“She ran down to the cliffs by herself?”
“We thought she was on the steps. At least I did. I know her parents did, too. Owen realized she was gone and walked down to the cliffs to see if he could find her.” Grace’s voice faltered. “He arrived in time to see her slip and fall.”
“You’re sure she slipped?”
Grace swung around but didn’t get up. “Of course she slipped! Do you think Owen pushed her?”
Abigail said nothing.
“You think Doe jumped? That’s outrageous. She was fourteen. She was full of life. No, she didn’t jump.” Grace yanked her feet out of the water and stood up, red from her toes to her ankles, her pants soaked, much of her sweater too. “I can’t believe you’d suggest such a thing.”
“I didn’t suggest it. I just asked a question.”
“Well, it was an outrageous question.”
“Maybe so. Did you go down to the cliffs that day yourself?”
She shook her head, her anger not taking root with a topic so tragic. “No. Chris and his grandfather heard Owen from their boat when he finally was able to yell for help. Mattie was with them. There was such a flurry of activity.”
“Did someone stay with you the whole time?”
“My mother did. She and my father were in the middle of their divorce, but she was there.”
“Do you remember anyone not being there, especially before you all heard Owen calling for help?”
Grace went very still. “No, I don’t. Abigail, what’s this all about? It’s well-known that Owen believed he heard someone in the trees. He was eleven-he couldn’t take in what happened. He felt guilty. There’s no reason, of course, but sometimes these things have very little to do with reason.”
“I’m just trying to figure out why the picture of his sister ended up on his doorstep.”
“Because some twisted son of a bitch put it there.”
Abigail nodded. “There’s that.”
“Dear heaven.” Grace shivered, and she seemed all of a sudden to notice her dripping sweater and cold feet. “I can’t start out on the water wet. I’d freeze in this wind.”
“Grace, you know your brother-”
“I heard the beginning of your conversation with my father.” She tried to button her sweater, then abandoned the effort. “That’s why I came out here. Fight or flight, you know.”
“You care about Linc very much,” Abigail said.
“Yes, I do.”
“Enough to lie for him when Chris asked you where he was?”
Grace lifted her chin, and Abigail could see the older woman’s self-control assert itself-could see glimpses, finally, of the intelligence and drive that had helped land her the State Department appointment. “What are you talking about?”
“I got pictures the other day, too. You told the police you never talked to Chris when he stopped up at your uncle’s house after I was attacked. But you did, didn’t you?”
“There’s a picture of us?”
“Yes.”
“I told the police I saw him. If the picture doesn’t show us actually talking-” But she stopped herself, then went on in a half whisper. “He asked me where Linc was.”
“What did you tell him, Grace?”
She looked down at her blue-red feet. “I told him Linc was at the old Garrison house foundation. That’s where I thought he was. I didn’t lie. Not to Chris.”
Something in her voice penetrated the wall of professionalism Abigail had tried to put up to steel herself-to give herself objectivity. She sat back on the bench, its wood warming in the midday sun. Bob O’Reilly had warned her to leave any questioning to the Maine CID detectives. And yet here she was.
“Linc wasn’t down at the foundation,” she said. “There was another picture in the packet on my doorstep. It shows him at the gate in your uncle’s yard. It was taken around the same time as the one of you and Chris.”
“Linc-” Grace seemed confused. “My brother was in the gardens?”
“Sneaking a martini.”
“But I thought he was…” She didn’t go on.
“Why did you think Linc was at the old Garrison foundation?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Did you know he was the burglar everyone was talking about that summer?”
“Suspected-I’ve never known it for a fact. I still don’t, no matter what Linc’s told anyone else.”
“My husband knew,” Abigail said, not making it a question-not wanting, she thought, to make it a question.
“He never said. But I assume he did know, and I assume he confronted Linc and gave him one more chance. And Linc-” Grace shrugged off her sweater and balled it up in one hand, turning back to her kayak. “I have to go.”
