A Texas Christmas: True Blue / A Lawman's Christmas: A McKettricks of Texas Novel

True Blue

Diana Palmer

About the Author

The prolific author of over one hundred books, DIANA PALMER got her start as a newspaper reporter. One of the top ten romance writers in America, she has a gift for telling the most sensual tales with charm and humour. Diana lives with her family in Cornelia, Georgia.

Chapter One

“We could lose the case,” San Antonio Detective Sergeant Rick Marquez muttered as he glared at one of the newest detectives on his squad.

“I’m really sorry,” Gwendolyn Cassaway said, wincing. “I tripped. It was an accident.”

He stared at her through narrowed dark eyes, his sensual lips compressed. “You tripped because you’re nearsighted and you won’t wear glasses.” Personally, he didn’t think the lack of them did anything for her, if vanity was the issue. She had a pleasant face, and an exquisite complexion, but she was no raving beauty. Her finest feature was her wealth of thick platinum-blond hair that she wore in a high bun on top of her head. She never wore it down.

“Glasses get in my way and I can’t ever get them clean enough,” she muttered. “That coating just causes smears unless you use the proper cleaning materials. And I can’t ever find them,” she said defensively.

He drew in a long, exasperated breath and perched on the edge of the desk in his office. In the posture, his.45 Colt ACP in its distinctive leather holster was displayed next to his badge on his belt. So were his powerful legs, and to their best advantage. He was tall and muscular, without it being obvious. He had a light olive complexion and thick long black hair that he wore in a ponytail. He was very attractive, but he couldn’t ever seem to wind up with a serious girlfriend. Women found him useful as a sympathetic shoulder to cry on over their true loves. One woman refused to date him when she realized that he wore his pistol even off duty. He’d tried to explain that it was a necessary thing, but it hadn’t given him any points with her. He went to the opera, which he loved, all alone. He went everywhere alone. He was almost thirty-one, and lonelier than ever. It made him irritable.

And here was Gwen making it all worse, messing up his crime scene, threatening the delicate chain of evidence that could lead to a conviction in a complex murder.

A college freshman, pretty and blonde, had been brutally assaulted and killed. They had no suspects and trace evidence was very sketchy already. Gwen had almost contaminated the scene by stepping too close to a blood smear.

He was not in a good mood. He was hungry. He was going to be late for lunch, because he had to chew her out. If he didn’t, the lieutenant surely would, and Cal Hollister was even meaner than Marquez.

“You could also lose your job,” Marquez pointed out. “You’re new in the department.”

She grimaced. “I know.” She shrugged. “I guess I could go back to the Atlanta P.D. if I had to,” she said with grim resignation. She looked at him with pale green eyes that were almost translucent. He’d never seen eyes that color.

“You just have to be more careful, Cassaway,” he cautioned.

“Yes, sir. I’ll do my best.”

He tried not to look at the T-shirt she was wearing under a lightweight denim jacket with her jeans. It was unseasonably warm for November but a jacket felt good against the morning chill.

On her T-shirt was a picture of a little green alien, the sort sold in novelty shops, with a legend that read, Have You Seen My Spaceship? He averted his eyes and tried not to grin.

She tugged her jacket closer. “Sorry. But they don’t have any regulations against T-shirts here, do they?”

“If the lieutenant sees that one, you’ll find out,” he said.

She sighed. “I’ll try to conform. It’s just that I come from a very weird family. My mother worked for the FBI. My father was, uh, in the military. My brother is …” She hesitated and swallowed. “My brother was in military intelligence.”

He frowned. “Deceased?”

She nodded. She still couldn’t talk about it. The pain was too fresh.

“Sorry,” he said stiffly.

She shifted. “Larry died very bravely during a covert ops mission in the Middle East. But he was my only sibling. It’s hard to talk about.”

“I can understand that.” He stood up, glancing at the military watch he wore on his left wrist. “Time for lunch.”

“Oh, I have other plans …” she began quickly.

He glared at her. “It was a remark, not an invitation. I don’t date colleagues,” he said very curtly.

