Carla Neggers: The Widow

“But Austin’s home for him?”

“I’m not sure anywhere’s home for him. Abigail…” The older woman extended a hand. “My dear, we all understand your need for answers, but don’t you think Chris would want you to be happy?”

“I am happy. But I want to know who killed my husband.”

As a line of cars passed behind her on Beacon Street and children squealed on Boston Common, Abigail realized her throat had tightened with the onslaught of memories, the July heat, the awareness of what she meant to do.

After her chat with Polly Garrison, who had revealed little about her family’s relationship with the Coopers, Abigail had returned to her modest Austin motel. She took a shower. Her hair had been long then, dripping into her clingy camisole top when Owen turned up at her door.

Just out of the army, he was rugged and hard-edged and not very pleased with her.

“You’re out of your jurisdiction, Officer Browning. And you’re not a detective.”

“Astute of you.”

“Next time you want to come down here and ask my grandmother about her dead granddaughter-don’t. Deal with me instead.”

Abigail didn’t defend herself. She simply pointed to the two-inch scar under his eye. “Where did you get that scar-a search-and-rescue mission?”

“Bar fight.”

On his way out, he paid for her motel stay. She didn’t know until she packed up the next day for Boston. It wasn’t kindness on Owen’s part. It was his way of telling her she was on his turf, and out of her league.

Except she didn’t give a damn. Then or now.

“Things are happening on Mt. Desert. Again.”

If so, were the Garrisons and the Coopers involved? Abigail had no idea, but she meant to find out.

When she got back to her triple-decker, she pulled a six-pack of Otter Creek Pale Ale out of the refrigerator, microwaved a bag of popcorn, sharpened three pencils, unwrapped three fresh yellow legal pads and put everything out on her little kitchen table.

Then she phoned her upstairs neighbors, and they came.

Scoop Wisdom had a shaved head and a ferocious, unbridled demeanor, but he’d adopted two stray cats. Abigail didn’t believe anyone who had cats could be all that scary.

The cheerful blues and yellows of her kitchen-even the beer and popcorn-had no apparent effect on either man.

“I need your help,” she told them.

Scoop’s dark eyes narrowed on her. Bob just scowled.

She raked a hand through her short curls. “I got a call last night.”

Bob snorted. “About goddamn time you came clean.”

“What? Lucas told you? When?”

Scoop grabbed a beer, opened it and took a long drink. “He called me on his way to meet you at the restaurant. I called Bob.”

“And none of you said anything? Lucas, you two-”

“We don’t butt into other people’s business,” Bob said.

Abigail had to laugh. “You’re detectives. You butt into other people’s business all the time.” But not hers, she realized. “All right. I should have told you myself. I needed today to get my head together. Burning my journals helped.”

Scoop frowned at her. “You burned your journals?”

“They weren’t evidence.” She shrugged. “They’re where I dumped my emotions.”

“Oh. Okay, then.” Obviously not wanting more details, Scoop pointed with his beer at the stack of files. “These your files on your husband’s murder?”

“My notes, newspaper articles, photographs, sketches. Everything I could pull together on my own, without stepping on toes.”

Bob grabbed a beer for himself. “You tell the Maine police about the call?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“Unimpressed but investigating.”

“What about Daddy?”

She looked at the stack of files. She’d never asked her father to go through them with her. He’d never offered. He wouldn’t want to encourage her to investigate Chris’s death on her own. “No. I haven’t talked to him.”

Scoop took a seat at the table and lifted a file from the pile.

Abigail swallowed. “It’s been a long time. It’s a very cold case.”

“Then let’s heat it up and see what happens.”

“Guys…are you sure?”

Bob slung an arm over her shoulder. “That’s the thing you still have to get through your head, kid.” He winked at her. “You’re not alone.”

Owen Garrison wasn’t one for suntan lotion and picnic baskets and lazy days on a beach. After forty-five minutes on Sand Beach, he was restless. The horseshoe-shaped beach was a rare stretch of sand carved out of Mt. Desert Island’s granite coastline, the water turquoise on the sunny early July afternoon.

Compared to Maine’s more expansive beaches to the south-York, Ogunquit, Wells-it wasn’t crowded at all.

But Owen paced in the sand, which clung to everything, as he kept an eye on Sean and Ian Alden, eleven and nine, towheaded boys who’d known no other home but the fourteen-mile-wide island. Their father was the local police chief. Owen had complicated Doyle and the boys’lives when he’d asked KatieAlden to head up the proposed Fast Rescue field academy in Bar Harbor. He wanted it up and running by fall, and Katie, a paramedic and search-and-rescue specialist, had taken on the challenge. She’d left for six weeks of training in London two days ago. The boys were doing fine, but Doyle was still sulking about not having her around for most of the summer.

Owen was just off a two-week operation in South Asia following a 7.5-magnitude earthquake and figured the least he could do was help watch the boys once in a while.

A kid-maybe Sean or Ian-squealed. Before Owen realized what was happening, he was jerked back into the past, remembering his sister on this same beach, running into the water and out again, squealing in delight, flapping her arms against the power of the waves and the shock of the cold water.

“Come on, Owen. Don’t be a chicken! You get used to the cold.”

But you didn’t, he knew. You might not feel it, but the cold would wear on your body, weaken it.

The day his sister drowned, the water temperature was fifty-five degrees. Early-stage hypothermia had tired her more quickly, shortening the time she could tread water amid the waves and wait for rescue.

Owen, helpless to save her, had watched Doe slip under the water.

Enough.

He snatched up two towels from the heap of stuff the Alden boys had insisted on carting down to the beach. He waved to them. “Time to warm up.”

They didn’t argue, although Owen had no idea whether they cooperated because of something they heard in his tone or because they’d had their fill of waves. Unlike most of their fellow beachgoers, Sean and Ian were wet from head to toe-and they were blue-lipped and shivering. Owen draped towels over them and opened up a blanket, spreading it out on the sticky sand.

“Sit. Wrap up good. Give yourselves a chance to warm up.”

Ian, the younger boy, skinnier than his brother, sat on the blanket and tucked his knees up under him, encasing his entire body in the oversized towel.

“Do you boys know what to do if you get stuck out in cold water?” Owen asked. He was in jeans and a polo shirt. Nice and dry.

Sean, his teeth chattering, sat cross-legged on the blanket. “Yell for help?”

“You should have a whistle with you if you’re out in the woods or on the water, kayaking, canoeing, whatever. If you get into trouble, you blow the whistle to alert people you need help. You should also have a life vest when you’re in any kind of boat. You almost never want to try swimming to shore.”

“Why not?” Sean asked.