“Car’s locked?” Abigail asked.
“Yeah. Keys are in the house.”
At least Mattie-if the boys were right and he’d been there-hadn’t bashed in a window and made his bed in the car. Doyle walked around to the hood, where Abigail pointed to a blue tarp that had been spread out on the concrete floor, on top of it a rolled-up car blanket and a camp pad that he’d forgotten they even owned.
“Looks as if he helped himself to your pantry,” Abigail said.
Doyle saw what she meant-a box of Wheat Thins, a pop-up can of pears, a package of Oreos. Everything looked empty. What Mattie hadn’t eaten, he must have taken with him.
And it was Mattie. Doyle knew he didn’t have to say anything. The smell, the strands of long hair on the makeshift pillow, the hair tie-enough proof for both him and Abigail.
“He must have slipped into the kitchen while I was out looking for him last night,” Doyle said. “He doesn’t have a key, but he’d know where I keep mine. I never thought…”
“Don’t beat yourself up. Staying here might have saved his life.”
“At least I didn’t have any beer in the house.” But as she walked past him, Doyle grabbed her arm. “About what I said earlier. I didn’t mean half of it.”
She had the grace to smile. “Which half?”
When they got back outside, Sean and Ian bolted away from Owen, and Doyle scooped them up, one in each arm. He nodded to his friend. “Thanks.”
“Anytime.”
But Owen had his eyes on Abigail. “It was Mattie?”
She nodded without comment. She’d pulled back inside of herself, protective, focused on the job she was there to do. “I’ll go call Lou,” she said, moving off toward the house.
Doyle hadn’t seen what was happening before, but he damn well did now. Here was another friend falling for Abigail Browning. “She doesn’t trust any of us right now,” he said to Owen.
“Would you?”
“Probably not.”
“Dad,” Sean said, “what’s going on?”
Doyle knew push had come to shove. He had to tell his sons as much as he could about Mattie, about Chris. All of it. He set them back on the driveway, could feel their tension and curiosity in their slim frames. But he addressed Owen. “If you want to check the area and see if you can pick up Mattie’s tracks, that’d be a help.”
“No problem,” Owen said, and when he started for the garage, he had the look of the experienced search-and-rescue specialist he was.
Mattie clung to wet moss and a protruding root on the steep hillside next to the zigzag steps eccentric Edgar Garrison had carved into the Mt. Desert granite a century ago.
His head pounded behind his eyes and cheeks. His teeth ached, his sinuses reacting to the strong smells of evergreen, moldy pine needles and pinecones. Hiking back out there from Doyle’s garage, sticking to the woods as much as possible, avoiding the cops, had been pure torture.
He’d had little sleep. Stretched out on his tarp, scared out of his mind, he had lain in the dark garage last night, listening to his cop friend snoring through his open bedroom window. Worse than a damn freight train.
If Katie had been there, Mattie might have gone into the house and begged her to help him figure out what to do. She was levelheaded. She could stand back from the situation and think. He didn’t know what Doyle would have done. Shoot him on the spot?
And the state cops. Hell. He was a freaking marked man.
Everyone thought he’d tried to kill Abigail. They thought he had killed Chris.
And then there was Linc’s money. The blackmail.
“Fuck the money,” Mattie whispered.
He crept along the slippery, treacherous, near-vertical hill to a crevice where he and Doyle had hid as kids, spying on the Garrisons. It was just a little inset in the granite. It reminded him of Tolkien and hobbits.
As he huddled against the rock ledge, Mattie pulled a cheap green camouflage rain poncho he’d lifted from Doyle’s garage around him. He had a jug of water and some chocolate. He hoped to have a plan well in hand before he starved to death or died of thirst.
He shivered against the cold rock. He didn’t dare light a cigarette.
“God,” he whispered, “what I wouldn’t give for a hot shower.”
He debated going up the steps and knocking on Ellis’s door. Hey, I’ll do some yard work for you if you’ll let me use your shower and keep your mouth shut.
