Found Art (Maine Justice Book 3) Page 2

  “We’re kind of busy right now.” I looked at Legere. “Who’s handling this latest burglary?”

  Legere said, “Joey Bolduc and Bob Marshall. But I’ve got a lot of other things I could use them on.”

  I nodded. “Fine. We’ll take it from here.”

  He handed me the folder. “It’s all yours. I’ll have the boys send anything else related to this up to you.”

  “Thanks, Ron,” Mike said. Legere got up and left.

  Mike held up the coffeepot and arched his eyebrows.

  “I’m good,” I said.

  “So, what’s up with Jennifer?” Mike sat down and put his feet up on the antique desk that came with his office. I figured Judith sneaked in there before he got in every morning to polish the scuff marks off, because it always gleamed.

  “A little morning sickness. Other than that, she’s great.”

  “Well, Poppa, I guess that comes with the territory.” Mike’s three kids were grown, so he could be casual about it. “How are things in the unit?”

  “Good. We wrapped up the smuggling case this morning. Three arrests.”

  “I’ll look at the reports today.”

  I nodded. “The new men are settling in.” Nate and Clyde had both come into the Priority Unit within the last two months.

  “Good. Keep me posted on this art thing,” Mike said. “I feel better with you handling it. Ron’s good, but he knows nothing about art, and Joey’s even worse. Bob Marshall is a fair detective, but he’s got no finesse, either. We need someone with some class on this.”

  “You’re looking at me?” I almost laughed.

  “Well…” he swung his feet to the floor and stood up. “Face it, Harv, a lot of our guys are culturally illiterate. You’ve got a broad education and twenty years of experience. You don’t let yourself stagnate. If I had to pick one man to handle something like this, I’d pick you.”

  “That’s flattering, but a little scary. I really don’t know that much about art.”

  Mike smiled. “You will.”

  Chapter 2

  I’d been in charge of the Priority Unit less than three months, and I was still getting used to my new position and the personnel changes, but overall I felt we were on track. We were coming up on evaluation time, and I thought about how I would rate each man.

  Eddie Thibodeau had been my partner before my promotion, and I figured his evaluation would be easiest, since I knew him best. At Jennifer’s and my wedding, he was the best man and in charge of banishing reporters—at which even he would admit the results were mixed. He’d just passed his twenty-eighth birthday, and he was single and loving it. Seeing him organize and execute the raid that morning told me he was ready for leadership.

  Arnie Fowler was my senior detective. He was fifty-seven, and planning to retire at the end of the year. He’d been Mike Browning’s partner back in the day and brought continuity to the job. I knew I would miss Arnie’s subtlety and polish. We’d have to bring a new man in when he left.

  Clyde Wood, in his early fifties, had worked downstairs on the detective squad for fourteen years. He’d come into the unit when Arnie’s partner left. I’d known Clyde slightly for years, but hadn’t worked much with him. He was a big man with a large mustache, and moved slowly. Sometimes it seemed he thought slowly, too, but he usually reached the right conclusions in the end, unlike Arnie, who was good at making quick decisions under pressure, but didn’t always jump in the right direction.

  Nate Miller, at thirty-five, was a family man, a good cop, steady, methodical, and so grateful to me for taking him out of uniform it was sometimes embarrassing. I’d brought him on board in July, when I’d taken my promotion, and hadn’t regretted it.

  “Captain, you want me to go to court with Eddie for the hearing?”

  “Yeah, that would be good, Nate.” We were all on a first-name basis in the unit, but Nate was so new, it was still hard for him to call me anything but Captain. I was trying to give him experience in all phases of our work, and observing a few court hearings wouldn’t hurt him.

  “Yes, sir.”

  I was going to have to work harder at being friendly to him.

  None of us were emotionally close to the new men yet. Eddie, Arnie, and I had worked with Mike for a long time, and dropping two new men into the mix had changed the dynamic. I wanted Nate and Clyde to be an integral part of Priority by the time Arnie retired.

