The Widow (7 page)

“You don’t have to—”

“If you’re not here at one, I leave without you.”

Linc shifted back to him and nodded. “I’ll be here.”

He jumped down from the deck and ran back to his rattletrap of a car with more energy, his foul mood and unfocused irritability and defeatism at bay. Owen remembered being twenty. He’d gone against his family’s expectations, but they’d supported his need to figure out his own life.

He watched a cormorant dive into the water just off his rocky point. He had no idea where he’d take Linc, but he liked the idea of getting out on the island. Seeing Abigail yesterday—knowing she was barely a quarter mile up the rocks from him—had thrown him off.

Nothing about her was uncomplicated.

Except, he thought, her determination to find her husband’s killer. That was straightforward, clear and unchanging.

And it was why she was on Mt. Desert.

It was always why she was there.

A
bigail dropped onto the wooden bench in a booth across from Lou Beeler, who’d arrived at the tiny harbor restaurant ahead of her. He already had a mug of black coffee in front of him. “Thanks for coming,” he said.

“I’m glad you called. I’d just finished trimming the entry.”

“Painting?”

She nodded. “Helps me think.”

“Keeps you out of trouble, too.”

There was that. A waitress with the face of a heavy smoker came for Abigail’s order. “I’ll have whatever Lou here’s having,” she said.

The woman raised her eyebrows. “The fisherman’s platter?”

Abigail looked at the older detective. “How do you stay so thin eating a fisherman’s platter, ever?” She shifted back to the waitress. “A shrimp roll with fries and iced tea will do it. Thanks.”

The waitress retreated without a word, and Lou sat back, eyeing Abigail with a frankness she’d learned to expect from him. Major crimes outside the cities of Portland and Bangor fell under the jurisdiction of the Maine State Police Criminal Investigative Division. Lou Beeler had been dedicated to his job almost as long as she’d been alive, and he knew what he was doing. They got along. He was sympathetic to her position as the widow of a murder victim and respectful of her expertise as a homicide detective—neither of which meant he would open his file on Chris for her.

She doubted Lou had held back much. Ballistics—he’d never give up what he had on the murder weapon. In his place, Abigail wouldn’t, either. But she had a fair idea that the killer had used a handgun, not an assault rifle, despite the distance and the accuracy of the shot.

The two crimes that day seven years ago—the break-in and Chris’s murder—had always created a discordant note for her. Whacking her on the head, stealing her necklace. Shooting a man after lying in wait for him. They didn’t seem to go together. And yet how could they not?

If nothing changed, Lou Beeler would retire with the murder of Mt. Desert Island native and FBI Special Agent Christopher Browning unresolved.

That fact couldn’t sit well with him, and Abigail hoped that she could play into his potential desire to tie up loose ends this summer.

“I don’t have anything to report on your call,” Lou said.

“I’m not surprised. Whoever it was went to some trouble to cover his tracks. Or hers. I still can’t even tell you if it was a man or a woman.”

The waitress returned with a glass of tea and a pot of coffee, refilling Lou’s mug. Abigail added a packet of sugar to her tea, which looked strong and not particularly fresh. “I’ve been here for less than a day and already have heard about a million things going on around here. Owen Garrison’s on the island. His organization, Fast Rescue, is opening up a field academy in Bar Harbor. Grace Cooper’s been appointed to a high-level State Department position, pending an FBI background check. Linc Cooper’s here. Jason Cooper’s selling his brother’s house out from under him.”

“You’ve been busy,” Lou said.

“Actually, I’ve just taken a couple walks and said hello to the neighbors.”

“If you want a green light to look into this call of yours, you’ve got it. You know what lines you can and can’t cross.”

Their lunches arrived, Lou’s plate of fried seafood so full, a shrimp fell off onto the table. He stabbed it with his fork, coated it in homemade tartar sauce and popped it into his mouth. “Unbelievable. You can’t fry seafood this way at home.”

“Just as well, don’t you think? We don’t need any more temptation.” Her own shrimp roll was decadent enough, a once-a-year treat. “Is Doyle Alden up to speed on the call?”

“Yes, ma’am. He’ll be here any minute. I should warn you—he’s not in the best mood.”

“When has Doyle ever been in a good mood? What’s it this time?”

“Katie’s out of town. Fast Rescue hired her as director of the new academy. She’s in England for six weeks of training.”

