The Widow - Carla Neggers [98]
“I know, Lou. It’s awkward.”
“Awkward? It’s a damn tangled-up mess is what it is. And I haven’t even gotten to the Garrisons and their history, and Owen and his work. I caught up with Doyle last night. His wife’s got a big job ahead of her as director of this new field academy in Bar Harbor. Fast Rescue’s not an outfit for the fainthearted. Owen has ambitious plans. He doesn’t do anything by half measures—” Lou stopped suddenly, and Abigail realized she must have reddened or something, because he groaned. “Oh, hell. Damn it, Browning.”
She cleared her throat. “Back to the pictures. Have your guys discovered any concrete evidence that Mattie shot them?”
Lou seemed almost relieved that she’d redirected the subject to the investigation at hand. He shook his head. “Nothing so far. Apparently he did burn a bunch of negatives, but his files are just the disaster you’d expect them to be. Maybe worse.”
“If he did take the pictures, he could have given them to someone, sold them. We don’t know if they’ve been in his sole possession all this time. He could have made copies and given them out to a half-dozen different people.”
“Not likely. Someone would have come forward.”
“But possible,” Abigail said. She didn’t wait for Lou to continue to speculate with her. “What about Linc Cooper?”
“He’s home with his family. He should have told us what was going on, but now he has. The FBI was interested in what he had to say. What he did shouldn’t have an impact on Grace’s appointment. It’s just a whiff of scandal. But what she did herself—lying all these years about talking to Chris at her uncle’s, not saying anything about her brother—” Lou shrugged, not going on.
Abigail finished for him. “That could be more than a whiff of scandal.” She pointed to his mug. “Finished?”
“Yeah. Doyle makes lousy coffee. This was better.”
“How’re the boys doing?”
“They seem fine. They know Mattie. They’re not afraid of him, even if they should be.”
She dumped out the last of his coffee and put all three mugs into the dishwasher, closing it up with a thud. “What about weapons? Did you find any guns in Mattie’s house?”
“No.”
“You’re not going to tell me what the murder weapon was, are you, Lou?” “I haven’t in seven years. I’m not today. You know I can’t.”
Withholding that kind of detail was standard operating procedure, but Abigail persisted. “An automatic. There were shell casings. I didn’t know what they meant at the time—”
“Abigail,” he warned.
“It wasn’t a lucky shot that killed Chris. The killer knows how to shoot. He likes guns. If he threw the murder weapon into the ocean, then he got himself another just like it.” She walked around to Lou’s side of the peninsula. “That’s my guess, anyway.”
The state detective ignored her completely. “What are you going to do now?”
“Owen and I thought we’d walk up to Ellis’s.” She smiled with feigned innocence. “I have this thing for delphinium.”
“Mattie.”
Mattie stirred amid the thick evergreens that grew along the cliffs where Doe Garrison drowned, listening in case he’d conjured up the voice whispering his name.
“Mattie Young.”
A ghost?
Chris’s ghost?
He brushed pine needles off him and stood up under the low branches of the prickly balsam firs and spruces. He’d made his way down there before dawn, after a rough night up on the ledge. A state cruiser had purred along the private road just after he crossed it and disappeared into the forest. It wasn’t great timing on his part. It was luck. Pure damn luck.
He heard the rustle of dead leaves and underbrush from his own movements, and he smelled the tang of salt in the air from the ocean just below him.
It wasn’t Chris.
Chris is dead. What the hell’s the matter with you?
“I know you’re here, Mattie.”
That voice.
It wasn’t Abigail, or Owen. Doyle. The people he’d betrayed but who wouldn’t hurt him.
It wasn’t any of them.
A cold serenity came over him. He knew what was happening now. He shut his eyes