Carla Neggers - The Widow

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-”