Witness (6 page)

Joe hung up with a sigh. This type of case always brought back memories of his teenage years, when his father had walked out on the family. Maybe he’d chosen the wrong profession, after all. Divorce cases were definitely not his favorite. But memories of his mother’s situation always made him sympathetic with the victim.

He wondered if he’d look too eager if he went back over to the gift shop. Immediately, he discarded the idea. Petra was busy; it would be better to wait until she came to him. He didn’t want to smother her. Still, he didn’t want to hang around the office all morning. He’d head over to the police station and see who was on break.

The decision made, he jotted his itinerary for Wednesday evening in the appointment book and slid it into his desk drawer. Before he could rise, the door opened. His heart leaped, then faltered.

Petra stepped inside, and the look on her face told him that he’d been right. Her pleasant attitude at the gift shop had been a mask covering her fear.

He jumped up and walked toward her, his hands extended. “Come sit down. Tell me what happened.”

She pulled in a raspy breath and took the chair he offered. “Last Wednesday night a man was lurking in the parking lot at the hospital when I got off work. It was dark, but I thought…” She licked her lips, then met his gaze. “I thought it was Rex. I ran back inside and called security. And the guard called the police.”

Joe sat on the corner of his desk. “They called the P.D. because you saw someone hanging around the parking lot?”

She shook her head. Her eyes dulled with hopelessness. “I made the mistake of saying the man looked like my neighbor. The guard called it in and told the dispatcher. The patrolman who responded had looked at my statement from the week before.”

“Oh, boy.”

“It gets worse. I told the officer I wasn’t sure, and when I thought about it, I realized it probably wasn’t Rex. But it was too late. They’d already sent a patrolman to his house to make sure he was tucked in safe and sound.”

“Sounds reasonable. They were doing all they could to protect you.”

“Yes. Unfortunately, I’m now considered the girl who cried wolf.” She brushed her hair back from her forehead. “Joe, the same officer who responded the night I saw the murder went to Harwood’s house and got him up at midnight. He told Rex I said he’d stalked me in the parking lot, which wasn’t what I’d said.”

“And?” Joe watched her closely, taking in every gesture, every movement of her eyes. She looked directly at him. She was scared, but so far as he could tell, she was giving it to him straight.

“There was an incident a month or so ago. My dog, Mason, got loose and somehow wound up in Rex’s yard. I’d barely spoken to the Harwoods before that, but they’d always been civil over the fence. But Rex got angry when Mason went over there, and he called the animal control officer. I apologized and offered to pay for any damage. He declined the offer. I could see that it wasn’t anything serious. Since then, I’ve kept a close eye on Mason.”

Joe waited. This was leading somewhere.

She laughed without humor. “He told the cops Wednesday night that I was harassing him because he’d called the dog officer on me. The way he tells it, I made up this story of him strangling a woman to get even with him. But I wasn’t mad at him when it happened. I was upset with myself for letting Mason get loose. I still don’t know how he got over the fence, but he did. And now…oh, Joe, it probably wasn’t him in the parking lot, but I’ve made this thing a hundred times worse by bringing up his name again.”

Tears glistened in her eyes. Joe reached behind him and pulled a tissue from the box on his desk.

“Thanks.” She swabbed her eyes and smiled ruefully. “All of which is a prelude to telling you I want to hire you.”

He sat still for a moment, clicking through everything she had told him. Could he do anything to help her? If she had imagined the murder, digging into it would do nothing but worsen her relationship with her neighbors. But if it was real…

“Have you gotten any more anonymous phone calls?” he asked.

“Yes. Well, a few after I left here, but none since Wednesday. And he’s madder now. That probably wasn’t him making the calls, either.”

“I wouldn’t say that.”

“You wouldn’t?” She blinked and touched the tissue to her eyes again.

Joe got up and went to his chair behind the desk. He sat and linked his hands behind the back of his neck. “Let’s say he really did kill a woman ten days ago.”

She nodded, eyeing him cautiously.

“Okay, so he bugs you a little. Calls your phone and hangs up. Why?”

“To annoy me?”

“Sure. To scare you and make you wonder if he knows what you’re up to.”

