CHAPTER 29

The morning was warm enough for Abigail to walk barefoot on Owen’s smooth wood floors and open up the doors to the deck to let in the breeze and the sounds of the ocean. She wasn’t tempted to ask Owen to build a fire in the woodstove. She made coffee, feeling the sunlight streaming in through the tall windows. Her scrapes and bruises were better, her body loose and liquid after their night of lovemaking.

When the phone rang, it didn’t occur to her to answer it. Owen, seated at a bar stool at the kitchen peninsula, picked up. “Hello?” He rose, his eyes telling her everything as he handed her the receiver. “For you.”

Her caller.

Owen came around the peninsula and stood next to her.

She nodded to him, then said formally into the phone, “It’s Abigail Browning.”

“Detective. Good morning.” The voice had the familiar eerie muffle of the previous calls.

“I’m not in the mood for your games. What do you want?”

“Prickly this morning, aren’t you?”

“Just tell me what you want.”

“I want you to get back to Boston alive, Detective Browning.” The voice on the other end remained strangely toneless, impossible to recognize. “You need to be careful in the coming days. Very careful.”

“Why? What do you know?”

He ignored her. “How far will your husband’s friends go to keep their secrets?”

“How far will you go to keep your secrets? Everyone has secrets. What are yours?”

“Any secrets I have are innocent ones. Your husband-”

“Chris wasn’t talkative. He kept other people’s secrets to himself. He was the kind of man people liked to have as a friend.” Interrupting her caller had been a risk, but the status quo-being patient-hadn’t gotten her anywhere. Abigail licked her lips, listening for background sounds, anything that could help her identify the person on the other end of the line. “If you’re trying to make me think any less of Chris because of what he didn’t tell me when he was alive, it’s not working.”

“I just want to help you.”

“No, you don’t. If you wanted to help me, you’d tell me who you are. You’d meet me.”

“You don’t call the shots, Detective.” An edge had crept into the caller’s voice, the first sign of any real emotion. “Haven’t you figured that out yet?”

The coffeemaker hissed. Strong-smelling coffee dripped into the glass pot. Abigail felt a prickly sensation on the back of her neck. “Does that mean you’re calling the shots?” she asked mildly.

“It means you need to be careful.”

“How did you get this phone number?”

“Easy.”

“How did you know I was here?”

“Even easier, Detective. You’ve become quite the slut, haven’t you?”

She didn’t let his jibe get to her. “Then you’re on the island. You’re watching me. We’ve interacted-”

“Don’t waste your time trying to figure out who I am.” There was no hint of worry in the eerily calm tone. “Think about the secrets people are keeping. Watch your back.”

Abigail didn’t move as she stood in front of the peninsula, paying careful attention to his every word.

“Promise me you’ll be careful, Detective.”

She could feel Owen’s gaze on her and turned to him, saw his set jaw, his narrowed eyes, and knew he was thinking what she was.

“Detective?”

“You’re the killer.”

“Don’t bother tapping your phone lines.” The voice was crisp now, efficient. “I won’t call again.”

Once he hung up, Abigail could have smashed the telephone on the rocks. Owen put a small pad and a pen on the counter in front of her. She started to speak, but stopped herself and quickly wrote down every word of her conversation with her anonymous caller.

With her husband’s killer.

Then, still without speaking, she called Lou Beeler’s cell number, got through and reported what had just happened.

The senior detective didn’t comment on her whereabouts. “You’ve got coffee on yet?”

“It’ll be ready in two minutes.”

“I’ll be there in five.”

“Five?”

“I slept on Chief Alden’s couch last night.”

Abigail didn’t blame him. She told him she’d be waiting, and hung up, noticing Owen scanning her notes on the call. His gray eyes connected with hers. “I’m sorry,” he said and walked out to his deck, leaving her alone in the kitchen.

She waited until the coffee finished brewing, then took two dark brown pottery mugs from an open shelf and set them on the counter. She filled the mugs and headed outside with them. The air was warm, but the deck was cool under her feet. She saw that Owen had gone down to the rocks. She debated leaving him alone there-at least putting on shoes before Lou arrived-but stepped off the deck and onto a sandy path, following it onto a sprawling, rounded boulder.

Mindful of her bare feet and the hot coffee, Abigail jumped to a smaller rock, making her way to Owen’s chunk of granite just above the tide line. She handed him one of the mugs. “I suppose I’d be better off in the wrong shoes than barefoot.”

He smiled, but she could see in his gray eyes that his mind was elsewhere. “Not necessarily.”

“The rough rock’s probably a good exfoliator.” She paused, seeing the emotion behind his impassive face. “Owen-”

“Why the picture of Doe?” he asked quietly.

She understood his question. Of all the pieces they had of whatever was going on, the photo of his drowned sister was the one that jarred most, that didn’t seem to fit. “There has to be a reason. It’s not necessarily a logical reason.”

“To us.”

She nodded. “Exactly. This caller isn’t trying to help us find Chris’s killer.”

“No, he’s not. But we have to be sure, Abigail.”

“I’m sure. This creep is Chris’s killer.”

Saying the words felt unreal to her. She tried to stand back from them emotionally and pretend she was a homicide detective working a case, not the victim’s widow, not a woman who’d lived with questions and doubts about how her husband had died for seven long years. But how could she pretend she wasn’t involved? With the strange voice fresh in her mind, with the photos, the cut on her leg, the memories of last night, objectivity was elusive.

“Your caller knows something about Doe’s death,” Owen said, staring down at a deep tide pool among the rocks. “He’s talked a lot about secrets. Maybe he knows a secret about her.”

“It’s possible. It’s also possible the picture of your sister could be a red herring designed to throw us off track, or just to upset you.”

A muscle worked in his already tight jaw. He seemed to force himself to drink some of his coffee. “I want this bastard.”

“I know. So do I.” Abigail’s voice sounded calmer than she felt. “This caller is daring and manipulative-maybe desperate, maybe at wit’s end. But it’s someone with a plan, even if it’s not a good plan. And if it is Chris’s killer, then it’s also someone who’s managed to go undetected for seven years, at least.”

“Yes. At least.”

She took a breath. “If you’re thinking your sister was pushed-”

“I saw her go over the cliffs. She wasn’t pushed. She was upset-more upset than her fight with Grace would account for.” Owen looked up, squinting at a trio of seagulls flying out across the water from her house. “What if someone was in the woods that day? What if I didn’t make that up?”

“Who?”

He watched the seagulls land on a finger of rocks that jutted out into the water. “It couldn’t have been Will Browning or Chris-or Mattie. They were on the boat together.”

“You’re sure Mattie was on the boat?” Abigail asked.

“I was eleven. I’m not sure of anything.”

Sean Alden’s age. She remembered his wide eyes yesterday, his fear, his desire to make sense of a situation he couldn’t understand. If she’d said there was a ghost in his father’s garage, he would have believed her.

She asked Owen, “Did someone tell you there was no one in the woods?”