The Lure

by S. W. Hubbard

  “She’s just fine, Mr. Nyquist, how are you?”

  “Can’t complain, can’t complain. And if I did, ain’t nobody to listen,” he grinned, revealing a broad expense of pink gums interrupted sporadically by some stumpy brown teeth. “And this must be the new police chief, who replaced Herv,” he continued, turning his attention to Frank. “I been hearing some good things about you. You must be here about a year now, huh?”

  “Going on two,” Frank answered, reaching out to shake Nyquist’s hand. He found the old man’s grasp surprisingly strong.

  “Well, you can’t be here to arrest me. I don’t move fast enough these days to get into any trouble,” he said, slapping his bony knee. “So what can I do for you?”

  “It’s about Mary Pat Sheehan,” Frank began.

  “Don’t think I know her, although the name kinda rings a bell.”

  “The girl who was found dead in her car out here last week,” Earl explained.

  “Oh, oh, her. Yup, that was quite a bit of commotion.” Mr. Nyquist’s eyes glittered with remembered excitement. “Pity—can’t imagine what caused her to crash. It’s not like she didn’t know the road.”

  Frank and Earl exchanged glances. “You saw her out here a lot?” Frank asked.

  “Sure, recently that is. She drove a beige Escort.”

  “Who did she come out here to see?”

  “Couldn’t tell you that. I’d just see her drive by; then about an hour later, sometimes less, she’d drive back.”

  “So whoever it was, they must live beyond your house,” Frank clarified.

  “Yessiree.”

  “And when did you first notice her car out here?”

  “It was in May. That’s when I start sitting out, when things warm up. In the winter I sit by the window in the house, but I can’t really see the road too good from there.”

  “So she might have come before that?”

  Mr. Nyquist nodded.

  “What about last fall—did you notice her then?”

  “Oh, no definitely not then.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Nyquist, you’ve been very helpful,” Frank said.

  “I have? How?” But despite the old man’s prying, Frank managed to extricate himself and Earl without revealing any of the details of Mary Pat’s situation.

  “Now we’re getting somewhere, “ Frank said as they got back into the car. “We can concentrate all our efforts on the houses down at this end of the road.”

  Unfortunately, no one was home at the first two. At the third, the door was finally answered, after a long period of ringing and knocking, by a middle-aged woman named Donna Milford. “I’m sorry,” she said breathlessly. “I was clear back in my workroom, and with the sewing machine running I can’t hear the bell.” A few minutes’ conversation put Mrs. Milford out of the picture. She knew Mary Pat only from visits to the Stop ‘N’ Buy, and although she was home all day, she worked at the back of the house, making curtains and slip covers, and never noticed what traffic passed in the front.

  “What about the folks in the two houses between yours and Mr. Nyquist—are they usually home during the day?” Frank asked.

  “Well, Judy Penniman works all day and their son's at school. Her husband Doug’s a trucker. Sometimes he’s home during the day, but then he’s usually sleeping. And the Stilers, they’re retired, so they’re in and out most days, I guess.”

  Frank didn’t know what to make of this information. Would the trucker husband be brazen enough to have his girlfriend Mary Pat meet him at his own home in broad daylight? Or maybe Mary Pat was friends with the wife, who let her use their empty home to meet her lover. Or could the retired couple be helping her in her predicament? He’d have to come back again in the evening to check out the remaining houses.

  Leaving the Milfords', they saw a car pull into the Stilers' driveway. “Looks like we’re in luck. They’re back home,” Frank said. “Isn’t she the woman who’s so involved in organizing the concerts on the town green in the summer?”

  “Yeah,” Earl agreed. “Her husband’s got something wrong with him. He walks real stiff and he doesn’t say much.”

  Frank pulled into the driveway behind the Stilers and got out of his car with a cheerful wave. Mrs. Stiler acknowledged him, but went to the passenger side of her car and opened it. As Frank approached, he could see her moving first one and then the other of her husband’s legs out of the car. He stepped forward to help her but she waved him off. With one practiced move, she swung her husband from the car. They both staggered slightly, then regained their balance.