Her eyes widened. “You think he’s keeping track of me?”

“Maybe. He’s got to be feeling guilty, and he knows you’re the only one who can accuse him.”

“He walked past my house the other day,” she said. “I was just coming in from walking Mason.”

“Did he say anything?”

She inhaled deeply and looked away. “I was scared when I saw him. I…I told him to leave me alone. He said, ‘No,
you
leave
me
alone.’”

“Did you tell the police that?”

“No. He may have, though. I felt as though he was…making a statement.”

“A threat?”

“It wasn’t that well defined.”

“I agree.” Joe sat forward. “Has anything else happened?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You said the police checked to make sure his wife was all right?” he asked.

“They say she is.”

“You haven’t seen her lately?”

“No.”

“So you’re not sure it’s the same woman?”

Petra stared at him. “Well…yeah…I guess.”

“I can check into it if you want.”

“You don’t think they did that when I told them her husband killed a woman?”

“I would hope they did. At least compared her to photos. Checking her fingerprints would be better.”

“But they don’t believe there was a murder,” Petra reminded him.

“Right. So they probably didn’t do that.” He pursed his lips, thinking. “Well, let’s say the man you saw in the parking lot at the hospital was Rex.”

“The police said he was at home.”

“Would he have had time to get home and crawl into bed?”

“Maybe.” Her brow wrinkled as she thought about it. “It was at least half an hour before I got home afterward, and Officer Stenwick had talked to him, then went over to my house.”

“All right, so just for a minute, say it was him.”

“But…” She pressed her lips together.

“What are you thinking?” Joe asked.

“It was the late shift. I usually get off earlier, but I had to work a double that night. He couldn’t have known that.”

“Couldn’t? Or probably wouldn’t?”

She watched him but didn’t answer.

“How sure are you that it was him?” Joe asked.

“In the parking lot?” She shook her head. “Not sure at all. I mean, it looked like him, but I was so scared…and when I turned around and saw the knife in his hand, I didn’t stop to try to get a better look at his face.”

“Understandable.”

“So you think it was random? There have been purse snatchings and muggings around there lately. Rex wouldn’t be doing that.”

“But a killer might use that as camouflage if he wanted to shut up someone who worked there.”

She didn’t move a muscle for a good ten seconds.

“Petra,” he said softly, “I’m not trying to scare you, but I’m concerned about you. If you truly saw a murder, you’re in danger. I can’t discount that. You said you want to hire me. All right, I’ll do what I can. And I’ll start with the premise that you’re telling me the truth and that what you say you saw really happened.”

“Thank you.” Her voice dropped to where he could barely hear her. “I’d like to have you look into it—you know, like we talked about. If you can do it without causing more trouble.”

“I’m sure I can get some basic information. Whether I can find out what really happened that night, I don’t know, but at least it will help us decide whether this guy is on the level.”

“I just want to know the truth. I don’t want to stir up things that shouldn’t be stirred.”

“I understand. And I want you to call me if anything else happens. If he leaves a message on your voice mail, not just a hang-up, I want to hear it. Or if he stares at you out the window, tell me. Any time something out of the ordinary happens, write it down. We’ll document everything. Then, if he forces another confrontation, we’ll have some evidence to take to the police.”

“All…right.”

He wished her voice held more confidence. “I meant it when I said to call the cops if you’re frightened. Call me anytime, and I’ll drive down there if you need me. But if you think there’s the slightest chance you’re in danger, you call the cops.”

“I will, Joe.”

“Good. Are you going home tonight?”

“Yes.”

“When are you coming up to see your sisters again?”

“I’m supposed to attend a seminar Saturday morning at the university. But I’ll probably come the following weekend.”

“All right. We’ll get together then. Meanwhile, if I learn anything pertinent, I’ll call you. And don’t hesitate to call me,” he repeated.

“Shouldn’t I…well, give you some money or something?”

“Yeah. Well…” He considered for a moment telling her they’d talk about it later, but immediately gave himself a mental kick. Since when did he not demand a retainer up front from the client? He opened the top left drawer, took out a rate schedule, and slid it across the desk. “Here are my usual rates. Why don’t you just give me enough for a day’s work and we’ll see what I turn up. If you want me to keep going with this, we’ll talk again.”