She blushed all the way down to her throat. She swallowed and stood taller. “Sorry. I was … I meant … that is …”

He waved the excuses away. “We’ll talk about this some more later. Meanwhile, please do something about your vision. You can’t investigate a crime scene you can’t see!”

She nodded. “Yes, sir. Absolutely.”

He opened the door and let her go out first, noticing absently that her head only came up to his shoulder and that she smelled like spring roses, the pink ones that grew in his mother’s garden down in Jacobsville. It was an elusive, very faint fragrance. He approved. Some women who worked in the office seemed to bathe in perfume and always had headaches and allergies and never seemed to think about the connection. Once, a fellow detective had had an almost-fatal asthma attack after a clerical worker stood near him wearing what smelled like an entire bottle of perfume.

Gwendolyn stopped suddenly and he plowed into her, his hands sweeping out to grasp her shoulders and steady her before she fell from his momentum.

“Oh, sorry!” she exclaimed, and felt a thrill of pleasure at the warm strength of the big hands holding her so gently.

He removed them at once. “What is it?”

She had to force her mind to work. Detective Sergeant Marquez was very sexy and she’d been drawn to him since her first sight of him several weeks before. “I meant to ask if you wanted me to check with Alice Fowler over at the crime lab about the digital camera we found in the murdered woman’s apartment. By now, she might have something on the trace evidence.”

“Good idea. You do that.”

“I’ll swing past there on my way back to the office after lunch,” she promised, and beamed, because it was a big case and he was letting her contribute to solving it. “Thanks.”

He nodded, his mind already on the wonderful beef Stroganoff he was going to order at the nearby café where he usually had lunch. He’d been looking forward to it all week. It was Friday and he could splurge.

Tomorrow was his day off. He was going to spend it helping his mother, Barbara, process and can a bushel of hothouse tomatoes she’d been given by an organic gardener with a greenhouse. She owned Barbara’s Café in Jacobsville, and she liked to use her organic vegetables and herbs in the meals she prepared for her clients. They would add to the store of canned summer tomatoes that she’d already processed earlier in the year.

He owed her a lot. He’d been orphaned in junior high school and Barbara Ferguson, who’d just lost her husband in an accident, and suffered a miscarriage, had taken him in. His mother had once worked for Barbara at the café just briefly. Then his parents—well, his mother and stepfather—had died in a wreck, leaving a single, lonely child all on his own. Rick had been a terrible teen, always in trouble, bad-tempered and moody. He’d been afraid when he lost his mother. He had no other living relatives of whom he was aware, and no place to go. Barbara had stepped in and given him a home. He loved her no less than he’d loved his real mother, and he was quite protective of her. He never spoke of his stepfather. He tried not to remember him at all.

Barbara wanted him to marry and settle down and have a family. She harped on it all the time. She even introduced him to single women. Nothing helped. He seemed to be an eternally on-sale item in the matrimonial market that everybody bypassed for the fancier merchandise. He laughed shortly to himself at the thought.

Gwen watched him leave and wondered why he’d laughed. She was embarrassed that she’d thought he was asking her to lunch. He didn’t seem to have a girlfriend and everybody joked about his nonexistent love life. But he wasn’t attracted to Gwen in that way. It didn’t matter. No man had ever liked her, really. She was everybody’s confidante, the good girl who could give advice about how to please other women with small gifts and entertainments. But she was never asked out for herself.

She knew she wasn’t pretty. She was always passed over for the flashy women, the assertive women, the powerful women. The women who didn’t think sex before marriage was a sin. She’d had a man double over laughing when she’d told him that, after he expected a night in bed in return for a nice meal and the theater. Then he’d become angry, having spent so much money on her with nothing to show for it. The experience had soured her.

“Don Quixote,” she murmured to herself. “I’m Don Quixote.”

“Wrong sex,” Detective Sergeant Gail Rogers said as she paused beside the newcomer. Rogers was the mother of some very wealthy ranchers in Comanche Wells, but she kept her job and her own income. She was an amazing peace officer. Gwen admired her tremendously. “And what’s that all about?” she asked.