“Good for her,” Abigail said. “I know it’s Doyle’s busy season, but he’ll survive.”

“Here he is now.” Lou nodded toward the door. “He doesn’t think your call’s going to amount to anything, either. If there was something specific to go on—”

“I know. There’s nothing but mush.”

Lou scooted over, and Doyle sat on the bench next to him and shook his head at the two plates of fried seafood, never mind that Abigail’s was smaller. “I can’t eat that stuff anymore. Gives me heartburn.”

“Good,” Lou said with a grin. “I was afraid I was going to have to share.”

Doyle settled his gaze on Abigail. “I haven’t seen you since last summer. You’re looking good.”

“You, too, Chief.”

“You got here yesterday?”

“In the fog. I’m painting my entry lupine-blue. So far as I know, it’s always been white.”

Doyle scoffed. “You’re not up here to paint.”

“Well, no. Finding out who interrupted my wedding anniversary dinner the other night would be more important than painting. I assume Lou told you about the call.”

“We’re looking into it,” Doyle said. “If we learn anything, we’ll let you know in due course.”

Abigail bit into her shrimp roll, just to keep herself from throwing a few piping hot native Maine shrimp at Alden. She wouldn’t be getting any green light from him to poke around his town.

Lou tackled a big piece of fried haddock. “You two. Come on. We’re all on the same page here.”

Doyle kept his gaze pinned on Abigail, who was seated across from him. “I don’t know about that, Lou. You and I know the call’s most likely bullshit. Abigail does, too, but she doesn’t care—she’ll use it to stir people up. Doesn’t matter who gets caught in the crossfire. Chris’s killer could be long gone and maybe hasn’t stepped foot in Maine in seven years, but she can’t deal with that. She wants it to be one of us.”

“There are too many secrets among your husband’s friends and neighbors.”

Chris hadn’t had a better friend than Doyle Alden, and yet, Abigail thought, she’d gotten on Doyle’s nerves right from the start—because marrying her meant Chris was never coming back to Mt. Desert to live.

Lou started to speak, his anger and shock at Doyle’s bluntness obvious, but Abigail reached across the table and touched her fellow detective’s hand. “It’s okay. Doyle has a point. I haven’t given anyone here a moment’s rest since Chris died. To say I want Chris’s killer to be someone from the area isn’t fair. I don’t.”

“But you believe it is,” Doyle said.

“I’m keeping an open mind. So should you.”

Before Doyle could launch himself across the table and go for her throat, Lou dipped a fry into his little tub of ketchup and handed it over to him. “Eat up, Doyle. If one fry gives you heartburn, see a doctor. If I get heartburn from listening to you two, I’m going to knock both your heads together before I go for the Rolaids. Got it?”

Abigail didn’t doubt that Lou Beeler could, and would, do exactly what he promised. “I understand your wife’s in England, Chief,” she said. “My caller said things were happening up here—”

“Leave my wife out of your guessing.”

“It’s not a guess. It’s a fact that she’s not here.”

“It’s also a fact that a lobsterman up on Beals Island caught a blue lobster last week.”

“No kidding? What did he do with it?”

Lou picked up his coffee mug. “I should have ordered a beer when I had the chance. He donated the lobster to the Mt. Desert Harbor Oceanarium. I read about it in the paper. Abigail, we’re on your side—all of us. Doyle, me, the entire Maine State Police. We all want to solve your husband’s murder as much now as we did the day it happened. We’ll pursue any and all leads with vigor.”

Abigail tried to put herself in Lou’s shoes as the lead investigator on a seven-year-old case, but she couldn’t. She’d only been a detective two years. The cold cases in the BPD’s files weren’t ones she’d worked on. The family members weren’t people she’d come to know from year after year of them pushing, prodding, demanding answers—pleading for resolution. From wanting to give them those answers.

“I know you will,” she said curtly. “But neither of you believes the call will amount to anything.”

“It’s the fifty-seventh phone tip we’ve received over the years.”

“The first in two years,” Abigail said. “The first I’ve received in Boston, at dinner, on my wedding anniversary.”

Doyle, sneaking a fried scallop from Lou’s plate, seemed calmer, less antagonistic. “You’re high profile. John March’s daughter, a Boston homicide detective. I don’t need to tell you that complicates matters, makes it harder to separate bullshit from something real.”

