Fort Point (Maine Justice Book 2)

by Davis, Susan Page

  The four of them tackled the list, and by noon determined that, of the forty surviving classmates at the reunion, at least twenty-eight of them and ten of the spouses or dates from the reunion were planning to attend the funeral. They asked everyone they talked to about Luke Frederick. Had they seen him, and when? They set up appointments with the out-of-towners for after the funeral.

  The rain broke just before noon, pouring down and beating on the large windows that made most of two walls in the office. Harvey called Records and told Jennifer he would take her someplace away from the office for lunch. They got in his Explorer in the parking garage attached to the station, but had to get out when they got to the restaurant. They didn’t have an umbrella, so he grabbed his bomber jacket out of the back seat and held it over Jennifer until they got inside. He got a little wet, but it could have been worse.

  They’d just gotten their chicken when the power went out. Their table near the window was better lighted than most, and they kept eating. Some people left. The waitresses came around with candles and lit them on the tables.

  “This is turning into a romantic lunch,” Jennifer said. The rain sheeted down the glass beside them, and lightning flickered, followed by a crash of thunder that shook the window.

  Harvey reached for her hand across the table. “I’ll be glad when I can get you off someplace where there’s no office, and no floating corpses, and no limit on the lunch hour.”

  “Is this case getting you down? I know it’s hard to deal with the public.”

  “There are so many people to interview, not to mention the press.”

  The restaurant was emptying, and the employees weren’t letting anyone new in, because they had no electricity in the kitchen. Harvey and Jennifer finished their entrées in peace, and the waitress refilled Harvey’s cup with lukewarm coffee.

  “We’ve got two bodies now,” he told Jennifer. He’d avoided the topic during the meal, but now he needed to tell her. She understood how his work burdened him, how he couldn’t not think about it until the case unraveled.

  “Two bodies?” she asked.

  “Another member of Blake’s class drowned.”

  “That’s pretty strange.”

  “I think so.”

  The waitress cleared the tables around them and stood near a sideboard that held the cooling coffee pot, watching them. The manager had probably told her that she could go home when they left. Harvey looked at his watch. Five more minutes, he decided.

  “I called the florist,” Jennifer said. “Is there anything else I’m forgetting?’

  “Is everything all set for the reception?”

  “Yes, food, decorations, it’s under control.”

  “Photographer?”

  “Done.”

  “Your gown?”

  “Hanging in my closet.”

  For some reason, that was an emotional trigger. She had the dress. It was really going to happen. He turned her hand over so he could see the ring.

  “Jenny, I love you so much.”

  Her smile was a bit watery. “Rob Nelson is going to sing Bing’s song for us.”

  “Great.” Rob was the lead tenor in the church choir, and he was good. Harvey had requested “True Love,” the song Bing Crosby sang to Grace Kelley in High Society. When Jennifer wore her hair up, she looked so much like Grace Kelley he was tempted to call her Princess.

  The waitress approached. “Can I get you anything else?”

  “No, thanks. We’ve got to get going.” He took out his wallet and laid a generous tip on the table, then took the bill and walked with Jennifer to the checkout. The rain was still falling hard. He left her in the entry and ran out to the Explorer, driving it right up to the door. He was going to go back in and put his jacket on her, but she ran out and jumped in the passenger side as soon as he had it in park.

  She was dripping a little, and she threw her arms around him.

  “Your hair’s curly!” She slid her fingers through it and kissed him with an abandon she didn’t usually practice. The wind shook the vehicle, and the rain pounded down on the roof. He turned the lights and wipers off, and they sat in their refuge for another five minutes, holding each other.

  “We’re going to be late getting back,” Jennifer murmured. He was crushing her against the front of his shirt.

  “Couldn’t help it in this weather.” But the downpour had softened. He kissed her one last time and started the engine.

