The Lure: a small town murder mystery (Frank Bennett Adirondack Mountain Mystery Series Book 2)

by S. W. Hubbard

  “Humpf,” said Augie, before the door had fully swung shut. “I guess some people think they’re too important to even say hello to folks.”

  “He’s always like that,” Rita said. “As many times as he’s been in here, he looks right through me like he’s never seen me before. And his daughter’s just as bad.”

  “I guess she must be adopted,” Augie speculated. “I seen the wife a few times and she’s not oriental. You can get lots of girl babies over there in China, you know, but they won’t give up any of their boys. Guess Mr. Extrom’ll have to go somewhere else if he wants a son.”

  Frank sat up and took interest in Augie’s prattle for the first time since he’d started talking, but the handyman was already on a new tack. He turned his attention to the fliers taped up in the window. “I hear that garage sale at the Feeney’s this Saturday is really going to be something. But some of these signs are awful old.” Augie pulled down a yellow one with musical notes floating across it. “Don’t need this anymore. The summer concert series is over.”

  Frank picked it up. He’d enjoyed the concerts, when everyone brought their lawn chairs to the green and listened to performers in the Gazebo, ate pie and coffee at intermission, and heard the last notes die away in the dark. “Some of those concerts were really good. I liked those four girls who sang in close harmony.” He was willing to chat if it wasn’t about his work.

  “Yeah, they’ve gotten a lot better since Constance Stiler came back and took over organizing them.”

  “What do you mean ‘came back and took over’?”

  “Constance Stiler’s a local girl. She and her husband were both from Keene Valley. But they moved away for better jobs years ago. Then they came back after he retired, and she started organizing the concerts. She gets musicians from all over. But who knows if she’ll do it for much longer.”

  “Why not?”

  “Her husband’s really failing. If he dies, maybe she’ll go live near her kids. ‘Course, she’s friends with a lot of ladies at the church. And she does have her job.”

  “Job? I thought they were retired?” Frank asked.

  Augie leaned forward confidingly. “No sooner did he stop working than he got that Parkinson’s disease. Insurance don’t pay for all the special medicine he needs, so she went back to work part time. She’s a nurse over at the Cascade Clinic.”

  Now Augie had his full attention. “Really?”

  “They say she practically runs the place. They’d take her on full time but she don’t want to be away from her husband all day, every day.”

  “Understandable,” Frank murmured. It looked like another visit to the Clinic was in order.

  Augie sighed. “It’s sad. You make plans and sometimes life just don’t cooperate.”

  Frank closed his eyes briefly and saw Estelle at the piano, Caroline tossing him a Frisbee, the command room at the precinct house. “You can say that again.”

  Leaving the Store, Frank nearly tripped over a bundle on the steps. The bundle raised its head.

  “Why, hello, Olivia. What are you doing out here?”

  “No school today. Waitin’ for my uncle to pick me up.”

  “Where is he?”

  She shrugged. “The Mountainside, probably.”

  This could be a long wait, and it was getting gray and cold. “You can’t stay out here in that thin jacket. Why don’t you go inside and wait?”

  Olivia shook her head. “Ain’t allowed in if I’m not buyin’ anything.”

  Frank tugged on her hand. “Well, come on—I’ll buy you a cup of hot chocolate, how would that be?”

  Olivia shook her head again. “Miz Sobel don’t like me. She won’t let me stay in there.”

  Frank looked up and saw Rita glaring from behind the cash register. Probably afraid the poor kid would lift a roll of Life Savers.

  “Then you better come over to my office. We’ll watch for your uncle from the window.”

  Olivia hesitated, but a strong gust of wind convinced her. She trotted across the green at Frank’s side.

  “Do you want a snack?” Frank asked as he settled her in an office chair.

  “OK.” Her tone stayed indifferent, but her eyes darted around avidly looking for where the food might spring from.