She pushed aside her plate, no longer hungry. “The call may be bullshit, but it was real.”

“Yeah.” Doyle got heavily to his feet. “You’ve got the station number and my home phone and pager numbers. Feel free to call anytime.”

“I will. Thanks.”

He left, the door banging shut behind him, and Lou scowled across the table at her. “You had to goad him?”

“Me? What’d I do?” But she sighed, shaking her head. “He’s never liked me.”

“That’s a two-way street, sister.”

“It’s not—”

“He knew Chris for a lot longer than you did. Do you think you might be just a little bit jealous of Chief Alden?”

Abigail sat back against the scarred wood of the booth and studied the man across the table from her. “You know how to play hardball, don’t you, Lou?”

“It doesn’t come naturally, if that’s any consolation.”

“Not much. What’re you going to do when you retire?”

“My wife and I bought a used camper. We’re tearing it apart and plan to put it on the road and take off for three months. Then, who knows?”

“Think you’ll miss the work?”

“I’ve loved my job, but I’m looking forward to whatever comes next. What about you?” He set his mug down but kept his eyes on her. “You see yourself on the job for another twenty, twenty-five years?”

“You mean will I quit when I find Chris’s killer?”

“I mean will you quit either way. Can you see yourself investigating homicides twenty years from now when your husband’s is still unsolved?”

“I don’t think that far into the future.”

“Maybe you should,” Lou said, but he didn’t take the thought further, and nodded at her plate. “You taking that shrimp home with you?”

“No. Take them, Lou. Enjoy.”

He grinned at her. “I will.”

B
y dusk, Abigail had put a second coat of her perky lupine-blue paint on the entry walls and was up on her stepladder, an unsteady relic from Chris’s grandfather, dipping her brush into her coffee can.

She’d poured about two inches of paint into it. If it fell off the ladder, there’d be less to clean up. A few touch-ups, and she’d be finished. Then came the cleanup. Brush, tray, rollers. Herself. She’d splattered paint on herself from head to toe.

Bob or Scoop or any of the guys she rented the house to would have gladly painted with her or for her, and they wouldn’t have cared about getting a break on rent—they knew she could have charged twice as much. She didn’t care about making a profit.

But doing the work, the steady rhythm of it, the kind of concentration it required, helped anchor her mind just enough for her to think productively, not an easy concept to explain but one that worked for her.

Not that she’d produced any great insights since she’d first dipped her brush into the blue paint.

She’d opened up all her windows and could hear gulls and the wash of the tide, passing boats, the occasional rustle of leaves and branches in the wind. Peaceful sounds that somehow made her feel less isolated.

She thought of Owen and wondered if he ever felt isolated, or if he would have preferred to have their quiet waterfront all to himself.

A different sound caught her attention. She paused, paintbrush in midair, to hear better.

There it was again.

A whisper, she decided. Someone was outside.

She laid her brush across the top of her coffee can and dismounted the ladder, then fetched her gun from the small safe in the front room. She slipped on the belt holster. If not for the call the other night, she wouldn’t have bothered.

She stepped into the back room, listening through the open back door.

A whiny whisper. A sharp one in response.

Kids.

Tucking her weapon into her holster, Abigail walked outside, the evening air cool, almost cold, the navy blue sky dotted with the first stars of the night.

“Shh.” Another whisper. “Be quiet.”

“I am being quiet.
You’re
the one.”

The voices came from a trio of pine trees to Abigail’s right. She walked down the porch steps. “You can come out of the trees. The mosquitoes must be eating you alive.”

“You won’t tell our dad?”

The Alden boys, she thought. Had to be. Doyle and Owen had developed a tight, if unexpected, friendship, especially in the years since Chris’s death.

“Come on, guys. Sean and Ian, right? It’s getting dark.”

The two boys stepped out from behind the smallest of the pines into the yard. The older boy, Sean, looked more defiant than embarrassed or fearful. Ian stayed a half step behind his brother.

“You remember me, don’t you? Abigail—Abigail Browning.”

They nodded simultaneously but said nothing.

“Are you and your dad visiting Owen?”

“Just us,” Sean said. “Dad’s at a meeting.”

“Is Owen behind you?”

Ian gasped, but Sean shook his head. “We’re on a mission,” he said in a serious tone.

