The Widow

CHAPTER 32

Bloodied and beaten, Ellis still had gone after one of Doyle Alden’s officers with a rock, snatching his gun, and Lou Beeler had shot him.

It was a clean shot. Ellis had died instantly.

“Suicide by cop,” Lou said.

Abigail, wrapped in a fleece blanket in front of Owen’s woodstove, shook her head. “He still thought he could make it work. He didn’t give up.”

She edged closer to the fire. Thunderstorms were raging outside, and everyone else was in shorts and looked hot, but she thought she’d never get warm again. Mattie was in the hospital but would recover. He’d talked some to police before the paramedics took him away. Linc was fine, back with his family.

They’d survived.

“Ellis’s gun. It fell in the water when I tackled him.”

“We’ve got it.”

“It’ll be the weapon he used to kill Chris,” Abigail said. “That’s how his mind worked. He’d like the poetic justice of it. And he’d be too arrogant to get rid of it.” She tightened the blanket around her. “It’s like keeping Doe’s swing in the backyard for everyone to see.”

“I never had a clue,” Lou said.

“Me, neither. Thank God he didn’t kill anyone else.”

“He was all about hate, not love. You know that, don’t you?” Lou’s look took in Owen, too. “Both of you?”

Owen nodded. “I had that clear in my head the second I kicked in the door to Doe’s old room.”

“He resented Jason for his money and power over him,” Abigail said. “He felt like a second-class Cooper. His secret obsession with Doe allowed him to feel more power, more control.”

Owen stared at the fire. “Doe never said a word. She kept what he did to her to herself.”

“I know it doesn’t make it any easier, but that’s not uncommon,” Lou said.

Abigail agreed. “Chris figured out Ellis was obsessed with Dorothy Garrison. That’s why Ellis killed him. They both knew Linc was burglarizing homes, that Mattie was angry with Chris for dumping him as an informant. Ellis used and manipulated them-and Grace. Only his obsession mattered.”

“Mattie never expected you to be at your house that afternoon,” Owen said.

Lou nodded. “He’s told us that already. Ellis said you weren’t home. When you surprised Mattie, he panicked. He hit you and grabbed the necklace, knowing the burglar would be blamed. He didn’t want to get caught with the necklace and dropped it in the wall.”

“And Ellis seized the moment.” Abigail felt a surge of respect for the man she’d married. “Chris did what he could to keep anyone else from getting hurt. Ellis knew he would-he counted on it.”

“Your husband was a good man,” Lou said. “I wish I’d had a chance to know him.”

Abigail bit back tears. “What about Grace? Have you talked to her?”

“She lied to us after the fact. She didn’t knowingly help her uncle kill your husband. She wouldn’t have-” Lou stopped himself, getting to his feet. “The Coopers have a lot to sort out. I don’t envy them.”

If the Maine detective felt any lingering effects from having killed Ellis Cooper, he didn’t show it in his stride as he headed out.

He stopped at the door. “By the way, about hypothermia-you know one of the best ways to get warm?” He grinned. “Shared body heat.”

Abigail groaned. “Good night, Lou.”

After her fellow detective left, Owen sat next to her by the fire. “He’s right, you know.”

“Tonight’s a good night to be close to you.”

He gathered up more blankets and pillows, laying them on the floor in front of the woodstove. He stretched out next to her. “We’ll stay right here by the fire.”

Linc drifted off on the couch in the library and awoke with a start, overwhelmed by a feeling of sheer terror. His heart beat wildly.

“It’s okay, son,” his father said, taking his hand in the near-darkness. “I’m here.”

“Dad?”

“I’m not going anywhere. Don’t worry.”

Grace came into the room. “I thought you two were asleep. I’ve got chamomile tea made if either of you wants it.” Her voice sounded curiously calm-shock, maybe, Linc thought. “Just let me know.”

Their father sat on the floor next to Linc. “Ellis was a malevolent force in all our lives. He had secrets none of us could ever have hoped to penetrate. He was lost in them. He couldn’t see his way out.” Jason’s voice faltered. “I didn’t know how far he’d gone.”

“Oh, Dad. I’m so sorry.” Linc was too exhausted to cry. “He was your brother.”

“He hated us.”

“None of us knew,” Grace said quietly. “We all loved him.”

“We loved the man he wanted us to believe he was.”

