A Texas Ranger's Christmas

by Rebecca Winters

  “I’m talking someone from the past. The reason I ask is because the pictures from that box don’t show that he had any other close friends.”

  She frowned. “He told me I was his best friend. Before that he had to work too many jobs through high school and college to have much of a social life.”

  “What about Danny Dunn? Did you invite him to your wedding?”

  “No.”

  “Didn’t you think it odd considering Nate had spent so much time with him?”

  “Yes. In fact, I said the same thing to Nate, but he insisted they weren’t friends in that way. He wouldn’t presume, so that was the end of it.”

  Caige was starting to dig deep, and he knew Blaire didn’t like it. “I find it odd you still refer to him as Mr. Dunn. Why do you do that?”

  Color seeped into her cheeks. “Because he was only Mr. Dunn to me. I never met him.” She was holding back something.

  “Didn’t you want to meet him?”

  “Of course.”

  “But your husband didn’t want to introduce you. Don’t hate me for this, but did it ever occur to you your husband could have had a gay side he didn’t want you to know about?”

  She got out of her seat and clung to the back of it. Her complexion had paled. “It never crossed my mind because our love life was satisfactory to me.”

  Caige studied her trembling figure. “Why didn’t you ever go on those trips he took to San Diego?”

  “Because we couldn’t afford it.”

  “Yet he could afford expensive golf lessons.”

  “That was different. It was an investment for his career. We’d talked about it and planned it out. November would have been his last lesson if he hadn’t disappeared.”

  “What about the money for rental cars, hotels and meals while he was on those trips?”

  “Mr. Dunn had a place down there and arranged everything for Nate. He did it in exchange for Nate caddying for him when Ron wasn’t available.”

  Blaire had a flaw, the same flaw plaguing millions of women who asked no questions of husbands who might be untrustworthy. “Did you always drive him to the airport and pick him up?”

  “I took him the first time. After that, he just took his car and parked it in the short-term parking.”

  “How long was he gone for each time?”

  “He left Friday night and came home Sunday morning.”

  After swallowing the last of his coffee, Caige got to his feet. “Didn’t you start to question the setup even a little bit?”

  Her eyes flashed an icy blue. “After a couple of months I hated it, but he always phoned me while he was gone, and because he always came home so happy and encouraged over the improvement in his game, I didn’t make an issue of it. Tally Isom told him he would make pro ranking before long.

  “But after Mr. Dunn was killed and the police questioned anyone who knew him, including Nate, that’s when he told me about Ron being Mr. Dunn’s lover. I asked him if he gave the police that information. He said no because he didn’t have proof. It was only conjecture on his part.”

  “Your husband withheld what could have been vital evidence in an ongoing murder case.”

  “I know. You can imagine how the whole thing frightened me. Part of me wondered if Nate had brought it up as his way of trying to tell me the truth about his own orientation.” Her breath staggered. “If he and Mr. Dunn had been lovers, it would explain why he didn’t want me to see them together.

  “When Nate disappeared before I’d worked up the nerve to confront him, I felt like the world’s biggest fool for having stayed in denial months too long because of my own fears.”

  “That’s why you didn’t tell any of this to the police?”

  “Yes. Five years ago I was traumatized by what happened. I’d only been married eight months and doubted everything I ever knew. It’s taken me years to think rationally.”

  “Did you ever confide this to your parents?”

  “To my whole family. They didn’t believe it, but then they liked him so much. Mark was the most vocal. Though he and Nate weren’t ones who had anything in common or would ever do anything together by choice, he said I was crazy to think Nate was gay. I asked him how he knew. He said, ‘It’s just not Nate.’”

  Caige had a hunch Mark knew what he was talking about. Caige had his own theory that Nate’s interest in Dunn had more to do with money while he climbed that golden ladder to the top of the golf world.

