They nodded simultaneously but said nothing.
“Are you and your dad visiting Owen?”
“Just us,” Sean said. “Dad’s at a meeting.”
“Is Owen behind you?”
Ian gasped, but Sean shook his head. “We’re on a mission,” he said in a serious tone.
Abigail didn’t want to make light of whatever they were up to. “What kind of mission?”
“Sean.” Ian tugged on his brother’s arm. “We can’t tell her. Dad’ll kill us.”
Sean was silent a moment, then said, “Ian and me are just practicing our nighttime navigation skills.”
“That’s your mission?” she asked.
Both boys nodded.
“How did you end up here? Was that part of your mission?”
Ian took a step forward, and in the light from her house, Abigail saw that he was pale and nervous. Because of her? She could see tears forming in his eyes.
“Boys,” she said gently, “what’s going on?”
Before they could answer-or lie-pine branches moved behind them, creating shadows on the grass, and Sean and Ian shot toward Abigail, ducking behind her with a terror that was both immediate and real.
“It’s just me,” Owen said, ducking out into the open. “Sorry if I startled everyone.”
Given his experience, stealth would come almost naturally to him at this point. Abigail slipped her arms over the boys’ shoulders as they stood on either side of her. “Why don’t we all go inside for a minute? You can inspect my paint job while I make hot chocolate. Then you can warm up before you go on your way.”
Owen eyed the boys, unamused. “You two told me you were going upstairs to read.”
“We did,” Sean said. “We just-”
“I can’t have you stay with me if you’re going to sneak out.” Owen shifted to Abigail, easing up slightly. “They went out a window on a bedsheet. I was lighting a fire in the woodstove. I never heard a thing.”
“They told me they were practicing their nighttime navigation skills,” she said, not bothering to hide her skepticism. She gave their shoulders a quick squeeze. “But I think there’s more to their story, right, guys?”
Ian broke away from her and appealed to Owen. “I told Sean-”
“You’re responsible for your own decisions.”
“But he made me!”
Sean snorted. “I didn’t make you do anything. You wanted to go.”
“I didn’t think the ghost was real.” Ian had a panicked note in his voice now. “I thought-I thought-”
“Whoa, slow down,” Owen said.
Abigail turned Sean to face her and bent down so that she had eye contact with him. “Tell me about the ghost, okay? Everything you can think of.”
His face had gone deathly white, his lower lip trembling, but he didn’t respond.
“We heard it,” Ian said, crying now. “We heard the ghost!”
Abigail didn’t shift her gaze from Sean, who nodded. “We heard it breathing.”
“Where?” she asked.
“In the ruins.”
“The ruins?”
“The old foundation,” Owen said. “That’s where you heard someone the other night, too, isn’t it, boys?”
“Yes,” Sean said.
“Might it have been an animal?” Abigail asked. “A fox or a squirrel maybe?”
The older boy, his color only marginally improved, shook his head. “It was human. It was…we think it was…”
Chris, she thought.
She put a hand on Sean’s shoulder. “Do you boys think you heard my husband’s ghost?”
A tear dribbled down his cheek. “We had to be sure. The other night-we were pretty sure that’s who it was. Now-” He wiped his tear with the back of his hand, took a quick breath. “It has to be.”
Abigail straightened and glanced at Owen, who looked pained, not only for the frightened boys in his charge, she thought, but for her. “I’m sorry. They have active imaginations.”
“Maybe,” she said, “but they heard something out here.”
“Yes, but it wasn’t a ghost.”
She didn’t care. “Wait in the house. I’ll go take a look. Then I can drive you all back to your place.”
“That’s not necessary,” Owen said quietly. “The boys and I can investigate on our way back.”
Abigail shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
“Then we’ll go together.”
She could see he was as determined as she was. The tension between them seemed to have helped steady the boys. She sighed. “All right. Let me get a flashlight.” She smiled at him. “Don’t worry-I’ve got on the right shoes.”