  Frank didn’t know what to give Olivia from the trove of junk food in Earl’s bottom desk drawer. He felt justified in plying his grandsons with Oreos and peanut butter cups because their mother had convinced them that whole wheat pretzels and yogurt were treats. But he could take no joy in offering Olivia candy and cookies, not when she probably subsisted on a diet of Hawaiian Punch and Devil Dogs and Cheetos. Her baby teeth were like two brown rows of Indian corn. No doubt her mother had put her to bed every night with a bottle of juice, or worse.

  Casting about the office, his eyes fell on a sack of Winesap apples he’d bought at the farmer’s market. He quartered and pared one with his pocketknife, afraid that if he let Olivia bite right into the apple, her rotten, little teeth would break off in the crispy fruit. “This is one of my all-time favorite snacks,” Frank said as he set the apple on a paper towel before her.

  Olivia did not seem to share his enthusiasm, but she reached out a grubby hand to take a slice. “What’s that stuff?”

  “Just some files I’m working on.” Frank sat down at his desk and began to go through his paperwork, but he could feel Olivia’s eyes boring into him.

  He looked up. “So, Olivia, what grade are you in?”

  “Second.”

  “You like school?”

  “I like the library. That’s where I go at recess.”

  “Not out to play?”

  “The other kids make fun of me.” Olivia’s hand traveled back to the desk for two more slices of apple.

  Geez, this kid could take your heart and hang it out to dry. “Do you have any brothers or sisters?” Maybe that was a safer topic.

  “I had a brother, but he went away.”

  He hoped she meant he’d left to get a job, not to go to prison. He didn’t get a chance to ask.

  Olivia pushed back from the desk and headed over the shelves in the corner. “What’s in here?” she asked over her shoulder, shaking a colorful bag from the bookstore in Lake Placid.

  Before he could answer, Olivia had fallen to her knees in front of the shelf and slid out the contents of the bag.

  “I bought some books for my grandsons. You can read them if you like,” Frank offered.

  Olivia picked up the top book in the stack. “The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig,” she read the title aloud. “That ain’t right.”

  “It’s a joke—in this version, the pig’s the bad guy, but it has a happy ending,” Frank explained.

  She shot him a dubious look. Olivia wasn’t one to suffer fools gladly.

  “What kind of books did Mary Pat read to you?”

  Olivia’s eyes lit up. “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory—that was a really funny book. It took us a while to finish it because…because she couldn’t come to my house that often.”

  “What other books did you read?”

  “We read Little House on the Prairie. She brought it with her. To my house, I mean.” Olivia dropped her eyes. “I’m going to read this book now.”

  Frank watched her lips move slightly as her stubby finger traced down each page. She certainly seemed to have shared some favorite books with Mary Pat. And yet she seemed so jumpy when he asked her about it. Reaching the end, Olivia shut the book with a snap. “That was stupid.”

  Frank really liked the book. “I think they’re just trying to show that it’s impossible to keep your enemies locked out, so you’re better off making friends with them.”

  “It don’t work like that,” Olivia stated in a tone that ended all further discussion. She crossed to the window. “There’s my uncle. I better go.”

  Frank watched Olivia walk into the wind toward her uncle’s truck. He tensed as he saw Ralph shaking his fist and stamping his foot, obvio
usly irritated that she’d had the nerve to keep him waiting even a minute. If he hit that kid, he’d find his ass in the holding cell. But Ralph simply flung open the passenger side door, and threw the truck in gear before Olivia could even sit down.

  Chapter 24

  Frank didn’t have long to contemplate the Veech family dynamics. A state police patrol car pulled up in front and Lew Meyerson got out. He saw Frank standing in the window and raised his hand. A moment later he was sprawled across an office chair in a most unMeyerson-like pose.

  The lieutenant kneaded his eyes. “This case is driving me crazy.”

  It wasn’t like Lew to come looking for sympathy. Frank sat down behind his desk and put his feet up. “Tell me all about it.”

  “The FBI has interviewed everyone who has the slightest connection with the Green Tomorrow operation out in Oregon—both opponents and supporters. Everyone can account for their time—no trips to the East Coast, no unexplained absences.”

  “Could they have hired someone out here to do the job?”

