The Secrets of Ethan Falls

by J. W. Lucas

  The Secrets

  Of Ethan Falls

  A Daryl Richardson Crime Mystery Novel

  J.W. Lucas

  THE SECRETS OF ETHAN FALLS

  Copyright © 2017 by John W. Lucas

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission from the author.

  ISBN 978-0-692-95907-7

  The Secrets Of Ethan Falls is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Introduction

  In the eyes of many Daryl Richardson has the almost perfect

  life. A former police detective with a law degree he has recently transitioned from employment as an Assistant US Attorney into a criminal law consultant role with the Department of Justice, a move made possible by an inheritance.

  When he gets a frantic phone call from a law school classmate that her husband, a judge, has been shot at his courthouse, he sets off to the New England village of Ethan Falls to help her find the answer why.

  He learns the judge was reviewing the stalled police investigation of a murdered beautiful young woman on the brink of stardom as a singer.

  What could he have discovered that would shock the community and almost cost him his life?

  Chapter One

  The portrait was artistic and professionally done. She was beautiful. Young, slender, with long flowing golden hair, her freshness was etched in the soft studio light. The subtle smile, the tilt of her head, and the demure cast of her eyes had frozen in time her pure beauty.

  The Honorable Forrest Moran, Senior Court Judge in Abbot County sighed deeply, and carefully placed the portrait back into the manila folder on the desk. His gaze moved to the stack of photos next to the folder, a chill coursed through him as he picked them up. His hand unsteady, he witnessed her pure beauty in death, captured by the police photographer in the woods where she had been found by a hiker. She had been badly beaten, to the point almost unrecognizable. Her hair was twisted and matted, with blood, leaves, and twigs smeared across her once pristine face.

  “My God,” he murmured aloud. “What evil could do this?”

  The Judge laid the photos face down on the desk, leaned back in his oversized worn leather office chair and deeply rubbed his eyes. Head in hands, a sense of depression swept over him as he listened to the crescendo of the early evening rain beating on the windows.

  He stood up, turned off the desk lamp, stretched to relieve the ache in his back, and walked across the office for his raincoat and hat. As he slowly buttoned the coat and searched the pockets for his car keys, he found himself staring at his desk.

  He sighed heavily, and his thoughts shifted to the drive home, his waiting wife, a cocktail, and dinner. He turned off the office lights, locked the door and slowly walked down the creaking wooden stairs to the courthouse lobby.

  “All done for the day Your Honor?” asked Billy Barnum, the courthouse superintendent as he stopped in mid grand-motion pushing his broom across the oak floor. Sweeping is a simple chore but somehow Billy orchestrated it as an art form, exaggerated perhaps to reinforce the importance of his role in the eyes of his Master.

  “You’re the last one to leave, as always, better put your collar up, the rain is coming down pretty hard now. Oh, by the way, that young girl from the town paper was here to see you a little while ago. I know you’re busy, so I told her you were in chambers and couldn’t be disturbed.”

  Judge Moran looked at Billy. He was a strange looking little man,

  with uncombed grey hair, a few days’ stubble growth on his face, dressed in wrinkled denim coveralls, the cuffs crudely rolled up to compensate for the fact that they were at least one size too big for him. Pushing seventy, Billy was as much an institution at the courthouse as the cornerstone.

  “Thank you, Billy I can always count on you.”

  “Any time Your Honor; I know you’ve got your hands full with that dead girl thing.”

  Judge Moran didn’t answer and hastened his walk to the doorway. Anyone who knew Billy would agree that he was a talker. The last thing the judge wanted was to extend the depression that he was already feeling. “Night Judge,” said Billy.

  He went through the doorway, adjusted his coat collar high onto the back of his neck and walked briskly across the parking lot. Halfway to his car, the last one in the lot, he felt a stinging sensation on his left shoulder that spun him around.

  As he stumbled, he felt a searing blow to his lower back that dropped him like a stone onto the hard pavement. Gasping for breath, in shock and disbelief, not understanding what was happening, he jerked his head away from the pool of now red rainwater forming around his face and gagged. He tried to stand, but the pain was intense, his knees couldn’t overcome the pain to support his weight and he fell again face first into the deepening puddle of water.

  Confusion was fast setting in, trying to breathe but unable, his vision blurred. His last moment of conscious recollection was the red pond stealing his life’s breath.

  Chapter Two

  I was enjoying a warm late afternoon on the terrace of the Heritage Inn in Stillwater Vermont, nipping from a small carafe of Martel cognac. A luxury family vacation spot, the place was teeming with activities. Private golf course, mini golf, tennis courts, hiking trails, a four-star restaurant, and, in my humble opinion, one of the best pubs in the entire Northeast.

  Stillwater personifies what many would describe as nostalgic. Like a Norman Rockwell vignette, it has meticulously maintained brick sidewalks, coach lantern street lights, and a three-block-long stretch of vintage and contemporary clothing shops, bookstores, hand-crafted gift and furniture makers, a bevy of sidewalk cafes and yes, a wonderful variety of pubs. My kind of town.

