The Widow

by Carla Neggers

  Doyle decided not to tell him about the boys and their ghost. “Just curious. Sure you don’t want to come in?”

  “I should get back. Say hi to the boys for me.”

  After Lou left, Doyle locked up his car and headed inside. The house wasn’t the same without Katie. He didn’t know how he’d manage for six weeks without her. The place needed vacuuming. He had to take out the trash, clean the bathrooms, mop the kitchen floor. Normally he and Katie and the boys split the housework, but he could see now he hadn’t been doing his fair share.

  He didn’t need to deal with Abigail right now. She had a way of getting on his last nerve.

  With a little luck, she’d get assigned to a hot case in Boston and forget about the anonymous call. Let the state and local police investigate. Stay out of it.

  Doyle snorted, noticing he’d left the coffeepot on that morning.

  What was he thinking?

  Luck just never seemed to be on his side.

  CHAPTER 4

  Abigail left Boston early Monday morning, and by the time she took Route 3 over the Trenton Bridge onto Mt. Desert Island, she ran into a wall of fog. Not pretty fog, either. It was slit-your-throat depressing fog. She had her coffee can of journal ashes on the front seat next to her. She’d almost dumped them at a rest stop between Augusta and Bangor, just to be rid of them. It was as if every memory of her life with Chris was in there, condensed, trying to pull her inside with them and draw her into the past, keep her there forever and never, ever let her go.

  She stopped in Bar Harbor at a streetside deli-restaurant and bought containers of clam chowder, lobster salad and crab salad, and two huge peanut butter cookies. Droopy-eyed tourists griped about the fog. “It could last for days.”

  Well, Abigail thought, climbing back into her car, it could.

  When she arrived at her house on the southern end of the island, the fog, if possible, was even thicker, encasing the tall spruce and pine trees in gray, obscuring any view. Water, rocks and sky were indistinguishable.

  The front steps were slick with condensation, and the air tasted of salt and wet pine needles.

  Her 1920s house was too small, too simple, for today’s coastal living standards. If she put it on the market, it would sell for its location. A new owner would almost certainly bulldoze it and build from scratch.

  Perhaps just as well.

  She unlocked the door and, with the damp air, had to push hard to get it open. Inside, her house felt like a tomb. Cold, dark, still. Midafternoon, and it might have been dusk.

  Flipping on a light in the entry, Abigail walked into the kitchen and dropped her keys on the counter, the silence not comforting, only making her feel more alone.

  The ashes called to her.

  She could hear Chris’s voice.

  “It’s not a palace, but I wouldn’t give up this place for the world. I love it here, Abigail. I don’t want to live here. But I don’t ever want to sell it.”

  He’d wanted her to fall in love with his boyhood home-not the house so much as the island, its breathtaking beauty, its simplest pleasures. She didn’t need to have the same memories he had, he’d said.

  “We’ll make our own memories.”

  She spun on her toes and ran back outside, slipping on the steps and the stone walk, sinking into the soft gravel of the driveway as she went around to the passenger side of her car. She ripped open the door and grabbed the coffee can.

  “We’ll raise our kids out here.”

  Without thinking, she ducked under the dripping branches of a pine tree on the side of the house, emerging on the strip of grass that passed for a yard.

  She made her way through the gloom along a footpath worn into the damp grass and rocky dirt, following it to the tangle of rugosa roses and the tumble of granite boulders that marked the water’s edge. No marshes and bogs here, no gentle easing from land to ocean. Two centuries ago, the Brownings had parked themselves on the rockbound island and carved out a living for themselves amid Mt. Desert’s gales, salt spray, acidic soil, impenetrable granite and incredible, austere beauty.

  Abigail tucked her coffee can under one arm. Beneath her, the Atlantic was gray and glassy, barely visible in the fog. She heard seagulls but couldn’t tell how far away they were. Sucking in a breath, she plunged down the rocks, careful with her footing on steep, potentially slippery sections. As her familiarity with her stretch of coast kicked in, she moved faster.

