“She has other things that need praying about. Like her personal life, that kind of thing.”
“Could you pray for Sarah?”
Harvey turned around and met his gaze. “Sure. Anything in particular?”
“Just … stuff.”
“Okay.”
*****
Jennifer and Beth were ready when Harvey got to their house. Beth had her hair up and was keeping cool in front of the fan in a sleeveless dress. Jennifer had changed to a skirt and sleeveless blouse and braided her wet hair. The Rapunzel-just-had-a-shower look.
They ate supper at an ice cream restaurant and then went to the church. After the Bible study, Harvey looked for Mr. Bailey. He joined the elderly man, Rick, and the pastor for prayer time. Harvey shared his burden for Eddie and Jeff with them, and they also had a few requests.
“I’ll have a decision to make at work soon,” Harvey told them.
“As if you didn’t have any decisions to make right now, investigating the case of the century,” Rick said.
“I’ve had some pressure lately,” Harvey admitted.
“Everything’s on track for the wedding, I hope,” said Mr. Bailey.
“Yes, sir, and I’ve got the papers for the closing on the house right here. We can take care of it tonight, if you’d like to.”
“Suits me fine.”
They prayed together, and Harvey was very thankful for the things he didn’t have to worry about. Money, Jennifer’s love, and friends he could trust, for instance. The other things, he took to the Lord.
He rejoined Jennifer and Beth, and they went outside into dusk. Jennifer pointed to the west. “Heat lightning.” They stood and watched it for a few seconds.
Beth asked, “Are you going anywhere this weekend?”
“Let’s get out on the water if it’s hot,” Harvey said.
“We haven’t been to Fort Gorges,” said Jennifer. “It’s close. You don’t want to go very far right now, do you?”
“I don’t know. Maybe we should wait and decide Friday. See where the case is going.” He could very well be tied up over the weekend on this case.
At their little house, Jennifer and Beth had a screen in every window and fans pumping as hard as they could, but it was still too hot. The tiny yard behind faced a fence. They sat on the back steps and drank lemonade. Thunder rolled in the distance.
“Any leads today?” Jennifer asked.
“A few,” Harvey said. “The book may have helped. Or confused things worse than ever.”
“That old burglary?” Jennifer asked.
“Yeah. I’m not quite done with it, and I’m not sure yet whether it means anything to the case or not. I hope I’m not spending too much time on something totally unrelated.”
“Do you think Martin Blake was involved in the burglary?”
“No, he was too smart to write about it if he was in on it. I think he figured he knew who did it. Maybe it was a catharsis for him to write about it.”
“Or he had something against those guys and wanted them to be brought to justice, if only in fiction. But he didn’t publish it for years.”
“I know.” Harvey looked up at the cloudy sky. “I wish I knew why.”
“You don’t think it was autobiographical?” Beth asked.
“If Martin’s in the book, he was the quiet kid who saw everything and told nothing. But I did find out who Binky was, the kid who was arrested.”
“Who?” Jennifer asked eagerly.
“His real name was Philip Whitney, according to Patricia. He’s dead now.”
She frowned. “Were any of your suspects in it?”
“I wish I knew.”
“Forget it for a while. You’ve got to let your brain rest.” Jennifer squeezed his hand.
“Want to go with us Saturday, Beth?” Harvey asked. She hadn’t been on any of their outings yet.
“That would be fun. Are you sure you want company?”
“Yes and no.”
Beth laughed.
“Come,” he said.
Jennifer’s phone rang in the house. She got up and went in.
Beth gazed upward. “I hope it rains after all this.” They couldn’t see the lightning from that side of the house, but every few seconds the sky lit momentarily, and the clouds had thickened.
Jennifer came running to the door holding her phone out to him. “It’s Jeff.”
Harvey took the phone and put it to his ear. “Hey, Jeff!”
“Harvey, I got the job.”
“Excellent. When do you start?”
“A week from tomorrow.”
