“What’s that?”
“Who will make the final decision when you disagree on a minor matter? And an important matter?”
Harvey said, “Well, if it’s not important, then whoever feels most strongly should have their way.”
“What if we both feel strongly?”
“For example?”
Jennifer smiled. “Oh, I don’t know. How about the flavor of the wedding cake?”
“We compromised.”
“Yes, but I was willing to have it your way.”
“Wasn’t I willing to have it your way?” he asked.
“I guess so, as long as it wasn’t chocolate. Until you tasted the chocolate, that is.”
“Well, you wouldn’t want an all-chocolate wedding cake, would you?”
“Of course not.” Jennifer watched him warily. It had started out as light teasing, but a knot tightened in her stomach, and she wasn’t quite sure where the humor ended and the anxiety began.
“Is this your first fight?” asked Eddie.
Jennifer said, “No, I think we’ve had this fight before.”
“It wasn’t a fight,” Harvey said.
“Well, I don’t want to fight.” She blinked furiously, determined not to cry over something so frivolous.
Harvey looked over at her and then put the turn signal on, pulled into a parking lot, and threw the gearshift into park.
“Why are we stopping?” she asked a little shakily.
“Your first lesson in making up.” Harvey put his arms around her and kissed her, lingering over the embrace. She sighed and relaxed. The back seat was very quiet.
“Do you know where we are?” he asked.
“Searsport?” Jennifer guessed.
“No, only about halfway. Thomaston.”
She craned her neck and looked. They were near the entrance of a bookstore she recognized. “Oh.” She sat very still, looking at it.
“One of my favorite spots. Want to go in?”
She nodded. He got out of the Explorer and went around the back.
“A bookstore?” Eddie asked.
She smiled. “Not just any bookstore. This is where Harvey proposed. You guys will love it.”
Harvey opened her door, and she got out. He put his arm around her shoulders, and they went inside. He led her down the book-lined hallways and through History, Biography, and Cookbooks, into Fiction. They went through Westerns, Sci-Fi and Suspense, and into Romance. Three women were in the room between the floor-to-ceiling shelves, talking and comparing authors. Harvey sighed and stepped back into the adjoining room, which was empty at the moment, and pulled Jennifer close.
“What, you’re keeping me in Suspense?” she said.
He shook a little, then his laugh broke out. “Jenny, let’s don’t ever fight.”
“It wasn’t really a fight.” She choked a little on it. “I didn’t mean it to be.”
“Me either. And if it’s something that doesn’t matter, then you can do whatever you want. I mean that. Even a little bride and groom on the cake, if that’s what you want.”
“It’s not. But if you care about something, I want to do it your way, even if it doesn’t matter. And if it does matter, you definitely get the final word.” He tipped her face up and kissed her, then kissed her again.
“Excuse me. Romance is in there,” said a woman, coming out of the room in question with an armful of paperbacks. She sounded a little bemused, but not severe.
As they stepped aside, so she could wend her way out via Suspense and Sci-Fi, Harvey said, “In this store, ma’am, Romance is where you find it.”
When the other two women came out, he and Jennifer stepped in and looked around at the historic room.
“There should be a brass plaque on the wall in here,” he said. “Detective Harvey Larson asked for the hand of Miss Jennifer Wainthrop on this site, and received a favorable response.”
“That’s not romantic enough,” she said. “It should read, ‘Detective Harvey Larson passionately declared his love on this spot, and coaxed his sweetheart, Jennifer Wainthrop, into a whirlwind engagement.’ Or something like that.”
Harvey smiled, “I thought courting you was hard, but being engaged is a lot more tiring.”
“Think so?”
“Yes. I’ve never been so happy or so stressed. I’m sorry about the cake and anything else I’ve been obnoxious about.”
“You weren’t obnoxious. I need your input, and I appreciate the way you’ve put up with everything. I know you never wanted a big wedding.”
