The Widow - Carla Neggers [4]
“Excuse me—ma’am? Are you Detective Browning?”
Her waiter’s words yanked her out of her memories and dropped her back into the real world. “Why—”
“You have a phone call.”
A call? Why not reach her on her pager or cell phone? She eyed the waiter. He was young, unfamiliar. “Who is it?”
“I don’t know. I just—” He gestured back toward the bar. “Someone gave me the phone and said it was for you.”
“All right. Don’t go far, okay? I might want to talk to you.”
He nodded, retreating fast.
Abigail held the phone to her ear. “Yes?”
“I’m sorry to disturb your dinner.” The voice was unrecognizable, barely a whisper. She couldn’t even tell if it was a man or a woman speaking. “Are you having your husband’s favorite wine?”
“Who is this?”
“Pinot Noir, correct?”
Damn. She pushed back the emotion of the evening and called on her law-enforcement training and experience. Keep whoever it is talking. “That’s right. Are you here? Join me.”
“Another time, perhaps.”
“Did you know my husband?”
“Shh. Shh. Just listen. Your husband turned over too many rocks. Bad things crawled out. He was eliminated.” The static whisper made the words seem even creepier, more menacing. “His death wasn’t a random act of violence.”
“I need you to be more specific—”
“You need to listen.” It was the first time the caller had put emphasis on any one word. “Things are happening on Mt. Desert. Again.”
“Is someone else in danger?”
“You’re the only person the killer fears.”
“Are you suggesting I’m in danger?”
“I’m suggesting you’re the one who can find the answers. Detective.” A brief pause. “You’ve gained experience over the past seven years. You haven’t lost your determination to solve your husband’s murder. The killer knows you won’t stop until you do.”
A cold finger of emotion penetrated her cloak of professionalism. “How do you know what the killer knows?”
“I have to go.”
“Wait—you said ‘things’ are happening. What kind of things?”
“No more.”
“What about the rocks Chris turned over—what crawled out? Give me an idea. Otherwise, once I hang up, I drink my wine, have a nice dinner and dismiss this as another crank call. I’ve had several over the years, you know.”
“This is the call you’ve been waiting for. You know it is.”
“Don’t—”
Click.
It was done. The call was over. Abigail set the phone on the table and dug her detective’s notebook out of her handbag and tugged off the Bic pen she kept attached to it. The waiter, who must have been watching, wandered back to her table, but she held up a hand, silencing him as she wrote down every word the caller had said to her.
When she finished, she flipped the pad shut and sat back, eyeing the waiter. A kid, really. “What’s your name?” she asked him.
“Trevor—Trevor Baynor.”
She took down his address and phone number, learned that he worked at the restaurant twenty hours a week—the rest of the time, he studied jazz at the Berklee College of Music. Piano.
“I need to get back to work,” he said.
“Sure. First tell me who took the call I just received. The bartender?”
He nodded. “Her name’s Lori.”
“What did she say to you when she handed you the phone?”
“She said—I don’t remember.”
“Try.”
He shoved a hand through his tufts of thick blond hair. “She said to give you the phone. That you had a call.”
“She knew my name? How?”
“The caller, I guess.”
“There are a hundred people in this restaurant, Trevor. How did Lori know I was Detective Browning?”
“Oh. Yeah.” He grinned a little. “I didn’t think about that. She gave me your table number, said, ‘I think that’s her.’ It’s not like she knows you.”
“Did you see anyone else on a phone while I was taking my call?”
Trevor’s eyes widened in surprise or possibly fear. “No—I mean, I didn’t notice. I wasn’t looking. People talk on cell phones all the time.”
“Okay, Trevor. Thanks.” Abigail got to her feet. “I’ll go talk to Lori. Don’t throw my wine away. I haven’t given up on dinner yet.”
Lori, a sleek, black-clad woman in her early forties, didn’t know much more than Trevor did. The caller had spoken to her in a whisper, too. “I just figured it was someone