by Donald Bain
“I don’t know,” was Brad’s answer. “I don’t know what he thinks he saw. What I do know is that whatever he says, it’s not the truth. It wasn’t me. I did not kill Gérard Leboeuf!”
“Kristen, has Trotter made his accusation under oath?” I asked.
“Not to my knowledge,” she replied, “but he’ll have to at some point.”
“Trotter went to work for Leboeuf after leaving Brad’s restaurant,” I said. “Isn’t it possible that Trotter is accusing Brad of the murder in order to deflect suspicion from himself?”
Kristen nodded slowly. “We know what a volatile man he is. It’s certainly something to consider.”
“Yeah,” Brad said, having mustered a sudden burst of energy, “that’s got to be it. Trotter had run-ins with Leboeuf, too. Ask the other guys in the kitchen. Jake’s got a mean streak, and everybody in town knows it. Sure, Trotter killed Leboeuf and he’s trying to blame it on me so he can walk free.”
Brad’s hopeful analysis was within the realm of possibility, of course, although at that juncture it was just speculation on his part. He needed proof. I wondered whether Mort Metzger and the other investigators had probed deeply enough into Trotter’s activities the night of the murder, and I intended to ask Mort about it at the first possible moment.
But this was a case where potential suspects were plentiful. It was frustrating to me that the authorities had zeroed in on Brad so early in the investigation. I wondered how much Brad’s attorney knew of Leboeuf’s alleged ties with organized crime and whether they might have played a part in his killing. And had Charles Compton, aka Warren Shulte, come to town earlier than he claimed to get even with his former employer?
What about Leboeuf’s wife, Eva? Cherchez la femme, or Look for the woman, was the famous French phrase that Fritzi the waiter had quoted. Leboeuf had a reputation as a skirt chaser, as the saying goes, at least according to gossip at Sardi’s in New York City, where Fritzi once worked. My casual observations of the interaction between Gérard and Eva had been that there was palpable tension between them. While not something to build a case on, there was a certain wisdom to it based upon many murders in history in which a wronged woman wielded the murder weapon or had enticed someone else to act for her.
Then there was Leboeuf’s son. Mort had told me that the initial focus was on Wylie, but that line of inquiry had been abandoned once what they’d thought was Brad’s fingerprint had been found and Trotter had made his claim. Had Mort or others on the case really spent a lot of time questioning Wylie about his father’s death? Or did Trotter’s claim bring the investigation to a jarring halt before all the interviews were concluded?
The deputy informed Kristen that her time with the prisoner was up.
“You’ve got to help me, Mrs. Fletcher,” Brad said as he stood. “I didn’t kill him.”
“We’ll do everything we can to prove that,” his attorney said.
Kristen Syms and I left the courthouse together and continued our conversation on a bench outside.
“I want to believe Brad,” I told her. “In addition, there are so many others who might have wanted Leboeuf dead. I feel like we’re dealing with an incomplete investigation.”
“That may be true, Jessica, but we—at least I—can’t worry about other suspects at the moment,” she said. “Later I’ll want you to tell me about them, but right now I need to know everything you can pass along about Brad.”
“All right, but I’d like a favor in return.”
“What’s that?”
“Do you have a copy of Jake Trotter’s statement with you?”
Her hand slid down to the briefcase she’d set on the bench. “I can’t give it to you.”
“I’m not asking you to make me a copy for me. But would you let me read it? I’ll just scan it and give it right back.”
“I guess that won’t hurt anything.” She snapped open her case, pulled out two pages stapled together, and handed them to me. I gave them a quick once-over and gave them back to her.
“Did anything strike you?” she asked.
“I’ll have to think about it a little, but you said something earlier that struck me.”
“What’s that?”
“You talked about Jake Trotter being a volatile man, and he is that. But what complicates this case is that we’re dealing with three volatile men, not just one. Brad, Trotter, and Leboeuf. Brad goes off like a rocket at the first provocation. He and Jake were like oil and water. But Gerard Leboeuf was not a nice man either. He was known for crushing his competition in the business. You can find lots of material about him online. I was there when he insulted Brad’s mother, Isabel, made fun of the Fin and Claw menu, and sneered at the food.”
“Aren’t you giving me more reasons why Brad would want to kill Leboeuf?”
“It would seem so, but the point I’m making is that Leboeuf must have a trail of former rivals lined up wanting to see him dead, not to leave out how many others he may have abused with his elevated ego and sharp tongue.”
“But how many of them were in town the night he died?”
I sighed. “I don’t know. And there’s something else I have to tell you, even though it pains me to do so.” Reluctantly, I told the attorney what Marcie had said to me about Brad asking her to lie about the time he’d returned home the night of the murder. Kristen listened quietly. When I was finished, she grimaced, sat back, and directed a stream of air at an errant wisp of hair on her forehead. “That’s not good,” she said.
“Not good at all.”
“It also wasn’t in his favor that he tried to run from the police,” she said.
I nodded my agreement.
“Have you told anyone else?” she asked.
“No, but I know that I’ll have to at some point.”
