The Widow - Carla Neggers [11]
“They don’t fight that much,” he told Owen, then gave a tight smile as he opened the car door. “Katie’s doing. They’re more likely to act up around me.”
In the back seat, his window open, Sean had grown pensive. “Dad, do you believe in ghosts?”
Doyle didn’t hesitate. “No. Why? You boys think you saw a ghost?”
Ian’s eyes widened, and he elbowed his brother. “Sean, Dad’ll know what to do.”
Sean snapped his seat belt. “We didn’t see nothing.”
“Anything,” Doyle said. “You didn’t see anything.”
“That’s what I said.”
Doyle started the car. “Forget it.” He looked exhausted, overwhelmed without Katie at his side. “Wouldn’t surprise me if you saw a ghost out here. It’s been that kind of day.”
But as Doyle backed out of the driveway, Owen noticed Ian in the back seat, pale, his blue eyes unblinking, and felt his stomach twist.
They know about Chris Browning.
Owen knew Doyle avoided mentioning his childhood friend in front of Sean and Ian and never discussed the details of a long-unsolved murder that had deeply affected him. Their father’s silence had created a void that the boys, apparently, had filled on their own.
But what had made them think they’d seen a ghost?
Doyle Alden pulled into the short driveway of the little house he and Katie had bought six weeks before Sean was born and fixed up themselves. It was on a side street near the police station, a few miles from Owen’s place. Bar Harbor, where the Fast Rescue Field Academy would be located, was about twelve miles up and across the island, a picturesque drive that his wife would have to start making every morning once the construction was finished.
An unmarked Maine State Police car eased in behind him. Doyle recognized Lieutenant Lou Beeler behind the wheel, and knew it couldn’t be good news.
“Go on inside, guys,” Doyle told his sons. “I’ll be a couple minutes.”
In the glare of the front-door light, Lou looked thin and tired, his hair grayer. He planned to retire in the fall after thirty years on the job, fifteen of them in the Criminal Investigative Division. He was a decent guy with an extraordinary record, one of the most respected detectives in Maine. But riding off into the sunset with Christopher Browning’s murder unsolved grated on him. An FBI agent married to John March’s daughter, a man beloved on Mt. Desert Island—shot on his honeymoon within shouting distance of his boyhood home, left to bleed to death amid the rocks, seaweed, salt water and gulls.
Who wouldn’t want to find Chris’s killer?
“What can I do for you, Lou?” Doyle asked.
Lou rubbed his lower back. He’d have driven to Bar Harbor from his home hear Bangor. “Fog’s rolling in. I can smell it.”
“I hadn’t noticed.”
“I don’t like driving in it. My eyes aren’t what they used to be. How’s Katie?”
“Fine. She’s in England.”
“I heard. Working with Owen Garrison’s outfit now?”
“Yeah.” Doyle knew Lou was just being friendly, but he hadn’t had much patience for the past few days and wanted the older man to state his business. “The boys and I are on our own for a few weeks. They’re inside now, waiting for me.”
“Sure, sure. I’ll get to the point. Has Abigail Browning been in touch?”
Hell. Doyle shook his head.
“She got a call last night. I thought you should know,” Lou said in a professional tone that belied his personal interest in the case. He then gave Doyle details on the call. “I doubt it’ll amount to anything, but—I don’t know. It doesn’t feel right.”
“Is Abigail on her way here?”
Lou sighed. “I didn’t ask, and she didn’t say. But what do you think?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s here now.”
Lou kept his steady gaze on Doyle. “I don’t know about you, but I never thought I’d still be hunting Chris Browning’s killer after seven years.”
“Didn’t you? Here’s how I see it. A burglar targeted the island seven years ago and stole a lot of jewelry from rich summer residents. He landed at the Browning house, thinking it was a guest cottage for the Garrisons or the Coopers,