“Understandable,” she said. “Do you remember in what order people arrived?”
“My grandmother was the last to arrive. I remember that. The rest-” He shook his head, his emotions well in check. “I don’t know.”
“If you remember Polly was the last to get there, you might be able to remember who was first.” Abigail took another swallow of coffee, the rock suddenly feeling very hard and rough under her feet. “I don’t know that it’ll make a difference. After everyone arrived on the cliffs, what happened? Had your sister’s body been removed-or did they see her-”
“They watched Chris’s grandfather pull her out of the water into his boat.”
“Then what?” Abigail asked, pressing him, resisting the tug of her own emotions.
“We drove out to the harbor.”
“How? Who were you with? Where were the cars?”
“The cars were up at Ellis’s house. Jason Cooper and my father went to get them. The rest of us walked out to the road and met them there. I’m not sure I’d remember, but I saw an owl in a fir tree-it didn’t fly away. It perched on its branch and stared at me. My sister was into birds. I thought somehow…” He shrugged, tossing the last of his coffee out into the encroaching tide. “I thought the owl was trying to reassure me that whatever had happened, wherever she was, my sister was okay.”
Abigail touched his arm. “I don’t know who put that picture on your doorstep or why, but it was an awful thing to do.”
Owen turned to her. “If it helps find this killer, then it’s worth it.” He glanced out at the sparkling water. “I don’t need a picture to make me remember that day.”
“No. I imagine not.”
“When we finish up with Lou, I’m going up to Ellis’s house, then out to the cliffs. Maybe being there will jog my memory for any details I’ve buried all these years.”
“I’ll go with you.”
He managed a smile. “Somehow, I knew you would.”
“Unless you’d rather go alone-”
He shook his head. “No, I wouldn’t.”
Abigail refused Lou Beeler’s suggestion that she put herself into protective custody. She was polite and appreciative of his concern, but adamant. “Not a chance, Lou,” she said, refilling his mug with fresh coffee.
He didn’t give up. He’d perched himself on the bar stool Owen had vacated and had listened to her recap of the call, asking few questions. “At least let me post a trooper at your side.”
“That’s the same thing.”
“I don’t like this caller. I haven’t from the beginning.”
“You said it was probably a crank.”
“I did? Well, it still could be.” He blew on his steaming coffee. “Makes you not want to answer any more phones, doesn’t it?”
“No, it makes me hope he’ll call again.”
Lou didn’t comment.
Once the state detective was finished with him, Owen had retreated to the shower, leaving Abigail to fend off Lou by herself. From the moment he’d walked in the door, it was obvious his anxiety about the situation had been ratcheted up a few notches.
Not that she blamed him.
She dumped out the last of her coffee into the sink. “Next time this bastard calls, I want to have enough caffeine in me so I can figure out a way to back him into a corner and nail him. I hate it when I get calls like that before I’ve had my morning coffee.”
“I see you’re coping,” Lou said, just short of a grumble.
“I want this guy, Lou. This caller is Chris’s killer. I
“Think he meant to give himself away?”
“Yes. I think everything he’s done and said is intentional.” She looked at the older man across the granite- topped peninsula. “And we’re using ‘he’ in the rhetorical sense. It could be a woman.”
“You have anyone in mind, Abigail? Any names you want to throw out there for consideration, just between us?”
She shook her head, then said, “Not Mattie Young.”
“Even with the pictures, the necklace, the attack on you, the blackmail?”
“Even with.”
Lou studied her a moment, nothing about him giving away what he was thinking or feeling.
“Hell, Lou, you’re like a stone statue,” she said with some impatience. “You could be sitting there thinking about blueberry pancakes for all I know. What’s on your mind?”
“Nothing.” He picked up his mug but didn’t take a sip of the coffee. “Abigail-”
“I know what you’re going to say. I’m not jumping to conclusions. I’m keeping an open mind.”
“You’re not on this case. Think for a moment what you’d do if you were in my position. Your father’s the FBI director. Your deceased husband was an FBI agent. There are presently a couple of G-men in town sniffing into the secrets of a high-level State Department appointee.”
“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
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.
