Carla Neggers - The Widow

The front door of the graceful house stood open. He headed up the shaded stone walk. A hummingbird fluttered to a pot of some kind of red flowers, almost as if Doe’s ghost had sent it as a reminder of her.

Owen peered through the screen door. “Hello-anyone home?”

When there was no answer, he pulled open the door and stepped onto the cool tile floor. Since his family had sold the place, he’d seldom been inside, and not just to avoid memories. Ellis was a private man who preferred small get-togethers with family and close friends. The garden party seven years ago had been an aberration, atypical of his nature.

When no one answered, Owen walked back to the kitchen.

Jason stood at the sink, staring out the window at his brother’s gardens.

“Jason? What’s going on?”

The older man didn’t look back from the sink. He said, “Chris suspected there was something weird about Ellis-something beyond eccentric. I never wanted to listen.” He lowered his head, as if in shame. “I accused him once of trailer-trash envy.”

“Jason-”

“I wish I knew what was going on. I wish I’d known all along and had asked the right questions. I thought…” He gulped back a sob. “I thought selling this place made sense. I hoped it would help Ellis-help all of us.”

“Where is he?”

Jason shook his head. “I don’t know.” He placed both his hands on the sink edge and dropped his head down between his arms. “I’m afraid he’s lost in his own obsessions. I’m afraid there’s no way back for him.”

Owen left Jason in the kitchen and quickly checked the living room, the library, and the dining room, but saw no one. He headed down the hall toward the back bedrooms. Not since he was a child had he gone this far into the house. He pushed back memories.

He arrived at Doe’s old room.

Jason came up behind him. “Ellis keeps it locked.”

“Not anymore.”

Owen reared back and kicked the door, splintering it away from the lock on the first try. It bounced open, and he went inside.

The room was as Doe had left it twenty-five years earlier.

The same white throw rugs, the same pink chenille bedspread, the same simple pine furniture.

And there were differences.

Birds, Owen saw. Dozens of stuffed birds stuck up on shelves, hanging from the ceiling. Hawks, eagles, robins, bluebirds, hummingbirds, chickadees.

And guns. They were on display behind a glass cabinet. A rifle, a shotgun, two revolvers and two pistols. Ammunition. A stack of paper targets.

Jason staggered, falling against the doorjamb. “Dear God.”

“Don’t go any farther. We don’t want to touch anything.” Owen put a hand on the older man’s shoulder and steadied him. “We need to get the police in here.”

“What’s he done?” Jason blinked rapidly, his face as pale as death. “My God in heaven. All these years…”

“Ellis was the one in the woods. He could have saved Doe.”

“Believe me, Owen. I had no idea. I knew he was attached to her. But-you know him. He’s always been quiet, introverted. Sensitive. He’s not a predator. He keeps to himself.”

“I wasn’t wrong. There was someone in the woods that day. Doe was upset because of Ellis. He didn’t save her because he knew he could never have her-or because he was afraid she’d expose him.” Owen heard the steeliness in his own voice. “He must have come on to her. God knows what he tried to do to her-did do. And she rejected him. She wasn’t upset because of Grace.”

“Dear God.”

“It all makes sense now. Look at this room, Jason. Your brother was twenty-five, and he was abusing the trust of a fourteen-year-old girl.”

Jason looked as if he’d vomit. “I had no idea it’d gone this far. Owen, my God, what’s Ellis done?” He gripped Owen’s arm. “What-has-Ellis-done?”

“We need to find him. There are cops crawling all over this island looking for Mattie Young. I’ll call-”

“No.” Jason straightened, steadier on his feet. “I’ll call.”

Owen thought of Abigail out there with the man who’d killed her husband. “Do it,” he said.

“Where are you going?”

“I’m going to find Abigail.”

Doyle cleaned up Mattie’s makeshift campsite in his garage. The lab guys had carted off what they needed and dusted for prints and scraped up anything that looked as if it might have an eyelash or some other kind of DNA in it. He figured Mattie hadn’t cared about covering his tracks. He’d cared about getting through the night without freezing to death, starving, dying of thirst or getting shot.

Sean and Ian had promised to stay within earshot. Doyle could hear them bickering in the backyard. He’d kept them home and pulled himself off the investigation. He was a police chief in a small town and accustomed to knowing the people he dealt with, but this was different. This was Mattie Young sleeping in his damn garage. This was a guy he’d known since kindergarten messing up under his nose.

And it was Chris.

Doyle stuffed a half-filled trash bag into a plastic garbage can, replaced the lid and bit back something between a sob and a growl. He’d been mixed-up and out of sorts ever since Mattie-and it was Mattie-had come after Abigail with a drywall saw.

“Mattie-hell. What were you thinking?”

He wasn’t thinking, just as he wasn’t thinking when he’d broken into Chris’s house seven years ago and hit his friend’s wife on the head then, stolen her necklace, ran.

But he hadn’t killed Chris.

Doyle just couldn’t see that one. Mattie was a chronic screw-up and a whiner, but even when he was drunk, he wasn’t a murderer. He wasn’t someone who’d lay in wait for his target and take him out with a single shot the way Chris’s killer had done.

Not his problem now. He’d promised to take the boys into Ellsworth for pizza and a movie.

Lou Beeler’s car careened into his driveway.

Doyle called for his sons. They came running and stood at his side as the state detective got out of his car.

“It’s Ellis Cooper,” Lou said.

“Ellis?”

“We’re going after him. You have a place to leave your sons?”

Sean slipped his hand into his father’s and tugged on it. “We can stay next door with Mrs. Casey. Me and Ian will be fine.”

Doyle looked down at his son. “Ian and I.”

The boy grinned at their old refrain. “That’s what I said.”

They’d be okay, his boys. Doyle nodded to the state detective. “Give me a minute to get these guys settled and I’ll ride out there with you.”

Ellis Cooper held a gun to his nephew’s head. Linc was pale but very still, his blue eyes wide with fear but focused on Abigail as she stood three yards from the two men on the edge of the cliffs, her Glock drawn.

If she’d realized what was happening sooner, she’d have shot Ellis before he ever saw her. But she hadn’t.

“Drop your weapon, Abigail.” Ellis’s voice was calm, just as it had been earlier that morning on the phone to her. “If you don’t, Linc is dead. I’m an expert marksman.”

She had no doubt he was telling the truth. “One of your many secrets.”

He inhaled sharply through his nose. He liked being in charge. “Do it now. ”

“Okay, I’m putting the gun down-”

“Toss it in the water.”

Hell. She nodded, opening her fingers from her grip on the weapon. “I’m tossing it now.” She reached her arm out and pitched her Glock over the cliff. “Done. Now let your nephew go. You have me. That’s enough for you to get away.”

“So noble.”

Linc sputtered in a mix of anger and terror. “Ellis…Jesus…”

“Focus on saving your own skin.” Abigail kept her voice calm. Reasonable. Any vulnerability on her part would only increase Ellis’s sense of control over her. He needed to see he had one option and one option only, and that was not to fire his weapon. “Go, Ellis. Disappear. Don’t waste your time on these games.”