The Widow

CHAPTER 9

By 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.

“We’re sorry, Mrs. Browning,” Sean mumbled, not waiting to be asked.

“Sorry for what? I like having company. Next time you’ll definitely have to come in for hot chocolate. And it’s Abigail. Not Ab, either. Or Abbie. Just Abigail.” She winked at both boys, adding in a conspiratorial whisper, “But you might want to apologize to Owen about the bedsheet thing.”

They’d all but forgotten that one and turned to him, wide-eyed. “Are you going to tell Dad?” Ian asked.

Owen grinned. “Depends how much work I can get out of you two before he shows up. Of course, you could always read those books-”

“We’ll read,” Sean said.

His brother nodded. “We’ll read all night!”

Abigail laughed, and as she started into the trees, Owen called to her, “If you need us, give a yell.”

“I will.” She glanced back at him. “And the same here. If you need me, give a yell.”

They were, after all, neighbors.

On the way back across the rocks to his place, Sean and Ian peppered Owen with questions about Abigail and what she was doing out here by herself, and why wasn’t she married-and why was she a detective?

“Sorry, guys,” Owen said. “I don’t know all that much about Abigail.”

A true statement, as far as it went. And as long as he was being honest with himself, he admitted he’d like to change that.

The boys ran up onto the deck and back into the house.

Owen lingered out in the cool night air. He did want to know his neighbor across the rocks better.

He had for a long time.