Carla Neggers - The Cabin

“Why?”

“Why?” she repeated dumbly. The man drove her mad. He knew the worst, most awkward, most difficult and probing questions to ask her. But he was a trained interrogator. He could get people to confess to murder, never mind to why they’d bought a cabin in the Adirondacks.

“Yes. Why do I have to see it?”

“I don’t know—it makes sense. You’re my husband.”

“It’s an open invitation?”

She licked her lips. He had her off-balance, and he knew it. “I suppose so. Sure.”

“You know what Sam says, don’t you?” His voice lowered, deepened. “He says I should go up there, cuff you and haul you back to Texas.”

Susanna nearly dropped the damn phone in the sink.

“I knew that’d leave you speechless,” her husband said. “Good night, darlin’. Enjoy your cabin.”

He hung up on her again.

This time, she didn’t call him back.

When she returned to the kitchen, Gran was back, heating up a quart of Jim Haviland’s famous clam chowder on the stove. The girls were setting the table. It was a comfortable scene, three generations of women in Gran’s simple, clean kitchen with its tall ceilings, old painted cabinets and framed samplers from her cross-stitch craze fifteen years ago. Even at eighty-two, Iris Dunning retained her tall, graceful build. Susanna could picture her grandmother as an Adirondack guide in her youth. People assumed she was a widow when she moved to Boston, but that wasn’t true. She’d never married. Now she was in her sunset years, her hair white and wispy, her skin translucent and wrinkled. But her mind was sharp, and she stayed active and socially engaged—she was taking tai chi at her senior center. Before her granddaughter and great-granddaughters had moved in, she’d rented rooms in the house to university students to supplement her income and give her company.

Susanna sank onto a chair at the table. Her knees were wobbly from her talk with her husband.

Gran glanced back at her from the stove. “Jimmy Haviland says you’re avoiding him.”

“I’ve been busy,” Susanna said. But that wasn’t entirely true. Busy, yes, but the last two times she’d stopped at Jim’s Place, its opinionated owner had asked her if she’d told Jack about her stalker. He would keep asking her until she said yes. He wouldn’t squeal to Gran. That wasn’t Jim Haviland’s style. He might to Jack, though.

Ellen set a sturdy white bowl in front of her. “Mom, we’re sorry we told Dad about the cabin—”

“No, no, that’s not your fault. I was going to tell him. It just slipped my mind.”

Maggie shot her mother a dubious frown, but said nothing. Ellen sighed. “We tried to talk to him while we were home. We told him he should try to be more romantic.”

“Romantic? Your father?” Susanna smiled, shaking her head with affection for her two clueless daughters. “He just threatened to handcuff me and drag me back to Texas.”

Gran set the steaming soup tureen of chowder in the middle of the table. “I don’t know,” she said, a mischievous gleam in her very green eyes. “I think it’s a start.”

Four

After thirty years of running a neighborhood pub, Jim Haviland considered himself a good judge of character. It came down to experience and survival—they’d honed his instincts about people. Still, he had to admit that the woman at the bar had him stumped. He guessed she was in her late twenties. Slightly built, short, curly, dyed red hair and pale skin, almost pasty looking. She wore a lot of makeup and about a half ton of gold jewelry. Dangling earrings, rings on both hands, bracelets, a thin gold necklace with a tiny heart pendant and a thicker chain necklace. He wouldn’t want all that metal on him in a nor’easter. But the snow had finally stopped, and the cleanup was in full force. The plow guys would be showing up later for the beef stew special.

The woman’s clothes made her stick out in this neighborhood, too. She had on a close-fitting baby blue ribbed V-neck sweater, tight Western-cut jeans and leather boots that would land her on her ass on an icy sidewalk. She played up her femininity, but there was a hardness to her, a toughness that Jim couldn’t reconcile with the jewelry, the clothes, the painted nails. He wouldn’t be surprised if she had a .22 strapped to her ankle.

After making sure he didn’t use a mix, she’d ordered a margarita. Her accent wasn’t local, but Jim was no good at placing accents outside of New England. He drew a couple of drafts for two firefighters who’d come in, complaining about the hazards of space heaters and overtaxed extension cords. Davey Ahearn, on his stool at the end of the bar, was listening in, nursing a beer and keeping an eye on the woman with the makeup and the margarita.

“New in town?” Jim asked her.

“Two days. It’s that easy to tell?”

“With that accent?” Jim smiled at her. “Where you from?”

“Texas. A little bitty town outside Houston.”

“Hope you brought a good winter coat with you.”

She gestured toward the coat rack next to the door, gold bangles sliding down her slender wrist. “No, sir, but I bought one on sale this morning. They said it’s a basic parka. I never knew there was anything but. I bought a winter hat and gloves, too. I think mittens would drive me batty.” She raised her gray eyes at him. “I’m holding off on the long underwear.”

She had an engaging manner, whoever she was. “That’s one thing about owning a bar,” Jim said. “I can get through a Boston winter without long underwear. You’ll like it here in the spring. Are you planning to stick around that long?”

“I’m hoping to relocate here, but have you checked out the rents lately? Whoa. They’re sky-high.” She sipped more of her margarita, looking as if she relished every drop. “I don’t know why you put up with it. Aren’t you the folks who dumped the tea in the harbor?”

“That we are. You have a job lined up?”

“More or less, yes, sir.”

“What’s your name?”

“Audrey,” she said. “Audrey Melbourne.”

Jim studied her a moment, noticing she didn’t flinch under his frank scrutiny. Definitely a tough streak. “What are you running from, Audrey Melbourne?”

She shrugged. “What do any of us run from?”

“The law and husbands,” Jim said. Davey Ahearn glanced down the bar, not saying a word, but Jim knew his friend’s suspicions were on full alert.

“No, sir, I don’t believe that’s the case at all.” Audrey Melbourne slid off her stool, looking even smaller. “Mostly we run from ourselves.”

She walked over to the coatrack and put on her new parka, hat and gloves as if they might have been a space suit. She left without looking back.

Davey breathed out a long sigh. “Sure. I hope she comes back real soon. That pretty little number is trouble.”

One of the firefighters snorted. “All women are trouble.”

Two female Tufts graduate students took exception to this comment, and the argument was on. Jim didn’t intervene. The Bruins and the Celtics were having a lousy year, the Patriots hadn’t made the playoffs, and pitchers and catchers didn’t report for weeks yet. People needed something to do. Maybe he needed to wonder about a redheaded Texan coming into his bar. It happened now and again, a stranger popping in for a drink. He doubted Audrey Melbourne would be back.

* * *

An icy gust bit at Alice Parker’s face as she climbed over a blackened, frozen, eighteen-inch snowbank to get to her car. The Texas tags were a dead giveaway, but what the hell—so was her Texas accent. She’d arrived in Boston in the middle of a damn blizzard, and now it was so cold her cheeks ached and her eyeballs felt as if they were frozen in their sockets. Her chest hurt from breathing in the dry, frigid air.