The Cabin (37 page)

okay, Gran. Sam’s probably chomping at the bit already.

I’ll be fine. Trust me, you’ll hear me yell if there’s a

problem. I’ll check to see which way the tracks go, then

I’ll hustle back here.”

Obviously reluctant to leave her, Gran nonetheless

started retracing her tracks to the cabin, moving steadily,

carefully. Susanna watched her take a few steps, decided

she’d be all right and set off along Destin’s presumed

path, staying close to the boot prints but trying not to

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obliterate them with her snowshoes. She used her poles

to help her pick up speed. She needed to make short

work of this little mission. Then she needed to talk to

Jack and Sam—and someone needed to find Destin

Wright and warn him he’d put his stupid head in the

lion’s mouth this time.

Rachel McGarrity was a Tucker from Philadel-

phia…Jared Herrington’s widow had married a Tucker

from Philadelphia…Beau McGarrity had followed Su-

sanna in the days before his wife turned up murdered

in their own driveway.

Susanna pushed the rush of questions and possibili-

ties to the back of her mind and focused on making her

way along the trail, the wind slapping snow into her

face. She followed the boot prints down to the lake’s

edge. As Gran had suspected, they didn’t veer off into

the woods—they stayed right along the shore.

The wind and the now heavy snow had already made

the tracks difficult to make out. Susanna picked her way

carefully among the rocks and thick, milky white ice

that had pushed up onto shore from the lake, rounding

a small cove. She’d go out to the point, see what she

could make out and then head back.

She used her poles and bore down on her snowshoe

cleats to maneuver along the edge of a rock outcropping.

It gave way to a treacherous, vertical rock ledge twenty

or thirty feet above the lake, but she took a sharp, steep

path straight down to the shore. She could barely see in

the blinding snow and wind. There was little she could

do now but turn around, get local trackers out here to

see if these prints amounted to anything. For all Susanna

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knew, they could be Jack’s, from one of his restless

bursts outside.

At the end of the path, she realized she’d lost the

tracks. Destin must have gone along the top of the ledge,

as treacherous as it was, and stayed off the lake, where

he’d have been more exposed on the ice.

She was beyond the protection of the trees and rocks

now, the wind gusting hard out in the open, slapping into

her face, spraying snow against her cheeks and into her

eyes. She moaned at the shock of cold, her eyes tearing,

blurring. She blinked, clearing her vision, and started

back up the steep path that would take her to the cabin.

Then she saw him, just as she turned onto the path,

and jumped back, yelling out in horror and shock even

as she took in the camel coat, the expensive cream cash-

mere scarf flapping on the ice.

His body was slumped in the snow and ice three or

four yards from her, on the lake, at the base of the ver-

tical ledge.

Destin Wright hadn’t made it off Blackwater Lake.

Susanna couldn’t take in that he was dead. It refused

to register in her numb mind. Maybe there was a chance

he was still alive. Maybe he’d just gone to sleep.

She had to get to him. She had to know for sure be-

fore she went for help.

She pushed down hard on her ski pole, but it hit ice,

throwing her off-balance. The toes of her snowshoes

crossed as she tried to adjust, and she fell hard onto one

knee, losing one of her ski poles and just managing not

to stab herself with the other. She untangled herself and

used the one pole to get to her feet, her knee aching,

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snow down her neck and up her sleeves. She’d dressed

for a quick run around the yard with her eighty-two-

year-old grandmother.

The wind and snow were fierce on the open lake,

blowing straight at her, the snow like tiny ice needles.

“Destin,” Susanna called, then louder. “Destin, hang

on!” And she turned and yelled down the lake toward

the cabin. “Sam, help! I need help down here!”

But with the wind and the curve of the shoreline, she

doubted he would hear her, and she couldn’t wait for

him—she had to see if Destin was still alive.

She could feel the lake ice under the snow cover, and

even on snowshoes, she moved carefully, as quickly as

she could, her stomach twisting when she crouched

down at the fringed end of Destin’s scarf.

She didn’t want to look, but made herself do it.

His skin was bluish white, and snow had collected

on his eyelashes. There was ice in his blond hair. Su-

sanna touched the sleeve of his coat, but his arm was like

a block of ice.

“Oh, Destin,” she whispered, choking on the wind,

the cold, her own shock. “Destin—I wish I’d given you

your damn angel money. My God.”

He could have fallen off the ledge. It was icy, and the

trees grew right to the edge of it. He was in boots, a city

guy despite his bragging about his winter sports expe-

rience. But she didn’t know. She didn’t know what had

happened, and she needed to call the police and get

them out here, get back to the cabin and tell Sam, find

her husband.

She wanted Jack now. She wanted him here, with her.

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She knew what she had to do, and she’d do it. But she

wanted him at her side.

The simple admission brought her up short, and she

stood up, the wind howling out on the lake, whipping

more tears out of her eyes. The snow was coming down

hard, collecting on her outer layers. Across the frozen

lake, she could see nothing but blinding white, obliter-

ating the mountains, the opposite shore. She realized

how isolated she was, with poor Destin dead at her feet.

She moved toward the ledge, hoping it would block

some of the wind. She was careful not to get too close

to the edge, where the ice was rough and difficult to ne-

gotiate. Her snowshoes felt heavy now, her knee throb-

bing and bruised from where she’d fallen. She made her

way to the steep, icy path, noticing the displaced snow

where she’d fallen. She leaned forward, pressing hard

on her toe cleats. If she hit her head on ice or rock, she’d

be dead, too.

