“I wonder if I could have a copy of his article?”
“Oh, no. It’s too sensitive.”
“I promise I’ll keep it confidential.”
“You don’t understand. This story belongs to the Press Herald right now. If one word leaks out before it hits print, we lose our advantage. I am talking a major scandal on the national level, with roots right here in Portland.”
“Murphy,” Harvey said.
Russell swore.
“You may as well give it to me now,” Harvey told him.
The editor eyed him with something between admiration and loathing. “You ought to be a reporter.”
“I like my job.”
“I guess you’re good at it.”
“I’d have guessed Murphy anyway. They went to school together. At the reunion on Sunday, somebody overheard a remark Blake made. He said he knew Murphy’s secrets.”
“Martin was usually more discreet than that.”
“They weren’t talking politics. An old high school thing had come up in the conversation, and Blake said he knew about it.”
Russell sighed and turned to his computer. “The article’s in the system, in Martin’s private queue.” Harvey waited while he found it and copied the file to a thumb drive for him. Russell hesitated, then handed him the drive.
“If this weren’t important to my investigation, I wouldn’t ask you for it,” Harvey said.
“What, you think this is the motive?”
“Any chance Murphy got wind of it?”
“I don’t see how. Martin was very good at covering his tracks. Not even the staff here knew what it was about. We didn’t discuss it in meetings. Secrecy has paramount.”
“I’ll keep my word.”
“This information belongs to the Press Herald,” Russell said again.
“You paid him for it?”
“We paid Martin big bucks for every word he wrote for us the last fifteen years. But I guess Thelma will get the check this time.”
“What day will you run the article?”
“Not sure. I think I’ll hold off a few days. It’s something that needs to be made public, but I’ve got to go over Martin’s documentation scrupulously first. We can’t afford to mess up on something this big.”
*****
When he got back to the station, it was nearly eleven o’clock. Harvey logged Blake’s notebook out of the evidence room and took it upstairs.
It was dry now. He opened to the last entry.
“Eddie, look at this.”
“M confronts TN—TN is defiant. We saw that before. Notes for his next book.” Eddie stopped suddenly, then grabbed the reunion list from his “in” box. “Thomas Nadeau and who? Martin?”
“Murphy.”
Eddie nodded slowly. “On the beach.”
“David Murphy confronts Tom Nadeau, and Nadeau is defiant.”
“You sure it’s not for the book?”
“I checked. There are no characters in the new book with the initials TN. There’s a Maria and a Mateo starting with M, but no TN.”
Eddie chewed the end of his pen. “But Nadeau and Murphy are chummy.”
“Maybe not.” Harvey checked his stocks. They were looking good. Not enough to buy Martin Blake’s house, but it would certainly get him and Jennifer a comfortable home, even within the city limits.
He and Eddie met Jennifer for lunch at the café.
“What’s Leeanne up to today?” Harvey asked.
“Beth was taking her to the art museum,” Jennifer said. “Did Jeff get off all right?”
“Yes, he left early.”
They ordered sandwiches, and Harvey arranged to pick Jennifer up for their counseling session with the pastor that evening.
Sarah came and stood by the table. “Is it all right if I sit here?”
They all welcomed her, but Eddie seemed a little stand-offish. A red flag went up in Harvey’s brain. Eddie never shut off the charm around women, especially women he liked.
“Sarah, I haven’t seen you for a couple of days,” he said.
“We’ve been really busy. I caught traffic duty for the cemetery yesterday. Today we had an abuse call from a daycare center. Big mess. We had to call in Social Services. I’m so glad it’s Friday.” She started eating her salad.
“What are you and Cheryl doing tomorrow?” asked Jennifer.
“I told her I’d go to her parents’ for the day. Wish I was going with you guys.” She shot a glance at Eddie, but he was looking inside his sandwich.
“Maybe another time,” Harvey said.
It was getting a little depressing. Eddie and Sarah usually struck sparks off each other.
