The Widow (9 page)

“Until I know who killed Chris, the past is always stirred up for me.”

“Even after seven years? Abigail.” He seemed genuinely distressed. “You have to live your life.”

“I am living my life.”

“Maybe that’s what you believe, but if you were, you’d have sold your house a long time ago. You don’t belong here.” His tone wasn’t unkind. “You only keep that house because of Chris. Because of the past.”

She wasn’t digging into her soul with Jason Cooper. She regretted having gone as far as she had with him. “You could be right, but painting’s got to be a good sign, don’t you think?” She didn’t give him a chance to answer. “Is Mattie Young here by any chance?”

“He’s working up at Ellis’s all day. He’ll be here tomorrow.”

“What’s he driving these days?” she asked, thinking of his party out in the old foundation. What had he done with his car? Had anyone seen it? Had he driven home under the influence?

“A bicycle,” Jason said. “Mattie lost his license over the winter.”

“DUI?”

He nodded. “Unfortunately. The dark winters and isolation got to him. He goes to meetings. He’s making an effort.”

Not a consistent one, Abigail thought, picturing the beer cans. Unless they weren’t Mattie’s. She had no real evidence they were. “He’s still living in the same place?”

“He rents a house around the corner from Doyle Alden. That’s how he got caught drinking and driving—Doyle saw him scream past his house. Why?”

“Just curious.”

Jason smiled, but his eyes remained cool. “Always curious, aren’t you, Abigail?”

“It’s a March family trait.”

The reminder of her father obviously didn’t sit well with Jason Cooper. “I suppose it is. If you won’t come in—”

“No, thanks. I should get back. Nice to see you.”

“Likewise.”

Before she could get out another word, he was walking onto the porch, snapping his fingers at his little dog.

When she arrived at her house, Abigail pulled on shorts, a T-shirt and her good running shoes and jogged up the private drive and out onto the main road, finding her pace, telling herself she needed stay in shape. But she could feel her restlessness building into frustration, questions and threads of conversations, new possibilities, coming at her all at once.

And memories. They jumped at her with every stride—and not just her own memories, of her short-lived marriage, of her widowhood, filled with seven years of prodding and pushing for answers to her husband’s unsolved murder. Chris’s memories came at her, too. The stories he’d told of his childhood on the island that had taken shape in her mind over the years, until they were as real to her as the images of her own past.

Chris and Doyle Alden…Mattie Young…the three of them going off on a lobster boat with Chris’s grandfather, the old man teaching them what he knew about tides, currents, hidden dangers, good stewardship of the land and sea that had sustained their families for generations.

Abigail could picture them on Will Browning’s lobster boat when they’d realized a girl was in the water. Doe Garrison, a wealthy summer resident. A pretty girl, by all accounts. Happy. A nature lover like her great-grandfather.

The local boys were just teenagers themselves. At seventeen, Mattie was the oldest. Doyle, fifteen. Chris was fourteen, like Doe.

They’d pulled her out of the water, but it was too late.

“I could see her brother up on the cliffs watching us try to save her. I’ll never forget his face, Abigail. Never.”

Will Browning raced to the harbor, an ambulance waiting.

“The Garrisons and the Coopers were on the dock. Polly Garrison, Doe’s parents, Owen. They were in shock. They knew that she was gone. Jason Cooper, Ellis. They tried to stay out of the way. But Grace—she was thirteen years old, and her best friend had just drowned.”

As she maintained her steady pace, Abigail pictured the horror of that beautiful summer afternoon and wondered how much of it Owen remembered.

Every second, probably.

She could understand how he could keep coming to Maine, build a house a few hundred yards from where his sister had drowned. It wasn’t just out of a stubborn need to appreciate what Doe had loved but out of a knowledge that, in order to be whole, he had to embrace that loss and make it a part of him, not run from it, cut it out of him or drag it behind him.

But was she really thinking about Owen’s behavior…or her own? What, really, did she understand about Owen Garrison?

When she trotted back up her driveway, Abigail was almost relieved to find a black government car and a well-dressed, straight-backed man and woman knocking on her front door.

