The Cabin (36 page)

went slightly pale. Paul cleared his throat and said, “He

wanted to know all about Iris Dunning.”

Paul Johnson handed Jack the photo, and he slipped

it into his jacket, remembering Iris’s haunted look last

night, her conviction that her past had somehow collided

with her granddaughter’s life and was doomed to bring

tragedy to them all.

It was different, interviewing witnesses when the

subject was his family. When they were at the center of

violence, lies, obsessions. Murder. He had to fight hard

to keep his focus. Yesterday, finding Susanna’s cabin

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tossed, seeing Ellen’s panic, Maggie’s terrified determi-

nation—making love to his wife through the night, des-

perate to penetrate her fog of fear and vulnerability, her

anger at what had infected their lives. He had to call on

his training, his professionalism, his ability to distance

himself from the raw emotions of the people directly in-

volved in a crime. The victims. He had to stay objec-

tive, focused, and as a result, he hadn’t been very nice

to Susanna that morning.

“Iris Dunning is one of our beloved local legends,”

Sarah said. “I don’t know if she fully realized that yes-

terday when she was here with your wife. Her affair

with Jared Herrington was a scandal at the time, but peo-

ple don’t remember it that way. We think about her find-

ing his body when she was hiking all alone in the dead

of winter—”

“She was almost six months’ pregnant,” Paul added.

His wife nodded. “She was very sick in the early

months. We have a picture of the two of them together.

I didn’t think of it when she was here. Would you like

to see it?”

“I would,” Jack said, and he followed the Johnsons

down the short back hall, its papered walls covered in

framed pictures.

Paul pointed to a five-by-seven, black-and-white pho-

tograph almost in the center of the wall. “There, that’s it.”

Jack leaned in close and studied the old photograph.

It was just the two of them, an impossibly young Iris and

her rich lover, standing on a rock outcropping above the

lake, smiling at the camera as if they didn’t have a care

in the world. Iris wore her hair in a long, thick braid over

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one shoulder, and Jack thought she was beautiful in her

shorts and camp shirt, her big old hiking boots. He

smiled, imagining what she must have been like as a

young woman.

Next to her, Jared Herrington was rakishly hand-

some, right out of the pages of an early twentieth cen-

tury Princeton yearbook.

Sarah Johnson sighed beside Jack, shaking her head.

“They say Jared was so in love with her. What hap-

pened—it’s just unbearably sad.”

“Iris has lived a good life,” Jack said. “I think it’s

been a happy one, even if it’s not what she envisioned

when this picture was taken.”

He read the caption at the bottom of the picture,

handwritten in neat black print.
Iris Dunning, Adiron-

dack guide, and Jared Rutherford Herrington of New

Canaan, Connecticut.

“The Herrington family still owns property on the

north end of the lake.” Paul spoke quietly, as if he was

trying somehow to respect Iris’s privacy, acknowledg-

ing the tragedy of that time in her life. “They haven’t

been up here in years. Jared’s widow remarried after he

died and moved to Philadelphia with their son. Appar-

ently she had nothing more to do with the Herringtons,

but I imagine her son inherited the property—”

“Philadelphia?” Jack asked, interrupting. “Are you

sure?”

He nodded. “Yes, we’ve made it a point to learn as

much as we can about the history of the lake, the peo-

ple…” But he stopped, apparently sensing Jack’s in-

creased urgency.

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303

Rachel McGarrity was from Philadelphia. A month

before she was murdered, her new husband visited the

Blackwater Inn in the Adirondack State Park without

her and asked the innkeepers about Iris Dunning.

Jack knew he’d missed something. All along, he’d

known, but he couldn’t grasp it, couldn’t figure out the

connections. But he’d been looking strictly at Alice Par-

ker, not at his own family. “Thanks for your time,” he

told the Johnsons.

Sarah inhaled sharply. “If we see this man—”

“His name’s Beau McGarrity, and if you see him, call

the police.”

“Is he dangerous?” Paul Johnson asked.

Jack decided not to screw around with niceties. “Yes.”

He was halfway to his borrowed truck when Sarah

Johnson ran across the sanded parking lot, clutching the

picture of Iris and Jared Herrington. She thrust it at him.

“I should have given it to her yesterday. They say this

is the only picture of the two of them together.” Her face

was ashen, and she was near tears. “You get into the his-

tory of this place, you hear the stories, and they’re so

dramatic, so
interesting,
and then an old woman walks

into your inn—” Her lips trembled. “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to apologize,” Jack said, meaning it.

“I’ll give Iris the picture.”

“Thank you. She’s a remarkable woman.” She

shoved her hands into the pockets of her hiking pants.

She hadn’t bothered with a coat, but the cold didn’t

seem to bother her. A fine snow had started to fall, the

wind gusting on the frozen lake. “There’s something

else I remembered, just as you headed out the door. The

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Herrington teahouse. Alice Parker was very interested

in it.”

“Where is it?”

She perked up and seemed pleased to be of help. “I

have a geological survey map inside. I can show you.”

��

Nineteen

Susanna gathered up two pairs of snowshoes and ski

poles while Gran pulled on a pair of insulated gloves she’d

borrowed from one of the girls. Sam leaned against the

door to the mud room, watching them. “Stay within shout-

ing distance,” he said. “Don’t go taking off for Greenland.”

“Gran just wants to get back on snowshoes.” Su-

sanna tucked them under one arm, the poles under the

other, wishing she could contain her restlessness now

Jack was gone. “She used to do it all the time.”

“That was a while ago,” Sam said.

“Sixty years since I snowshoed on Blackwater Lake,”

Gran said. “Just twenty years since I’ve snowshoed at all.”