Abigail didn’t want to make light of whatever they were up to. “What kind of mission?”

“Sean.”
Ian tugged on his brother’s arm. “We can’t tell her. Dad’ll kill us.”

Sean was silent a moment, then said, “Ian and me are just practicing our nighttime navigation skills.”

“That’s your mission?” she asked.

Both boys nodded.

“How did you end up here? Was that part of your mission?”

Ian took a step forward, and in the light from her house, Abigail saw that he was pale and nervous. Because of her? She could see tears forming in his eyes.

“Boys,” she said gently, “what’s going on?”

Before they could answer—or lie—pine branches moved behind them, creating shadows on the grass, and Sean and Ian shot toward Abigail, ducking behind her with a terror that was both immediate and real.

“It’s just me,” Owen said, ducking out into the open. “Sorry if I startled everyone.”

Given his experience, stealth would come almost naturally to him at this point. Abigail slipped her arms over the boys’ shoulders as they stood on either side of her. “Why don’t we all go inside for a minute? You can inspect my paint job while I make hot chocolate. Then you can warm up before you go on your way.”

Owen eyed the boys, unamused. “You two told me you were going upstairs to read.”

“We did,” Sean said. “We just—”

“I can’t have you stay with me if you’re going to sneak out.” Owen shifted to Abigail, easing up slightly. “They went out a window on a bedsheet. I was lighting a fire in the woodstove. I never heard a thing.”

“They told me they were practicing their nighttime navigation skills,” she said, not bothering to hide her skepticism. She gave their shoulders a quick squeeze. “But I think there’s more to their story, right, guys?”

Ian broke away from her and appealed to Owen. “I told Sean—”

“You’re responsible for your own decisions.”

“But he made me!”

Sean snorted. “I didn’t make you do anything. You wanted to go.”

“I didn’t think the ghost was real.” Ian had a panicked note in his voice now. “I thought—I thought—”

“Whoa, slow down,” Owen said.

Abigail turned Sean to face her and bent down so that she had eye contact with him. “Tell me about the ghost, okay? Everything you can think of.”

His face had gone deathly white, his lower lip trembling, but he didn’t respond.

“We heard it,” Ian said, crying now. “We heard the ghost!”

Abigail didn’t shift her gaze from Sean, who nodded. “We heard it breathing.”

“Where?” she asked.

“In the ruins.”

“The ruins?”

“The old foundation,” Owen said. “That’s where you heard someone the other night, too, isn’t it, boys?”

“Yes,” Sean said.

“Might it have been an animal?” Abigail asked. “A fox or a squirrel maybe?”

The older boy, his color only marginally improved, shook his head. “It was human. It was…we think it was…”

Chris,
she thought.

She put a hand on Sean’s shoulder. “Do you boys think you heard my husband’s ghost?”

A tear dribbled down his cheek. “We had to be sure. The other night—we were pretty sure that’s who it was. Now—” He wiped his tear with the back of his hand, took a quick breath. “It has to be.”

Abigail straightened and glanced at Owen, who looked pained, not only for the frightened boys in his charge, she thought, but for her. “I’m sorry. They have active imaginations.”

“Maybe,” she said, “but they heard something out here.”

“Yes, but it wasn’t a ghost.”

She didn’t care. “Wait in the house. I’ll go take a look. Then I can drive you all back to your place.”

“That’s not necessary,” Owen said quietly. “The boys and I can investigate on our way back.”

Abigail shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

“Then we’ll go together.”

She could see he was as determined as she was. The tension between them seemed to have helped steady the boys. She sighed. “All right. Let me get a flashlight.” She smiled at him. “Don’t worry—I’ve got on the right shoes.”

Nature was slowly, but inexorably, reclaiming the land where Owen’s great-grandfather had built his summer place almost a hundred years ago, no doubt never imagining that a killer would one day hide in its remains and lie in wait in order to commit murder. Most of the charred rubble was long removed. Now, trees and brush grew in the sunken chunks of foundation, and only parts of the original stonework could be distinguished from the surrounding landscape.

Owen kept the boys close to him. Their talk of a ghost had kicked the cop in Abigail into gear. He watched her push ahead on the path through low-growing wild blueberry bushes and junipers.

Feet-flat-on-the-floor Abigail Browning didn’t seem the type to believe in ghosts. So, what did she think she’d find out here?

