The Widow - Carla Neggers [3]
Using a long-handled spatula, she scooped ashes into the Folgers can.
Not all the ashes fit.
She stirred those left in the grill. All she needed to do was start a fire with two of Boston’s most respected detectives on the premises. She’d been a detective for just two years. By Bob O’Reilly and Scoop Wisdom’s standards—by her own standards—she was still a novice.
They believed in her, and she proved herself one day at a time, but she’d decided, even before she’d formed her own plan of action, not to tell them about last night’s call.
An anonymous tip.
It wasn’t the first in seven years, and it wasn’t the craziest—but she didn’t need two trusted colleagues, two unwavering friends, to talk her out of following up on it.
Her spatula struck a half-burned page pasted to the bottom of the grill, the words jumping out of the ashes at her in thick, black marker, as if somehow she needed reminding.
I am a widow.
CHAPTER 2
The tip had come to her the night before in theatrical fashion.
It was the second Saturday in July, the day Abigail and Chris had chosen for their wedding seven years ago. She had spent the day alone. She always did, despite her friends and family who would call and invite her to barbecues and dinners, a movie, a Red Sox game.
Once, her mother, a corporate attorney with a high-powered husband, a woman who’d learned how to relax, had offered to book Abigail a spa day. “Get a massage. Get your toes done. You’ll feel better.”
Only her mother, Abigail had thought. But Kathryn March had made her widowed daughter smile with that gesture—mission accomplished.
Her father was a different story. He never tried to make his only daughter smile on her anniversary. He knew he couldn’t. Abigail had told him he couldn’t.
“Was Chris killed because of you?”
“Abigail…don’t…”
“Was he?”
“I was the father of the bride on your wedding day. That’s all.”
“Did you put him up to something on his honeymoon? You’ve seen the file on his murder. What’s in it? What aren’t you telling me?”
The truth was, there was nothing in Chris’s file. Otherwise his murder wouldn’t have remained unsolved. Investigators wouldn’t release certain details to a family member—in their place, Abigail wouldn’t, either. But the Maine State Police and the FBI weren’t hiding anything from her. Although he was a director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, a hard-driving, self-made man, a former Boston cop himself, John March had no advantage when it came to his son-in-law’s murder.
He couldn’t produce a killer any more than she could. The evidence just wasn’t there. He couldn’t even console his daughter.
Not that she needed consolation. Not anymore. What she needed was resolution.
Answers.
But on the second Saturday in July, Abigail thought only of the man she’d loved and their time together. She didn’t think of Chris as the FBI special agent brutally murdered on his honeymoon, nor did she let her mind wander to the stack of materials she’d collected herself for her own investigative file on his death.
She’d landed at their favorite restaurant on Newbury Street and asked to sit by the window, where she could see the outdoor tables, crowded with diners enjoying the warm July evening, and passersby, young lovers holding hands, older couples out for an evening, perhaps celebrating their own wedding day.
Abigail wasn’t celebrating, but she wasn’t mourning, either.
“I love you, Abigail. I’ll always love you.”
She wanted to crawl back in time and tell him…don’t! Don’t love me! Love someone else. Live, Chris. Live.
But, because she couldn’t, she ordered a glass of Pinot Noir and thought of her wedding flowers—hydrangeas, roses—and that sparkling Maine afternoon, and how handsome Christopher Browning was as he’d waited for her to walk up the aisle on the lawn of the quaint seaside inn where they were married.