“Okay.” Patricia wrote it down.
Jennifer stood up, so he did, too.
“May I ask you something, Mrs. Lundquist?” he said.
“Certainly, Harvey, and call me Patricia.” They were all on a first-name basis now that they’d survived the cake crisis.
“Were you a classmate of Martin Blake’s?”
“Yes, how did you know?”
He took the reunion guest list from his pocket. “Unfortunately, I’ve had to investigate Mr. Blake’s death today.”
“His death? Martin is dead? But I just saw him yesterday.”
“Yes, ma’am.” In his official capacity, Harvey dropped back into the formal mode. “That would be at the high school reunion at Fort Point.”
“Yes.” Her face was as pale as the white wedding cake. “What happened to Martin?”
“Apparently he went home last night, then took a walk and got himself killed.”
“Was he hit by a car?”
“No, ma’am. It was homicide.”
“Oh, dear. Poor Thelma.”
“Yes. I’m in charge of the investigation.”
“I see.”
“That’s not why I came here—I mean, we really do need the wedding cake—but I saw on this list of reunion guests that you and your husband were present, and I thought maybe I could ask you a couple of questions.”
“Of course.” She sat down on a stool. Jennifer and Harvey resumed their seats.
“Did you talk to Martin Blake at the reunion?” he asked.
“Yes. He and Thelma were both there. Thelma was all gussied up in a sailor top and navy blue Capri pants, and a red wig. She seemed to think the picnic was a little rustic. Martin was great. He’s so down to earth. I see him here in town sometimes, and he’s always friendly.”
“Do you see them socially?”
“Not really. Michael and I are very busy, and I’m sure the Blakes have their own circle. I run into them once in a while.”
“Do you read Martin Blake’s books?”
“Always. Our class is very proud of him.”
“What did you talk to him about yesterday?”
“Oh, the usual catching up things. The children. I did ask him when his next book will be out. He said in the fall. It’s a story about Mexico and California.”
“Border Feud?”
“That sounds right.”
“Is your husband Michael also a member of the class?”
“No, he’s from New Jersey. It was members and spouses yesterday. Thelma’s not a Portland High alumna, either. She grew up in Farmington.”
Harvey took his notebook out and began writing. “Did Mr. Blake have any sharp words with anyone?”
“Not that I know of. Martin is pretty easygoing. I’ve never seen him fight with anyone, not even Thelma.”
“Is there anything about the reunion that sticks out in your mind?”
“Well, David Murphy was there. A lot of people were talking politics with David.”
“How about Martin?”
“He’s quieter. He talks one-on-one, but doesn’t usually hold forth to a throng like David does.”
Harvey nodded. “Anything else that you think might help me?”
She frowned. “I can’t think of anything.” She gave him her business card for the bakery. Harvey gave her his.
“Call me if you or Mr. Lundquist have anything to add.”
They parted cordially, and Jennifer promised to call the next day about the cake.
*****
Jennifer called her roommate, Beth Bradley, and alerted her that there would be three for dinner. When she and Harvey arrived at the house together, Beth had beef stew and biscuits cooking. Harvey took off his jacket and tie and sat down at the kitchen table while Jennifer helped Beth lay the place settings.
He looked tired, which was no surprise. Jennifer was tired, too. The long day on the new job had worn her out. Compared to the upscale software design firm where she’d worked previously, the police station was noisy and hectic. Beth looked as though she needed to sleep off the entire school year.
“Time for the news.” Beth turned on a small TV that sat on the kitchen counter.
“Harvey doesn’t like to watch himself,” Jennifer said.
“Oh, sorry.” Beth reached to turn it off.
“Maybe I’d better today,” Harvey said, so she left it on. Martin Blake’s death was the lead story. They all sat at the table and watched. The editors had obviously cropped the tape and used two clips, one of Harvey’s initial statement and one of him saying, “We don’t know where the crime took place.” He groaned.
“What’s wrong?” asked Beth. “You look great.” The reporter was going into a retrospect of Blake’s life and gushing over his books, from Morristown to the unfinished Mexico book, due out in the fall.
“I shouldn’t have said we don’t know where he was killed,” Harvey said.
“But if it’s true…”
“It just gives the press a chance to make us look incompetent.”
Jennifer squeezed his hand in sympathy. Harvey wasn’t concerned about his own image, but making the police department look good was important to him.
He ate appreciatively, but Jennifer could tell he hadn’t gotten over the news broadcast. After they ate, she settled on the living room couch with him and her bridal planner, to work on the guest list. She was determined to make the tedious process as quick and painless as possible for him.
“All right, relatives first. Your two sisters and their families.”
Harvey nodded. “And Aunt Linda and Uncle Robert, and Aunt Billie—”
“Aunt Billie?”
“Well, her name is really Agatha, but no one calls her that. And my cousins. Let’s see, Stewart, Peter, Melvin, Anna, Heather and Gary.”
“Do you have addresses?”
“I’ll have to call my sister Gina.”
“Okay, why don’t you just have her send all the addresses to me?”
“Good idea.” He wrote himself a note.
“Now, what about friends?”
