Carla Neggers: The Widow

“You took a huge risk, coming here to steal it. Were you afraid I’d find it when I started knocking out walls?”

“Not just that. I used it to put more pressure on Linc. I wanted more money. I wanted to believe he was responsible for what happened to Chris. Because I wouldn’t have broken in if he hadn’t been burglarizing. I’ve been mixed-up for a long time.”

“What about the money Linc paid you?”

“I returned it. He says-” Mattie seemed embarrassed. “He says he’ll insist it was a loan, but I was too drunk and stupid not to realize it.”

Abigail stood up. “Mattie-the pictures-”

“I took the ones at Ellis’s. I didn’t know he had them. I snapped them with a disposable camera after I broke in here.” He flushed. “I was trying to give myself an alibi.”

“The police found the pictures on Ellis’s computer. But the one the morning Owen found Chris’s body-”

“That was Ellis,” Mattie said.

“Then he was there. Watching us.” She’d need time to get used to that one. “Thank you for returning the necklace.”

He nodded to the bag. “There’s something else in there.”

She helped open the bag and lifted out a photograph in a simple black frame.

It was of Chris as a boy out with his grandfather on their lobster boat, laughing, loving life. Mattie must have been on shore, just a boy himself.

“Thank you.”

But she realized he was gone.

Scoop and Bob came out onto the porch with a platter of lobsters. Bob sighed at her. “You’re trying to keep the State of Maine from prosecuting him, aren’t you?”

She knew he meant Mattie, and nodded.

Scoop scowled. “Someone comes after me with a drywall saw, I’d want his butt in the slammer.”

“Look at it this way, Scoop,” Bob said, grinning, “if not for the cut on that leg, who knows if Abigail and Batman ever would have gotten together?”

“Yeah.” Scoop winked at her. “There’s that.”

“Forget it, guys. Owen’s off to Guatemala.”

Bob slung an arm around her. “Not forever.”

Abigail struck a match to her pile of charcoal and lighter fluid and stood back just in time to avoid getting her eyebrows singed from the two-foot flames.

One of these days, she’d get the knack for lighting a damn grill.

She’d been back on the job a month. The work felt good.

Being alone in her bed didn’t.

But she’d needed the weeks on her own. Her routines had helped her turn the last corner on her past. She and Bob and Scoop had sat up late many nights going over the details of the case. Her housemates never tired of helping her put the pieces together, until they became like a worn puzzle that she could do blindfolded.

She had answers. Most of them, anyway. Understanding, she realized, never would come-she never wanted to live in a world where she could understand someone like Ellis Cooper.

“You shouldn’t be out here barefoot. Hot coals and all.”

Owen. She spun around, grinning at him, trying not to let on her surprise at seeing him-her delirious pleasure. “Yikes, man, you look even more rugged here in the city than you do up in Maine amid all that granite.”

“Does that mean I’m invited to stay?”

“I’m grilling hot dogs. Normally I don’t eat hot dogs, but the Red Sox are on a winning streak.”

He smiled. “That’s Bostonian logic.”

“Bob’s making potato salad. Scoop’s doing up a bean salad. And we’ve each got a pint of Ben & Jerry’s in the freezer. We’re going to bring them all out at once and see who picked what.” She slung her arms over his shoulders. “And, yes, you’re invited.”

“Good, because you’re invited to a Polly Garrison function.”

“Uh-oh.”

“Uh-oh is right. Do you own a dress?”

“Of course-”

“A gown, I mean.”

“A gown?”

“It’s a formal. A fund-raiser for Fast Rescue here in Boston. She wants her rich friends to cough up big-time. She’s here-”

“I don’t suppose she’d like to join us for hot dogs?”

“Knowing my grandmother, she would, but I’m not telling her she’s invited.”

“When is this fund-raiser?”

“Tomorrow night.” He slipped his arms around her. “Which gives us tonight.”

“My apartment-it’s not even as big as my house in Maine.”

“Does it have a bed?”

“A double bed. I can’t fit a queen-size mattress in my bedroom.”

“Then we’re all set. The rest will sort itself out.”

Abigail was a hit at the fund-raiser, as Owen knew she would be. He sat with her the next morning in her tiny yard, drinking bad coffee while she strapped on gun and pager and whatever else she carried as one of Boston’s finest.

“Austin, Boston, Maine, my life, your life.” She grinned at him. “We’ll figure it out, won’t we?”

“We will.”

“I love you, you know.”

He winked at her. How many times had he told her he’d loved her in the past two days? Not nearly enough. “I love you.”

“I like hearing that. What’re you going to do while I’m off catching bad guys today?”

“Buy you a new multimedia system. The bed works fine. As you know.” He sipped more of his coffee, which tasted as if it’d been boiled in her gritty grill. “But your multimedia system has to go. Your TV has rabbit ears.”

“That’s an exaggeration.”

Bob and Scoop yelled from their balconies, “No, it’s not.”

Abigail started arguing with them, and Owen grinned, stretching out his long legs and feeling at home.

Carla Neggers lives in rural Vermont with her husband and their two children. Since completing her first novel at the age of twenty-four, she has written over forty books and has appeared on the New York Times and USA Today bestseller lists.