The Widow

CHAPTER 24

Bob O’Reilly took one look at Abigail on her front doorstep and scowled. “Damn it, Browning.”

“What? Do I have dirt on my nose or something?”

But she knew what he meant. With the fog burning off, she’d put on shorts and a T-shirt, and he could see her scraped arm-she’d pulled off the gauze wrap-and the lower edge of her bandaged thigh.

“Looks like you need a refresher on how to fight off a man with a saw.”

“I did fight him off.”

It was eight o’clock in the morning, but she’d awakened early in Owen’s bed and beat a path back to her place for a hot shower, coffee and a get-a-grip session with herself. A good thing, because she wouldn’t have wanted O’Reilly showing up unannounced and not finding her there. Having him privy to her love life or lack thereof in Boston was bad enough-one of the unintended consequences of him living two floors above her.

Explaining Owen Garrison would have been impossible. Abigail wasn’t sure she understood what had happened last night herself. Whatever was going on between them wasn’t just a fling. She knew that much.

“What are you doing here?” she asked Bob. “Taking a break from city life? Is it too hot in Boston, or is there nothing for an experienced detective like yourself to do?”

“You know why I’m here.”

She did, indeed. She’d have headed north if he’d been the one attacked.

“Scoop would be here, but he’s working a case right now. He said I have his permission to smack you up the side of the head for him, too.”

“And you boys wonder why you have trouble with women.”

“I don’t have trouble with women. It’s relationships that kill me.”

“This is what I’m saying.”

He stood at the bottom of the steps. He wore jeans and a navy polo shirt, yet no one would mistake him for anything but a cop. “And you’re not a woman. You’re a detective.”

“Ha-ha.”

He walked up the steps, and she moved aside, letting him go in first. He made a face at the brightly-colored entry. “The blue’s a change.”

“Doesn’t it remind you of lupine?”

“Right. Yeah. First thing I thought of.”

She smiled. Bob was even worse with plants than she was. “Lupines aren’t native to Maine, actually. They’re a Japanese import. They’ve naturalized.”

“Been reading about lupines?”

“Ellis Cooper told me.”

“Ellis, the amateur landscape designer whose brother is about to sell his summer house out from under him.”

“He has a pink lupine in his garden that’s incredible.”

Bob moved into her front room; he’d obviously heard enough about lupines. “Your assailant was hiding in here?” He didn’t tone down his skepticism. “How the hell did you miss him?”

“Because he wasn’t in here.” She walked past him into the back room and pointed to the short hall that led past the cellar door and into the kitchen. “He must have heard me coming and ducked in there.”

“Why not just run through the kitchen and out the front door?”

“Because I’d have heard him and followed him.”

“And he knew that,” Bob said with just a hint of a challenge.

“It’s a logical conclusion-”

“For someone who knows you’re a police officer.” He nodded in agreement. “Otherwise, you’d just get out of here and try not to be seen.”

“Another indicator it was Mattie Young.”

“No word on his whereabouts?”

Abigail shook her head. “You heard he was holed up in Ellis’s garden shed?”

“Yeah. Lou Beeler gave me a call late last night.”

“Lou? Why?”

Bob’s expression told her that he wasn’t buying any pretense of confusion on her part. He said, “No one wants to see you get hurt or spin out of control.”

“Thank you for your concern, but-”

“But nothing.” He pulled open her porch door, the cool morning breeze gusting into the small room. “Turning out to be a nice day. I left Boston at two o’clock this morning.”

“If you want to take a nap, you’re welcome to crash upstairs.”

“I don’t want to take a nap, Abigail.”

At least he was using her first name again. “Coffee?”

“I drank a gallon on the way up here.” Standing in the doorway, he looked back, scanning her half-gutted room. “You do all this work yourself?”

She nodded. “Wielding a sledgehammer is a great tension reliever. Helps focus the mind.”

“I’d have helped. Scoop, too.”

“I know.”

“Leave the rest for us. We can all come up one weekend-”

“Bob, I’m not going back to Boston until I figure out what’s going on up here.”

“Yeah.” He gave her a grudging smile. “It was worth a try.”

“At least let me make you breakfast,” she said.

But he was staring out at the water, tufts of fog yet to burn off, lobster boats making their way to the buoys that marked their dozens of pots. “It’s gorgeous here. I remember when I first stood right in this spot. The scenery literally takes your breath away.” Without turning, he went on, “I couldn’t help thinking what a damn shame it was for this beauty to be marred by the memories you have.”

“I have good memories, too. They’re not all bad.” She sat on the edge of a chair. “You’re not here just because a Maine state detective called you.”