FBI agents.

They introduced themselves as Special Agent Ray Capozza and Special Agent Mary Steele and declined Abigail’s invitation to go inside, instead joining her on the driveway. Capozza, a compact, no-nonsense man, insisted on showing her his credentials. “We’re here on routine business, Mrs. Browning.”

“You’re running a background check on Grace Cooper, yes, I know. And, please, call me Abigail. Did my father tell you I was here?”

“No.” Capozza wasn’t going any further.

Steele, a sharp-featured brunette who looked as if she expected a bear to jump out of the trees, nodded vaguely out toward the water. “Pretty spot. I can see now why you hung on to this place. Your husband—” She broke off, looking awkward, then plunged ahead. “We’re aware of what happened to him, Mrs. Browning—Abigail. No one’s forgotten. No one will forget.”

Capozza nodded in agreement, even if he wasn’t ready to be that frank. “We’re not here to investigate his murder, but we’re in close touch with Maine CID. If we learn anything new, we’ll let them know.”

“Of course. Thanks.” A courtesy call, Abigail realized. That was what this visit was. “Thanks for stopping by.”

“We’ll want to talk to you about your relationship with Grace Cooper at some point,” Capozza said.

And Chris’s relationship with her, no doubt. He and Grace had known each other most of their lives. If he’d died of natural causes seven years ago, he’d be a footnote, if that, in the two FBI agents’ investigation. Now, they’d be prepared for anything—they’d hope, if not expect, to run across some new, telling tidbit. Abigail could see it in Capozza’s and Steele’s faces. They would love to stumble on the one missed fact that would solve the cold case of Chris’s murder and turn their routine background investigation into something more.

“Anytime,” she said. “I’ll be here for the rest of the week and through the weekend, at least.”

Special Agent Steele opened up the driver’s door of their car and glanced back at Abigail. “Why are you up here this week? Vacation?”

Capozza toed a loose rock in the driveway. “Funny coincidence, isn’t it?”

“You’ve talked to Lieutenant Beeler and Chief Alden,” Abigail said.

They nodded. Leaning against the open car door, Steele said, “We know about the call.”

“You want me to take you through it?”

“You don’t mind?”

“Not at all.” Abigail smiled, watching her fellow law enforcement officers slap at mosquitoes at almost the exact same moment. “Now would you care to come inside?”

Abigail sank into the old leather chair in her catch-all back room and felt the cold air off the water blow in through the open door. The wind had picked up with the incoming tide. She liked the sound of it, the taste of the ocean on it, but she’d have to get up and close the door eventually. The temperature was supposed to drop down into the forties overnight.

Would Mattie sneak into the old foundation tonight for a secret party?

The FBI agents had listened carefully to her story about the call. They’d asked the same follow-up questions that Lucas, Bob, Scoop and Lou had also asked—that she’d asked herself. She’d half hoped answering them again would bring new insight, but it hadn’t.

After Capozza and Steele left, Abigail had gone into the musty cellar and dragged tools up to the back room and laid them out on the floor. A set of screwdrivers and a set of wrenches, two different kinds of hammers, chisels, scrapers, level, a crowbar, a utility knife, a drywall saw, a sledgehammer.

The Browning men had taken good care of their tools. She’d left the electric drill and saw in the cellar, and other tools that were either unfamiliar to her or looked dubious. Chris and his grandfather weren’t big on throwing things away. They’d recycle broken bits of one thing and use them to fix something else.

The back room needed more than a fresh coat of paint. It needed gutting. New wallboard, new wiring, new flooring. Abigail had collected do-it-yourself books over the years. Surely there was a chapter on gutting a room. How hard could it be? She just had to be careful not to drop anything on her head or electrocute herself.

The wind picked up, gusting through the open door. A light plastic chair scraped across the porch floor and fell over backward, landing with a bang that, although she’d seen it coming, startled her.

She shot out of her chair and grabbed the sledgehammer, lifting it with both hands, remembering Chris grinning at her as he’d held it himself so long ago. What had he been doing? She couldn’t even remember.