But who knew with Ellis? He was discreet. Otherwise, no one would trust him, and in his work off-island, trust was everything. He was also a control freak who’d fuss about two Japanese beetles on his rosebushes instead of being happy there weren’t hundreds. Mattie had no idea how Ellis had reacted to his yardman’s predicament. Was he sympathetic to the police and determined to be helpful? Or was he more worried about having to handle his gardens by himself?
Didn’t matter, Mattie thought. If he tried to move now, he’d never make it. He’d fall and crack his head open. He was exhausted and so damn confused, and there were just a few inches between him and a straight drop down to one of the crazy stone landings. He half expected to hear police sirens and helicopters, or see some big, nasty police dog drooling over him.
A drink would calm his nerves. He didn’t care about “working the program” or “one day at a time”-any of it. He’d reform when his life wasn’t so complicated.
He was facing too many unknowns, and was up against too many different agendas of smart, powerful people.
You’re the damn yardman.
And he was a slimeball. Mattie had betrayed his friends’ trust in him. He’d let alcohol and entitlement and resentment fuel his anger and screw up his judgment.
His eyes drooped and shut, and he felt his body go slack.
Would he fall off the ledge in his sleep?
Would the search dogs find him?
I don’t care.
Ah, Chris.
Did you lie there bleeding in the tide thinking I’d killed you?
Did you, my friend?
CHAPTER 28
An uneasy silence had settled in Abigail’s back room, which had finally been swept and wiped clean of any police presence. She’d ripped out the last of the old wallboard.
So many questions, she thought, tugging a red bandanna off her hair and shaking off the plaster dust.
Owen tied up a trash bag of the last of the debris and carried it back to the kitchen. Abigail watched him. He was a rock, as solid a man as she’d ever known. But how could she fall for him?
How could she fall for him here?
MattieYoung had camped out in his childhood friend’s garage. Where was he now? Doyle hadn’t known he was there. Lou Beeler obviously believed the chief’s explanation-with Katie gone for most of the summer, he and the boys didn’t use the garage on a daily basis. It wasn’t as if Doyle’d had time in recent days to mow the lawn or trim the roses. He simply hadn’t needed to be in the garage for anything.
As far as anyone could tell, Mattie had slipped in there for shelter. If he’d thought about knocking on Doyle’s door and turning himself in, fine, but he hadn’t done it.
He could have gone anywhere from Doyle’s house. Into Acadia National Park, onto the ocean. He could have slipped into someone else’s garage or broken into a vacant summer home, or he could have crawled under a rock somewhere.
He’d avoid the police and anyone who’d recognize him. Although news of his disappearance had hit in the media, tourists on Mt. Desert would be relatively insulated from such goings-on. Mattie could have walked past hikers and campers, and they wouldn’t necessarily pay attention or recognize him as the man the police were looking for.
Abigail walked out to the porch. She and Owen had driven around, trying to spot Mattie. They’d checked his party spot in the old foundation. Nothing.
It would be a warmer, more humid night than last night, but cool for July, very cool in comparison to Boston. Far out on the water, she could see the lights of
expensive yachts. Did one of them belong to Jason Cooper? Had he chucked his family’s problems and gone off to enjoy his wealth, be alone?
She became aware of Owen’s presence behind her, on the other side of the screen door. “I’ve changed in the past seven years,” she said without looking around at him. “I haven’t wanted to admit it. I keep thinking that if I did, I’d also have to acknowledge that Chris might not want me the way I am now.”
The door creaked open and shut. Owen brushed away a mosquito floating in front of her face. “His death pulled you up off the path you were on and hurled you back down onto a different one. But you’re the same Abigail.”
“I don’t blame Doyle Alden and the Coopers for resenting me.”
“You’ve had every right to push for answers.”
