The Lure

by S. W. Hubbard

  “I wonder why Mrs. Golding was walking her sister’s dog so early in the morning?” Earl said.

  This time both Frank and Meyerson stared him into silence. Frank resumed his story. “Beth said Golding looked her up recently. The day she was seen with him in Malone’s, they were discussing his plans to try to shut down Raging Rapids.”

  “Raging Rapids? Why would he care about that?” Meyerson asked.

  “That’s what I wondered.”

  Frank and Meyerson locked eyes for a moment, then Meyerson shrugged. “It’s probably nothing. According to the Feds, Green Tomorrow and a lot of these other environmental groups are just a bunch of loosely organized cells. The way they work is, the leaders go around rabble-rousing and getting the locals worked up about something, then they step back and let the locals take over the protests. That way, the left hand never knows what the right hand is doing and they can’t rat each other out. For instance, Golding claimed he knew nothing about the bombing in Colorado. Said he couldn’t help what his followers do.”

  “Yeah, but why has Green Tomorrow chosen Raging Rapids as the next project?” Frank asked. “It’s small potatoes.”

  “The hunting lodge was no big deal either,” Meyerson said, “until the bombs went off. I think his strategy is –was—to sow his seeds far and wide and see what sprouts.”

  “What’s sprouting here on Wednesday is a demonstration in front of Raging Rapids lead by Katherine Petrucci. She runs the nursery school at the Presbyterian Church. I don’t know if Beth will be involved in it or not.”

  Meyerson sighed. “I’m sure it’s another dead-end, but I better go talk to her.”

  “It couldn’t hurt,” Frank agreed.

  “I’ll let you know what I find out.”

  “Thanks, Lew.” Frank smiled as he watched Meyerson trudge across the Green toward the church. He liked Lew a lot better when he was the FBI’s gofer than when he was running his own show.

  “There’s a Mrs. Finn for you on line one,” Doris announced.

  Frank pressed the blinking button eagerly. Maybe Sheltering Arms had contacted the Finns again.

  “Hi, Mrs. Finn—what can I do for you?”

  “I, I’m sorry to bother you—”

  Her tentative tone didn’t sound promising. “No bother. Do you have some new information for me?”

  “No…I was hoping you might have some news. Have you discovered anything more about Sheltering Arms?”

  “No, ma’am. I’m afraid your husband was right. They were very good at covering their tracks. We’ll keep trying to recover your money for you, but it doesn’t look promising.”

  “Oh, the money. I don’t care about… I mean, I do care, but that’s not why I called. I wondered if you had any news about Sarah?”

  “No, we haven’t been able to locate the baby.”

  “Oh.” Her voice sounded tiny and crushed. There was a long pause, then she began to speak in a rush. “I’m sick about this, sick. I just want to know that Sarah is OK. I’ve accepted that she’ll never be ours, but I have to know that she’s with a good family and not some, some…”

  Horse traders. Frank supplied the word in his mind, but spoke gently to Mrs. Finn. “I know it’s upsetting ma’am. I’ll be sure to let you know when I have some news.”

  “Okay. Thank you.”

  She hung up, just as Earl came in looking forlorn. “After I sent the email, Edwin made me a snack, and then we checked just to see if they had answered yet. But the message bounced. It came back ‘not a known address’.”

  Frank didn’t bother to look up from what he was doing. “That doesn’t surprise me. They’re covering their tracks. Close one account, open another.”

  “What did you make me go over there for if you knew it wasn’t going to work?” Earl sulked.

  “Never take anything for granted, Earl. Do you want to work on the next lead, or do I have to promise you it’s going to pan out?”

  Earl sighed. “What?”

  “Do a search–see if you can find any references to Sheltering Arms on the Internet.”

  “Any luck?” Frank asked, after Earl had been working quietly for half an hour.

  “Not yet. The top hit for “Sheltering Arms” is the website for some romance writer named Aneliese Dupree. Then you get a lot of hits for animal shelters, battered women’s shelters, injured wildlife shelters. Now I’m going to search on ‘independent adoption’—see what that turns up.”