“Great! Make sure you have the seventeenth off for the wedding.”
“I already checked, and I do.”
“Terrific. Jennifer and I are buying a house. The apartment’s yours if you want it. I checked with the landlord, and you can move in anytime.”
“Thanks. That will save me a lot of hassle. I’ll work here Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday next week, but could I come down this weekend? I don’t want to put you out.”
“No, that’s fine. On Saturday, Jennifer and Beth and I are talking about taking a jaunt to one of the forts or something. Want to go along?”
“Sure. Sounds like fun.”
“Do you want to bring some stuff down and leave it?”
“You sure you’re ready for that?” Jeff asked.
“Yeah, I talked to the man we’re buying the house from tonight. We signed the papers, and he says he’ll be out before the wedding, so I may be able to start moving early, too.”
“All right, I’ll be down Friday.”
“You’ve got the key. Make yourself at home. Oh, Jennifer and I have counseling Friday night. I’ll come home first, though.”
“Counseling? You guys are fighting already?”
“Not that kind of counseling.” Harvey shot a glance at Jennifer. “Premarital counseling. With the pastor. You know, talk about all the things we don’t want to fight over later.”
“Is that normal?”
Harvey laughed. “We’re finding it educational.” He signed off with Jeff.
Beth had brought out the newspaper and was reading it by flashlight.
“They’re going to shoot fireworks off from Fort Preble Saturday night,” she said.
The Fourth of July had been on the edge of Harvey’s consciousness, but he hadn’t considered how it would affect their weekend plans.
“If we went out to Fort Gorges at suppertime and took a picnic, we’d have a great view,” Beth said. “You have to have a boat to get out there, though.”
“We could arrange it,” he said.
“I could,” Beth agreed. “I know someone from the school. Let me call him and see if I can fix it up.”
“Uh—” Harvey stopped. This could be embarrassing. He realized he’d sort of set up a date for Beth without her permission.
“What?” asked Jennifer.
“Well, is this guy, uh, a friend of yours? Because I just told Jeff he could tag along Saturday.”
“Oh, he’s married,” said Beth. “I just want to borrow his boat.” She didn’t say anything about Jeff. She looked at her watch. “I don’t think it’s too late to call him.” She went inside.
Harvey slipped his arm around Jennifer’s waist and pulled her up against his side. “Seems like we’re spending less time together than we did before we were engaged.”
“Maybe less time alone together.” She looked up at him, and he took it as an invitation to kiss her. The day’s stress began to slip away.
“We both have too many obligations right now,” he said.
“Maybe we shouldn’t go anywhere Saturday.”
“It’s too late to change it now. Besides, we’ll enjoy being with Beth and Jeff.”
“Do you think it’s a good idea? I mean, Jeff…” Jennifer’s gray eyes were dark in the twilight.
“Beth didn’t complain.” He sighed and leaned back against the steps. Jennifer came with him and leaned her head aga
inst his shoulder.
“Where’s your gun?” she asked suddenly.
“Locked in the Explorer.”
“Have you decided where’s it’s staying on the honeymoon? You can’t fly with it.”
“Probably in my locker at work.” It would be strange to go a whole week without the holster.
Beth came back out. “We can have the boat after four in the afternoon. Charlie wants to take his family out early in the day, but it’s all ours for the evening. You can drive a boat, can’t you, Harvey?”
“Sure.”
They made plans and decided to take in the batteries at Peaks Island first, then putter over to Fort Gorges for a picnic supper and fireworks viewing. The boat was a cabin cruiser with a ninety-horse outboard. They’d be fine if the bay was calm.
“If it’s windy, it’s off,” Harvey told Beth.
“Of course.”
They moved inside, and Jennifer brought her Bible. She and Harvey sat on the couch with it and went over the books of the Bible. Jennifer was learning them faster than Harvey was.
“I’m too old for this,” he said.
“No, you’re not. People who keep learning new things stay alert and active longer.”