“I’ve done more than push for answers. Every time I come here I’ve reminded them of Chris. I won’t let them forget him.” She pushed her hands through her hair, her short curls more pronounced with the increased humidity. “I don’t even have to do anything. I’m his widow. That’ll never change. It’s like having a circle drawn around me wherever I go that keeps people at bay, that reminds them I lost my husband on our honeymoon.”
Owen placed a hand on her shoulder. “You’re not keeping me at bay.”
She smiled. “Maybe I should. Hell. I can’t believe I’m telling you all these things about myself. I suppose if I’d remarried sooner…”
“I’m glad you didn’t.”
She looked back out at the dark water, the yachts gone now. “For seven years, I’ve thought if I’d just gone with him on those errands-if I’d taken a walk on the rocks or stopped in at Ellis’s garden party-that he’d still be alive. Now, I’m not sure that’s true. I’m not sure I could have done anything to keep him from getting killed.”
“The break-in, the attack on you-”
“An opportunity. Something the killer could capitalize on, but not the cause of Chris’s death.” She kept staring into the darkness, her eyes adjusting, picking out stars, seeing outlines and silhouettes of rocks and trees. “He didn’t tell me what was going on.”
Owen didn’t respond.
“It wasn’t about who I was. If I’d been a homicide detective seven years ago, he still wouldn’t have told me. He wasn’t keeping secrets from me so much as just not talking. It was his personality.” A firefly sparked in the trees to the side of the house, where the Alden boys had hidden just a few days ago, convinced they’d seen a ghost. “And what did I know of his relationships with the people on this island? I knew him for eighteen months. We weren’t even married a week.”
“Abigail…”
She seized Owen’s hand, intertwined her fingers with his. “I don’t want to be alone tonight.”
“You don’t have to be.”
She raised his hand to her lips. “Not here. I can’t stay with you here.”
A nightmare woke her. Lying in the dark, Abigail didn’t know where she was.
She heard an owl outside on a nearby tree and felt the cool breeze from an open window and the warmth of the soft blanket over her, and she remembered the slick heat of tangled limbs and thrusting bodies, hers and Owen’s, as they’d made love long into the night.
She reached across the bed and touched his shoulder, thinking he was asleep. But his hand covered hers. She edged closer to him. She felt as if she’d known him forever, and yet there was so much more to find out about him, to the point that he might well have been a stranger.
“You don’t know anything about my real life,” she whispered. “I investigate homicides in Boston. I’m not just the widow out here on the rocks. And I know nothing about your real life.”
“There’s time for that.” He rolled onto his side, pulling her to him. “Plenty of time.”
She ran her fingertips over a scar on his shoulder and upper arm. “Where did this scar come from?” She eased her hand over his chest, unable to see, just to feel the firm flesh, another scar. “And this one…and this one…?”
“I don’t remember where half my scars came from. I don’t think about them.”
She rolled him onto his back and climbed on top of him, straddling him. “You don’t think about them, but you remember how you got them.” She scraped her fingernails along his hips and sides, feeling him shudder with desire under her. “Every single one of them.”
She lifted herself above him, and when she came down again, he was inside her, his arms around her as she drew down hard onto him, pulling him in as deeply as possible. She moaned, sinking her chest onto him, her orgasm instantaneous, racking her to her core.
He whispered her name, thrusting into her, shuddering with his own release.
The cold night wind gusted over their heated bodies, but neither made a move to pull the blanket back over them. Abigail laid her head on his chest and closed her eyes, hoping once she fell asleep again, there’d be no more nightmares.
CHAPTER 29
The morning was warm enough for Abigail to walk barefoot on Owen’s smooth wood floors and open up the doors to the deck to let in the breeze and the sounds of the ocean. She wasn’t tempted to ask Owen to build a fire in the woodstove. She made coffee, feeling the sunlight streaming in through the tall windows. Her scrapes and bruises were better, her body loose and liquid after their night of lovemaking.
When the phone rang, it didn’t occur to her to answer it. Owen, seated at a bar stool at the kitchen peninsula, picked up. “Hello?” He rose, his eyes telling her everything as he handed her the receiver. “For you.”