Gwen sighed, glancing around to make sure they weren’t being overheard. “I won’t give out on dates,” she whispered. “So men think I’m insane.” She shrugged. “I’m Don Quixote, trying to restore morality and idealism to a decadent world.”

Rogers didn’t laugh. She smiled, very kindly. “He was noble, in his way. An idealist with a dream.”

“He was nutty as a fruitcake.” Gwen sighed.

“Yes, but he made everyone around him feel of worth, like the prostitute whom he idealized as a great lady for whom he quested,” came the surprising reply. “He gave dreams to people who had given them up for harsh reality. He was adored by them.”

Gwen laughed. “Yes, I suppose he wasn’t so bad at that.”

“People should have ideals, even if they get laughed at,” Rogers added. “You stick to your guns. Every society has its outcasts.” She leaned down. “Nobody who conformed to the rigid culture of any society ever made history.”

Gwen brightened. “That’s true.” Then she added, “You’ve lived through a lot. You got shot,” Gwen recalled hearing.

“I did. It was worthwhile, though. We broke a cold case wide-open and caught the murderer.”

“I heard. That was some story.”

Rogers smiled. “Indeed it was. Rick Marquez got blindsided and left for dead by the same scoundrels who shot me. But we both survived.” She frowned. “What’s wrong? Marquez giving you a hard time?”

“It’s my own fault,” Gwen confided. “I can’t wear contacts and I hate glasses. I tripped in a crime scene and came close to contaminating some evidence.” She grimaced. “It’s a murder case, too, that college freshman they found dead in her apartment last night. The defense will have a field day with that when the perp is caught and brought to trial. And it will be my fault. I just got chewed out for it. I should have, too,” she said quickly, because she didn’t want Rogers to think Marquez was being unfair.

Rogers’s dark eyes searched hers. “You like your sergeant, don’t you?”

“I respect him,” Gwen said, and then flushed helplessly.

Rogers studied her warmly. “He’s a nice man,” she said. “He does have a temper and he does take too many chances. But you’ll get used to his moods.”

“I’m working on that.” Gwen chuckled.

“How did you like Atlanta?” Rogers asked conversationally as they headed for the exit.

“Excuse me?” Gwen said absently.

“Atlanta P.D. Where you were working.”

“Oh. Oh!” Gwen had to think quickly. “It was nice. I liked the department. But I wanted a change, and I’ve always wanted to see Texas.”

“I see.”

No, she didn’t, Gwen thought, and thank goodness for that. Gwen was keeping secrets that she didn’t dare divulge. She changed the subject as they walked together to the parking lot to their respective vehicles.

Lunch was a salad with dressing on the side, and half a grilled cheese sandwich. Dessert, and her drink, was a cappuccino. She loved the expensive coffee and could only afford it one day a week, on Fridays. She ate an inexpensive lunch so that she could have her coffee.

She sipped it with her eyes closed, smiling. It had an aroma that evoked Italy, a little sidewalk café in Rome with the ruins visible in the distance …

She opened her eyes at once and looked around, as if someone could see the thoughts in her head. She must be very careful not to mention that memory, or other similar ones, in regular conversation. She was a budding junior detective. She had to remember that. It wouldn’t do to let anything slip at this crucial moment.

That thought led to thoughts of Detective Marquez and what would be a traumatic revelation for him when the time came for disclosure. Meanwhile, her orders were to observe him, keep her head down and try to discover how much he, or his adoptive mother, knew about his true background. She couldn’t say anything. Not yet.

She finished her coffee, paid for her meal and walked out onto the chilly streets. So funny, she thought, the way the weather ran in cycles. It had been unseasonably cold throughout the South during the spring then came summer and blazing, unrelenting heat with drought and wildfires and cattle dying in droves. Now it was November and still unseasonably warm, but some weather experts said snow might come soon.

The weather was nuts. There had been epic drought throughout the whole southern tier of America, from Arizona to Florida, and there had been horrible wildfires in the southwestern states. Triple-digit temperatures had gone all summer in south Texas. There had been horrible flooding on the Mississippi River due to the large snowmelt, from last winter’s unusually deep snows up north.