Susanna glanced at her grandmother, who was less

pensive than earlier but still not herself, and smiled at

Sam. “We’ll stay right around here.”

“Don’t make me come after you.”

She nodded without argument. Sam Temple was

committed to being suspicious of everyone and every-

thing, and she’d done nothing to exempt herself.

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She had on her ski hat, wind pants, high-tech long

underwear, heavy socks and layers of thermal shirt,

fleece vest and shell. The snow and the wind had both

picked up, Gran’s storm starting to move in.

“We’ll be fine, Sam” Gran said.

He winked at her. “At your word, Sasquatch. Off

you go.”

Iris headed outside, and Susanna followed, dumping

the snowshoes and poles on the driveway. There was al-

ready an inch of fresh snow on the ground, more com-

ing down. Gran strapped on her snowshoes with little

difficulty, just needing to hang on to Susanna’s arm a

few times to maintain her balance. She took the ski

poles, beaming as she gazed out at the falling snow.

“This is wonderful.” She smiled at Susanna, her eyes

shining. “These new-styled snowshoes are so light and

maneuverable—I could climb Whiteface in them, even

at my age.”

Susanna laughed, her grandmother’s enthusiasm in-

fectious. “I don’t think Sam would approve.”

She waved a gloved hand in dismissal. “He and that

husband of yours have to be careful their law enforce-

ment mindset doesn’t squelch their sense of adven-

ture—or other people’s.” She sighed, a snowflake

melting on her nose. “A little rule-breaking is good for

the soul.”

“Gran?”

“Come with me,” she said and set off along the tram-

pled path through the side yard. She moved steadily,

rhythmically, if not quickly.

Susanna followed her down to the lake, welcoming

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307

the exercise and the brisk air. She assumed Gran would

want to tramp around for a while, and then go inside and

sit by the fire. But when they came to the lake, she

wasn’t satisfied staying in the open area in front of the

cabin. With a remarkable burst of energy, she shot up

the loop path that Susanna, Maggie and Ellen had taken

to break in their snowshoes on Saturday morning.

“Let’s not get too far afield,” Susanna called to her.

Either Gran hadn’t heard her over the gusting wind

or was ignoring her. Susanna wasn’t about to let her

grandmother go off on her own, but when she caught up

to her, Gran was already detouring off the path, using

her poles to help her descend a gentle slope that led to

the icy shore of the lake.

Susanna stayed after her. “Gran, what are you

doing?”

“There,” she said, pointing with her pole. “Do you

see it? It’s a boot print. I knew it. Destin came this way.”

“But the inn is back the other direction—”

“I’m right,” Gran said. “It’s Destin. Alice checked out

by herself yesterday, didn’t she?”

“That’s what the police said, yes.” Susanna frowned.

“You’re thinking she and Destin had a rendezvous point

somewhere.”

“I told her stories about the old days out here,” Gran

said, leaning against her ski pole, staring out at the snow

and the frozen lake. “She was so good at acting inter-

ested in every word I had to say.”

“Gran…we can show Sam and Jack the boot print.”

She seemed not to hear. “Most of the places on the

lake are seasonal. The Herrington property is vast. The

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house is boarded up, and the teahouse where Jared and

I used to meet…” She trailed off a moment, as if drift-

ing back in time, but quickly recovered her train of

thought. “I suppose it’s not really Herrington property

any longer. I suppose it eventually went to his son—his

mother remarried a few months after I found Jared and

buried him. A Philadelphia businessman. Tucker, his

name was. Brighton Tucker. He adopted little Jared.”

Taken aback, Susanna took her grandmother by the

elbows and held her, turning her away from the harsh

wind. “Gran—what did you say? Jared’s widow mar-

ried a man named
Tucker?
”

“Yes, I remember, because I didn’t think she should

make little Jared change his name to Tucker. But she did,

and I never said a word. He’s your father’s half brother,

but I—well, Kevin doesn’t know about him. We just

didn’t put those things out in the open in those days.”

She anchored her ski pole in the snow and sank against

it, her earlier energy obviously deserting her. “They had

no interest in coming back up here. The property just

sat. Oh, that happened even before I left the lake, years

and years and years ago.”

With the snow, the wind and the shock of Gran’s words,

Susanna almost couldn’t breathe. “Gran… Beau McGar-

rity’s wife, the woman who was murdered—her name

was Tucker. Rachel Tucker. She was from Philadelphia.”

“Oh, dear.” Iris’s eyes widened, and the wrinkles in

her face seemed more prominent. But she rallied, lean-

ing hard on one ski pole, pointing up the lakeshore with

the other. “Destin’s got himself mixed up in a terrible

mess. If you’ll just go a few yards down this path and

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309

along the cove, you’ll be able to see if he headed for the

teahouse or someplace, or if he split off and looped

back through the woods. At the rate it’s snowing, we

could lose his tracks. I should have thought of this yes-

terday and checked—” She broke off her self-recrimi-

nations and set her second pole back into the snow.

“You’ll still be within shouting distance for Sam.”

“You go on inside,” Susanna said. “Tell him what you

told me.”

Her grandmother nodded, but didn’t move. She bit

her thin, purplish lower lip, blinking rapidly. “Susanna,

I didn’t know. This was all so long ago…”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, okay?” Susanna

managed a smile. “That’s what Jack would say, right?

This might just be a coincidence. There must be a ga-

zillion Tuckers in Philadelphia. Please, go back to the

cabin.”

“I’ll wait out here for you,” she said stubbornly.

Her grandmother was shivering, not so much from

the cold, Susanna realized, as the shock of the possible

connection between her lover of more than a half cen-

tury ago and a woman murdered in Texas. “No, it’s