Witness (13 page)

“Yes. I called the police, and then I smelled gas.”

“Gas? Petra!”

“I think he tried to kill me.” Tears gushed into her eyes and spilled down her cheeks.

“The police came?”

“Yes. They searched the house.”

“Did they find anything? You said you had the locks changed.”

Petra sobbed. “Yes, but that didn’t stop him. He broke a window in the guest room. They think he came in there and went out the front door. It was unlocked when I got up.”

She heard Joe sigh.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Yes. They wanted me to go to the hospital and get checked out, but I told them I didn’t need to.”

“I’d feel better if you did.”

“An EMT looked me over and the police officer brought me to a hotel.” She brushed back a tear.

“Good.”

“Joe, the cop said I probably left the burner on by mistake.”

After a moment’s silence Joe said, “People do forget things like that, especially if they’re stressed.”

“No. I didn’t turn the stove on after you left, and we’d have noticed if it was on when you were there.”

“If you did…I suppose the flame could have gone out?”

“No. Joe, I heard him leave. And what about the broken window?”

“Okay, okay.”

Another silence clawed at her heart. She’d been foolish in thinking she would be safe because she had a new dead bolt. Even though she’d been afraid, she’d refused to give up her independence.

“You believe me, don’t you?” she whispered. “About the gas?”

“Yes.”

No hesitation there. She blew out a breath. “Thank you.”

“I wish I could be there with you. Did you tell the police about the keys?”

“Yes, but the officer didn’t seem to think it was important, since the locksmith was here yesterday.”

Joe sighed. “Okay.”

“I didn’t mention Rex Harwood,” Petra said. “I told them I missed my extra key ring and someone might have taken it. They weren’t wild about the theory. They asked if I’d given out any other keys, and I told them about the boy who comes to mow the lawn and feed Mason when I’m gone. They’re going to check with him tomorrow to see if he’s lost the key. But I figured if I mentioned Rex again, I’d have some sort of harassment suit slapped on me.”

“I’m so sorry. Do you want me to come back down?”

She could hear the frustration and fatigue in his voice.

Yes! I want you here. I want you to keep me safe and tell me no one will hurt me. I want you to make him leave me alone.

She took a deep breath. “No. I’ll be okay.”

“Petra, you have a visitor.”

Petra looked up in surprise from updating a patient’s chart. Surely, Joe hadn’t come to Portland this morning. He’d called her again at six-thirty, and she’d assured him that she was all right and headed for work. She peeked into the E.R.’s waiting room. Several people sat in the chairs, their expressions varying from boredom to agony. A handsome man in a suit stood near the entrance, looking about with an alertness that shouted “cop.”

Her pulse accelerated.
Now what?
She went back to the nurses’ station and told her supervisor she would take her break.

“Miss Wilson?” the man said as she approached him.

“Yes. Would you care to step out into the hallway?”

“Thank you.”

Outside the E.R., he smiled at her. “I’m Detective Nick Wyatt.”

She shook his hand, appraising him. Joe’s age, but Nick looked younger with sun-bleached hair and a cowlick. Joe’s friend; a man he trusted and turned to for help when he needed it. A very good cop, according to Joe, and a cop on her side now, unless last night’s episode had swayed him.

“I’m pleased to meet you,” she said. “Perhaps we could step over to the coffee shop.”

“Good idea.” As they walked down the hallway, Nick said, “Joe and I are working pretty closely on your case now.”

“I’m glad to hear that.”

“It must be very stressful for you.”

“You’ve no idea.”

They ordered coffee and sat in a corner out of the traffic pattern.

“I spoke with Joe this morning,” Nick told her, “to update him on what I’ve been doing. He told me about the intruder at your house last night. Are you okay?”

“It shook me up pretty badly, but I’m all right.”

Nick nodded. “I understand you didn’t name any suspects.”

“It didn’t seem wise, in light of past events.”

“But you think Rex Harwood came in and blew out the pilot light on the stove and turned the gas on.”

“Well…someone poisoned my dog last week. After that, I realized my key ring was gone. I do think Harwood may have tried the lock and then broken the spare room window. And I don’t know of anyone else who would want to harm me.”

Nick held her gaze for a long moment. “I hope we can clear this up for you. All of it. I admit I was skeptical when Joe first contacted me about your case, but it’s beginning to make sense.”

“I appreciate that.”

“And Joe’s told you about the car that was left at the airport?” he asked.

“Yes. Did you find the owner?”

“Unfortunately, no. It’s registered to a woman living outside Halifax, Nova Scotia, and she seems to be missing.”

“That’s a shame.”

“Yes. She’s a widow, living alone. The police in Halifax have contacted her children, friends and neighbors, but no one seems to have known she was going to Portland that day.” Nick sipped his coffee.

