Take the Bait

by S. W. Hubbard

  “That’s our only hope. It helps that the truck is brand-new. At least they won’t have to sift through a decade’s worth of dirt.” Frank sank into a glum reverie.

  “Hey, Frank?” Earl broke the long silence as he parked the patrol car in front of the office. “Maybe it’s not so safe that Ned’s over at the hospital with Penny. Couldn’t he, uh, pull her plugs or something?”

  “Oh, shit! You’re right, Earl.”

  But when Frank called the hospital, the ICU nurse assured him that there had been no change in Penny’s condition. She was still alive, although just barely. She also reported that Ned and his mother had left an hour ago to go home for a much-needed rest.

  “Just one more thing,” Frank said to the nurse. “Is there always a nurse able to see Penny at all times?”

  “We’re watching her very closely, sir,” the nurse replied patiently, used to dealing with distraught relatives.

  “I know, but if her respirator stopped or her intravenous…fell out…you’d know that right away?”

  “Yes, sir, all the patients’ monitors are right here at the nurses’ station.”

  “Good, good. Thanks.”

  Frank hung up and began explaining to Earl as he dialed again. “I’ll call Meyerson and he’ll have to arrange for the Vermont state police to send someone over to the hospital. It could take a while.”

  “But if Ned’s on his way back here, it would take him two hours to get back over there again, even if he didn’t stop to rest,” Earl said.

  “If he really is headed back here,” Frank replied.

  It took nearly half an hour of discussion and explanation with Lieutenant Meyerson to arrange for the forensics team to examine the vehicles at Al’s, and to set up the guard at the hospital. When he finally finished, Frank stood up and reached for his hat.

  “Where are you going?” Earl asked.

  “I think I’m going to stop in and see Ned.”

  26

  THE STEVENSON FAMILY owned a large tract of land behind the lumberyard, and all along the road that bisected it were the homes of various Stevensons. Ned and Penny lived in the original stone house, a rambling two-story affair with a wraparound porch. Anticipating the day when stairs would become a problem, Clyde and Elinor had built themselves a brand-new ranch house next door. Across the way lived Clyde’s sister, and quite a few of her many children had built homes farther down the road.

  Frank sat in the patrol car for a moment, staring at the row of Stevenson mailboxes by the edge of the road. Poor Penny had been attracted by all this togetherness, thinking she’d finally found the family she longed for. He only hoped that longing wouldn’t be the death of her.

  Frank walked up to the front door and leaned on the bell. There was no response from within, but Ned’s Jeep was in the driveway, so he had apparently told the nurse the truth. Frank pressed on the bell again and heard the old-fashioned chimes reverberate. The curtains on one of the front windows moved, and Frank saw the face of a black cat staring out at him. A moment later, the front door opened.

  Ned stood before him, red-eyed and unshaven, wearing sweatpants and a T-shirt.

  “Did I wake you, Ned? Sorry about that,” Frank said as he walked in without waiting for an invitation.

  Ned’s eyes narrowed in irritation, but he smiled nevertheless. “I just got back from the hospital. I was up all night. The nurses told me to get some rest. They’ll call if there’s any change.”

  Frank marched through the front hall and headed for a big overstuffed chair in the living room. Ned had no choice but to follow.

  “It’s too bad Penny didn’t have her seat belt on,” Frank commented as he plopped himself down. “She might have come through the crash with hardly a scratch.”

  Ned nodded sadly.

  “I’m surprised she wasn’t wearing it. Seems to me whenever I saw Penny driving, she always had it on,” Frank continued.

  “Usually she did. The one night she was careless, was the night she really needed it.”

  “So you think she was just careless?” Frank asked. “Is there any chance the seat belt wasn’t working?”

  Ned seemed to grow more alert. “She never mentioned she was having problems. Although, come to think of it, I remember reading something about a seat belt recall in certain Japanese cars.”

  “Well, we’ll just have the state police mechanics look at it. You might have grounds for a lawsuit there. Not that any amount of money could compensate you if Penny didn’t pull through this,” Frank added.