Grace said quietly, “Chris was the happiest man I’ve ever seen in those last days with Abigail. If I could ever dare to be so happy…”

“Dare it, Grace. Dare everything to be that happy.”

Linc could see the shock on his sister’s face at their father’s words.

When Linc drifted off again, he was aware of his father stretched out on the floor next to him, and his sister sitting across the room with her little pot of chamomile tea.

Mattie didn’t expect to see Doyle standing over his hospital bed when he woke up in a haze of painkillers and God knew what else the doctors had pumped into him. He was still on an IV. He tried to sit up. “Abigail? Linc? Are they all right?”

“They’re okay,” Doyle said, gruff as ever. “You got banged up the most. A couple broken ribs. About eight million bruises. You didn’t puncture a lung, though. No internal injuries.”

“I deserved to die.”

“Well, you didn’t. Now you have to figure out what comes next.”

“I can’t drink.”

Doyle nodded. “But you know it’s really about not drinking.” He seemed awkward. “I talked to Katie this morning. We’ll have to see what the prosecutors decide to do with you, but if you’re not in jail, you can have the spare bedroom until you’re back on your feet. One drop of alcohol, and you’re out. And you’re never to be there alone with the boys.”

“Doyle, I don’t deserve-”

“It’s not about what you deserve, Mattie. Katie and I can and want to do this for you. We’re not trying to save you. We know we can’t. Only you can save yourself.”

“When I was in the water,” he whispered. “BeforeAbigail. Chris was there. He kept me going. I had to stay alive to tell people about Ellis. I could hear his voice. I swear, Doyle. He was there, telling me…I had this one last chance…”

If Doyle believed him, he’d never say. “You’ve got a long road ahead of you, Mattie Young. Katie and I can walk some of it with you, but if you stumble-if you screw up-you’re on your own.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Just say thank you.”

“Thank you.”

Sean and Ian Alden squatted in front of a tide pool down on the rocks by Owen’s house. He sat on the deck with Doyle, watching the boys hold periwinkles up to their ears.

“You ever hear a periwinkle sing?” Doyle asked. “Because I never have. Katie says she hears them all the time.”

Owen lifted his feet onto the deck rail. “I can’t say I’ve spent a lot of time listening to periwinkles.”

“You would if you lived out here on this rock year-round.” Doyle grinned, and it was good to see. Forty-eight hours after Ellis Cooper’s death, nothing was back to normal. “Something to be said for it, don’t you think?” His grin broadened. “You’d go out of your damn mind.”

“I’ll be up here regularly once the field academy starts.”

“Rappelling off cliffs. Hauling trainees up and down mountains. Diving off boats. You won’t be listening to periwinkles sing.”

“Sometimes, maybe.”

“Katie’s excited about being director. You should hear her.” Doyle leaned back in his deck chair. “It’s good. I’m happy for her. For us.”

Owen shifted his gaze from the boys up the headland toward Abigail’s house on the rocks. The media had descended in a whir, keeping Doyle’s officers busy. Special Agents Capozza and Steele had kept vigil on Abigail’s house during the worst of it. John March called his daughter from Washington. He’d wait and see her when the frenzy had died down. By last night, most of the media had departed.

Doyle nodded in the direction of her house. “Her cop buddies from Boston are there. Bob O’Reilly and that other one-Scoop Wisdom. Have you seen him? Hell. He looks like he could dig Ellis up and shoot him again just to be sure he’s dead. Abigail says he’s got cats, though.”

“Cats?”

“She thinks anyone who has a cat can’t be all that mean. I told her she should look up all the murder cases involving weird cat people. Of course, she knows there are exceptions-she’s just saying this guy Scoop’s not as big a bad-ass as he looks. I guess not, because he’s helping her and O’Reilly nail up wallboard and paint the place.”

“Doyle,” Owen said. “Are you okay?”

His eyes filled with tears, but his gaze never left his sons. “I keep going back over what I could have done. I was the responding officer after the break-in seven years ago. If I’d realized it was Mattie-if I’d known Chris was on to Ellis…”

“Ellis manipulated Mattie. Seven years ago, and this past week.”

“Mattie’s responsible for his own decisions.”