  The tide was out, and she dropped down from a rectangular boulder onto smaller rocks covered in seaweed and barnacles, cold, gray water seeping over them. She could feel the dampness in her bones now. When she’d packed up for Boston last night, after Scoop and Bob had left her with her notes and files and mess to clean up, she’d imagined dumping her ashes on a crisp, clear Maine afternoon.

  She crept out to the edge of a rock slab-the water was deeper here, deep enough for the ashes. Holding the coffee can in front of her, she peeled off the plastic lid.

  “Abigail?”

  “Oh, my God!”

  Startled, she spun around at the voice, real or imagined, and the coffee can went flying, ashes spilling over her, the rock, the water. The can banged off granite and into the gray ocean.

  “Chris?”

  She shook herself. What was wrong with her, calling out to her dead husband?

  Squatting down, she reached for the coffee can, but it floated farther away. Determined, she lurched forward-too far forward. She dropped her left hand onto the rock at her side to regain her balance, but a cluster of sharp barnacles dug into her palm. She jerked her hand back and started to jump up, but slipped, tipping over into the water.

  She shuddered at the shock of cold water and scrambled right back up onto her rock. She was soaked, cursing. Freezing. But as she climbed up onto a boulder above the tideline, she slipped again, banging her knee.

  A man materialized out of the fog above her and lowered his hand to her. “You’re wearing the wrong shoes.”

  “The wrong-” She looked up at Owen Garrison, handsome as ever, dry. “I nearly drown, and you’re worried about my shoes?”

  “Now that you didn’t drown, yes. You’re going to slip and slide all the way back up to your house in those shoes.”

  They were five-dollar slip-on sneakers she’d picked up for the summer. Bright red. Fun. Not intended for tramping through the wilds of Maine.

  She took Owen’s hand, noticed the warmth of his firm grip as he helped her up onto his boulder. If she didn’t accept his help, she’d only land up in a worse predicament. Maybe break an ankle.

  She had to be practical.

  “You startled me,” she said. “That’s why I fell.”

  He shrugged. “Sorry. Did you cut yourself on the rocks?”

  “I scraped my hand. It’s no big deal. The cold’s numbed it.”

  She was shivering. She hadn’t expected the ash-dumping to turn into an ordeal, and she still had on her shorts and T-shirt from her trip. Even without the dunking, she’d have been cold in the relentless fog.

  Owen wore jeans and a lightweight fleece the color of the fog-and, she noticed, of his eyes.

  “Want me to fetch whatever it is you dropped?” he asked.

  “It’s just a coffee can of ashes.”

  “From your woodstove?”

  She shook her head. “I brought them up here with me-”

  “Abigail…”

  “Oh-no, no. They’re not human ashes.” ButAbigail had no intention of telling him they were ashes of seven years’ worth of journals she’d burned yesterday in a grill. “They’re just from something I burned. I can fetch the can later.”

  Owen, however, had already jumped lightly down to the wet slab below the tideline. He scooped up the coffee can and, in two long strides, was back up on the dry boulder with her-not breathing hard, not wet. She did notice he’d gotten a glob of ashes on his hand and fleece.

  “Thanks,” she said, taking the can from him. “I should go back and put on some
dry clothes. That water’s damn cold.”

  “About fifty-five degrees.”

  She winced. “Now I’m really freezing. What’re you doing out here?”

  “I heard you and decided to investigate.”

  “But you didn’t know it was me,” she said.

  “No, I didn’t.”

  He wasn’t explaining any further, obviously. Abigail started past him, slipped, cursed and felt him clamp a hand on to her upper arm. She gritted her teeth. “I see what you mean about my shoes.”

  “Hikers fall all the time because they underestimate how slippery wet rock can be.”

  “I’m not a hiker. I was just out here doing a cleansing ritual-never mind.” She sighed at him. “You’re going to hold my arm until I reach grass, aren’t you?”

  “Unless you want to keep falling.”