Bob kept his gaze on the water. “You’ve got a few spots of fog that haven’t burned off yet. Kind of neat looking.”

“Bob.”

“The FBI stopped by to talk to Scoop and me about you.”

Abigail didn’t react. “Because of Grace Cooper’s background check?”

He turned to her with a half grin. “We didn’t get that far.”

“Scoop was in a bad mood?”

“That and your father called right while these G-men were sitting in my living room.”

Abigail sprang up. “My father called you?”

“We knew each other in the old days.”

“So?”

“Better he should call me about his daughter than about five thousand other people he could have called, don’t you think?”

She was only slightly mollified. “What did he want?”

“For me to come up here.”

“And here you are. Great, Bob. Just great.”

“He talked to me as a father, not-”

“Not as the FBI director? And you didn’t think of his position for one second, did you?”

O’Reilly shrugged off her irritation. “He asked me to put eyes on you and reassure him you were all right. If he came up here himself, it’d be a show. You know that.”

And if he’d called-which he probably had tried to-she wouldn’t have been there to answer the phone, but that was a point Abigail preferred to keep to herself.

“Some asshole comes after my kid with a saw,” Bob said, “I’d want to know she was all right, too. It’s natural. It’s got nothing to do with what’s going on up here or what you’re doing or not doing.”

“It’s got everything to do with what’s going on up here. He wants to make sure it’s not about him-that someone’s not using Chris’s death to play games with my head and get at his somehow.”

“That’d be a stretch.”

She shrugged. “Anything’s possible. Isn’t that what my father told you?”

“You and your dad aren’t as different as you think.” Bob paused, nodding at her waterfront. “Isn’t that your neighbor? Batman Garrison. Guy can move on those rocks, can’t he? He’s like a billy goat.”

“Owen’s here?”

O’Reilly must have heard something in her voice, because he turned to her. “Browning, are you blushing?”

“I never blush.” She walked to the door, but he didn’t move aside. “I should go down there and meet him. Maybe he has news.”

Bob didn’t budge. “He patch up your injuries for you?”

“What difference does that make? He’s trained in first aid.”

“So he did patch you up. I’ll be damned. Should I report this to your father?”

“You should mind your own damn business.”

Her half-faked irritation only further confirmed whatever he was thinking-and she had a fair idea of what it was. His grin broadened. “So it’s not just the weird shit happening that’s keeping you up here.”

“If you don’t mind, I’d like to go out to see what he wants.”

“Am I in your way, Detective?”

“Bob.”

“Don’t you want me to meet your neighbor? I’ve seen him a couple times when I’ve been up here, but he’s usually off to a disaster. We’ve never officially met.”

“You don’t need to meet now.”

“Abigail? Hell-are you sleeping with this guy?”

“Bob.”

“You get involved with Batman, and everything changes. You know that, right?”

He wasn’t letting her go to Owen without him. “You’re a pain in the neck, Bob. You know that, right?”

He ignored her. “You get involved with a guy like Scoop, nothing changes. You’re both a couple of working stiffs, never mind who your father is. You rent out one of your apartments, put his TV set and stereo system in with your IKEA stuff, and that’s it. You’re done. With Owen Garrison-” Bob squinted out at the rocks. “Do you know who the Garrisons are? Who he is?”

“Yes, Bob, I know who the Garrisons are, and I know who Owen is. And why come up with Scoop for your hypothetical? Why not that cute guy in narcotics?”

“Abigail, the Garrisons used to own this island.”

“Not all of it.”

“The half the Rockefellers didn’t own.”

“His grandmother grew up dirt-poor in Texas. She kept chickens up here. She wanted to keep pigs, but her husband-”

“The guy throws himself into the mouth of danger every chance he gets.”

Maybe that described why he made love to her, she thought. He’d gotten turned on by the risk of having a relationship with her. The forbidden woman. But she found herself smiling at the thought.

As Owen crossed her narrow strip of yard, Bob elbowed her, still not letting her get past him in the doorway. “He’s even better-looking than that guy in narcotics.”

Owen trotted up the porch steps. Abigail could have smacked Bob for successfully stalling her long enough to make sure she didn’t get a word with Owen alone first.

Bob opened up the door as if he owned the place, and Abigail, with no other real option, stepped back out of the way and made polite introductions. She didn’t explain why Bob was there. She didn’t ask why Owen was there.

Owen, casually dressed, as good-looking as ever, handed her a small paper bag. “You left these at my house.”

She gave him a questioning look.

“Your socks.”

Avoiding Bob, Abigail snatched the paper bag and dumped it on a chair. “Thanks.”