She wrote him a check, and he reluctantly took it from her and pocketed it. It felt strange, taking money from a woman for whom he felt a growing attraction.

“Let me walk you over to the store,” he said.

“It’s only twelve steps. I counted.”

He smiled, and at once he saw an answering light in her eyes.

“Come on. I’m walking that way anyhow.”

He left her at the door to the gift shop and ambled on toward the police station, already planning how to approach Petra’s case. One thing for certain: now that he was officially on the job, he would make sure she was safe.

J
oe paced his office as he mulled over Petra’s case. He couldn’t stop thinking about it. If what she’d told him was accurate, she could be in serious danger. Even if she was wrong and there hadn’t been a murder, her neighbor sounded like the type with a short fuse who might get violent if she so much as frowned at him over the back fence. And here he was ninety miles away, helpless to protect her.

He’d wandered into the gift shop once or twice since the opening, but Keilah and Bethany were so busy they’d only waved at him or absently told him to help himself to coffee out back. For some reason that depressed him, and he had gone to the grocery store for a large can of ground coffee so he could drink and brood alone.

He poured himself a fresh cup, stirred in the sugar and carried the mug to his desk. He bumped his mouse and the screensaver disappeared, revealing his file on Rex Harwood. Born in Augusta, grew up in Kennebec County. Smart, earnest kid who served as a counselor at a camp for handicapped children, then joined the National Guard. Double degree in archaeology and anthropology. Taught at a private college in Indiana, then returned to Maine. Took a trip to Crete a decade ago to take part in an archaeological expedition. Summer digs at various spots in North America. He’d led another in Mali three years back, after which he wrote articles for glossy magazines on ancient history and the archaeological dig experience.

Joe lifted his mug and realized it was empty again. Might as well check into Harwood’s teaching career at the two colleges. Maybe he could get an inkling of his financial situation.

An hour later he leaned back in his chair, eyeing his computer screen with a frown. It seemed likely that Harwood took a cut in pay to teach at the University of Southern Maine, but the school allowed him a flexible schedule for writing, speaking engagements and professional travel. Probably a good trade-off for someone in Harwood’s line. Not the most prestigious school in the country, but it enabled him to be a minor celebrity in his field and go off on Indiana Jones jaunts. He had a trip to Morocco scheduled for July and August.

Joe reached for the phone. A call to the academic dean’s office at U.S.M. told him Professor Harwood was limiting his speaking engagements at present, but could be reached at his office on campus. Of course, the professor would be abroad on an archaeological expedition the latter part of the summer.

“Well, I’d like to hear him speak sometime,” Joe said. “Up here in Waterville, we’re always looking for something different, and I understand the professor used to live up this way. Kind of a hometown boy.”

“I wouldn’t know about that,” the dean’s secretary said. “However, his schedule fills quickly, since he’s so busy, and if he becomes department head—”

“Oh, he’s going to get a promotion?”

After a slight pause, the secretary said, “Professor Harwood is close to receiving his Ph.D., and he’s very busy working on his dissertation. Let’s just say his name is on the short list for head of the archaeology department.”

“Contingent on the Ph.D.?” Joe asked.

“Are you…you’re not a reporter, are you?”

“No, ma’am, just curious.”

When Joe hung up, he reached for the phone again. Harwood had a lot to lose, and he was planning to leave the country in a few weeks on an extended trip. Time to call in the cavalry.

He had Portland Detective Nick Wyatt’s private number on speed dial. Joe couldn’t see trying to keep too many numbers floating around in his head when he had more important things to think of.

“Hey, Nick, you got a minute?”

“Sure. What’s up?”

Joe smiled. Even though they seldom saw each other and it had been fifteen years since they’d worked together, Nick was always ready to help him. Joe felt the same way. He’d canceled a date to go and help Nick once, and his girlfriend had broken up with him because of it. Well, not
just
because of that, but she’d fussed and fumed and told him it was the last straw. She’d planned a dinner with her parents for weeks, and she’d changed the date twice because he’d taken on a time-consuming surveillance case. Then Nick called with an urgent request. He knew Nick would not say “urgent” if it weren’t life or death. But some women didn’t understand a relationship like that between guys. Joe had called a moratorium on dating since that episode.