  *****

  He went once more to Thelma Blake’s house. Eddie had stayed at the office to try to get the M.E.’s report on Frederick and check with the lab on the blood sample from the bridge. Nate and Tony were back from lunch and trying to contact the last few class members on the list. The power was still off, but the P.D. had a generator to keep the lights and computers up.

  The Blakes’ yard was soggy under an unrelenting drizzle when Harvey arrived, and the bushes dripped. Water shot out of the downspout at the end of the porch. Mrs. Harrelson, the day maid, opened the door. Their power was out, too, and the interior of the old house was dim.

  The daughter, Ellen Blake Trainor, greeted him. Trim and pretty, but solemn, she wore a pullover sweater and black pants. In the room off the swimming pool, she talked to Harvey about her father with affection and humor.

  “He would always make Marty and me read his works in progress when we lived at home,” she said. “We’d go through the manuscript, and he’d ask us what was the best thing we’d read, and the worst. Then he’d go back and hack out the worst and replace it with something better.”

  “Did he often go out and walk when he was writing a new book?”

  “All the time. He’d be gone for hours. If he thought of something on the way, he’d scribble notes in a little notebook, so he wouldn’t forget when he got home.”

  “You mean, like ‘M confronts TN’?” Harvey asked.

  “Yes, things like that. And sometimes, he’d come home all excited and say he’d seen one of his characters.”

  “So, a character in one of his books might be someone he didn’t know, but he’d use a model, so to speak?”

  “Lots of times, I’m sure.”

  “How about this Mexico book?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. I haven’t been home since Christmas, and he was just starting it then.”

  “So, are any of the characters in his books actual people?”

  “Some are probably composites of many people he encountered. He said some of the people in the first book were real, but with different names. Of course, he wrote that before I was born.”

  “When?”

  “He always said he started writing Morristown when he was in high school and finished it in college, when he took a writing class. But it wasn’t actually published until ten years or so later, after he’d established himself as a journalist.”

  Her mother came in, and Harvey prompted Mrs. Blake to think again about the reunion. “Do you know if Martin talked to a man named Luke Frederick?”

  She showed no recognition. “Maybe. I met so many people. A few I’d met before, like the Lundquists, and Dave and Alison Murphy, but most of them are a little hazy to me now.”

  “One of Martin’s classmates, Luke Frederick, was found dead this morning,” he said.

  Thelma caught her breath. “How extraordinary!”

  “That’s terrible,” Ellen said. “Mom, are you okay?”

  “Yes.” Thelma peered at Harvey. “What happened to this man?”

  “It looks like a drowning. His body was found on the shore in Islesboro.”

  “And he was at the reunion?”

  “Yes, ma’am. It’s important to remember if you saw that man Sunday.”

  “I don’t—wait.” Her brow furrowed in concentration. “Maybe he was down on the beach.”

  “When was that, ma’am?”

  “Just before lunch. Martin and I had gone back to the car after we looked at the fort and the lighthouse, to get the lunch things, and we took t
hem down to the picnic area. The men were trying to move the picnic tables closer together, so we could all sit near each other. There wasn’t enough seating in one spot.”

  “And you saw Luke Frederick?”

  “Well, there was a man with no jacket, in a white, short-sleeved shirt. He was down on the beach with David.”

  “Congressman Murphy?”

  “Yes. I said to Martin, ‘Isn’t that David down there?’ and Martin said ‘Yes, and so-and-so’s with him.’ I can’t say for sure, but it may have been this Frederick fellow. We both saw them.”

  “So you were up above them?”

  “Yes, the picnic area overlooks the shore. It’s very rocky. The bushes and trees block part of the view, and the path going down is very steep. I didn’t want to go down myself, but some people did. My shoes weren’t made for it.”

  “But you’re positive it was David Murphy you saw down below you?”

  “Oh, yes. I’m sure about him.”

  “What time was that?”

  “Before lunch. Between 11:30 and 12, I’d say.”

  “Was it the first you’d seen of Murphy that day?”