She saw the section of wall where they’d fixed the leak on their last morning together. The job had never been finished properly. She could see the edges of tape and dried spackling, and the paint over the repair work didn’t match the white of the rest of the wall.

Abigail could do the work herself, or ask friends, or hire it out, but she simply hadn’t gotten around to it.

“Oh, Chris.”

Her voice caught on the wind and seemed to echo out on the darkening rocks.

She drew the sledgehammer back and, on an exhale, smashed it not into the haphazardly repaired wall, but the narrower wall next to the porch door.

The plaster cracked. White dust puffed out from where the sledgehammer had struck.

She smashed the wall again. This time, the head of the massive hammer broke through the plaster.

Tears mixed with plaster dust in her eyes.

“I owe you, my friend.”

Seven years…

“I owe you all I am.”

T
he acidic smells of evergreen and peat mixed with the smells of low tide, filling the cool night air. Owen stood out on his deck, listening as he angled his flashlight beam up onto the rocks. He’d been drawn outside by voices, a sharp exchange near the old foundation.

Mattie Young stepped out of the shadows and crooked an arm in front of his face. “You’re blinding me.”

“What’re you doing out here, Mattie?”

“Running from Abigail. She’s armed—I thought she was going to kill me.”

“I wasn’t going to kill you.” Abigail jumped lightly off a boulder and landed behind Mattie, who flinched. “I’m still not, but I wouldn’t throw another beer can at me if I were you.”

Her voice was calm, coplike.

Owen lowered his flashlight, pointing the beam at the ground and lighting the way for the two of them. “Come on over here. We can sort this out.”

“Not me,” Mattie said. “I’m going home.”

“How?” Abigail asked him. “Are you going to ride your bike in the dark?”

“Yeah. I do it all the time. You don’t like it, call Doyle. I’ll tell him you threatened to shoot me.”

She sighed. “I didn’t threaten to shoot you, Mattie.”

“You’re armed—”

“Damn right I’m armed. Were you spying on me?”

“Why would I spy on you?”

“That’s not an answer. You were out here Sunday night—before I got here. Did you know I was on my way?”

“Of course not. How would I?”

Abigail paused for a half beat. “You know you can’t drink safely, don’t you?”

Mattie didn’t answer. Neither of them, Owen noticed, had started back toward his deck, his warm fire, a chance to talk.

“Get yourself to a meeting,” Abigail said. “No more jaunts out here in the dark with a six-pack. Right, Mattie? Makes sense?”

“Go fuck yourself, Abigail. You’re not a detective here.”

Mattie spun around and marched out to Owen’s driveway, oblivious to the dark.

“Where’s your bike?” Abigail called.

“Up on the road. Don’t worry about it.”

“Did you hide it?”

“Go to hell.”

“At least your language is improving. If you hid your bike—”

“I’m not hiding anything.” He stopped abruptly, turning back to her. “I just don’t bow down to you. I knew Chris’s parents. I knew his grandfather. I knew them before you were even born. You think you’re the only one who cares about what happened to Chris? You think you’re the only one who wants his killer found?”

“Mattie,” Owen said. “That’s enough. Go home. Get some rest.”

“Sleep it off, you mean? I’m not drunk.”

But he tripped as he reached the driveway, swearing, then held up one hand, his middle finger clearly visible in the light from the house. He continued on around a bend in the driveway, disappearing into the blackness.

Abigail had gone silent. Owen raised his flashlight to her, catching the hard set of her mouth. She had on a sweatshirt, but she had to be cold.

“Come inside,” he said. “Warm up.”

“Thanks.” She climbed up on the deck, glancing up the driveway. “He has a point. You all knew Chris longer than I did.”

“He was just trying to get under your skin.”

“Maybe. Chris didn’t make excuses for him, but he didn’t judge him, either, even after he knew he had to detach from him. He believed in Mattie. He has such talent.”

“Talent’s not a lot of use if you don’t make something of it.”

“Chris always said Mattie never had a sense of his own limitations. One of those good thing, bad thing deals. The good thing—it allowed him to take risks with his photography. The bad thing—he doesn’t save money, he doesn’t set realistic goals. He basically thinks the rules don’t apply to him.”

