still gray and pasty. She hadn’t curled her hair or done her nails in months.

She parked in the spot where Rachel had parked the night she died and started to hyperventilate. She shut her eyes, controlling her breathing the way she’d learned from her yoga books and prison classes. She’d done everything she could to better herself in prison. She hadn’t wasted a minute. Her grandma would have been proud of her for that part, but at least she wasn’t alive for the other parts-the humiliation of her arrest, the cowardice of her plea bargain, the defeat of seeing Beau McGarrity remain a free man. Grandma had missed all that.

Rachel had loved it in south Texas. She said it was so different from the rich neighborhood in Philadelphia where she grew up. She’d been drawn to the romance of Texas, marrying a Texan—it blinded her to what she was really getting. A mean, crazy bastard who’d shoot her in the back and try to frame her best friend for her murder.

Best friend might be a stretch. Alice sighed, remembering how they’d only met because she’d stopped Rachel for a broken headlight. She’d invited Alice to meet her for coffee. Alice thought that was kind of weird, but she’d agreed. Rachel had slipped into the coffee shop like she was working for the CIA, and she’d talked about flowers and antiques until she finally got to the point—she wanted Alice to do some private investigative work for her.

Rachel was so fine-mannered and naive, so sincere, that Alice went against her better judgment and said sure, she’d do what she could. They met almost every day after that, for a month, and Alice was never too clear on what it was she was investigating—just that it involved Susanna Galway somehow. Rachel had all the pieces, the big picture, and it all seemed to evaporate when she was killed. Alice hadn’t ever told Ranger Jack about it. No one else mentioned anything, so she didn’t. It seemed like an invasion of privacy.

And she’d been afraid she’d end up dead if she said too much. Damn afraid. She remembered her horror when she’d spotted her change purse in a pool of Rachel’s blood on the driveway. It was monogrammed with her initials. Her grandma had given it to her for Christmas one year.

Her only thought had been to get rid of the change purse and scour the crime scene for any other incriminating evidence. Let people say she was a moron cop—she didn’t care.

Later, she’d realized that was what Beau had expected her to do. Panic and contaminate the crime scene, make it impossible for the evidence to lead investigators to him. Alice had felt stupid, like an unwitting co-conspirator. In the midst of her self-loathing, she’d come up with the idea of her bogus eyewitness. Beau hadn’t expected that—she remembered the edge of panic in his voice that day in Susanna Galway’s kitchen, when he’d tried to get Susanna to intervene with her husband on his behalf.

But that wasn’t the only reason he’d gone to see Susanna. She had some connection to what all had gone on, but Alice didn’t know what.

In any case, her fabricated eyewitness hadn’t worked out. Jack Galway had seen to that.

Alice took the curving rock walk to the front door, which opened just as she got to the steps. Beau McGarrity came out. It was a clear, cool afternoon, squirrels chattering in nearby trees. In summer, there’d be a field of sunflowers out back, although Beau leased out most of his land to working ranchers. He just owned the place for show. Rachel had bought into the rugged image he wanted to project. He was a tall man with neat, gray hair, a square jaw and blue eyes. He had the broad shoulders and build that had served him well as a college football player. He and Rachel were married within weeks of meeting while she was in Austin on business. She was his second wife. His first wife, his high school sweetheart, had died of cancer three years earlier. She was a saint, a hard act to follow. No kids.