  “Or I could take my shoes off. Except then I’d be even colder.” She smiled. “I have tender feet.”

  He hadn’t released her arm. She wasn’t wearing her weapon, thankfully. It was locked up in her car. All the panic and urgency she’d felt about getting rid of the ashes had dissipated with the shock of the cold water and her sexy Maine neighbor. Now, she just wanted warm clothes and a bowl of hot chowder.

  Because her shoes were less than useless wet, Owen ended up half-carrying her up the rocks.

  “I’ve dripped on you,” she said when they reached the path.

  “Not a problem. When did you get here?”

  “An hour ago.” If that.

  He nodded to her Folgers can. “And you had to dump your ashes right away?”

  “I need the can for paint. I’m going to be working on the house.”

  “Ah.”

  She ignored his skepticism. “I didn’t realize you were in Maine.”

  “I’ve only been here a few days. Fast Rescue is opening a field academy in Bar Harbor. We hope to have it up and running this fall.”

  Abigail remembered her caller’s words.

  “Things are happening on Mt. Desert.”

  Owen Garrison and his nonprofit outfit starting a field academy was something that was happening. Had her caller read about it in the paper, on the Internet? Heard about it from a friend?

  And what possible difference could Owen’s presence and a new training facility make in the investigation into Chris’s murder?

  “Why Maine?” she asked.

  “Makes sense. Katie Alden is perfect to be the director.” He touched Abigail’s shoulder. “You should get into those dry clothes.”

  The combination of his tone and her surroundings-her fatigue, her raw emotions, the fog-had his words curling up her spine. She backed away from him, sliding in the grass. She finally kicked off her shoes, scooped them up and continued on barefoot, turning when she reached the bottom step of her porch. “Thank you for your help.”

  “Anytime.”

  “I’ll be more careful about my choice of shoes next time.”

  She ran inside, not stopping until she reached her one bathroom upstairs. She grabbed a towel and started to dry off, but caught her reflection in the mirror.

  Her forehead and cheeks were smeared with soot.

  So much for playing the experienced, confident Boston homicide detective.

  As she dried her face, she burst into laughter.

  On his way back along the rocks from Abigail Browning’s house, Owen watched a seagull plunge into the fog and disappear, and he thought of his long-dead sister.

  Doe had wanted to become an ornithologist.

  “Don’t you love that word, Owen? Say it. Ornithologist.”

  Although her given name was Dorothy, their grandmother-the inimitable Polly Garrison-had nicknamed her Doe because she was nimble and had hair the color of a deer’s coat.

  And innocent eyes, Owen thought.

  Such innocent eyes.

  When she fell into the Atlantic, slipping on the wet cliffs through the woods on the other side of the Browning house, farther up the headland, her deer-colored hair had swirled in the waves like seaweed.

  Owen had been about twenty yards behind her, and when he ran to the edge of the rock, the tide had pulled Doe farther out. Helpless to save her, Owen had tried to scream for his parents, anyone, but no sound came out. He’d had no whistle. Doe had run down from their summer house, crying, and he’d followed her, hoping to console her so that she’d pull herself together in time to go hiking with him after lunch.

  Help had arrived in the form of the Brownings in their lobster boat. But they were too late. Everyone was too late.

  Forcing himself to exhale, Owen pulled off his fleece. His skin was clammy, and the closeness of the fog was making him claustrophobic. It was his one weakness in the work he did-he didn’t like feeling closed in. He’d learned to control his reaction and focus on the job at hand.

  That’s the problem, he thought. He didn’t have enough to do. His mind was free to go off on tangents.

  And being around Abigail Browning always got to him.

  He stood on a coarse granite slab above the water, above the narrow crevice where he had found Chris Browning on a cold, clear July dawn, the sky streaked with shades of lavender and pink.

  Owen had found the shell casings first-up at the remains of his family’s original house. Even now, in the impenetrable fog, he could see the silhouette of its skeletal chimney, sunken and crumbled but, still, partially intact. The perfect spot for Chris’s shooter to hide.

