Frank Bennett Adirondack Mountain Mystery Box Set

by S. W. Hubbard

  Frank jumped out of the car ready to yell.

  “Oh man! Thank God you came along!” He was a stocky man in his late thirties, and his words came in bursts between gulps of breath. “There’s a guy up there on the trail. Oh man, I think he’s dead.”

  Frank put a steadying hand on the hiker’s shaking shoulders. “OK, slow down. What’s your name? Where is this man?”

  “Only about a quarter of a mile up the trail. My name’s Milton Miyashiro. I just came up here from New Jersey for a couple of days of hiking. I camped on Giant last night, and I was on my way down when I found this guy lying face down on the trail. I thought about giving him CPR. But, I don’t know, there’s blood, I think it’s too late.”

  Frank radioed for an ambulance and the state police and told Milton to come with him back up the trail.

  The lower part of the trail was neither steep nor rocky and Frank made good time even though he wasn’t dressed for hiking.

  “I think we’re getting close,” Milton said. A moment later they turned a bend in the trail. Sprawled across the trail lay the body of a man.

  “You OK?” Frank asked Milton, whose face looked gray behind a two-day stubble of beard. He didn’t wait for a reply before dropping to his knees to examine the man on the trail, who lay on his side with his left arm pinned beneath him. Milton kept up a running commentary that Frank heard with half an ear.

  A quick exam told him the ambulance would be making a trip to the morgue, not the emergency room. The body was dry and still warm—certainly it hadn’t lain there all night. A bloodstain radiated out from the center of the man’s chest, darkening his blue anorak, and blood had soaked into the hard-packed earth of the trail. “You turned him like this?” Frank asked.

  “Yeah. I’m sorry if I shouldn’t have. But he was face down, and I thought he had fallen, or had a heart attack or something. I thought maybe I could help.”

  “It’s all right.” Crouching, Frank looked at the back. He grunted at what he saw: a small, perfect round hole through the back of the jacket.

  “What is it?” Milton asked. “How did he die?”

  “He was shot.”

  “Like, with a gun? But there’s no hunting allowed here.”

  Frank didn’t answer. This was no hunting accident. The entrance wound was so tiny it had to come from a small caliber handgun at very close range. He felt his heart rate ratchet up a bit, the way it always had when he had been called to the scene of a murder in Kansas City. But this wouldn’t be his case. The death had occurred on a trail in the Adirondack Park, so the state police would investigate.

  Still, he couldn’t stifle his instincts. He studied the dead man: expensive but well-worn hiking boots, fancy sports watch, Gortex anorak, a fanny pack. Definitely a tourist, yet the face, slack and expressionless in death, seemed familiar. The baseball cap had slipped back, revealing dark wavy hair streaked with silver. Then it came to him—this was the man who had been talking to Beth Abercrombie at Malone’s.

  LIEUTENANT LEW MEYERSON barked out orders like the Marine sergeant he once had been. The woods crawled with crime scene investigators. Dr. Hibbert had arrived to confirm that the body was indeed dead. Uniformed troopers directed traffic and sent away prospective hikers. Frank sat seething on the sidelines with Milton Miyashiro.

  Instead of thanking him for securing the crime scene and keeping the witness close by, Meyerson had reamed him out for approaching the body at all. He wouldn’t let Frank return to his office until he’d debriefed him, but he was taking his sweet time about it. Frank knew he was being reprimanded and it really ticked him off.

  Finally, Meyerson approached the patrol car, where Frank leaned with his arms folded across his chest. The lieutenant signaled Milton over, too.

  “All right. What time was it when you discovered the body?” Meyerson demanded.

  Milton looked at Frank and shrugged. “Uh, I don’t know. Did you look at your watch?”

  “It was nine-forty when you flagged me down. Had you been standing there long?”

  “No, I tried to stop one other truck, but he passed me by. Then you came along.”

  “O.K. So it took you how long to get down the trail?”

  “Less than ten minutes.”

  “Then you came upon the body at approximately nine-thirty,” Meyerson clarified. “Did you pass anyone on the trail?”

  “No one. I was the only ones camping at the lean-to. And no one else came up the trail as I was coming down.”

  “Did you hear anything? Shouts? Screaming? The shot?” Meyerson asked.

  Milton looked perplexed.

  “It would have just sounded like a loud pop,” Frank explained, despite Meyerson’s glare.

  “If I heard it, it sure didn’t make an impression.”

  “And you found the body in what position?” Meyerson asked.

  “Face down, in the middle of the trail. I rolled him partway over because I thought he might’ve hit his head or had a heart attack or something. But when I saw all the blood on his chest, and he had no pulse, I just left him alone.” Milton looked at Meyerson for reassurance, but the lieutenant only grimaced.

  “When you got down here to the parking area, did you see a car other than your own and that old green Volvo?”

  “No.” Then Milton caught on. “Oh, is that his car? It wasn’t here when I hiked in yesterday.”

  “The victim is one Nathan Golding, resident of Brooklyn, New York according to his license,” Meyerson said. “And that car is registered to him.”

  “The Nathan Golding?” Milton asked.

  “You know him?”

  “Know of him. He’s the head of Green Tomorrow, the environmental group. The one that blows stuff up.”

  Frank’s eyes met Meyerson’s and he knew they were thinking the same thing. What was Golding up to in the Adirondack Park? He also knew he could probably provide Meyerson with a quick answer by telling him about the conversation he’d overheard in Malone’s. But why should he? If Meyerson knew so damn much about running a murder investigation, let him work it out for himself.

  A tiny muscle near Frank’s left eye began to twitch. He no longer heard what Milton was saying to Meyerson. What would he do with the information if he didn’t pass it on to Lew? Investigate himself?