  Ned’s hand tightened on the sofa cushion. Just then, a white cat came charging into the room and leaped into Ned’s lap. In a reflexive motion, Ned flung the cat away from him. It landed next to its black compatriot, and both animals stood eyeing their owner malevolently.

  Ned gave an edgy little laugh. “I guess Yin and Yang are trying to tell me they’re hungry. Penny always feeds them. She’s had them for years.”

  “They say animals can tell when something’s not right,” Frank said as he rose from his chair. “I don’t know if I believe that, though, do you?”

  Ned glanced out the window at a passing car rather than meet Frank’s eyes. “Beats me. Was there anything else?”

  “Yeah, just one little thing. You know George Fisk’s truck was stolen out of your parking lot yesterday afternoon. It’s turned up again, so I doubt George will press charges. But I really ought to find out who did it. Talk to them, shake them up a little. You wouldn’t happen to have noticed anyone around his truck, would you?”

  Ned was headed purposefully toward the door. “No, I didn’t. I don’t spend much time looking out the window when I’m at work.”

  “Of course not.” Frank stood on the threshold as Ned held the door for him. “Stick close to home, Ned. Get some rest. You don’t look so good.”

  Frank pulled away from the Stevensons’ and headed over to Al’s Sunoco to check on the forensics team. He might never get the evidence he needed to convict Ned, but at least he’d had the satisfaction of watching him squirm.

  When he arrived, the garage was a hornet’s nest of police activity. Al had been unceremoniously barred from his own workplace and stood by the gas pumps, complaining to anyone who would listen. Frank looked for Meyerson to give him an update.

  “There are definite signs of damage to Penny’s seat belt that wouldn’t be caused by normal wear and tear,” Meyerson reported. “Now the men are going through the truck.”

  Al’s workbench was covered with sealed plastic bags, each containing some crumb or fiber or speck from George’s truck. Frank stood around watching, knowing he was just in the way, but reluctant to leave.

  He heard footsteps behind him and turned to see Meyerson returning from the rest room. “What’s that all over the back of your pants, Frank?” Meyerson asked.

  Frank looked down. Intermingled black and white cat hair clung to his beige pants. Yin and Yang had apparently been sitting in the same chair he had chosen at Ned’s house. Frank brushed at his pants in irritation, then stopped and swiftly reached out to grab a clump of the fluff as it floated through the air. His smile soon turned into a full-fledged laugh as he scanned the plastic bags of evidence.

  “Cat hairs, Lew,” Frank said as he held a bag up for inspection. “Ned may have a little trouble explaining how fur from Yin and Yang got into George Fisk’s brand-new truck.”

  Arresting the scion of Trout Run’s leading family for murder and attempted murder was not a matter to be undertaken lightly. Frank spent the next day preparing to strike.

  He spoke to Janelle again to confirm that she had told Ned, and no one else, about Tommy’s secret hiding place, and also that she had given Ned the excerpt from Madame Bovary as a love note. He verified that Jack, Dorothy, Dennis Treve, and even Tommy’s boyhood friends never knew the location of Tommy’s hideout. He clarified that George Fisk had never given any member of the Stevenson family, or anyone who’d ever been in Ned and Penny’s house, a ride in his week-old tr
uck. Then, when he was certain he had all his ducks in a row, he got a search warrant to seize Ned’s computer and sent in auditors to review the books at Stevenson’s Lumberyard.

  After two days of agonized waiting—two days that Frank had spent holed up in his office, refusing to offer explanations; two days that Ned spent under the watchful eyes of the state police—Frank had what he needed to make his arrest.

  Walking into Stevenson’s Lumberyard and uttering the words, “Ned Stevenson, you’re under arrest for the murder of Tommy Pettigrew and the attempted murder of your wife, Penny,” had been a moment of pure vindication for Frank. Ned, of course, had known this was coming, had even hired the lawyer Peter Stratton to represent him. Still, Frank had the pleasure of seeing the flicker of panic in Ned’s eyes when the words were spoken. After all, no rich white man with an Ivy League MBA ever expects to be led off in handcuffs, no matter what he’s done.