  Supervising Eddie and Arnie was also strange, when we’d worked side by side for years. I was still struggling with the management end of the job, and Mike was my main support. When he was named chief of police, I had stepped into his old job with trepidation, but he gave me free advice whenever I wanted, and sometimes when I didn’t.

  I made a few notes on each man’s file and put the paperwork away. I was working on a computer fraud case of my own at the moment, so I buckled down on that for a while.

  Clyde and Arnie came into the office about ten o’clock. They’d been working nights on a drug case all week and had joined us for the sunrise raid. I sent them home to get some sleep.

  The office was quiet all morning, and I sent out e-mail requests for information on stolen paintings to the state police and several municipal police departments in the area. Then I went back to my computer fraud case until Eddie and Nate came in just before noon, fresh from the smugglers’ bail hearing.

  “Going to eat lunch, Harvey?” Eddie asked, pulling off the striped necktie he’d worn to the courthouse.

  “Brought it with me. I’ll eat here.”

  “How’s Jennifer doing?” Nate asked.

  “Pretty good. I’m hoping her sister Abby will come stay with us for a while. She’s coming tomorrow for a job interview at the hospital.”

  Eddie’s ears pricked up. Abby bore a striking resemblance to my wife, who was high on Eddie’s list of favorite people. He’d met Abby and the third sister, Leeanne, at the time of the wedding and had kept up a steady flirtation with both of them while they were around for the festivities.

  He hovered near my desk, and I said, “Abby’s staying for the weekend. Why don’t you come over Saturday night and visit?” He rewarded me with a huge smile.

  When he and Nate left for the café down the block, I dialed my home number. Jennifer answered.

  “Hey, gorgeous, how you feeling?”

  “Not too bad.”

  “Did you eat any lunch yet?”

  “No. I’m thinking about it.”

  “Make sure you feed that baby.” I was feeling very tender toward her. I’d wanted kids for years, but had been deeply disappointed during my first marriage. After it ended, I’d stayed single so long I’d about given up. “I invited Eddie to come over Saturday night, is that okay?”

  “Should be. Abby can help me fix dinner.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’m going to get her room ready this afternoon.”

  “Don’t push it.”

  “I’m fine,” she said.

  The whole pregnancy thing was so new to me, I wasn’t sure what she was and was not capable of. I leaned toward feeling guilty if she had the least discomfort, but her doctor, Margaret Turner, knew me well enough to try to counteract that. She was a good friend, and she’d sent some books home with Jennifer. Evenings I’d been reading a little, and I was starting to believe that most women in the “delicate condition” weren’t all that delicate. I was still a little dazed by the fact that Jennifer had married me, and we had this enormous joy of a coming child added. I didn’t deserve it.

  Eddie brought his sandwich up to the office, and we ate together in the break room. He gave me all the details on the bail hearing, and I thought he had things well in hand.

  Mike walked into the room at quarter to one. He frequently left the cushy chief’s office upstairs to visit us in his old stomping grounds.

  “Harvey, can you boys handle one more case?”

  “Besides the art thing? I guess so. Eddie and Nate are about done with the tobacco smuggling.
They’ll have arraignments and paperwork.”

  “Well, you’ll need Eddie on this one.”

  Eddie’s eyebrows shot up, but his mouth was full, so he didn’t say anything.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “A 911 call came in ten minutes ago from the Québécois Club. They’ve sent four ambulances over there. The lunch guests are dropping like flies.”

  “Mass food poisoning?” I asked.

  “That was the first impression. But the club manager insists it’s a deliberate poisoning.”

  “You’re joking.”

  Mike shook his head. “He says it’s a hate crime.”

  “Oh, brother!”

  “What’s so amazing?” said Eddie. “Lots of you Anglos hate Frenchmen. Francophones were persecuted in Maine right up until the 1960s.”

