Stonebrook Cottage (10 page)

A white polo shirt hung stiffly from a branch. Pete plucked it off and noted the label in the collar.
Henry Stockwell.

He grinned. There was hope for the kid yet if he was building tree houses. Lillian was a scrapper—she'd probably helped. They must have worked on it over the summer.

The binoculars were grimy from exposure to the elements. He cleaned the lenses on his shirt and trained them on the view. Nothing much to see down in the gravel pit, but he supposed Henry and Lillian would have enjoyed watching the work going on there. He turned, the view to the southwest much more impressive with the faroff rolling hills and endless summer sky.

He brought the binoculars down lower, focusing the lenses on what he quickly realized was the roof of Big Mike's rented house. He scoped out what all he could see, adjusting the lenses.

"Jesus Christ."

Pete suddenly felt cold, as if it were midwinter instead of midsummer.

With the binoculars, Henry and Lillian had a limited but unimpeded view of the swimming pool. The kids could have been up here with their snacks and water bottles, amusing themselves with their binoculars, when Big Mike fell into the deep end of his swimming pool. They had been in Bluefield that weekend.

Had they seen their friend fight for his life?

Jesus, had they watched him drown?

Even if they saw him go into the water, they'd never have made it down the hill in time to save him.

What did they do? Run to help him? Watch, paralyzed with horror?

Why hadn't they said anything? But Pete had a feeling he knew. If they saw what happened, the police would want to talk to them, answer any nagging questions they had about how the governor had died. Instinctively, Henry and Lillian must have understood that no one, except perhaps their mother's worst enemies, would want to hear that the children of the new governor had witnessed his death.

Pete swore to himself and swung down to the crude ladder.

He was jumping the gun, he told himself. Ten to one, the kids hadn't seen a thing.

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Six

"G
et a warrant." Nothing in Jack's voice on the other end of the phone suggested he had even a shred of patience left for his sister, a feeling Sam shared. "Or wait until I get there, and I'll break into her damn house myself. I'll be there in an hour."

It was 8:00 a.m. in Austin, and no Stockwell kids. Past the point of exhaustion, Sam had stopped in a twenty-four-hour diner for coffee and eggs. A lot of coffee. A cabdriver remembered dropping off two children meeting their description near but not on Kara Galway's street. They'd pointed at a big house, presumably at random, and told the driver that was where they were headed. The man had thought nothing of it, but he definitely remembered them. They were polite, they had Yankee accents, and they'd overtipped him with a crisp twenty.

Sam had gone straight back to Kara's little bungalow in Hyde Park, but he was too late. She was gone. Lights out, doors locked, car not in the driveway. No note. She was a defense attorney. She wasn't about to leave behind any evidence that could be used against her or her godchildren should push come to shove— which it would, Sam thought, if he had anything to say about it.

No one was panicking yet in Connecticut. The kids' uncle and their mother's adviser, Hatch Corrigan, had told the Austin police that he and Allyson trusted Kara completely and weren't as worried now that it looked as if Henry and Lillian Stockwell were with her. Corrigan was sure Kara would get in touch. Nor was he surprised his niece and nephew had made it to their godmother's house on their own—they were smart, worldly children accustomed to being on their own.

Sam didn't share Corrigan's optimism. Neither did Kara's big brother. It all could be spin to keep Texas law enforcement at bay and control what went public. The kids' mother, after all, was already in a touchy situation, with her predecessor dead in his pool. Her people would want to keep this escapade quiet now that it looked as if Henry and Lillian were in responsible hands. Sam didn't know about that. Kara's actions struck him at best as requiring further explanation. Jack agreed. He'd checked in with Sam and hit the road after learning the Connecticut governor's kids were technically still on the loose and his sister had cleared out in the middle of the night.

Sam sipped his coffee. He should have taken off his badge before knocking on Kara's front door last night, said he was there on personal business and walked right past her.

