The Widow

CHAPTER 7

Grace Cooper stepped carefully in the lush grass of her uncle’s backyard, as if she didn’t want to leave footprints. “Ellis has worked very hard to make these gardens look natural. It seems contradictory, doesn’t it?”

Abigail smiled, enjoying her tour of the award-winning gardens. “Everything’s so beautiful. I’m lucky if I can keep a pot of geraniums alive.”

“I know how you feel,” Grace said with a laugh.

Ellis was transplanting a bush with Mattie Young and had left his niece to deal with his unexpected guest, suggesting a quick garden tour. At thirty-eight, Grace was striking with her fine blond hair and strong features. Her eyes, a clear, pale blue, were her best feature. She was gracious and politely reserved.

The mix of perennials and annuals, their colors and textures contrasting here, complementing there, sparkled and glistened in the clear and crisp morning air. Abigail had walked up from her house, yesterday afternoon’s escapade on the rocks with her journal ashes and Owen Garrison behind her.

Grace leaned over and brushed her fingertips over a perfect dark pink foxglove. “These gardens are Ellis’s pride and joy. It won’t be easy for him to give them up.”

“Give them up?”

“Oh. I assumed you’d heard. We’re selling the property.”

“This place?” Abigail didn’t hide her surprise. “No, I hadn’t heard.”

And Grace would know she hadn’t heard. It was just her way of reminding Abigail that she didn’t know everything about the Coopers. Abigail had no illusions about her relationship with them. It wasn’t unfriendly, but they were aware she kept track of them-and that she did so because of their connections to Chris. They’d known him all his life. Ellis had held a garden party here the day she was attacked and robbed and Chris was killed. Someone had burglarized them and a handful of their friends that summer, although whether it was the same person who attacked her and stole her necklace remained an open question.

“The timing’s right,” Grace continued. “Linc and I aren’t children anymore. My father can only get away for a few weeks in the summer. Keeping two houses here just doesn’t make as much sense these days.”

“Why not sell your place on Somes Sound?”

She shrugged, moving past sprays of coral bells and painted daisies. “It’s right on the water, and it’s really the family place more than this is. Ellis agrees. I think he wants to buy his own place. He’s so much younger than my father-he didn’t have the money when my father bought this property from the Garrisons.”

“Won’t Ellis miss his gardens, especially?”

“I imagine so, but he’s become quite the amateur landscape designer-I’m sure he’d love to get his fingers into something new. And there’s not much more he can do here.”

“But it wasn’t his idea to put the home on the market?”

“He trusts my father on these matters.” Grace paused, then smiled as she moved on to a sun-filled garden “room” of peonies. “We all trust my father.”

“He’s a smart man,” Abigail said.

“That he is. And you-why are you here?”

“In Maine? I’m painting.” She and Lou Beeler had agreed to limit the number of people they told about the anonymous call. “I’ve already been to the hardware store this morning.”

“Good for you. I hope you’ll join us for lunch one day while you’re here. I’m sure my father would love to see you. And Linc’s here-”

“I saw him on the steps while Mattie had a cigarette.”

Grace rolled her eyes. “Mattie knows Ellis doesn’t allow smoking on the grounds. Well, Linc won’t tell.”

“Neither will I. I’m not here to stir up trouble.”

“Aren’t you?” But she added quickly, “I have to go. I have calls to make. Take all the time you want looking at the gardens. Ellis will be flattered.”

“Congratulations on your appointment.”

She brightened. “Thank you. I’m thrilled. It’s a tremendous honor, and I look forward to the work.” She started back to her uncle’s house, then stopped and glanced back. “It’s good to see you, Abigail. I mean that.”

With Grace’s departure, Abigail walked over to a small garden shed at the far end of the yard. Mature herbs and tall wildflowers grew to its small, four-paned windows. As a young bride, new to Maine, new to Garrison wealth, Polly Garrison supposedly had insisted on keeping chickens.

Abigail peeked behind the shed-sure enough, there was a boarded-up, chicken-sized door.

Mattie Young dragged a hose toward the shed. “Hey, Abigail, how’s it going?”

“Great. Beautiful day. You?”

“Paying the bills.”

“I was just talking to Grace. I hadn’t realized the Coopers were putting this place on the market.”

