“Remember, you weren’t a homicide detective seven years ago.”
“Yes, I know.” She set her shrimp roll on the dock rail, half-covered in seagull droppings. “It’s a lot to absorb. What kind of information did Mattie provide?”
“To be honest, I think Chris was just trying to help a friend, to give him a sense of purpose, keep him busy.” She could hear the emotion in her father’s voice, not a common occurrence for him. “I can get on a plane now and be there in a couple of hours.”
“I know, Dad. Thanks. I’m okay. I just wish you’d told me about Mattie a long time ago.”
“I couldn’t.”
“I know that, too.”
After she disconnected, she fought off a seagull interested in her shrimp roll and watched a battered lobster boat circle into the harbor with a man and a boy going through their routines after a day at sea. She wanted to call to the boy to keep fishing. Be satisfied. Don’t go away and fall for the daughter of the future director of the FBI.
That Linc Cooper was their burglar. That Mattie Young was his informant.
That Grace Cooper was in love with him.
In time, Abigail wondered if Chris would have told her-if they weren’t secrets so much as things he just hadn’t gotten around to sharing with her. They’d been focused on their wedding and honeymoon, their future together.
But they hadn’t had time.
CHAPTER 27
Doyle read a chatty e-mail from Katie three times before he shut down his computer and headed to the kitchen to take some pork chops out of the freezer. His wife had told him in great detail about what she was doing in England -the kinds of things she was learning, the people she’d met, the sights she’d seen. She wrote like she talked. They hadn’t called each other much since she’d left, with the time difference, their busy schedules, the cost of international calls.
As much as he missed her and would have wanted her counsel-her support-if she’d been there, Doyle didn’t want to tell her about what was going on at home, not when there was nothing she could do about it but worry.
The boys liked to instant-message her right after dinner. Doyle had never figured out the whole IM thing.
He looked out the window over the sink. Sean and Ian had gone off on their bikes. He’d told them not to go near Mattie’s house, but otherwise what could he do? Keep them inside all the time? Make them afraid of their own shadows?
The search for Mattie continued. If he was still up in the woods and hadn’t found food and water, he risked dying of exposure, thirst. Doyle had envisioned that scene a million times over the years-Mattie Young, dead in a pile of leaves, dead on the rocks, dead in a car crash. Better than him killing someone else while driving drunk, or so Doyle had always told himself.
He left the pork chops on the counter and walked out to the living room. He’d have the chops in the oven before they could breed bacteria. So far, he’d managed not to poison himself and the boys.
Abigail Browning stood on the other side of his screen door at the front entrance. He hadn’t heard her drive up. Then he saw Owen behind her, both of them grim-faced. Doyle’s heart lurched. Had something happened to Sean or Ian? Katie? He immediately told himself to calm down. It’d been the kind of day for grim faces.
“Come on in,” he said.
“Hey, Doyle.” Owen stepped past Abigail and pushed open the door. “We saw the boys on their bikes. They look like they’re having a great time.”
“They know we’re looking for Mattie. The rest-I haven’t told them.” He held up a hand, nipping any well- intentioned protests in the bud. “I’m not planning to, either, until I have to.”
“Your call.”
Abigail glanced around the country-style room. “I haven’t been in here in a few years. You and Katie have done a nice job with the place.”
“Thanks.” Doyle pointed to the couch. “Have a seat-”
“I can’t stay,” she said. “Mattie?”
“No sign of him since we found his bicycle. I left the station an hour ago. Lou was still there. The FBI guys wanted to talk to Linc Cooper.” Sighing heavily, Doyle sank onto his easy chair. “I don’t get Mattie. I guess I never will. He never could get his shit together. He had his chances, just like the rest of us, but he was always looking for an angle. It was Mattie first. Always Mattie first.”
“We still have a lot of unanswered questions.”
He didn’t even get on her for saying “we,” as if she had an official role in the investigation.
“You can’t know what it’s like. Either of you. I have this picture in my head of Pa Browning taking Mattie, Chris and me out on the boat on a freezing cold day long after the tourist season had ended. We had the best time. And now-hell. Pa and Chris are gone. Mattie might as well be.”
Abigail had that relentless look Doyle had seen in her before, and she didn’t indulge him in his moment of self- pity. “You knew Mattie was an FBI informant?”
He threw his head against the tall back of the chair and thought about throwing them both out and watching television. Just not think about his work, his life, for a half hour.
Owen said quietly, “I didn’t know.”
Doyle sat forward. “‘FBI informant’ is too strong. Mattie kept his ear to the ground and told Chris what he heard. Mostly it wasn’t much of anything, but he happened onto a drug smuggling operation into Canada. The feds were on to it, but Mattie had names, a meeting place. It helped. So, Chris threw some money his way. It was all on the up-and-up.”
“Then Mattie started drinking again, and Chris pulled back.”
“Yeah. That’s pretty much the story.”
“I don’t want ‘pretty much’ the story, Doyle. I’d like to hear the whole story.”
“All right.” He put both hands on the arms of his chair just to keep himself from launching to his feet and strangling her. “That’s the whole story. Better?”
She didn’t react to his sarcasm. “And Grace Cooper. Did you know she was in love with Chris?” But when Doyle’s eyes flickered to Owen, Abigail sucked in a breath and swore. “Damn it. You all knew.”
“He was never for her,” Owen said. “We all knew that, too. And it was over a long time ago.”
“No, it wasn’t.” Doyle got heavily to his feet. “It was for Chris. Yeah, he never had a romantic interest in Grace. But for her? She’ll never get over him. Who knows, maybe he’d still be alive today if he’d fallen for her instead.”
Owen grabbed his friend’s arm. “That’s enough. You’re upset. Don’t make matters worse.”
Abigail had gone pale, which, in the mood he was in, Doyle considered something of a victory. But she didn’t raise her voice when she spoke. “If you thought Chris should be marrying someone else, why did you agree to be his best man?”
“Because he asked me, and he was my best friend. He thought I’d come around one of these days and see what he saw in you.”
“Another of his little secrets,” she said without bitterness.
A bike clattered out in the driveway, and one of the boys yelled,
Sean, Doyle thought, surging for the door, even as Ian called out to him. “Dad, Dad, come quick! It’s Mattie!”
Moving like a bolt of lightning, Owen shot out the front door before Doyle could get there, Abigail on his heels. He took the steps in one leap, then charged across the lawn to his driveway and detached one-car garage, where his sons were tangled up in their bikes.
