Heartbreaker Hero: Eddie's Story (Maine Justice Book 4) Read online

  Tony and Arnie came in from lunch. After Friday, Eddie would work with Tony. He was a little apprehensive about it. Taking on a new partner after you’ve worked closely with someone for a long time could lead to tension. In Eddie’s case, he’d worked with Harvey for five years. Even since Harvey’s promotion, Eddie spent more time with him than any of the other detectives. He was determined to make things work with Tony.

  Their unit was the smallest one in the police department. Five men worked under Harvey: Tony, Nate, Jimmy, Arnie and Eddie, but Arnie was retiring the last day of the year, which would be Friday. Arnie was Mike’s old partner, and his experience counted for a lot. Harvey and Eddie had never worked in Priority without Arnie. The unit would be very young on average after Arnie left, and Eddie would have the most experience as a detective, even though Nate and Jimmy were a little older than him.

  Jimmy and Tony had only been with the unit about six weeks, and they were still getting used to each other. Jimmy and Nate had been partners before, as patrol officers. They stuck together like glue, so Eddie hadn’t had a chance to get to know Jimmy well. But he was a good cop. Eddie had partnered with Nate for a few weeks before Jimmy came on board. It would all work out, he told himself.

  Harvey came back from Mike’s office and nodded his way. “Bring the men over here, Eddie. We’ve got to pick up another case.”

  When they had gathered around his desk, Harvey opened a folder. “Arnie, I’m sending you and Tony over to the USM campus. They’re on vacation, but the bursar went into his office this morning to get something and found there’d been a break-in.”

  “Sounds like a routine case for Ron’s squad,” Arnie said.

  “The office was trashed, and there’s a large amount of blood on the floor,” Harvey said.

  Arnie nodded. “Okay, boss.”

  “I’ll get you some techs.” Harvey looked at Arnie. “Do you want Miller and Cook, too?”

  “Let me see what’s what, and I’ll call you if I need them.”

  “Okay, I’ll trust your judgment on that.”

  Tony always acted like a little spaniel, eager to please his master. He’d followed Arnie around for the last month, soaking up everything he could get from him. Eddie figured Tony was going to be a great detective someday—and not in the distant future. He was very intelligent, and he never quit unless Harvey or Arnie ordered him to. He might run circles around Eddie when they started working together, but Eddie wasn’t going to chase him.

  Harvey turned to Eddie. “I’ve got to keep you on this Quinlan thing. Check with the techs and see if they’ve dumped Kyle’s phone yet. And get the records for his and Misty’s both.”

  “I asked for them this morning,” Eddie said. “They’ll send them electronically, but nothing yet.”

  “Keep on it. I’ll tackle Misty’s laptop.”

  Eddie nodded.

  “Nate, Jimmy, I’ve got a few people who knew Kyle Quinlan that I’d like you to track down and interview. I’d also like you to find out who Misty’s closest friends were.”

  “She’s pretty active on Facebook and Instagram,” Eddie said.

  “I can look into that, boss,” Nate offered.

  “Good. Jimmy, you take the names we got from Oliver and Benoit.”

  “Right.”

  They worked all afternoon, but they didn’t make a lot of progress. Everyone they depended on for evidence—mainly the medical examiner and the lab techs—was taking his time. Harvey didn’t find much useful on the laptop. About two-thirty Arnie called for more manpower, and Harvey sent Nate and Jimmy over to the campus. He and Eddie stayed on their phones and computers, inching along, adding tiny bits of information to the file on Kyle Quinlan.

  At five o’clock, Eddie finished his reports for the day feeling unproductive.

  “Are you coming over for supper, Eddie?” Harvey asked.

  “Am I supposed to?”

  “Yeah, come on. Unless you want to avoid Leeanne.”

  Eddie hadn’t called her all day, and he’d meant to. After Harvey had said she was shopping with Jennifer that morning, he’d let it slide.

  “She might not want me there.”

  “Give her a call.”

  Eddie hesitated. He didn’t take rejection well, and he supposed that was because he wasn’t used to it. He walked into the breakroom and called her. “Hey, it’s me. How are you doing?”

