Take the Bait

by S. W. Hubbard

  “Why, you didn’t like the boy?”

  “Oh, no. Craig is a very nice kid. Good family. But, you know how it is, I didn’t like the idea of her getting too serious with one boy just yet.”

  “Mmmm,” Frank murmured noncommittally. “You and your wife were high school sweethearts, weren’t you?”

  “Things were different then. Besides, we waited a year to get married. Not like my sister and Tom Pettigrew. I just didn’t want what happened to Dorothy to happen to Janelle.”

  “What was that?” Frank asked.

  Jack seemed sincerely surprised that there was anyone in Trout Run, no matter how recent an arrival, who did not know Dorothy’s story. “You may not believe it now,” he began, “but my sister could have had her pick of guys when she was young. But she started going with Tom Pettigrew in tenth grade and she never looked at another boy from then on. Our parents tried to break it up, but that only made it worse.”

  “Why didn’t they approve?”

  “Tom was real jealous and had a nasty temper even as a kid. He and Dorothy were inseparable, and then, just what you’d figure would happen, happened. Dorothy got pregnant, and in those days you had to get married and drop out of school, so they did.

  “When our folks died, they left everything to me and told me to take care of Dorothy. They knew if Tom got hold of any of the money he’d just drink it away. I said I’d help Tom build a house. He was a pretty good carpenter when he was sober.

  “So they moved there behind Rosemary and me and things were better for a little while, but it didn’t last. He drank more and more, and then I found out he was beating her. She tried to hide it from me, but one day he knocked one of her teeth out. I went after him, and he pulled a knife on me. I was in the hospital for a week. By that time, Rosemary had started to get sick. I couldn’t afford to get tangled up in my sister’s problems anymore. I had to think about taking care of Rosie and Janelle. It ate me up inside that I couldn’t do anything to help her.”

  “Why didn’t she leave him?” Frank asked.

  “And go where? She lived all her life here. She’s a shy person. She could never go off and live by herself in a strange town. And how would she make enough money to support Tommy, working in a store or something? She was trapped.”

  “Couldn’t she have had the police arrest him?” Frank inquired.

  Jack looked as if Frank had suggested consulting a witch doctor. “And hang out all our dirty laundry for everyone in Trout Run to see? The Harveys don’t operate that way.”

  “So she finally escaped when Tom drove his car into the lake, huh?”

  “Yeah, but by that time he had destroyed her. She’s nothing like she used to be. She’s got no life left in her. You know, she actually cried when he died?” Jack shook his head. “So you can see why I didn’t want Janelle rushing into anything. I always told her, ‘You have plenty of time for boyfriends when you get older. Look at what falling for a boy did to your aunt. Don’t let what happened to her, happen to you.’”

  Frank’s thoughts ranged back to the years when Caroline had been dating. When she was seventeen, Frank had been so certain of his daughter’s innocence that the possibility that she could be the object of a boy’s sexual desires—and worse, that she might reciprocate those feelings—was entirely beyond the realm of his imagination. But once she had been away to college, the truth was harder to evade. He still remembered the moment when his eyes, seeing the packet of birth control pills lying on the bathroom counter, fought a mighty battle with his mind to suppress the obvious: his little girl, in a moment of carelessness, or perhaps conscious cruelty, had left them there.

  No father wants that knowledge of his daughter. So he sympathized with Jack, which made it all the harder to have to ask the next question.

  He drained the cup of tepid coffee on his desk and cleared his throat. “You don’t think that could be it, do you? That Janelle did make the same mistake as Dorothy and was afraid to tell you?”

  “Absolutely not.” Jack’s reply came almost before Frank had finished. “Why are you asking me all this?” his voice rose sharply. “The other day, you told me you thought someone Janelle knew might be mixed up in her disappearance. But now it sounds like you think she ran away.”

  Frank could feel Earl’s eyes on him, but he stayed focused on Jack. “Something was bothering her, and then she disappeared. Janelle’s a smart girl. She may have planned this to look like an abduction, just to throw us off the track.”

  “My daughter did not plan anything!” Jack flung his chair back and leaped up. “My daughter did not run away!”

