The Widow

CHAPTER 18

There were three color photographs in Abigail’s clear plastic sleeve.

The top one-the one she saw through the plastic-was of a thirteen-year-old Linc Cooper standing by the iron gate in his uncle’s garden with his shirt half untucked and a martini glass in his hand.

Abigail knew it was taken at Ellis’s party seven years ago because of Linc’s age, the little umbrella in his drink and the decorative lights on the fence. She’d seen many other pictures of the party.

The second photograph was of Grace Cooper in the shade at the top of the steep zigzag of steps that led up to Ellis’s house from the private drive.

On the step just below her, almost out of view, was Chris, his hands balled into fists, a tight look of anger on his face.

There was no fear, Abigail had decided after studying his expression.

No premonition that he was about to be murdered.

He’d gone up to Ellis’s after finding her unconscious, obviously intent on finding whoever had attacked his wife. Just the Coopers and the caterers and a few stragglers were still at the party. Grace had told the police that she had seen Chris at her uncle’s house, but never indicated they had spoken.

But how could they not have, with him coming up the steps and her right there?

The third photograph was of Owen, on Ellis’s stone terrace, clearly later-after Linc had snuck his martini, after Grace and Chris had said whatever they’d said to each other.

Hours before Owen had gone down to the rocks and found Chris’s body.

Abigail had jotted down detailed descriptions of each photograph before Lou Beeler could send them off to the lab. The prints were fresh, probably run off an inkjet printer. She’d suggested to Lou that he check to see if Mattie had put his negatives onto a computer disk before burning them, or put the ones he hadn’t burned-if he’d burned any-onto a disk, but the Maine CID detective had already covered all the bases.

Her fellow law enforcement officers were gone now, off to find Mattie, having taken her and Owen, separately, through their paces, all of them trying to make sense of the pictures and why they’d been left, what they meant.

Abigail was restless. There wasn’t much she could do for the moment, other than take out her frustration on her walls.

She tied a purple bandanna over her hair and lifted her sledgehammer, the wind gusting off the water, blowing through her porch door and stirring up more plaster dust. There seemed to be no end to it, no matter how much she swept.

One more to go, and she’d have the room gutted. Then she could put up new wallboard and tape, slap on primer, pick out a paint color-something bright, but that didn’t clash with the lupine-blue in the entry.

Thinking about wallboard and paint colors gave everything else a chance to simmer. The calls, the pictures, Mattie’s parties in the old Garrison foundation, the stash of money under his vase.

The Maine cops, the frightened Alden boys.

Owen.

Abigail jumped.

The man who’d just been in her thoughts stood in the doorway to her front room, watching her angle her sledgehammer at the final section of wall. It was dusk, but night was coming fast. “You should wear goggles and a mask,” Owen said.

“I’ve got some in my trunk.”

He didn’t offer to go fetch them. “You rent this place to cops most of the time. I bet you could get a half dozen of them together to help you tear down walls and put up new ones. Throw a few lobsters in a pot, buy a couple of six-packs-they’d be thrilled.”

She grinned at him. “Are you implying we cops come cheap?” But she didn’t wait for an answer. “Stand back. I don’t want to nail you in the head with this thing.”

“Abigail-”

Her first whack penetrated the wallboard. “Hey, I’m getting good at this.” Before she lost her steam, she heaved the sledgehammer twice more, then gave up and set it against an exposed support beam. “That’s enough. Best to pace myself before I tear my rotator cuff or something.”

“You’ve got a dead body there.”

“Mouse skeleton.” Using her toe, she dragged it out of a corner. “It’s the one I missed earlier.”

“Where there’s one dead mouse, there’s another.”

“It’s live mice I don’t want to run into.”

Owen stepped into the room and walked over to her, running his thumb under her eye. “Don’t want to get plaster in your eyes.”

“That wouldn’t be good.” She took a breath. “Owen…I’m sorry you and Sean and Ian had to see those pictures.”

“It’s not your fault-”

“I could have stayed in Boston. I didn’t have to come up here.”

Doyle Alden appeared on her back porch. “That’s right,” he said, opening the screen door. “You didn’t.”

Abigail ignored his sour tone. “Did you find Mattie?”

“Yeah. We found him. Beeler’s talking to him.” Doyle glanced at her array of tools, as if he wanted to take a crowbar to her himself. “Maybe you should talk to the Coopers about including this place in with the sale of Ellis’s. Jason’s a smart guy. Shrewd. He’d probably get you a better price than you could get on your own.”

“Probably would. How are Sean and Ian?”

“They’re fine. My next-door neighbor’s watching them while I deal with this mess.”

“Listen, Doyle, if I’d known about the pictures-”

“No way for you to know,” he interrupted. “The bastard who left them could have stuck a piece of paper in front of them. Instead…” He trailed off. “Doesn’t matter. What’s done is done.”

