Witness (10 page)

“Sorry. I’m just saying. You know?”

“I know.” Joe scowled. His coffee still tasted bitter. He reached for another packet of sugar.

That night Petra brought Mason home. He entered the kitchen warily and sniffed all around before padding into the utility room, turning around three times, and flopping on his cushion.

Petra squatted beside him and patted his smooth head.

“Poor puppy. Glad to be home and in your own bed?”

She checked on him frequently throughout the evening. Mason seemed too tired to play. Now and then he gave a loud sigh. The vet had told her not to feed him until morning, but she made sure he had cool, fresh water available.

The whole house felt subdued. She found herself stiffening and listening for any strange sound. Finally she turned on the television, something she rarely did anymore. Twenty minutes into the program, she realized she had stopped paying attention and lost the thread of the story. All she’d been thinking about was Rex Harwood and how much she hated living close to him. Time to change that. She shut off the TV and went for her phone.

Bethany didn’t answer her cell phone. Surprised, Petra tried the number for the gift shop. Keilah’s weary voice answered on the third ring.

“Tarleton Detective Agency.”

“Keilah? It’s me.”

“Petra? Oh, sorry. I thought it was Joe’s phone again.”

“What are you doing at the store so late?”

“We’re restocking and cleaning.” Keilah yawned audibly. “Sorry again. We’re almost done.”

Petra went to the patio door and looked out. Observing the Harwoods’ house was becoming a habit. Lights shone over there tonight, but she didn’t see any movement.

“You two are overdoing it. Are you there at eight o’clock every night?”

“No, but some new merchandise came in, and Bethany interviewed clerking applicants all day. We’ve been busy, which is good, but it means we have to catch up on mundane stuff in the evenings. We sold every one of those painted slates, can you believe it? The artist is bringing us a dozen more tomorrow.”

“Well, do you two still think you need another roommate?”

“You mean, you’ll come?” Keilah’s voice rose at least an octave.

“I’m starting to think I’d like to change to a new job and get out of the city. It would take me some time to sell my place here, though.”

“Well, sure, but you could give it over to an agent. Oh, Petra, that’s fantastic. Do you want to help us in the shop?”

“I think you’d better hire someone, and fast, before you’re both completely worn out.”

“A lot of summer people are coming in.”

“That’s good,” Petra said. “Maybe I can check with the Waterville hospitals to see if they have any job openings posted.”

“Sure. How soon do you think you can move permanently?”

Petra sat in a chair, relieved now that the decision was made. “I’ll talk to my boss Monday. I’ll have to give two weeks’ notice. It’ll probably take longer than that to tie up loose ends, though.” All sorts of flotsam sailed through her mind.
How will I move all my stuff? Will Mason make the adjustment all right? I’ll need to find a good vet right away.

Keilah’s voice bubbled at her again. “Oh, I can’t wait to tell Bethany. She’s out back.”

Petra caught a little of Keilah’s excitement herself. Moving in with her sisters would be good for all of them. She wished she could tell them everything, but that thought was still too unsettling. Too much had happened. Bethany would be terribly upset. “So, Joe’s getting a lot of calls on the line in your shop?”

“More than I expected,” Keilah said. “I’ve got a half dozen messages for him right now.”

“I’m sorry. Maybe you should tell him it’s too much.”

“No, we’re glad we can help, and he seems to be getting more work now. He’s promised to hire a new secretary. Say, you wouldn’t want to—”

“Absolutely not. I’ve seen Joe’s office, and I’m pretty sure he can’t afford me. I’ll settle for an E.R., thank you. But hey, I’ll tell you something. Joe and I went out last night.”

“Really?” Keilah’s response was almost a squeal, and Petra smiled.

“Yeah. He was down here on business yesterday. I’ll tell you about it when I see you.”

“You’d better. So you’re coming tomorrow?”

“Well…I’m supposed to go to a seminar in the morning.”

“For your job? But if you’re going to quit…”

“I’ll think about it,” Petra promised.

She went to the utility room and knelt by Mason’s bed. He licked her hand.

“Hey, fella. Want to sleep in my room tonight?” He wagged his tail and hauled himself to his feet. She dragged his bed down the hall to her room and arranged it on the floor by the side of the bed she didn’t use. Mason immediately lay down again, sprawling on his side and staring up at her.

“Just stay there and be comfy,” she told him. “It’s okay.”

Looking around, she tried to estimate how many boxes she would need for books and clothing. Dishes, too, and DVDs. The idea of uprooting herself and starting over daunted her, but she felt free. She could leave behind the fear.

