Sis barked at her, as if the dog knew Abigail had been rude. Jason stared at her, but some of the raw anger visibly went out of him. “I love my son. I’m proud of him. I believe in him.”
“I wouldn’t expect otherwise.”
“Of course you would. Sometimes I’m not a very good father. I know that.” He stopped himself. “Well. I should go to Linc. I want you to know, however, that my son had nothing to do with Chris’s death.”
“Did you know he was burglarizing homes seven years ago?”
Jason snapped his fingers, and Sis scampered into the house through the open porch door. He turned back to Abigail. “If I did know or suspect anything of the sort-and I’m not saying I did-I wouldn’t have confronted him. That’s not how we do things in my family. I would let him sort out his own priorities.”
“He was thirteen.”
“Yes, I know he was thirteen. Everything stolen was returned.” Jason’s expression hardened, as if he was daring her to contradict him. “Whatever my son did, Abigail, he wasn’t the one who attacked you and stole your necklace.”
Making that his final remark, he followed his dog’s path back into the house. Abigail was faintly surprised that he’d left her to her own devices, but he would also know she wanted to talk to his daughter and that there was very little he could do to stop her.
She could see Grace dragging a bright orange sit-on-top kayak through the beach roses, down to the water.
Abigail quietly shut the screen door behind her and walked down the stone steps. The landscaping was more reserved than Ellis’s extensive gardens, but nonetheless tasteful and in perfect condition, thanks to the hard work of their solo yardman-presumably, given Mattie’s behavior, soon to be ex-yardman. She hadn’t pressed Jason Cooper on what, if anything, he knew about his son’s recent cash withdrawals. She’d leave that to Lou and his teams.
Following the path through the roses, she joined Grace down at the water’s edge. “I think those rosebushes have more thorns than they used to. Just what I needed, more scratches.”
“I do believe you relish every one of your scratches, Abigail.” Grace slapped the kayak into the water and stood up straight, her baggy sweater unbuttoned, blowing out in the stiff breeze. She squinted back at Abigail. “I’ll paddle with the wind and hope it dies down before I get back.”
“Where are you headed?”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.” She smiled without any pleasure. “Anywhere.”
“It’s a beautiful day for kayaking.”
“Do you kayak?”
Abigail shrugged, walking into the soft, squishy sand. “I’m not very good at it.”
“I love it. I wish I could get on the water more often, but my work keeps me very busy.” She pushed back her hair, strands rising up in the wind. “I’d hoped to spend more time up here, but I have to get back to Washington.”
“Must be a busy time for you.”
“Yes. Very.” She hugged her pilled, old sweater to her. “I’m not really dressed for kayaking. Well, I don’t care. I suppose I could paddle past Owen’s house. Then if something went wrong, he could rescue me. Although that wouldn’t look good on my FBI background report, would it?”
“Better to be rescued than-”
“Drown?” Grace splashed into the shallow water. The tide was coming in, rising steadily, the waves choppier out on the sound, away from the shore. She had on long pants and sports sandals, the gray sand seeping under her exposed feet, between her toes, as she sank into it. “I seldom paddle that way. Never, in fact. The water’s often rough, but that’s not the reason. I just don’t want to pass the cliffs where Doe drowned.”
Abigail sat on a wood bench on a grassy strip up against the beach roses. She could smell their sweet fragrance as she watched Grace lift the paddle off her kayak, almost banging herself in the head with one end.
She stabbed it onto the bow of her kayak, stopping it before it could float off. “Have you ever seen pictures of Doe?”
Grace was being provocative, mean, even. Abigail deliberately kept her tone matter-of-fact. “The other day,” she said. “Someone left a picture of her after she’d drowned for Owen to find. Unfortunately, the Alden boys found it first.”
It wasn’t the answer Grace had expected. “What?”
She dropped the paddle and lunged after it, falling onto the kayak and landing on her knees in the water. She awkwardly tried to right herself and not lose the paddle or the kayak.
Feeling the barest hint of guilt, Abigail ran to her, splashing into the chilly water with her own sports sandals, and offered her a hand.
“I’m all right.” Grace stood up, the bottom half of her sweater soaked and stretched down to her knees now. She got her balance and snatched her paddle, laid it back across the kayak cockpit, then grabbed the line tied to the bow and gave Abigail a cold look. “That was intentional. To shock me. Well. Mission accomplished.”
Abigail didn’t apologize. She jumped back out of the water, shook as much wet sand off her shoes as she could and watched Grace slide her kayak back into shallow water, where it scraped along the sand and rocks.
“Doe was as beautiful as Owen is handsome,” she said, her back to Abigail. “Even in death. The Garrisons are a good-looking family.”
“That they are.”
Grace plopped down onto the grass, with her feet in the rising water, up to her ankles now. “I’m surprised you notice such things.”
“Why?”
“Being a detective and all. Being a woman who doesn’t seem to pay much attention to that sort of thing. Being-I don’t know. Stuck in the past, maybe?” But she didn’t wait for the barb to strike and went on. “Do you know where this picture came from?”
“I assume Mattie took it.” Abigail could feel the rough sand rubbing at the bottom of her feet. “Where it’s been all these years and how it ended up on Owen’s doorstep-that I don’t know.”
“Well, I certainly don’t. And neither does Linc-or my father-or my uncle. Any of us.”
Abigail didn’t argue with her. “The day Dorothy Garrison drowned…”
“I was at what was then the Garrison house. We all were. Doe and I had argued. Just some stupid teenage fight that should have passed with us remaining the best of friends. She’d been miserable company all day. Sullen, teary, argumentative. I don’t know if it was hormones or what. I don’t suppose I’ll ever know.”
“She ran down to the cliffs by herself?”
“We thought she was on the steps. At least I did. I know her parents did, too. Owen realized she was gone and walked down to the cliffs to see if he could find her.” Grace’s voice faltered. “He arrived in time to see her slip and fall.”
“You’re sure she slipped?”
Grace swung around but didn’t get up. “Of course she slipped! Do you think Owen pushed her?”
Abigail said nothing.
“You think Doe jumped? That’s outrageous. She was
“I didn’t suggest it. I just asked a question.”
“Well, it was an outrageous question.”
“Maybe so. Did you go down to the cliffs that day yourself?”
She shook her head, her anger not taking root with a topic so tragic. “No. Chris and his grandfather heard Owen from their boat when he finally was able to yell for help. Mattie was with them. There was such a flurry of activity.”
“Did someone stay with you the whole time?”
“My mother did. She and my father were in the middle of their divorce, but she was there.”
“Do you remember anyone not being there, especially before you all heard Owen calling for help?”
Grace went very still. “No, I don’t. Abigail, what’s this all about? It’s well-known that Owen believed he heard someone in the trees. He was eleven-he couldn’t take in what happened. He felt guilty. There’s no reason, of course, but sometimes these things have very little to do with reason.”