“Grace, Linc wasn’t the one who broke into my house and attacked me and stole my necklace. Chris knew that. I could see it in his face. He knew who’d done it, and he knew it wasn’t a troubled thirteen-year-old boy.”
“You sound so confident.”
“I’m not confident about much that happened that day, but about that-” She nodded. “Yeah. I’m confident. Chris wanted to know where your brother was to make sure he was safe. All this time, Grace, have you believed your brother killed Chris?”
She shook her head. “No. Never.”
Grace abandoned her thought and grabbed the line on her kayak, dragging the lightweight boat farther up onto the grass. She dropped it and tossed her sweater into the open cockpit, then threw her head back, staring into the sky as if she might see Chris’s ghost.
Finally, she turned to Abigail. “I just believed I sent your husband to his death.”
And Abigail knew what she was hearing in Grace’s voice now. She stood up, put a hand out to her. “Grace,” she said. “You were in love with him.”
But she pretended not to hear. She gave her kayak a little kick. “I’ll come back for you later,” she said to it, then squinted at Abigail. “I’m so glad you weren’t hurt any worse than you were yesterday. I know you’re very good at taking care of yourself, but I’d hate to see anything happen to you. We all would.”
She fled up the path through the roses.
Abigail didn’t follow her. Instead, she walked back into the water, the tide higher now, deeper. She spotted a bit of bright color that didn’t fit with the grays and browns of the bottom and reached one hand into the water, digging among rounded stones and rough sand until she freed it.
It was a sliver of purple seaglass, its edges rounded and softened by the salt water and sand. She rinsed it off and held it up to the sun, imagining it was from a bottle Chris had tossed into the sound as a boy. She could see him out in his grandfather’s boat, exploring the island’s nooks and crannies, pulling lobster traps from the depths, dreaming of becoming an FBI agent.
Had he ever dreamed of the woman he would marry?
She cupped the seaglass in her hand, then threw it as far out into the water as she could.
She would find out who killed him.
On her way back from Somes Sound, Abigail stopped at the diner where she’d had her fried shrimp roll with Lou Beeler and Doyle Alden the other day. It seemed like a hundred years ago. She ordered another one to go. She hadn’t eaten with O’Reilly before he headed back to Boston, after making her promise to stay in touch and behave and not do anything stupid-a whole long list.
She took the steaming roll down to the picturesque harbor and watched the working boats and the pleasure boats come and go on what was a stunningly perfect Maine summer afternoon.
The harbor was also one of the few places with cell phone service.
“Abigail,” her father said when he picked up. “Is everything all right?”
“Was Mattie Young an FBI informant?”
Silence. Her question wasn’t altogether the stab in the dark it felt like now that she could hear her father’s voice. Lou Beeler had hinted at something her father knew. And Chris and Mattie-the tension between them before the wedding. The pieces
were coming together.
“Maybe we don’t have a good connection,” she said. “Let me ask again. Was Mattie Young an FBI informant?”
“It’s complicated,” her father said.
“No, it’s not complicated. It’s a yes or no question. Yes, he was. No, he wasn’t.”
“You should talk to Lieutenant Beeler.”
“I did.” She could hear the edge in her voice. But if anyone would know, it was FBI Director John March. Her father. “Have you talked to him?”
“You’re a homicide detective yourself, Abigail. You understand there are details of an investigation that you keep to yourself.”
“Lou, yes. But you? You’re not on this case. Or are you?”
He didn’t answer right away. “Mattie was Chris’s informant.” There was no hint of apology in her father’s tone. “I didn’t find out until after Chris was killed.”
“And you didn’t tell me.”
“Lou Beeler knew.”
And that was enough as far as her father was concerned. The lead investigator had the information, even if Abigail didn’t. “Chris never said a word,” she said.