Two figures materialized at the top of the path, like

a mirage. Alice Parker in front, Beau McGarrity in back.

Susanna recognized them both even as she stared up at

them. Alice’s curls were caked with ice and snow, hang-

ing in her face like red icicles.

“Destin’s dead,” Susanna said, her voice cracking

from the cold, the strain. “Did you—”

“That’s what Beau wants everyone to think. That I

killed Destin. That I killed his wife.” Alice’s voice was

dull and thick, as if she had no strength left in her. She

had the ski pole Susanna had lost earlier and leaned

heavily on it. Her eyelids were drooping. “He planted

something of mine at the crime scene. My change purse.

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My grandma gave it to me when I graduated high

school, and it had my initials on it.”

“Isn’t she pathetic? A murderer who wants us all to

feel sorry for her.” Beau McGarrity shoved Alice from

behind, then caught her before she could fall down the

icy path. “I didn’t want to believe it, Mrs. Galway. Alice

Parker befriended my wife. I didn’t want to believe

she—a police officer—would kill her friend and try to

frame me for it.”

Susanna decided this was not the time to confront ei-

ther of them. “I don’t know what’s going on here, but

let’s none of us do anything we’ll regret later. Jack and

Sam Temple are here. They’re on the case with the local

authorities. It’ll all get sorted out.”

Alice seemed to want to lick her lips, but couldn’t man-

age the effort. She mouthed words that didn’t come out.

“Alice,” McGarrity said, and it wasn’t a warning—

it was a command.

Susanna instinctively took a step backward on the

steep path, but she was too late. Alice raised the ski pole

and whipped it at her, the sharp tip catching Susanna in

the chest as she spun around, diving toward the lake and

the cover of the rock ledge.

Her other ski pole flew out of her hand, and she

tripped over her snowshoes, tumbling headfirst back

down the path. Her shoulder slammed against the icy

ledge, and she landed on her hurt knee and pitched for-

ward into the snow. Her left hand plunged through an

icy crust, tearing off her glove, scraping her wrist and

arm up to her elbow.

She cried out in agony and fell onto her stomach,

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lying still. With her right hand, she reached for her ski

pole, prepared to defend herself against another attack.

But there was silence. Even the wind had died down.

Her heart raced painfully, and she slowly extricated

her injured arm from the snow, trying not to add more

scrapes as she pulled it back through the crust. It was

red and bleeding, aching with the cold. With her unin-

jured hand, she dug out the glove that had come off and

eased it back on, shuddering at the pain.

She got to her feet, unsteady, terrified. Why the

hell had Beau ordered Alice to go after her with a

damn ski pole if he wanted her to believe Alice was

framing him?

“Dead people can’t tell tales,” she muttered.

“That’s why.”

Or he’d just say Alice seized the moment, and it had

nothing to do with him. He was the innocent victim.

Always the innocent victim, Beau McGarrity.

Susanna pushed her questions aside and focused on

what to do next. Her left snowshoe had come off. She

got it back on, taking off the glove on her good hand to

adjust the bindings. They were frozen, covered in snow.

She did the best she could. If she had to walk in her

boots, she’d walk in her boots. She didn’t care. She

needed to get to the cabin, to Gran and the girls.

She had no energy left to yell, but she tried.

“Sam…Jack…”

Her face was wet with snow, her hair hanging in fro-

zen clumps. She lifted one foot, bringing it down where

she’d already mashed down the snow. She didn’t look

back at Destin Wright. She didn’t bother with her one

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ski pole. She didn’t go back up the steep path. She

stayed on the edge of the lake, making her way toward

her family.

��

Twenty

Alice trudged through the deep snow with Beau Mc-

Garrity right behind her, occasionally shoving Destin’s

H&K in her back to urge her to pick up her pace. She

could hear him breathing hard, as much from the ex-

citement as exertion. His mind must be racing. She fig-

ured he had about a dozen different versions of how he

could play this out, none of them good.

“You and Rachel were plotting to kill me and get my

money,” he said.

This was one version. The Paranoia Scenario. Alice

shook her head. Or thought she did. She was numb from

exhaustion and the cold. Her mind felt dull, but she re-

membered that someone suffering from hypothermia

should try to keep talking. “Rachel didn’t care about

your money. She had plenty of her own. And I was just

her friend. I wanted to be a Texas Ranger.” It sounded

so romantic now, so pathetically out of reach. She mum-

bled, not sure McGarrity could hear her, “Ever since I

was a little girl, I wanted to be a Texas Ranger.”

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They were following snowshoe prints on a path that

seemed to lead through the woods back to Susanna’s

cabin. They both had on boots, and Alice wasn’t sure

when her legs would give out and she wouldn’t be able

to lift them high enough to take the next step. If not for

the snowshoe prints, she’d have collapsed not long after

they’d left Susanna on the lake.

“Rachel was writing a book about her grandfather and

his affair with Iris Dunning,” McGarrity said. “After he

died, his own wife wouldn’t even take him back home to

bury him. Iris found his frozen body out here in the woods

and buried him herself. Rachel planned to include that

sort of sordid detail in her book for all the world to read.”

“That all happened a long time ago—”

“She refused to show me her notes. I had to find

them on my own. She planned to write about how bit-

ter her grandmother was, how she and Jared Herring-

ton were estranged long before he took up with his little

Adirondack guide.”

“I don’t think Iris was ever little,” Alice said dully.

“She’s pretty tall by my standards, and I’ll bet she was

tough in her youth.”