Carla Neggers - The Widow

Abigail Browning stood on the other side of his screen door at the front entrance. He hadn’t heard her drive up. Then he saw Owen behind her, both of them grim-faced. Doyle’s heart lurched. Had something happened to Sean or Ian? Katie? He immediately told himself to calm down. It’d been the kind of day for grim faces.

“Come on in,” he said.

“Hey, Doyle.” Owen stepped past Abigail and pushed open the door. “We saw the boys on their bikes. They look like they’re having a great time.”

“They know we’re looking for Mattie. The rest-I haven’t told them.” He held up a hand, nipping any well-intentioned protests in the bud. “I’m not planning to, either, until I have to.”

“Your call.”

Abigail glanced around the country-style room. “I haven’t been in here in a few years. You and Katie have done a nice job with the place.”

“Thanks.” Doyle pointed to the couch. “Have a seat-”

“I can’t stay,” she said. “Mattie?”

“No sign of him since we found his bicycle. I left the station an hour ago. Lou was still there. The FBI guys wanted to talk to Linc Cooper.” Sighing heavily, Doyle sank onto his easy chair. “I don’t get Mattie. I guess I never will. He never could get his shit together. He had his chances, just like the rest of us, but he was always looking for an angle. It was Mattie first. Always Mattie first.”

“We still have a lot of unanswered questions.”

He didn’t even get on her for saying “we,” as if she had an official role in the investigation.

“You can’t know what it’s like. Either of you. I have this picture in my head of Pa Browning taking Mattie, Chris and me out on the boat on a freezing cold day long after the tourist season had ended. We had the best time. And now-hell. Pa and Chris are gone. Mattie might as well be.”

Abigail had that relentless look Doyle had seen in her before, and she didn’t indulge him in his moment of self-pity. “You knew Mattie was an FBI informant?”

He threw his head against the tall back of the chair and thought about throwing them both out and watching television. Just not think about his work, his life, for a half hour.

Owen said quietly, “I didn’t know.”

Doyle sat forward. “‘FBI informant’ is too strong. Mattie kept his ear to the ground and told Chris what he heard. Mostly it wasn’t much of anything, but he happened onto a drug smuggling operation into Canada. The feds were on to it, but Mattie had names, a meeting place. It helped. So, Chris threw some money his way. It was all on the up-and-up.”

“Then Mattie started drinking again, and Chris pulled back.”

“Yeah. That’s pretty much the story.”

“I don’t want ‘pretty much’ the story, Doyle. I’d like to hear the whole story.”

“All right.” He put both hands on the arms of his chair just to keep himself from launching to his feet and strangling her. “That’s the whole story. Better?”

She didn’t react to his sarcasm. “And Grace Cooper. Did you know she was in love with Chris?” But when Doyle’s eyes flickered to Owen, Abigail sucked in a breath and swore. “Damn it. You all knew.”

“He was never for her,” Owen said. “We all knew that, too. And it was over a long time ago.”

“No, it wasn’t.” Doyle got heavily to his feet. “It was for Chris. Yeah, he never had a romantic interest in Grace. But for her? She’ll never get over him. Who knows, maybe he’d still be alive today if he’d fallen for her instead.”

Owen grabbed his friend’s arm. “That’s enough. You’re upset. Don’t make matters worse.”

Abigail had gone pale, which, in the mood he was in, Doyle considered something of a victory. But she didn’t raise her voice when she spoke. “If you thought Chris should be marrying someone else, why did you agree to be his best man?”

“Because he asked me, and he was my best friend. He thought I’d come around one of these days and see what he saw in you.”

“Another of his little secrets,” she said without bitterness.

A bike clattered out in the driveway, and one of the boys yelled, “Dad!”

Sean, Doyle thought, surging for the door, even as Ian called out to him. “Dad, Dad, come quick! It’s Mattie!”

Moving like a bolt of lightning, Owen shot out the front door before Doyle could get there, Abigail on his heels. He took the steps in one leap, then charged across the lawn to his driveway and detached one-car garage, where his sons were tangled up in their bikes.

Ian stood up, his knees skinned. “We tripped. We were running-” He sobbed. “I thought Sean saw the ghost!”

Owen knelt down, getting at eye level with Sean as the boy pointed at the garage. “Mattie was in there! I know he was. He made this bed…”

“We’ll check it out,” Owen said, calmer than Doyle would have been. “Did you see him?”

Ian shook his head, Owen’s presence steadying him. “He’s not here.”

The garage didn’t have an automatic door. Doyle didn’t protest when Abigail went around to the side door, still half-open from when the boys were in there. “Sean and Ian didn’t have to unlock the door,” he told her. “Lock’s busted. It’s been busted for weeks. I haven’t gotten around to fixing it.”

She nodded, going inside. He raised the main door, entering the garage a half second after she did. Katie’s sedan filled up most of the space. On various hooks and shelves were tools, supplies, snow shovels, sleds and pieces of junk that she insisted she’d use one day for various craft projects.

“Car’s locked?” Abigail asked.

“Yeah. Keys are in the house.”

At least Mattie-if the boys were right and he’d been there-hadn’t bashed in a window and made his bed in the car. Doyle walked around to the hood, where Abigail pointed to a blue tarp that had been spread out on the concrete floor, on top of it a rolled-up car blanket and a camp pad that he’d forgotten they even owned.

“Looks as if he helped himself to your pantry,” Abigail said.

Doyle saw what she meant-a box of Wheat Thins, a pop-up can of pears, a package of Oreos. Everything looked empty. What Mattie hadn’t eaten, he must have taken with him.

And it was Mattie. Doyle knew he didn’t have to say anything. The smell, the strands of long hair on the makeshift pillow, the hair tie-enough proof for both him and Abigail.

“He must have slipped into the kitchen while I was out looking for him last night,” Doyle said. “He doesn’t have a key, but he’d know where I keep mine. I never thought…”

“Don’t beat yourself up. Staying here might have saved his life.”

“At least I didn’t have any beer in the house.” But as she walked past him, Doyle grabbed her arm. “About what I said earlier. I didn’t mean half of it.”

She had the grace to smile. “Which half?”

When they got back outside, Sean and Ian bolted away from Owen, and Doyle scooped them up, one in each arm. He nodded to his friend. “Thanks.”

“Anytime.”

But Owen had his eyes on Abigail. “It was Mattie?”

She nodded without comment. She’d pulled back inside of herself, protective, focused on the job she was there to do. “I’ll go call Lou,” she said, moving off toward the house.

Doyle hadn’t seen what was happening before, but he damn well did now. Here was another friend falling for Abigail Browning. “She doesn’t trust any of us right now,” he said to Owen.

“Would you?”

“Probably not.”

“Dad,” Sean said, “what’s going on?”

Doyle knew push had come to shove. He had to tell his sons as much as he could about Mattie, about Chris. All of it. He set them back on the driveway, could feel their tension and curiosity in their slim frames. But he addressed Owen. “If you want to check the area and see if you can pick up Mattie’s tracks, that’d be a help.”