Nature was slowly, but inexorably, reclaiming the land where Owen’s great-grandfather had built his summer place almost a hundred years ago, no doubt never imagining that a killer would one day hide in its remains and lie in wait in order to commit murder. Most of the charred rubble was long removed. Now, trees and brush grew in the sunken chunks of foundation, and only parts of the original stonework could be distinguished from the surrounding landscape.
Owen kept the boys close to him. Their talk of a ghost had kicked the cop in Abigail into gear. He watched her push ahead on the path through low-growing wild blueberry bushes and junipers.
Feet-flat-on-the-floor Abigail Browning didn’t seem the type to believe in ghosts. So, what did she think she’d find out here?
Obviously she had something on her mind, Owen thought as she squeezed between a fir tree and a six-foot section of chimney that had broken off its base. She stabbed her flashlight beam into the dark.
“What does she see?” Ian asked, taking Owen’s hand.
“I don’t know. Abigail?”
She visibly relaxed. “Well, well. I like to keep an open mind, but I’ll bet ghosts don’t smoke cigarettes and drink beer.” She shifted her flashlight, taking in more corners of the little hideout and then pointed the beam back at Owen and the boys. “Come see.”
Owen let Sean break off from him and run ahead. Ian looked up at him for a cue, and he nodded, the younger boy immediately pulling his hand free and scooting after his brother.
Using her flashlight as a pointer, Abigail explained the scene to the boys. “Someone used that rock over there as an ashtray,” she said. “See the cigarette butts? And there. A squished empty pack of Marlboros.”
“I can still smell the cigarettes,” Ian said.
“Did you smell smoke when you were out here?” she asked.
Sean shook his head. “No. Look at those beer cans. How many of them are there?”
“Let’s count them. One, two, three-”
“Eight,” Ian said. “There are eight!”
Owen walked on the dark path behind them, shifting into a steady rhythm. He’d hiked in Acadia with Linc Cooper earlier that day, but Linc had gone inside himself, trudging along a mountain trail, preoccupied and unwilling-perhaps unable-to explain what was on his mind. To be twenty and that caught up in his own demons didn’t seem right to Owen. But if he’d skipped the hike, he might have been less preoccupied and caught the boys sneaking out the window, sparing Abigail a trek out to investigate a ghost.
He stood behind her, noticing the shape of her back, hips. She kept herself in good physical condition. He said, “Seems someone had himself a party out here.”
“More than one party, I’d say.” She gestured into the shadows with her flashlight. “There are more butts and beer cans over there.”
“That’s what we heard?” Sean snorted in disgust. “Some drunk?”
“We don’t know whoever it was got drunk,” Abigail said. “It’s tempting to jump to conclusions, but we don’t have all the facts. Anyone you know smoke Marlboros and drink Budweiser?”
Mattie Young.
Owen could see Abigail had already considered Mattie as a possibility, if not a likelihood. The boys shook their heads. They knew Mattie, who’d grown up with their parents, as well as anyone, but they wouldn’
t pay attention to what he smoked and drank.
Without warning, Abigail put her hand on Owen’s upper arm and smiled at him. “I’m not taking any chances of falling in front of you again,” she said as she stepped back from the chimney, then jumped lightly back onto the path, in no more need of a steadying hand than he was. She returned her focus to the boys. “What night did you first think you heard this ghost of yours?”
Owen answered, coming up behind her. “It was Sunday night.”
She nodded. “Do you think whoever was out here heard you? Were you talking to each other, making noise playing on the rocks or anything?”
“Oh,” Sean said, as if just figuring out what she was asking. “Well-yeah, we made noise. But when we heard someone up here, we tried to be quiet.”
“What about tonight? Do you think our partier realized you were out here? Were you trying to be quiet and sneak up on him?”
“We were trying, but it didn’t work.”
Sean was calmer, Abigail’s steady, pragmatic questions having what Owen suspected was their intended effect-to get information and, at the same time, to help the boys to see the scene from her point of view.
“Maybe whoever it was just didn’t want to be seen,” Abigail continued. “Even if it was someone you know.”
