She could hardly breathe in the thick dust she’d stirred up. She tied up the overstuffed bag and dragged it out to the back porch, down the steps and around to the side of the house, coughing as she shoved it into the garbage bin.
She knew what she had to do.
Before she could change her mind, she ran back into the house and grabbed the phone, dialing her father’s private number.
“Abigail,” he said when he picked up. “I thought you might call. Where are you?”
She was sure he knew where she was. “Maine,” she said.
He took an audible breath. She pictured him in his office or in his car, taking her call because he was between meetings. He was a busy man with an important, high-pressure job, but he was like any father with a daughter whose life had taken a hairpin turn from what he’d wanted for her.
John March had started out as a Boston cop. Bob O’Reilly remembered him and said they’d all known—even the rookies like him—that her father wouldn’t stay in uniform. He had drive, ambition and a willingness to sacrifice. He’d gone to law school, joined the FBI, moved his family from one city to another as he worked his way to the top. He was fifty-nine, handsome and unstoppable. He was also absolutely convinced that no one would ever crack the only unsolved murder of one of his own—FBI Special Agent Christopher Browning.
Abigail never doubted her father’s love or his desire to see her happy, only what they might lead him to do.
“You know about the calls, don’t you?” she asked him bluntly.
“I was briefed earlier today. You’re my daughter, Abigail. You can pretend I’m a plumber all you want, but I’m not—”
“Do you have any reason to believe the calls are related to your position?”
“No.” He spoke without hesitation, and he wasn’t a liar. If he didn’t want to tell her something, he simply wouldn’t. “Do you?”
“I don’t know anything. It’s frustrating. I’d hoped coming up here would get the caller to come out of hiding, but so far, no luck. And I have zip for leads.” She smiled into the phone. “But I did have tea and popovers at the Jordan Pond House today.”
“Alone?”
“With Owen Garrison, actually.”
“And the Coopers. They were there, weren’t they?”
Abigail sat at the kitchen table and frowned. “Dad, are you having me watched?”
He gave a small laugh. “That’d send Washington aflutter. Just imagine. To answer your question, no, I’m not having you watched. The two agents doing the background check on Grace Cooper saw her there with her father and uncle.” His humor vanished as quickly as it had appeared. “Abigail, you are my daughter. If you’re getting anonymous calls, for any reason, I need to know about it.”
In other words, she should have called him on Saturday after the first call—or, at the latest, this morning, not left it for the news to work its way to him. But she hadn’t, and she didn’t know why.
“Next time, I’ll let you know sooner,” she said.
“Right now, it doesn’t sound as if this caller has shed any new light on the investigation into Chris’s death.”
“So far, no.”
“Do you want protection? An agent—”
“Good heavens, no. Tell Mom I said hi. Don’t worry about me, okay? I’ve been painting and knocking out walls and having tea and popovers.” And kissing Owen Garrison. “I rousted Mattie Young from the old Garrison foundation. He was drinking beer and smoking cigarettes out there in the dark. The Alden boys thought he was Chris’s ghost.”
“You don’t fool me,” her father said quietly. “You’re all over this case. You’ll do what it takes to wring out of it whatever you can.”
“Maybe we’ll finally know—”
“Maybe, but if I had my way, it wouldn’t be now, not this way, with you all alone up there.”
She smiled. “I can take care of myself.”
“See that you do.”
After she hung up, she returned to the back room, saw that fog and gray clouds were moving in from the south and west. She could feel the dampness in the air and pictured herself by Owen’s woodstove, cozy under a warm blanket.
She grabbed a hammer and attacked nails and bits of plaster stuck on the beams of the gutted walls. Two more walls to go, and she’d be done.
Tonight, she decided, was for her and her memories.
CHAPTER 15
She’s harder.
There’s an edge to her that wasn’t there before. She tries to keep others from seeing it, but I see it. I know. She’s small and mean and doesn’t care about anything but her own pain.
She won’t stop.
She won’t ever stop.
Calling her isn’t easy. Hearing her voice. Hoping I didn’t slip up. She would pounce if I did.
Abigail.
She would treat me like a common criminal if she knew what I have done.
I hate the thought of trying to defend myself. Trying to explain what she will never let herself understand.
I don’t kill out of passion. I don’t get caught up in the moment and regret later what I’ve done.
I act quickly. Decisively. I capitalize on what’s going on around me.
I see things.
Everything.