Harvey stood near the body talking to the medical examiner, and two men stood by with a stretcher, looking none too happy. Their breath made little clouds of vapor, and one of them stamped his feet. Called out to move a body on Christmas Day. Eddie totally sympathized with those guys and their winter of discontent, as Shakespeare would say. His feet were cold, too, and the woman he loved was pining for him. These guys no doubt had stories of their own.
Harvey looked up as he approached. Eddie recognized Dr. McIntyre, one of the M.E.’s who lived in the Portland area. He nodded to Eddie.
“What have you got?” Harvey asked.
“It looks like he went to the fence alone. I could see dimples in the snow where he’d walked, and I followed them back as far as I could. I think he came into the strip behind the fence higher up, off the sidewalk. But as near as I can tell, nobody was with him or following him. I took a few pictures, but...” Eddie shook his head.
“Okay,” Harvey said.
The dead man lay on his back now, and the snow all around him was disturbed.
“Have you examined the body, Dr. McIntyre?” Eddie asked.
“Yes, and my preliminary findings were few. No obvious cause of death. I’d say he’s been dead four or five hours. Until I get him to my table, I can’t tell you much more.”
“Okay, I guess you might as well take him,” Harvey said. “Please call me right away if you find anything unusual.”
“Understood.” Dr. McIntyre motioned his men to take the body away.
After they’d loaded him and headed for the gate, Harvey said, “That man did not die of natural causes. I won’t believe that.”
If Harvey wouldn’t, Eddie wouldn’t either, although it would have made their day so much easier. “Then I guess we’d better get back to work.”
Mike’s sons, Tommy and Mike Junior, had arrived with their families, and they wanted an update after the hearse left. Mike was restless, but he knew he should keep out of it, unlike Harvey, who was right in the middle of the investigation when someone got shot at his house. That had cost him, and everyone in the unit had learned from it.
The family’s biggest headache was keeping the kids distracted. Mike Junior had a twelve-year-old daughter, and the two children who had found the body were Debbie’s. Tommy was twenty-five and married, but had no kids yet.
The metal detector arrived, courtesy of day sergeant Brad Lyons, and Harvey and Eddie made a thorough search of the area where the body was found and all along the fence. For nothing, as it turned out, except to be sure they hadn’t missed something. O’Heir and Bard reported that none of the neighbors had seen any prowlers or noticed anything unusual the night before or that morning. Harvey sent them back to the station and told them he’d call if they were needed again.
They went to the back door, stomped the snow off their boots, and knocked. Mike opened it.
“I don’t think we can do much more here,” Harvey said.
Mike nodded. “You boys might as well go home. You probably won’t get anything out of the M.E. until Monday.”
“Maybe not,” Harvey said.
Mike sighed. “It’s the darnedest thing.”
“I agree.” Harvey looked over his shoulder at the back yard. “Nothing pops out at me as to why he was out there, let alone why he died out there.”
“Okay. You boys did what you could, and I appreciate it.”
“Mike,” Harvey said. “You know we’ll get to the bottom of this.”
Mike smiled. “Of course you will.”
“I’ll stay in town in case something breaks on this.”
“Sorry to ask that of you.” Mike frowned, but Eddie knew he wouldn’t tell them to go ahead and run off to Skowhegan. His family’s space had been violated, and he wanted his best detectives close by.
“Call me anytime,” Harvey said.
“I will.”
In the truck, Eddie turned the heater on full blast. “What’s the plan for the rest of the weekend?”
Harvey sighed. “We really can’t do anything until we get an I.D., but we definitely need to stay in town.”
“Right. Maybe his prints are on that gun,” Eddie said. “We could run them through IAFIS.” It was a computerized—or “automated”—fingerprint identification system.
“Yeah, maybe,” Harvey said. “If we could get one good print.”
Eddie knew that was anything but a lead pipe cinch. The gun had fallen in the snow beneath the body. “It’s worth a try.”