“Carl and Margaret. And Grandma Lewis. She may not be able to come, but I want to invite her.” She was Harvey’s first wife’s grandmother, and Jennifer knew he was fond of her, although he didn’t see her often.
“Do you want to invite Tim Lewis?” He’d told her about Carrie’s younger brother.
“No, we haven’t kept in touch. I’ll just let Grandma tell him about the wedding.”
“Old school friends?” she asked.
“Hmm … I don’t think so. It’s been so long. But I would like to invite my neighbors, the Jenkins family.”
“Sure.” Jennifer knew Mrs. Jenkins. The family had the apartment below Harvey’s.
“And all the Thibodeaus. Eddie’s folks are always good to me.”
She wrote it down.
“And the P.D. Do you think I can just post it on the bulletin board?”
She tried to keep her jaw from dropping while she processed that. “That will make it hard to count cake slices. Will they RSVP?”
“Some will. Most won’t. But we’re both working there now, and the guys downstairs are already asking me about it.”
“Okay,” she said, against her better judgment. “But you’ll want to give individual invitations to the men in your unit. Mike and Eddie are in the wedding, but give them one, anyway, and Arnie and Pete and the secretary. Anyone else who needs their own?”
“How about Sarah Benoit?” She had been to the lighthouse on a double date with them and Eddie.
“All right,” Jennifer said. “Who else?”
“Nate Miller and Jimmy Cook. Maybe Tony Winfield. He’s on this investigation with me. Guess we’ll see how things are when it’s time to mail the invitations.”
“How about the chief?”
“The police chief?” Harvey looked surprised at her suggestion.
“Sure.”
“He goes to all the men’s funerals, but I don�
��t know about weddings.”
“Well, we don’t want to insult him by not inviting him.”
Harvey frowned. “Maybe I should ask Mike about that.” He made himself another note.
They went on through his part of the list. Their church would get a blanket invitation, except for a few special friends they had made there in the last month. Pastor Rowland was doing the ceremony, and the reception would be held in the church hall.
Beth, their unofficial chaperone, had been working on her cross stitching while she listened to them. She got up and folded her handwork. “I’m sorry, you guys, but I’m really tired. I’m going to get ready for bed.”
“When do you get out of school?” Harvey asked.
“By three o’clock Thursday, I should be free for the summer.”
“Sounds like paradise,” Harvey said. “I hope things go smoothly for you until then.”
“Thanks.” She said goodnight and headed down the hallway.
Harvey looked at his watch. “Guess I’d better get going.” He still sat there, eyeing Jennifer uncertainly.
“Don’t go yet,” she begged, although Harvey had deep shadows beneath his eyes. “We don’t know how many people the cake has to feed, and I promised Patricia I’d call her tomorrow.”
He seized her hand and kissed her fingertips. “Get your list out, gorgeous.”
Jennifer had already pondered over her list. It included a large extended family, a few old friends in the Skowhegan area, and some former coworkers. They tried to count a total, but with the uncertain numbers from the church and the police department, it was hard. They hadn’t been at Victory Baptist Church long, so she doubted all the church people would come, but a lot of the cops might show up with their wives and girlfriends.
Harvey sighed wearily. “Guess you’d better be prepared for two hundred. If only half that come, we’ll freeze the leftover cake and eat it all summer.”
“What if three hundred come?” she asked. It was entirely possible, given the size of the congregation and the city’s police force.
“We’re not paying six hundred dollars for a cake.”
“My father’s paying for it.”
“Well then, George isn’t paying six hundred dollars for a cake.”
“But if there’s not enough—”
“There will be. There’s always cake left over. Half the people who go to the wedding won’t eat it.”
“Think so?”
“Know so. Diabetics, people on diets. . .”
She nodded hesitantly.
“Couldn’t you have just gotten one of the church ladies to make us a cake?” he asked.
“No. They’re all willing to make salads and finger sandwiches and help serve at the reception, but nobody there seems to make cakes professionally.”
Angela Williams at the church was heading up the food committee for the wedding, and Jennifer’s parents were footing the bill. It was going to be a lot cheaper than a caterer, but she knew Harvey was still thinking about her father paying all that money for a cake.
“We still have the list of topics that we need to make decisions on.” She hated bringing it up, but Harvey didn’t complain. He found the list in his jacket pocket and squinted at it.
“Cake, guest list, and tuxedoes are covered. That leaves apartment, honeymoon, vows, and motels for guests.” His brow furrowed. “Do we have to do all this tonight?”
“Well…Maybe we can go over what we want for vows with Pastor Rowland Friday night when we have the counseling.” They had attended one premarital counseling session and were scheduled for the next three Friday evenings.
“Great. And I can make a list of motels on the computer. You can mail them to out-of-state guests with the invitations, or is that tacky?”
“No, I think it’s okay,” she said. “That would help me a lot.”
He nodded. “So now we’re down to apartment and honeymoon. What does apartment mean?”
She stared at him. “It means, where are we going to live?”
“Oh.”
