The Cabin

“Miss Parker,” Beau McGarrity said in his deep, twangy accent, “if you don’t leave at once, I’ll call the police.”

He didn’t like her coming around anymore than Jack Galway had. “Relax, Mr. Beau, I’m not here for a little vigilante justice. I have a proposition for you.”

“Miss Parker, there’s nothing you can offer that would be of any interest to me whatsoever.”

Alice shrugged. She felt tiny and pale next to him, isolated out here on his precious ranch, but not vulnerable—not like that night when she’d found Rachel out here in the dark. She remembered screaming like a damn fool, crouching behind Rachel’s car, expecting a bullet in her back, before she realized Beau needed her alive. As Rachel’s murderer.

“Susanna Galway taped you that day you showed up in her kitchen.”

His eyes narrowed on her, but he said nothing.

“Her daughters had one of those little digital tape recorders, and Susanna saw it and hit the record button.” Alice was matter-of-fact. “I’m surprised you didn’t notice.”

“This is ridiculous. You’re making this up.”

“No, sir, Mr. Beau, I am not making this up. I am telling you the flat-out truth. It’s not a regular cassette tape. It’s a digital audiotape, about three inches by three inches. I’ve listened to it. You know all that sympathy you’ve been building up this past year? All these people who’re thinking, oh, poor Mr. Beau, he’s the innocent victim of police corruption and incompetence—well, let them hear you threatening a Texas Ranger’s wife.”

“I didn’t threaten her.”

“You were subtle,” Alice said, “but not that subtle.”

“Get off my property. You’re trying to set me up again. I’ve been under suspicion for months of killing my own wife—”

“You did kill your own wife, Mr. Beau. You killed her because you’re paranoid and crazy. Not twenty-four hours before I found her dead out here, I told you that if I were her, I’d smother you with a pillow while you slept, and you killed her—”

“I’m calling the police.” He turned to go back inside.

She held up a hand, breathing hard. “No, wait. I’m sorry. That’s all over with. Let me finish.”

He said nothing, but he stayed put.

Alice went on. “I happened to show up at the Galway house right after you left—I was hoping to catch Ranger Jack and plead my case to him. It was just a few hours before I was arrested, and here’s Mrs. Jack Galway, all pale and scared, telling me how you’d just walked into her kitchen and she’d taped you. I assumed she’d give the tape to her husband, but she never did, probably because everything was such a big mess by then. Why drag herself into it?”

Beau straightened, recovering a bit from his shock. “This tape. You believe Mrs. Galway still has it in her possession?”

This was the tricky part. Alice remembered how Rachel had often warned her against making things too complicated. But she couldn’t tell Beau that Susanna Galway had thrust the tape at her that day at her front door—Susanna obviously had thought Alice was still on Rachel’s murder investigation and wanted to be rid of the damn thing. “I don’t know if it’s any good,” she’d said, “but, please, take it.”

Alice had gone out and bought a tape recorder and listened to the DAT herself. There was nothing on it that would pull her own hide out of the fire, nothing a prosecutor would bother with as far as Beau went. The Texas Rangers wouldn’t like it, a murder suspect trying to get under the skin of the wife of one of their lieutenants. Jack Galway really wouldn’t like it. But, too bad.

She’d expected Jack to get around to asking her about it when he’d come to arrest her, but he never did. Alice didn’t volunteer. Let the Texas Rangers work for every damn thing they got out of her. Her world had crashed in on her while Beau McGarrity got away with murder, everything.

She’d put the tape out of her mind. It was worthless. Irrelevant.

Then, in prison, she’d started dreaming of Australia.

She still had the tape, and she was betting Beau would want it. It wasn’t enough to nail him for murder, but it was plenty to ruin his chances of any kind of political comeback—provided no one realized Alice Parker, corrupt cop, had had it all this time. If he knew that, Beau would never pay. He wouldn’t have to. He’d just say she was back to her old tricks, tampering with another bit of “evidence.”

She shifted away from him, looking out at the sprawling, shaded lawn. She loved the smells. “I happen to know Susanna still has the tape. That’s why I’m here. I can get it for you.”

“Miss Parker, you managed to get yourself thrown in prison because of your own incompetence and your zeal to pin my wife’s murder on me. Why should I believe anything’s changed? Why shouldn’t I believe this is just a ploy on your part to entrap me, frame me for something I didn’t do?”