  “I’m okay.”

  “Well, uh, Harvey invited me to supper, but I wasn’t sure you’d want me there.”

  “I do,” she said.

  Eddie’s face pulled into a grin. “I’ll be there.”

  He and Harvey both had their vehicles at the station. Eddie stopped on the way and bought flowers for Jennifer and Leeanne. They greeted him with huge smiles and exclaimed over the flowers. Jennifer looked a little tired.

  “Is Abby at work?” Eddie asked.

  “Yes,” said Jennifer. “Make yourself at home, Eddie. Harvey’s changing his clothes.”

  Eddie hung up his coat and walked into the kitchen. Leeanne took a dish from the oven while Jennifer arranged the flowers in two vases.

  “These are really beautiful, Eddie,” she said.

  He shrugged. “My mother always liked flowers in the wintertime.”

  Leeanne smiled at him. “It’s a sure way to cheer things up.” The table was already set, and she brought over a casserole and set it on a trivet.

  Jennifer set one vase toward the back of the table, out of their way, and the other over on the sideboard. “Harvey says Arnie’s retiring on Friday.”

  “Yeah. We’re having a party for him Friday afternoon.”

  Harvey walked in while Eddie was talking. He said, “Mike’s secretary, Judith, is organizing it.”

  “Really?” Eddie said. “I thought Paula was.” Paula was their unit secretary, and she was usually upbeat. He couldn’t imagine the sour-faced Judith planning a party.

  “Paula’s helping her,” Harvey said. “We’ve having it upstairs.”

  “No kidding.” Eddie shook his head. Another first. A party in the chief’s office.

  “They figured they could keep it a surprise if they held it up there.” Harvey held Jennifer’s chair for her. “I’d better call Pete Bearse and tell him to come.” Pete was Arnie’s old partner, who had left the unit in July to join a law practice.

  After supper they talked for a while. Leeanne seemed almost back to the camaraderie she’d enjoyed with Eddie before Abby spilled the hospital conversation to her, but by eight o’clock, he started to feel he should leave. Jennifer looked tired, and Harvey was drooping a little, too.

  Eddie squeezed Leeanne’s hand. “I’d better get going. I’ll see you tomorrow, Harv.”

  “Good night, Ed. I’ll meet with you first thing.”

  Leeanne got up and walked toward the entry with him. Eddie glanced back and saw Harvey standing behind Jennifer’s chair, massaging her shoulders. He bent down and kissed her neck. Yup, time to leave.

  “Anything happening around here tomorrow night?” Eddie wasn’t sure whether to just ask Leeanne to go out.

  “Well, Harvey and Jennifer are supposed to start Lamaze classes tomorrow, if he gets off work in time.”

  Eddie didn’t know what to say to that. He was not fluent in the topic of childbirth. “What about you? You want to do something?”

  She hesitated, and he thought he’d said something wrong. Why was it that Leeanne could make him feel clumsy and inept, like no other woman ever had? But when she looked up, under those long dark lashes, she was smiling.

  “I’d like to. What did you have in mind?”

  Eddie had checked the Press Herald just in case. “There’s a brass quintet at a church downtown, or an opera at the Gold Top theater, or a juggler and a magician at the Sollit.”

  “Juggler, huh?”

  “Yup. And a magician. Supposed to be really good.”

  “Let’s do that.”

  He smiled and got his coat out of the c
loset. He glanced toward the kitchen again. Harvey and Jennifer were walking toward the sunroom together with their arms around each other.

  “Those two.” Eddie nodded toward them.

  Leeanne turned around and watched them. Harvey stopped in the middle of the sunroom and turned around, but he wasn’t looking at them, he was looking at the wall in there, and Eddie figured he was focused on the painting of Jennifer when she was six years old. Then he kissed her.

  “They’re always like that,” Leeanne said. Eddie couldn’t tell if it bothered her or not.

  “True love,” he said.

  “I guess so.” She was solemn. She stepped back a little, and he took that to mean he should keep his distance. He zipped up his coat and said goodnight.