“Have they talked to their mother?” Abigail asked. “That might help.”

Doyle stiffened. “I don’t need you to tell me how to raise my sons.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean-”

“Doyle,” Owen said, “nobody wanted the boys to see those pictures. I’ve had the image of my sister burned into my brain for twenty-five years-of Chris for seven years. I’d have done anything to keep Sean and Ian from having to see that. We all would have.”

All the air seemed to go out of the chief of police. He swore under his breath, but quickly pulled himself together, pointing a finger at Abigail. “You need to remember what your role here is and what it isn’t. Understood?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Knock out all the walls in this whole damn house, Abigail. Paint. Decorate. If we learn anything about the phone calls and the pictures, we’ll let you know.”

Abigail gave him a cheeky smile. “Lou told me the same thing.”

Doyle managed a grudging smile back at her. “Smart guy, that Lou.”

Doyle climbed into his car, the window down, mosquitoes thick in the cool, salt-tinged air. Owen had followed his friend outside and could feel Doyle’s frustration and resentment-his powerlessness. “Let me know if you want me to talk to the boys about what happened.”

“Some days, I swear-” Doyle shoved the key into the ignition with more force than was necessary. “I swear Katie and I should just pack up the boys and get off this damn rock. I should find another line of work.”

“Your work didn’t cause what happened today.”

“I’m not talking about today.”

Owen knew he wasn’t. “You’re a small-town cop, Doyle. You’re good at what you do. You enjoy it. You just never thought you’d have to investigate the murder of your best friend.”

“You’d think after seven years…”

“What, that we’d all have forgotten? I’d think after seven years we’d be itchy and irritated that Chris’s murder was still unsolved, and worried that other people might be at risk.”

Doyle gripped the wheel, shaking his head. “We’re never going to find the killer. That’s the truth, Owen. Abigail knows it. She’s trying to create leads where there are none. For all we know, she planted those pictures herself. She’s been collecting her own stash of evidence for years. She’s-” He eased off the wheel and turned the key in the ignition, starting the engine. “I’ve said too much.”

“Forget it.”

But Doyle looked at him through the open window. “She’s not going to tell you anything she doesn’t want to tell you. She’s got a tight lid on herself. Never mind those dark eyes, Owen, my friend.”

He smiled with feigned innocence. “What dark eyes?”

When he returned to Abigail’s kitchen, she had dumped lobster bisque into an ancient saucepan and had it simmering on the stove. “Big confession,” she said. “I’ve never cooked my own lobster. Then again, I’ve never claimed to be a real Mainer. I just have a house here.” She peered into the saucepan. “I think there’s enough butter in there to give us six heart attacks apiece.”

Owen stood behind her and peered over her shoulder as she stirred the bisque with a wooden spoon. “I can’t remember the first time I was in this house. I must have been a toddler. Not much has changed. Chris’s grandfather used to heat up chowder in this same pan.”

“I wish I’d had a chance to know him better. He died nine months after Chris and I met.”

“He was a great guy. Salt of the earth. I used to come over here all the time before my sister drowned. After that-” He eased his arms around her waist, wanting to feel her warmth as much as to provide some kind of reassurance for her. “It wasn’t easy for my family to be here.”

“But you came back.”

“After I was on my own, yes. Chris was off to school by then. I’d come over here and sit on the back porch with his grandfather, and he’d tell me stories about lobstering and living out here. He was laconic-it took some doing to get him going. Once he did, he was mesmerizing.”

“That’s what I remember about him. Chris was like that, too. He didn’t tell me everything.” She stared at the pinkish bisque, the smell of lobster, butter and sherry filling the air as the pot heated. “I think he believed there’d be time for all that. Time to fill in the gaps. Tell me his secrets.”

Her matter-of-fact tone only added to the intensity of her words. Owen kept his arms around her. She sank her weight into him. He tried to picture all the horrific images that were seared into her brain, not only of her husband’s bloodied body on the rocks, but of other murder scenes, other grieving loved ones.

“The police will talk to Ellis Cooper and anyone up at his house,” Abigail said. “Anyone who might have been out here today and seen something.”

“If the pictures were Mattie’s doing, people wouldn’t necessarily notice him. He’s a fixture around here. Part of the landscape.”

She nodded. “Fair point. They’ll interview Jason and Grace, too. Not great timing for her, but right now, as far as we know, no crime’s been committed.”

She continued to speak in that same deliberate, calm tone. Owen could feel the heat of her skin under his hands and suspected that, underneath that cool exterior, Abigail Browning was churning.

“Mattie took those pictures, Owen,” she said.

“I know.”

“I’m just not convinced he’s the one who left them here.”

Owen tightened his arms around her. “You don’t trust any of us, do you?”