“Not the Coopers. Daddy Jason.”

“But Ellis-”

“He goes along. Can’t afford to piss off big brother, you know?” Mattie coiled the hose into a heap under a water line at a corner of the shed. “Makes no difference to me. New owners will need a yardman.”

Abigail didn’t respond. She’d lost patience with Mattie’s chronic bitterness and cynicism a long time ago. Even Chris, who’d stood by his childhood friend through one self-indulgent, self-destructive screwup after another, had finally written Mattie off after he didn’t show up for their wedding.

“I hadn’t realized Linc was up here,” she said. “I saw you two talking-”

“We’re allowed to talk.” He caught himself, stepping back from the house. “Sorry. It’s just-you’re a cop. Every time you ask a question, I think I’m being interrogated.”

“That’s understandable,” she said, neutral.

He picked at a mosquito bite on his wrist. “Linc’s at a loose end this summer. I think he’s bummed about his dad selling this place. He’s never known a time when it wasn’t in his family. He doesn’t remember when the Garrisons owned it.”

“I hadn’t thought of it that way. But the Coopers’ house on Somes Sound is even bigger and fancier-”

“Don’t I know it?” Mattie grinned, but he didn’t manage to take any of the edge off his put-upon attitude. “I mow their yard every week.”

Portly Ellis Cooper joined them. He was neatly dressed in khakis and a bright blue golf shirt, a retractable walking stick tucked under one arm. His favorite pastime was to wander in his five acres of gardens. His property also backed up onto woodland trails that led into Acadia and down the steps and across the private drive, included the cliffs where Doe Garrison had drowned. Ellis could roam to his heart’s content.

“Abigail-my apologies for not greeting you sooner. I wanted to finish in the garden and wash up before saying hello.” He put out a hand and shook hers warmly. “Wonderful to see you.”

“You, too, Ellis. I don’t think I’ve ever seen your gardens this gorgeous.”

“We had a cool spring. Everything seems to have blossomed at once. Did Grace give you the grand tour?”

“She did. I should let you all get back to your day. Is Linc still here? I haven’t had a chance to say hello-”

“He took off a few minutes ago,” Mattie said.

Ellis seemed faintly irritated at his yardman’s interruption, but he hooked his arm into Abigail’s, smiling at her. “I’ll walk with you. You came up the steps, didn’t you? I was worried the fog would settle in for a few days, but it blew out almost as fast as it blew in.”

When they reached the front of the house, he unhooked his arm from Abigail’s, and she grinned at him. “You’d have made a good bouncer in another life.”

He laughed. “I’m just a political consultant and gardener.”

“I don’t know how good a consultant you are, but you’re obviously quite the gardener.”

“Grace told you we’re selling the place? I could continue here forever, but I have to admit I’m excited about the prospect of a fresh start somewhere. Keeping up five acres of gardens is a huge responsibility. I’ve naturalized more and more in recent years, but it’s still a lot of work.”

“You and Mattie manage everything yourselves?”

“I bring in specialists from time to time. Mattie-well, you know what he’s like. He’s just reliable enough and just hardworking enough that I can’t fire him. I don’t think he’s drinking, not right now. The truth is, I feel sorry for him.” Ellis’s expression softened. “Chris’s death shattered him. He’s never been the same.”

“He’d started drinking again before Chris was killed.”

“True, but he was starting to turn himself around that summer-or so most of us thought. Hard to believe it’s been seven years. Jason thinks it’s been long enough not to affect prospective buyers. Even if Chris wasn’t killed on the property, it was close-” He stopped himself, looked stricken. “Oh, Abigail. I’m so sorry. I know it must seem like yesterday to you. I didn’t mean-”

“It’s okay, Ellis. Forget it.”

Abigail was accustomed to people getting tongue-tied around her. She wondered if it’d be different if she’d remarried, if she’d been older when she was widowed.

She said goodbye to Ellis and followed a shaded stone path surrounded by thyme to the steps. Abigail imagined Owen’s eccentric great-grandfather taking the time, the money and the energy to have the steps carved into the granite hillside-all to get to a teahouse. He wasn’t in the same league as his superrich Maine neighbors like the Rockefellers, but he’d had vision and optimism, a trait most people said his great-grandson shared, although Abigail doubted Edgar Garrison’d had a two-inch scar under his eye from a bar fight.