“Doyle stopped by,” Owen said. “They found Mattie’s bike in the woods. It was hidden off a hiking trail behind Ellis’s place. No sign of him. Lou Beeler asked Doyle to let you know, and Doyle asked me-”

Bob snorted. “Sounds like no one wants to talk to you, Abigail.”

“Everyone’s busy.” She sighed, then addressed Owen. “Bob’s humor takes some getting used to. I should get rolling. I want to help search for Mattie.” She turned, motioning at her mostly gutted room. “Never mind that everyone would rather I stay here and work on my walls.” She frowned, but her mind had gone elsewhere. “What’s that?”

Before either man could respond, Abigail was across the room, kneeling on the floor, picking up a tiny white ball. She held it up in the light. “It’s a pearl.”

Bob was there instantly, and she placed the pearl into his big hands.

“How did the crime scene guys miss this yesterday?” Bob asked.

“We all missed it. We weren’t looking for pearls.”

“The wall,” Owen said.

He didn’t need to explain further. They all recognized it as the same wall that she and Chris had worked on the morning before she was attacked and robbed.

Abigail, still on her knees, leaned into the gutted portion and reached down inside the wall, lowering her arm as far as she could, wiggling her fingers for any more pearls. “That pearl didn’t jump out onto the floor by itself,” she said, touching something soft and dry with her fingers. “Gross. I think I hit mouse pooh.”

Neither man smiled at her attempt at humor. She dug through a ball of fuzzy gunk of some kind, scraping her already bloodied arm on a two-by-six.

“Let me do that,” Bob said.

“Your arm’s too big. Owen’s, too.”

She scooped up a brown-and-gray heap and dumped it onto the floor.

Another pearl, covered in dust, rolled out.

And, in the middle of the fuzz, Abigail saw her grandmother’s cameo pendant.

She dropped back onto her heels, her arm stinging, her cut leg aching. “My necklace was in the wall all this time. And Mattie-” She took in a breath, calming herself. “That bastard knew.”

Owen lowered a hand to her and helped her to her feet. “That’s what he was after yesterday.”

“He must have used the drywall saw to dig into the wall and hook the necklace.” She pushed a hand through her hair. “Damn him.”

Bob frowned at the heap of dust, mouse droppings, mouse fur, pearl and cameo. “Why go after it now? Why not seven years ago?”

“Because I was gutting walls. He knew I’d find it. I’ll call Doyle and Lou.” She caught her breath and faked a smile. “Heck. Now maybe they’ll want to talk to me.”

If Lou Beeler wanted to smack his detectives or himself for having missed the pearl, he never let on. But he obviously wasn’t happy about it. He looked as if he could kick out the rest of the half-gutted wall, a feeling Abigail well understood. She leaned against the doorway to the front room, her house filling up with local and state cops. Doyle Alden was still en route-she had no desire to see him. Mattie Young was a lifelong friend, and discovery of the necklace would just be another implication for Mattie, another blow for Doyle to absorb.

And somehow Abigail felt responsible. If she hadn’t come along, would Chris still be alive? Would Mattie have straightened out and become the kind of photographer everyone believed he was meant to be?

She hadn’t sat down since Lou had arrived, tight and preoccupied but also, she thought, energized. Discovery of the pearls and the cameo pendant were breaks. Although she hadn’t been a detective for as long as he had and didn’t have a seven-year cold case, Abigail thought she understood how he felt.

If anyone could identify with Detective Lieutenant Beeler, it was Bob O’Reilly, but he was staying out of the way-if not, Abigail noticed, out of earshot.

Owen had excused himself as soon as Lou had told him he could go or stay. She’d known he would leave. He would consider his presence an unnecessary distraction.

Lou shoved his hands into his pants pockets. “It never occurred to me the thief dropped your necklace into the wall,” he said. “Doyle Alden was the responding officer when it was stolen, but I did a walk-through here after your husband was killed. And I did the final walk-through yesterday.”

Abigail pictured the back room and the descriptions she’d written so many times in her journals of how she’d heard the clatter of tools, felt the breeze, smelled the salt and roses in the air. Every detail of what had happened.

“I’ve looked at that wall for seven years,” she said. “Some of the best detectives in Boston have looked at that wall for seven years. It never occurred to us, either.”

That didn’t mollify Lou. “Why toss the damn thing into the wall?”

“I don’t know. It doesn’t make sense.”

“I figure the thief-”

“Mattie,” she said.

Lou wasn’t going that far. “It looks that way, I know, but it’s possible the real thief confessed to Mattie, or he saw what happened and just has never said.”