“It’s okay.” He kissed her beneath the spot where the brass plaque should have been. “Are we ready for Fort Point?”
“I think so.”
They ambled back out through the maze of alcoves and crannies and found Eddie in Automotive. They split up to look for Leeanne. She emerged from Juvenile with shining eyes, holding up a pair of hundred-year-old children’s books.
“G. A. Henty,” she said to Jennifer.
“Oooh! Let me see!” Jennifer was as excited as Leeanne. They’d loved the author’s books as children. Leeanne paid for her finds, and they went back to the SUV.
As they drove on, Leeanne and Eddie talked like friends, and Jennifer felt at ease. Whenever Harvey didn’t need two hands to drive, he held on to one of hers.
*****
They found the state park a little before eleven o’clock. A young woman in a Parks & Rec uniform stood in the booth at the gate, and when Harvey gave her the entrance fee, she handed him several brochures. He parked in the lot and looked around, trying to visualize Martin and Thelma Blake’s arrival on Sunday. A dirt road led up an incline from the far end of the lot, and a sign beside it said, “Fort and Lighthouse.”
Harvey opened the door and got out, still surveying the layout.
“It’s not like I thought,” said Eddie.
“Nope. Can’t see the water or the lighthouse from here.”
Harvey pushed the automatic lock button, took Jennifer’s hand, and led the way down a path toward Penobscot Bay. Restroom cabins were just visible in the woods to the right of the path. They went through the trees, and soon several picnic tables came into view. He and Jennifer walked past them and came to a rim, where the ground suddenly fell away about thirty feet, in a very steep slope to the shore below. Bushes and small trees grew on the slope, and the tops of the trees came up above it, partly obscuring the view. A narrow path zigzagged down between rocks and bushes, ending on a rocky strip of beach below. Waves rolled in over boulders, and water splashed within five yards of the foot of the path.
“Not much of a beach,” said Jennifer.
Eddie and Leeanne came up behind them.
“Can’t see much from here,” Eddie observed. He put his binoculars to his eyes and trained them on the bay.
“Let’s find out how much you could see.” Harvey started down the path. It was rugged, and he had to place his feet carefully. Jennifer followed, holding on to branches as she went.
“Careful.” Harvey got to the ground, and called up to Eddie, “Can you see us?”
He leaned out over the top and said, “Now I can.”
They walked out away from the hillside, picking their way carefully on the rocks.
“How about now?”
“Clear view.”
They went as far as they could without getting their feet wet.
“Now?”
“Yep.” They walked back in. Eddie and Leeanne scrambled down the slope.
“I think the tide’s pretty high,” Harvey said. “The Blakes were up there looking down a little later, but that was six days ago.” He calculated the difference a week would make in the tide schedule.
“So there might have been a little more beach showing,” said Eddie.
“Yeah. Tide was high at two-thirty in the afternoon that day, so about halfway in when they were here.”
They looked out at the bay, then to the right, at a strip of coarse gravel. They walked to it, and Harvey w
ondered if they could be seen from above. Beyond it, the shore curved around a point. In the other direction was a rocky stretch, then the water came nearly to the trees.
“The lighthouse is that way.” Harvey gestured toward the point.
“Should we go back up, or walk around to the lighthouse?” asked Jennifer.
“I’m not sure that’s possible at this stage of the tide. But the longer we stay, the lower it will get. How about if you girls go up the hill, and Eddie and I try to go around on the rocks?” Harvey gave her his car keys.
Leeanne and Jennifer climbed slowly, grabbing bushes to pull themselves up the path. He and Eddie stood below, watching them, in case they had trouble.
“I can’t see a bunch of 50-year-olds taking that path,” said Eddie.
“Me either. It was hard enough on my knees.”
“Maybe there’s another path.”
When the women were safely up, Jennifer waved.
Harvey called, “We’ll walk toward the point. If we make it, drive up to the lighthouse and meet us there.”
