Doyle gripped the wheel, shaking his head. “We’re never going to find the killer. That’s the truth, Owen. Abigail knows it. She’s trying to create leads where there are none. For all we know, she planted those pictures herself. She’s been collecting her own stash of evidence for years. She’s-” He eased off the wheel and turned the key in the ignition, starting the engine. “I’ve said too much.”
“Forget it.”
But Doyle looked at him through the open window. “She’s not going to tell you anything she doesn’t want to tell you. She’s got a tight lid on herself. Never mind those dark eyes, Owen, my friend.”
He smiled with feigned innocence. “What dark eyes?”
When he returned to Abigail’s kitchen, she had dumped lobster bisque into an ancient saucepan and had it simmering on the stove. “Big confession,” she said. “I’ve never cooked my own lobster. Then again, I’ve never claimed to be a real Mainer. I just have a house here.” She peered into the saucepan. “I think there’s enough butter in there to give us six heart attacks apiece.”
Owen stood behind her and peered over her shoulder as she stirred the bisque with a wooden spoon. “I can’t remember the first time I was in this house. I must have been a toddler. Not much has changed. Chris’s grandfather used to heat up chowder in this same pan.”
“I wish I’d had a chance to know him better. He died nine months after Chris and I met.”
“He was a great guy. Salt of the earth. I used to come over here all the time before my sister drowned. After that-” He eased his arms around her waist, wanting to feel her warmth as much as to provide some kind of reassurance for her. “It wasn’t easy for my family to be here.”
“But you came back.”
“After I was on my own, yes. Chris was off to school by then. I’d come over here and sit on the back porch with his grandfather, and he’d tell me stories about lobstering and living out here. He was laconic-it took some doing to get him going. Once he did, he was mesmerizing.”
“That’s what I remember about him. Chris was like that, too. He didn’t tell me everything.” She stared at the pinkish bisque, the smell of lobster, butter and sherry filling the air as the pot heated. “I think he believed there’d be time for all that. Time to fill in the gaps. Tell me his secrets.”
Her matter-of-fact tone only added to the intensity of her words. Owen kept his arms around her. She sank her weight into him. He tried to picture all the horrific images that were seared into her brain, not only of her husband’s bloodied body on the rocks, but of other murder scenes, other grieving loved ones.
“The police will talk to Ellis Cooper and anyone up at his house,” Abigail said. “Anyone who might have been out here today and seen something.”
“If the pictures were Mattie’s doing, people wouldn’t necessarily notice him. He’s a fixture around here. Part of the landscape.”
She nodded. “Fair point. They’ll interview Jason and Grace, too. Not great timing for her, but right now, as far as we know, no crime’s been committed.”
She continued to speak in that same deliberate, calm tone. Owen could feel the heat of her skin under his hands and suspected that, underneath that cool exterior, Abigail Browning was churning.
“Mattie took those pictures, Owen,” she said.
“I know.”
“I’m just not convinced he’s the one who left them here.”
Owen tightened his arms around her. “You don’t trust any of us, do you?”
She slid out of his embrace without answering and got bowls down from a cupboard. He noticed the pull of her shirt against her skin. She’d taken off her purple bandanna and cleaned up, but she’d still managed to get plaster dust in her dark curls.
She let the bisque simmer until it was heated through but not boiling.
“Abigail, I want you to trust me.”
She turned the heat off under the saucepan, keeping her back to him. “I’ve been fighting for answers on my own for a long time.”
“We should have done more to help you. All of us.”
She ripped open a drawer and pulled out a dented soup ladle. “I tell myself that everyone wanted to give me the space to get on with my life. And you had your own grief. You all knew Chris longer than I did.”
“We weren’t married to him,” Owen said, making a face. “Hell.”
She gave him a small smile. “Fair enough. I have got on with my life, but-I want to find his killer. I want answers. I know I probably should have sold this place that first year after Chris’s death, but-” She shrugged. “I didn’t.”
“The pictures.” He sighed. “They’re tough to look at.”
“If we’d gone to Ellis’s party that day…” She shook her head, making it almost a shudder. “We were invited, but we didn’t go.”
“You were on your honeymoon.”
“When I saw those pictures, I felt the breeze off the water and smelled the salt and the roses in the air as I went into the back room and got my head bashed in. It all came back.” She switched the heat off under the pan. “Was that what it was like for you, seeing the photo of your sister?”
He nodded.
“At least I was an adult when Chris was killed. Twenty-five.” She kept her tone even as she dipped the ladle into the bisque. “You were a little kid when your sister drowned. I can’t imagine. Or maybe I can, somewhat. When you’ve lost someone close to you that young, that tragically-people treat you differently. It’s like all of a sudden there’s a circle around you that people have to step into before they get close to you. Where before there was no circle.”
“Abigail, don’t-”
She swore, dropping the ladle, and spun around at him, into him. His mouth found hers, and if he was tentative, she wasn’t. She took his hand and placed it on her breast, and he found her nipple with his thumb, even as their kiss deepened. Her urgency fired his own. She lifted his shirt, and he felt her fingers cool on his back, inside his belt.
But he felt her tears, dripping onto his cheek, hot, and pulled back, his heart breaking for her. “Abigail-I’m sorry.”
“It’s not you.”
He knew it wasn’t. But he was sorry, anyway, and didn’t know how to explain it even to himself.
Without a word, she fled from the kitchen.
Owen stared at the simmering bisque. What the hell was wrong with him? Why not carry her upstairs and make love to her? He wouldn’t be taking advantage of her. It was what she wanted as much as he did.
He walked into the front room and stood in the doorway of the torn-apart back room where she’d been attacked so long ago. “Bisque’s going to get cold.”
She kicked at the debris on her floor. “I don’t know what the hell I was thinking, making this mess. I should get Bob and Scoop up here.” She smiled over her shoulder at Owen. Self-deprecating. Tears dried. “Have you met Bob and Scoop?”
“Cops?”
She nodded. “My upstairs neighbors.” She gestured to her pile of debris. “They’d be like Doyle and want me to stay out of trouble, to keep knocking out walls. Well, maybe I will. I’ll head to the hardware store in the morning and order some wallboard. Buy a new hammer.”
As if she wasn’t going to think about the call, the articles, the pictures. Mattie Young. As if she would just switch off her cop mind, her sense of obligation to her murdered husband.
Owen kept his expression neutral. “Sounds like a plan.”
She blew out a breath and angled a look at him. “I was this close-” she held up two fingers, a quarter inch apart “-to throwing you over my shoulder and carrying you upstairs. You know that?”
He laughed. “It would have been a fight, then, for who carried whom.”
“Nah. I’d have let you win.”
But when she hooked her arm into his and walked him back into the kitchen, Owen realized what had just happened.