“I wondered if you could do me a small favor,” he said to Nick.

“If it’s legal.”

“Yeah, sure. Could you pull up the police report on a complaint filed a couple of weeks ago by a Miss Petra Wilson of Acton Street?”

“Is this a case you’re working on?”

“Yeah. She’s my client.”

“Well, I’ll have to get back to you later, when I have a chance to check the computer.”

“Sure. Call me anytime at my office or on my cell.”

“What sort of complaint is it?”

“She claims a fellow named Harwood strangled a woman, and she saw it. But the investigators didn’t find anything.”

“Huh. That’s an odd one.”

“I thought the same thing. And I’ve checked this guy’s background with my limited resources. No police record that I could find. He’s a professor at U.S.M., and he’s a member of the Portland planning board. He seems squeaky clean, but still…”

“Okay, I’ll see what I can do.”

Joe felt a little better. Nick understood him. He would make this a priority. When it came down to it, Nick knew him better than anyone else on earth. They were together during the shooting that had influenced Joe to leave the police force and start his own private detective agency.

He decided to give Petra’s case a rest and call the two women whose numbers Bethany and Keilah had taken in response to his classified ad for a secretary. The first one had already found a job, but the second sounded like a possibility. He set up an interview with her for the next day, then threw a few files in his briefcase. Time to go home and change clothes and then go park himself near the home of Bill Watson, a man he was watching for the insurance company that subcontracted him. Watson claimed he was in too much pain to go to work and couldn’t stand for more than ten minutes, but Joe had learned he and his wife were on the guest list for a charity dinner and auction that evening. Joe had finagled a ticket. He would follow the Watsons to the hall where the event was being held and keep an eagle eye on the subject.

Two hours later, Joe used his cell phone to click a fourth photo of Bill Watson circling the silent auction tables with a glass in his hand and peering at the merchandise. Watson had been on his feet for more than forty minutes and didn’t seem to be limping.

His phone chimed softly, and Joe headed for the entry as he took the call.

“Yeah, Nick?”

“Okay, I’ve got the file open. Bob Stenwick and Eric Chadbourne responded the night Miss Wilson claimed she witnessed a murder.”

“Detectives?”

“No, patrolmen. They talked to Miss Wilson, then went to the house where she said she saw the assault. Apparently she witnessed it—or claimed she did—from her backyard. But the officers found zilch. They decided Miss Wilson was very suggestible and imagined she saw something.”

Joe groaned. “See, ordinarily I’d take that at face value. Only I know her, and she’s not like that.”

“What can I tell ya?”

“Well, do you see another call she made a few days later, saying a man followed her in the parking lot where she works?”

“Uh…yeah, here it is,” Nick said. “She claims he may have had a knife, and he sort of looked like Harwood. Not much there.”

“No, but the police visited Harwood again because of it, and that riled him up. She’s scared of him, big time.”

“Yeah?” Nick paused. “Well, the report makes reference to an earlier complaint Harwood made against her. Loose dog. He called the animal control officer. Stenwick seemed to think the lady was carrying a grudge for that.”

“Nah.” Joe leaned against the wall in the entryway. “I know all about that, and I don’t buy it. This gal is sharp, but not at all vengeful.”

“I don’t know, Joe. She’s made a serious accusation against him, and he must be worried she’ll ruin his reputation.”

“Yeah, well…I’ll take that under advisement. He does have quite a reputation to maintain. But about this alleged murder…No Jane Does have turned up down there in the last two weeks, have they?”

“Uh-uh. I’d know about that.”

“Any chance you could take a look at the missus? She was away when this thing supposedly happened, and now she’s back. I’d just like to know for sure he didn’t do in his wife and get someone else to pose as her for the patrolmen on the case. Of course, you’d have to do it without the Harwoods knowing about it. If he finds out someone is still looking at him, he’ll probably get upset again.”

“You don’t ask much, do you?”

