Dead Drift: three small town murder mysteries (Frank Bennett Adirondack Mountain Mystery Series Book 4)

by S. W. Hubbard

  As if on cue, Earl came charging out the office door, drawing up short at the sight of his boss. “Wow, what timing! I thought I was going to have to go out on this call alone.”

  Frank detected a note of disappointment. There was a time when he wouldn’t have let his civilian assistant handle a stray dog call on his own, but the kid had come a long way in two years. Earl was studying at the Police Academy now, and by next year he’d been sworn in as an officer. As long as this call wasn’t dangerous, Frank was happy to let Earl take it.

  “Roy Corvin’s been shot!” Earl practically bounced with excitement. He hadn’t quite mastered a cop’s unflappable detachment.

  “Hunting accident?”

  Earl pulled a face. “Roy Corvin’s no hunter. More likely he pissed someone off.”

  Frank got back in the patrol car, waiting for Earl to buckle in before flipping on the siren and peeling out of the lot. “Which way?”

  “Roy rents that little house behind Bill McKenna’s machine shop out on Ridge Road.” Earl was a human MapQuest for Trout Run, able to provide not only addresses and directions for every home in town, but also complete background information on every resident.

  “Roy Corvin was way ahead of me in school,” he continued. “But he never graduated. Dropped out and couldn’t hold a job. Finally he joined the Army, but he was back home in four months. Claimed he had bad hearing in one ear, but I bet he got thrown out.”

  “The Army needs every warm body they can get these days. They’re willing to overlook quite a few problems.”

  “Army didn’t even want Roy for defusing roadside bombs. That says a lot.”

  Frank took his eyes off the road for a moment to look at his assistant. It wasn’t like Earl to be so negative. This must be personal.

  “What’d Roy Corvin ever do to you?”

  Earl turned his head toward the window. Gazing at Whiteface shrouded in clouds, or Stony Brook winding through a stand of white birch could be irresistible, even to a native, but at this particular moment they were passing Al’s Sunoco.

  “Earl?”

  “My cousin Ruthann dated him for a while. Got taken in by his looks. Let’s just say it wasn’t a happy time for anyone in the family.”

  “Abusive?”

  “First Ruthann stopped coming to family parties. Then my Uncle Dave spotted her at the supermarket with a black eye. A couple of us paid Roy a little visit. Now Ruthann is engaged to a schoolteacher from Saranac Lake.”

  Frank slapped the edge of the steering wheel. “Earl, I’m warning you, when you become a sworn law enforcement officer, you can’t take part in these family vengeance operations. ‘Protect and Serve’ is our motto, not ‘Judge and Punish.’ Roy is the victim here.” Frank pulled up beside an ambulance parked in front of Roy Corvin’s house. “Keep an open mind.”

  Two members of the rescue squad carried a stretcher toward them. A young man, his face starkly pale against his dark hair and red-soaked shirt, lay limp as the third member of the team labored over him. “Looks like the bullet collapsed his right lung,” the paramedic said. “He’s in shock--lost a lot of blood. We have to get on the road.”

  The ambulance took off as Frank and Earl turned toward the house. Bill from the machine shop waited for them on the porch. He didn’t need questions to get him talking.

  “I was working on a lawnmower engine when I thought I heard a shot. Then I heard a car tearing out. By the time I got outside, the car was over the crest of the hill. Roy didn’t answer the door, so I went in.” He paused for a breath. “Roy was layin’ on the kitchen floor, a hole in his chest. I called you guys ad did what I could to help him.” He looked down at his hands, back with grease and red with blood.

  “Did he say who did it?” Frank asked.

  “His lips moved a little, then he passed out.” Bill shook his head. “I don’t know ‘bout Roy. For a while he was working regular over at the lumberyard, but lately he’s been home all day and out all night. Two months behind on his rent. Now this.”

  Frank thanked Bill and sent him on his way before he and Earl entered the house. Passing through the beer can-strewn living room, they stopped at the door to the kitchen. Blood had pooled in a low spot on the cracked linoleum floor. A chair lay on its side, drawers and cabinets hung open, papers and food wrappers covered every level surface. It was hard to tell if the place had been ransacked or if this was the usual state of Roy’s housekeeping. Frank picked his way carefully through the mess, his eye drawn by a spot of orange plastic on the table.