“You can quit professing your innocence, Mr. Beau. You already got away with murder. There’s nothing I can do about that—I don’t even care anymore. It’s time I looked after my own interests.” Alice shifted back to him, squinting, noting that she wasn’t even slightly nervous. “I want fifty thousand dollars to start a new life.”

He scoffed. “Do you actually think I’d pay you fifty thousand dollars for anything?”

“Not just anything. For a tape of you creeping out Susanna Galway in her kitchen.”

“If there’s anything on this tape that should concern me—if it even exists—why wouldn’t Mrs. Galway have given it to her husband by now?”

“Probably because you scared her shitless that day. I don’t know.” Alice paused, shrugging. “Look, Beau, I know you, and you’re going to chew on this until you can’t stand it. The idea of that tape being out there, out of your control, is going to drive you crazy.”

“She could have made copies.”

“Unlikely. I think she just wants to forget it exists.”

“Then why not destroy it?”

“She’s the wife of a Texas Ranger. She’s not going to destroy potential evidence, even if she doesn’t believe it’ll amount to anything. If she has, end of story. I only get the money if I produce the tape and no copies of it turn up within a reasonable period of time.”

He tilted his head back, staring down at her in that superior way of his. At first, Rachel had said, she’d thought it was confidence—she hadn’t seen the truth until later. Her husband was one cold, arrogant son of a bitch. He’d put his first wife on a pedestal after she died, then tried to put Rachel on one, too, but she could never measure up. She was real. His dead wife was a mirage.

“Miss Parker—”

It used to be Officer Parker. She remembered that. She knew everyone in town, and they’d all called her Officer Parker. “Think about it,” she said. “I’ll call you in a few days.”

“This is extortion. Blackmail. You can’t—”

“I’ll be in touch, Mr. Beau.” She started down the walk, breathing in the fresh smells of his yard. She’d grown up in this country. It was home. But she could get used to Australia. She wanted the chance. She glanced back at Beau McGarrity, still standing on his front steps, probably thinking about where he could bury her out back if he decided to wring her neck. Just as well he didn’t know she had Susanna’s tape in her glove compartment. “Now, you aren’t going to tell the Texas Rangers about our visit, are you?” she called back over her shoulder.

“Get out.”

She smiled sweetly. “I didn’t think so.”

* * *

A nor’easter was blowing up the coast, promising to dump up to a foot of snow in Boston. Susanna noticed the first fat, wet flakes as she walked back to Gran’s from her subway stop. With a full schedule of client meetings, she’d avoided taking her car into the city. It had been a good day. Helping people sort out their finances and set up goals was one of the real pleasures of her work. It wasn’t just about money, numbers, calculations—it was about people and their lives. She had clients saving for their kids’ college, a first home, a year off to volunteer for something like Doctors Without Borders. One client was digging herself out of debt after a cancer scare and a deep depression that had nearly caused her to pull the plug on her life. Now she was excited, eager to knock off one credit card debt after another.

Susanna wasn’t as good at following her own advice. She always told couples to talk about money. What did it mean to them? What positives and negatives did they associate with money from their childhoods? What did they want it to do for them, individually, as a couple?

She and Jack had stopped talking about money beyond the absolute basics. If the bills were paid and they had walking-around money, Jack didn’t care about the rest. “Accumulating wealth” fell somewhere after “watching gum surgery” on his list of things he was excited about in his life.

Some days Susanna thought he wouldn’t care that she’d invested her money and a chunk of his money, and, now, together, they had a net worth of ten million.

Some days she thought he’d care a lot. And wouldn’t like it. That he especially wouldn’t like that she hadn’t told him. Not that he’d asked. Not that he’d shown any interest whatsoever.

In the months before she’d headed north to join Maggie and Ellen, he’d talked very little about his own work. Things hadn’t been right between them even before Beau McGarrity had walked into her kitchen.

The wind picked up, slapping her in the face as if to get her attention. Maggie and Ellen had been back five days, still filled with tales of friends, vintage clothing scores, Jane Austen, and Dad this and Dad that. Susanna was pleased they’d enjoyed their visit home, and they’d had the grace to say they’d missed her. She wondered if they’d be happy about the snow.