The Widow

CHAPTER 8

Abigail 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.”