  “There now.” Mrs. Stiler turned toward them with a smile and extended her hand. “I know who you are and I imagine you know who I am, but I don’t think we’ve ever officially met. Constance Stiler,” she shook Frank’s hand firmly, then Earl’s. “And this is my husband, George.” Frank offered his hand to the man but he didn’t respond. “George has advanced Parkinson’s disease. He finds it difficult to shake hands, and to converse, but he enjoys having company. Come on in.”

  They followed the Stilers through their back door into a large and cheerful kitchen. Patiently, Constance helped her husband ease into a chair that looked out over the yard behind the house. Frank studied her movements. He imagined she must be in her mid-sixties, but she moved like a much younger person. Tall and lean, she looked like she had always been athletic and still kept up with her exercise. Dressed in khakis and a sweater, she nevertheless projected a rather elegant image. Her most striking feature was her hair: thick and wavy, it had turned a pure, gleaming silver over time.

  Motioning them into more comfortable chairs, she pulled a straight-backed chair away from the table and perched on the edge. “What can I do for you?”

  “We’re here about Mary Pat Sheehan,” Frank began.

  Immediately Constance began shaking her head. “A terrible tragedy. The poor girl. Do you know what caused the accident?”

  “We’re looking into it. Right now I’m trying to figure out who she was visiting on Harkness Road."

  “Why would that matter?”

  Frank sidestepped the question. “Mr. Nyquist said he noticed her driving out to this end of the road many times over the summer.”

  Constance smiled. “Mr. Nyquist is nothing if not observant.”

  “Was she visiting you?”

  “I think she may have been here once early in the summer to pick up some posters for the concert series. She offered to put them up at the Stop ‘N Buy and her church.”

  “And that’s it? She didn’t stop by on a regular basis?”

  Constance arched her eyebrows. “I don’t know what you’re getting at, Chief Bennett. I only knew the girl in passing. What does who she was visiting have to do with her car accident?”

  Frank hesitated, his eyes scanning the small details of the Stilers’ home: the canvas PBS tote bag hanging on a hook, the wall calendar with a famous painting that he recognized but couldn’t name; the Julia Child cook books on the shelf. No, he didn’t imagine that Mary Pat and Constance had been fast friends. Still, something held him back from telling her what he was after.

  “We’re trying to determine who she was with immediately before the accident. Did you ever notice her across the street at the Pennimans’?”

  Constance regarded him with her steady, intelligent gaze, letting him know that she understood this was only a partial truth. “Well, she certainly wasn’t here. And since I don’t watch out my front window like Mr. Nyquist, I really couldn’t say about the Pennimans.” Somewhere across the kitchen a timer let out a tinny, persistent beep. “Is that all you needed? It’s time for George’s medication.”

  “That’s all. We won’t keep you.”

  Back in the car, Frank continued down the road, even though there were no more houses to visit. Harkness Road ended in what would be called a cul-de-sac in the suburbs, but in the country the wide, gravelly area surrounded by dense woods was simply known as “the turn-around.” On one side, a slightly overgrow
n path extended into the woods. Earl pointed to it an explained, “That’s the old logging trail, where kids ride their ATVs and dirt bikes.”

  On the other side, a narrow but hard-packed dirt road led out of the turn-around. A crudely lettered sign nailed to a birch tree read, “PRIVATE PROP KEP OUT.”

  “Where’s that go?” Frank asked.

  “To the Veeches. I’ve never been back there.” The look on Earl’s face showed he wanted to keep it that way.

  “What’s the big deal? Who’re the Veeches?” Frank asked as he carefully steered the patrol car up the rutted dirt road.

  “They’re this weird big family. They all live back here and they never bother with anyone in town. They’re dirty and none of ‘em work, and there’s something wrong with all the kids.”

  “Wrong in what way?”