  “That’s why you’re better at this than me, Earl. I would’ve given up already.”

  Earl smiled, pushed his lank hair out of his eyes and reapplied himself to the search. Frank watched him for a moment. Paying the kid a compliment worked wonders on his productivity—he ought to do it more often.

  They worked in companionable silence for more than an hour. Finally, Earl glanced up. “What are you doing?”

  “I’ve been making a list of papers in a hundred-mile radius of here. When you’re done with what you’re doing there, call them all and see if an ad like the one in the Herald has run recently.”

  The ‘why?’ was written on Earl’s face although he didn’t speak it.

  “After what happened to Mary Pat, they’re not going to try to recruit again in Trout Run,” Frank explained. But I figure the Adirondacks are too a good territory for them to give up. A rural, white population, not far from their buyers—couples with money in Albany, Westchester, New York City. It beats getting the babies from West Virginia, or Arkansas.”

  “I may as well start now. All I’ve found so far are lots of chat rooms and newsgroups and discussion lists about independent adoption. It’ll take forever to visit them all.”

  “All right. Save the notes on what you found. It might still come in handy.”

  “What do you have in the pipeline?”

  “Nothing. You said to stop running the ads for a while.”

  “I know, but I was hoping—“

  “What?”

  “Those damn Braithwaites are making trouble again. I told them it would be months before we could find them another baby, but they’re not willing to wait. Chip says he paid his money and we didn’t hold up our end of the bargain when we offered them Mary Pat’s baby. As he put it, ‘clearly not what we specified.’

  “Specified! Does he think he’s ordering a new BMW? Tell him to get lost.”

  “Believe me, I’d like to. But he’s threatening to expose us if we don’t produce a nice WASP baby for him right away.”

  “How can he expose us without getting in trouble himself? No one would believe he didn’t know what he was doing was illegal.”

  “He knows politicians. He knows high-priced lawyers. He’ll act like a pathetic victim and get out of it with a slap on the wrist and we’ll be screwed. We have to give him what he paid for.”

  “Can’t you just give him back the money?”

  “The money? The money is long gone.”

  Chapter 13

  Frank had left a message on the Pennimans’ answering machine saying he wanted to schedule a time to come out to Harkness Road and talk to them both. Judy Penniman, sounding none too friendly, had called back to say he could come at seven. He’d learned from the owner of the Stop’N’Buy, that Anita Veech would be working tonight, so he figured he’d swing by and see her after he finished with the Pennimans. By the end of the night, he ought to know what Mary Pat was doing on Harkness Road.

  When he pulled into the Pennimans’ driveway he noticed the cab of Doug’s eighteen-wheeler parked beside the garage. He could tell from the size of it that it had a sleeping berth behind the driver’s seat. Doug must make long-distance hauls. Maybe that explained why the yard looked so overgrown and the paint on the front door was peeling. With Doug away, most of the work around the house must fall on Judy’s shoulders.

  He rang the doorbell and immediately heard heavy footsteps pounding and a male voice yelling, “I’ll get it! I’ll get it!” A female voice replied in a softer tone, and when the do
or opened, it was Judy Penniman who greeted him. A good-looking, broad-shouldered boy stood behind her. Frank didn’t recall ever seeing him hanging around town with the other local kids.

  “Come on in,” she said. “Doug’s in here.” She led the way to the dark-paneled living room, where Doug Penniman was stretched out in a plaid recliner before a blaring TV. A rack full of guns stood in the corner. He sat up and pressed the mute button on his remote, but let the baseball game continue to flicker across the screen. The boy had followed them in, and was pacing around the room, running his fingers through his wiry dark hair.

  “Do you like baseball?” he asked, before his father could even say hello. “Do you like the Red Sox? I love the Red Sox, but they never win the World Series. It’s the curse of the Bambino. Do you know what that is?”

  “Yes, I—”

  The boy steamrolled over Frank’s attempt to answer. “Back in 1920 the Sox got rid of Babe Ruth and—”

  “All right, Bill. Chief Bennett didn’t come out here to talk about baseball,” Doug said.