  Now Frank, Ned, and Stratton sat in Frank’s office reviewing the evidence. Ned was no more ruffled than he would have been if Earl had pulled him over in the speed trap. Frank had an annoying tickle in the back of his throat from breathing in the fumes of Stratton’s high-priced aftershave.

  “Ned, the audit reveals that Stevenson’s went from profits of three hundred thousand dollars last year to losses of more than two hundred and fifty thousand dollars this year,” Frank began.

  “If overexpansion and ill-conceived stock market investments were a crime, Chief Bennett, half the executives in America would be behind bars,” Stratton said without lifting his head from a file folder he’d opened. “Tell us what else you’ve got.”

  Frank continued to direct his comments to Ned. “You were having an affair with Janelle Harvey and you didn’t want Penny to find out. She told you where Tommy was hiding. No one else knew.”

  “It’s her word against my client’s, Bennett, and the young lady’s recent exploits would lead me to say she’s not a very reliable witness,” Stratton replied.

  Ned stretched out his legs and smiled slightly.

  Frank took a long drink from a glass of water on his desk. “How did cat hairs from your client’s cat get into the truck that ran Penny off the road?” he demanded.

  “Ned’s office is full of cat hair. Fisk probably picked it up in there.”

  “You’re not suggesting Fisk tried to kill Penny!” Frank said.

  “It’s not my job to find out who did do it; only to prove my client didn’t. I think we need to start talking to the D.A. about reducing these charges,” Stratton said as he began to pack up his briefcase.

  Stratton was a cool character. He was bluffing, Frank knew, but he thought he was winning the war of intimidation. So far.

  “Just one more thing needs explaining, Mr. Stratton,” Frank said. “You remember that ransom note that I thought your other client, Mr. Klein, wrote? Well, I was sure wrong about that. Because our investigators found the computer document of that note on Ned’s computer.”

  Ned sat straight up. “But I deleted it!” he shouted. Then he clapped his hand over his mouth.

  “Shut up, Ned!” Stratton barked.

  “Geez, I’m not one much for computers,” Frank said, “but even I know that when you delete a file, it just goes to the trash can. You forgot to empty the trash, Ned.”

  And that’s when Ned started to cry.

  27

  FRANK APPROACHED THE DOORWAY of his office. Earl sat with his back to him, feet propped on the windowsill. He knew if he spoke Earl’s name now, the kid would leap up in guilt, and that’s not the way he wanted to start this conversation. So he backed out past Doris’s empty desk—really, that woman must have the weakest bladder in the North Country—and reentered the building, slamming the door and whistling “A Mighty Fortress Is our God.” When he reached the office door this time, Earl was typing a report, both feet flat on the floor.

  “Morning, Earl.”

  “Morning.” Earl stopped typing, then with a deep sigh, resumed his two-fingered dance with the keyboard.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Earl peered up through his bangs. “Nothing. Things just seem—”

  “A little dull, now the Harvey case is closed,” Frank finished Earl’s sentence. “I know what you mean. The whole time we were working on it, all I wanted was for it to be over. Now that it is, I’m a little let down. Kind of like the day after Christmas.”

  “I guess, but—” Earl looked away.

  “But what?”

  “Nothing.”

  Frank walked over to the window and looked out. Behind him, the computer keys began to click again. “Earl,” Frank began, his eyes still riveted to the unremarkable sight of Augie Enright putting up this week’s sermon title in the church signboard. “I want to thank you for all the work you did on the Harvey case. I couldn’t have closed it without you.”

  The typing stopped.

  Frank turned around, expecting to see Earl’s sweet, goofy smile. Instead the kid looked as foul tempered as a Thruway toll-taker on Labor Day weekend.

  “You’re just saying that to be nice. I’ll never be a real cop. I’ll just be your, your sidekick”—he spit the word out with surprising vehemence—“forever.”

  Frank didn’t know what the right response to that was supposed to be. He’d kind of assumed Earl wanted to be his sidekick forever—this was the first he’d heard of grander ambitions. “Well,” he ventured, “you could be a real cop. Of course, you’d have to go to the Police Academy.”

  “You think I don’t know that?” Earl snapped. “I can’t get in.”