“Do we know how long she was in Portland?” Petra asked.

“Good question. I checked with the ferry terminal. This car came over on the catamaran ferry from Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, on May sixteenth. We’re checking hotels to see if we find that the owner stayed at one of them overnight. And you saw what you saw on the seventeenth.”

“That’s right. Early evening.”

Nick nodded. “The car was parked at the airport the morning of the eighteenth. The question is, did Mrs. Foster leave it there, or did someone else?”

“Mrs. Foster? That’s the owner?”

“Yes, sorry. Harriet Foster. As you can imagine, the police and the airport management want to find her as soon as possible. So far, we’ve established that she did not hold a reservation on any plane leaving Portland on the eighteenth.”

“And someone saw her car on Rex Harwood’s street the night of the seventeenth.”

Nick smiled. “Yes. Joe picked up on that. I might have. Then again, I might not. He’s got a special kind of brain, Joe has.”

And a special kind of heart, she thought.

“Mr. Wyatt—”

“Please call me Nick.” He drew back and reached for his coffee.

She smiled. “I suppose Joe told you about his little stunt—going over to talk to Mrs. Harwood.”

“Oh, yes, and I chewed him out for it. He could blow my investigation if he’s not careful.”

“I was surprised she let him in,” Petra admitted.

“Well, Joe’s got charm oozing out his ears.”

“Hasn’t he?” They both laughed.

“How can you be sure, from such a distance, that the jug Joe saw is the same item the woman was holding when she was strangled?”

Petra drew in a deep breath. “I wasn’t certain at first. But when Joe held it, the colors were the same as my memory of it. I see that picture every night in my dreams, vividly. Her face, mostly. But the…thing…it’s there, too. She was holding it against her chest and screaming at Rex. And when she fell to the floor, he…he picked it up so gently…” She flexed her shoulders. “His wife handled it with the same reverence last night. When Joe showed me the photo he took, I was absolutely sure. No question.”

Nick nodded slowly. “All right. Joe is doing some research on that particular type of ceramics, and he’ll share the information with me. My job today is to try to establish where Mrs. Foster stayed in Portland, and what her connection is to Rex Harwood.”

“Don’t they have cameras at the airport?” Petra asked. “They might have footage of whoever drove the car there. And he must have called a taxi to take him somewhere afterward.”

“We’re on it,” Nick said. “They don’t have cameras on that part of the parking lot. But we do have an officer working the taxi angle. Of course, it’s been more than two weeks now. A passenger would have to stand out for some reason in a cabdriver’s mind for him to remember it so long, and to be able to fix the date. So that’s a long shot, but we are checking.” He glanced at his watch. “Well, I’d better get going. Best case scenario, we’ll find a cabdriver who recalls picking Mrs. Foster up at the airport that night.”

“Worst case scenario, some driver remembers picking Rex up?”

Nick shook his head. “Worst case scenario is nothing. Nobody saw a thing.”

J
oe entered his office yawning on Wednesday morning. He’d been up half the night working at the computer. A case this absorbing rarely came his way. His briefcase held the reams of information he’d gathered about Rex Harwood, the Cat ferry, Portland International Airport and Toby jugs. And Petra. Nick had e-mailed him a preliminary report on her.
Just thought you’d like to know my background check on Miss Wilson is clean so far,
his note had read.
No solid clues as to the identity of the intruder at her house, though. An officer will be at her house this morning while workmen fix the broken window.

Joe tamped down his initial anger when he read that Nick had done a background check on Petra.
Just doing his job.
Joe had purposely held back from digging too deeply into Petra’s past. He wanted to let her unveil her history to him, so he could learn it the same way he was learning her personality. He loved her insistence on truth, her determination to learn what lay behind the awful scene she’d witnessed. Joe had a feeling the same intensity wove into other areas of her life, yet he’d seen an occasional touch of lightness.

Finding Petra in the middle of an intriguing case was the ultimate bonus. He’d begun to think they were well matched. For a long time, he’d shied away from entering a permanent relationship. He didn’t want to get into something that turned bad. His parents’ breakup had taught him one thing well: caution. But with Petra…Lately he found himself looking more closely at Nick and Robyn’s marriage. He didn’t doubt they loved each other, though they sometimes disagreed vigorously. And they’d been together fifteen years. Maybe it wasn’t impossible to have a lifelong, happy marriage.

I wonder if Petra only seems ideal for me because she needs my help and protection.
That was a recurring thought that sobered him. Would the mutual attraction fade once the case was solved? Joe sat at his desk and bowed his head for a moment.
Lord, help me to see things clearly, and help us to find the truth about Rex Harwood.
He turned on the computer and opened his briefcase.