“You’re coming to the wedding, right?” Jennifer asked. “We mailed the out-of-town invitations today. Yours is right … here.” She fished it out of her purse and handed Sarah the fat envelope that read, ‘Miss Sarah Benoit and guest.’ Harvey had posted the one for the other officers on the bulletin board in the roll call room and distributed those for the men in his unit, plus Nate Miller and Tony Winfield. On Mike’s advice, they had mailed one to the police chief.
“I wouldn’t miss it.” Sarah finally cracked a smile, opening the two envelopes and sliding out the white embossed card.
The conversation lagged. Eddie was the best man, so he couldn’t take Sarah to the wedding. He’d be squiring Abby that day. Sarah knew that, and Harvey thought she was pining for him.
Jennifer’s blue-gray eyes were trying to ask him something. Harvey smiled a little and wondered if the wedding ceremony gave couples mental telepathy.
“Harvey’s taking me to an auction Tuesday,” she said brightly to Sarah. “You ought to come with us.”
That was what she wanted to ask. Another double date.
“That would be fun,” Sarah said eagerly. She brushed her short, dark hair back, and didn’t look at Eddie. “What are you guys shopping for?”
“Just stuff for the house,” Jennifer said.
“You found a house?”
“No, but we’re hoping.”
Harvey decided he’d better step in. “Eddie, can you go? I might need you if I start buying furniture.”
“For you, mon ami, but of course,” he said, with the Maurice Chevalier accent. They all laughed. Eddie only lapsed into French when he was trying to be funny, when his grandmother was around, or when the job demanded it.
The ice was broken, and soon Eddie was eating chips off Sarah’s plate and keeping the repartee flowing. She shook her head at him but came back with smart remarks, her eyes bright.
Harvey raised his eyebrows at Jennifer and tried to communicate mentally what he was thinking. This could be serious. Jennifer nodded solemnly and squeezed his hand.
*****
“Gonna be strange without Mike for two weeks,” Eddie said.
“Yup.” Harvey didn’t want to think about it.
“I heard him say he’s retiring.”
“Not yet. At least not until spring.” Harvey shot him a glance sideways. “You hear anything else?” That was the conversation where Mike had talked about Harvey stepping into his job.
“Yeah. You want me to forget it?” Eddie asked.
They had reached the top of the stairs, and Mike was leaning over Arnie’s desk, looking at a file with him.
“We’ll talk about it sometime.”
“Sure.”
Eddie set to work on the interview notes. Harvey had asked him to compile a coherent narrative of the events from the first arrivals of alumni at Fort Point Sunday morning, through the discovery of Luke Frederick’s body two days later. It was slow work, picking out the significant details from the witnesses’ statements.
Harvey put the flash drive John Russell had given him in his computer and began reading Blake’s article. When he’d finished, he sat for a long time, letting things settle in his mind.
“How’s it going, Harv?” He jumped. Mike was standing beside him.
“Sit down for a minute.” He bu
mped the mouse so the screen saver went away and the text showed on the monitor.
“What’s this?”
“A story Martin Blake was writing for the Press Herald. It’s pretty explosive.”
Mike read intently, then whistled and scrolled down a screen, scanning the text. After a couple of minutes, he looked at Harvey.
“And they were going to print this?”
“They still might. Think anyone would want to stop it bad enough to kill him?”
Mike squinted at the screen again. “Blake had proof?”
“His editor was adamant he had to have documentation for everything. The paper’s afraid of a libel suit. They’re very strict about proof, but the managing editor still wants to publish it. If it’s true, it will come out sooner or later, and he wants the Press Herald to break the story.”
Mike shook his head. “Don’t kill yourself over this one, Harv.”
“Like you wouldn’t.” He sighed. “I hope we can wrap this up before the wedding.” He was beginning to envy Mike his Allagash trip. No phone. No case. No press. Just the woman he loved and a few billion mosquitoes.
