The Widow - Carla Neggers [100]
And he was the one who’d had to tell her.
She put her notes away and headed outside, locking her front door behind her. She saw the fat robin back up on its branch and felt a surge of hope that she couldn’t describe or even understand.
Halfway up the driveway, she veered off onto the path through the woods that led to the cliffs where Doe Garrison had drowned. Chris had taken her out there once, but this had never been one of her favorite spots. The transition from woods to cliffs and ocean was too abrupt—downright scary, as far as she was concerned. She wasn’t much on vertical drops unless there was a rail or a window.
Owen, she knew, wouldn’t mind at all.
One of the differences between them, she thought, picking up her pace.
They’d assumed Mattie took the picture of Doe’s body on the dock, after his and the Brownings’ failed attempt to rescue her. But he was just seventeen then, a boy still himself.
Would a teenager snap a picture of a dead girl—a pretty fourteen-year-old he knew?
And why keep such a picture?
Why leave it for her brother?
Mattie wasn’t in the shot. That suggested it was most likely his work.
Abigail paused in the shade of a massive spruce, its lower branches dead sticks poking out of its gnarled trunk. Despite the ravages of the harsh conditions of its exposed spot, the tree had survived.
The angle of the shot of Doe and her traumatized family and friends meant it must have been taken not from a boat or farther out on the dock, but from the parking lot above, perhaps from a car or truck.
She shut her eyes, seeing the horror on the faces of the Garrisons—Owen, his parents, his grandmother. And Jason Cooper, his arm around his young daughter.
Who would take such a picture?
Chris and his grandfather were there, on the sidelines, grim and sad, but not a part of the Garrison and Cooper circle.
Mattie wasn’t there. Definitely. She’d remember.
And Ellis.
Abigail opened her eyes and felt a warm breeze sweep in as if from the center of the island.
Ellis Cooper wasn’t in the picture.
Lou Beeler had never warmed up to Grace Cooper. People said she was nice enough. Smart. Well-connected. But she’d always struck him as a woman wrapped so tight, once she started to unravel, that’d be it. It’d be like unrolling a mummy and finding nothing inside but bits of bones and little piles of dust.
For all her success and riches, she was a woman with no center. Lou was convinced she didn’t really know who she was.
He was relieved not to see any FBI agents parked in the Cooper driveway.
Grace called to him from the front porch. “Lieutenant Beeler,” she said, her voice cool, collected. “I imagine you’re looking for me, aren’t you?”
He walked up the steps, noting that the hanging plants looked parched—missing Mattie Young, no doubt. “Mind if I have a word with you?” he asked.
“Of course not.” She sat on a wicker settee with a little puff-ball of a dog in her lap. But her face was pale, her eyes distant, even as she smiled with an emotionless grace. “Please, sit down.”
Lou shook his head. “I don’t have that much time. I wanted to ask you, Ms. Cooper—” He paused, watching her reaction. She knew why he was there. “When Chris Browning came up to your uncle’s house after Abigail was attacked and spoke to you, why did you tell him your brother was down at the old Garrison foundation?”
“I—I—” She made a choking sound, unable to go on, and fell back against the settee. Her knees went slack, and the little dog slipped down her legs, then jumped off her lap and scampered up onto a nearby rocker.
Lou didn’t relent. “Did you know your brother was on the grounds?”
“No.” She recovered her poise. “I didn’t know. I didn’t lie to Chris.”
“Ms. Cooper—Grace, why did you think your brother was down at the old Garrison place?”
But she couldn’t answer, and Lou realized that she didn’t have