  *****

  Eddie was determined to find a break somewhere in the case on Tuesday. Arnie and Tony had found out where the blood at the university office came from—the guy who broke in smashed the glass in the door and cut himself badly in the process. They were chasing leads and hopeful of catching him. Harvey took Jimmy and Nate to the courthouse with him for Misty’s arraignment, just to give them a little more court experience.

  Eddie went through the previous day’s reports and zeroed in on one of the names Nate and Jimmy had come up with, supposedly one of Kyle’s friends. He decided to take a little drive and see if he could catch up with Trevor Brady.

  He found Brady rotating tires on a Mazda at a service garage on Brighton Avenue. When Eddie pulled out his badge, Brady got that panicky look, like he might run, and laid down the wrench he’d been holding, which was a slight relief to Eddie.

  “Take it easy. I just want to talk to you about Kyle Quinlan. Do you know what he was up to Friday night?”

  “No idea,” Trevor said. “I heard yesterday morning he was dead, and then a couple of cops came around asking about him.”

  “Yeah. Tell me, who did he work for?”

  “Uh ... the Commercial Wharf?”

  “Nah, he quit that job. I’m talking about drugs. Who was he running for?”

  “Man, I don’t know.”

  “Sure you do,” Eddie said.

  “Look, Kyle was messed up. Did he O.D.?”

  “Who did he work for?”

  Brady’s forehead wrinkled, like he was actually trying to think. “He said something about some guy called Mel, but I don’t think it was his boss.”

  “Mel? Mel what?”

  “I don’t know, man.” Brady looked over his shoulder. “Look, I gotta keep working, okay?”

  “Do you know anyone else Kyle hung around with?” Eddie asked.

  “No one I can think of. Look, he had a good job, right? Why ditch that? I told you, he was messed up.”

  “You want us to find out what happened to him, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  Eddie put a business card in his hand. “Call me if you think of something, okay?”

  What a bust. He went back to the station.

  It was like that all day. Finally he wrote up his report for the day, spell checked it, and e-mailed it to Tony, who had been helping Arnie with the university break-in. Tony never got complaints on his reports.

  “Hey, Winfield? Got time to edit something?”

  “What, a book?” Tony asked.

  “No. My report. It’s short.”

  Tony laughed then opened the file and scrolled through it. He shook his head.

  “What?” Eddie asked.

  “Hold on.” Tony clicked a few keys, read some more, clicked some more. “Back atcha, Shakespeare.”

  “What kind of crack is that?”

  Tony grinned. “I usually charge fifty bucks an hour for proofreading.”

  “Yeah, right—so why aren’t you working for the newspaper?”

  “They don’t pay that much.”

  Eddie opened the file he’d attached. It looked just like his report. He slowed down and read it carefully, trying to figure out what Tony had done. He could tell one sentence was rearranged, but other than that, he didn’t have a clue.

  “Okay, Perry White, what did you do?”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Man, didn’t you ever read Superman comics? Great Caesar’s Ghost!”

  Tony said, “A little before my time.”

  That made Eddie feel as old as Harvey. “Hey, they’re still making Superman movies. Super Girl, too. Where you been?”

  “Third star to the left and straight on to Krypton.”

  “Ha, ha. Thanks.” Eddie almost called him Wonder Boy, which was what Harvey had dubbed Tony the previous summer, but it suddenly hit him that it might offend Tony. So far they were getting along pretty good, razzing each other a little bit. In Eddie’s mind, letting Tony see his atrocious punctuation skills was worth having him fix the report. “No, really, I want to know what you fixed,” he said. “I aspire to educate myself, and you can help.”

  “You left out a word in the part about the tire guy, and I put in a couple of commas and fixed a run-on sentence.”

  “Okay.” Eddie scowled at the screen but still couldn’t tell where he’d done it. “Good job, Winfield.”

  Tony chuckled. “Thanks.”

  Eddie could just see it. Someday, Tony would be in the chief’s office, and he would still be down here writing reports for Tony to read and correct. Maybe a brush-up class in grammar was in order. He e-mailed the report to Harvey and walked over to his desk.

  “Quitting time, Harvey.”

  “Mm-hmm.” Harvey had his nose in a case folder and didn’t look up.