  Meyerson shrugged. “You know the kind of low-lifes who sign on to be contract killers. How could someone like that sneak up on Golding early in the morning on a hiking trail and kill him at point-blank range? How could they even know he’d be there?”

  “You’re right—it seems likely it was someone he knew,” Frank agreed. “Have you learned anything more about the organization?”

  “A bundle. The FBI auditors have been combing through Green Tomorrow’s books. Get this—the IRS no longer classifies Green Tomorrow as a tax-exempt non-profit organization. Because of all their political activism, the IRS considers them a lobbying group. It was an enormous blow to their fundraising. If you make a contribution to, say, the Sierra Club, you get a tax deduction; if you make a donation to Green Tomorrow, you get squat.”

  “So how do they stay afloat? Neither Golding nor his wife has any other job.”

  Meyerson rose and began to pace around. “The auditors are trying to follow the money trail. All they’ll tell us right now is that it’s not coming from the small donations of thousands of individual contributors.”

  “What does Meredith Golding have to say about it?”

  “Get this—she has a master’s degree in some field I can’t even pronounce, but when the Feds questioned her about the books, she suddenly turned into a bimbo who wouldn’t know how to write a check to pay the gas bill. ‘I have no idea,’ Meyerson mimicked in a high-pitched voice. ‘My husband handled all that.’ or ‘You’d have to ask our lawyer, Barry Sutter.’”

  “So where does that leave you?” Frank asked.

  “Nowhere,” Meyerson plopped back down in his chair. “The Feds are pressuring us to come up with more local suspects, now that none of their west coast possibilities have panned out. But we’re working in the dark—they won’t share a lot of what they’ve discovered on the financial end.” Lew snorted. “It’s classified.”

  Frank wasn’t particularly interested in Meyerson’s power-struggle problems. He honed in on the first thing he’d said. “Local suspects? Like who?”

  “The Fenstocks of course. All the women who were at that protest march. All the people who spoke up at that Town Council meeting.”

  “Now wait a minute, no one from around here…” as the words came out of his mouth Frank knew he sounded just like a Trout Run native and he changed tacks. “Abe Fenstock didn’t even know about Green Tomorrow’s plans until after Golding was killed,” he pointed out, in what he hoped was a reasonable tone.

  “So he claims—we’ll check on that a little further. And Beth Abercrombie and Katie Petrucci knew the score before Golding was killed. Maybe they’re–”

  “What? Double agents?”

  Meyerson bristled at the sarcasm. “I thought you wanted to help. Guess I was wrong.”

  Now he and Lew were back to their familiar antagonism.

  “I do want to help. But let’s follow the most likely leads first. I just…” Was he trying to use his influence to steer Meyerson away from Beth? Ridiculous–she had nothing to hide. Did she?

  “I just think,” Frank continued, “that we never have gotten to the bottom of what brought Green Tomorrow to Trout Run in the first place. If we could figure that out, we might make progress on who killed Golding.”

  Lew relaxed a bit and nodded. “You’ve got a point.”

  “Doesn’t Golding have kids from his first marriage? Are they involved in the organization?”

  “Two sons,” Lew stood up and bounced on the balls of his feet. “Daniel, in San Mateo, California. And Neil, an orthodontist in Nyack. Both estranged from the old man.”

  “Nyack’s only four hours away. Did you check him out?” Frank knew that they must have, but Lew tended to reveal more information when he thought he was setting Frank straight.

  “Iron-clad alibi. Was with his nurse and a steady stream of patients from eight A.M. on. Not enough time to kill Golding and get back to Nyack by eight.”

  “What did he say about his father’s personal life? Maybe this murder has nothing to do with Golding’s environmental work.”

  “Says he hasn’t spoken to his father in over a year. I don’t think he knows anything.”

  Maybe not, but Frank had seen Meyerson interviewing suspects and he felt the trooper had a tendency to charge ahead, trampling any subtle innuendoes. He wouldn’t mind talking to Neil Golding himself, and it didn’t hurt that Nyack was only twenty-five minutes away from Chappaqua. Following up a lead on a case would give him a very good reason to drop in on Caroline and figure out what the hell was going on there.