  9

  FRANK HEADED OUT to Mount Marcy Community College after his disastrous talk with Jack, hoping to find the librarian who’d helped Janelle with her research on the Bruderhof, or at least find some of the books she’d been using.

  Entering the nondescript beige bunker marked Downing Memorial Library, Frank followed the signs to the reference department and saw a tall, slender woman in a shocking pink dress showing someone how to use the microfiche reader. He could not hear her words, but her face was animated as she turned the knobs of the machine, then gestured over to a row of storage cabinets. The librarian returned to her desk without noticing Frank, then looked straight up at him as she heard him approach. In shock, he took in her face and the nameplate on her desk at the same moment: Penny Stevenson, Ned Stevenson’s wife.

  “Why, Penny,” he stammered, “what the heck are you doing over here? The last time I ran into you, you were waiting tables over at the Trail’s End.”

  Penny waved a long elegant hand, on which a sizable diamond ring slipped and shined. “Oh, that was just a temporary job to keep me out of trouble—my degree is in library science. It drove my father-in-law crazy to have a Stevenson ‘slinging hash’ as he put it”—Penny grinned wickedly—“so in a way, I hated to give up wait-ressing.”

  Frank’s smile broadened in response. For a Stevenson, Penny wasn’t half bad.

  “Mrs. Parkes’s death was a terrible way to get a job,” Penny continued, “but I must say, I love the work.” When Frank looked perplexed she explained in a hushed tone, “Mrs. Parkes, my predecessor, had a heart attack in the stacks in March.”

  Frank groaned to himself. Great—not only did the librarian who probably had helped Janelle not work here anymore, she was no longer even on this earth.

  Penny gave her stylishly bobbed dark hair a toss and evaluated Frank with her slightly almond-shaped eyes. She was not conventionally beautiful; her jaw was a little too strong, her mouth a bit too wide. Using Estelle’s term, Penny was “striking.” “So,” she said, “you must be here to do some research on the Harvey case.”

  Frank coughed. “What makes you say that?”

  A broad smile consumed Penny’s face. “All I hear about at home is how you’re mishandling this case. I’m sure the library is the last place Clyde thinks a cop working on a kidnapping should be; therefore, you’re here.”

  Frank flopped down into a chair and extended his long legs in front of him. Taking Penny into his confidence was probably like a cobra asking a mongoose for help. Still, there was something irresistibly likable about her. On the other hand, she had chosen to marry that pompous ass, Ned, which tended to call her judgment into doubt. But he had no choice but to show his cards; she had called his bluff before he could even offer it.

  “All right, Penny, here’s why I came.” Frank leaned forward and held up his hands, as if to physically ward off the objections he felt sure were to come. “Janelle was working on this paper on utopian religious communities when she disappeared, and I want to check on her sources, and find out more about this group, the Bruderhof. Her friends said Janelle talked to some of them one day, and I want to find out where they’re from.”

  Frank pulled out Janelle’s note cards, and for the next half hour Penny searched out the books and magazine articles Janelle had used, helped Frank make photocopies, and even used her own card to check out some b
ooks for him to take home.

  “Here’s something,” Penny said, reading aloud from a thick book. “Apparently the Hutterites are an outgrowth of the Anabaptists. They’re named after Jakob Hutter—he was burned at the stake in the 1500s.”

  “How does that help us?”

  “This word ‘bruderhof’ means ‘dwelling place of the brothers,’ and that’s what they call their communities. The book indicates there are Hutterite colonies in Montana, South Dakota, and Canada, too.”

  “Anything about a community near here?” Frank asked.

  “Well, let’s keep going and maybe we’ll see.” Penny was on a roll and not about to quit. “Oh, wow, here we go! A guy named Eberhard Arnold wrote some theological books in the 1930s, and that was the foundation of the Bruderhof movement. They’re similar to the Hutterites, in that they both forbid private ownership of property. But the Bruderhof split with the Hutterites in the early 1990s. There are Bruderhofs all over the world, but look at this—a book about Arnold is published at a bruderhof in Silas, New York.”