  As you may have surmised, my priorities in life are weighted toward indulgence. My current indulgence is watching the bevy of young women in and around the Olympic pool just under my terrace perch. They were mostly college age, with their moms and dads (or a combination of parental partners as is almost the norm among the affluent these days), celebrating a break from their educational adventures with a lavish vacation before they face the summers-end realities of everyday young adult life.

  I foresee great things ahead for the twenty-something blonde green-bikini lass who is sunning herself while her mom and dad appear to be more involved with their smartphones than their progeny.

  Sorry! I digress. Who am I you ask? My name is Daryl Richardson. I’m forty- two, single, and a former police detective with a law degree. I was raised by a great-aunt after my parents died in a car accident when I was eight years old. I know, sounds like a sad story, but I was blessed.

  My grandparents had passed, my parents had no siblings, and my Great Aunt Clarice Helseth, who lived in the Berkshires of Massachusetts on the edge of Stockbridge, was my only living direct relative and became my legal guardian.

  Aunt Clarice was a widow. I can best describe her as being refined, almost Victorian in appearance and manners, but in her heart, a nurturing positive influence in my life. Childless, her late husband was a physicist who died about ten years before my parents. He and Aunt Clarice were born in Denmark and came to the US a few years before the war broke out in Europe. She didn’t speak of him often, other than to say he was a good man, brilliant, and always provided her with a comfortable life. As I grew older, I learned that he worked for the government, but doing exactly what Aunt Clarice never discussed. Over the years I’ve spent some time researching my great uncle, Gustav Helseth, with little success. Perhaps someday I’ll find answer
s to that mystery.

  Did I mention that Aunt Clarice was a little wealthy? Well, wealth is a relative term, but in a monetary sense, her late husband had the foresight to invest in some ‘blue chip’ companies that generated a healthy cash flow for his widow, in addition to a government pension.

  Over the years she took an interest in the stocks and quietly amassed a fortune on her own. I learned that her penchant for investments extended into real estate, and she had bought large tracts of land in northern Massachusetts and southern Vermont, selling them in later years at staggering profits to land developers in the tourism and ski industries.

  I should tell you I lived comfortably growing up, but it wasn’t all privileged life. Public schools, summer jobs for spending money when I was old enough, the first car from a used car lot.

  In hindsight, I think Aunt Clarice was helping me find my identity and experience the successes and failures that life brings. I guess that was the matriarchal instinct in her. One of her favorite quotes was “strong oak only grows from strong roots.”

  After high school, and many long talks with Aunt Clarice about my future, I was accepted for a job as a police officer in Connecticut, against Auntie’s pressing that I attend an Ivy League school.

  Being young and independent, I chose my own path, and she ultimately accepted my decision without further debate when I agreed to her insistence I continue my education, paid for with a trust fund, as if I had attended in her words, a real school. Her generosity got me through college and law school at night.

  When Aunt Clarice passed, my life had moved on. I had left the police department and was working for the US Attorney in Boston. As her only living relative, I inherited the estate that she lived on and all her financial assets.

  Her will provided for several generous endowments to charities and non-profits, as well as providing lifetime income for our housekeeper and her husband who maintained her property for years before I arrived on the scene. They’ve agreed to continue to stay on in their house that was left to them in my aunt’s will and manage the estate grounds for me.

  Now, my life has become almost surreal. Incredible wealth can have a dark side if one loses sight of their roots. Now I know what Aunt Clarice was trying to tell me. I’ve decided to use my new wealth to continue her philanthropic work and have agreed to work as a criminal law consultant to the Justice Department. The next chapter of my life is starting here in Stillwater, Vermont, or so I thought.

  I looked to my left and saw a young woman from the inn staff approaching me. “Mr. Richardson?” she asked. “I’m so sorry to disturb you Sir but we took a phone message for you from a Mrs. Moran. She asked that you call her as soon as possible She said it was an emergency.”

  “Mrs. Moran?” I quizzed, setting my glass on the terrace railing.

  “Yes Sir. We have her phone number at the desk. I’m terribly sorry

  to disturb you sir, but…”

  “No, No, that’s OK. I’ll call right now. Thank you, Miss.”

  I left my perch and walked to the reception desk in the lobby. I

  waited only a few moments before the young receptionist asked, “May I help you, Sir?”

  “Yes, I was told that you have a phone message for Mr. Richardson?”

  “Oh Yes, Sir. The lady sounded very upset and kept saying it was an emergency and that she needed you to call right away.” The girl handed me a card with a phone number and “Lindsey Moran” written next to it.

  Lindsey Moran and I were in law school together, though her last name at the time was Leahy, and she was two years ahead of me in our studies. A beautiful girl with a wicked sense of humor, she was also very smart, graduating near the top of her class. She was a proctor in a few of my study groups and I recalled that there were many late study nights when I would find my mind straying from the discussions and end up staring at her beautiful long brown hair, her soft brown eyes and,well, I’m sure you get the idea.

  About three years ago I ran into Lindsey in Boston when she was in town for a law seminar where I was on the presenting panel.