Or could she?

She took out her pajamas and walked to the window. She couldn’t help looking over the backyard again. A single light shone upstairs in the Harwoods’ house.

I’m not running away. I want to do this.

Once she’d made up her mind, Petra couldn’t wait to pack. After a lot of thought, she had called the evening head nurse at the E.R. and asked her to leave a message telling her supervisor she would not attend the seminar the next morning. A flurry of packing followed, and she anticipated driving to Waterville early Saturday with a load of her belongings.

Suddenly, she stopped and eyed the top of her dresser. In spite of the jumble of small items she had created there, she had the distinct feeling that something wasn’t right. She stood motionless, going over the collection of cosmetics and toiletries.

“Mason, what’s missing?”

The dog yipped.

She smiled at him. “Feeling better, aren’t you? Good boy!” She stooped to stroke his head.

It came to her. She straightened slowly, staring at the dresser.

“My extra key ring.” Her mouth went dry and a pang of fear jabbed her.

She sorted through all the junk on the dresser top, then opened each drawer and checked to be sure the keys hadn’t dropped into one during her packing frenzy.
Jewelry box!
Maybe she’d tucked it in there to get it out of sight. But only her costume jewelry and the box that held the ill-fated engagement ring lay inside. She lay on the rug and peered under the dresser. At last she stood and pulled it away from the wall, checking carefully behind and beneath it.

She pushed aside a pile of clothes and sat on the edge of the bed. After a moment of thought, she went to her study and checked her desk drawers. Next she got her purse from the kitchen counter and upended it on the table. The key ring she normally used was there, with a fat bunch of keys, including several she couldn’t remember the locks for. Her stomach did a rapid descent as she surveyed the collection she’d carried around with her.

Mason came and stood at her knee, watching her with his head to one side.

“You think I’m crazy, don’t you?” Petra asked, feeling inside the slender inner pockets of the leather purse.

Nothing. She cradled her head in her hands.

Think! When did you last see it?

That was the trouble. She couldn’t recall seeing it. For months it had lain on her dresser untouched. The longer she thought, the more certain she was that it had been there last week when she went to Waterville for the gift shop’s opening. And when she returned? She wasn’t positive. The possibilities frightened her.

She frowned at Mason, who had lain down at her feet and was licking his front paw.

“It will turn up,” she said without believing it.

He looked up at her and whined.

A
fter stopping at the gift shop the next morning to pick up a key to their house, Petra drove the two miles to her soon-to-be new home and unloaded her boxes and luggage. Mason romped about the big lawn, and she took a few extra minutes to play with him. It felt good to be out in the sunshine without wondering if a killer watched her.

She and Mason rode back to the shop, where she plunged into the activity. The store was full of patrons, and Bethany stayed glued to the cash register while Keilah scurried about to help customers. Petra settled Mason in the back room with a rawhide chew and approached Keilah.

“What can I do?”

“Answer the phones. Joe ran an ad in the paper for the secretary job.”

She fielded calls, careful to keep straight which line was which, and between them ran to the back room at Bethany’s request to find a new roll of cash register tape and start a pot of coffee.

Joe wandered in about three in the afternoon. Petra spotted him as soon as he walked through the door carrying a covered plastic platter. Her heart soared. He grinned and disappeared into the back room. When she joined him a few minutes later, he was pouring a mug of coffee. On the card table sat a tray of fresh fruit and cheese.

“Your sisters told me to quit bringing them pastries.” He put the mug in her hands and reached for another.

“This looks great.” She helped herself to a slice of honeydew.

“I’m glad you called me last night. Did your keys turn up?” he asked. “No.”

“Did you sleep all right?”

“Not too badly. I was glad Mason was with me.”

“What was on the key ring?” Little ridges creased his forehead, and the dimple was hiding.

She shrugged. “Car and house keys. But I might have moved them and forgotten.” She watched his face, hoping for reassurance.

“Do you think that’s what happened?”

“No.”

“I don’t like it.”

“Me, either.” She squeezed her lips together to keep from saying,
He was in my house. He stole my keys.

Joe set his mug down. “You need to change the locks.”

“I…” She looked away, feeling stupid. Rex Harwood could be ransacking her home this minute. “You’re right. I’ll call a locksmith from work on Monday and set it up. Maybe he can come that night, when the real estate agent is going to look at the house.”

“You’re selling, then?”

She nodded. “Not just because of this. I want to.”

