“You get involved with Batman, and everything changes. You know that, right?”
He wasn’t letting her go to Owen without him. “You’re a pain in the neck, Bob. You know that, right?”
He ignored her. “You get involved with a guy like Scoop, nothing changes. You’re both a couple of working stiffs, never mind who your father is. You rent out one of your apartments, put his TV set and stereo system in with your IKEA stuff, and that’s it. You’re done. With Owen Garrison-” Bob squinted out at the rocks. “Do you know who the Garrisons are? Who he is?”
“Yes, Bob, I know who the Garrisons are, and I know who Owen is. And why come up with Scoop for your hypothetical? Why not that cute guy in narcotics?”
“Abigail, the Garrisons used to own this island.”
“Not all of it.”
“The half the Rockefellers didn’t own.”
“His grandmother grew up dirt-poor in Texas. She kept chickens up here. She wanted to keep pigs, but her husband-”
“The guy throws himself into the mouth of danger every chance he gets.”
Maybe that described why he made love to her, she thought. He’d gotten turned on by the risk of having a relationship with her.
As Owen crossed her narrow strip of yard, Bob elbowed her, still not letting her get past him in the doorway. “He’s even better-looking than that guy in narcotics.”
Owen trotted up the porch steps. Abigail could have smacked Bob for successfully stalling her long enough to make sure she didn’t get a word with Owen alone first.
Bob opened up the door as if he owned the place, and Abigail, with no other real option, stepped back out of the way and made polite introductions. She didn’t explain why Bob was there. She didn’t ask why Owen was there.
Owen, casually dressed, as good-looking as ever, handed her a small paper bag. “You left these at my house.”
She gave him a questioning look.
“Your socks.”
Avoiding Bob, Abigail snatched the paper bag and dumped it on a chair. “Thanks.”
“Doyle stopped by,” Owen said. “They found Mattie’s bike in the woods. It was hidden off a hiking trail behind Ellis’s place. No sign of him. Lou Beeler asked Doyle to let you know, and Doyle asked me-”
Bob snorted. “Sounds like no one wants to talk to you, Abigail.”
“Everyone’s busy.” She sighed, then addressed Owen. “Bob’s humor takes some getting used to. I should get rolling. I want to help search for Mattie.” She turned, motioning at her mostly gutted room. “Never mind that everyone would rather I stay here and work on my walls.” She frowned, but her mind had gone elsewhere. “What’s that?”
Before either man could respond, Abigail was across the room, kneeling on the floor, picking up a tiny white ball. She held it up in the light. “It’s a pearl.”
Bob was there instantly, and she placed the pearl into his big hands.
“How did the crime scene guys miss this yesterday?” Bob asked.
“We all missed it. We weren’t looking for pearls.”
“The wall,” Owen said.
He didn’t need to explain further. They all recognized it as the same wall that she and Chris had worked on the morning before she was attacked and robbed.
Abigail, still on her knees, leaned into the gutted portion and reached down inside the wall, lowering her arm as far as she could, wiggling her fingers for any more pearls. “That pearl didn’t jump out onto the floor by itself,” she said, touching something soft and dry with her fingers. “Gross. I think I hit mouse pooh.”
Neither man smiled at her attempt at humor. She dug through a ball of fuzzy gunk of some kind, scraping her already bloodied arm on a two-by-six.
“Let me do that,” Bob said.
“Your arm’s too big. Owen’s, too.”
She scooped up a brown-and-gray heap and dumped it onto the floor.
Another pearl, covered in dust, rolled out.
And, in the middle of the fuzz, Abigail saw her grandmother’s cameo pendant.
She dropped back onto her heels, her arm stinging, her cut leg aching. “My necklace was in the wall all this time. And Mattie-” She took in a breath, calming herself. “That bastard knew.”
Owen lowered a hand to her and helped her to her feet. “That’s what he was after yesterday.”
“He must have used the drywall saw to dig into the wall and hook the necklace.” She pushed a hand through her hair.
Bob frowned at the heap of dust, mouse droppings, mouse fur, pearl and cameo. “Why go after it now? Why not seven years ago?”
“Because I was gutting walls. He knew I’d find it. I’ll call Doyle and Lou.” She caught her breath and faked a smile. “Heck. Now maybe they’ll want to talk to me.”
If Lou Beeler wanted to smack his detectives or himself for having missed the pearl, he never let on. But he obviously wasn’t happy about it. He looked as if he could kick out the rest of the half-gutted wall, a feeling Abigail well understood. She leaned against the doorway to the front room, her house filling up with local and state cops. Doyle Alden was still en route-she had no desire to see him. Mattie Young was a lifelong friend, and discovery of the necklace would just be another implication for Mattie, another blow for Doyle to absorb.
And somehow Abigail felt responsible. If she hadn’t come along, would Chris still be alive? Would Mattie have straightened out and become the kind of photographer everyone believed he was meant to be?
She hadn’t sat down since Lou had arrived, tight and preoccupied but also, she thought, energized. Discovery of the pearls and the cameo pendant were breaks. Although she hadn’t been a detective for as long as he had and didn’t have a seven-year cold case, Abigail thought she understood how he felt.
If anyone could identify with Detective Lieutenant Beeler, it was Bob O’Reilly, but he was staying out of the way-if not, Abigail noticed, out of earshot.
Owen had excused himself as soon as Lou had told him he could go or stay. She’d known he would leave. He would consider his presence an unnecessary distraction.
Lou shoved his hands into his pants pockets. “It never occurred to me the thief dropped your necklace into the wall,” he said. “Doyle Alden was the responding officer when it was stolen, but I did a walk-through here after your husband was killed. And I did the final walk-through yesterday.”
Abigail pictured the back room and the descriptions she’d written so many times in her journals of how she’d heard the clatter of tools, felt the breeze, smelled the salt and roses in the air. Every detail of what had happened.
“I’ve looked at that wall for seven years,” she said. “Some of the best detectives in Boston have looked at that wall for seven years. It never occurred to us, either.”
That didn’t mollify Lou. “Why toss the damn thing into the wall?”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t make sense.”
“I figure the thief-”
“Mattie,” she said.
Lou wasn’t going that far. “It looks that way, I know, but it’s possible the real thief confessed to Mattie, or he saw what happened and just has never said.”
“I suppose.”
He pulled his hands out of his pockets and eyed her, not without sympathy. “Must be tough for you right now.”
“I’m just trying to wrap my head around what happened.” She had no intention of getting into her emotions right now. “I interrupted you. You figure the thief what?”
Lou sighed, then went on. “I figure he didn’t expect you. He already had the necklace when you woke up from
