Carla Neggers: The Widow

She shook her head, then said, “Not Mattie Young.”

“Even with the pictures, the necklace, the attack on you, the blackmail?”

“Even with.”

Lou studied her a moment, nothing about him giving away what he was thinking or feeling.

“Hell, Lou, you’re like a stone statue,” she said with some impatience. “You could be sitting there thinking about blueberry pancakes for all I know. What’s on your mind?”

“Nothing.” He picked up his mug but didn’t take a sip of the coffee. “Abigail-”

“I know what you’re going to say. I’m not jumping to conclusions. I’m keeping an open mind.”

“You’re not on this case. Think for a moment what you’d do if you were in my position. Your father’s the FBI director. Your deceased husband was an FBI agent. There are presently a couple of G-men in town sniffing into the secrets of a high-level State Department appointee.”

“I know, Lou. It’s awkward.”

“Awkward? It’s a damn tangled-up mess is what it is. And I haven’t even gotten to the Garrisons and their history, and Owen and his work. I caught up with Doyle last night. His wife’s got a big job ahead of her as director of this new field academy in Bar Harbor. Fast Rescue’s not an outfit for the fainthearted. Owen has ambitious plans. He doesn’t do anything by half measures-” Lou stopped suddenly, and Abigail realized she must have reddened or something, because he groaned. “Oh, hell. Damn it, Browning.”

She cleared her throat. “Back to the pictures. Have your guys discovered any concrete evidence that Mattie shot them?”

Lou seemed almost relieved that she’d redirected the subject to the investigation at hand. He shook his head. “Nothing so far. Apparently he did burn a bunch of negatives, but his files are just the disaster you’d expect them to be. Maybe worse.”

“If he did take the pictures, he could have given them to someone, sold them. We don’t know if they’ve been in his sole possession all this time. He could have made copies and given them out to a half-dozen different people.”

“Not likely. Someone would have come forward.”

“But possible,” Abigail said. She didn’t wait for Lou to continue to speculate with her. “What about Linc Cooper?”

“He’s home with his family. He should have told us what was going on, but now he has. The FBI was interested in what he had to say. What he did shouldn’t have an impact on Grace’s appointment. It’s just a whiff of scandal. But what she did herself -lying all these years about talking to Chris at her uncle’s, not saying anything about her brother-” Lou shrugged, not going on.

Abigail finished for him. “That could be more than a whiff of scandal.” She pointed to his mug. “Finished?”

“Yeah. Doyle makes lousy coffee. This was better.”

“How’re the boys doing?”

“They seem fine. They know Mattie. They’re not afraid of him, even if they should be.”

She dumped out the last of his coffee and put all three mugs into the dishwasher, closing it up with a thud. “What about weapons? Did you find any guns in Mattie’s house?”

“No.”

“You’re not going to tell me what the murder weapon was, are you, Lou?” “I haven’t in seven years. I’m not today. You know I can’t.”

Withholding that kind of detail was standard operating procedure, but Abigail persisted. “An automatic. There were shell casings. I didn’t know what they meant at the time-”

“Abigail,” he warned.

“It wasn’t a lucky shot that killed Chris. The killer knows how to shoot. He likes guns. If he threw the murder weapon into the ocean, then he got himself another just like it.” She walked around to Lou’s side of the peninsula. “That’s my guess, anyway.”

The state detective ignored her completely. “What are you going to do now?”

“Owen and I thought we’d walk up to Ellis’s.” She smiled with feigned innocence. “I have this thing for delphinium.”

“Mattie.”

Mattie stirred amid the thick evergreens that grew along the cliffs where Doe Garrison drowned, listening in case he’d conjured up the voice whispering his name.

“Mattie Young.”

A ghost?

Chris’s ghost?

He brushed pine needles off him and stood up under the low branches of the prickly balsam firs and spruces. He’d made his way down there before dawn, after a rough night up on the ledge. A state cruiser had purred along the private road just after he crossed it and disappeared into the forest. It wasn’t great timing on his part. It was luck. Pure damn luck.

He heard the rustle of dead leaves and underbrush from his own movements, and he smelled the tang of salt in the air from the ocean just below him.

It wasn’t Chris.

Chris is dead. What the hell’s the matter with you?

“I know you’re here, Mattie.”

That voice.

It wasn’t Abigail, or Owen. Doyle. The people he’d betrayed but who wouldn’t hurt him.

It wasn’t any of them.

A cold serenity came over him. He knew what was happening now. He shut his eyes a split second and pictured himself in the ice and snow of Acadia on a soundless, frigid winter afternoon. His winter photography was some of his finest. He liked the island best on the coldest, clearest, sharpest winter days.

He’d trapped himself along the edge of thirty-foot rock cliffs.

There was nowhere to run. Behind him was the ocean. Ahead of him, a killer.

“Mattie.”

He recognized the voice but refused to look to see if he was right.

He’d had his chances, and now they were done. He had nothing more to do in this life.

He would need a miracle to live out the hour.

“Mattie, what are you doing?”

I’m going to Chris.

I’m going to one of the friends I betrayed.

My best friend.

And he turned to meet his killer.

Abigail stopped at her house to shower, change clothes and clear her head. Owen had agreed to meet her on the steps up to Ellis’s. She needed a few minutes alone-a few minutes to think in the quiet rooms where the man she’d loved and married and lost had lived for most of his short life.

If only the walls could speak, she thought, heading downstairs to the entry, her hair still damp from her shower. She’d pulled on jeans, her good running shoes, a camp shirt and her gun, a.40 caliber Glock. The niceties of jurisdictions and Maine ’s gun laws notwithstanding, she doubted Lou Beeler would object.

She spotted Special Agents Ray Capozza and Mary Steele out on her doorstep and yanked open her front door. “What can I do for you?”

“We thought we’d stop by and see how you’re doing,” Capozza said.

“I’m fine. Just washed my hair. I didn’t blow-dry it-”

Steele rolled her eyes. “It’s a courtesy call, Detective Browning. We wanted to let you know that Grace Cooper has withdrawn her name for the State Department job. No reason stated.”

Capozza stared straight at Abigail, his gaze unwavering, hard-ass. She decided she liked him. “Lying to the police in a murder investigation could have something to do with it,” he said. “She told your husband at Ellis Cooper’s party-the day Agent Browning died-that her brother was down here on the water. She believed that was the case. If she’d told the investigators that fact seven years ago-” He shrugged. “Who knows?”

Abigail opened the door wider. “I’m off to meet Owen Garrison in a minute, but would you two care to come inside?”

Steele shook her head. “We have some loose ends we need to tie up.”

“Let us know if we can be of any assistance,” Capozza said. Abigail believed his courtesy had nothing to do with who her father was. The guy just wanted to help. He winked at her. “See you around, Detective.”