“Like who?” Sean asked.
“Talk to your dad. See what he says.” She brushed at a mosquito in front of her face. “This is a beautiful spot, but I’d bring my bug spray next time.”
“The mosquitoes are bothering me, too,” Ian said.
“I’m finished here. You guys need me to walk you back? You can borrow my flashlight-”
“I have one,” Owen said, producing a small flashlight from his back pocket.
She grinned at him. “Always prepared.”
“Let us walk you back. You’re the one out here alone.”
“That’s not necessary.” But she tilted her head back, studying him in the near-darkness. “All right. You guys can all walk me home. Let’s get moving before I lose another pint of blood to these mosquitoes.”
Since she was the one with the gun, Owen wasn’t sure who was escorting whom, but his flashlight was more efficient than hers, and he knew the rocks better than she did.
She let them take her as far as the pine trees where she’d caught Sean and Ian hiding.
“We’re sorry, Mrs. Browning,” Sean mumbled, not waiting to be asked.
“Sorry for what? I like having company. Next time you’ll definitely have to come in for hot chocolate. And it’s Abigail. Not Ab, either. Or Abbie. Just Abigail.” She winked at both boys, adding in a conspiratorial whisper, “But you might want to apologize to Owen about the bedsheet thing.”
They’d all but forgotten that one and turned to him, wide-eyed. “Are you going to tell Dad?” Ian asked.
Owen grinned. “Depends how much work I can get out of you two before he shows up. Of course, you could always read those books-”
“We’ll read,” Sean said.
His brother nodded. “We’ll read all night!”
Abigail laughed, and as she started into the trees, Owen called to her, “If you need us, give a yell.”
“I will.” She glanced back at him. “And the same here. If you need me, give a yell.”
They were, after all, neighbors.
On the way back across the rocks to his place, Sean and Ian peppered Owen with questions about Abigail and what she was doing out here by herself, and why wasn’t she married-and why was she a detective?
“Sorry, guys,” Owen said. “I don’t know all that much about Abigail.”
A true statement, as far as it went. And as long as he was being honest with himself, he admitted he’d like to change that.
The boys ran up onto the deck and back into the house.
Owen lingered out in the cool night air. He did want to know his neighbor across the rocks better.
He had for a long time.
CHAPTER 10
Mattie Young jammed his shovel into a two-foot hole he’d dug and hit rock. He laid the shovel next to him and got down on his hands and knees, digging into the hole with one hand, but he couldn’t find the edges of whatever he’d just struck.
“It’s ledge,” he said.
Ellis Cooper peered into the hole. “That’s not ledge. That’s just a rock. Dig it up. The hole’s not deep enough.”
Mattie wanted to take the shovel to Ellis’s head, except Ellis had always treated him well. Mattie knew his nerves were frayed, and he hadn’t been sleeping well. Drinking too much, smoking too much. And Linc. The money. The tension of whether the kid would crumple under the pressure and tell someone about the blackmail.
I should have demanded the ten grand all at once.
For the Coopers, ten thousand dollars was a minuscule amount. Even Linc could manage to scare up that much without drawing too much attention to himself-if he tried. He just needed the right motivation.
For Mattie, ten thousand dollars was a fresh start.
A new life.
“We need at least another eight inches,” Ellis said, pulling on his doeskin work gloves, not that he’d be doing any of the work. “You’ll try, won’t you?”
Mattie nodded, rancid-smelling sweat pouring down his face and back, dampening his armpits. He could taste the booze and cigarettes from last night. He’d scared the hell out of Doyle’s sons, but what the hell was he supposed to do? Even half in the bag, he’d known he didn’t want Sean and Ian to see him. They’d tell their father-and Owen. Possibly Abigail, too. He didn’t need anyone’s scrutiny right now.
Let them think he was a ghost.
He’d only brought enough beer to keep himself from dehydrating after a long day digging and hauling and snipping for the Coopers. He knew his limits, never mind what anyone else said. He’d hoped the cigarettes would help with the mosquitoes. He didn’t like the smell of bug repellant.