“He wouldn’t have. In his position, you wouldn’t have, either. He cut Mattie loose in the weeks before you two got married. He had other things on his mind, Abigail. He was on his honeymoon. There was no need-”
“Apparently there was a need since he ended up with a bullet in his gut, bleeding to death-since he was murdered.” She sucked in a breath. “Damn it.”
“Remember, you weren’t a homicide detective seven years ago.”
“Yes, I know.” She set her shrimp roll on the dock rail, half-covered in seagull droppings. “It’s a lot to absorb. What kind of information did Mattie provide?”
“To be honest, I think Chris was just trying to help a friend, to give him a sense of purpose, keep him busy.” She could hear the emotion in her father’s voice, not a common occurrence for him. “I can get on a plane now and be there in a couple of hours.”
“I know, Dad. Thanks. I’m okay. I just wish you’d told me about Mattie a long time ago.”
“I couldn’t.”
“I know that, too.”
After she disconnected, she fought off a seagull interested in her shrimp roll and watched a battered lobster boat circle into the harbor with a man and a boy going through their routines after a day at sea. She wanted to call to the boy to keep fishing. Be satisfied. Don’t go away and fall for the daughter of the future director of the FBI.
“Your husband had secrets.”
That Linc Cooper was their burglar. That Mattie Young was his informant.
That Grace Cooper was in love with him.
In time, Abigail wondered if Chris would have told her-if they weren’t secrets so much as things he just hadn’t gotten around to sharing with her. They’d been focused on their wedding and honeymoon, their future together.
But they hadn’t had time.
CHAPTER 27
Doyle read a chatty e-mail from Katie three times before he shut down his computer and headed to the kitchen to take some pork chops out of the freezer. His wife had told him in great detail about what she was doing in England -the kinds of things she was learning, the people she’d met, the sights she’d seen. She wrote like she talked. They hadn’t called each other much since she’d left, with the time difference, their busy schedules, the cost of international calls.
As much as he missed her and would have wanted her counsel-her support-if she’d been there, Doyle didn’t want to tell her about what was going on at home, not when there was nothing she could do about it but worry.
The boys liked to instant-message her right after dinner. Doyle had never figured out the whole IM thing.
He looked out the window over the sink. Sean and Ian had gone off on their bikes. He’d told them not to go near Mattie’s house, but otherwise what could he do? Keep them inside all the time? Make them afraid of their own shadows?
The search for Mattie continued. If he was still up in the woods and hadn’t found food and water, he risked dying of exposure, thirst. Doyle had envisioned that scene a million times over the years-Mattie Young, dead in a pile of leaves, dead on the rocks, dead in a car crash. Better than him killing someone else while driving drunk, or so Doyle had always told himself.
He left the pork chops on the counter and walked out to the living room. He’d have the chops in the oven before they could breed bacteria. So far, he’d managed not to poison himself and the boys.
Abigail Browning stood on the other side of his screen door at the front entrance. He hadn’t heard her drive up. Then he saw Owen behind her, both of them grim-faced. Doyle’s heart lurched. Had something happened to Sean or Ian? Katie? He immediately told himself to calm down. It’d been the kind of day for grim faces.
“Come on in,” he said.
“Hey, Doyle.” Owen stepped past Abigail and pushed open the door. “We saw the boys on their bikes. They look like they’re having a great time.”
“They know we’re looking for Mattie. The rest-I haven’t told them.” He held up a hand, nipping any well-intentioned protests in the bud. “I’m not planning to, either, until I have to.”
“Your call.”
Abigail glanced around the country-style room. “I haven’t been in here in a few years. You and Katie have done a nice job with the place.”
“Thanks.” Doyle pointed to the couch. “Have a seat-”
“I can’t stay,” she said. “Mattie?”
“No sign of him since we found his bicycle. I left the station an hour ago. Lou was still there. The FBI guys wanted to talk to Linc Cooper.” Sighing heavily, Doyle sank onto his easy chair. “I don’t get Mattie. I guess I never will. He never could get his shit together. He had his chances, just like the rest of us, but he was always looking for an angle. It was Mattie first. Always Mattie first.”