“And I’ll have to share it with the prosecutor.”
“I understand,” I said. “I want to help, not hurt Brad. If there’s anything I can do, please let me know. I was so fond of Brad’s mother, Isabel, and I want to see Brad and Marcie succeed with their restaurant. If Brad is innocent, I—”
“If he’s innocent,” Kristen said solemnly.
That word “if” stayed with me all the way home and far into the night.
Chapter Twenty-two
The lead story on the front page of the next edition of the Cabot Cove Gazette was about Brad Fowler’s arraignment. Evelyn Phillips’s photographer had managed to grab a candid shot of Eva arriving at the courthouse with her entourage; a stock shot of Brad, taken when the Fin & Claw opened, also accompanied the article.
I read the piece with great interest. In it Evelyn retraced the path of events leading to Gérard Leboeuf’s murder, ending it with a statement from Marcie Fowler: “My husband is innocent of this charge, and I’m confident it will be proved beyond a doubt.” Evelyn didn’t indicate where or how she had obtained Marcie’s statement. I hadn’t seen the Gazette editor in the packed courtroom, but the article made it sound as if she had been there in person.
When I moved on to the inside pages and caught up on happenings around town, a headline caught my eye: FOOD INSPECTOR CHARGED.
Harold Greene, a longtime employee of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Division of Environmental Health, has been charged by the state attorney general with multiple counts of breach of duty. Among the charges are accusations that Greene, a state health inspector, solicited bribes from restaurants in exchange for withholding reports of violations of the State of Maine Food Code, and instead gave them a clean bill of health. Mr. Greene has denied all charges.
However, this reporter was also made aware of an incident in which a health inspector assigned to Cabot Cove allegedly falsely accused a merchant of sanitary violations posing an imminent health hazard. The merchant claims his reputation was so damaged by the false report, he was forced to close his business.
The merchant, who prefers to remain anonymous at this time, would not name the health inspector but has told the Gazette that he is considering bringing his case to the attention of the attorney general’s office. If so, Mr. Greene, who has been the only state inspector assigned to this town for many years, may have more charges leveled against him.
Mara apparently had been correct in her assessment of Harold Greene. And if Mr. Greene was guilty of accepting money for his silence regarding legitimate violations, it wasn’t too far a stretch to think that the health inspector might have “seeded” a new restaurant like the Fin & Claw with rodent droppings as a way of establishing the power of his position, or as a warning to the restaurant owners to treat him generously. Was it also possible that a man willing to accept a bribe might also be willing to falsify a report at someone else’s behest? Brad had claimed that someone—maybe Jake—had put evidence of rodent infestation where it didn’t exist. But could Harold Greene have been paid off by someone else to find such a violation—someone like Gérard Leboeuf? Could it possibly be that Leboeuf would have gone so far as to pay Greene to trump up health violations against the Fowlers in order to gain a competitive advantage? I hated to believe that anyone would do such a thing to gain a financial advantage over another human being, but that kind of behavior obviously does exist. And Leboeuf’s reputation for having forced other competitors out of business argued that such action was not out of character for him.
As I read the article I couldn’t help but think about Brad and Marcie Fowler’s run-in with Harold Greene. I picked up the phone and called Evelyn at her newspaper.
“Good hearing from you, Jessica,” she said. “Did you read today’s story on Brad Fowler’s arraignment?”
“Couldn’t have missed it, Evelyn. It was thorough and well written.”
“A welcome comment from someone with your writing skills. What can I do for you this morning?”
“Well, I was wondering whether you’d been provided with a list of restaurants that were alleged to have been shaken down by Mr. Greene.”
“Why do I have the feeling that Jessica Fletcher has a hidden agenda in asking me that?”
“No hidden agenda, Evelyn. I’m curious because it was Harold Greene who inspected the Fowlers’ Fin and Claw and claimed to have uncovered violations, including mouse droppings in the kitchen.”
“Yes, I heard about that. You know how things like that get around. But I don’t usually run a list of those who failed an inspection the first time around. They usually correct the violations and pass on their second try. I don’t see tarnishing someone’s reputation unless they’re flagrant violators. Then it becomes a public service to expose it, and I write it up in the paper.”
“That’s very sensitive of you, Evelyn.”
“I’m not always the bull in a china shop you seem to think I am,” she said.
“Now, Evelyn—”
She laughed. “Just giving you a hard time,” she said. “What would you like to know?”
“Can you tell me a little more about the man who closed his business after one of Greene’s inspections? I’m not asking for his name, just a few more details than you wrote in your article.”
“Interestingly enough, it was another situation where two restaurants were in competition. The man, who shall remain nameless, at least for now, opened his establishment down the street from an existing place and began having problems with the health inspector from his first day. He believes the other owner was paying off Greene to find violations in order to give his place a bad reputation, with the eventual goal of closing him down.”
“And that’s what happened?”
“Apparently so. The guy got weary of answering a series of what he says were unjustified and increasingly expensive citations—not to mention the tarring of his reputation for running an unsanitary and unhealthy restaurant.”