  “You’ve got a class with Jennifer tonight.”

  That got his attention. He glanced at the corner of his computer screen. “Yikes, you’re right! I’d better get moving.”

  He started shutting down his computer files.

  “Where’s the captain off to?” Tony asked when Eddie walked past his desk.

  “Baby lessons.”

  Tony’s face scrunched up.

  “LaMaze class,” Eddie translated, feeling very mature and in-the-know. He went to the locker room for his jacket. He had just time to grab a bite and a shower before picking Leeanne up for their date.

  *****

  Leeanne helped Harvey carry things out to Jennifer’s car. Harvey took two pillows, and Leeanne brought a folded blanket. Eddie drove in just as they were stashing them in the back seat. He got out of his truck and ambled up to the garage.

  “You guys are sleeping at the hospital tonight?” he asked.

  Harvey shook his head. “No, Ed. Jennifer needs to learn breathing and relaxation technique. Everybody sits on the floor, and you need pillows.”

  Eddie looked at the bedding, then at him. “Okay,” he said doubtfully.

  Leeanne smiled at him. “How are things?”

  “Great. You ready to go?”

  “I think so.”

  Jennifer came out of the house. She had on her winter jacket, but it wasn’t zipped, and Leeanne wondered if she’d need another one before the baby was born. She’d always been thin, but she was starting to look plumper now. Eddie took one glance at her middle and looked away.

  “Hi, Eddie,” Jennifer said. “You and Leeanne have fun tonight.”

  “Yeah, you, too.” Eddie looked at Leeanne and shrugged, as if he didn’t know what else to say.

  “Oh, I’m sure we will.” Jennifer looked happy, and Harvey smiled and opened her car door for her.

  They drove out, and Eddie stepped closer to Leeanne. “So, you ready to see the juggler?”

  “Yeah, I can’t wait.” She closed the garage door and walked with him to his truck.

  “This baby stuff is kind of weird.” Eddie put the truck in gear.

  “How do you mean?” Leeanne asked.

  “Well, Jennifer is ... well, she’s changing.”

  “Of course she is.”

  He shook his head, frowning. “I mean, I thought I knew her pretty well, but now it’s like she’s different every time I see her.”
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br />   “Hormones,” Leeanne said. “She’s still her same self.”

  “I guess.”

  “I think all women must go through some big changes, physically and emotionally, when they have a baby.”

  Eddie seemed to think about that. “What about Harvey, though?”

  “Yeah, new dads, too. I think Harvey’s a little more compulsive now. He wants to be sure everything is safe for the baby and that Jennifer’s comfortable. He treats her like royalty.”

  “That’s nothing new,” Eddie said. “But I think you’re right. Becoming parents has a profound effect on people.”

  She nodded, liking this thoughtful side of Eddie.

  He looked over at her suddenly and winked. “Can you juggle?”

  She laughed. “I’ve never tried. Can you?”

  “I don’t know. But I told Tony we were going to the show, and he tried to juggle three cans of soda. He dropped one, and it broke open and squirted Pepsi all over the breakroom.”

  Leeanne laughed. “What did Harvey say?”

  “He doesn’t know. We cleaned it up before he found out about it.”

  They arrived at the theater, and Eddie parked the truck then came around to open her door. She let him help her down, and he held her hand as they walked into the theater. The room was set up like a small club, and they sat at a table and ordered soft drinks.

  The juggler kept them riveted, tossing top hats and metal rings. He juggled five balls at once, and never dropped any.

  Leeanne hoped the magician in the second act would saw somebody in half, but he didn’t. He did make a woman disappear in a puff of purple smoke.

  “How did he do that?” she asked as they applauded.

  “I don’t know,” Eddie said. “He’s pretty good.”

  “My dad used to pull quarters out of our ears, but this guy is great.”

  Eddie squeezed her hand, smiling as the lights focused for the next trick. Leeanne sighed. If only their time together was always this carefree.

  The magician’s big finale was stuffing a rubber chicken into his hat and pulling out half a dozen live doves that flew out over the audience. Not Houdini, but it was fun.