  Bill kept talking, as his pacing became more agitated. “They should never have gotten rid of the Babe. Once the Babe went to the Yankees…”

  “Bill!” Doug raised his voice. The muscles in his powerful arms flexed as he made to get up from his chair. “That’s enough.”

  Frank watched as Judy shot her husband a dirty look. “Billy, you need to go to your room now and finish your handwriting assignment.” She spoke to Bill in a low, patient voice, like a horse trainer soothing a high-strung thoroughbred. “If you don’t go, I’ll have to take away your baseball cards for the evening. I’ll count to three. One. Two.”

  “No, no! No three!” Bill shouted and he ran out of the room.

  Frank’s amazement at seeing a kid who looked to be high-school age act like this must have been written on his face.

  “Sorry about that.” Doug clenched and released his big hands. “Bill’s got Asperger’s Syndrome. He—”

  “You don’t have to apologize for him,” Judy snapped. “He’s doing great, and he’d be even better if you—”

  Frank, who had taken a seat between the two parents, extended a hand toward each. “Look, don’t worry about it.” He smiled at Judy and used a de-escalation ploy he’d learned as a beat cop. “Could I trouble you for a glass of water? I don’t know why I’m so thirsty today.”

  Judy stamped off toward the kitchen and Doug sat in his recliner massaging his temples. Each finger had a tuft of thick, black hair, but no wedding ring, Frank noticed. As the tension dissipated, he seemed to remember he wasn’t alone. “So what was it you wanted to talk to us about?”

  “Mary Pat Sheehan.”

  “I just heard about her dying when I got home yesterday. That’s a shame.”

  “You were away all week?” Frank inquired.

  “Yeah, New York to California, to Texas and back again.”

  “Did you know Mary Pat well?”

  “The Stop’N’Buy sells diesel, so I fill up there a lot. You know how friendly Mary Pat is. Was.”

  “Did she ever visit you here at home?”

  “Visit us?” Judy asked as she came back. “Why would she visit us?” She handed Frank the water, sloshing some out of the hazy, jam-jar glass.

  “I’m trying to determine who she was with right before she died. You may have heard that she didn’t die because of the crash.”

  “We heard,” Judy said.

  “What do you mean?” Doug asked simultaneously.

  “She was pregnant and she died of complications from the birth.” Bitterness, not the force of gravity, had tugged Judy’s features toward the floor. “I told you. You never listen.” Then she turned her irritation on Frank. “I don’t see what it’s got to do with you anyway. Her parents don’t want you stirring things up. You oughta respect that.”

  Frank didn’t appreciate hearing what he ought or ought not to do from Judy Penniman. “I’m trying to find out what happened to her baby,” he said, and then focused on Doug. “Any idea what brought her out here that day?”

  “She must’ve been dropping something off, doing someone a favor. Once Bill left his baseball cards in the Stop‘N’Buy and she brought them back here. She was that kind of a person—she’d go out of her way for you.”

  Frank would have accepted that explanation if it hadn’t been for Mr. Nyquist. “Your neighbor, Nyquist, says he saw Mary Pat out here on a regular basis.”

  Judy snorted. “That senile old fool. He talks just to hear himself.”

  “He’s lonely, Judy. It wouldn’t kill you to stop and chat with him sometimes,” Doug said.

  “Oh, and when am I supposed to fit that in? Between working full-time, taking care of Billy, trying to keep this house from falling down around our ears…”

  Frank could tell they were heading down a road the Pennimans had traveled many times before. “So, Judy,” he interrupted before she worked up a full head of steam, “you’re not around much during the day, are you? Would you have noticed if Mary Pat was out here?”

  Judy shook her head. “I’m gone from six AM to six PM, Monday through Friday, and most of the day Saturday too. I’m an LPN and I work with the homebound—bathing them, changing the sheets, checking their vitals. ”

  “And what about you, Doug?” Frank made direct eye contact with him, but Doug dodged his gaze. “When you’re not driving, are you home during the day?”