  A prescription pill bottle, empty. He used the tip of a pencil to roll it over and read the label aloud. “OxyContin.”

  “That’s a powerful narcotic,” Earl volunteered, having recently aced an exam on drugs of abuse.

  “Prescribed for a Marcus Philhower,” Frank said.

  “We prayed for him in church last week. He’s got liver cancer.”

  Frank sighed. “Nice. Roy stole a dying man’s painkillers, then someone popped him to steal them again.”

  Earl did not say “I told you so.” Didn’t even smirk. More and more these days, Frank thought the kid had the makings of a damn good cop.

  Earl hung up the phone and spun around on his desk chair as Frank returned from canvassing Corvin’s neighbors. “Mrs. Philhower didn’t even notice the OxyContin was gone. Her husband’s on morphine now.”

  “Interesting,” Frank said. “I wonder if Roy knew the drugs wouldn’t be missed?”

  “Mrs. Philhower says she doesn’t know Roy. She was a little freaked out thinking that he came right into her husband’s room to steal the stuff.”

  “I suppose she leaves her doors unlocked like everyone else in Trout Run.” Frank stuck his hands in his pockets and jingled his change, pacing the office as he thought aloud. “Roy could have taken the drugs himself, but maybe he had an accomplice. I don’t suppose you know which unlucky lady took your cousin’s place in Roy’s affections?”

  “No, but I can ask the bartenders at the Mountainside. Roy’s a regular.”

  “Good. The hospital will call us when Roy’s able to talk. No one on Ridge Road saw or heard anything. What about Roy’s parents?”

  “His dad was killed in a motorcycle accident when he was a baby, then his mom ran off with another guy and left him with his grandparents, Deke and Connie Steuben.”

  Frank looked up a number, reached for the phone, and dialed. After a moment he announced, “No answer. They’re probably over at the hospital with Roy.”

  Frank’s brow wrinkled as his fingers touched something strange in his pocket. He pulled out the locket. “Here’s another mystery for you, Earl. Do you recognize these people?”

  Earl studied the picture. “Don’t know the guy. There’s something kinda familiar about the woman, but her face is blurry. Where’d you get it?”

  Frank explained Ardyth’s discovery. “She wants me to keep it here while she runs a lost-and-found ad in the Herald. I’d better tell Doris, in case someone really does call.”

  Frank took the locket to the secretary’s desk in the outer office. Doris immediately put aside her filing for this far more interesting project.

  “Hmmm. I don’t recognize them, but the guy’s awful handsome.” She ran her rough fingers over the gold. ”This sure is beautiful. Expensive too. Ardyth is right—I can’t throw it in the lost and found box.”

  Frank peered into the overflowing bin behind her desk. “Why don’t you get rid of some of that stuff, Doris? Face it—tourists who left their gloves here during the ’80 Winter Olympics aren’t coming back for them.”

  “None of it’s that old, Frank. Why, I didn’t even start the lost and found until ’86…or was it ’88?”

  “Doris,” Frank warned.

  “All right, I guess I could give some of the stuff on the bottom to the church clothing bank.”

  “Great idea.” Frank returned to his office and left her to her new assignment. Half an hour later, Doris appeared in front of him, a loaded
shopping bag in one hand and a little yellow rain slicker printed with green frogs in the other.

  “I’m going to take this bag over to the church now,” Doris said, “But I was wondering about this coat. It’s Hanna Anderson…”

  “So if you know it belongs to Hanna, call her mom to come get it.” Why Doris needed him to authorize the simplest phone call was beyond Frank.

  “No, no—Hanna Anderson is the designer who makes it. Her stuff is so cute, but it’s awful expensive.” She stopped and looked at the coat longingly.

  Frank took a deep breath. “What are you getting at, Doris?”

  “I was just wondering…well…” She spit the rest out in a rush, “if you thought it would be okay to give this coat to my granddaughter, Julie.”

  “Sure. Go ahead.”

  “Really? Because I don’t want to do anything dishonest. Maybe I should wait another year.”

  Do not yell. Do not yell. She can’t help herself. “Give it to her now, Doris. She’s not going to want it when she goes off to college.”