Obviously she had something on her mind, Owen thought as she squeezed between a fir tree and a six-foot section of chimney that had broken off its base. She stabbed her flashlight beam into the dark.

“What does she see?” Ian asked, taking Owen’s hand.

“I don’t know. Abigail?”

She visibly relaxed. “Well, well. I like to keep an open mind, but I’ll bet ghosts don’t smoke cigarettes and drink beer.” She shifted her flashlight, taking in more corners of the little hideout and then pointed the beam back at Owen and the boys. “Come see.”

Owen let Sean break off from him and run ahead. Ian looked up at him for a cue, and he nodded, the younger boy immediately pulling his hand free and scooting after his brother.

Using her flashlight as a pointer, Abigail explained the scene to the boys. “Someone used that rock over there as an ashtray,” she said. “See the cigarette butts? And there. A squished empty pack of Marlboros.”

“I can still smell the cigarettes,” Ian said.

“Did you smell smoke when you were out here?” she asked.

Sean shook his head. “No. Look at those beer cans. How many of them are there?”

“Let’s count them. One, two, three—”

“Eight,” Ian said. “There are eight!”

Owen walked on the dark path behind them, shifting into a steady rhythm. He’d hiked in Acadia with Linc Cooper earlier that day, but Linc had gone inside himself, trudging along a mountain trail, preoccupied and unwilling—perhaps unable—to explain what was on his mind. To be twenty and that caught up in his own demons didn’t seem right to Owen. But if he’d skipped the hike, he might have been less preoccupied and caught the boys sneaking out the window, sparing Abigail a trek out to investigate a ghost.

He stood behind her, noticing the shape of her back, hips. She kept herself in good physical condition. He said, “Seems someone had himself a party out here.”

“More than one party, I’d say.” She gestured into the shadows with her flashlight. “There are more butts and beer cans over there.”

“That’s what we heard?” Sean snorted in disgust. “Some
drunk?”

“We don’t know whoever it was got drunk,” Abigail said. “It’s tempting to jump to conclusions, but we don’t have all the facts. Anyone you know smoke Marlboros and drink Budweiser?”

Mattie Young.

Owen could see Abigail had already considered Mattie as a possibility, if not a likelihood. The boys shook their heads. They knew Mattie, who’d grown up with their parents, as well as anyone, but they wouldn’t pay attention to what he smoked and drank.

Without warning, Abigail put her hand on Owen’s upper arm and smiled at him. “I’m not taking any chances of falling in front of you again,” she said as she stepped back from the chimney, then jumped lightly back onto the path, in no more need of a steadying hand than he was. She returned her focus to the boys. “What night did you first think you heard this ghost of yours?”

Owen answered, coming up behind her. “It was Sunday night.”

She nodded. “Do you think whoever was out here heard you? Were you talking to each other, making noise playing on the rocks or anything?”

“Oh,” Sean said, as if just figuring out what she was asking. “Well—yeah, we made noise. But when we heard someone up here, we tried to be quiet.”

“What about tonight? Do you think our partier realized you were out here? Were you trying to be quiet and sneak up on him?”

“We were trying, but it didn’t work.”

Sean was calmer, Abigail’s steady, pragmatic questions having what Owen suspected was their intended effect—to get information and, at the same time, to help the boys to see the scene from her point of view.

“Maybe whoever it was just didn’t want to be seen,” Abigail continued. “Even if it was someone you know.”

“Like who?” Sean asked.

“Talk to your dad. See what he says.” She brushed at a mosquito in front of her face. “This is a beautiful spot, but I’d bring my bug spray next time.”

“The mosquitoes are bothering me, too,” Ian said.

“I’m finished here. You guys need me to walk you back? You can borrow my flashlight—”

“I have one,” Owen said, producing a small flashlight from his back pocket.

She grinned at him. “Always prepared.”

“Let us walk you back. You’re the one out here alone.”

“That’s not necessary.” But she tilted her head back, studying him in the near-darkness. “All right. You guys can all walk me home. Let’s get moving before I lose another pint of blood to these mosquitoes.”

Since she was the one with the gun, Owen wasn’t sure who was escorting whom, but his flashlight was more efficient than hers, and he knew the rocks better than she did.

She let them take her as far as the pine trees where she’d caught Sean and Ian hiding.