  “I don’t know,” Earl said as he peered out the window at the dense woods. He seemed to expect sniper fire at any moment. “Slow, I guess. One of them was in school with me for a while. He was about fifteen and still in the sixth grade, then he just stopped coming. Everyone made fun of him.” Earl paused, thinking back on the bad old days when he’d been in school. Frank suspected Earl had endured a fair amount of teasing himself.

  “There was a joke they all told about the Veech girls,” Earl continued. “What’s the Veeches’ definition of a virgin?”

  “What?” Frank prompted.

  “A girl who can run faster than her brothers.”

  “Earl, that’s terrible,” Frank said, but snickered anyway. “So what do they do back here, farm?” He winced as his well-maintained patrol car bottomed out on the increasingly steep road, wondering how much further they had to go before they’d come to a house.

  “Nah, they just collect welfare. Sometimes you see one of them in the supermarket in Verona. They always pay with food stamps.” Earl’s voice vibrated with contempt.

  Plenty of families lived on the brink of poverty in these small mountain towns, but Frank had noticed that even the poorest workers seemed to be staunch Republicans, fiercely opposed to government handouts of any kind. The Veeches might run counter to the local character, but they must be law-abiding because he’d never had a complaint about them, and their names had never been suggested as suspects in the few petty thefts or vandalisms that constituted his usual workload.

  Just as he began to despair of ever getting off this lousy road, the light brightened, the trees thinned out, and the first of several ramshackle houses came into view. Frank pulled up in front of it and turned off the car, then hesitated. Surely this house wasn’t inhabited. The front door opened about three feet above ground level, with no porch, stoop or step leading up to it. Several windows were broken, patched with cardboard, and the remaining glass ones were shrouded by tattered sheets serving as curtains. The central part of the house had been built of wood, and several haphazard additions flowed from it, including one wing consisting of a small Airstream trailer that had apparently been backed right into the side wall, then attached with some roughly nailed-up boards.

  In a passing fit of enthusiasm, someone had once started painting the place bright blue, but had laid down his brush in mid-stroke, as if called to the phone, and had never picked it up again. The garish color covering half the house made the rest of it look even more dismal.

  “No one could possibly live here,” Frank said. “We better drive up to the next house.” He started up the car again and hadn’t gone more than a few feet forward when Earl cringed away from the passenger side door, shouting, “Look out!”

  A huge, brindle-coated dog had sprung out of the trees and lunged against Earl’s side of the car. Frank stopped with a jolt as the big brute leaped again, putting paws the size of saucers against the window and baying ferociously. Two more dogs ran down the road from the direction of the other houses, surrounding the patrol car. Although smaller, they were no less fierce. Frank could hear their claws scratching his car, as one and then the other showed his head above the car hood.

  Frank let out a few whoops of the police siren and the dogs backed away momentarily, but despite all the racket, no one emerged from any of the houses. He turned on the bullhorn. “Hello, Mr. Veech? Could you call off your dogs please?”

  Still no sign of life. “We just want to ask you a question about the accident Mary Pat Sheehan had out here last week. Could you help us out?” No response.

  “Now what?” Earl asked, as the dogs closed in again. The big one slobbered all over the window, looking for a way to tear Earl’s throat out.

  “I think we beat a tactical retreat.” Frank put the car in gear, not caring if the dogs got out of the way. “We’ll wait and see what the Pennimans have to tell us before we come up here again.”

  “Next time, we better bring the state police animal control officer with us,” Earl said.

  “That’s an option. But it could be the dogs were guarding the place because no one is home today.”

  But as they passed the first house, they saw the ragged curtain in the upstairs window fall back into place.

  Chapter 9

  “What’s today’s date?” Frank demanded out of the blue as they drove back toward town.

  “October first.”

  “Shit! Caroline’s birthday is just four days away and I haven’t bought her present yet.”

  “So she’ll get it a day or so late—what’s the big deal? She’s not a little kid.”

  Earl was right of course, but Caroline had always regarded her birthday as a national holiday, and since she was an only child he and Estelle had indulged her in this, even after she was grown. She looked forward to his present and would be disappointed if it weren’t there on the right day. He didn’t want to let her down, especially with the coolness between them now.