“That’s part of why he keeps drinking.”

“Alcoholics Anonymous is for other people. Not for him.” She sighed. “It’s such a difficult disease. If he could make that breakthrough—”

“Only he can. No one else can do it for him.”

“I said pretty much the same thing to Chris. But he knew without me having to tell him. We all know.”

Owen could feel the cold now. He’d shot outside in his T-shirt. “Mattie’s used Chris’s death as an excuse not to deal with his problems.”

“Maybe.” Abigail’s expression hardened again. “But Mattie has had his own agenda long before Chris was killed.”

Owen stepped closer to her, flicking a fat mosquito off her forehead.

She waved at one in front of her. “I should have put on bug spray.”

She followed him inside. She wasn’t winded from chasing Mattie out on the rocks in the dark. She was in good shape. As a cop, she would need to be, but she also seemed to enjoy physical activity—a thought that twisted itself into an image that Owen suspected she’d shoot him for having in his head.

“I have a bottle of Chianti I’ve been saving.”

“Saving for what?”

“Now, I guess. I’ve had a long year, and I don’t like to drink alone.”

She smiled, sitting on a chair in front of the woodstove. “Open it up, then. What did you do today?”

“Linc Cooper stopped by. He wants me to teach him everything I know in two weeks or less.” He grabbed a wine bottle off the rack in his kitchen. “I remember that feeling. Linc’s got a big set of issues. He thinks learning to jump out of a helicopter is going to help solve them.”

“Did it help you?”

He opened the wine. “I had a different set of issues.”

The fire had gotten hotter than he’d meant it to, Abigail’s cheeks reddening in the warmth. The hard look was gone now, her dark curls softly framing her face. “You’ve got white dust in your hair,” Owen said, setting two glasses on the counter and pouring the wine.

“I’ve been knocking out walls.”

“Cathartic?”

“I don’t know. I suppose it is. It’s just one of those things that needs to be done.”

“Did you stake out Mattie just now, or did you hear him and investigate?” Owen walked over to her with the two glasses and handed her one. “I’m guessing you laid in wait for him.”

“You’re guessing wrong. I was curious, and just took a walk over there—”

“In the dark.”

“Correct.”

“Without a flashlight?”

“I didn’t need one, really, out in the open on the rocks, with the stars and the moonlight. Once my eyes adjusted, I was fine. There was one short stretch of woods that was a little tricky.”

Owen sat on the chair opposite her. “And a flashlight would have warned Mattie you were on the way.”

She tasted the wine. “So it would have.”

“Are you ever off?”

She frowned at him. “What do you mean, ‘off’? Crazy? Out of control?”

“I mean, do you ever turn off your inner detective?”

“Ah. That ‘off.’ I have no jurisdiction here. Why?”

“I’d just like to know when I’m talking to Abigail, my pretty dark-eyed neighbor, and when I’m talking to Detective Browning, my pretty dark-eyed cop neighbor.”

“They’re one and the same.” She drank more of her wine. “So, how did Linc do on your hike?”

“Fine. He’s in better shape than he thinks he is. He asked about you—why you’re here, that sort of thing.”

“That’s understandable. Whenever I’m here people get stirred up. I remind them of a lot of unanswered questions. And Linc.” She shifted, staring at the fire. “Chris’s death was hard on him. He was just thirteen. He idolized Chris.”

“I remember.”

“Think you can help him?”

“Traipsing Linc Cooper up and down mountains wasn’t exactly what I had planned for the summer.”

“What did you have planned?”

Her voice held none of the suspicion and frustration it had when she was out on the rocks with Mattie, and her eyes shone in the glow of the orange flames. Owen could see the plaster dust on her hands, in her hair, and thought of her alone in her dead husband’s house, knocking out walls.

“I don’t know what I had planned,” he said.

“That could be just what you need—to have a few weeks with no plan.”

He smiled. “My grandmother would say that describes my whole life. She says I’m a tumbleweed at heart.”