Now it was November and Gwen was actually sweating long before she reached her car, although it had been chilly this morning. She took off her jacket. At least the car had air-conditioning, and she was turning it on, even if it was technically almost winter. Idly, she wondered how people had lived in this heat before air-conditioning was invented. It couldn’t have been an easy life, especially since most Texans of the early twentieth century had worked on the land. Imagine, having to herd and brand cattle in this sort of heat, much less plow and plant!

Gwen got into her car and drove by the crime lab to see if Alice had found anything on that digital camera. In fact, she had. There were a lot of photos of people who were probably friends—Gwen could use face recognition software to identify them, hopefully—and there was one odd-looking man standing a little distance behind a couple who was smiling into the camera against the background of the apartment complex where the victim had lived. That was interesting and suspicious. She’d have to check that man out. He didn’t look as if he belonged in such a setting. It was a mid-range apartment complex, and the man was dingy and ill kempt and staring a little too intently. She drove back to her precinct.

Her mind was still on Marquez, on what she knew, and he didn’t. She hoped he wasn’t going to have too hard a time with his true history, when the truth came out.

Barbara glared at her son. “Can’t you just peel the tomato, sweetie, without taking out most of it except the core?”

He grimaced. “Sorry,” he said, wielding the paring knife with more care as he went to work on what looked like a bushel of tomatoes, a gift from an organic gardener with a hothouse, that his mother was canning in her kitchen at home. Canning jars simmered in a huge tub of water, getting ready to be filled with fragrant tomato slices and then processed in the big pressure cooker. He glared at it.

“I hate those things,” he muttered. “Even the safest ones are dangerous.”

“Baloney,” she said inelegantly. “Give me those.”

She took the bowl of tomatoes and dunked them into a pot of boiling water. She left them there for a couple of minutes and fished them out in a colander. She put them in the sink in front of Rick. “There. Now they’ll skin. I keep telling you this is a more efficient way than trying to cut the skins off. But you don’t listen, my dear.”

“I like skinning them,” he said with a dark-eyed smile in her direction. “It’s an outlet for my frustrations.”

“Oh?” She didn’t look at him, deliberately. “What sort of frustrations?”

“There’s this new woman at work,” he said grimly.

“Gwen.” She nodded.

He dropped the knife, picked it back up and stared at her.

“You talk about her all the time.”

“I do?” It was news to him. He didn’t realize that.

She nodded as she skinned tomatoes. “She trips over things that she doesn’t see, she messes up crime scenes, she spills coffee, she can’t find her cell phone …” She glanced at him. He was still standing there, with the knife poised over a tomato. “Get busy, there, those tomatoes won’t peel themselves.”

He groaned.

“Just think how nice they’ll taste in one of my beef stew recipes,” she coaxed. “Go on, peel.”

“Why can’t we just get one of those things that sucks the air out of bags and freeze them instead?”

“What if we have a major power outage that lasts for days and days?” she returned.

He thought for a minute. “I’ll go buy twenty bags of ice and several of those foam coolers.”

She laughed. “Yes, but we can’t tell how the power grid is going to cope if we have one of those massive CMEs like the Carrington Event in 1859.”

He blinked. “Excuse me?”

“There was a massive coronal mass ejection in 1859 called the Carrington Event,” she explained. “When it hit earth, all the electrics on the planet went crazy. Telegraph lines burned up and telegraph units caught fire.” She glanced at him. “There wasn’t much electricity back in those days—it was in its infancy. But imagine if such a thing happened today, with our dependence on electricity. Everything is connected to the grid these days, banks, communications corporations, pharmacies, government, military and the list goes on and on. Even our water and power are controlled by computers. Just imagine if we had no way to access our computers.”

He whistled. “I was in the grocery store one day when the computers went offline. They couldn’t process credit cards. Most people had to leave. I had enough cash for bread and milk. Then another time the computers in the pharmacy went down, when you had to have those antibiotics for the sinus infection last winter. I had to come home and get the checkbook and go back. People without credit cards had real problems.”