“I know.” He finally smiled, a gentle, wistful upturn of his lips. “I’m glad.”

She wondered if his opinion was formed objectively, or on a more personal level.

Keilah dashed in. “Hey, is the coffee ready? There are only two customers out there and Bethany ordered me to take a break. Oh!” She screeched to a halt and scrutinized the fruit platter with a look of adoration on her face. “Joe, something tells me you got a fat paycheck. Your snacks are improving.”

Joe laughed. “Stuff yourself.” He looked quickly at Petra. “Not you. I’m hoping you’ll join me for dinner later, and I want you to have at least a semblance of an appetite.”

“Just one more.” Petra took a toothpick and speared a chunk of fresh pineapple. She closed her eyes and smiled as she chewed the tart, juicy fruit. She should probably decline dinner and insist they talk business in his office or the living room at the house. Keep it professional for now. But she didn’t want to.

“Well,” Joe said. “Next time I want to impress a woman, I’ll send her fruit.” He winked at her and filched a piece of melon. “Oh, by the way, I’ve hired a secretary. She can’t start till a week from Monday. Can you stand it another week, Keilah?”

Keilah looked up at him with a strawberry in her hand. “Barely.”

Joe laughed and drained his coffee cup. “You’ve been a big help. I’ll see you later, ladies. Pick you up at six?” he asked Petra.

“Sure.”

The next two hours flew by. Just as Bethany locked the door and turned the Open sign to Closed, the phone rang. Petra dived for it and put the receiver to her ear.

“You Shouldn’t Have.”

Only silence greeted her. After a moment, a click was followed by dial tone.

She dropped her jaw and stared at the receiver. Keilah burst out laughing.

“What?” Petra asked in a sharper tone than she intended. Had Rex Harwood learned of her connection to the new gift shop?

“You answered Joe’s phone.” Keilah nearly doubled over as she chortled. “I bet you scared them to death.”

Petra looked down at the two phones and let her shoulders sag. She replaced the receiver carefully and managed to chuckle.

Dinner with Joe on his home turf was even better than dinner with Joe in Portland. The restaurant wasn’t as upscale as the one in the Old Port, but it won her over with candlelight, soft music and perfect steak. Their conversation faltered now and then, and Joe looked at her in what she felt was appraisal.

“I guess this is kind of strange for both of us,” she said. “At least, it is for me. It’s been so long since I got close to anybody.”

“Yeah, me, too.”

“Do you think this was a bad idea?” She watched him closely, almost afraid of his answer.

Joe shrugged. “It would be nice if the case could be put to rest. Maybe then we could think about other things. What we want our relationship to be when it’s over.”

“Yeah.” She knew there was more behind it than the professional-client thing. Maybe it was her own hesitance, or maybe it was something more on Joe’s part.

After dinner he drove down Main Street and curved around onto Front Street, the one-way that paralleled Main but went in the other direction.

“Why are we going this way?” Petra asked softly. “I know you know where the house is. You picked me up there.”

“It’s a beautiful night.” He smiled at her as they passed the newspaper office. “Thought we might take a little stroll.” He glanced toward the police station as they rolled by it, but focused back on his driving, turning almost at once into a parking lot on the riverbank.

“I used to walk across here when my mother needed something from the store.” He parked the car close to the end of the Two-Cent Bridge.

“I haven’t been here for…I won’t say how long.” Petra laughed. “I used to love to walk over this bridge. Bethany was terrified of it, though. We went out in the middle once, and she froze up and wouldn’t let go of the railing. I thought I’d have to carry her home. I finally told her I was going to run over to the police station and ask an officer to come get her, and that did it. She was more afraid of being alone on the bridge than of walking over it.”

“I wonder if she’s still afraid of it.”

“I don’t know. She’s changed a lot since she married Mike and lost him. She’s stronger in a lot of ways. I’ll bet she’d walk right over it without flinching now. If the water wasn’t too high.”

Joe smiled broader and opened his car door. Petra reached for her door handle, but waited. She shut her eyes for an instant, knowing he was walking around behind the car to her side.

Thank you, Lord. Thank you for this moment.

He opened the door and she got out. When he took her hand, it seemed right. Maybe this was the time for her to get past her reservations and open her heart again.

The rushing of the river was the only sound as they walked out onto the footbridge. Joe led her to the center of the span and leaned with his forearms on the railing, facing downstream toward the railroad and automotive bridges over the Kennebec.

“I used to love to watch trains go over the bridge from here,” he said.