“Maybe that’s why you like Maine. All the granite around here isn’t going anywhere. It gives you a sense of permanence that you don’t have in your life right now.”

“So philosophical.”

She laughed. “Now you’re scaring me.” She got to her feet, took another sip of the Chianti before setting the glass down on a side table. “I don’t want to keep you. Thanks for the wine.”

Something about his tone—his expression, whatever—had spooked her, made her self-conscious, aware. Owen rose, setting his wineglass next to hers. “Linc thinks you’re going to end up selling your place, too. I told him it wouldn’t feel right not having a Browning out on these rocks.”

“The real Brownings are all gone now. Too many of them died young. Chris, his parents. God knows how many ancestors. I swear his grandfather lived to ninety-five just to spite the odds.”

Owen touched a finger to her jaw. He felt the heat of the fire on one side of him and, on the other side, the cool night air coming through the partially open door. Her skin was warm, soft. “Abigail.”

She took an audible breath. “I’ll never have that kind of love again. A first love. I know that.” She seemed to make herself look at him, her gaze clear, unwavering. “But don’t think I haven’t loved again. Or that I can’t.”

“What about falling in love again?”

“I haven’t—not in the way you mean. I have a good life. I have wonderful friends and colleagues, a great family, rewarding work. That’s a lot.”

“Enough?”

“I don’t live in the past, if that’s what you mean. I want answers to Chris’s death. I want justice for him. But that’s not the only thing that gets me up in the morning.”

With the tip of his finger, Owen traced the outline of her mouth, saw her shut her eyes for a split second longer than a normal blink, telling him she wasn’t unaffected by his touch.

“What about you?” she asked. “You haven’t married.”

“Not yet, no.”

“Then it’s something you think about—something you want.”

But he took a step closer to her, easing his hand behind her neck, breaking her concentration. He couldn’t pinpoint when he’d first become attracted to her. Maybe he’d always been attracted to her, but she’d seemed so untouchable, so remote. Chris Browning’s widow. But over the years—a glimpse here and there on the rocks, a friendly chat from time to time when they’d run into each other on a walk, at the hardware store, in the post office. He’d never expected to act on his attraction. And, yet, here he was.

His mouth found hers for a whisper of a kiss, but he knew he was holding back—he knew he had to put a hard brake on how far he wanted to go with her. She sank the fingers of one hand into his upper arm, not to balance herself, he realized, but to communicate that he’d gotten to her. Her lips opened to the kiss, and he responded, his tongue mingling with hers, her grasp on his arm tightening.

He lowered his arms around her middle and lifted her slightly off her feet, drawing her against him. How easy it would be to slide her pants over her slim hips and take her right here, in front of the fire.

Slipping his hands inside her waistband, he splayed his fingers against her firm, warm flesh.

“Damn, Owen,” she said, taking her mouth from his and throwing her arms around his neck. Her breathing was ragged, her eyes were shining, and under her shirt, her nipples were clearly visible. She pressed herself against him and found his mouth again. “Damn.”

“Tell me what you want.” He slid his hands deeper into her shorts, the flesh hotter, wetter. How had they come this far, this fast? One quick move on his part, and she’d be fully exposed. “Tell me, Abigail.”

She smiled. “I think it’s obvious what we both want.” She settled her feet back onto the floor and dropped her arms from his neck. “You do like to live dangerously, don’t you?”

“And you don’t?”

“Well…” She seemed to realize she had nowhere to go with that one. “That’s not the point. Or maybe it is.”

But they both knew when to give in to an impulse, and this wasn’t the time—if only, Owen thought, because they both also knew it was more than an impulse. Something real was going on between them and had been for a long time.

He stepped back from her. “Another glass of wine?”

She smiled. “That would be wonderful.”

Linc heard the clatter of a bicycle on the driveway outside, in the dark, and knew it was Mattie Young.

Who else would it be?

His father looked up from his book and frowned. “What was that?”

“I think it’s one of my friends,” Linc said, already on his feet. They were in the front den, pretending they were a normal family. Him, his father, his sister. “We’re supposed to make arrangements to hike the Bubbles tomorrow.”

“Oh. Wonderful.”