The popcorn wasn't her damn dinner. It was a snack for those kids.

She hadn't lied to him outright, but she'd come close— and she'd deliberately misled him about two runaway minors. He hadn't said as much to her brother. Jack was good at putting together the pieces. Maybe too good, if he started thinking about the gallery opening, coffee, his sister's alibi and Sam beating a path to Austin last night.

"Where do you want me to meet you?" Sam asked.

"My in-laws' gallery. Let's keep this unofficial for now."

He hung up, and Sam set his cell phone on the table next to his plate. His eyeballs felt as if they'd been rolled in hot sand. He pushed his eggs around on his plate, not hungry. He was trying to work the facts and not jump to conclusions, never mind the uncertainty he'd sensed in Kara last night, the fear he'd seen hovering in her dark eyes.

His cell phone trilled again, and he hoped it was the Austin police telling him they'd located Governor Stockwell's children and they were nowhere near their godmother.

It wasn't. It was Susanna Galway. "Sam—where are you?"

"Diner out by the Austin airport."

"Good, not too far. Meet me at my parents' gallery as soon as you can. Fifteen minutes? Do
not
tell my husband—"

"He's on his way there."

"
Here?
To the gallery?"

"That's right. He should be there in an hour."

She swore. "All right, we still have enough time. Get over here, Sam.
Now.
"

The hairs on the back of his neck rose up. "Susanna—"

But she'd disconnected. Sam paid for his breakfast and headed out, wondering if he should just throw his badge in the nearest garbage can and get it over with. Before this was all over, Lieutenant Galway would be feeding it to him. The women in Jack's life gave him fits. His wife, his daughters, his sister. Sam could see why—he'd seen it six months ago in the Adirondacks, and still he'd waded in with Kara.

He drove over to Hyde Park and found his way to the shaded street where Eva and Kevin Dunning had opened their gallery almost eight years ago. It was in a renovated 1920s frame house painted cream with white trim, just enough yard out front for a pecan tree and asters in a half-dozen colors. On the night of the champagne reception for Gordon Temple, the place had sparkled, people wandering inside and out as they chatted and oohed and aahed over his artwork. Even before he'd found a spot to park his damn car, Sam had known he shouldn't have come. He had a similar feeling now, gnawing at him, warning him away.

Susanna met him at the door, refusing to speak as she led him through the main showroom. He barely noticed his father's paintings on the wall, mostly landscapes, some with animals native to North America—bison, eagles, river otters. An Eastern bluebird. Out of the corner of his eye, Sam caught sight of an oil painting of a desert sunrise, haunting with its vibrant colors, but he didn't allow himself to stop and look at it.

When they came to a small, tidy workroom in the back, Susanna shut the door and leaned against it, as if Sam might try to escape and she meant to stop him. "Thank you for coming." She had on a sundress and sandals, no makeup, no jewelry, her hair pulled back with a rolled-up orange bandanna. Last winter Sam had seen fear in her green eyes—it was there again now, mixed, he thought, with a certain measure of anger. She sucked in a breath. "Sam—
Jesus
."

"Susanna, what's wrong? Are you all right?"

She held up a hand. "I'm okay. I need to ask you a favor. And you can't say no. You can't, Sam."

His eyes narrowed. This was a woman who loved her secrets. "I'm listening."

"Yeah, and you're suspicious as hell." She struggled to smile, then gave up. "First you have to promise—"

"No promises in advance."

"All right, all right. Forget it. You won't squeal to Jack. That would be stupid, and you're not stupid. Well, you
are
stupid about some things, like my sister-in-law, but that's—" She was talking more to herself than to him, her forehead creased as she put one heel up against the door and seemed ready to kick it. "There's no reason to believe a crime's been committed, so you won't be compromised on that score—I'd never ask you to cover up a crime. A real one, anyway."

"Susanna. Start talking or I tie you up and we wait for Jack to get here."

