Carla Neggers - The Cabin

“Damn it, Susanna.”

He wasn’t waking up next New Year’s without his wife. Hell, he didn’t want to wake up tomorrow without her.

Probably he should tell her as much.

He came home sweating, breathing hard, purged of his bad night and recharged to enjoy his last two days with his daughters. He peeked in the family room, where Maggie and Ellen and two friends had set up their Jane Austen fest. They all held crumpled tissues and had tears in their eyes. Jack smiled. They’d be running the world in a few years, but right now they were crying over Darcy. Maggie shot him a warning look. He winked at her and retreated to his bedroom.

He showered, put his jeans back on and turned on a football game. If he could make it to the kitchen and back without someone offering him a watercress sandwich, he’d fetch himself a beer.

Ellen knocked on his door and told him they’d voted to invite him to tea, after all. “We all agreed we want to see you try lemon curd.”

“I went to Harvard,” he said. “I’ve tried lemon curd.”

“Come on, Dad. We feel terrible having tea without you.”

There was no way out of it. He’d had two perfect weeks with his daughters. He’d taken time off and did whatever they wanted. Shopping, visiting colleges, going to movies, tossing a rugby ball around the yard—it didn’t matter. They’d spent Christmas Day in Austin with his in-laws. Kevin and Eva didn’t understand what was going on with their daughter’s marriage, but they determinedly stayed out of it.

“Do you want Earl Grey or English Breakfast?” Ellen asked.

“There’s a difference?”

He was kidding, but she took his question seriously, as if her father couldn’t possibly know tea. “English Breakfast is more like regular tea. Earl Grey has a smoky flavor—”

“English Breakfast.”

They had the good china set up on the coffee table in the family room, with Susanna’s favorite cloth napkins, small china platters of crustless sandwiches and warm scones, little bowls of clotted cream, lemon curd and strawberry jam. There were two teapots, one with Earl Grey, one with English Breakfast. Very elegant, except the girls were in jeans, jerseys and sneakers, all but Maggie, who favored what she called vintage clothing and had on a housedress Donna Reed might have worn. She was on the floor, her back against the couch, studiously avoiding looking at her father. Her nose was red. Ellen would cry at movies in front of him, but not Maggie.

The Emma Thompson Sense and Sensibility was playing. Susanna had dragged him to it when it first came out. One of the sisters was in bed sick. The sensibility one, as Jack recalled.

“You’ve all seen this movie a dozen times,” he said. “How can you still cry?”

All four girls waved him quiet. “Shut up, Dad,” Maggie said.

It was the sort of “shut up” he could let go because he’d asked for it and she wasn’t three anymore. But her time up north had sharpened her tongue. He was convinced of it.

Ellen handed him a china cup and saucer and a plate with a scone, lemon curd and a tiny watercress sandwich. “You know, Dad, you should rent some Jane Austen movies for yourself. You might learn how to be more romantic.”

“I know how to be romantic.”

Both daughters rolled their eyes. He drank some of his tea. The watercress sandwich was bearable, probably because it was so small. The scones were okay. The lemon curd had lumps that he didn’t mention.

“What about me isn’t romantic?” he asked.

“Everything,” his daughters and their two friends said in unison.

He was spared further analysis of his romantic nature by the arrival of Sam Temple. Maggie and Ellen liked to pretend they didn’t notice him, but every woman in Texas noticed Sam. He was in his mid-thirties, a Texas Ranger for the past three years, and he was unmarried, good-looking and smart.

He sauntered into the family room and glanced at the television. “Isn’t that the guy from Die Hard? He’s something. Remember when he shot that cokehead weasel?”

Maggie snatched up the remote, hit the pause button and glared coolly at the two men. “There ought to be a law against Texas Rangers watching Jane Austen movies.”

Sam grinned at her. “I thought you wanted to be a Texas Ranger.”

“That was when I was eleven.”

She eased onto her feet, elegant even in her quirky Donna Reed dress and black sneakers. Jack glanced at Sam, who was wisely showing no indication of noticing that Maggie Galway wasn’t eleven anymore. She put her hands on her hips. “Why don’t you two get all your comments out of your system? Then we can finish watching our movie in peace.”

“What comments?” Sam asked, pretending not to understand. “That’s the guy from Die Hard, isn’t it?”

Ellen started refilling teacups. Their friends weren’t about to say anything. “Dad and Sam actually want to watch Jane Austen movies with us, Maggie, but they’re afraid they might cry.”

Sam’s grin only broadened. “Hey, I read Jane Austen in high school. What’s the one with Darcy? I remember that name. Holy cow. Darcy. Can you imagine? It’s a girl’s name now.”

Maggie exhaled loudly and refused to respond. Ellen fixed her dark eyes on Sam. “You’re referring to Pride and Prejudice. We have the 1940 version with Laurence Olivier and Greer Garson and the 1995 miniseries with Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth, if you’re interested.”

“Oh, man. You girls are tougher than I am.”

He grabbed a couple of watercress sandwiches and headed for the kitchen. Jack went with him. Sam hadn’t stopped by just to rib his daughters.

Sam pulled open the refrigerator. “I need something to wash down these lousy sandwiches.” He glanced back at Jack, grimacing. “What was that, parsley?”

“Watercress.”

“Jesus.” Sam took out a pitcher of tea, poured himself a glass without ice and took a long drink. Then he settled back against the counter and looked seriously at Jack. “Alice Parker got out of prison yesterday.”

“Happy New Year.”

“She’s renting a room in town.”

“Job lined up?”

“Not yet.”

Jack stared out at his shaded patio, remembering how petite, blond Alice Parker had pleaded with him to look the other way when he’d come to arrest her just over a year ago. She was convinced Beau McGarrity had killed his wife—she just couldn’t prove it. McGarrity was a prominent south Texas real estate developer with political aspirations. Alice was the small-town police officer who answered the anonymous call to check out the McGarrity ranch and found Rachel McGarrity dead in her own driveway, shot in the back after she got out of her car, presumably to open the garage door. The automatic opener was broken.

She and Beau had been married for seventy-nine days. They’d known each other less than five months.

Jack could understand how Alice Parker might have panicked coming upon her first homicide. It was late at night, she was alone, and she was young and inexperienced. But she didn’t just make ordinary mistakes that night—she completely mucked up everything. Instead of immediately securing the crime scene and calling in an investigative team, she took matters into her own hands and contaminated evidence to the point that virtually nothing was of any use to investigators, never mind being able to stand up in court. The classic overzealous, incompetent loose cannon.

But before anyone fully realized the damage she’d done, Alice Parker tried to make up for her mistakes by committing a crime herself. She produced an eyewitness, a drifter who did odd jobs and claimed he’d seen Beau McGarrity crouch in the azaleas and shoot his wife.

That was when her chief of police got suspicious and asked the Texas Rangers to investigate. Jack unraveled Alice’s story within a week. She’d found her drifter, paid him, then coached, threatened and cajoled him into lying.