  I scowled at Eddie. “Listen to you! You’re my best friend, but when somebody says ‘hate crime,’ you’re lumping us all together as Anglos! I happen to be Swedish, you imbecile!”

  “Careful,” Mike said, “that might be construed as an ethnic slur. Anyway, take a couple of guys on over there and see if you can sort it out. If it doesn’t make any sense, say so, and tell the press that. Come up and see me when you get back, Harvey.”

  I called to Nate, and he went with Eddie and me in my vehicle.

  “What is this place, anyway?” he asked, when we got out in front of the Québécois Club. The old, three-story brick building had a discreet sign over the steps. A rescue unit was parked in front, and an ambulance pulled up behind it.

  “It’s a private club for French people,” I said.

  “For French men,” Eddie corrected.

  “Isn’t that illegal?” Nate asked. “I thought gender-based organizations went out a long time ago?”

  “Not illegal, just politically incorrect,” I told him.

  Eddie said, “It’s mostly old guys. They come here to get a good lunch and parler français to each other and get away from their wives.”

  We went up the steps and inside, where pandemonium ruled, in French. Everywhere, elderly men sat waving their arms and chattering away en français. EMTs were examining one moaning customer who lay on the floor. The place smelled like fresh bread and vomit.

  A white-haired man in a tweed jacket stood by, wringing his hands, watching the EMTs anxiously. I stepped over to him and held up my badge.

  “I’m Captain Larson. Who’s in charge here?”

  He turned toward me and let loose a stream of rapid French, of which I caught, “C’est mauvais, c’est horrible.”

  “Eddie,” I said.

  Eddie stepped up and started talking to the man in French. One of the EMTs stood up, and I approached him.

  “What happened here?” I asked.

  “At least six people got bad abdominal cramps during lunch. Sudden onset, and violent symptoms. We’re taking this man in, and there’s one more who probably ought to go. That will make seven total—we already transported five.”

  “What caused it?”

  “We don’t know.”

  I went back to Eddie.

  “He’s the manager,” Eddie said, nodding toward the man he’d questioned. “All he knows is, people started getting sick and collapsing. It happened really fast. He doesn’t know what caused it. He called 911 for the first man, and by the time the ambulance got here, there were three more.”

  “Seven now,” I said.

  “Well, he’s all upset, of course, because this place is known for the best French food. I mean, you have to be French to come here, and they won’t put up with anything second class. But he insists it wasn’t the food.”

  “All right, we need to know what every sick person ordered. Food, wine, everything, right down to the toothpicks.”

  Eddie turned back to the manager. Nate and I found our way into the kitchen. The chef was better at English, so I talked to him. Nate interviewed a college-age busboy who spoke fluent, if slangy, English.

  The chef insisted that there was nothing wrong with the food. Everything was fresh, fresh, fresh! I tried to calm him down a little, but he thought everyone was accusing him of poisoning the vieux messieurs.

  Nate asked the busboy to locate the waiters’ order slips for him, and I abandoned the chef and helped him line up the waiters and sort out who had waited on the men who subsequently became ill. The three waiters went through their order slips and identified the ones for people who’d gone to the hospital.

  Nate made a careful list of everything on each order form. I asked what else the patrons had had access to. There wasn’t a salad bar, but they were served water in the dining room, and there were salt, pepper, and sugar containers on the tables.

  I left Nate questioning the chef about the ingredients of each dish served and went into the dining room in search of Eddie.

  “What have you got?” I asked.

  “He says this was done to kill French people. He thinks it was a frog-hater.”

  I stared at him. “I can’t believe you just said that.”

  Eddie brought his hands to chest level, palms open. “Not me. I’m telling you what he said.”

  “Okay.” I shook my head. “Eddie, you know I love you and your colorful but charming people. I suppose there could possibly be a francophobe behind this, but really, those attitudes went out with the 1930s, didn’t they?”

