Doyle nodded in the direction of her house. “Her cop buddies from Boston are there. Bob O’Reilly and that other one-Scoop Wisdom. Have you seen him? Hell. He looks like he could dig Ellis up and shoot him again just to be sure he’s dead. Abigail says he’s got cats, though.”

“Cats?”

“She thinks anyone who has a cat can’t be all that mean. I told her she should look up all the murder cases involving weird cat people. Of course, she knows there are exceptions-she’s just saying this guy Scoop’s not as big a bad-ass as he looks. I guess not, because he’s helping her and O’Reilly nail up wallboard and paint the place.”

“Doyle,” Owen said. “Are you okay?”

His eyes filled with tears, but his gaze never left his sons. “I keep going back over what I could have done. I was the responding officer after the break-in seven years ago. If I’d realized it was Mattie-if I’d known Chris was on to Ellis…”

“Ellis manipulated Mattie. Seven years ago, and this past week.”

“Mattie’s responsible for his own decisions.”

“But Ellis played on his weaknesses. Chris knew. He didn’t realize Ellis was a marksman. The police had found where Ellis practiced in the woods behind his house here, and at a private shooting range near his home in Washington. He’d kept his skill to himself. Chris guessed that Ellis stood by and watched my sister die, but that’s different from ambushing someone.”

“If he’d asked me to come down here with him-”

“Then you’d both be dead.”

Doyle was silent a moment. “Maybe so.” He pointed at the cloudless sky. “Hey, a heron.”

Owen saw it, a giant blue heron, ungainly looking and yet so graceful as it flew up the rockbound coast toward the cliffs.

“Herons were always one of Chris’s favorites,” Doyle said.

“One of Doe’s, too.” When the bird disappeared, Owen got to his feet. “I have to go. You and the boys are welcome to stay here as long as you like.”

“Where are you off to?”

“Guatemala,” he said. “There’s been a massive mudslide.”

“I thought you were supposed to be resting.”

Owen shrugged. “I’ll rest another time.”

“How’re you getting to Guatemala?”

“I’m flying to Austin and meeting my team there. We’ll head out together.”

Doyle squinted up at him. “Abigail know you fly your own plane?”

“Abigail has thick files on all of us, Doyle.” Owen grinned, clapping a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “She knows more about us than we know about ourselves.”

Bob and Scoop were in her kitchen making dinner-boiling lobsters, which she hated to do-whenAbigail saw Mattie limp up from the spruce trees down by the back porch. He looked thin and colorless, but his hair was clean, pulled back in a neat ponytail, and his bruises, the blossoms of purples and yellows on his arms, were beginning to heal.

“Don’t get up,” he said. “I’m not staying. I just want to leave you this.” He placed a small silver gift bag on her bottom porch step. “I know I can’t make up for what I’ve done to you.”

“I haven’t asked you to.”

“Yeah. Anyway, I’m sorry.”

He started to walk away. Abigail climbed down the steps. “Wait-stay.”

Nervous, eager, he watched her open the bag and take out a white rectangular box. She lifted the lid, and inside, nestled on soft cotton, was her necklace, the chain repaired, the pearls restrung.

“I told the jeweler there was a cameo pendant,” Mattie said.

“I have it.”

“When I grabbed the necklace with the saw, I broke the chain,” Mattie explained. “I got a plastic bag in Doyle’s garage and put all the pearls and the pieces of chain in there. It’s the one okay thing I did, because if they’d been loose in my pocket when Ellis knocked me in the water…” He didn’t finish the thought. “Well, I just wanted to get your necklace back to you.”

“You took a huge risk, coming here to steal it. Were you afraid I’d find it when I started knocking out walls?”

“Not just that. I used it to put more pressure on Linc. I wanted more money. I wanted to believe he was responsible for what happened to Chris. Because I wouldn’t have broken in if he hadn’t been burglarizing. I’ve been mixed-up for a long time.”

“What about the money Linc paid you?”

“I returned it. He says-” Mattie seemed embarrassed. “He says he’ll insist it was a loan, but I was too drunk and stupid not to realize it.”

Abigail stood up. “Mattie-the pictures-”

“I took the ones at Ellis’s. I didn’t know he had them. I snapped them with a disposable camera after I broke in here.” He flushed. “I was trying to give myself an alibi.”

“The police found the pictures on Ellis’s computer. But the one the morning Owen found Chris’s body-”

“That was Ellis,” Mattie said.

“Then he was there. Watching us.” She’d need time to get used to that one. “Thank you for returning the necklace.”

He nodded to the bag. “There’s something else in there.”

She helped open the bag and lifted out a photograph in a simple black frame.

It was of Chris as a boy out with his grandfather on their lobster boat, laughing, loving life. Mattie must have been on shore, just a boy himself.

“Thank you.”

But she realized he was gone.

Scoop and Bob came out onto the porch with a platter of lobsters. Bob sighed at her. “You’re trying to keep the State of Maine from prosecuting him, aren’t you?”

She knew he meant Mattie, and nodded.

Scoop scowled. “Someone comes after me with a drywall saw, I’d want his butt in the slammer.”

“Look at it this way, Scoop,” Bob said, grinning, “if not for the cut on that leg, who knows if Abigail and Batman ever would have gotten together?”

“Yeah.” Scoop winked at her. “There’s that.”

“Forget it, guys. Owen’s off to Guatemala.”

Bob slung an arm around her. “Not forever.”

CHAPTER 33

Abigail struck a match to her pile of charcoal and lighter fluid and stood back just in time to avoid getting her eyebrows singed from the two-foot flames.

One of these days, she’d get the knack for lighting a damn grill.

She’d been back on the job a month. The work felt good.

Being alone in her bed didn’t.

But she’d needed the weeks on her own. Her routines had helped her turn the last corner on her past. She and Bob and Scoop had sat up late many nights going over the details of the case. Her housemates never tired of helping her put the pieces together, until they became like a worn puzzle that she could do blindfolded.

She had answers. Most of them, anyway. Understanding, she realized, never would come-she never wanted to live in a world where she could understand someone like Ellis Cooper.

“You shouldn’t be out here barefoot. Hot coals and all.”

Owen. She spun around, grinning at him, trying not to let on her surprise at seeing him-her delirious pleasure. “Yikes, man, you look even more rugged here in the city than you do up in Maine amid all that granite.”

“Does that mean I’m invited to stay?”

“I’m grilling hot dogs. Normally I don’t eat hot dogs, but the Red Sox are on a winning streak.”

He smiled. “That’s Bostonian logic.”

“Bob’s making potato salad. Scoop’s doing up a bean salad. And we’ve each got a pint of Ben & Jerry’s in the freezer. We’re going to bring them all out at once and see who picked what.” She slung her arms over his shoulders. “And, yes, you’re invited.”

“Good, because you’re invited to a Polly Garrison function.”

“Uh-oh.”

“Uh-oh is right. Do you own a dress?”

“Of course-”

“A gown, I mean.”

“A gown?”

“It’s a formal. A fund-raiser for Fast Rescue here in Boston. She wants her rich friends to cough up big-time. She’s here-”

“I don’t suppose she’d like to join us for hot dogs?”

“Knowing my grandmother, she would, but I’m not telling her she’s invited.”