  “Can’t get in? Why not?”

  “Because I’m too dumb!” Earl yelled in the tone that Frank usually used on him. “I flunked the entrance test, all right?”

  “Wait a minute, you’re telling me you’ve already applied to the State Police Academy and you failed the test? When was this?”

  “Back in February.”

  “This past February? How come you didn’t mention it?”

  Earl shrugged. “I thought you’d laugh.”

  Frank sank into his chair. Is that what Earl thought of him? That he was the kind of man who would mock another person’s dreams?

  “Earl,” the word came out choked. “Earl,” he began again, “I would never laugh at you. I’m very impressed that you want to do this.”

  “Yeah, well, it doesn’t matter ’cause it’s not going to happen. I can’t get in.”

  “Earl, lots of people flunk these tests the first time they take them.”

  “Did you?” Earl demanded.

  “Well, no. But that was years ago. They’re harder now,” Frank improvised. “Look, you can take it again.”

  “What’s the point? I’d just flunk again.”

  “Not if I prepped you for the test, you wouldn’t. I’ll help you study.”

  For the first time in this whole crazy exchange, Earl looked him straight in the eye. “You’d do that for me?”

  “Yes. I would really like to—if you can put up with me. Okay?”

  Finally, that loopy grin. “Okay.”

  Frank knew it was a bad time to be going to the Store, but the magnetic pull of the coffeepot reeled him in.

  The morning meeting of the Coffee Club was in full swing. Augie Enright pulled up a chair, and Reid Burlingame patted it invitingly. “Come join us, Frank. Have a donut.”

  There was no avoiding it. Frank sat down and prepared to be grilled.

  “When do you think Ned’s case will come to trial, Frank?” Bart Riddle asked.

  “The D.A.’s ready. But Ned’s hired the lawyer who was up here when we arrested that hiker. He’s filed for all sorts of extensions, so it’ll probably be a few more months.”

  “I hear Clyde didn’t want to put up the bail money, but Elinor made him. They say he’s plenty pissed off, now that he got Bertha back in to go through the books. Apparently the lumberyard is one hundred thousand dollars in the red,” offered Augie.

  “I heard it was more lik
e a quarter of a million,” contradicted Bill Feeson.

  “Plenty of talk that Stevenson’s will have to close down,” Augie said.

  This is what Frank had dreaded. He knew most of Trout Run would rather have a murderer walking free among them than lose the three hundred-odd jobs that the lumberyard provided. If Stevenson’s closed its doors, somehow Frank would be blamed, not Ned.

  “That’s nonsense.” Reid banged his coffee cup for emphasis. “I want you to nip that rumor whenever you hear it. I’ve talked to Clyde myself, and he assures me that Stevenson’s can pull through this.”

  Augie knew when he had been rebuked. “So, Frank, have you heard from Penny?”

  “Yes. They moved her to a rehab facility. She had some nerve damage to her left leg, but she should be walking fine soon. Then I think she’ll move to New York City. She oughta be a whole lot safer there.”

  “Will she testify at the trial?”

  “She’ll be able to state that the truck intentionally ran her off the road. She didn’t see who was driving.”

  “So it all hangs on the cat hair, and that computer file thing, huh?” Bart inquired. “Think that’s enough to get a conviction?”

  “On the attempted murder charge, yeah. On Tommy’s murder…” Frank shrugged. “It’s all still circumstantial. It depends on the jury.” The trouble was, Ned didn’t look like a murderer. The jury might think the evidence was sufficient to convict the kind of man you’d cross the street to avoid on a dark night, but not to put away a clean-cut young businessman like Ned. Frank stared at his companions. He wondered if anyone at that table would have the guts to vote to convict Ned Stevenson.

  “Attempted murder—that’ll only get him a few years. He’ll be out by the time Clyde’s ready to retire,” Bill scoffed.

  “He might get out, but I doubt he’ll have the nerve to come back to Trout Run,” Reid said. “However the trial turns out, I think that’s the last we’ll see of Ned Stevenson.”

  “And to think the whole thing started with Janelle Harvey disappearing. Who woulda thought that Ned and little Janelle…” Augie began.