*****
Jennifer hated to leave Leeanne that evening when Harvey picked her up for their counseling session at the church. “I’ve hardly seen her!”
“We’ll only be gone a couple of hours, and we’ll spend all day tomorrow with her,” Harvey said.
Leeanne was enjoying her trip to the city, and Beth had taken over as hostess. They’d been to the Maine Mall after the art museum, and Leeanne had come home with a new pair of shoes and sunglasses. Jennifer was jealous of the time Beth had spent with her sister. Maybe after she and Harvey were settled, both her sisters could visit.
Pastor Rowland focused on communication that evening.
“Harvey, you’re an intelligent man, and an independent thinker. However, I think it would benefit your marriage tremendously if you’d talk to Jennifer more.”
Jennifer smiled at that. Many times she wished Harvey would spell out what he was thinking.
“I guess I needed that,” he admitted. “I tend to assume Jennifer knows how I feel.”
Pastor Rowland nodded. “You’ve had to do some joint decision making already, but there’ll be a lot more after the wedding. People who have been single for a long time tend to be independent. That’s not necessarily bad, but you need to remember you’re half of a team now.” He handed them each a sheaf of papers stapled together, containing eight pages of questions.
“You need to discuss these things,” the pastor said, “and this is just a start.” Jennifer leafed through the pages. The topics were wide ranging and detailed. Some of them she and Harvey had already dealt with, but others hadn’t entered her mind. In-laws, housing, working wives, children, finances, household chores, submission, sex, and dozens more. She swallowed hard.
“You expect us to talk about all this tonight?” Harvey asked.
“No, but over the next few weeks. Talk, talk, talk. You don’t need me there on everything, but you each need to get an idea of the other’s opinions in these areas. If you hit a snag, you can come to me. Some things we’ll go over together.”
The pastor talked about God’s view of marriage then, and Harvey listened gravely. Jennifer sat quietly, her hands folded in her lap, feeling woefully inadequate.
They discussed the vows after that. Did they want the traditional wording? Harvey looked at Jennifer.
“I’d like it,” she said.
He smiled. “You don’t have to obey if you don’t want to.”
“I want to. I mean, I want it in the vows.”
They prayed together. Jennifer’s heart soared when Harvey prayed, asking God to help him lead their family and never to put her in the situation where she felt uncomfortable letting him. Her tears were near the surface by then.
The pastor brought out a stack of books for them to take home.
“Harvey,” he said, “I’m not going to give you the sex lecture, unless there’s something you want to talk about.”
Harvey smiled. “I appreciate that.”
“But Jennifer—” Rowland turned to her, and she blushed and looked at her hands. “I was wondering if you might like to talk to my wife sometime.”
She took a shaky breath. “Maybe that would be good.”
“There’s a lot in these books,” said the pastor. “They’re all from a biblical perspective.” He looked at Harvey. “You’ll find this marriage is different from a secular one. You have the love of Christ now, and you’ll love Jennifer in ways you never knew about before. Unselfishly.”
Harvey nodded and looked over at her cautiously. Jennifer smiled, and he reached for her hand. This is right, she told herself, as joy shot through her. This is the smartest thing I’ve ever done, and also the scariest.
He took her home and left her at the door with a prayer and a sweet kiss.
Chapter 8
Saturday, June 26
Harvey picked Eddie up in the morning for the expedition to Fort Point. Eddie was well outfitted, with a tape measure, binoculars, a coil of rope, and his regular gear. The air was cool, and he and Harvey both wore light work shirts over their holsters.
On the way to Jennifer’s house, Eddie said, “Only three more weeks.”
Harvey smiled. “And five hours.”
“You nervous?”
“Just a tad.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. I messed up my first marriage. I really want to do things right this time.”
“You’re older and wiser.”
“Well, older for sure.”
Eddie looked over at him. “Hey, Harv, am I supposed to throw you a bachelor party?”