“We still have a lot of unanswered questions.”
He didn’t even get on her for saying “we,” as if she had an official role in the investigation.
“You can’t know what it’s like. Either of you. I have this picture in my head of Pa Browning taking Mattie, Chris and me out on the boat on a freezing cold day long after the tourist season had ended. We had the best time. And now-hell. Pa and Chris are gone. Mattie might as well be.”
Abigail had that relentless look Doyle had seen in her before, and she didn’t indulge him in his moment of self-pity. “You knew Mattie was an FBI informant?”
He threw his head against the tall back of the chair and thought about throwing them both out and watching television. Just not think about his work, his life, for a half hour.
Owen said quietly, “I didn’t know.”
Doyle sat forward. “‘FBI informant’ is too strong. Mattie kept his ear to the ground and told Chris what he heard. Mostly it wasn’t much of anything, but he happened onto a drug smuggling operation into Canada. The feds were on to it, but Mattie had names, a meeting place. It helped. So, Chris threw some money his way. It was all on the up-and-up.”
“Then Mattie started drinking again, and Chris pulled back.”
“Yeah. That’s pretty much the story.”
“I don’t want ‘pretty much’ the story, Doyle. I’d like to hear the whole story.”
“All right.” He put both hands on the arms of his chair just to keep himself from launching to his feet and strangling her. “That’s the whole story. Better?”
She didn’t react to his sarcasm. “And Grace Cooper. Did you know she was in love with Chris?” But when Doyle’s eyes flickered to Owen, Abigail sucked in a breath and swore. “Damn it. You all knew.”
“He was never for her,” Owen said. “We all knew that, too. And it was over a long time ago.”
“No, it wasn’t.” Doyle got heavily to his feet. “It was for Chris. Yeah, he never had a romantic interest in Grace. But for her? She’ll never get over him. Who knows, maybe he’d still be alive today if he’d fallen for he
r instead.”
Owen grabbed his friend’s arm. “That’s enough. You’re upset. Don’t make matters worse.”
Abigail had gone pale, which, in the mood he was in, Doyle considered something of a victory. But she didn’t raise her voice when she spoke. “If you thought Chris should be marrying someone else, why did you agree to be his best man?”
“Because he asked me, and he was my best friend. He thought I’d come around one of these days and see what he saw in you.”
“Another of his little secrets,” she said without bitterness.
A bike clattered out in the driveway, and one of the boys yelled, “Dad!”
Sean, Doyle thought, surging for the door, even as Ian called out to him. “Dad, Dad, come quick! It’s Mattie!”
Moving like a bolt of lightning, Owen shot out the front door before Doyle could get there, Abigail on his heels. He took the steps in one leap, then charged across the lawn to his driveway and detached one-car garage, where his sons were tangled up in their bikes.
Ian stood up, his knees skinned. “We tripped. We were running-” He sobbed. “I thought Sean saw the ghost!”
Owen knelt down, getting at eye level with Sean as the boy pointed at the garage. “Mattie was in there! I know he was. He made this bed…”
“We’ll check it out,” Owen said, calmer than Doyle would have been. “Did you see him?”
Ian shook his head, Owen’s presence steadying him. “He’s not here.”
The garage didn’t have an automatic door. Doyle didn’t protest when Abigail went around to the side door, still half-open from when the boys were in there. “Sean and Ian didn’t have to unlock the door,” he told her. “Lock’s busted. It’s been busted for weeks. I haven’t gotten around to fixing it.”
She nodded, going inside. He raised the main door, entering the garage a half second after she did. Katie’s sedan filled up most of the space. On various hooks and shelves were tools, supplies, snow shovels, sleds and pieces of junk that she insisted she’d use one day for various craft projects.
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