Carla Neggers - The Widow

“Better to be rescued than-”

“Drown?” Grace splashed into the shallow water. The tide was coming in, rising steadily, the waves choppier out on the sound, away from the shore. She had on long pants and sports sandals, the gray sand seeping under her exposed feet, between her toes, as she sank into it. “I seldom paddle that way. Never, in fact. The water’s often rough, but that’s not the reason. I just don’t want to pass the cliffs where Doe drowned.”

Abigail sat on a wood bench on a grassy strip up against the beach roses. She could smell their sweet fragrance as she watched Grace lift the paddle off her kayak, almost banging herself in the head with one end.

She stabbed it onto the bow of her kayak, stopping it before it could float off. “Have you ever seen pictures of Doe?”

Grace was being provocative, mean, even. Abigail deliberately kept her tone matter-of-fact. “The other day,” she said. “Someone left a picture of her after she’d drowned for Owen to find. Unfortunately, the Alden boys found it first.”

It wasn’t the answer Grace had expected. “What?”

She dropped the paddle and lunged after it, falling onto the kayak and landing on her knees in the water. She awkwardly tried to right herself and not lose the paddle or the kayak.

Feeling the barest hint of guilt, Abigail ran to her, splashing into the chilly water with her own sports sandals, and offered her a hand.

“I’m all right.” Grace stood up, the bottom half of her sweater soaked and stretched down to her knees now. She got her balance and snatched her paddle, laid it back across the kayak cockpit, then grabbed the line tied to the bow and gave Abigail a cold look. “That was intentional. To shock me. Well. Mission accomplished.”

Abigail didn’t apologize. She jumped back out of the water, shook as much wet sand off her shoes as she could and watched Grace slide her kayak back into shallow water, where it scraped along the sand and rocks.

“Doe was as beautiful as Owen is handsome,” she said, her back to Abigail. “Even in death. The Garrisons are a good-looking family.”

“That they are.”

Grace plopped down onto the grass, with her feet in the rising water, up to her ankles now. “I’m surprised you notice such things.”

“Why?”

“Being a detective and all. Being a woman who doesn’t seem to pay much attention to that sort of thing. Being-I don’t know. Stuck in the past, maybe?” But she didn’t wait for the barb to strike and went on. “Do you know where this picture came from?”

“I assume Mattie took it.” Abigail could feel the rough sand rubbing at the bottom of her feet. “Where it’s been all these years and how it ended up on Owen’s doorstep-that I don’t know.”

“Well, I certainly don’t. And neither does Linc-or my father-or my uncle. Any of us.”

Abigail didn’t argue with her. “The day Dorothy Garrison drowned…”

“I was at what was then the Garrison house. We all were. Doe and I had argued. Just some stupid teenage fight that should have passed with us remaining the best of friends. She’d been miserable company all day. Sullen, teary, argumentative. I don’t know if it was hormones or what. I don’t suppose I’ll ever know.”

“She ran down to the cliffs by herself?”

“We thought she was on the steps. At least I did. I know her parents did, too. Owen realized she was gone and walked down to the cliffs to see if he could find her.” Grace’s voice faltered. “He arrived in time to see her slip and fall.”

“You’re sure she slipped?”

Grace swung around but didn’t get up. “Of course she slipped! Do you think Owen pushed her?”

Abigail said nothing.

“You think Doe jumped? That’s outrageous. She was fourteen . She was full of life. No, she didn’t jump.” Grace yanked her feet out of the water and stood up, red from her toes to her ankles, her pants soaked, much of her sweater too. “I can’t believe you’d suggest such a thing.”

“I didn’t suggest it. I just asked a question.”

“Well, it was an outrageous question.”

“Maybe so. Did you go down to the cliffs that day yourself?”

She shook her head, her anger not taking root with a topic so tragic. “No. Chris and his grandfather heard Owen from their boat when he finally was able to yell for help. Mattie was with them. There was such a flurry of activity.”

“Did someone stay with you the whole time?”

“My mother did. She and my father were in the middle of their divorce, but she was there.”

“Do you remember anyone not being there, especially before you all heard Owen calling for help?”

Grace went very still. “No, I don’t. Abigail, what’s this all about? It’s well-known that Owen believed he heard someone in the trees. He was eleven-he couldn’t take in what happened. He felt guilty. There’s no reason, of course, but sometimes these things have very little to do with reason.”

“I’m just trying to figure out why the picture of his sister ended up on his doorstep.”

“Because some twisted son of a bitch put it there.”

Abigail nodded. “There’s that.”

“Dear heaven.” Grace shivered, and she seemed all of a sudden to notice her dripping sweater and cold feet. “I can’t start out on the water wet. I’d freeze in this wind.”

“Grace, you know your brother-”

“I heard the beginning of your conversation with my father.” She tried to button her sweater, then abandoned the effort. “That’s why I came out here. Fight or flight, you know.”

“You care about Linc very much,” Abigail said.

“Yes, I do.”

“Enough to lie for him when Chris asked you where he was?”

Grace lifted her chin, and Abigail could see the older woman’s self-control assert itself-could see glimpses, finally, of the intelligence and drive that had helped land her the State Department appointment. “What are you talking about?”

“I got pictures the other day, too. You told the police you never talked to Chris when he stopped up at your uncle’s house after I was attacked. But you did, didn’t you?”

“There’s a picture of us?”

“Yes.”

“I told the police I saw him. If the picture doesn’t show us actually talking-” But she stopped herself, then went on in a half whisper. “He asked me where Linc was.”

“What did you tell him, Grace?”

She looked down at her blue-red feet. “I told him Linc was at the old Garrison house foundation. That’s where I thought he was. I didn’t lie. Not to Chris.”

Something in her voice penetrated the wall of professionalism Abigail had tried to put up to steel herself-to give herself objectivity. She sat back on the bench, its wood warming in the midday sun. Bob O’Reilly had warned her to leave any questioning to the Maine CID detectives. And yet here she was.

“Linc wasn’t down at the foundation,” she said. “There was another picture in the packet on my doorstep. It shows him at the gate in your uncle’s yard. It was taken around the same time as the one of you and Chris.”

“Linc-” Grace seemed confused. “My brother was in the gardens?”

“Sneaking a martini.”

“But I thought he was…” She didn’t go on.

“Why did you think Linc was at the old Garrison foundation?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Did you know he was the burglar everyone was talking about that summer?”

“Suspected-I’ve never known it for a fact. I still don’t, no matter what Linc’s told anyone else.”

“My husband knew,” Abigail said, not making it a question-not wanting, she thought, to make it a question.

“He never said. But I assume he did know, and I assume he confronted Linc and gave him one more chance. And Linc-” Grace shrugged off her sweater and balled it up in one hand, turning back to her kayak. “I have to go.”