  “Well, I’ll keep poking around here,” Frank assured Myerson. “I’ll see what I can turn up on why Green Tomorrow’s so interested in Raging Rapids.

  “Thanks, Frank.” Meyerson nodded curtly. “I know I can count on you.”

  The next day, Frank pulled into Caroline’s driveway, right behind her minivan. Good, that meant she was home, and he was quite sure the boys would be in nursery school. He went up to the back door and raised his hand to knock, but lowered it again as he looked into the house. He could see his daughter standing in profile, holding a mug in her hands and gazing out the kitchen window. He watched her for quite a while; she never drank from the mug or turned her head toward him. Then she rubbed the back of her hand against her cheek, as if brushing away a tear.

  He knocked.

  Caroline jumped, then smiled as she came to answer the door. At least she looked happy to see him.

  “Daddy! What are you doing here?”

  He said nothing, only pulled her into a tight embrace, glad that her curly, dark-haired head still fit right under his chin. She returned the hug, but when he didn’t let her go she pulled away and looked at him with her head cocked.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with you?”

  “Nothing. Nothing’s wrong.”

  Frank banged his fist on the doorframe. “Godammit, Caroline, don’t lie to me. You’ve been avoiding me and cutting me short on the phone. I know something’s wrong. That’s why I came down here. You’re sick, aren’t you? And you don’t want to tell me.”

  “Daddy, don’t be silly.” Caroline spread her arms. “Look at me—I’m as healthy as a horse.”

  True, she didn’t look ill, but she didn’t look great either. Her face seemed strained and taut. And her pants drooped on her slender hips, like she’d lost weight.

  “It’s one of the boys, then, isn’t it? Something is worrying you, I know it.”

  “The boys are fine.” They faced each other stubbornly as they had so many times when she’d been a teenager. Frank remembered how she’d once stuck insistently to the story that she was sleeping at a girlfriend’s house when he had incontrovertible proof that she’d been drinking and dancing at a club downtown. She didn’t crack easily under pressure, so he shamelessly hauled out the parent’s personal grenade launcher: guilt.

  “This rift between us
is killing me, Caroline. I know if your mother were here, you’d be able to tell her. Can’t you just tell me? No matter how bad it is, it’s better than not knowing.”

  Immediately, she was crying and clinging to him. “Oh, Daddy, I’m sorry,” she gasped through her tears. “I just didn’t want to worry you. Besides, it’s nothing you can help with.”

  He sat her down at the kitchen table and handed her a box of tissues. “Don’t be so sure.”

  She bristled. “You always think you can fix anything, Daddy. This is different.”

  He did have a tendency to think he could fix anything, from broken toasters to broken hearts. And Caroline wasn’t the first person to find it annoying. He reached out and took her hand. “Tell me. Please.”

  She wiped her face and looked down at her trembling fingers. “It’s Eric. Things aren’t working out. We’re separated.”

  He might have known it; he’d never trusted that pompous jerk. “What is it?” he demanded. “Is he running around with another woman?”

  Caroline looked up in amazement. “Daddy! Of course not. Eric would never do that.”

  “Well then, what?”

  Caroline shrugged. “We just have different values. He wants me to get rid of my minivan and replace it with some big, stupid SUV. And you know why? Because it’s a status symbol. The van embarrasses him.”

  No one got divorced because they couldn’t agree on what car to buy. She wasn’t telling him the whole truth. A terrible thought popped into his mind. “He didn’t he hit you, did he?

  Caroline jumped up from the table. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m telling you, we just can’t agree on anything anymore. Like, for instance, he wants the boys to get special tutoring so they’ll pass the test to get into this ritzy private school. Can you imagine anything so insane? They’re three years old, for God’s sake.”

  “Private school? I thought you bought this house because it’s so close to that nice elementary school in town.”

  “Exactly. The public schools here are terrific.” Caroline paced around the kitchen, waving her hands as she spoke. “But suddenly Eric says the boys won’t get into Harvard if they don’t go to the right prep school, and they won’t get into the right prep school unless they go to the right kindergarten. It’s crazy, and I want no part of it.”