  “Oh, Frank! You’re such a card. You make me laugh all the time.”

  Frank massaged his temples. “Yeah, same here.”

  “I hope we have better luck finding the owner of that locket.” Doris pointed to the puddle of gold on Frank’s desk blotter. “You’d better not leave it lying around.”

  He pulled his keys from his pocket and looked at Earl and Doris. “Remember, if someone actually comes to claim the necklace, they have to describe it to get it. I’m locking it up in my top desk drawer, right in the petty cash box.”

  “Roy Corvin’s taken a turn for the worse,” Frank reported as Earl came into the office the next morning. “He picked up an infection in his good lung. He’s on a respirator, under heavy sedation.”

  “That’s one way to get your drugs.” Earl handed Frank a cup of coffee, a sweet roll, a quarter and a dime. “They were out of jelly donuts so I had to get you a Danish. That’s why your change is only thirty-five cents.”

  “Good choice. Did you get to the Mountainside last night?”

  “Yeah, I took Molly over there for a drink, and—”

  “Molly? Molly Lynch?” Frank whistled. Molly was a cute little college girl who wouldn’t have given Earl a second glance a few months ago. “Man, you’re a regular babe magnet since you enrolled in the Police Academy. Just wait until you get your badge and gun.”

  Earl’s grin teetered between shy and smug. “So anyway, the bartender says Roy was hooked up with Tiffany Kass. Guess what she does for a living?”

  “Cleaning lady? Home health aide?”

  Earl shot a rubber band at his boss. “Bingo. I stopped in at the Philhowers’ this morning. Tiffany’s been working there three days a week for the past month. Mrs. P says she wasn’t crazy about her, but she needed the help.”

  “Outstanding, Earl.” Frank downed the last sugary bite of his breakfast. There was a time when Earl wouldn’t have shown the initiative to substitute a Danish for a donut. Now he was following up on leads and asking all the right questions. “Let’s go pay a call on this little angel of mercy. If Roy dies, we’ve got a murder investigation on our hands.”

  Tiffany Kass lived with her mother and sister and a passel of kids of various ages. The house slumped as if one good Adirondack snowstorm would flatten it, but since it was still standing in May, Frank figured it was good for another six months. Tiffany herself was not bad looking, if you could get past the dark roots and unicorn tattoo. She sat at her sticky kitchen table radiating resentment.

  “I don’t know nuthin’ about it.”

  “Let me refresh your memory,” Frank said. “You were working as a home health aide for the Philhowers. You took a prescription bottle of OxyContin from the nightstand in Mr. Philhower’s bedroom and gave it to your boyfriend, Roy Corvin. That’s a felony.”

  Tiffany picked at a crusty clot of dried breakfast cereal. “You can’t prove that.”

  Frank leaned across the table, forcing eye contact. “You know what, Tiffany? I don’t have to prove it. All I have to do is tell your probation officer you’ve been associating with a known drug user.” Frank shot a look at a T-shirt clad toddler waddling by with a sodden diaper drooping nearly to her knees. “And the child welfare department might be interested in hearing about it too.”

  Tiffany tapped into a hidden reserve of energy. “You leave that bitch social worker out of this! I’m not losing my kids ‘cause a Roy Corvin.”

  “Then talk. I know you were in Elizabethtown meeting with your probation officer at the time Roy was shot. Who else knew he had those drugs?”

  Tiffany shrugged. “There was only a few left in the bottle. Roy wasn’t about to share them.”

  “How about selling them? Does he have regular customers?”

  Tiffany shook her head. “Roy’s not into dealing. You gotta be able to collect enough from everyone to pay your supplier. Roy got messed up with that once. He don’t do it no more.”

  “So who had a beef with Roy? Who could have shot him?”

  “Roy’s had fights with half the guys at the Mountainside. And he’s screwed half the girls. Go talk to them about it.”

  Tiffany rose and took a sudden interest in cleaning the kitchen. Frank thought the clatter of dishes flung into the sink very effectively masked her sniffling. “Was there another woman, Tiffany?” he asked gently.