She swallowed and wished she hadn’t brought it up, but they had to decide. “Beth would like to keep the house, but she said if you and I want it, she’ll find another place. I’d hate to make her move out, though, when she just moved in.”
She watched him anxiously. He glanced around, and she could almost read his thoughts. The little rental house was characterless, a box in a ho-hum neighborhood. The kitchen cabinets were stained plywood, and the bathroom fixtures were old and water stained. He’d never criticized it, but she couldn’t imagine it as his home.
“Do you want to keep living here?” he asked quietly.
“Not really. So, what do we do? Move into your apartment?”
“No way.”
She bit her lip and waited. He had lived in his apartment for fifteen years, since the days of his first marriage. The thought of living with him in the same place Carrie had made him miserable troubled her, and she knew it would bother him even worse.
“I think we should get a new place,” he said at last. “Neutral territory, so to speak.”
She exhaled. “Okay, but that’s going to take time. Our schedule is already jammed.”
“Well, I don’t want to live in the apartment with you.” His blue eyes were grave and pleading.
“Me either.” She put her hand on his, and he slid his arm around her. Nobody said Carrie’s name, but she was there.
“So, I guess we check the classifieds,” he said.
“For a new apartment?”
“Yes. But I hope we can find something that’s not too far from Eddie.” He and his partner ran together three days a week and carpooled to work.
“That’s fine. Wherever you want.”
“Let’s not go through that routine again,” he said.
“What do you mean?” Jennifer asked.
“Well, I did it to you on the cake, and it turned out I had stronger opinions than I’d realized.”
She smiled. “I mean it. I’ll be happy with you, wherever we land.”
He looked deep into her eyes. “Jenny, where we live will be important to you, especially when the summer’s over and you’re not working. You’ll be home a lot more than I am. I want it to be a place you like.” He kissed her, and she clung to him.
“Okay, then we should look together,” she whispered.
“I think so.” He straightened suddenly and looked at her with more animation than he’d shown all evening. “It doesn’t have to be an apartment. We could buy a house.”
“On your salary?”
“I have some money. My stocks.”
He had mention his investments to Jennifer before, in a modest way.
“You mean we could make a down payment?”
“Sure. Or, depending on how much the house was…”
She cuddled in against his shoulder. “Well, I guess we could look, if you think we should.”
“I think I’d like to have a house of our own to come home to.”
“That sounds good. I’ll see if I can find a real estate agent who can show us houses after work one of these days.”
“What’s left on the list?” he asked.
“The honeymoon.”
“I thought that was my department.” He smiled, and her heart lurched.
“That’s fine, as long as you have time to plan it.”
Two days after he’d bought her the ring, he’d started paperwork on a passport for her. Just in case, he’d told her. Jennifer had had a passport as a teenager, for family trips to Quebec and Prince Edward Island, but it had expired.
He had his already, because he flew on business occasionally. Mike had sent him to Montreal the previous winter, and to Paris two years earlier for a week-long session on sharing international crime data via computer. He claimed he’d loved the conference, hated Paris, and she hadn’t pressed him for details. It was during the time he’d been depressed and drank heavily, and she’d believed him when he said he never wante
d to see Paris again.
A crafty glint came into his eyes. “I have some ideas for a trip.”
“Fantastic. Do I really need a passport?”
“Well, that depends. I thought we’d better have it ready, but I’m not sure it will come through in time. Although I did request to have it expedited.”
That probably cost him more than she wanted to know about.
“Okay,” Jennifer said. “I’ll leave it to you.”
He smiled wider, and the corners of his eyes crinkled as he leaned in for another kiss.
He left soon after, and Jennifer headed for bed. She drifted off to sleep thinking about Martin Blake. The most famous man in Maine was dead, and it was up to her fiancé to find the killer. Harvey was known as a relentless detective who wouldn’t give up. He rarely left a case unclosed. But that could take time. Harvey had more patience than anyone else she knew, but if he couldn’t find Blake’s murderer before the wedding, would he still want to take time off? She tried to banish it from her mind. Pink and white roses in her bouquet—that was a more pleasant train of thought.
Chapter 4
Tuesday, June 22
Harvey drove by the bridge Tuesday morning, and the divers were in the water. So far they hadn’t turned up anything but trash, so he and Eddie went on to the office. Harvey entered the names of all the high school reunion guests into his computer. Jennifer had written a flagging program for him that would notify him if any of those names appeared in city, county, or state law enforcement reports.
He was due at the lawyer’s office at nine o’clock, so he left Eddie with the reunion list, to start calling Blake’s classmates and see if they could shed any light on the situation.
Harvey walked into Chester and Clayfield’s law office on Forest Avenue. Upscale old brick building with bay windows and fancy molding. Edwin N. Clayfield honored him with an appointment. He was the senior partner, white-haired and paunchy.
“I have an appointment with the family on Thursday, after the funeral, to go over Mr. Blake’s will with them,” he told Harvey.
Harvey nodded soberly. “Thank you for agreeing to give me a preview.”
“Well, in view of the homicide investigation. . .” Clayfield pressed his lips together and opened a folder. “Of course, this is confidential.”
Fort Point (Maine Justice Book 2) Page 4