“Okay. We need to be at the dinner table, though, or Jennifer and her mother will be very disappointed. Let’s take the evidence to the station and go back after dinner. I’m game if you are.” He looked at Eddie with his eyebrows arched.
“Sure.” Eddie started the engine. “Maybe I should go to my folks’ and make my mother’s day. I’d rather go to your house, though.”
“She doesn’t even know you’re still in Portland,” Harvey said.
“Yeah, but...” Eddie tried to forget the phone conversation he’d had with his mother early that morning. She was upset about him not being with his own family on Christmas, but that was only the top item on her long list of complaints.
“Call her later and ask if you can take Leeanne over for dessert,” Harvey suggested.
“Maybe.” Eddie scowled, thinking about the dead man. “This whole thing at Mike’s is ridiculous. Who would dare to climb into the chief’s yard and die?”
Harvey gave him a mirthless smile. “I don’t think he planned it that way, Eddie.”
“I know. So, what was he planning?”
Chapter 2
Leeanne folded the green linen napkins meticulously into geometric shapes. They were supposed to stand up and look like a bishop’s crown, but even with printed instructions she’d found online, it took her four tries to get one right.
Jennifer, meanwhile, fussed with the centerpiece, a big bowl of pinecones and Christmas ornaments, while their sister Abby and their mom held sway in the kitchen.
“How disappointed do you think Mom is?” Leeanne asked.
“On a scale of one to ten, maybe a seven.” The entire Wainthrop clan had gathered in Portland the day before for their older brother Jeff’s wedding, which had gone beautifully. Jeff and his bride were now off on their honeymoon at an unknown destination. It was their mother who had persuaded them all to move the celebration an hour and a half to the north for Christmas dinner at the family home. She had been planning the festivities for weeks. Jennifer smiled. “She’s feeling a lot better since I opened the freezer this morning and gave her carte blanche for the rest of their visit.”
“Personally, I never understood why she likes cooking so much,” Leeanne said. “Do you really think Harvey and Eddie will get home for dinner?”
“It’s possible.” Jennifer stood back to survey the table they’d set up in the dining room. “Looks good. Want some help with those?”
The house phone rang, and she hurried into the kitchen to grab it. She returned a minute later, smiling. “They’re both coming. They’ll be here in fifteen minutes.”
The day suddenly looked a whole lot brighter. Already Leeanne could see that her fledgling relationship with Eddie would be at the mercy of his unpredictable schedule. She accepted her sister’s help with the napkins, and they had just finished folding them when Harvey breezed in with Eddie close behind.
“Hi,” her mother called out. “Are you boys hungry?”
“Starved,” Eddie said.
Harvey sought out Jennifer. “Hey, gorgeous.” He kissed her.
“Do you have to go back?” Jennifer asked.
“Eddie and I might run to the office later for a little while. Other than that, it depends on if the medical examiner calls, and I doubt he’ll forgo his Christmas dinner to do an autopsy.” He looked at the vacant spot where the kitchen table usually sat.
“It’s in the dining room, of all places,” Jennifer said. They’d never used the dining room to eat in, but had
turned it into a shared study. “It was the one place we could seat everyone at once, so we put two tables in there.”
“Maybe we need a dining room after all?” Harvey asked.
“I hope not, because then we’d need a study.”
Abby walked past them carrying a large bowl of mashed potatoes. “So it was a homicide.”
“Had to be that or terrorists to get these two out on a holiday,” Jennifer said.
Meanwhile, Leeanne had just stood there, watching Eddie. He smiled at her, and she felt self-conscious. Eddie was devastatingly handsome. He had to be smart, or he wouldn’t hold down a detective’s job in the police department’s hotshot unit. And his personality—that was what made her heart flip every time he entered a room. She knew he was popular. Everywhere he went, he had friends or made new ones. People flocked to talk to him. His nature was the opposite of her own cautious reserve. How could a guy like him like her?
“How’d your morning go?” he asked.
“Good. I’m surprised you got back so early.” It was nearly one o’clock, but still.
