The Angel by Carla Neggers

Island . Why don’t they just call it a pond?”
    “Maybe it’s a Victorian thing.” Abigail ran both her hands through her short, dark curls, noticing wet spots where water had dropped onto her head from leaves of the nearby shade trees. “And Mr. Sarakis was wearing loafers. No laces to trip over.”
    “Figure of speech.”
    Abigail said nothing.
    “This is a straightforward death investigation, Abigail. Guy running in the rain slips or trips and goes flying, hits his head on the concrete, falls into the drink and drowns. A freak accident.”
    “A good detective doesn’t let assumptions drive conclu
    sions,” she said, adding with just a touch of sarcasm, “I wonder who gave me that advice when I decided to become a detective?”
    “Don’t give me a hard time. I’m not in the mood.”
    She didn’t blame him for wanting Victor Sarakis’s death to be an accident, considering his niece was the one who’d called 911.
    Abigail kept her mouth shut. Normally she would ap
    preciate Bob’s insight, his questions. He’d been in Boston law enforcement through some of its most difficult crime years. He wasn’t bitter and burnt-out so much as cynical. He’d seen it all, he liked to say, and not much of it had been 58
    CARLA NEGGERS
    good. But she didn’t want him around right now. It wasn’t just because of Keira’s involvement with the case, either.
    “Never mind my bad mood,” he said. “You’ve been prickly for days.”
    “So?”
    He didn’t answer, and she felt him studying her in the same way he had when they’d first met eight years ago. He hadn’t believed she’d make a good police officer, much less a good homicide detective. She’d won him over slowly, despite what he considered a lot of baggage. Her father was the FBI director, a liability from Bob O’Reilly’s perspec
    tive because it brought attention to her. By itself, it was enough for him to rule her out as police officer material. But that wasn’t all. She’d quit law school after her husband was murdered four days into their Maine honeymoon, a case that had remained unresolved for seven years, until a break last summer.
    Finally, she knew how Chris—her first love—had died, and who had killed him. For seven years, it was all she’d wanted in life. Answers. Justice. The lifting of the burden of not knowing what had happened that awful day. But the break in the case had changed her life in a way she hadn’t anticipated. During her hunt for her husband’s killer last summer, she’d also opened herself up to falling in love again.
    She could feel Bob’s eyes on her and brought herself back to the present. “There’s no evidence of foul play,” he said. Abigail chose her words carefully. “So far, no, there isn’t.”
    “He had his wallet in his back pocket.”
    Indeed, the wallet had made identifying Victor Sarakis easy because it came complete with his driver’s license, ATM card, credit cards, insurance cards, bookstore frequent
    buyer card and seventy-seven dollars in cash. No loose
    THE ANGEL
    59
    change, unless it had fallen out of his pants into the water or grass. If it had, the crime scene guys would find it. But Abigail knew Bob had raised the point about the wallet because it played into his desire for Sarakis’s death to be an accident.
    “What do you suppose he was doing out here in the rain?” she asked, knowing Bob wouldn’t like the question but refusing to let him bulldoze her.
    “Movie, play, Starbucks. It’s Boston in June. He could have been doing a million different things.”
    “He’s from Cambridge.”
    “A lot of people from Cambridge cross the river for a night on the town.”
    She knew that and wasn’t sure why she’d brought it up, except that Victor Sarakis didn’t strike her as a night-on-the
    town sort. He wore expensive, if traditional, clothes—khakis, polo shirt and loafers. No socks. She hadn’t found a receipt from a nearby restaurant or shop or ticket stubs in his pockets.