“No. Absolutely not.”
“Okay. Pete said it’s part of the best man’s job.”
“Well, he’s wrong. Imagine how Jennifer would feel.”
“Guess you’re right. Or we could all get together without the other stuff.”
“Don’t forget, Mike’s away. Why don’t we just skip it?”
Eddie nodded, then asked slowly, “So, what exactly is my job?”
“Just hold the ring until we need it, and be there to catch me if I pass out.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“You never know.”
“What about at the reception? Do I dance with Abby?”
“Eddie, we’re not having dancing at the wedding.”
“No dancing? I’ve never been to a wedding without dancing.”
“Well, brace yourself, buddy, because there won’t be any champagne, either.”
“You’re off of champagne, too?”
“I’m off everything, and so is Jennifer.”
“Okay. Is it because you’re having it at the church?”
“Partly, I suppose. You know I’ve had a problem with alcohol in the past.”
They were passing the church, and Eddie looked at it solemnly. “I don’t get it, Harv. You’re so different all of a sudden.”
“I’m still me. I’m still your friend.”
“I know, but … is it God or Jennifer that did it?”
“Maybe both.” Eddie was pensive, and after a minute Harvey asked, “Do you not want to do it?”
“What? Be your best man? Of course I do!”
“Well, you don’t seem comfortable with it.”
“Just give me some time. I’m getting used to the new you, but you keep surprising me. Like the dancing thing.”
A memory of his first wedding, with the reception at a posh Boston hotel, flashed through Harvey’s mind. He’d called cabs for several people who drank too much, including his father-in-law, and he hadn’t been exactly sober himself. As for dancing, after five or six drinks, Carrie had taken that to a new level with one of his Harvard buddies. He shook his head, trying to banish that memory.
“It’s just better this way, okay? For Jennifer and me both.”
“Okay.”
Harvey turned in at Jennifer’s driveway and shut the
engine off. “There are just some things that we can do without now.”
“Like drinking?”
“Yeah. When you drink, you’re not in control. I want God to control me now, not alcohol.”
“I can understand that.”
“You know I quit drinking before I started dating Jennifer,” Harvey said.
Eddie nodded slowly. “Yeah. When Carrie died. I remember.”
“Well, Jennifer’s family are nondrinkers, so it works out pretty well.”
“What about the dancing? It’s tradition.”
Harvey blew out a breath. “That’s a personal request on my part. It’s got nothing to do with Jennifer, but she agreed.”
The door opened, and Jennifer and Leeanne came out. Harvey got out of the SUV. Jennifer had her hair in two long braids. On the lower part of each braid was a leather wrap with green wooden beads securing the thongs that laced them.
“Hey, Pocahontas.” She made a face at him, but he kissed her anyway. “Better take a jacket. It might be chilly at the park.”
“All right. The lunch is inside.”
He followed her in and carried the picnic box to the SUV. She had packed food enough for an entire squad of detectives.
“Where’s Beth? Would she like to come?” he asked.
“She’s already left for her parents’ in Freeport for the weekend,” said Jennifer. Her tomboy ensemble consisted of jeans, a Portland SeaDogs sweatshirt, sneakers, and a blue Civil War campaign hat. Leeanne’s dark hair was in a ponytail, and she wore a navy zip-front sweatshirt over a yellow T-shirt and jeans. She and her sister didn’t look very feminine that day, but definitely cute.
Leeanne’s luggage went in the back of the Explorer, along with the lunch. She climbed in and buckled up, demure and perhaps a little nervous beside Eddie.
*****
Traffic was already heavy on coastal Route 1, and Harvey had to pay attention to his driving. In the back seat, Eddie began telling Leeanne a story about one of the unit’s undercover jobs. He had her laughing in no time. Jennifer pulled out the pastor’s list of questions and scanned it.
“What’s the topic today, gorgeous?” Harvey asked.
“Number 48,” she said.
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