“Now I feel really old. You make it sound like I’ll be senile tomorrow if I don’t watch it.”
“How did you learn the multiplication tables?” she asked.
“My mother bribed me. I got marshmallows if I said them right.”
Jennifer smiled. “You want me to get a bag of marshmallows?”
He said, “No, just kiss me.”
“Say them right.”
He started at Genesis and got through Proverbs. She kissed him.
“Feeling any younger?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I think we need to repeat that experiment. Measure the recurrence of youth per unit of osculation.”
She slugged his shoulder.
“It’s for science,” he said. She drilled him on Ecclesiastes through Daniel for a couple of minutes before she would give him any more rewards.
Beth came through with a pile of clean laundry. “Are you still here?”
“Watch your mouth,” Harvey said. “I was just leaving, but I need to talk to you first.”
She turned back expectantly, with the towels and socks and shirts in her arms.
“It’s about Jeff.”
“What about him?” Beth asked.
“Did I overstep the bounds when I told him he could go with us Saturday? I should have asked you first.”
“I don’t mind. You took Eddie and Leeanne last week, and that worked all right, didn’t it?”
“Well, yeah.”
“It’s fine,” Beth said, and disappeared into the hallway with her laundry.
“I’ll talk to her,” said Jennifer.
Harvey shrugged. “Maybe she’s not interested in him.”
“Maybe not.”
They left it at that, but he thought otherwise. There had definitely been sparks of attraction between those two. He went home, but called Jennifer as soon as he got there.
“Did you talk to her?”
“A little.”
“So?”
“She likes him, but she’s keeping cool for now.”
“Absolutely? Because I don’t want to be the one who messed things up.” He walked around his sparsely furnished apartment while he talked.
“How could you mess things up?”
“By putting people together when they shouldn’t be. Matchmaking the wrong people. Like Eddie and Leeanne.”
“You think Eddie’s interested in Leeanne?”
“I don’t know. He likes Sarah, but he’s not wearing blinders yet.”
“Well, I talked to Leeanne on the phone last night, and I told her to forget it.”
“That means Leeanne thought Eddie was paying attention to her. I was afraid of that.”
“He was,” Jennifer said. “A little. How could he help it?”
“So how can Jeff help paying attention to Beth? He likes her, I’m sure of that.”
“Beth can take care of herself. If she doesn’t think it’s right, she won’t go out with him, even if he is my brother, and even if he is the best-looking guy in Portland, with the possible exception of Eddie.”
“Eddie?” Harvey said. “What about me?”
“You’re fantastic, but a totally different type.”
“You think Eddie’s cute?”
“Cute? Not exactly. He’s good looking. Leeanne was a little awestruck, I’m afraid.”
“Is she going to get over it?” Harvey asked.
“In time.”
“So, let me ask you something.” She had the ring on her finger, and the wedding was within sight, but his insecurity had surfaced anyway. “You met me and Eddie the same day. Why did you fall for me, not him?”
“Eddie?” Her voice was full of disdain. “Eddie’s a great guy, don’t get me wrong, but he’s a long way from being you.”
Harvey stopped walking in the bedroom doorway. “Could you elaborate? Because I think I need to know.”
“He’s immature in a lot of ways,” Jennifer said. “You’re…well, you’re right for me, that’s all. I love you.”
He smiled. “Can I come back over there?”
“Now?”
“Yes.”
“No.”
He felt a lot better than he had earlier, even though she was keeping him at a distance.
He sat down and skimmed the last two chapters of Morristown. In the end, Danny and Jason began promising careers, one a doctor and the other an actor. Larry, the wimp, died of alcohol poisoning.
Chapter 13
Thursday, July 1
On Harvey’s desk the next morning he found a bag of marshmallows. He smiled and brought in his e-mail, which included a folder of archived newspaper stories. He started reading the accounts of the burglary and its aftermath.