“But Ellis played on his weaknesses. Chris knew. He didn’t realize Ellis was a marksman. The police had found where Ellis practiced in the woods behind his house here, and at a private shooting range near his home in Washington. He’d kept his skill to himself. Chris guessed that Ellis stood by and watched my sister die, but that’s different from ambushing someone.”

“If he’d asked me to come down here with him-”

“Then you’d both be dead.”

Doyle was silent a moment. “Maybe so.” He pointed at the cloudless sky. “Hey, a heron.”

Owen saw it, a giant blue heron, ungainly looking and yet so graceful as it flew up the rockbound coast toward the cliffs.

“Herons were always one of Chris’s favorites,” Doyle said.

“One of Doe’s, too.” When the bird disappeared, Owen got to his feet. “I have to go. You and the boys are welcome to stay here as long as you like.”

“Where are you off to?”

“Guatemala,” he said. “There’s been a massive mudslide.”

“I thought you were supposed to be resting.”

Owen shrugged. “I’ll rest another time.”

“How’re you getting to Guatemala?”

“I’m flying to Austin and meeting my team there. We’ll head out together.”

Doyle squinted up at him. “Abigail know you fly your own plane?”

“Abigail has thick files on all of us, Doyle.” Owen grinned, clapping a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “She knows more about us than we know about ourselves.”

Bob and Scoop were in her kitchen making dinner-boiling lobsters, which she hated to do-whenAbigail saw Mattie limp up from the spruce trees down by the back porch. He looked thin and colorless, but his hair was clean, pulled back in a neat ponytail, and his bruises, the blossoms of purples and yellows on his arms, were beginning to heal.

“Don’t get up,” he said. “I’m not staying. I just want to leave you this.” He placed a small silver gift bag on her bottom porch step. “I know I can’t make up for what I’ve done to you.”

“I haven’t asked you to.”

“Yeah. Anyway, I’m sorry.”

He started to walk away. Abigail climbed down the steps. “Wait-stay.”

Nervous, eager, he watched her open the bag and take out a white rectangular box. She lifted the lid, and inside, nestled on soft cotton, was her necklace, the chain repaired, the pearls restrung.

“I told the jeweler there was a cameo pendant,” Mattie said.

“I have it.”

“When I grabbed the necklace with the saw, I broke the chain,” Mattie explained. “I got a plastic bag in Doyle’s garage and put all the pearls and the pieces of chain in there. It’s the one okay thing I did, because if they’d been loose in my pocket when Ellis knocked me in the water…” He didn’t finish the thought. “Well, I just wanted to get your necklace back to you.”

“You took a huge risk, coming here to steal it. Were you afraid I’d find it when I started knocking out walls?”

“Not just that. I used it to put more pressure on Linc. I wanted more money. I wanted to believe he was responsible for what happened to Chris. Because I wouldn’t have broken in if he hadn’t been burglarizing. I’ve been mixed-up for a long time.”

“What about the money Linc paid you?”

“I returned it. He says-” Mattie seemed embarrassed. “He says he’ll insist it was a loan, but I was too drunk and stupid not to realize it.”

Abigail stood up. “Mattie-the pictures-”

“I took the ones at Ellis’s. I didn’t know he had them. I snapped them with a disposable camera after I broke in here.” He flushed. “I was trying to give myself an alibi.”

“The police found the pictures on Ellis’s computer. But the one the morning Owen found Chris’s body-”

“That was Ellis,” Mattie said.

“Then he was there. Watching us.” She’d need time to get used to that one. “Thank you for returning the necklace.”

He nodded to the bag. “There’s something else in there.”

She helped open the bag and lifted out a photograph in a simple black frame.

It was of Chris as a boy out with his grandfather on their lobster boat, laughing, loving life. Mattie must have been on shore, just a boy himself.

“Thank you.”

But she realized he was gone.

Scoop and Bob came out onto the porch with a platter of lobsters. Bob sighed at her. “You’re trying to keep the State of Maine from prosecuting him, aren’t you?”

She knew he meant Mattie, and nodded.

Scoop scowled. “Someone comes after me with a drywall saw, I’d want his butt in the slammer.”

“Look at it this way, Scoop,” Bob said, grinning, “if not for the cut on that leg, who knows if Abigail and Batman ever would have gotten together?”

“Yeah.” Scoop winked at her. “There’s that.”

“Forget it, guys. Owen’s off to Guatemala.”

Bob slung an arm around her. “Not forever.”