Petra inhaled deeply. The moonlight turned his dark hair to silver and reduced the distant streetlights and vehicle tail-lights to fireflies. A cool breeze lifted her hair. Joe straightened and slipped his arm around her. She wasn’t cold, but he was so deliciously warm that she nestled in against him and rested her head on his shoulder.

“Thanks for bringing me here,” she said.

“I don’t like your leaving Mason here with your sisters when you go back.”

She turned her head upward and looked at his face. “I won’t have to worry about him while I’m wrapping things up at work and packing and showing the house.”

“And you won’t have him at night when you’re alone.”

She looked out over the river. “That’s true. It’s a trade-off. But if anything else happened to him…” She pulled away from him and turned to meet his gaze head-on. “Joe, what else can I do? I’m afraid if I have any more contact with Harwood, this thing will escalate. I just want to move out as quickly as possible.”

Joe took a long, slow breath and looked up at the sky. “I’d like to go down there again and hang around campus, maybe find some of his students. I thought about it before and got sidetracked.”

“What’s the point?”

“A man who kills in a rage like that must have a short temper. There must be people who’ve seen him lose it before. Maybe in the classroom.”

She considered that for a moment. “School is out for the summer.”

“Mmm. There are probably summer sessions. But you’re right, it’s bad timing. I could look into his wife’s background.”

“She wasn’t even there when he did it.”

Joe was silent. She wondered if he heard her over the sound of the swirling water.

After a long moment his gaze met hers. His dark eyes gleamed with intensity. “Something in me won’t let this go. It’s in my blood, or my training, or my nature, I don’t know.”

She laid her hand on his sleeve. “I want justice, too. But I don’t want Mason…or you…or me to be hurt.”

“Come on.”

He turned back toward the parking lot, and they walked slowly across the bridge holding hands. Petra paused at the end and looked back out along the narrow decking, then up at the moon. Joe waited in silence until she moved again. When they reached his car, he opened the door for her, then went around and got in.

“Tell me about your training,” she said softly as he held up his keys in the dim light.

He stuck one into the ignition slot, but didn’t turn it. “What do you want to know?”

“Everything.”

He sat still, staring toward the river, and she almost regretted asking, but she needed to know more about him, needed to know she could trust him completely. This was the standard she had set for the man she could love—total honesty.

“I was with the Portland P.D. for three years.”

Portland. Of course. He was at ease in the city because he’d patrolled those very streets.

“Nick Wyatt was my partner. Best friend. We did everything together. Went through the Academy together. I was his best man.”

“You quit the force, and he stayed with it.”

Joe nodded, not looking at her. He sighed and leaned back against the seat. Petra waited. Was she asking too much of him?

“We…had an incident. I decided to…”

They sat in silence again, and Petra didn’t want to push him any further. The possibilities intrigued her, but she knew she didn’t want to push at this stage of their budding relationship.

“Joe.” She touched his hand. “I’m sorry. Forget I asked.”

“No, it’s…If you want to know, then you should know.”

“I don’t have to. Everyone has painful things in their past.”

“Do you?”

Touché.
She inhaled and let the breath out carefully. “Yeah.”

“Do you feel like talking about it?” he asked.

“No.”

He nodded. “Okay.” He turned the key in the ignition and the engine sprang to life.

“Wait.”

He looked at her, his eyebrows arched.

“Joe, what does it mean if we can’t talk about our past? Does it mean we don’t know each other well enough yet, or…does it mean we’ve built walls we never intend to break down?”

After a second’s pause, he flexed his shoulders. “You got me.”

She reached over and turned the engine off.

“Twelve years ago, when I was twenty-three, I found out my fiancé was dealing drugs. I turned him in to the police. He…” She coughed, but the lump in her throat stayed put. “I told him I’d made the call. Stupid of me. We had a huge fight. He hit me and stormed off just before the police arrived. I found out later they chased him, and he crashed his pickup into the information booth in Belgrade. DOA. At least no one else was hurt.” She stared across the river at the old Scott Paper mill, stark and imposing in the moonlight.

Joe stirred. “I remember that. I was at the Academy.”

Her eyes filled with burning tears, and she put her hand to her forehead. “Just don’t tell me you went to the scene. That would be too freaky.”

“No. The instructor told us about it in class. How not to conduct a high-speed chase.”

“Danny went out with a big bang. I never told my family about my part in it.” She realized she clutched the armrest with a death grip. “But I’ve always felt guilty that by calling the police I played a part in Danny’s death.”