  We met at the reception after the program and we caught up with each other’s life stories. Lindsey told me she had married one of our law professors, Forrest Moran and that he became a judge in Vermont.They had bought a gentleman’s farm, and she had opened a law practice in the town they lived in. We exchanged phone numbers and addresses, but that was the last time I had any contact with her. I dialed the number on the message card and after four rings a woman’s voice softly answered.

  “Hello.”

  “Lindsey? It’s Daryl.”

  Before I could say anything else, the voice cried out “Oh Daryl, thank God. I didn’t know who else to call.”

  “Lindsey, what’s wrong?”

  “Oh God Daryl, Forrest got shot yesterday when he left the courthouse.”

  The voice on the other end was a torrent of sobs and short breaths,

  trying to form the words, but they wouldn’t come out.

  “Lindsey, it will be OK, just take a few breaths, try to take it easy and tell me how I can help you.”

  After a pause, she said in a hushed voice, “Daryl, I don’t know what, I don’t know how this happened. Why?”

  “No one will tell me anything. The doctors, the police, nobody. “Daryl I’m so scared” as her voice trailed off.

  “Lindsey, I’m in Vermont myself, about an hour away from Bellington. I’ll drive down, where can I meet you?”

  “I’m going over to the Medical Center. He’s in the ICU. I want to stay there all night if they’ll let me.”

  “OK, I can be on the road in about an hour. I’ll meet you at the hospital.”

  “Oh God, thank you Daryl, thank you, thank you,” she said as she broke down crying again.

  “I’m on my way, Lindsey. It will be OK” I said. Another soft “Thank You” and the phone call ended.

  I walked back to the terrace and poured myself two fingers to drain the carafe. I looked down to the pool and saw my green-bikini distraction looking up at me. She was standing, sensuously rubbing lotion on her stomach and thighs. Our eyes met, and I raised my glass to her in a toast. I’m sure I caught a seductive smile from her before she quickly turned and wrapped a beach towel around her waist, returning to her beach chair. I poured the glass into a nearby planter and thought to myself in resignation.

  “Just as well, I’m leaving anyway,” and walked back to the lobby reception desk.

  “Miss,” I said to the attendant, “A business matter has come up and I’ll be checking out in about an hour. Could you please have my bill closed out for me?”

  “Of course, Mr. Richardson, we’re so sorry to see you leave,” she answered with a faux frown and a well-rehearsed tone as if she was losing her best friend. I started toward the elevator to go up to my room, stopped, and went back to the desk.

  “Could you please have the valet bring my car to the front for me?” I asked, handing her the claim receipt.

  “Of course, Mr. Richardson.”

  I went up to my room, changed out of my LL Bean khakis and shirt, took a shower and shaved. I had brought business casual slacks and dress shirts on the trip and selected a dark blue summer weight trouser and a blue checked long sleeve, suitable attire for what I expected to be a business visit to a hospital rather than a reunion with a college crush.

  I packed my suitcase and hanger travel bag, looked around the room for anything I had forgotten, dropped a ten-dollar bill on the bedside table for the chambermaid and went down to the lobby. The receptionist had my room charges ready, gave me my copy and placed my car keys and valet ticket on the counter.

  “Your car is out front. Have a safe trip we hope to see you again.” I thanked her for her services, complimented the Inn’s ambiance with a few adjectives, and walked out to the portico.

  The young valet appeared out of nowhere and smiled. I saw my black Challenger on the curb and I handed him the claim ticket.

  “I’ll t
ake those Sir,” he said reaching for my suitcase and travel bag.

  We walked to the car, I pressed the trunk release, and he placed my things neatly inside as I reached for my wallet.

  “Sweet ride. NCIS all the way."

  “Excuse me?”

  “You know, NCIS Los Angeles, Sam Hanna, Callan, HETTY!” he exclaimed, emphasizing each name stronger than the prior. “Right” I responded with an acknowledgment of the popular TV show.

  “Hope this baby doesn’t end up with bullet holes in it like Sam’s does every other week.”

  “So do I,” I said as I handed him a five-dollar bill, “So do I.”

  “Thanks, have a safe trip,” and he shoved the bill into his shirt

  I set the GPS for North Bellington, the voice responded, “Turn left onto Route 4 West” and I headed out. The Challenger SRT was brand new, and I sensed she was straining at the bit as we crawled through the tourist district and its 25-mph speed limit. In a few minutes we were on the open road and I eased her up to 55.

  The throaty sound of the exhaust was almost calming to me as if saying she had the strength to get us out of anything that got in her way.

  The ride across Route 4 was scenic, and I settled in for what I thought would be an hour on the road. An incoming call flashed on the Bluetooth touch screen and I saw it was from “Bernie” short for Bernadette Nichols, my housekeeper. I touched the accept icon and answered “Hello?”

  “Daryl, are you OK?” She asked sounding almost breathless.

  “Yeah, why? Is there a problem?”

  “No, but I’ve been a nervous wreck for the past hour. I feel I may have done something terrible. Daryl, I’m so sorry but I called you before and you didn’t answer, so I left a message. You didn’t call back, and I thought something terrible had happened.”