  “Silas!” Frank sat up from his slouch. He’d passed Silas many times as he drove the Thruway south to Caroline’s house. “That’s what, two, two and a half hours from here?”

  Penny nodded. “You think Janelle is there?”

  “No, don’t get that rumor started.” Frank stood and paced in front of Penny’s desk. “I just want to see if I can find the people who spoke to Janelle. It’s more a matter of eliminating them as a possibility.”

  Penny studied a photo of some Bruderhof women sewing a quilt. “Yeah, they don’t look much like kidnappers.” She smiled up at him. “Don’t worry—I’m not tapped into the Trout Run gossip network. I’m an outsider here too, remember.”

  Frank nodded, but he wasn’t reassured. He didn’t lump Penny in with all the old hens in town, but he couldn’t very well ask her not to mention any of this to Ned. That would look too paranoid. Best to just act casual.

  “Thanks, Penny, I really appreciate the time you’ve taken on this,” he said.

  “No problem. I hope it helps.”

  As Frank reached the door, he impulsively glanced back and saw that Penny was looking at him. “Good luck,” she called, suddenly serious.

  “Thanks. I’ll need it.”

  By the time he got back to the office, the Lambert autopsy report had arrived. As Lew suspected, Lambert had died of a broken neck. Frank waded through the dry medical language of the report, searching for any indication that Lambert had been involved in a struggle, but although the old man had sustained other broken bones in the fall, there were no defensive wounds on his hands or arms, and nothing under his fingernails.

  When Frank reached the portion of the autopsy report that concerned Lambert’s brain, something caught his attention and he reached for the phone. After a protracted period on hold, Dr. Hibbert, the county medical examiner, came on the line. Frank read aloud the part of the report that had confused him. “What exactly does that mean?”

  “Just what it says,” Hibbert answered perversely. “His brain showed signs of a previous major trauma.”

  “Could you tell if he was blind because of that?” Frank asked.

  “Well, it was in the part of the brain that controls vision, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “Lambert was supposedly blinded when he got hit in the head by a wooden beam. I suspect that he might have been faking,” Frank explained. “Could you tell if he really had brain damage that would cause blindness?”

  “Well, his doctors at the time would certainly have been able to tell.” Hibbert went off on a tangent about MRIs and brain scans. “But,” he concluded, “I can’t tell from looking at his corpse.”

  “Is it possible that his sight could have come back, after the initial loss?” Frank continued.

  “Sure, it’s possible. Neurology textbooks are full of miracles.” Hibbert started rambling about the unpredictable regeneration of neural pathways.

  Frank felt a surge of vindication. “Is it likely?” he interrupted.

  “Oh, I wouldn’t go that far. But definitely possible.”

  • • •

  “My cousin Donald and I went to the Mountainside last night,” Earl said, apropos of nothing. Frank didn’t think this required an answer.

  “Ray Stulke was there.”

  “Oh,” Frank murmured, continuing to read a report.

  “He horned in on our darts game.”

  Frank threw down his report. “Do you mind? I’m trying to read.”

  “Sorry.” Earl began to pace around the office, like a cat who hears a mouse in the walls.

  “Willya cut that out! What’s the matter with you?”

  Earl stopped in front of him. “Look, Frank, I just gotta tell you this. I’ve been worried about it all day. Don’t get mad, ’cause I wasn’t blabbing about the case, but Ray started talking about Janelle, and he said something that I think might be important.”

  Ray Stulke was the Mountainside Tavern’s resident lout; twice Earl’s size with half his powers of reasoning. Frank couldn’t imagine a worthwhile contribution from this quarter. “Spit it out, Earl.”

  “Ray started ragging on me, calling me ‘Dick Tracy of the North Country’ and stuff, but I didn’t let him get to me. Finally, he said he knew what happened to Janelle. That she was a real little slut and probably ran off with some guy.”

  “Oh, come on, Earl. That cretin talks that way about all women.”

  “I know, that’s why I kept ignoring him. Finally he said, ‘If you don’t believe me, ask her cousin. Tommy Pettigrew says Janelle’s a whore, sneaking out at night when she’s in heat.’”