  “Dead to the world,” Judy answered for him. “And you better believe when he is awake, he’s not spending any time here, between bowling, softball, hunting.”

  “And working construction whenever I can,” Doug defended himself. “You seem to forget that.”

  Frank stood up; he’d had about all he could take of the Bickersons here. Judy was sure no Cupid, so it didn’t seem likely she’d have loaned their house for Mary Pat’s trysts. Billy had the physique of a grown man, but he couldn’t picture Mary Pat seducing someone who was mentally handicapped. There certainly was no doubt the Pennimans were unhappily married, which made Doug a reasonable candidate to be Mary Pat’s lover. He was a good-looking man and probably only in his mid-thirties, although the circumstances of his life made him seem older. Of course, he wasn’t going to admit to that in front of his wife. But with the schedule Judy kept, it shouldn’t be too difficult to catch Doug alone tomorrow.

  “Thanks for your time,” Frank said. “I can let myself out.” As he closed the door, he could hear their voices raised again. He headed out to the Stop’N’Buy, hoping that when his time came, he’d die in the saddle and never have to face being cared for by the likes of Judy Penniman.

  In two years of living in Trout Run, Frank had never once met Anita Veech. He could be confident in this because Anita wasn’t a woman anyone would be likely to forget.

  He couldn’t accurately estimate her weight—the difference between 350 pounds and 450 or 500 was largely academic. She wore black knit pants, pilled from the constant friction of her massive thighs. Her arms appeared disproportionately short, flipper-like, because the size of her gut prevented her fingertips from extending past her waist. With eyes, nose and mouth subsumed by fat, her face seemed almost featureless. Wheezing with every step, Anita came toward him.

  Frank extended his hand. “Hello, Anita, I’m Frank Bennett. I don’t believe we’ve ever met.”

  Her mouth stretched open in what passed for a smile. Two teeth were missing and the others were crooked and brown. “That’s because I like to steer clear of the law.”

  “A good policy. Say, I just wanted to talk to you for a minute about Mary Pat Sheehan. I guess you heard by now the reason she died?”

  “Coulda knocked me over with a feather—and that wouldn’t be easy!” Anita slapped her thigh, setting waves of fat in motion.

  “So you didn’t know she was pregnant? She never confided in you?”

  “Nope. I did notice she was gaining a little, but I’m not one for mentioning other people’s weight.”


  “Was she in the habit of coming out to visit you at home?”

  “Visit me!” Anita’s snorting laugh added to the overall impression of a malevolent pig. “Pap told me you all was out to our property the other day. Set the dogs on ya, didn’t he? No, Pap’s not one much for company, see?”

  If that was the way Pap welcomed all guests, Frank supposed it wasn’t Anita Mary Pat was visiting on Harkness Road. Doug Penniman was starting to look more and more likely. Still, there must be some people for whom the dogs were called off. He let the matter of the visits drop for the moment and changed tacks.

  “It would be helpful if we could figure out who the baby’s father was. It might’ve been someone Mary Pat met here at the store. Was there anyone she was unusually friendly with?”

  Anita cocked her head and pushed aside a strand of greasy dark hair. “Well, there might’ve been…”

  Frank stood waiting, but Anita said no more. He had the distinct impression the ball was back in his court.

  “The man wouldn’t be in any trouble,” Frank assured her. “I’d just like to talk to him. It could help us locate the baby.”

  Anita’s eyes scanned the store, focusing on everything but Frank. “Well, see, I feel like I’d be breaking my word, in a way.”

  Frank couldn’t keep the eagerness out of his voice. “I know Mary Pat wanted to keep the relationship secret, Anita. But her death changes everything. This adoption she tried to set up wasn’t legal. With the father’s consent, we could get the baby placed in a good home.”

  Anita waved her hand. “The father, he don’t want nothin’ to do with the baby, that much I can tell you.”

  “What do you mean? I thought you said you didn’t know she was pregnant?”

  Anita shifted her weight from one leg to the other. She looked down at her feet oozing out the sides of unlaced sneakers. “I didn’t. But I got the feeling the guy who was doing her was married.”