  Blaire looked so vulnerable standing there clutching the chair, Caige wanted to carry her upstairs. But he didn’t want her accusing him of taking advantage. Besides, this wasn’t the time. She needed space to come to grips with the new reality that her husband’s case had been reopened. For now, Caige was neither her friend nor her enemy. At the moment she despised his undercover tactics, with good reason.

  “I’ll let myself out and see you in the morning.”

  “I don’t mean to be rude, but why bother to show up for work, Caige? I don’t need a partner, and Stan arranged for that temp job because you’re on police business. Perry will be back on Monday.”

  He stared her down. “Did it ever occur to you that I like working with you? If I thought I couldn’t see you tomorrow, I might have a tantrum.”

  SHE FELT THE SAME WAY.

  Blaire watched him leave. Though she wanted to call him back she couldn’t, not when she was so churned up inside.

  As soon as she heard the front door close, she hurried upstairs to her bedroom where she’d left her purse. Where was Danny Dunn’s place in San Diego? She needed to make a phone call to find out. She called 411.

  “I’d like the number for the Torrey Pines golf course in San Diego, California, please.”

  The automated message from the golf course gave her a full menu from which to choose. She pressed the digit for the golf shop. It was eight-thirty here. That meant six-thirty there.

  “Golf shop.”

  “Hi. I’m anxious to talk to anyone there who might have worked in your shop five years ago. Would that be possible?”

  “I’ve been here close to ten. How can I help?”

  “Do you remember Danny Dunn, the pro golfer from Austin, Texas?”

  “No, that name doesn’t ring a bell. I’ll transfer you over to the pro shop. They’ll know more.”

  She waited until another voice came on the line. “Pro shop.”

  “I need some information about a pro golfer who used to play there five years ago named Danny Dunn from Austin, Texas.”

  “Sorry. The name’s not familiar and we’re closing right now. Call the business office in the morning. Maybe they can help you.”

  They probably couldn’t if Mr. Dunn hadn’t been that remarkable. Certainly the two employees she’d just talked to had no patience to try and help her.

  After she’d hung up, she reached for the phone directory and looked up Dunn. There were over two hundred Dunns listed. She went through each one looking for the Hyde Park area code. Nothing. If Mrs. Dunn was still alive, she probably had a cell phone like Blaire, and no one knew the number except close family and friends.

  She buried her face in her hands. It was appalling how little she’d known about Nate’s life away from her. Blaire didn’t have a phone number to call, or a person who knew Nate and could answer her questions. He’d kept so much from her.

  But you let him, Blaire.

  Caige’s question still raced around in her mind. Didn’t you start to question the setup even a little bit?

  He had to think she was the most pathetic creature alive. She was humiliated and furious with herself. A throwback to the nineteenth century when a wife knew nothing about her husband’s business and didn’t dare ask. How insane was that when this was the new millennium?

  With her adrenaline surging, she cleaned up the kitchen and put the box of pictures away. After she’d typed up her notes on today’s appointments, she phoned her parents. They had a quick conversation, then she got ready for bed.


  Still needing a distraction, she turned on the TV to a movie, if only for the noise. At four in the morning she awakened to static. For the rest of the night she lay there going over everything in her mind. By the time she walked into the office four hours later, she knew what she had to do in order to hold her head up around Caige.

  When he walked in, everyone bantered with him. They liked “Jack” a lot already. He’d become a favorite person in no time at all. It killed her that he wouldn’t be working here after Friday. By the new year he wouldn’t even be living in Austin.

  While he was in the middle of a chat with the guys, she finished making out their schedule. “Let’s get going, Jack. We’ve got an appointment out in Vista Royale.” It would be a half hour drive, which ought to give her plenty of time to have a certain discussion with him.

  “Slave driver!” Marty called to her.

  Blaire smiled. “That’s me!” She put a copy of their schedule on Sheila’s desk and headed outside for her truck. Caige caught up to her and they took off.

  “Was Josh upset when you got home so late?”

