home to Mt. Desert Island.
Doyle had been Chris’s best man. Sean had been the ring-bearer.
Owen had arrived in Maine on a two-week leave from the army three days after the wedding.
In time to find Chris’s body.
Doyle’s voice brought Owen back to the present.
“Katie e-mailed me,” Doyle said, staring out the French doors at the water. The boys, finished with dinner, had gone back out. “She says she’s settling in. Says the flowers in England are beautiful right now.”
“She’d notice,” Owen said.
“The six weeks will be up before we know it.”
Owen could hear the struggle in Doyle’s tone to hide his resentment. He’d put the decision to do this training in Katie’s hands, saying it was hers, not his, to make. She’d pleaded with him to discuss his feelings with her, but he’d refused. And now he was irritated, because deep down he’d wanted her to stay.
It was all more complicated than Owen could get his head around, but Doyle and Katie had been together since they were teenagers. As ornery as Doyle could be, he would know that if his wife didn’t need his permission to go to England, she at least deserved his support.
“Summer’s my busiest season,” he said. “Katie could have picked a better time to learn how to save the world.”
“She didn’t pick the time. I did.”
Doyle gave him a faint smile. “Yeah? Well, screw you.”
The boys pounded onto the deck and burst inside with a frenzied energy that seemed to lift their father’s mood. Ian’s fingers were blue-red, a sign he’d been into the tide pools. He had his mother’s curiosity and affection for living things. Sean got more pleasure from scrambling over granite boulders.
“What’s going on?” Doyle asked at their obvious excitement.
“Nothing,” Sean said, his cheeks reddening as he warmed his hands in front of the woodstove, the fire glowing behind the screen.
“Nothing’s got you all excited, huh?”
Ian started to speak, but Sean shot him a warning look. “Dad, can we stay here tonight?”
“Not tonight. Let’s wait until a night I have a meeting, if that’s okay with Owen.”
Owen shrugged. “That’d be fine.” But he could see that Sean and Ian had something they were keeping from their father. “Did you notice the fog on the horizon?”
“Uh-huh.” Ian nodded, but he was watching his older brother, presumably for another warning look if he strayed too close to spilling whatever it was they were hiding. “It’s coming closer. Sean calls it The Blob. We pretend it’s a monster.”
Ian roared and stretched out his arms, pretending he was The Blob. Sean rolled his eyes. Owen followed them and their father out to the car. Sean said he wanted the front seat, Ian said it was his turn-the fight was on. Doyle settled it by making them both sit in back.
“They don’t fight that much,” he told Owen, then gave a tight smile as he opened the car door. “Katie’s doing. They’re more likely to act up around me.”
In the back seat, his window open, Sean had grown pensive. “Dad, do you believe in ghosts?”
Doyle didn’t hesitate. “No. Why? You boys think you saw a ghost?”
Ian’s eyes widened, and he elbowed his brother. “Sean, Dad’ll know what to do.”
Sean snapped his seat belt. “We didn’t see nothing.”
“Anything,” Doyle said. “You didn’t see anything.”
“That’s what I said.”
Doyle started the car. “Forget it.” He looked exhausted, overwhelmed without Katie at his side. “Wouldn’t surprise me if you saw a ghost out here. It’s been that kind of day.”
But as Doyle backed out of the driveway, Owen noticed Ian in the back seat, pale, his blue eyes unblinking, and felt his stomach twist.
Owen knew Doyle avoided mentioning his childhood friend in front of Sean and Ian and never discussed the details of a long-unsolved murder that had deeply affected him. Their father’s silence had created a void that the boys, apparently, had filled on their own.
But what had made them think they’d seen a ghost?
Doyle Alden pulled into the short driveway of the little house he and Katie had bought six weeks before Sean was born and fixed up themselves. It was on a side street near the police station, a few miles from Owen’s place. Bar Harbor, where the Fast Rescue Field Academy would be located, was about twelve miles up and across the island, a picturesque drive that his wife would have to start making every morning once the construction was finished.
An unmarked Maine State Police car eased in behind him. Doyle recognized Lieutenant Lou Beeler behind the wheel, and knew it couldn’t be good news.
“Go on inside, guys,” Doyle told his sons. “I’ll be a couple minutes.”
In the glare of the front-door light, Lou looked thin and tired, his hair grayer. He planned to retire in the fall after thirty years on the job, fifteen of them in the Criminal Investigative Division. He was a decent guy with an extraordinary record, one of the most respected detectives in Maine. But riding off into the sunset with Christopher Browning’s murder unsolved grated on him. An FBI agent married to John March’s daughter, a man beloved on Mt. Desert Island-shot on his honeymoon within shouting distance of his boyhood home, left to bleed to death amid the rocks, seaweed, salt water and gulls.
Who wouldn’t want to find Chris’s killer?
“What can I do for you, Lou?” Doyle asked.
Lou rubbed his lower back. He’d have driven to Bar Harbor from his home hear Bangor. “Fog’s rolling in. I can smell it.”
“I hadn’t noticed.”
“I don’t like driving in it. My eyes aren’t what they used to be. How’s Katie?”
“Fine. She’s in England.”
“I heard. Working with Owen Garrison’s outfit now?”
“Yeah.” Doyle knew Lou was just being friendly, but he hadn’t had much patience for the past few days and wanted the older man to state his business. “The boys and I are on our own for a few weeks. They’re inside now, waiting for me.”
“Sure, sure. I’ll get to the point. Has Abigail Browning been in touch?”
“She got a call last night. I thought you should know,” Lou said in a professional tone that belied his personal interest in the case. He then gave Doyle details on the call. “I doubt it’ll amount to anything, but-I don’t know. It doesn’t feel right.”
“Is Abigail on her way here?”
Lou sighed. “I didn’t ask, and she didn’t say. But what do you think?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s here now.”
Lou kept his steady gaze on Doyle. “I don’t know about you, but I never thought I’d still be hunting Chris Browning’s killer after seven years.”
“Didn’t you? Here’s how I see it. A burglar targeted the island seven years ago and stole a lot of jewelry from rich summer residents. He landed at the Browning house, thinking it was a guest cottage for the Garrisons or the Coopers, and Abigail surprised him. She was assaulted, and Chris took matters into his own hands. The burglar killed him and took off, never to return.”
“That’s one scenario.”
“It’s the only one that makes sense and fits the facts. If Abigail thinks she’s going to come up here and find answers, she’s wrong.”
“She’s thought that for seven years-”
“And she’s been wrong for seven years. She just stirs people up for no good reason.”
Lou sank back against the hood of his car. “The caller said things were happening here.”
