The Widow - Carla Neggers [108]
“Doyle,” Owen said. “Are you okay?”
His eyes filled with tears, but his gaze never left his sons. “I keep going back over what I could have done. I was the responding officer after the break-in seven years ago. If I’d realized it was Mattie—if I’d known Chris was on to Ellis…”
“Ellis manipulated Mattie. Seven years ago, and this past week.”
“Mattie’s responsible for his own decisions.”
“But Ellis played on his weaknesses. Chris knew. He didn’t realize Ellis was a marksman. The police had found where Ellis practiced in the woods behind his house here, and at a private shooting range near his home in Washington. He’d kept his skill to himself. Chris guessed that Ellis stood by and watched my sister die, but that’s different from ambushing someone.”
“If he’d asked me to come down here with him—”
“Then you’d both be dead.”
Doyle was silent a moment. “Maybe so.” He pointed at the cloudless sky. “Hey, a heron.”
Owen saw it, a giant blue heron, ungainly looking and yet so graceful as it flew up the rockbound coast toward the cliffs.
“Herons were always one of Chris’s favorites,” Doyle said.
“One of Doe’s, too.” When the bird disappeared, Owen got to his feet. “I have to go. You and the boys are welcome to stay here as long as you like.”
“Where are you off to?”
“Guatemala,” he said. “There’s been a massive mudslide.”
“I thought you were supposed to be resting.”
Owen shrugged. “I’ll rest another time.”
“How’re you getting to Guatemala?”
“I’m flying to Austin and meeting my team there. We’ll head out together.”
Doyle squinted up at him. “Abigail know you fly your own plane?”
“Abigail has thick files on all of us, Doyle.” Owen grinned, clapping a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “She knows more about us than we know about ourselves.”
Bob and Scoop were in her kitchen making dinner—boiling lobsters, which she hated to do—whenAbigail saw Mattie limp up from the spruce trees down by the back porch. He looked thin and colorless, but his hair was clean, pulled back in a neat ponytail, and his bruises, the blossoms of purples and yellows on his arms, were beginning to heal.
“Don’t get up,” he said. “I’m not staying. I just want to leave you this.” He placed a small silver gift bag on her bottom porch step. “I know I can’t make up for what I’ve done to you.”
“I haven’t asked you to.”
“Yeah. Anyway, I’m sorry.”
He started to walk away. Abigail climbed down the steps. “Wait—stay.”
Nervous, eager, he watched her open the bag and take out a white rectangular box. She lifted the lid, and inside, nestled on soft cotton, was her necklace, the chain repaired, the pearls restrung.
“I told the jeweler there was a cameo pendant,” Mattie said.
“I have it.”
“When I grabbed the necklace with the saw, I broke the chain,” Mattie explained. “I got a plastic bag in Doyle’s garage and put all the pearls and the pieces of chain in there. It’s the one okay thing I did, because if they’d been loose in my pocket when Ellis knocked me in the water…” He didn’t finish the thought. “Well, I just wanted to get your necklace back to you.”
“You took a huge risk, coming here to steal it. Were you afraid I’d find it when I started knocking out walls?”
“Not just that. I used it to put more pressure on Linc. I wanted more money. I wanted to believe he was responsible for what happened to Chris. Because I wouldn’t have broken in if he hadn’t been burglarizing. I’ve been mixed-up for a long time.”
“What about the money Linc paid you?”
“I returned it. He says—” Mattie seemed embarrassed. “He says he’ll insist it was a loan, but I was too drunk and stupid not to realize it.”
Abigail stood up. “Mattie—the pictures—”
“I took the ones at Ellis’s. I didn’t know he had them. I snapped them with a disposable camera after I broke in here.” He flushed. “I was trying to give myself an alibi.”
“The police found the pictures on Ellis’s computer. But the one the morning Owen found Chris