“I suppose.”

He pulled his hands out of his pockets and eyed her, not without sympathy. “Must be tough for you right now.”

“I’m just trying to wrap my head around what happened.” She had no intention of getting into her emotions right now. “I interrupted you. You figure the thief what?”

Lou sighed, then went on. “I figure he didn’t expect you. He already had the necklace when you woke up from your nap, and once he hit you, he knew he didn’t want to get caught with it. He panicked and did the first thing that came to his mind.”

“Dropped it in the wall and ran.”

“It’s logical, not that I think he was using logic.”

“There’s a perfectly good ocean right out my door. If he wanted to get rid of it, why not toss it in the ocean? Much less likely to be found there.”

“You could have come to and seen him. If he’d tried to run with it, he could have been caught. Ellis Cooper’s guests were down this way during the party to check out the cliffs. A wonder he wasn’t spotted as it was.”

But Lou and his detectives had questioned every one of Ellis’s guests that day, and no one had seen anyone.

Then again, would anyone have noticed Mattie Young?

“We’ll go through every piece of dust in that wall, Abigail,” Lou said, moving past her into the front room. “And we’ll keep an open mind.”

She gave him a grudging smile. “If you’re reminding me of the dangers of jumping to conclusions, your point is well taken. I shouldn’t have dug into the wall. I should have waited for the crime scene guys.” She glanced back at her fellow BPD detective in the entry. “O’Reilly, why didn’t you stop me?”

He shrugged. “Didn’t seem like a good idea at the time.”

“I just…”

She couldn’t go on. She saw herself on her wedding day, putting on the pearl-and-cameo necklace with her grandmother and mother watching her, happy for her, none of them ever imagining the horror and tragedy that would come their way in a matter of days.

And not because of the necklace.

The thief-the person who’d attacked her seven years ago-had never been after the necklace.

It was nothing she needed to tell either detective with her.

“Lou, what else do you know?” She spoke quietly, saw him stiffen as he stopped, his back to her. She went on. “What haven’t you told me all these years?”

He turned back to her. “Lab guys will be here any sec-”

She swallowed. “I should talk to my father, shouldn’t I?”

“You should always talk to your father.” He cleared his throat and nodded to Bob. “Good to meet you, finally.”

“You, too, Lieutenant,” Bob said, stepping aside for Lou to pass him.

After Lou headed outside to meet more arriving officers, Abigail frowned at O’Reilly. “‘Finally?’ What does that mean? Have you two talked behind my back more than I think you have?”

“Probably.”

“I don’t like being thought of as a complication.”

“Well, you are. Tough. You’re also a damn good detective. If not for you, Boston would have a few more cretins on the street.”

She hadn’t expected any kind of compliment, not today. “Thanks for that, Bob.”

“I’m just stating the facts. I’m not trying to be nice.” His big frame took up most of the doorway. “Abigail. Detective Browning. You get burned up here-you cross the line-I can’t help you.”

“Understood.”

“Having a father who’s the director of the FBI isn’t a point in your favor. It’s not why you’re a detective today. Neither is having the unsolved murder of a loved one in your background. These are liabilities.”

“I like to think I’m a detective today because of my own hard work.”

“You are. You didn’t let your liabilities sink you.” He made a face, as if he’d been planning what to say to her but, now that he was saying it, didn’t like it. “I’m being blunt here, but I have to be. Your liabilities set you apart. They make people look at you and wonder, and that’s not good. I’ve stood up for you because you should have a chance to prove yourself on your own merits. And you have.”

“Your faith in me means a lot.”

“Yeah. That’s great. I’ll tell Scoop that we need to keep that in mind when reporters are camped out on our front stoop.” But O’Reilly wasn’t finished. “Tell me, kid. What are you going to do if you come face-to-face with Chris’s killer? Have you thought about that?”

“Every day for the past seven years.”

He wasn’t satisfied. “Do you see yourself calling 911?”

“Bob, I know what you’re getting at.”

“Or do you see yourself taking out your Glock and pulling the trigger and blowing this guy’s head off?”

“I see Chris.” Abigail crossed her arms on her chest and refused to look at her friend and mentor, a man with almost thirty years of law enforcement experience. “I see him nodding and saying, ‘That’s the one, babe. That’s the one who killed me.’”

Bob had no response. He walked into the front room and stood next to her. Lou had posted troopers at the porch and hall doors. No one was touching his seven-year-old crime scene wall.

“Beautiful spot,” O’Reilly said, looking out at the ocean. “I’m starving, though. Anyone up here serve lobster this early?”