Carla Neggers - The Widow

“Grace, Linc wasn’t the one who broke into my house and attacked me and stole my necklace. Chris knew that. I could see it in his face. He knew who’d done it, and he knew it wasn’t a troubled thirteen-year-old boy.”

“You sound so confident.”

“I’m not confident about much that happened that day, but about that-” She nodded. “Yeah. I’m confident. Chris wanted to know where your brother was to make sure he was safe. All this time, Grace, have you believed your brother killed Chris?”

She shook her head. “No. Never.”

Grace abandoned her thought and grabbed the line on her kayak, dragging the lightweight boat farther up onto the grass. She dropped it and tossed her sweater into the open cockpit, then threw her head back, staring into the sky as if she might see Chris’s ghost.

Finally, she turned to Abigail. “I just believed I sent your husband to his death.”

And Abigail knew what she was hearing in Grace’s voice now. She stood up, put a hand out to her. “Grace,” she said. “You were in love with him.”

But she pretended not to hear. She gave her kayak a little kick. “I’ll come back for you later,” she said to it, then squinted at Abigail. “I’m so glad you weren’t hurt any worse than you were yesterday. I know you’re very good at taking care of yourself, but I’d hate to see anything happen to you. We all would.”

She fled up the path through the roses.

Abigail didn’t follow her. Instead, she walked back into the water, the tide higher now, deeper. She spotted a bit of bright color that didn’t fit with the grays and browns of the bottom and reached one hand into the water, digging among rounded stones and rough sand until she freed it.

It was a sliver of purple seaglass, its edges rounded and softened by the salt water and sand. She rinsed it off and held it up to the sun, imagining it was from a bottle Chris had tossed into the sound as a boy. She could see him out in his grandfather’s boat, exploring the island’s nooks and crannies, pulling lobster traps from the depths, dreaming of becoming an FBI agent.

Had he ever dreamed of the woman he would marry?

She cupped the seaglass in her hand, then threw it as far out into the water as she could.

She would find out who killed him.

On her way back from Somes Sound, Abigail stopped at the diner where she’d had her fried shrimp roll with Lou Beeler and Doyle Alden the other day. It seemed like a hundred years ago. She ordered another one to go. She hadn’t eaten with O’Reilly before he headed back to Boston, after making her promise to stay in touch and behave and not do anything stupid-a whole long list.

She took the steaming roll down to the picturesque harbor and watched the working boats and the pleasure boats come and go on what was a stunningly perfect Maine summer afternoon.

The harbor was also one of the few places with cell phone service.

“Abigail,” her father said when he picked up. “Is everything all right?”

“Was Mattie Young an FBI informant?”

Silence. Her question wasn’t altogether the stab in the dark it felt like now that she could hear her father’s voice. Lou Beeler had hinted at something her father knew. And Chris and Mattie-the tension between them before the wedding. The pieces were coming together.

“Maybe we don’t have a good connection,” she said. “Let me ask again. Was Mattie Young an FBI informant?”

“It’s complicated,” her father said.

“No, it’s not complicated. It’s a yes or no question. Yes, he was. No, he wasn’t.”

“You should talk to Lieutenant Beeler.”

“I did.” She could hear the edge in her voice. But if anyone would know, it was FBI Director John March. Her father. “Have you talked to him?”

“You’re a homicide detective yourself, Abigail. You understand there are details of an investigation that you keep to yourself.”

“Lou, yes. But you? You’re not on this case. Or are you?”

He didn’t answer right away. “Mattie was Chris’s informant.” There was no hint of apology in her father’s tone. “I didn’t find out until after Chris was killed.”

“And you didn’t tell me.”

“Lou Beeler knew.”

And that was enough as far as her father was concerned. The lead investigator had the information, even if Abigail didn’t. “Chris never said a word,” she said.

“He wouldn’t have. In his position, you wouldn’t have, either. He cut Mattie loose in the weeks before you two got married. He had other things on his mind, Abigail. He was on his honeymoon. There was no need-”

“Apparently there was a need since he ended up with a bullet in his gut, bleeding to death-since he was murdered. ” She sucked in a breath. “Damn it.”

“Remember, you weren’t a homicide detective seven years ago.”

“Yes, I know.” She set her shrimp roll on the dock rail, half-covered in seagull droppings. “It’s a lot to absorb. What kind of information did Mattie provide?”

“To be honest, I think Chris was just trying to help a friend, to give him a sense of purpose, keep him busy.” She could hear the emotion in her father’s voice, not a common occurrence for him. “I can get on a plane now and be there in a couple of hours.”

“I know, Dad. Thanks. I’m okay. I just wish you’d told me about Mattie a long time ago.”

“I couldn’t.”

“I know that, too.”

After she disconnected, she fought off a seagull interested in her shrimp roll and watched a battered lobster boat circle into the harbor with a man and a boy going through their routines after a day at sea. She wanted to call to the boy to keep fishing. Be satisfied. Don’t go away and fall for the daughter of the future director of the FBI.

“Your husband had secrets.”

That Linc Cooper was their burglar. That Mattie Young was his informant.

That Grace Cooper was in love with him.

In time, Abigail wondered if Chris would have told her-if they weren’t secrets so much as things he just hadn’t gotten around to sharing with her. They’d been focused on their wedding and honeymoon, their future together.

But they hadn’t had time.

Doyle read a chatty e-mail from Katie three times before he shut down his computer and headed to the kitchen to take some pork chops out of the freezer. His wife had told him in great detail about what she was doing in England -the kinds of things she was learning, the people she’d met, the sights she’d seen. She wrote like she talked. They hadn’t called each other much since she’d left, with the time difference, their busy schedules, the cost of international calls.

As much as he missed her and would have wanted her counsel-her support-if she’d been there, Doyle didn’t want to tell her about what was going on at home, not when there was nothing she could do about it but worry.

The boys liked to instant-message her right after dinner. Doyle had never figured out the whole IM thing.

He looked out the window over the sink. Sean and Ian had gone off on their bikes. He’d told them not to go near Mattie’s house, but otherwise what could he do? Keep them inside all the time? Make them afraid of their own shadows?

The search for Mattie continued. If he was still up in the woods and hadn’t found food and water, he risked dying of exposure, thirst. Doyle had envisioned that scene a million times over the years-Mattie Young, dead in a pile of leaves, dead on the rocks, dead in a car crash. Better than him killing someone else while driving drunk, or so Doyle had always told himself.

He left the pork chops on the counter and walked out to the living room. He’d have the chops in the oven before they could breed bacteria. So far, he’d managed not to poison himself and the boys.