She slid out of his embrace without answering and got bowls down from a cupboard. He noticed the pull of her shirt against her skin. She’d taken off her purple bandanna and cleaned up, but she’d still managed to get plaster dust in her dark curls.

She let the bisque simmer until it was heated through but not boiling.

“Abigail, I want you to trust me.”

She turned the heat off under the saucepan, keeping her back to him. “I’ve been fighting for answers on my own for a long time.”

“We should have done more to help you. All of us.”

She ripped open a drawer and pulled out a dented soup ladle. “I tell myself that everyone wanted to give me the space to get on with my life. And you had your own grief. You all knew Chris longer than I did.”

“We weren’t married to him,” Owen said, making a face. “Hell.”

She gave him a small smile. “Fair enough. I have got on with my life, but-I want to find his killer. I want answers. I know I probably should have sold this place that first year after Chris’s death, but-” She shrugged. “I didn’t.”

“The pictures.” He sighed. “They’re tough to look at.”

“If we’d gone to Ellis’s party that day…” She shook her head, making it almost a shudder. “We were invited, but we didn’t go.”

“You were on your honeymoon.”

“When I saw those pictures, I felt the breeze off the water and smelled the salt and the roses in the air as I went into the back room and got my head bashed in. It all came back.” She switched the heat off under the pan. “Was that what it was like for you, seeing the photo of your sister?”

He nodded.

“At least I was an adult when Chris was killed. Twenty-five.” She kept her tone even as she dipped the ladle into the bisque. “You were a little kid when your sister drowned. I can’t imagine. Or maybe I can, somewhat. When you’ve lost someone close to you that young, that tragically-people treat you differently. It’s like all of a sudden there’s a circle around you that people have to step into before they get close to you. Where before there was no circle.”

“Abigail, don’t-”

She swore, dropping the ladle, and spun around at him, into him. His mouth found hers, and if he was tentative, she wasn’t. She took his hand and placed it on her breast, and he found her nipple with his thumb, even as their kiss deepened. Her urgency fired his own. She lifted his shirt, and he felt her fingers cool on his back, inside his belt.

But he felt her tears, dripping onto his cheek, hot, and pulled back, his heart breaking for her. “Abigail-I’m sorry.”

“It’s not you.”

He knew it wasn’t. But he was sorry, anyway, and didn’t know how to explain it even to himself.

Without a word, she fled from the kitchen.

Owen stared at the simmering bisque. What the hell was wrong with him? Why not carry her upstairs and make love to her? He wouldn’t be taking advantage of her. It was what she wanted as much as he did.

He walked into the front room and stood in the doorway of the torn-apart back room where she’d been attacked so long ago. “Bisque’s going to get cold.”

She kicked at the debris on her floor. “I don’t know what the hell I was thinking, making this mess. I should get Bob and Scoop up here.” She smiled over her shoulder at Owen. Self-deprecating. Tears dried. “Have you met Bob and Scoop?”

“Cops?”

She nodded. “My upstairs neighbors.” She gestured to her pile of debris. “They’d be like Doyle and want me to stay out of trouble, to keep knocking out walls. Well, maybe I will. I’ll head to the hardware store in the morning and order some wallboard. Buy a new hammer.”

As if she wasn’t going to think about the call, the articles, the pictures. Mattie Young. As if she would just switch off her cop mind, her sense of obligation to her murdered husband.

Owen kept his expression neutral. “Sounds like a plan.”

She blew out a breath and angled a look at him. “I was this close-” she held up two fingers, a quarter inch apart “-to throwing you over my shoulder and carrying you upstairs. You know that?”

He laughed. “It would have been a fight, then, for who carried whom.”

“Nah. I’d have let you win.”

But when she hooked her arm into his and walked him back into the kitchen, Owen realized what had just happened.

Abigail wanted to make love to him.

But not here, he thought. Not in the same house where she’d spent her short-lived honeymoon.

“Owen…”

“It was a very nice kiss, Abigail. We’re not just distractions for each other. We both know that much now, don’t we? But let’s leave it at that.”

He could see the relief wash over her.

After their lobster bisque, he walked back to his house and started a fire in the woodstove to take the chill out of the air, to hear the crackle of a fire and feel its warmth and coziness. DidAbigail worry about staying in her house alone tonight? He reasoned she was a police officer, and a widow, and she’d spent more nights alone than not.

Once he got the fire going, he walked outside, the stars and the moon guiding him out to the far end of the point, waves crashing on three sides of him.

He looked back toward the old foundation of his family’s original house and saw a solitary silhouette.

Abigail.

No way was she out there contemplating life. She was checking to make sure Mattie Young hadn’t returned to his party spot.

Owen gave a loud whistle and waved to her.

She waved back.

But he thought he heard her call him a jackass, presumably for startling her but who knew-who cared? It made him laugh, which, he decided, was a good way to end such a day.