As she descended the zigzag of steps, a slight breeze stirring, Abigail wondered if she should give serious thought to selling her own Mt. Desert Island house. With Lou Beeler’s retirement in the fall, would the dozens of state and local detectives who’d worked on her husband’s seven-year-old murder continue? Who would have his dedication, his interest?

Was it time to give up Maine?

She pushed back the thought, jumping down the last stone step to the narrow, well-kept private road. Owen and the Coopers paid for upkeep. They’d never sent her a bill for so much as a dime. They could afford not to rent out their houses. Abigail couldn’t. Without the money from renting to cop friends, she wouldn’t have been able to afford the taxes, utilities, the occasional repair job.

Chris had never cared about money or social status. Before his death, everyone knew her father was slated to become the next director of the FBI. It hadn’t fazed Chris-he just didn’t think that way.

But other people did, and she’d often wondered if his part-time neighbors on Mt. Desert Island had accepted him in the same way he did them.

“You’re the only person the killer fears.”

Had the killer feared Chris?

Abigail crossed the quiet, isolated road to the driveway entrance she shared with Owen, then turned onto her own driveway, feeling the wind pick up as she got closer to the water.

She’d come up here with questions and something of a mission, but no plan.

What she needed was a plan.

She’d paint, and she’d come up with one.

Linc Cooper pounded onto Owen’s deck in a state, pacing, starting to speak then stopping again. Owen tried to remember when he’d last seen him. Two years, at least. At the time, Linc had just dropped out-or, more plausibly, had just been kicked out-of Brown. He was smart, and most people expected him to get himself together one of these days.

Lincoln James Cooper had everything-except, Owen thought, what any kid needed most, which was a family who believed in him and considered him more than an afterthought. Linc was supposed to reflect his father’s and his sister’s successes and dreams. Whether he had any of his own didn’t seem to matter. It wasn’t necessarily what anyone intended or wanted. It was just the way the Cooper family worked.

Owen’s own family was more straightforward. “Just don’t get killed,” they’d tell him.

Finally, Linc plopped down on a wooden chair and looked up at Owen without meeting his eye. “I want you to teach me what you know. Show me how to do search-and-rescue. Take me on. You’re not doing anything this summer-that’s what I hear, anyway.”

“Linc-”

“I’d pay you. You’re the best, Owen. I want to learn from you.”

“It’s not about the money. Why don’t you apply for a spot in the field academy? We’ll be doing a full range of training.”

The kid shook his head, not even considering the idea. “That’d never work. My family would never let me take time off from school to do SAR training.”

“Don’t put words in their mouths. Besides, you’re over eighteen-”

“You think that matters?” Linc slumped in his chair and kicked out his legs, looking defeated. “My family’s not like yours. I can’t just go my own way.”

“You are going your own way. You’re choosing your own course now.”

He snorted. “Whatever.”

Owen smiled at the twenty-year-old. “Don’t give up so easily. If you disagree with me, fight for your position-”

“I don’t want to fight for anything.” His eyes teared up unexpectedly, and he shot to his feet, turning his back to Owen and looking out at the water. “I’m just tired of being a weak-kneed loser.”

“Get your stuff together.” Owen glanced at his watch. “Meet me here at one o’clock. We’ll go on a hike. Take things from there.”

“You don’t have to-”

“If you’re not here at one, I leave without you.”

Linc shifted back to him and nodded. “I’ll be here.”

He jumped down from the deck and ran back to his rattletrap of a car with more energy, his foul mood and unfocused irritability and defeatism at bay. Owen remembered being twenty. He’d gone against his family’s expectations, but they’d supported his need to figure out his own life.

He watched a cormorant dive into the water just off his rocky point. He had no idea where he’d take Linc, but he liked the idea of getting out on the island. Seeing Abigail yesterday-knowing she was barely a quarter mile up the rocks from him-had thrown him off.

Nothing about her was uncomplicated.

Except, he thought, her determination to find her husband’s killer. That was straightforward, clear and unchanging.

And it was why she was on Mt. Desert.

It was always why she was there.