Free The Widow by Carla Neggers

here—”
    “Leave my wife out of your guessing.”
    “It’s not a guess. It’s a fact that she’s not here.”
    “It’s also a fact that a lobsterman up on Beals Island caught a blue lobster last week.”
    “No kidding? What did he do with it?”
    Lou picked up his coffee mug. “I should have ordered a beer when I had the chance. He donated the lobster to the Mt. Desert Harbor Oceanarium. I read about it in the paper. Abigail, we’re on your side—all of us. Doyle, me, the entire Maine State Police. We all want to solve your husband’s murder as much now as we did the day it happened. We’ll pursue any and all leads with vigor.”
    Abigail tried to put herself in Lou’s shoes as the lead investigator on a seven-year-old case, but she couldn’t. She’d only been a detective two years. The cold cases in the BPD’s files weren’t ones she’d worked on. The family members weren’t people she’d come to know from year after year of them pushing, prodding, demanding answers—pleading for resolution. From wanting to give them those answers.
    “I know you will,” she said curtly. “But neither of you believes the call will amount to anything.”
    “It’s the fifty-seventh phone tip we’ve received over the years.”
    “The first in two years,” Abigail said. “The first I’ve received in Boston, at dinner, on my wedding anniversary.”
    Doyle, sneaking a fried scallop from Lou’s plate, seemed calmer, less antagonistic. “You’re high profile. John March’s daughter, a Boston homicide detective. I don’t need to tell you that complicates matters, makes it harder to separate bullshit from something real.”
    She pushed aside her plate, no longer hungry. “The call may be bullshit, but it was real.”
    “Yeah.” Doyle got heavily to his feet. “You’ve got the station number and my home phone and pager numbers. Feel free to call anytime.”
    “I will. Thanks.”
    He left, the door banging shut behind him, and Lou scowled across the table at her. “You had to goad him?”
    “Me? What’d I do?” But she sighed, shaking her head. “He’s never liked me.”
    “That’s a two-way street, sister.”
    “It’s not—”
    “He knew Chris for a lot longer than you did. Do you think you might be just a little bit jealous of Chief Alden?”
    Abigail sat back against the scarred wood of the booth and studied the man across the table from her. “You know how to play hardball, don’t you, Lou?”
    “It doesn’t come naturally, if that’s any consolation.”
    “Not much. What’re you going to do when you retire?”
    “My wife and I bought a used camper. We’re tearing it apart and plan to put it on the road and take off for three months. Then, who knows?”
    “Think you’ll miss the work?”
    “I’ve loved my job, but I’m looking forward to whatever comes next. What about you?” He set his mug down but kept his eyes on her. “You see yourself on the job for another twenty, twenty-five years?”
    “You mean will I quit when I find Chris’s killer?”
    “I mean will you quit either way. Can you see yourself investigating homicides twenty years from now when your husband’s is still unsolved?”
    “I don’t think that far into the future.”
    “Maybe you should,” Lou said, but he didn’t take the thought further, and nodded at her plate. “You taking that shrimp home with you?”
    “No. Take them, Lou. Enjoy.”
    He grinned at her. “I will.”

CHAPTER 9
    B y dusk, Abigail had put a second coat of her perky lupine-blue paint on the entry walls and was up on her stepladder, an unsteady relic from Chris’s grandfather, dipping her brush into her coffee can.
    She’d poured about two inches of paint into it. If it fell off the ladder, there’d be less to clean up. A few touch-ups, and she’d be finished. Then came the cleanup. Brush, tray, rollers. Herself. She’d splattered paint on herself from head to toe.
    Bob or Scoop or any of the guys she rented the house to