CHAPTER 11

The acidic smells of evergreen and peat mixed with the smells of low tide, filling the cool night air. Owen stood out on his deck, listening as he angled his flashlight beam up onto the rocks. He’d been drawn outside by voices, a sharp exchange near the old foundation.

Mattie Young stepped out of the shadows and crooked an arm in front of his face. “You’re blinding me.”

“What’re you doing out here, Mattie?”

“Running from Abigail. She’s armed-I thought she was going to kill me.”

“I wasn’t going to kill you.” Abigail jumped lightly off a boulder and landed behind Mattie, who flinched. “I’m still not, but I wouldn’t throw another beer can at me if I were you.”

Her voice was calm, coplike.

Owen lowered his flashlight, pointing the beam at the ground and lighting the way for the two of them. “Come on over here. We can sort this out.”

“Not me,” Mattie said. “I’m going home.”

“How?” Abigail asked him. “Are you going to ride your bike in the dark?”

“Yeah. I do it all the time. You don’t like it, call Doyle. I’ll tell him you threatened to shoot me.”

She sighed. “I didn’t threaten to shoot you, Mattie.”

“You’re armed-”

“Damn right I’m armed. Were you spying on me?”

“Why would I spy on you?”

“That’s not an answer. You were out here Sunday night-before I got here. Did you know I was on my way?”

“Of course not. How would I?”

Abigail paused for a half beat. “You know you can’t drink safely, don’t you?”

Mattie didn’t answer. Neither of them, Owen noticed, had started back toward his deck, his warm fire, a chance to talk.

“Get yourself to a meeting,” Abigail said. “No more jaunts out here in the dark with a six-pack. Right, Mattie? Makes sense?”

“Go fuck yourself, Abigail. You’re not a detective here.”

Mattie spun around and marched out to Owen’s driveway, oblivious to the dark.

“Where’s your bike?” Abigail called.

“Up on the road. Don’t worry about it.”

“Did you hide it?”

“Go to hell.”

“At least your language is improving. If you hid your bike-”

“I’m not hiding anything.” He stopped abruptly, turning back to her. “I just don’t bow down to you. I knew Chris’s parents. I knew his grandfather. I knew them before you were even born. You think you’re the only one who cares about what happened to Chris? You think you’re the only one who wants his killer found?”

“Mattie,” Owen said. “That’s enough. Go home. Get some rest.”

“Sleep it off, you mean? I’m not drunk.”

But he tripped as he reached the driveway, swearing, then held up one hand, his middle finger clearly visible in the light from the house. He continued on around a bend in the driveway, disappearing into the blackness.

Abigail had gone silent. Owen raised his flashlight to her, catching the hard set of her mouth. She had on a sweatshirt, but she had to be cold.

“Come inside,” he said. “Warm up.”

“Thanks.” She climbed up on the deck, glancing up the driveway. “He has a point. You all knew Chris longer than I did.”

“He was just trying to get under your skin.”

“Maybe. Chris didn’t make excuses for him, but he didn’t judge him, either, even after he knew he had to detach from him. He believed in Mattie. He has such talent.”

“Talent’s not a lot of use if you don’t make something of it.”

“Chris always said Mattie never had a sense of his own limitations. One of those good thing, bad thing deals. The good thing-it allowed him to take risks with his photography. The bad thing-he doesn’t save money, he doesn’t set realistic goals. He basically thinks the rules don’t apply to him.”

“That’s part of why he keeps drinking.”

“Alcoholics Anonymous is for other people. Not for him.” She sighed. “It’s such a difficult disease. If he could make that breakthrough-”

“Only he can. No one else can do it for him.”

“I said pretty much the same thing to Chris. But he knew without me having to tell him. We all know.”

Owen could feel the cold now. He’d shot outside in his T-shirt. “Mattie’s used Chris’s death as an excuse not to deal with his problems.”

“Maybe.” Abigail’s expression hardened again. “But Mattie has had his own agenda long before Chris was killed.”

Owen stepped closer to her, flicking a fat mosquito off her forehead.

She waved at one in front of her. “I should have put on bug spray.”

She followed him inside. She wasn’t winded from chasing Mattie out on the rocks in the dark. She was in good shape. As a cop, she would need to be, but she also seemed to enjoy physical activity-a thought that twisted itself into an image that Owen suspected she’d shoot him for having in his head.

“I have a bottle of Chianti I’ve been saving.”

“Saving for what?”

“Now, I guess. I’ve had a long year, and I don’t like to drink alone.”

She smiled, sitting on a chair in front of the woodstove. “Open it up, then. What did you do today?”

“Linc Cooper stopped by. He wants me to teach him everything I know in two weeks or less.” He grabbed a wine bottle off the rack in his kitchen. “I remember that feeling. Linc’s got a big set of issues. He thinks learning to jump out of a helicopter is going to help solve them.”

“Did it help you?”

He opened the wine. “I had a different set of issues.”

The fire had gotten hotter than he’d meant it to, Abigail’s cheeks reddening in the warmth. The hard look was gone now, her dark curls softly framing her face. “You’ve got white dust in your hair,” Owen said, setting two glasses on the counter and pouring the wine.

“I’ve been knocking out walls.”

“Cathartic?”

“I don’t know. I suppose it is. It’s just one of those things that needs to be done.”

“Did you stake out Mattie just now, or did you hear him and investigate?” Owen walked over to her with the two glasses and handed her one. “I’m guessing you laid in wait for him.”

“You’re guessing wrong. I was curious, and just took a walk over there-”

“In the dark.”

“Correct.”

“Without a flashlight?”

“I didn’t need one, really, out in the open on the rocks, with the stars and the moonlight. Once my eyes adjusted, I was fine. There was one short stretch of woods that was a little tricky.”

Owen sat on the chair opposite her. “And a flashlight would have warned Mattie you were on the way.”

She tasted the wine. “So it would have.”

“Are you ever off?”

She frowned at him. “What do you mean, ‘off’? Crazy? Out of control?”

“I mean, do you ever turn off your inner detective?”

“Ah. That ‘off.’ I have no jurisdiction here. Why?”

“I’d just like to know when I’m talking to Abigail, my pretty dark-eyed neighbor, and when I’m talking to Detective Browning, my pretty dark-eyed cop neighbor.”

“They’re one and the same.” She drank more of her wine. “So, how did Linc do on your hike?”

“Fine. He’s in better shape than he thinks he is. He asked about you-why you’re here, that sort of thing.”

“That’s understandable. Whenever I’m here people get stirred up. I remind them of a lot of unanswered questions. And Linc.” She shifted, staring at the fire. “Chris’s death was hard on him. He was just thirteen. He idolized Chris.”

“I remember.”

“Think you can help him?”

“Traipsing Linc Cooper up and down mountains wasn’t exactly what I had planned for the summer.”

“What did you have planned?”

Her voice held none of the suspicion and frustration it had when she was out on the rocks with Mattie, and her eyes shone in the glow of the orange flames. Owen could see the plaster dust on her hands, in her hair, and thought of her alone in her dead husband’s house, knocking out walls.

“I don’t know what I had planned,” he said.

“That could be just what you need-to have a few weeks with no plan.”