  “I don’t know if he measures time the same way we do, but he seemed happy to see me. We played for an hour before I put him down. Your pull ball is still his favorite toy.”

  “That makes me happy.”

  She felt his gaze studying her profile. “About yesterday, Blaire. I know I knocked the foundations out from under you. If there’d been any other way under heaven, I wou—”

  “I’m glad it happened,” she cut in on him. It was the truth. “You woke me up from that awful state of nothingness I’ve been wallowing in all this time. I brought it on myself. I don’t mean Nate’s disappearance. I’m talking about everything leading up to it, especially my passive role as a wife.”

  “Some might call it trust and see it as prudent.”

  “No,” Blaire retorted. “It’s called cowardice. I stopped asking questions for fear of arousing Nate’s anger.” She sighed heavily. “It was wrong of me to pretend everything was fine when it wasn’t.”

  “We all do that,” he muttered. “I closed my ears to my wife’s pleading for me to quit the Rangers. Our marriage got off track long before Josh’s accident because of my selfishness.”

  “Do you look at your career choice as selfish?”

  He made an odd sound in his throat. “It’s not exactly the easiest thing on a marriage.”

  “Your grandfather did it and managed to have a family, too. How did his marriage fare?”

  “From what I could tell they were very happy, but my grandmother was the kind of woman who went along with things and never complained even if she wanted to. For all I know, she hated his job.”

  “Whether she did or didn’t, she knew he was doing the work that made him happy, so that’s why she went along with it. An unhappy man worries a lot of wives whose husbands are near retirement age.”

  He chuckled. “So I understand.”

  “My mother fears my dad will go into a nosedive after he leaves pharmaceuticals for good. She’s trying to talk him into buying a franchise for a chocolate outlet so they can run it together.”

  “Your mother sounds like a very wise woman.”

  “She’s always been forward-thinking. Not like someone you know who’s sitting next to you.”

  “You’re being too hard on yourself, Blaire.”

  “No more so than you beating yourself up on your career choice.” She glanced at him. “Obviously you wanted to be a Ranger badly enough to leave Naylor. What’s the reason you’re planning to move back there after Christmas?”

  “Josh is getting older and needs more attention outside of school. I can’t provide it if I’m off on a case. With family close by, he’ll get the added stimulation on a regular basis.”

  “Tell me something honestly. Would your wife have liked it if you’d gone back to ranching and moved there sooner?”

  Caige shook his dark head without hesitation. “She’s a big-city girl. The slow small-town life in Naylor was anathema to her. It would never have worked. I’m afraid Josh’s brain injury was the final blow in a long line of hurts.”

  “You don’t talk about her family. Did she have siblings?”

  “No.”

  So Liz was an only child. Like Nate… Did that mean anything? Blaire scoffed at herself. Not really. She had two siblings and look at her!

  While Caige was being exceptionally quiet, she saw a convenience store and pulled into the parking area in order to buy ice and treats. She offered to do the honors. When she returned with a sack of goodies and they were on the road again, she handed him a Milky Way bar. He was addicted to them. The way he tore off the paper and started munching, she figured it had brightened his spirits.

  “Do you know, I lay awake for hours last night turning everything over in my mind? Around five this morning I came up with an idea.”

  “Go on.” He reached in the sack for the diet cola, his other addiction. He sounded happier than before.

  “I know it’s five years after Nate’s disappearance, but instead of crying about it, I want to become proactive because I’m sick and tired of the status quo. My parents are, too, or they wouldn’t have approached Agent Robbins again. As you said yesterday, we don’t know if Nate is alive or dead. Therefore I’ve got a proposition for you.”

  He flashed her a half grin so beguiling, she could hardly breathe. “I love it already.” Caige wasn’t taking her seriously. Now it was her turn to drop her little bomb.

  “Will you let me work with you to solve my case?”

  “In what way?”