“See?” She went back to her tomatoes.

“I suppose it would be a pretty bad thing. Is it going to happen, you think?”

“Someday, certainly. The sun has eleven year cycles, you know, with a solar minimum and a solar maximum. The next solar maximum, some scientists say, is in 2012. If we’re going to get hit, that would have my vote for the timeline.”

“Twenty-twelve,” he groaned, rolling his eyes. “We had this guy come in the office and tell us we needed to put out a flyer.”

“What about?”

“The fact that the world is ending in 2012 and we have to have tin-foil hats to protect us from electromagnetic pulses.”

“Ah. EMPs,” she said knowledgeably. “Actually, I think you’d have to be in a modified and greatly enlarged version of a Leiden jar to be fully protected. So would any computer equipment you wanted to save.” She glanced at him. “They’re developing weapons like that, you know,” she added. “All it would take is one nicely placed EMP and our military computers would go down like tenpins.”

He put down the knife. “Where do you learn all this stuff?” he asked, exasperated.

“On the internet.” She pulled an iPod out of her pocket and showed it to him. “I have Wi-Fi in the house, you know. I just connect to all the appropriate websites.” She checked her bookmarks. “I have one for space weather, three radars for terrestrial weather and about ten covert sites that tell you all the stuff the government won’t tell you …”

“My mother, the conspiracy theorist,” he moaned.

“You won’t hear this stuff on the national news,” she said smartly. “The mainstream media is controlled by three major corporations. They decide what you’ll get to hear. And mostly it’s what entertainer got drunk, what television show is getting the ratings and what politician is patting himself on the back or running for reelection. In my day—” she warmed to her theme “—we had real news on television. It was local and we had real reporters out gathering it. Like the Jacobsville paper still does,” she added.

“I know about the Jacobsville paper,” he said with a sigh. “We hear that Cash Grier spends most of his time trying to protect the owner from getting assassinated. She knows all the drug distribution points and the drug lords by name, and she’s printing them.” He shook his head. “She’s going to be another statistic one day. They’ve killed plenty of newspaper publishers and reporters over the border for less. She’s rocking the boat.”

“Somebody needs to rock it,” Barbara muttered as she peeled another tomato skin off and tossed it into a green bag to be used for mulch in her garden. She never wasted any organic refuse. “People are dying so that another generation can become addicted to drugs.”

“I can’t argue that point,” he said. “The problem is that nothing law enforcement is doing is making much of a dent in drug trafficking. If there’s a market, there’s going to be a supply. That’s just the way things are.”

“They say Hayes Carson actually talked to Minette Raynor about it.”

That was real news. Minette owned the Jacobsville Times. She had two stepsiblings, Shane, who was twelve, and Julie, who was six. She’d loved her stepmother very much. Her stepmother and her father had died within weeks of each other, leaving a grieving Minette with two little children to raise, a newspaper to run and a ranch to manage. She had a manager to handle the ranch, and her great-aunt Sarah lived with her and took care of the kids after school so that Minette could keep working. Minette was twenty-five now and unmarried. She and Hayes Carson didn’t get along. Hayes blamed her, God knew why, for his younger brother’s drug-related death, even after Rachel Conley left a confession stating that she’d given Bobby Carson, Hayes’s brother, the drugs that killed him.

Rick chuckled. “If there’s ever a border war, Minette will stand in the street pointing a finger at Hayes so the invaders can get him first.”

“I wonder,” Barbara mused. “Sometimes I think where there’s antagonism, there’s also something deeper. I’ve seen people who hate each other end up married.”

“Cash Grier and his Tippy,” Rick mused.

“Yes, and Stuart York and Ivy Conley.”

“Not to mention half a dozen others. Jacobsville is growing by leaps and bounds.”

“So is Comanche Wells. We’ve got new people there, too.” She was peeling faster. “Did you notice that Grange bought a ranch in Comanche Wells, next to the property that his boss owns?”

Rick pursed his sensual lips. “Which boss?”