  “Some chick I don’t know. He’d sit around waiting for her to call.” Tiffany snorted. “Not that he could’ve been doing much with her, loaded up on painkillers like he was. I shoulda stolen him some Viagra.”

  The toddler reappeared and wrapped her arms around her mother’s leg. Tiffany scooped her up. “I really don’t care who shot him. I’m done with Roy Corvin.”

  “What do you think?” Frank asked Earl when they were back in the patrol car. “Does Roy really not have enough ambition to sell pills?”

  “I think Tiffany’s right—you have to be able to manage accounts to have regular customers. But that doesn’t mean Roy wouldn’t sell a pill or two to another druggie.”

  “I think I’ll pay a visit to the Moutainside tonight,” Frank said. “In the meantime, let’s call on the grandparents.”

  The Steubens’ house wasn’t any bigger than Tiffany’s, bit it was light years apart in atmosphere. Cheerful clumps of daffodils lined the walk, a U.S. flag snapped smartly in the breeze, and a “Welcome Friends” plaque hung over a woodpecker-shaped door knocker. Before Frank could bang the beak, the door opened.

  “Saw you coming.” Deke Steuben, still powerfully built although well into retirement, ushered them into the immaculate living room. “Have a seat.” He pointed Frank and Earl toward the floral sofa draped with a zigzag afghan. “I suppose this is about Roy.”

  “Yes.” Frank glanced around. “Is your wife home too?”

  “Nah, Connie’s still at the hospital.” Deke ran a big paw over his silver crew cut. “I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to come home.”

  “I’m sorry for your trouble, Deke. We’re working hard to find out who did this.”

  Deke looked away, his eyes blinking hard. “What difference does it make? Roy’s always mixed up with the wrong kind of people. You lock this one up, someone else will come along to take his place.”

  Frank exchanged a glance with Earl. You might expect that kind of despair from a resident of a housing project in the Bronx, but it wasn’t typical in Trout Run. “We’re hoping you can tell us about Roy’s friends, men and women. Especially if there are any you know who are drug users.”

  Deke snorted. “I imagine all of them are. I don’t want to know his so-called friends or the sluts he sleeps with. Last winter we sent Roy to one of those clinics where they get you off the drugs. It cost a fortune. But it seemed like money well spent because he came back here and got a job and everything was great. Didn’t last, though. By March it all started again—the late night calls begging Connie for money, the lumberyard calling here when Roy didn’
t show up for work.”

  Deke nodded toward a cabinet in the corner. “He even stole one of my guns. That was the last straw. I changed the locks on the doors, and now I keep this place bolted up like we live in goddam Detroit. I told Connie we’re not giving him one more penny, I don’t care if he’s starving.”

  They sat in silence for a moment. But Deke wasn’t done. He seemed relieved to abandon his North Country stoicism. Frank and Earl already knew the worst, so why not share everything? “You see that picture?” Deke pointed to a wall covered with framed photos interspersed with mounted deer antlers. Near the center was a picture of a little boy in a bow tie holding a trumpet. “That’s Roy in fifth grade when he had a solo with the school band and won a prize. I swear that’s the last time he ever did anything we could be proud of.”

  Deke shook his head. “Right after that was when our daughter Theresa, Roy’s mother, disappeared for good. She left Roy with us and she never came back.”

  “Did you try to track her down?” Frank asked.

  “Oh, yeah—for years. But it was too hard on Connie and Roy. Finally I said we just had to put it behind us. That’s why Connie’s always been soft on Roy, making excuses for him. She feels like she failed with Theresa. But none of the others turned out bad.” He gestured back to the wall, where young women in graduation gowns and wedding gowns beamed. “We have two other daughters, Nancy and Karen. They’re great girls, married nice fellas, had kids who all went to college and got good jobs. Only Roy. Only Roy has these terrible problems.”

  Deke leaned back in his recliner, his eyes still focused on the wall of photos, his mind somewhere far in the past. Frank could see he would be of no further use to them. He rose to go, nudging Earl, who also sat staring at the wall.

  “You take care, Deke. We’ll keep you posted on what we find.”

  Deke struggled to get up from his chair, his hands trembling. “Whatever it is, it won’t be good.”

  “You’re awfully quiet, “ Frank said after they had driven halfway back to the office without Earl saying a word.