After several hours of research, his stomach growled. He sat back and sorted the papers he’d printed out during this session. By now he considered himself somewhat of an expert on Toby jugs. The one in Harwood’s house must be worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $12,000, if he was any judge of its condition and current prices.

He picked up his telephone receiver and dialed the number for the gift shop next door. As it rang, he wished he’d stopped by instead, on his way out for lunch. Keilah’s bright voice answered.

“You Shouldn’t Have.”

Joe smiled. “Yeah, yeah, I know I shouldn’t have. Any messages for me?”

“None this morning, which is rather remarkable, don’t you think?”

“I sure do. But it’s okay. I’ve got plenty of work right now.” He hung up wishing Petra would tell her sisters that he was working for her and why. It made things awkward sometimes. He and Keilah had developed a bantering rapport, and a couple of times he’d had to catch himself from saying something that would make her curious. Bethany seemed quieter and more pensive, but then, she was older, and she’d been widowed. Joe found he could enjoy a serious conversation with Bethany, and she, too, could enter into Keilah’s silliness on occasion. Still, he found himself thinking of Keilah as a…
Yeah,
he acknowledged inwardly,
I can see her as a younger sister.

He liked that. The feeling of being a sibling in a large family agreed with him. If things continued to progress with him and Petra…

Suddenly he wanted to hear her voice. He dialed her cell phone number. She wouldn’t answer; she was probably at the hospital and had the phone stashed in her locker. But just hearing her speak on her voice mail would give him a fix.

“Joe?”

Her voice surprised him, and his heart lurched.

“Yeah. Aren’t you working?”

“One of the other nurses and I are on our lunch hour, and we decided to get out of the hospital for a change.”

He was smiling, although she couldn’t see him. Probably a goofy smile. “I just wanted to see how you were doing.”

“Fine. Nick Wyatt stopped by this morning.”

“What did you think of him?”

“I like him,” she said. “I did get the feeling he was sizing me up.”

“He believes you now. The car convinced him, so don’t worry about that.”

“Mmm. Anything new?”

“I’m learning all I can about certain antiques, if you get my drift. Listen, why don’t you ask Nick to tell your boss you have to leave early? Come up here and get away from…you know who.”

“I…can’t talk about this now, Joe.”

He sighed. “Okay. I’ll let you go, but we’ll talk again soon.”

“Thanks.”

He hated to hang up, but he knew he could best serve her by putting something in his stomach and getting back to work. And he did have another case he needed to put some time in on today.

The other matter sent him to Augusta after lunch, and he stopped at the county courthouse for some records. While he was at it, he decided to ask for a copy of Rex Harwood’s father’s will. The clerk kept him waiting fifteen minutes while she searched, but she came up dry.

“I’m sorry,” she told him. “We don’t have a record of his will being probated in Kennebec County. If he died in another county, or in another state, we wouldn’t have it here.”

Joe sighed. “Why aren’t all of the records standardized? You should be able to check statewide records instantly with that computer.”

She gave him a rather sour smile. “We’re working on it, sir, but the backlog is huge.”

Joe got a burger and two cups of coffee. He picked up a paper to read while he ate. A sudden thought sent him to the classifieds in the back of the paper. Sure enough, a couple of estate auctions were advertised for the coming weekend. One of the auctioneers was an antique dealer well known in the area. Joe drove back up the interstate past Waterville and got off at the next town. At the auction hall, he parked in the empty lot and got out, but the door was locked. The action on a Wednesday afternoon seemed to be across the lot at the rambling antique shop.

He entered and sauntered through the rooms, hands in his pockets. Wouldn’t want to break a five-hundred-dollar vase. Joe had never seen so much old stuff. One set of shelves held hundreds of glass insulators—the kind they used to use on telephone poles when he was a kid. One section was filled with old farm implements. Then furniture. Bottles. Dishes.

He wandered around the dish section, but didn’t spot any Toby jugs. He did find a couple of newer “character jugs” that he’d learned were distant cousins to Toby.

He eventually wandered back toward the door and saw a man standing behind a counter, ringing up a purchase for a middle-aged couple.

“Thanks very much. Come again.” The man smiled and turned his attention to Joe. “May I help you, sir?”

Joe pulled out one of his private investigator business cards.

“Yes, I’m interested in Toby jugs.”

“Ah. Wonderful collectibles, but the genuine ones are becoming rare.”

Joe nodded. “So I’ve learned. Have you seen any in this neck of woods lately?”

“I had one a year or two back, but I don’t see them often.” The man shook his head.

“They say they might have gotten the name from a Shakespearean character,” Joe noted. “Sir Toby Belch.”

The man grinned. “That’s appropriate.”

“Yeah, well, it’s probably not true.” Joe shrugged.