“Why didn’t he go over Greene’s head?”
“He did. He appealed to the state, but the complaints he filed fell on deaf ears. He says he finally gave up and closed his doors. Nothing was ever proved against Greene, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t involved. Mara down at the luncheonette told me the guy has a shady reputation.”
So Evelyn had spoken with Mara as well.
“I talked with her, too. She said that she’s never paid Greene a penny, but that he always seems to have his hand out.” I laughed. “You know Mara. She’d sooner slug him than pay a bribe. She says that she always follows him around closely when he’s doing an inspection.”
Evelyn laughed, too. “I don’t blame her,” she said. “But to answer your earlier question, I don’t have a list of the restaurants involved. Why your interest?”
“I was curious to know if Jake Trotter ever worked for any of the restaurants that received notices of violations.”
“Oh, ho! Now we get to the crux of the reason for your call. I hear that Trotter was an eyewitness to the murder. Did you?”
“I had heard that, yes.”
“But even if Trotter was in cahoots with Greene in setting up restaurant owners to get violations, how would that impact the case against Brad Fowler?”
“I don’t know that it does.” I said. “I’m just looking at the case from all angles. You know his mother, Isabel, was a friend of mine. I feel that, for Isabel’s sake, I have to defend Brad.”
“Even if he murdered Gerard Leboeuf?”
“‘If’ is the operative word here, Evelyn.”
“Hard to ignore an eyewitness, Jessica.”
I could visualize her holding up her hand against what I was about to say.
“I know. I know,” she said, adding words to her silent signal. “Jake’s a flake, a less than savory character, plenty of problems with the law over the years. But he swears he saw Brad kill Leboeuf. From what I’m told, Trotter was stone-cold sober when he told Mort Metzger and the other investigators what he’d seen. Just because he’s a troublesome hothead doesn’t mean he’s not telling the truth.”
My silence prompted her to add, “You do agree with me—don’t you, Jessica?”
“Yes, of course. But what if—?”
“What if what?”
“Nothing. I was just coming up with scenarios.”
“Like when you write your novels? This isn’t fiction, Jessica. This is real life.”
I didn’t need to be reminded of that and told her that I appreciated what information she had and would be in touch again.
“Before you go,” she said. “When I was in the courtroom, I saw you chatting with Fowler’s attorney, Kristen Syms. What was that about?”
“We’ve been friends for a long time,” I said.
Evelyn had responded to my questions about Greene and the restaurant owner who shut down his business. Should I thank her by revealing that I’d been invited to sit in on Kristen’s interview with her client? Anything I said to Evelyn could end up in the pages of the Gazette. I wanted to be fair, but I decided I’d better not share that information, at least this time. I’d been in a privileged position and felt that it would be a violation of Kristen’s trust in me, to say nothing of Brad’s request that I be present.
After we hung up, I reviewed the notes I’d made when I returned from the arraignment. If the fingerprint Mort said the techs had found was indeed Brad’s, there was nothing I could do to explain it away. But what about the eyewitness? I’d been given only a few minutes to skim his statement, but something had stood out in the report. Trotter claimed to have seen Brad arguing with Leboeuf, and in his fury, pick up a knife from the counter, raise it over his head, and bring it down on the famous chef.
I reached for the phone and dialed Seth Hazlitt, crossing my fingers I’d reach him at a good time.
Chapter Twenty-three
Seth wasn’t in his office when I called, but I managed to track him down at the hospital, where he was vi
siting patients and their families. He said that he’d have to call me back, and I waited in my office until he did.
“What can I do for you, Jessica?”
I’d prepared a list of questions to ask, and ran down the list.
“Anything else you’d like to know?” he said.
“No, that’s it, Seth. Sorry to have bothered you while you made your rounds.”
“It was a pleasant respite, Jessica. Mind telling me why you have these questions?”
“Just filling in some blanks, Seth. Nothing important.”
Since I’d called him at the hospital, he probably didn’t buy my “nothing important” protestation, but he didn’t press and we ended the call.
While Seth had, indeed, helped fill in some blanks for me, I didn’t enjoy a sense of resolution. To the contrary, I spent much of the next few hours pacing the floor between bouts at my desk, where I pored over my notes. I decided to relieve my restlessness by taking out my bicycle and riding downtown. Even though most of the stores would close within the hour, I needed a little exercise to clear my mind of what had occupied it at home. I was brimming with nervous energy. When that occurs, I need to be moving, walking, focusing on anything and everything other than the cause of my angst and irritability.
I left my bicycle in a bike rack and ended up strolling through one of the parks in town that provides relaxing greenery. After a few minutes of sitting on a bench and watching squirrels scurry after one another, I walked to the pier, where I paused, looking back and forth from the Fin & Claw to Leboeuf’s French Bistro, the respective parking lots of which testified to a busy night ahead for both. I suppose my aimless wandering was a way to put off an action that I’d been pondering all day. Convinced that I was making the right decision, I approached the rear entrance to the bistro. As I did, the door opened and two kitchen workers on a break came through it. One lit a cigarette; the other swigged water from a bottle.