  “In every way. It’s why you went undercover. Now that you’ve told me the truth about yourself, you can fire all the questions you want at me and I can play an active part. You’re the one with the law on your side, but I have ideas. Let me tell you what I did after you left last evening.” In a few minutes she explained about her phone call to Torrey Pines.

  That seemed to surprise him. He finished off his drink and put the can back in the bag. “It’s nearly impossible getting answers out of people unless the police force them to talk.”

  “I found that out, but the fact remains someone has to know if Danny Dunn actually had a place there. I’ve come to the conclusion that Nate told me a lot of lies throughout our marriage and before. According to him, he had no living relatives. It’s hard to know that much about a person when all you have is his word to go on.”

  “I’m sorry, Blaire.” He sounded pained for her.

  “Don’t be. It’s life. Looking back now, I find myself suspecting everything. So many little things I dismissed at the time are starting to make sense.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like the Saturday I called the Hilly Heights golf shop to find out if Nate had come off the course with Mr. Dunn yet. We’d planned to go to lunch and do some shopping. But the answer I got was that Mr. Dunn hadn’t been on the course, so my husband was probably out caddying for someone else. But that couldn’t have been, or someone would have written it down.

  “When I asked Nate about it, he told me Mr. Dunn had decided to take them to the newer Falconhead golf course where he liked to play. Apparently their game went on longer than they’d planned. My husband was always penitent and had an answer that made sense at the time.”

  Caige reflected for a minute. “I noticed you set up our first appointment at an address near the Bee Caves. It’s not that far from Falconhead. Something tells me that wasn’t a coincidence.”

  She gave him an impish smile. “No. I thought that after we finished our job, we could drive over there and ask some questions. I’m curious to find out how many times Mr. Dunn played there and who the caddy was. It should be in their records.”

  He flashed her a look that said he was impressed. It gave her the courage to tell him the rest.

  “After the fiasco phone call to Torrey Pines, I tried to phone Danny Dunn’s mother, but couldn’t find the number. Yet after giving it serious thought, I decided she�
��d be the last person to know anything about the dark part of her son’s life he chose to keep secret.”

  Caige’s startled gaze swept over her as if he were seeing her for the first time. “You really did have an epiphany last night.”

  She nodded. “After those men at Torrey Pines refused to give me the time of day, I thought long and hard about it. If you were really free to give this your all, 24/7, I believe in my heart you’d find out what happened to Nate much sooner than we think.”

  “Your faith in me is gratifying, but you have no proof of that,” he said in a gravelly voice. For once she felt she’d caught him off guard. To hear this tough man sound so vulnerable caught at her emotions.

  “To quote a certain Texas Ranger whose badge I threw at him yesterday during my tantrum, it’s a feeling in my gut. The funny thing is, my gut instinct has never been wrong, either, especially about Nate. To my dismay, my huge character flaw was not acting on it, but those days are over.”

  “Will the real Blaire Koslov please stand up?”

  She broke into laughter as he reached in the sack for a second Milky Way. He always ate two. “Your training as a pathologist would give you a definite edge if you ever wanted to go into law enforcement.”

  “No, no. I gladly leave that to an expert’s expert like you. But I know I’ll be much happier to tag along supplying moral support, snacks. Think of it this way. I’ll be providing another mind for brainstorming. But not just anyone’s mind!”

  There was something else she could provide, too, but he wasn’t ready to hear it yet. She knew he wasn’t because he hadn’t responded to her last remarks.

  “Oh, dear,” she said as they drew up to their first appointment. The telltale signs of disease made the trees stand out a mile.

  “Oak wilt,” Caige supplied. “It’s everywhere. I see it in my sleep.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  They made quick work of taking samples and got back in the truck. Blaire was excited about reaching the golf course at Falconhead.

  Maybe there was something wrong with her that she couldn’t wait to find out if she was right and Nate had lied to her about even the little things like this. But they weren’t little things if they all added up to a whole life based on lies. Somewhere along the way in her marriage, her love for him had slowly taken a downward turn, but she’d been too in denial to acknowledge it.