The homeowner, Richard Fairley, had cashed a pension check that afternoon. A handgun and eighty-four dollars from the check were the only items the police could determine were stolen. When the young people attacked him, he was hit a few times and tied up. They put duct tape over his mouth left him on his kitchen floor. He was found dead the next day.
There were no articles on the arrest and trial of Philip Whitney. Fourteen years later, Martin Blake’s first book was published. A small notice appeared in the community news, followed by a feature story on Blake, the news reporter turned fiction writer. Philip Whitney’s obituary was in there, too, but no news article. The papers didn’t do news stories on suicides. The obit said Philip R. Whitney, 32, had died unexpectedly at his home, the standard euphemism for suicides.
Harvey forwarded the folder to Eddie. While he parceled out the phone messages to the other men, Pete tracked down Whitney’s family. The father was dead, and the mother in a nursing home. Philip’s little brother owned a grocery store in Rosemont and had a family, and his younger sister was a registered nurse, never married, working at Central Maine Medical in Lewiston.
Jennifer came into the office and approached his desk with gleaming eyes. “Harvey, I have something that may interest you.”
“What is it, gorgeous? More marshmallows?”
“Better. I dug out the police records on that old burglary, the one Martin Blake wrote about.”
“Really? I didn’t think anything that old was computerized.”
“It’s not. Marge says they’re working backward on data entry. They hope to get to that era by the first of the year.” She handed him a folder full of yellowed report forms.
“How did you find this?”
“By snooping around and asking Marge questions. It was in a box of old reports from that year in a storage room. There are boxes piled to the ceiling in there.”
He leafed through the folder.
“There’s something else,” she said.
“What?”
“That suicide when Morristown was published?”
She handed him a printout. “Marge and the staff entered all that year’s data into the computer system last month. The police responded to a call when Philip Whitney was found dead.”
Harvey scanned the paper eagerly. “Pretty straightforward. Single gunshot to the left temple. Whitney’s prints were the only ones on the weapon. I wonder if they gave the gun back to his family.” He focused in on the information about the weapon. “I can’t believe this!”
“What, that I found it?” Jennifer asked.
“No, that’s terrific, but I can’t believe what this says. The gun Whitney shot himself with was the same model as the gun that was stolen during the burglary.”
“Was it the same gun?”
“I don’t know.” He sat down and pawed through the burglary report. Finally he found the serial number of the handgun Fairley’s son had reported missing and compared it to the one in the report from the suicide.
“It was the same gun.” He smiled up at her. “Thanks, Jenny. This is important. I’ll reward you suitably at some opportune moment.”
“I can’t wait.” Before he could come up with a snappy reply, she went back down the stairs.
Tony and Nate came in from the patrolmen’s roll call eager to help, and Harvey called all the men over to his area and told them what Jennifer had found.
“Why didn’t anyone make the connection when Whitney shot himself?” Pete asked.
“I don’t know, but the records weren’t computerized, and the burglary was old. Fourteen years old. If the officer who responded to the suicide didn’t know about the burglary and didn’t bother to do a check on Whitney … well, it was sloppy, that’s all I can say.”
“Who was the investigator?”
Harvey looked at the printout on the suicide. “Arthur Corson.”
“Never heard of him,” said Eddie.
Arnie frowned. “I remember that guy. He would have been old then, close to retirement.”
“I wonder what happened to the gun,” Nate said.
“Probably gave it to Whitney’s family,” said Arnie.
Harvey gave them assignments and called David Murphy’s office to set up an appointment. Then he and Arnie drove to the store owned by Philip Whitney’s brother.
“I wondered when someone would dredge this up again,” Reggie Whitney said, sitting behind a cluttered desk in the manager’s office at the back of the grocery store. He had close-cropped brown hair and the same aquiline nose as Philip, and he looked harried. “It’s a long time ago, officer. Better to leave it alone.”
Fort Point (Maine Justice Book 2) Page 19