Angling the blade of his shovel, he jabbed it into the hole and carved around the edges of what turned out to be a rock, not ledge. But it was a big damn rock. Mattie dropped the shovel again and dug both hands into the hole, trying to get his fingers around one end of the rock. He didn’t wear gloves. His hands were so callused that new nicks and scratches didn’t bother him.
Ellis leaned over him. “Use your shovel for leverage.”
Ignoring him, Mattie got his hands under an edge of the rock and squatted down, putting his legs into it as he pulled hard, grunting. That end of the rock came loose, but it was too big for him to just pry it up out of the hole. He sat back on his butt, catching his breath.
Ellis was still hovering. Mattie wiped his mouth with the back of his dirt-encrusted hand. “You can go do something else,” he said. “This is going to take a while.”
“That’s all right. I’ll stay here in case you need me. I don’t mind.”
Mattie almost burst out laughing. Ellis, help him? The guy liked to work in his gardens, but he only did jobs that amused him. Digging up rocks wasn’t one of them.
Getting back up onto his knees, Mattie grabbed his shovel and stabbed it onto the other end of the rock, dislodging it, too. Using both hands and shovel, he managed to get hold of the entire hunk of granite and heave it out of the hole and onto the pristine grass.
“That’s a good-looking rock.” Ellis rolled it over with his foot. “Clean it up. I might find a use for it.”
How ’bout I bash you over the head with it?
But Mattie coughed, nodding, then sat on the grass, his muscles jittery, his head pounding. Maybe he’d had one more beer than he should have last night.
“The hole’s deep enough now,” Ellis said. “We need to get that hydrangea into the ground as soon as possible. It’s late in the season for transplanting shrubs. I don’t want the roots to dry out in this sun.”
What would you do, boss man, if I barfed into your hydrangea hole?
“I’m on it,” Mattie said.
Ellis nodded, satisfied. “Don’t stra
in yourself.”
The guy meant well, Mattie reminded himself as he dug back into the hole. Ellis provided steady work and often made up stuff for Mattie to do on slow days, just to be sure he had a paycheck. That he was a perfectionist came with the territory. Occasionally, Mattie fitted in small jobs at other places on the island, but he’d never encountered anyone more dedicated, more passionate about his gardens than Ellis Cooper. That he could give them up without a whimper was hard to believe.
On the other hand, Ellis would never let anyone know if he was displeased with his big brother Jason.
He might not even be able to admit his displeasure to himself.
Jason had the power, the reputation, the charisma, the money. Ellis had the talent, the vision, the discretion, the empathy for others. He had done well. He was a trusted Washington consultant-he’d advised his niece on her rise to power within very tough circles. He’d never married, but he was sociable, always on everyone’s guest list. In Maine, he liked showing off his gardens.
If Linc confided in anyone, it wouldn’t be his father-it’d be his uncle or his sister.
Grace.
Mattie reached for the hydrangea, whose roots were in no danger of drying out. He couldn’t think about Grace Cooper. Not now, not ever again.
He thought about his money instead, and his new life.
Think what you could do with twenty grand.
Linc could get another ten, easy. And he would pay it, given the right leverage.
Abigail…
Mattie dropped the hydrangea into the hole, which, because of the size of the rock he’d just dragged out of it, was actually too big. If Ellis noticed, he was keeping his mouth shut.
And that’s what you should do, Mattie thought. Keep your mouth shut. Mind your own business.
“I’ll get the hose,” Ellis said.
Mattie nodded. “Thanks.”
He gulped in air as he shoved dirt into the hole and patted it around and under the hydrangea roots. If he didn’t get control of himself, someone would be shoving dirt around his dead body, burying him in the cold, rocky ground.
Who the hell would miss him?
Not a soul. And for damn good reason.
Abigail took the last three steps of her porch in a single leap and ran into the back room to grab the phone. “Hello-”
The Widow Page 7