She picked up the spiral notebook on the bottom of her pile. The last one to burn, and the first one she’d filled, the handwriting oversized and thick, a pen difficult for her to hold in those initial, terrible weeks of rage, shock and grief.
With a sharp breath, she ripped out too many pages at once and distorted the metal spiral, ended up tearing sheets on an angle. She threw what she had onto the fire and pulled off the bits that had stayed behind, then grabbed another fistful and yanked those pages free.
Bob O’Reilly continued to watch her.
“I’m taking the ashes with me to Maine. As many as I can fit in the coffee can. I’m going to dump them in Frenchman Bay. It’s part of the ritual.”
“Should be pretty up there,” he said.
I keep running. I don’t slip on the rocks or hesitate, even as Owen grabs me by the waist. “Chris was shot, Abigail. He’s dead. I’m sorry. There’s nothing you can do now.”
Owen won’t let me go to my husband. He won’t let me contaminate the crime scene when there’s no hope.
All we can do now, he says, is find the killer.
Bob hooked the tongs back onto the side of the grill. “Forget it, Detective Browning. You’re not fooling me. You’re not even coming close. Cleansing rituals. Emotional clutter.” He snorted. “Bullshit.”
Abigail tilted her head back and gave him a lofty look. She could feel her tank top sticking to her back. Her hair, short and dark, had twisted itself into corkscrews. Bob didn’t wilt under her scrutiny, and finally she sighed. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
His cornflower Irish eyes leveled on her. “You haven’t given up, Abigail. You won’t toss in the towel on finding your husband’s killer, ever.”
“If you were in my position, would you give up?”
“We’re not talking about me.” He leaned in toward her. “Something’s happened. Something’s changed. What?”
Abigail turned away from him. “Bob…”
He grunted, silencing her. “If you can’t tell me what’s really going on, you can’t tell me. Just don’t give me cleansing rituals.”
“Okay, but the part about fixing up the house—”
“That’s a little better, as cover stories go.”
“It’s not a cover story—”
“Abigail.”
She decided not to push her luck, and Bob didn’t press her further, scowling once more before heading back up to his third-floor apartment. Abigail watched her fire die out, here and there bits of unburned paper amid the ashes. She peeled the lid off her coffee can and noticed that she’d started to cry, almost as if she were someone else.
Using a long-handled spatula, she scooped ashes into the Folgers can.
Not all the ashes fit.
She stirred those left in the grill. All she needed to do was start a fire with two of Boston’s most respected detectives on the premises. She’d been a detective for just two years. By Bob O’Reilly and Scoop Wisdom’s standards—by her own standards—she was still a novice.
They believed in her, and she proved herself one day at a time, but she’d decided, even before she’d formed her own plan of action, not to tell them about last night’s call.
An anonymous tip.
It wasn’t the first in seven years, and it wasn’t the craziest—but she didn’t need two trusted colleagues, two unwavering friends, to talk her out of following up on it.
Her spatula struck a half-burned page pasted to the bottom of the grill, the words jumping out of the ashes at her in thick, black marker, as if somehow she needed reminding.
I am a widow.
CHAPTER 2
The tip had come to her the night before in theatrical fashion.
It was the second Saturday in July, the day Abigail and Chris had chosen for their wedding seven years ago. She had spent the day alone. She always did, despite her friends and family who would call and invite her to barbecues and dinners, a movie, a Red Sox game.
Once, her mother, a corporate attorney with a high-powered husband, a woman who’d learned how to relax, had offered to book Abigail a spa day. “Get a massage. Get your toes done. You’ll feel better.”
Only her mother, Abigail had thought. But Kathryn March had made her widowed daughter smile with that gesture—mission accomplished.
Her father was a different story. He never tried to make his only daughter smile on her anniversary. He knew he couldn’t. Abigail had told him he couldn’t.
“Was Chris killed because of you?”
“Abigail…don’t…”
“Was he?”
“I was the father of the bride on your wedding day. That’s all.”