Eddie’s smile broadened. “I guess we were lucky today. We ran out of clues to investigate.”
“How will you solve the case, if you don’t have any clues?”
“The autopsy will tell us a lot. Once we have an I.D., we’ll get some info.”
“You don’t know who the victim is?” Leeanne frowned. “Does that happen a lot?”
“Usually they have some I.D. on them, or someone nearby knows who they are. This guy was all alone, from the look of things.”
Her mom headed for the dining room carrying a platter of fried chicken pieces.
“Leeanne, would you please call the others? We’re ready to sit down. And Eddie, you can wash up in the hall bath.”
“Thanks, Mrs. Wainthrop.” Eddie winked at Leeanne and headed off to hang up his coat and wash.
Leeanne stepped into the living room. Her father, Grandpa, and her younger brothers were watching a football game. “Time to eat.”
It was a squeeze, getting them all around the one long table made of two pushed together, but her mother insisted they all eat at the same table for Christmas dinner. Leeanne had made place cards for all of them: Grandpa, George and Marilyn, Harvey, Eddie, and the five Wainthrop siblings: Jennifer, Abby, Leeanne, Travis, and Randy. Only Jeff was missing, but he had the best of reasons for that. She settled in between Eddie and Randy.
Lacking a ham or a turkey, they had raided Jennifer’s stockpile for entrees and come up with oven-fried chicken, stuffed pork chops, and baked salmon filets.
Harvey looked over the spread. “I guess we’ve got something for everyone.”
“That’s right,” her mom said. “There’s no excuse for anyone to go hungry.” She had made breadsticks, and they’d found several frozen vegetables. Dessert would be no problem—they had a third of Jeff and Beth’s wedding cake left from last night’s reception.
Harvey asked the blessing, and they all began to eat and talk. Laughter filled the conversation, along with speculation about how the honeymooners were doing.
“I hope they’re having a blast, wherever they are,” Abby said.
“Jeff said they needed passports,” Randy said. “Would they be there already?” Trust their youngest brother to do the math, even when it included time zones.
“Depends on where they were headed, I guess,” Harvey said.
Leeanne hoped Jeff and Beth would have the time of their lives. Jeff had surprised them all by falling so hard and fast for Beth Bradley, Jennifer’s former roommate.
“I thought the wedding went off pretty well,” Abby said.
“Yeah,” Eddie said. “Without a hitch. Well, except Jeff and Beth getting hitched.”
“Wasn’t it lovely?” Marilyn brought the coffeepot over and topped off his coffee. “Beth was just beautiful.”
Things had moved quickly on a lot of fronts this year. Jennifer had met Harvey and married him, and Abby and Jeff had both moved to Portland to work. Abby was living with Jennifer and Harvey temporarily and holding down a nursing job at Maine Medical Center, while Jeff had landed a spot on the Portland Fire Department. Jeff’s wedding was the latest stir to the mix.
Odd, how the family had regrouped. Leeanne supposed Abby would be next to settle down. She’d had several dates since she came to the city, and she had two somewhat regular male admirers at the moment.
When he tasted the chicken, Eddie smiled at Leeanne. “Did you help make this?”
“Yeah, we girls all acted as Mom’s sous chefs.”
“That’s nice. It’s very good.”
“Thanks.”
“I’m feeling a little guilty,” Eddie confessed in a whisper. “I probably could have made it to my folks’ without being too late, but I’d rather be here.”
“Should you call them?” Leeanne asked.
“Maybe later. Hey, you want some broccoli?” He held the serving dish up for her.
“Thanks.” She took some and noticed he hadn’t put any on his own plate. “You want some?”
“I try never to eat broccoli,” he whispered, sober as a judge. Then he smiled, as if they had a really important secret, and she almost laughed out loud. Eddie was older than her by almost eight years, and sometimes he seemed very mature. At other moments, he acted like an overgrown kid.
“I hate oysters myself,” she said.
“Good thing Jennifer didn’t have any of those in her freezer.”