  “Yes. That’s why I asked Martin if it was David, because some of us had just been talking about whether or not he would show up.”

  “And when he did, was he alone?”

  “No, I saw his wife, Alison, helping set out the food. They both ate with us.”

  “Did you see Murphy come up the shore path?”

  “No, I got distracted, talking to some of the other guests. But I noticed him later, in line for the food with Alison.”

  “And when you and your husband saw him on the shore below you, what were he and the other man doing?”

  “Talking. They were facing each other at first, then they turned toward the sea. David always talks with his hands.” She mimicked a sweeping wave outward.

  “Did they walk?”

  “Not when I saw them. They just stood on the rocks near the water, talking.”

  “Tide was pretty high then?”

  “It was higher later, when we sat in lawn chairs looking out, near the bell tower. That was after lunch and the meeting. People were just hanging around talking. It started to cool off, and we packed up around three o’clock.”

  “Then you didn’t come straight home?”

  “We made a stop on the way, in Searsport. Martin has a cousin living there. We went in on the way home, and he and his wife asked us to have a bite of supper.”

  He took the name and address of the cousin.

  “What time did you leave the house?”

  “About seven-thirty, I think,” Thelma said. “We came straight home then. Oh, and we stopped for gas.”

  “Where?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t remember. Martin said he’d better fill up before it got too late. It must have been around Northport or Lincolnville.”

  Harvey thought back over all the information he had gathered, and one nugget of Eddie’s stuck out.

  “Mrs. Blake, did you at any time hear your husband say to David Murphy, ‘I know your secrets,’ or something like that?”

  “Let’s see … David had said something to a friend of his about high school. There was a time when the two of them broke into the gymnasium through an air duct. Nothing serious. They were locked out and wanted to go in and get something they’d left behind. Martin said he knew all about it. ‘See, I know all your secrets.’ He was teasing them.”

  “What did Murphy say?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  Harvey went back to the office, and Eddie had the medical examiner’s report on Blake at last, and the one on Frederick. Harvey looked at Blake’s first. Cause of death, drowning. Knife wound, upward thrust between the ribs to the right lung. Blood alcohol .05. No surprises, really.

  The preliminary report on Frederick was more riveting. The man had received a blow on each side of the head, probably before entering the water. The skull was fractured on the right temple, and there was bruising on the left. The body had been in the water 48 to 72 hours. The tox screens weren’t in yet. Harvey called Chief Philson in Islesboro again. They had reclassified the death as a possible homicide, and the state police were taking it over.

  He called the state police headquarters in Augusta and shared a little information with Captain Wadleigh there, to save them some time. Wadleigh knew about Frederick’s car being found in the parking lot at Fort Point, and Harvey told him several reunion guests had seen the man there before lunch, but no one they’d talked to could remember seeing him after noon Sunday. Wadleigh was wavering on whether Frederick had fallen and hit his head on the rocks or been killed.

  “I’ll fax you a copy of the reunion guest list,” Harvey said.

  When he hung up, the lab’s report on the blood smear was in, confirming that the stain on the bridge railing was human blood. The sample would be hand carried to Augusta, so the chief medical examiner could compare it with Martin Blake’s blood. They could expect a ‘no match’ or a ‘maybe’ the next day. A conclusive ‘yes’ would take longer.

  “If it’s Blake’s blood,” said Eddie, “he probably went off the bridge around eleven o’clock.”

  “Yes, if the Stroudwater woman driving past can be depended on.”

  “So, what else can we do now?”

  Harvey blew out a slow breath. “Ask everyone you talk to from now on if they saw Luke Frederick talk to Blake, and I’d like to learn more about that conversation Frederick and Murphy had on the shore.”

  They got back on the phones, with Tony and Nate helping. Several people had seen Frederick early in the day, but no one had seen him during or after lunch.

  “I think he had to leave early,” said one man. “I saw him when we first got there, near the old fort, but I never saw him after that. I’d wanted to talk to him, too.”