  “If I buy something today and send it express she’ll have it by the fifth,” Frank said.

  “What’re you going to get her?”

  That was the problem. Now that Caroline was married to Mr. Wall Street, there wasn’t a thing Frank could get her that Eric couldn’t provide a better version of. There was nothing she truly needed, and Frank didn’t understand her wants anymore.

  Then, as if the hand of God were guiding him, Frank rounded the next bend in the road and a sign came into view. “Adirondack Artisans—Pottery, Weaving, Jewelry”—Beth Abercrombie’s shop.

  The last time Caroline had visited she’d seen that sign, but when they stopped, the store had been closed and Caroline had stood with her nose pressed against the glass, oohing and ahing at what she could see through the window. Some arty little knick-knack from Beth’s shop would be right up Caroline’s alley, and it had the advantage of being something that Eric couldn’t deliver. Best of all, the pretext of shopping would give him a chance to ask Beth about Nathan Golding.

  “I just got a shopping brainstorm, Earl. I’ll drop you at the office. See what you can turn up searching the Internet for Sheltering Arms–I’ll be back in half an hour.” Frank soon dropped Earl off in the town office parking lot, then doubled back to Beth’s shop.

  The Adirondack Artisans sign stood on the main road between Trout Run and Verona, but the shop itself was down the little unmarked country road just beyond the sign. In less than a quarter of a mile, Frank spotted the shop, nestled in a clearing surrounded by white pine and birch. Its cedar shake siding, stained a deep green, allowed the little building to blend into the woods, as if it had sprung up there naturally.

  Beth must have had the place built to suit her needs. The front door, flanked by two large plate glass windows, opened directly into the shop, while a side door led into her living quarters behind and above the store. The little graveled parking area was empty.

  Frank followed a flagstone walk past some chrysanthemums blooming bravely despite the chill, and hesitated before the door. Maybe this hadn’t been such a good idea after all. Clearly, he would be the only customer. What if there was nothing he thought Caroline would like? He’d have to buy something
—he couldn’t very well say “just looking” and saunter out like you could in a big department store. But maybe the shop wasn’t even open today. He reached for the doorknob, half hoping it wouldn’t turn, but it opened and the breeze immediately set some wind chimes into a melody announcing his entrance.

  A wonderful scent of pine impressed him before his eyes registered anything. Not the cloying, suffocating smell of those pine air fresheners or green scented candles—just the terrific smell of a fresh Christmas tree the day you first bring it into the house. But there was no tree, and no Beth either.

  Frank prowled around the deserted showroom, taking everything in. Three tiers of shelves ran around the perimeter of the room. The carpenter in him immediately noticed the fine craftsmanship of the shelves—the finely mitered corners, the beveled trim, the satiny finish. Then he thought to look at the pottery displayed upon them: bowls, plates and vases, no two items exactly the same, although all clearly made by the same hand. A rack in front of the window held multicolored woven wool shawls, and another displayed cotton area rugs. In a case by the cash register, silver jewelry sat on black velvet pads. The overall effect was quite pleasant and restful, not at all like shopping in the mall. Still, Frank wondered how Beth could make a living with such a small inventory.

  He reached out and picked up a large green vase that caught his eye. Turning it over, he held it at arm’s length to make out the tiny writing on the discreet price tag. Twelve dollars? No, one hundred and twenty! Good grief, she couldn’t sell many of those around–

  “Why hello, Frank. What brings you here?”

  The sound of Beth’s low, mellow voice surprised him so much that he nearly dropped the vase, which would have been a real catastrophe.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you. I heard the bells chime but I had a pot on the wheel and couldn’t come right out.” Beth smiled. She radiated a placid stillness, as if the atmosphere of the shop emanated directly from her.

  Her calmness inspired an equal level of nervousness in Frank. He felt like she’d caught him shoplifting and for a moment his tongue stayed glued to the roof of his mouth as surely as if he’d just taken a big bite of peanut butter sandwich.