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“Actually, this was more Beckett than me,” Lucien confessed. “He took stuff I had on hand and turned it into this. We can set up the roadside stand tonight and get the word out. If you need fresh veggies or fruit, take what you need, pay what you can.”
Beckett beamed with delight. “I like the sound of that.”
“I’ll also send out emails to Seth and Ophelia,” Brogan said. “They’ll know who to contact going forward and get the food to the people who need it the most. I’m still going to try to make jam, though. There are enough leftovers to see that nothing goes to waste.”
“I may not know how to make jam,” Kelly began, “but I do know how to make vegetable lasagna.” She tossed an arm over Beckett’s shoulder. “Don’t look at me like that. I know you could probably use a steak right about now. But you’ll love what I come up with using all these veggies.”
“I’m not complaining, am I?” Beckett replied. “I realize we should use whatever we harvested.”
“Come on, Beck. Let’s wheel this down to the end of the driveway and set out the food,” Lucien called out as he headed toward the front of the house. “And Brogan, how about making some of those big, fat dinner rolls to eat with the lasagna? You know, the ones. The kind you made at Christmas last year the size of a fist. And a huge salad.”
Brogan chuckled. “You guys must’ve worked up an appetite. No problem.”
“By the way,” Lucien said, stopping at the corner of the house. “I talked to Brent earlier and relayed everything that happened with Marshall. He sent Eastlyn over to recheck Tazzie’s alibi. Now, Tazzie claims she was with Dennis the entire night.”
“Holy crap. She changed her story,” Brogan charged, looking over at Kelly. “That woman completely did a one-eighty. She’s either lying now or lied to me on Sunday.”
“Brent believes she’s lying, period. He wants to get together in a couple of days after Colt and Eastlyn have more time to research those shoes, then lay it all out there.”
“Enough about the case,” Beckett urged, rolling the cart toward the front. “The focus is on all this food. And dinner. People need to eat.”
17
On Friday morning, Brent called everyone together for a meeting inside the police station conference room. Before sitting around the table, each person grabbed a doughnut and coffee. Everyone, that is, except the latecomers. The last to enter was Jade and Birk. They arrived holding hands.
It didn’t go unnoticed. The couple had had three days to make peace and make up. It seemed they’d made the most of their reunion.
“Those two certainly buried the hatchet fast,” Eastlyn whispered to Brogan.
“They say love conquers all. It looks like the battle is over.”
Before taking her seat, Kelly leaned down over Brogan’s shoulder. “Jade looks happy. I hope it lasts.”
“We all do.”
At the head of the table, Brent stood in front of a giant whiteboard with a list of what they considered Katharine Pellico’s activities once she left Quebec and arrived in Maine. He cleared his throat and picked up a piece of paper. “John Doe’s DNA—the man in Vera’s box—matched to a decorated Vietnam-era Navy Corpsman named Russell Miller. To all you civilians, that’s a medic. According to his military service records, Miller was assigned to Company C, 1st Marine Division. He did two tours of duty as a medic in and around the DMZ from 1967 and toward the end of 1968.”
“Since the Marines don’t have medics,” Birk added. “You should know thatNavy Hospitalservice members take up the slack. They can earn a special pin that designates them as Fleet Marine Force. Along with receiving that distinction, you get the honor of calling yourself a Marine for the rest of your life.”
“Being a medic in war isn’t like what’s depicted in the movies,” Jade inserted. “It’s a dangerous job. A lot of people are unaware that during the Vietnam War alone, more than a thousand medics died, and another seven hundred corpsmen were killed in action.”
Birk turned his head to stare at Jade. “You always find a way to amaze me.”
Lucien and Beckett rolled their eyes. But it was Beckett who teased his brother. “You’ve had plenty of time for the lovey-dovey crap. Cut it out. Now it’s time to focus on the case at hand.”
Jade sent him a sweet smile. “Since Birk and I are starting from scratch, we don’t care what people say about us.”
Brent cleared his throat again. “This isn’t middle school. We have a lot of ground to cover. So, if you don’t mind, I’d like to continue. Miller himself was wounded twice in the line of duty. The first timewasn’t serious enough to put him out of action. But the second time, during an offensive, Miller had to be airlifted to Da Nang to undergo surgery.He’d taken a bullet to the chest. That was late November 1968.After recovering enough to get shipped stateside, they sent him as close to his hometown as possible to a VA hospital in Portland, Maine. He arrived in Portland in early January.”
“Where was his hometown?” Beckett asked.
Brent took a seat at the table so he could shuffle through the file to find the answer. “Providence, Rhode Island.”
“That sounds like the military. Some stupid-ass clerk thought Portland, Maine was near Providence, Rhode Island,” Beckett groused. “Missed it by a hundred and seventy-five miles.”
“Despite the distance, Miller’s parents came to see him three times during his stay,” Brent relayed. “But they were later told sometime near the end of January that their son had gone missing from that institution roughly two weeks after arriving. His family never saw him again after their last hospital visit on January 16th.”
“So you’re saying that sometime between January 17th and the end of the month, Russell Miller disappeared from a VA hospital?” Lucien questioned.