He and Eddie started along the shore. When they got around the point, the strip below the hillside was narrower, and they had to climb carefully over slabs of rock. The cold waves splashed up, soaking Harvey’s sneakers and pantlegs.
“Do you think they could have done this?”
“They could have. But did they?” Eddie asked.
“Well, if the tide was lower, it wouldn’t be so dangerous,” Harvey reminded him.
“Maybe Frederick slipped on one of these rocks and hit his head.”
Harvey said, “Then why did David Murphy deny seeing him at first?”
“Maybe he knew he was dead.”
“Hm. If Frederick died accidentally and somebody knew it, they’d raise an alarm and try to pull him out of the water. Murphy could come out a hero for even trying to save him. But if he knew Frederick was dead and didn’t want anyone else to know, he would have lied.”
“Which he did,” Eddie said.
They rounded the point at last, and could see a pyramid tower ahead.
“Is that the lighthouse?” Eddie asked. “Kind of small.”
They kept walking, and another structure appeared beyond it, a lighthouse tower with the keeper’s house at its base. When they got to the first building, the girls were waiting.
“What is this thing?” Harvey asked. The grassy slope was much more gradual here, and they climbed it with little difficulty. A large bronze bell hung in the wooden tower on the side that faced the bay, but it wasn’t up in the top like a steeple bell. Its base was only three feet off a recessed deck. The white pyramid-shaped tower was about fifteen feet high and had a locked door on the back of it.
“It’s called the bell tower,” said Jennifer, looking up from her brochure.
“What’s it for?” asked Eddie, climbing into the front of the tower where the bell hung. He reached up inside it, grabbed the clapper and tapped it gently against the side of the bell.
Bong! The sound was so loud, he jumped back and looked around quickly. A few people stood in the field between them and the parking lot, and more near the lighthouse. They all turned and looked toward the bell tower.
“Am I in trouble?” asked Eddie.
Harvey shook his head. “I don’t think so.” Just like a kid.
“Maybe it’s what they used before they had foghorns,” said Leeanne.
“What’s over there?” Harvey nodded toward the parking lot and barely visible signs.
“That’s the fort.” Jennifer, held out the brochure.
“You’re kidding.”
“No. It was wood, built in 1759, before the Revolution. Only the earthworks are left.”
They walked closer, and Harvey studied a diagram of the fort, comparing it with what was left in the ground before him. Fort Pownal had been in the shape of a four-pointed star, with a moat the same shape around it. They stood outside the ridges of earth that formed the outer wall of the moat. Harvey walked to the berm and surveyed the stone foundation that was left in the center, where the wooden garrison had stood. He wished he could have seen it in its original condition. The drawing in the brochure intrigued him.
At last he turned away. “So all the class members were up here looking at this.”
“Sounds that way,” said Eddie. “Most of them looked at the fort and the lighthouse and the bell tower before lunch. Then later some of them came back up here with lawn chairs and sat around talking.”
“It’s a better view than at the picnic area,” Leeanne said.
“And the mosquitoes wouldn’t be as bad here in the open as down there in the woods,” Jennifer added.
Harvey stared out over the bay. “If Frederick was in the water, they might not have seen the body. At some point it had to wash down to Islesboro, but it might have been out from shore far enough that they wouldn’t notice it.”
“Or it might have hung up in those rocks,” Eddie said.
“Someone must have gone down to the shore after lunch,” Harvey insisted.
“It’s a difficult climb,” Eddie reminded him.
Harvey didn’t want to give up the idea. “This path is easier than the one we went down. But I can’t believe no one would see the body if it was below this place. I’m pretty sure this is where Thelma said they sat around and talked.”
“Maybe there’s an easier path farther down the shore,” Leeanne said.
Jennifer wanted pictures for her scrapbook, so they took a few near the fort and the lighthouse. Eddie and Leeanne scrambled down into the foundation of the old fort, where rock walls stood chest-high.
Eddie said, “I wonder if people find old bullets and things here.” They started looking around the ground.