  “Not according to my pop. But anyway, that’s what this guy was saying, that it was a hate crime. I don’t buy it.”

  “I’m glad to hear you say that. I don’t buy it, either. Maybe it was a woman,” I said. “Some misanthropic women’s libber who wants them to open the club up to females.”

  “To me, that’s more believable. Anyway, these guys want to leave.” Eddie nodded toward the healthy diners, who still sat at their tables, talking away with fluid gestures. The ambulance crews had moved out with the last of the stricken.

  I thought about it for a few seconds. “Let’s take names and addresses and let them go.” As long as we could contact them later, I didn’t see any point in holding them all. If they stuck around, we could possibly have more sick people on our hands.

  We went around the room, cataloguing the information. I could handle some of the names, like LaChance and Pellotte, but fell down on Ouellette and Quirion, and started yelling for Eddie when I met Monsieur Poissonier. When we had all of their addresses, they left singly or in pairs, shaking their heads. A few of them asked us if their friends would be all right. Eddie spoke soothingly to them in French, and he seemed to have a calming effect on them. Score one for Portland P.D.

  When the club had emptied except for the manager and staff, I took Nate’s notebook and went through the list of foods and drinks served. Several wines were served, but the sick people didn’t share any bottles. Besides water, there was one common item for the victims, crème brulée. I sent Eddie to the chef.

  “Get his recipe, then get a sample of every ingredient, from the container he used. And ask him if he put anything in it today that’s not in the recipe. It could turn out to be a simple case of tainted supplies.”

  We took away an untouched serving, and partial portions from the dishes of two of the victims. The rest had already gone to the dishwasher. I detailed Nate to get the dishes to the lab, along with the samples of ingredients.

  “Can we open tomorrow?” the manager asked me.

  “I’m sorry, but you need to wait until the lab reports are in. I’ll try to expedite it,” I said, but he looked back at me with a blank expression, so I called Eddie over to translate.

  The manager and the chef weren’t happy, but I told them there wasn’t room for a repeat performance the next day, and the club couldn’t serve any food or drink until we gave them the okay. They seemed to accept my verdict, and we left.

  At the station, I briefed Mike and went back to my computer job. Eddie and Nate worked furiously on the poisoning case all afternoon, then stayed late to complete their reports on the tobacco smuggling.

/>   When I got home that night, Jennifer met me at the door. I set my briefcase on the top step and kissed her thoroughly.

  “How you doing, gorgeous?”

  “All right.”

  We watched the local news broadcast, which played up the mysterious outbreak at the Québécois Club. Then I ate my supper while Jennifer picked at hers. I figured she had given me an optimistic version of her health report.

  “What would taste good to you?” I asked her.

  She considered that at length. “Maybe … a jelly doughnut?”

  I laughed. “You can’t keep saltines down, and you want jelly doughnuts?”

  She looked hurt.

  “Oh, Jenny.” I put my arms around her and pulled her over onto my lap. “I’m sorry. If you think you can eat ’em, I’ll go get ’em.”

  I drove to the nearest Dunkin’ Donuts and bought half a dozen jelly doughnuts. When I got home, Jennifer very slowly ate one, and I ate three.

  *****

  The stack of messages on my desk Friday morning took me a while. I wasn’t used to all the administrative clutter, and I appealed to Paula, our unit’s secretary. Civilian aide, that is. She thumbed through the notes and handed me three.

  “You need to return these calls right away. If you want, I can schedule the appointments you need. Ignore the rest.”

  “I can do that?”

  Paula assured me I could.

  I returned the calls Paula had selected while my men worked on their open cases. Eddie and Nate were going over the lab report from the Québécois Club, which had come in surprisingly fast. No doubt after the evening news report, Mike had called the lab techs and put a little pressure on them.

  “The crème brulée was definitely the culprit,” Eddie told me.

  “Food poisoning?”

  “Arsenic.”

  I stared at him. “You’re not kidding, are you?”