He had the most gorgeous brown eyes. Her stomach fluttered as she remembered the last time he had kissed her. He’d driven up to Skowhegan to spend a day with her, and they’d gone out to dinner and a play at Lakewood Theater in Madison. Before he took her home, they’d stopped for milkshakes, and he’d kissed her thoroughly.
That was a kiss she would remember for the rest of her life. It was so different from the few kisses she’d shared with boys before. The kiss of a man who knew what he wanted—but not in a bad way. She’d never for an instant felt he was trying to seduce her. That moment was a life changer for Leeanne.
He’s kissed a million other girls, she told herself. Did they all feel this way? She hoped not. But how could they help it?
Jennifer had warned her last summer that Eddie had been considered wild when he was younger, and that he’d dated a lot. But her older sister and Harvey both admitted Eddie had changed over the last six months. He trusted in Christ now—he’d become a believer even before Leeanne had. And Harvey had said that now Eddie was trying to do things right. He loved Eddie like a younger brother, that was obvious. So what was there to be afraid of?
*****
When the meal was over, there was talk of singing Christmas carols and playing table games, something Jennifer and Harvey loved. It sounded very cozy and fun to Eddie. He wished his own family would get along so well when they were all together.
But Harvey said, “Eddie and I need to run over to the station for a couple hours.”
Jennifer’s smile drooped. “Do you have to?”
“We need to check a few things, but unless something major turns up, we’ll be back by five o’clock.”
“Okay.”
She looked tired. Her mom and sisters were helping her, but Eddie had the impression—largely from things Harvey said—that pregnant women needed extra rest. Eddie was still getting used to the idea of Jennifer having a baby, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to know too many details. Harvey would be a great dad, though.
Leeanne walked with him to the hallway, where he’d left his jacket.
“I guess we’ll see you later,” she said.
Eddie smiled at her. “A bientôt, mon amie.”
She frowned for a moment, then her face cleared. “See you soon?”
“Very good.” Harvey was coming toward them. Eddie gave her hand a quick squeeze.
“Leeanne, make sure Jennifer’s not on her feet all afternoon, huh?” Harvey said.
“Sure. I’ll make her have a nap.”
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Eddie went out to his truck with Harvey and drove over to the station. The snow was already melted to about half of what it had been. Hardly anyone was in the foyer of the station, and Sergeant Dan Miles was on the desk.
“You got the short straw, eh?” Harvey asked him.
“Yeah, but I get New Year’s Eve off.”
Harvey told him what they wanted to do, and Dan logged the dead man’s effects out of the evidence locker and opened the lab for them.
Eddie had been lifting fingerprints for years, so he went right to work on that with the dead man’s pistol. The only other things Harvey had taken off the body were a few coins and an inhaler. Harvey sat down at a work station with the inhaler.
“There’s no prescription label, is there?” Eddie asked.
“No. I’m pretty sure they come in a box.”
They worked in silence for several minutes. Eddie was extra careful as he took the clip out of the pistol and emptied the chamber, so he wouldn’t blot out any possible fingerprints. There were tools on hand to help him do that.
“I’ve got a partial on the inhaler,” Harvey said.
“How good is it?”
“Not very. You got anything?”
“Hold on.” Eddie was still dusting the clip.
Harvey came over to stand beside him.
“Want some?” Eddie asked.
“Sure.”
Eddie used the tweezers to push several shells Harvey’s way.
A print appeared in the powder Eddie had dusted onto the clip. “Abracadabra.”
Harvey leaned in close. “Looks good.”
Half an hour later, they had three usable prints off the clip and a couple of the shells inside. Harvey was light years more advanced in computer stuff than Eddie, so he set up the samples on the IAFIS program while Eddie did a routine check on the gun’s serial number. He didn’t find any concealed weapon permits or records connecting that gun to past crimes.
Harvey leaned back in his chair, watching the computer screen without really seeing it.
Heartbreaker Hero: Eddie's Story (Maine Justice Book 4) Page 2