“I recall a big collection being sold—oh, three or four years ago,” the man said. “But I didn’t handle them. The sale was at Gillespie’s in Portland. I attended.”

“Could you write down the name of the dealer for me?”

“Sure. I’ve got his phone number here, too. Calvin Gillespie. Does a lot of high-end auctions in southern Maine. I might still have the catalog from that sale on file.” He disappeared into an alcove, and Joe waited. A minute later the man reappeared and slipped a magazine-size brochure into his hand. “There you go. You can take that if you like.”

“Thanks very much.” Another customer was waiting behind him, so Joe nodded and left the shop. He realized it was nearly suppertime and drove back to his office, arriving just as Bethany and Keilah locked up their store.

“Joe, would you like to come out to the house for supper?” Bethany called.

Her offer tempted him, but Joe wanted to stay on Petra’s case, so he declined. Inside the office, he went straight to his computer. There were only half a dozen daily newspapers in Maine. He went after their archived obituaries methodically. In his initial investigation of Rex’s parents, he’d found Anne Fuller Harwood’s obituary easily, in the Augusta paper, but not Ernest Harwood’s. Time to dig deeper. Bangor, Lewiston, Portland…

An hour later he called out for pizza and kept at it. Just as the delivery boy arrived, he hit pay dirt with the Portland
Press Herald.
Ernest Harwood had died in Biddeford three years ago. Joe paid for the pizza and went back to the computer to print the obituary, scanning it on the screen while he waited. Survived by his son, Rexford, three stepchildren and several grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Joe leaned back in his chair and squinted at the screen. Very interesting.

Petra drove as quickly as traffic would allow to the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow House on Thursday. After today, only one more day of work. She pulled onto a side street, as parking in front of the Longfellow House and Maine Historical Society buildings was always iffy. After locking her car, she hurried to the little garden at the side of the old brick home. Joe was waiting for her, wandering about the small park and admiring the plants.

“Good afternoon!” She hurried to meet him and noticed several take-out food containers on a bench.

“Hi.” He stooped to kiss her cheek lightly. “Chinese okay?”

“Terrific. Is everything all right?”

“Yeah. I’m sorry I called you so early this morning, but I wanted to be sure to catch you before you left for work.”

“I was surprised you were coming down here again so soon.”

“Well, you know—business.”

Petra wondered how large his bill for expenses would be. After all, she was giving up her secure income after next week. “Do you need gas money?”

“Oh, don’t worry about the expenses.”

That was a relief, but it raised new questions. Maybe her case wasn’t generating new leads anymore. “Is this trip for another client?”

“Well, no, but…” His voice dropped to deep and confidential, and he took her hand in his. “I’ve got a personal stake in this now, Petra.”

Warmth spread over her. He cared about her on a deeper level, and she had to admit she was liking that more and more.

“I can’t believe this place is vacant.” Joe pushed aside the food containers and they sat on the bench. “I was afraid a busload of kids would be taking the tour.”

She smiled. “God arranged it for us, I guess.”

He asked a blessing on the food and opened one of the boxes. “Crab Rangoon?”

“I love it.” She took a napkin and the hot, delicious Chinese food. Joe handed her a bottle of diet cola that was still cold. She asked, “So, you’ve had a breakthrough?”

“Not exactly. But I learned that a private collection of Toby jugs was sold at a large auction house in Portland a few years ago. I came down to talk to the auctioneer this afternoon.”

“You think they were the Harwood family’s antiques?”

“I don’t know, but Mrs. Harwood did say her mother-in-law had a large collection and they’d been sold. The timing of the sale is right—a few months after Rex’s father died. His stepmother predeceased her husband.”

Petra tried to follow that and pictured a family tree chart in her mind. “So, his mother died when Rex was a kid, and his father got married again, and the new stepmother liked antiques…”

“Right. I found out her first husband was a doctor, but they divorced. She seems to have had money of her own when she married Ernest Harwood.”

“Let me know how it goes.”

“I will. I also learned Rex had two stepbrothers and a stepsister.”

“What happened to them?”

“Well, one of the brothers is retired from the navy, living in California. The other one died of a heart attack five years ago.”

Petra opened another container and discovered beef and broccoli. “And the stepsister?” She reached for a set of plastic silverware.

“Get this. Back in the 1960s she married Isaac Foster, a businessman from Nova Scotia.”

Petra paused and stared at him. “The Nova Scotia connection!”

“I think so.”

“Did you tell Nick?”

“Yes. He’s meeting me here. When you go back to work, he’s going to go with me to the auction house. He said he’d call ahead for an appointment with the owner.”

“Great.” She smiled. “Joe, we’re going to solve this case.”

“I sure hope so.” He took her hand for a moment and squeezed it. “You gave me a scare the other night. Are you sure you’re all right?”