Joe smiled. “Maybe I’d better drive down there and take a look at her myself.”

“No, no. I can get her driver’s license picture and see if she matches that. But I can’t ask to run fingerprints or get a DNA sample or anything like that for you, Joe.”

“I know. Thanks, Nick.”

Joe snapped his phone shut and headed for the parking lot. He had enough photos of Watson, and he didn’t really feel like eating rubber chicken.

The next day was a busy one, what with his report to the insurance agency, interviewing the wannabe secretary—who, it turned out, refused to work on a PC instead of her adored Macs—and tracking down a deadbeat dad who owed three years in back child support. Work was picking up, and he hardly had time to think about Petra’s case, except when he stopped at Burger King for a sandwich and onion rings.
Not as good as the old diner’s.

As he ate, he found himself ruminating on her lovely face, poignant with anxiety as she faced him across his desk and said, “I think I witnessed a murder.” He’d about given up on complex relationships since that debacle with Angela over the meet-the-parents dinner. That had finalized it for him. That and the memory of his own parents’ rocky relationship.

But Petra was different. She didn’t seem the type who would pout when a man had to work late on an important case or drive to Portland unexpectedly to help a friend. Petra seemed genuinely interested in him, but was it just because he was a detective and she had a problem? He didn’t think so. That sparkle in her eyes when he entered the gift shop on Monday…

He’d about used up the time she’d paid for, and for what? To learn that Rex Harwood was perhaps the last man he would suspect of murder, let alone mugging women in parking lots? That bothered him a lot. Of course, Petra had decided that one wasn’t really Rex. Joe wasn’t so sure. A man who knew the nurse living behind the back fence could ruin him might take desperate measures. Maybe it was time he took a ride to Portland. He could hang around the university and talk to some of Harwood’s colleagues and students.

The murder Petra described sounded like a spur-of-the-moment thing, not premeditated. A man who killed that way must have a short fuse. He wondered if Harwood had ever lost his temper in the classroom. He couldn’t be too volatile, or the administration wouldn’t value him so highly. But it was worth looking into.

Nick’s next call came late in the afternoon, as Joe was downloading Harwood’s speaking schedule from the college Web site, in hopes of catching one of his lectures.

“Okay, pal, you owe me big time,” Nick said when he answered.

“What? You’ve got something?” The back of Joe’s neck tingled.

“Just four hours of my time. I couldn’t quit thinking about your oddball case, and today I took my life in my hands and asked the detective sergeant to take a peek at it. He thinks the patrolmen went by the book and nothing will come of it, but he agreed to let me put in half a day on it. I’ll be in court tomorrow morning, but I thought I’d spend the afternoon in Harwood’s neighborhood. Maybe I can take a look at the scene of the alleged crime and talk to some of the neighbors, see if Stenwick and Chadbourne missed anything.”

“Let me come with you.”

“Joe, no. I’m hoping for a promotion when the sergeant retires. If I mess up on this, I can kiss that opportunity goodbye.”

“Hey, I’ll keep my mouth shut. You can do all the talking. Come on, Nicky, you know I can be discreet.”

Nick groaned. “I shouldn’t have told you until I’d already done it.”

“Please?” Joe decided he’d better play his ace. “Red Sox tickets.”

“You’re bluffing.”

“Am not. June twenty-fourth, right on the third base line. I solved a case for a hot-shot Realtor who’s a city councilor up here, and that was my bonus.”

“How many tickets?”

“Four.”

“Good night! What did you do for him?”

“Brought his teenage daughter home safe and sound.”

“Well. You, me, Robyn and who?”

“What, you’ll take your wife and let me keep two tickets?”

“Only if you bring a date. Old cop buddies and relatives don’t count.”

“I can handle it. Where do I meet you tomorrow?”

Nick sighed. “That vacant gas station on Congress Street, at one.”

“I’ll be there.” Joe hung up and checked his schedule for the next day. Nothing he couldn’t shuffle. Clinching the date for the Sox game would be harder. Of course, Petra was the only woman he wanted to take. Would she accept a date with him? Did she even like baseball? There was so much he didn’t know about her. He turned back to the computer, determined to solve her case.