  Retreating back through the woods to the private drive would have been easy. A car concealed in the woods. A bicycle. A friend on the way. Who’d have noticed?

  Chris was an FBI agent. He knew the island better than most.

  For too long, no one had considered he might be in trouble.

  His dark-eyed wife, a bump on her head, her legs unsteady, had been drawn to the spot of her husband’s murder as if by instinct, as if Chris, settled now in death, had called her there to end her uncertainty.

  “I’m going to find out who killed my husband.”

  Owen had never doubted Abigail’s words. Even as she’d dug her fingers into his arms, as he’d held her back from going to her husband, further contaminating the crime scene, he’d believed her determination and conviction were for real.

  She wouldn’t stop. Not Abigail March Browning.

  Now, she was back on the island.

  He wasn’t fooled by her soot-smeared face and slippery shoes or her dunk in the ocean.

  Abigail was a tight-jawed, hard-assed detective.

  She wasn’t in Maine to fix up her house and dump ashes. She was there for the same reason she was always there-for the same reason she hadn’t sold her house in the past seven years and put Mt. Desert Island behind her altogether.

  To find Chris’s killer.

  Owen turned away from the water and walked up to the path that would take him back to his house. In the shifting fog, spruce branches and the old foundation above created eerie, unnatural shapes.

  No wonder the Alden boys thought they’d seen a ghost out here.

  Maine was full of ghosts. Owen just had no intention of letting them run him off.

  CHAPTER 5

  I can see his eyes as I pull the trigger.

  I thought he’d be too far away, but I can see them. Wide open. Defiant.

  Knowing.

  He says his wife’s name, but only I am close enough to hear him above the waves and wind.

  “Abigail.”

  He calls her name because he loves her. Not because he believes she’s the one who has just shot him.

  He knows it’s me.

  That bothers me sometimes, still.

  Other times, I’m glad.

  Yes, it was me, you arrogant bastard.

  As I pull the trigger a second time, I think only that finally I am free, finally I am safe, finally I have done what I needed to do.

  I don’t think that his wife will hound me forever.

  I don’t think by pulling the trigger I have sen
tenced myself to another kind of prison and torture.

  Seven years.

  Abigail will never quit. I could hear it in her voice the other night, on the phone. While she was having dinner alone on her wedding anniversary. Those solitary annual dinners are her tradition.

  I picked that night to call on purpose.

  I’m not a monster. I don’t kill indiscriminately.

  I kill to solve problems that cannot be solved another way.

  I kill because I’m left no other option.

  I kill without pleasure.

  But I also kill without remorse.

  Abigail.

  He loved her.

  She loved him.

  What did Chris know of love?

  What does Abigail know?

  She will know of love in the end.

  That I promise.

  CHAPTER 6

  “L isten up, Linc. I’m giving you this one chance. That’s it.”

  Linc Cooper looked through the tall spruces at the Atlantic Ocean below him, the sun chasing away the last of the fog on the bright, cool morning. He was on a vertical zigzag of stone steps that Edgar Garrison had carved into the granite hillside behind his summer house almost a hundred years ago. They used to lead to an old-fashioned teahouse. Now the steps led to the house the Garrisons had built after fire had destroyed their original “cottage” down on the waterfront.

  The new house, with its blue-gray clapboards and black shutters, was supposedly smaller and more restrained, but Linc, who’d never even seen pictures of the Garrison’s original Maine home, had never liked it.

  He had always loved playing on the steps as a little kid, if only because no one noticed him out there. His uncle Ellis considered the house his own, but, in reality, the deed belonged to Linc’s father, Jason Cooper.

  Everything, Linc thought, was in his father’s name. His father was clever, responsible and ruthless. His younger half brother, Ellis, was passive by nature and gentle in temperament, not unambitious but more measured in his wants and needs.

  “I don’t give second chances. Don’t make the mistake of thinking I do.”