"Yeah, right." Her green eyes fixed on him. "Like it's me you'd like to tie up."

So, she knew. Sam kept his face expressionless.

She peeled off the bandanna and wiped her forehead with it, sighing heavily. "I'd love to babble my way out of this mess, but I can't. Sam—Kara stopped by the house this morning at six, not five minutes after Jack left for work. She must have been around the corner waiting for him to leave."

"Was she alone?"

"She came into the house alone. I didn't think to check her car. She looked terrible. I know she's working too hard, and she's still upset about Governor Pa-risi's death—and now these runaway kids…"

"Just tell me what happened, Susanna," Sam said, his tone neutral. "We can deal with the emotions later."

She eased away from the door, steadier but by no means calmer. She was an intelligent woman who'd earned an MBA part-time when the twins were little and through skill and luck turned several choice investments into a multi-million-dollar fortune. She'd kept the money a secret from her husband, although he knew about it, anyway, but she thought it'd destroy their marriage—and it nearly had. Not the money, the fear of it. She came to see that the hard way. Nothing important had changed in her and Jack's lives, at least not because of money.

Sam had seen how much Jack loved his wife six months ago in the killer cold of an Adirondack winter, and before that, during the Galways' long months of separation, forced apart because of their unspoken fears—and an unsolved Texas murder. Now that she'd returned to San Antonio for good, Sam saw how much Susanna loved her husband, too, and he'd come to realize he wasn't capable of that kind of love himself.

There were reasons. He supposed Gordon Temple was one of them.

As much as Sam liked and admired Susanna Galway, he knew she didn't think the way he did. They'd been arguing with each other ever since he'd become a Texas Ranger five years ago. Her love for her family was the only thing she saw in black and white. He was just the opposite. He saw everything in black and white—ex-cept for his love for his family.

"She was pale and sick to her stomach," Susanna went on. "She wouldn't let me give her anything. She got a bottle of San Pelligrino from the fridge and said she had a lot on her mind and couldn't sleep, so she got in her car and just started driving."

"And happened to end up at your house?"

"That's what she said."

Five minutes
after
her brother had left for work.

"Maggie and Ellen were still in bed." Susanna hooked her bandanna on the back of a tall stool at a drafting table. "Kara and I chatted for a few minutes, then she took off."

"You must have headed up here not long after that. It's not a planned trip, is it?"

Susanna shook her head, splaying her fingers in front of her and staring at them, obviously not wanting to tell him what came next. Sam didn't prod her. She hadn't driven here to tell him her sister-in-law had stopped by for San Pelligrino. "Sam, I—" She opened and closed her fingers, as if trying to keep them from stiffening up on her. "I was worried. So I drove up here to check on her. I stopped by her house, but she wasn't there. I tried her cell phone—I just got her voice mail."

"I did the same."

She nodded absently and sat on the stool, the drafting table in front of a window that overlooked a small yard filled with sunflowers. "On my way to Austin, the airport where Jack keeps his plane called me on my cell phone."

That was one of their indulgences now that they had money—a small plane that could make the trip north to Susanna's grandmother in Boston and their cabin on Blackwater Lake in the Adirondacks. She and Jack were both pilots, but by mutual agreement, this was his plane.

When she drifted into silence, Sam decided she needed a little prodding after all. "The longer you wait, the more likely Jack's going to walk in here—"

"The guy at the airport had a routine question and mentioned that Kara had gotten off the ground safely. He said she was a good pilot."

Sam could suddenly feel the heat, the closeness of the small workroom. "Susanna—Jesus Christ. Kara took off in Jack's plane? Without his permission, I presume?"

"Of
course
without his permission. It's not a problem with the airport—she's cleared to fly the plane as far as they're concerned. It's a problem with Jack. I called Maggie and Ellen and had them check my keys. Kara must have swiped the key to the plane while I was pouring the San Pelligrino. Borrowed," Susanna amended. "She borrowed the key."