  “Ray said that Tommy called his own cousin a whore and said she was sneaking out at night to meet a man?” Frank repeated.

  “Yeah, he said Tommy was sick of his old lady always saying, ‘Why can’t you be good like Janelle.’ He said if her and Jack only knew the truth, they wouldn’t think Janelle was so great.”

  Frank sat twisting the cap on his marker.

  “Well, what do you think?”

  “I think I have to have another talk with Tommy.”

  “Don’t tell him Ray told me and I told you!”

  “Don’t worry, Earl. We have to approach this carefully. Very carefully.”

  10

  FRANK SPED SOUTH on the Thruway toward Silas in his pickup, listening to Patsy Cline. Free of billboards and fast-food joints and even other cars, the highway was a joy to drive: smooth, and for a mountain road, surprisingly straight.

  Maybe he really would find her today at the bruderhof. It wasn’t totally out of the question. From what he’d read in the books Penny had found for him, they certainly didn’t appear sinister in any way. But maybe Janelle had convinced them she needed refuge and they had offered it. If she were there, how easy would it be to get her back?

  He had dressed in khakis and a plaid shirt. He’d see how far he could get posing as someone interested in the community. If he had to, he could always pull out his I.D. About twenty miles after leaving the highway, Frank saw a large wooden sign announcing the Silas bruderhof.

  He started up the small paved road, expecting at any moment to be stopped by a chain or a guard house. But he was able to drive all the way up to a cluster of large, freshly painted buildings before a middle-aged, bearded man in a bright blue shirt and suspenders hailed him with a friendly wave.

  “Hello, there. Can I help you?”

  “Well, I sure hope so!” Frank offered his best midwestern farm boy smile. “I’ve been having quite a time trying to find this book on Eberhard Arnold. Someone told me you publish it here. Am I in the right place?”

  “Oh, yes indeed! Park over there and we’ll walk to the publishing office. You are interested in the life and work of Eberhard Arnold?” his guide, who introduced himself as Henry Bruckner, asked eagerly.

  “The book’s not actually for me. It’s for my brother, Bill. He’s a pastor out in Missouri; teaches theology at
a small Lutheran college,” Frank said, blithely appropriating the life of his erstwhile neighbor in Kansas City. “Bill’s very interested in the Bruderhof movement. He’s been telling me about your communities. This is quite a place you’ve got here.”

  Frank looked around with unabashed curiosity as Henry led him down a wide, grassy path toward a white and blue frame building. Everyone they passed seemed to be busy with something: two women carried a huge basket of laundry between them; another woman supervised a group of children who had been berry picking; some men in the distance were working in a large vegetable garden. All the buildings were plain, but in good repair.

  Henry smiled bashfully. “Yes, visitors are often surprised at the size and prosperity of our community.” They had reached the blue and white building, and Henry stepped forward to open the door. “Here we are at the publishing office.”

  Inside, Frank was startled to see several women sitting in front of computers—typical office workers in every respect but one. Like all the women he had seen so far, they wore identical black and white polka-dotted head-scarves, and shapeless, calf-length dresses. They worked steadily, uninterested in their visitor, while Henry went back among the racks of books and pamphlets in search of the volume Frank had requested.

  When he returned, Frank feigned enthusiasm as he forked over eight dollars for the book, which featured a dour old German man and his wife on the cover. As they left the building, a loud bell started to toll.

  “It is lunch time,” Henry announced. “Perhaps you would like to be our guest in the dining hall?”

  “Thanks, I’d love to,” Frank said, amazed at his luck. All over the bruderhof, people poured out of buildings and headed toward the large dining hall at the center of the complex. A great place to check for Janelle.

  Inside the cavernous building rows of long tables filled quickly with an orderly procession of Bruderhof members. Except for the youngest children, all the girls and women wore those scarves. A sea of black and white heads bobbed up and down over white blouses or gingham dresses. It was amazing how the headgear made all the women, regardless of age or coloring, look virtually identical. Frank scanned the room, on the off chance that he would see the fringe of Janelle’s strawberry blond bangs under a babushka.