  By quitting time, they had located a few more people who had seen Frederick Sunday morning. Shelly Parker and her husband both remembered him being at the fort and the bell tower around 11 a.m., before the picnic started. She had spoken to him, and she remembered him saying his ex-wife lived in Pennsylvania. They’d been divorced a long time, she wasn’t sure how long. The son, Ben, lived with Luke. She described the man’s clothing at Harvey’s request, and it matched Thelma’s statement. Mrs. Parker said Luke had headed for the parking lot. She thought he was going to his car for a jacket, as it was a little cool near the water. She hadn’t seen him talk to David Murphy.

  Harvey hadn’t had a break all afternoon, so he got a cup of coffee and checked his stocks. The Dow was having a great day, and things were looking good. He opened a travel site he’d bookmarked and checked frequently over the last week. They were offering a good deal on the destination he had in mind for the honeymoon. If only Jennifer’s passport were a sure thing, he’d have bought the tickets.

  Mike stopped by his desk for an update. “You’re doing fine, Harv. Keep up the questions, and you’re sure to get some answers.”

  “It’s so hard chasing all these people down over the phone. At least a lot of them are coming here for the funeral tomorrow.”

  Mike helped him set up a schedule of interviews, to get Blake’s classmates in and out as quickly as possible. He volunteered the entire unit to help with the questioning. Harvey made a short list of people he wanted to see personally and divided the rest up for Mike, Eddie, Pete, and Arnie.

  “Mrs. Blake is tapping the department for security at the funeral and traffic control,” Mike said. “They’re detailing a dozen uniformed officers for it.”

  “Shouldn’t she hire private security?” Harvey asked.

  “The mayor thinks Blake is a big enough dignitary to merit it, and it’s our duty to handle the traffic, anyway. But tomorrow’s going to be a headache for us. They’ve already told some of the reserve officers to report for the day.”

  It was near five o’clock, so Harvey headed for the locker room to shave. He’d been leaving his razor at work, and half h
is wardrobe was hanging there, too. Since Jennifer had started working at the police station, he sometimes saw his apartment only for sleep time. He expected her brother Jeff by six, so he asked Eddie to drop him off.

  In the truck, he told Eddie, “Jenny and I have decided we don’t want to keep the apartment. Neither of us wants to live there.”

  “But you’ve been there for ages. It will be a big change for you.”

  “I’m ready.” It was still raining, and the wipers swung back and forth steadily.

  Eddie eyed him with skepticism. “I don’t know. You’re not so good at making changes. I’ll bet you’re still carrying the keys to your old car that blew up.”

  Involuntarily, Harvey put his hand to his pocket, where his key ring rested. “You’re right. It may take me a while to get acclimated.”

  Eddie smiled and shook his head. “So, have you started looking for a new place?”

  “Jennifer’s going to try to get a real estate agent to show us some houses after work next week.”

  “Houses? Not an apartment?”

  “I’ve been saving up for a long time, Eddie. I didn’t know what for at first, but I guess it’s for a house. I was thinking we might look out in Deering or someplace.”

  “Out of town, maybe?”

  “I don’t know. I think we’d both like to live outside the city, but not so far it would be a pain for me to get to work. I think I’d miss living near you, though.”

  “Yeah.” Eddie swallowed. “We’ve been running together and carpooling for five years.”

  “I know, Ed.”

  “She doesn’t want to live in town?”

  “Well, she has for a couple years, and she doesn’t seem to mind it, but her folks live on a farm, and I think she misses the country.”

  “You want to make Jennifer happy.”

  “Yes, I do, more than anything.”

  As Eddie pulled up in front of the apartment building, power was restored in the neighborhood, and the heavy overcast brought the street lights on.

  Eddie grinned. “It’s about time. See ya tomorrow.”

  “Right,” Harvey said. “Have your suit ready for the funeral.”