Her caller.
Owen came around the peninsula and stood next to her.
She nodded to him, then said formally into the phone, “It’s Abigail Browning.”
“Detective. Good morning.” The voice had the familiar eerie muffle of the previous calls.
“I’m not in the mood for your games. What do you want?”
“Prickly this morning, aren’t you?”
“Just tell me what you want.”
“I want you to get back to Boston alive, Detective Browning.” The voice on the other end remained strangely toneless, impossible to recognize. “You need to be careful in the coming days. Very careful.”
“Why? What do you know?”
He ignored her. “How far will your husband’s friends go to keep their secrets?”
“How far will you go to keep your secrets? Everyone has secrets. What are yours?”
“Any secrets I have are innocent ones. Your husband-”
“Chris wasn’t talkative. He kept other people’s secrets to himself. He was the kind of man people liked to have as a friend.” Interrupting her caller had been a risk, but the status quo-being patient-hadn’t gotten her anywhere. Abigail licked her lips, listening for background sounds, anything that could help her identify the person on the other end of the line. “If you’re trying to make me think any less of Chris because of what he didn’t tell me when he was alive, it’s not working.”
“I just want to help you.”
“No, you don’t. If you wanted to help me, you’d tell me who you are. You’d meet me.”
“You don’t call the shots, Detective.” An edge had crept into the caller’s voice, the first sign of any real emotion. “Haven’t you figured that out yet?”
The coffeemaker hissed. Strong-smelling coffee dripped into the glass pot. Abigail felt a prickly sensation on the back of her neck. “Does that mean you’re calling the shots?” she asked mildly.
“It means you need to be careful.”
“How did you get this phone number?”
“Easy.”
“How did you know I was here?”
“Even easier, Detective. You’ve become quite the slut, haven’t you?”
She didn’t let his jibe get to her. “Then you’re on the island. You’re watching me. We’ve interacted-”
“Don’t waste your time trying to figure out who I am.” There was no hint of worry in the eerily calm tone. “Think
about the secrets people are keeping. Watch your back.”
Abigail didn’t move as she stood in front of the peninsula, paying careful attention to his every word.
“Promise me you’ll be careful, Detective.”
She could feel Owen’s gaze on her and turned to him, saw his set jaw, his narrowed eyes, and knew he was thinking what she was.
“Detective?”
“You’re the killer.”
“Don’t bother tapping your phone lines.” The voice was crisp now, efficient. “I won’t call again.”
Once he hung up, Abigail could have smashed the telephone on the rocks. Owen put a small pad and a pen on the counter in front of her. She started to speak, but stopped herself and quickly wrote down every word of her conversation with her anonymous caller.
With her husband’s killer.
Then, still without speaking, she called Lou Beeler’s cell number, got through and reported what had just happened.
The senior detective didn’t comment on her whereabouts. “You’ve got coffee on yet?”
“It’ll be ready in two minutes.”
“I’ll be there in five.”
“Five?”
“I slept on Chief Alden’s couch last night.”
Abigail didn’t blame him. She told him she’d be waiting, and hung up, noticing Owen scanning her notes on the call. His gray eyes connected with hers. “I’m sorry,” he said and walked out to his deck, leaving her alone in the kitchen.
She waited until the coffee finished brewing, then took two dark brown pottery mugs from an open shelf and set them on the counter. She filled the mugs and headed outside with them. The air was warm, but the deck was cool under her feet. She saw that Owen had gone down to the rocks. She debated leaving him alone there-at least putting on shoes before Lou arrived-but stepped off the deck and onto a sandy path, following it onto a sprawling, rounded boulder.
Mindful of her bare feet and the hot coffee, Abigail jumped to a smaller rock, making her way to Owen’s chunk of granite just above the tide line. She handed him one of the mugs. “I suppose I’d be better off in the wrong shoes than barefoot.”
The Widow Page 23