Carla Neggers: The Widow

Owen didn’t respond.

“It wasn’t about who I was. If I’d been a homicide detective seven years ago, he still wouldn’t have told me. He wasn’t keeping secrets from me so much as just not talking. It was his personality.” A firefly sparked in the trees to the side of the house, where the Alden boys had hidden just a few days ago, convinced they’d seen a ghost. “And what did I know of his relationships with the people on this island? I knew him for eighteen months. We weren’t even married a week.”

“Abigail…”

She seized Owen’s hand, intertwined her fingers with his. “I don’t want to be alone tonight.”

“You don’t have to be.”

She raised his hand to her lips. “Not here. I can’t stay with you here.”

A nightmare woke her. Lying in the dark, Abigail didn’t know where she was.

She heard an owl outside on a nearby tree and felt the cool breeze from an open window and the warmth of the soft blanket over her, and she remembered the slick heat of tangled limbs and thrusting bodies, hers and Owen’s, as they’d made love long into the night.

She reached across the bed and touched his shoulder, thinking he was asleep. But his hand covered hers. She edged closer to him. She felt as if she’d known him forever, and yet there was so much more to find out about him, to the point that he might well have been a stranger.

“You don’t know anything about my real life,” she whispered. “I investigate homicides in Boston. I’m not just the widow out here on the rocks. And I know nothing about your real life.”

“There’s time for that.” He rolled onto his side, pulling her to him. “Plenty of time.”

She ran her fingertips over a scar on his shoulder and upper arm. “Where did this scar come from?” She eased her hand over his chest, unable to see, just to feel the firm flesh, another scar. “And this one…and this one…?”

“I don’t remember where half my scars came from. I don’t think about them.”

She rolled him onto his back and climbed on top of him, straddling him. “You don’t think about them, but you remember how you got them.” She scraped her fingernails along his hips and sides, feeling him shudder with desire under her. “Every single one of them.”

She lifted herself above him, and when she came down again, he was inside her, his arms around her as she drew down hard onto him, pulling him in as deeply as possible. She moaned, sinking her chest onto him, her orgasm instantaneous, racking her to her core.

He whispered her name, thrusting into her, shuddering with his own release.

The cold night wind gusted over their heated bodies, but neither made a move to pull the blanket back over them. Abigail laid her head on his chest and closed her eyes, hoping once she fell asleep again, there’d be no more nightmares.

The morning was warm enough for Abigail to walk barefoot on Owen’s smooth wood floors and open up the doors to the deck to let in the breeze and the sounds of the ocean. She wasn’t tempted to ask Owen to build a fire in the woodstove. She made coffee, feeling the sunlight streaming in through the tall windows. Her scrapes and bruises were better, her body loose and liquid after their night of lovemaking.

When the phone rang, it didn’t occur to her to answer it. Owen, seated at a bar stool at the kitchen peninsula, picked up. “Hello?” He rose, his eyes telling her everything as he handed her the receiver. “For you.”

Her caller.

Owen came around the peninsula and stood next to her.

She nodded to him, then said formally into the phone, “It’s Abigail Browning.”

“Detective. Good morning.” The voice had the familiar eerie muffle of the previous calls.

“I’m not in the mood for your games. What do you want?”

“Prickly this morning, aren’t you?”

“Just tell me what you want.”

“I want you to get back to Boston alive, Detective Browning.” The voice on the other end remained strangely toneless, impossible to recognize. “You need to be careful in the coming days. Very careful.”

“Why? What do you know?”

He ignored her. “How far will your husband’s friends go to keep their secrets?”

“How far will you go to keep your secrets? Everyone has secrets. What are yours?”

“Any secrets I have are innocent ones. Your husband-”

“Chris wasn’t talkative. He kept other people’s secrets to himself. He was the kind of man people liked to have as a friend.” Interrupting her caller had been a risk, but the status quo-being patient-hadn’t gotten her anywhere. Abigail licked her lips, listening for background sounds, anything that could help her identify the person on the other end of the line. “If you’re trying to make me think any less of Chris because of what he didn’t tell me when he was alive, it’s not working.”

“I just want to help you.”

“No, you don’t. If you wanted to help me, you’d tell me who you are. You’d meet me.”

“You don’t call the shots, Detective.” An edge had crept into the caller’s voice, the first sign of any real emotion. “Haven’t you figured that out yet?”

The coffeemaker hissed. Strong-smelling coffee dripped into the glass pot. Abigail felt a prickly sensation on the back of her neck. “Does that mean you’re calling the shots?” she asked mildly.

“It means you need to be careful.”

“How did you get this phone number?”

“Easy.”

“How did you know I was here?”

“Even easier, Detective. You’ve become quite the slut, haven’t you?”

She didn’t let his jibe get to her. “Then you’re on the island. You’re watching me. We’ve interacted-”

“Don’t waste your time trying to figure out who I am.” There was no hint of worry in the eerily calm tone. “Think about the secrets people are keeping. Watch your back.”

Abigail didn’t move as she stood in front of the peninsula, paying careful attention to his every word.

“Promise me you’ll be careful, Detective.”

She could feel Owen’s gaze on her and turned to him, saw his set jaw, his narrowed eyes, and knew he was thinking what she was.

“Detective?”

“You’re the killer.”

“Don’t bother tapping your phone lines.” The voice was crisp now, efficient. “I won’t call again.”

Once he hung up, Abigail could have smashed the telephone on the rocks. Owen put a small pad and a pen on the counter in front of her. She started to speak, but stopped herself and quickly wrote down every word of her conversation with her anonymous caller.

With her husband’s killer.

Then, still without speaking, she called Lou Beeler’s cell number, got through and reported what had just happened.

The senior detective didn’t comment on her whereabouts. “You’ve got coffee on yet?”

“It’ll be ready in two minutes.”

“I’ll be there in five.”

“Five?”

“I slept on Chief Alden’s couch last night.”

Abigail didn’t blame him. She told him she’d be waiting, and hung up, noticing Owen scanning her notes on the call. His gray eyes connected with hers. “I’m sorry,” he said and walked out to his deck, leaving her alone in the kitchen.

She waited until the coffee finished brewing, then took two dark brown pottery mugs from an open shelf and set them on the counter. She filled the mugs and headed outside with them. The air was warm, but the deck was cool under her feet. She saw that Owen had gone down to the rocks. She debated leaving him alone there-at least putting on shoes before Lou arrived-but stepped off the deck and onto a sandy path, following it onto a sprawling, rounded boulder.