After a while Harvey called them out of the hole, and they took the Explorer back to the first parking lot and followed the path on foot, to the spot they’d been to before on the rim. A family of five was eating at a picnic table close to the head of the path that descended to the shore.
Harvey nodded to them and kept going. After a short way, another path branched off toward the shore. He followed it until he found another dirt track heading down toward the rocky strip below. It was at least as steep as the first trail.
He turned back. Eddie was right behind him, and Jennifer and Leeanne were farther back, heading their way.
“I don’t think they’d go any farther than this,” Harvey said. Beyond that point, the main path faded to a faint trail with no markers.
“I doubt it, too,” Eddie said.
“So they were all over there near the picnic tables. Why didn’t one of them see the body?”
“Maybe it was never within sight from up there,” Eddie said. “If he started around the rocks and slipped…”
“Or maybe someone did see it, or thought he saw something in the water,” Harvey said, thinking over the options.
Eddie looked a question at him.
“Blake. Thelma said he started down the path.”
“Find anything?” Jennifer called.
Harvey grinned at her. “Not yet.”
“What else can we do?” Jennifer asked.
Eddie said, “We can put a body down by the rocks and see if you can see it from up top.”
Leeanne stared at him, her blue eyes dark in the shade.
Harvey said, “Eddie and I will go down this path and walk over to where we were before, below the first path. You girls go back near the picnic tables and wave when you can see us.”
“Wait a sec.” Eddie took off his binoculars and hung them around Leeanne’s neck. “Jennifer, do you have your phone?”
“Yes.”
“Harvey?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, so we can communicate without yelling in front of those people.”
“Good.” Harvey stepped over the edge onto the dirt path and nearly fell. The footing was tricky. Eddie, behind him, sent loose pebbles down on him. This path was more treacherous than the first, an
d he went on cautiously. At the base they walked over the rocks, looking along the edge above them for the girls. The strip of shore was a little wider now. Harvey saw the girls, and Leeanne had the binoculars to her eyes. Jennifer waved.
“They see us.” He and Eddie hopped from rock to rock, then stopped on a flat rock. The waves skimmed the top, washing over his sneakers. “This would be out of the water at low tide. The girls waved.
“That day, while they ate lunch, the tide got higher. Today, it’s getting lower.” Harvey turned toward the bay. “Mrs. Blake said Murphy and Frederick were standing on the rocks, close to the water.”
“This place is as good as any.” Eddie looked back at the path. “If you were standing here and you got mad at me, what would you do?”
“Throw you in the drink.”
“No, I mean really mad.”
“You mean, murderously mad?” Harvey asked.
“Precisely.”
Harvey looked around. Seaweed and mussel shells dotted the gravel between the bigger rocks, and little tide pools lay in depressions. He bent and picked up a rock the size of a softball, and hefted it in his left hand.
“This would do it.”
“Can’t hope to find any evidence.” Eddie scanned the shore. Thousands of rocks lay within sight.
Harvey took his phone out and speed-dialed Jennifer.
“Hello down there,” she said in his ear.
“Hey, gorgeous. Can you see what I’m holding?”
“Your phone?”
“No, in the other hand.”
“No. Let me ask Leeanne.”
They leaned toward each other, and Leeanne brought the binoculars up again.
“A rock?” guessed Jennifer.
“You got it.”
“We couldn’t see it without the binoculars.”
Eddie wiggled his eyebrows. “Hit me with it.”
Into the phone, Harvey said, “Watch closely.”
He and Eddie turned toward the water. Harvey raised the rock behind Eddie’s head and brought it gently against his skull. Eddie sat down on the rock, and Harvey dropped his hand that held the stone.
“What just happened?” he asked Jennifer.
“You hit him?”
“A-plus.”
“But we can see Eddie, and he’s sitting up,” she protested.
Eddie was taking his shoes off.
Fort Point (Maine Justice Book 2) Page 12