  Well, why not just look into it? He didn’t like the idea of bringing the State Police down on Beth’s head. Besides, if she knew anything, she’d be more likely to tell him than some ass-kicking trooper.

  Christ, what was he thinking? He couldn’t withhold information from the officer in charge of the case. Where was Meyerson?

  The lieutenant was handing the hiker his card and telling him to call if he remembered anything else. He glanced up and noticed Frank watching. “You’re free to go, Bennett.”

  The muscle near Frank’s eye pounded.

  “Thanks, Lew. Don’t work too hard.”

  AS SOON AS FRANK STEPPED through the door to his office, Earl and Doris were on him like two puppies on an old shoe. “Who got shot on Giant?” “How did it happen?” “Was it poachers?” “Did you arrest anyone?”

  “Jesus H. Christ! Why don’t you two consider doing a little work for a change? You obviously spent the whole morning listening to the radio.”

  His words had the effect of a rolled newspaper raised to strike. Doris and Earl slunk off while Frank sank into his chair and massaged his throbbing temples. He glanced at the clock. Ten after one and all he’d had to eat all day was a lousy donut and coffee in Albany—no wonder his head hurt. Too bad he’d snapped at Earl like that. He could hardly ask him to go to The Store for a sandwich now.

  As he was about to get up and go himself, Doris’s mousy brown bouffant appeared around the edge of the door. “Joe Sheehan is here,” she whispered. Doris always spoke softly in the presence of tragedy, to keep it from turning its attentions to her. “Should I send him in?”

  Frank nodded and sat back down as Joe entered, shutting the door behind him. “Well, w
hat did you find out?” Joe asked.

  When the fingerprint match had come through, Frank had told Joe he’d be going to Albany to see the Finns. But with all that had happened since he left Trout Run yesterday, he hardly had given a thought to what he would tell Mary Pat’s parents about the visit.

  Frank began systematically straightening a paperclip, keeping his eyes fixed on his task. “Well, the Finns are the people who wrote that letter I found in Mary Pat’s room. Unfortunately, they don’t have the baby.” Frank explained the entire Sheltering Arms story, ending with the money the Finns had paid for the baby they never got.

  Instantly, Joe’s hackles went up. “Now wait a minute! First you accused my girl of killing her baby, now you’re saying she sold it for money! Mary Pat didn’t have but three hundred dollars to her name when she died. I’ll show you her bank statement.”

  “I didn’t say Mary Pat sold her baby, I said Sheltering Arms did. Now the Finns found out about this so-called agency through the Internet. Did Mary Pat have a friend with a computer? Did she go to the Lake Placid library a lot?”

  Joe shook his head. “Nah, Mary Pat didn’t have no interest in computers. She had trouble just typing a letter on the one in the church office.”

  “Does that computer have Internet access?” Frank asked.

  Joe shrugged, then shifted his body in his chair to pull a large blue handkerchief from his pocket. He dabbed at his eyes. “This is just getting worse and worse. I thought you’d come back and tell me that this nice couple adopted the baby fair and square. And then I could tell Ann that everything was settled.”

  “Well, I’m sorry I couldn’t oblige you,” Frank said, unable to keep the sarcasm out of his voice. He’d just told the man his granddaughter was being sold like a steer at a cattle auction, and all he cared about was being able to tell his wife their messy problem was cleared up.

  But the remark apparently sailed over Joe’s head. “That’s all right,” he said. “What’s next?”

  “The Finns said Sheltering Arms told them the baby had been born on September 17th. If we knew where Mary Pat was that day, we might discover someone who helped her. And that person might know how Mary Pat hooked up with Sheltering Arms.”

  “The 17th—what day of the week was that?”

  “Wednesday.”

  Joe rattled off the litany of Mary Pat’s well-regulated life—shopping on Monday, her day off, volunteering at the church on Tuesdays, at the clothing bank on Fridays, helping her mother with housework and her father with yard work—punctuated with the mantra, “same as always.”

  “And did she come straight home after work every night? Were you awake when she got home?”

  “Of course she came straight home—she knew her mother could never sleep until she was in,” Joe explained, then added, “except for Wednesday, now that you mention it.”

  “What happened then?” Frank prompted.

  “She spent the night at Debbie’s,” Joe said, his mouth pursed in disapproval.

  “Debbie...?”

  “Flint, who she worked with at the store. You know she’s got those two little kids and her husband run off and left her, so whenever her regular babysitter would stand her up or she wanted to go gallivanting with some man, she’d want Mary Pat to come over after her shift at the store and watch the kids, and Mary Pat would never say no.”

  “I take it you disapproved.” Frank wondered what poor Debbie, who had always struck him as a decent, hard-working woman, would think of this take on her social life.

  “Well, Mary Pat’s just too good-natured. We thought Debbie took advantage, is all.”

  “And Mary Pat would spend the night when she babysat?” Frank asked.

  “Yeah, Debbie would stay out ‘til all hours and then Mary Pat would be too sleepy to drive home so she just slept over on the sofa, and came home early in the morning.”

  “And that’s what happened Wednesday the seventeenth? What time did she get home on Thursday morning?

  “Well she didn’t come home that morning. She called around seven and said Debbie was taking her and the kids to that new pancake restaurant that opened on the way into Lake Placid, and that she thought she might just do a little shopping over there afterwards. See, I had to take Ann to Plattsburgh for a doctor’s appointment later that morning.”

  “So you didn’t see Mary Pat from the time she left for work at 2:30 on Wednesday, till she got home from work at 11:30 on Thursday night,” Frank clarified.

  “Yeah, that’s right, “ Joe agreed. “So you think she had the baby while she was over at Debbie’s? I knew that girl was no good. Why would she let Mary Pat do such a thing and not call a doctor?”

  “Hold on, we don’t know that Mary Pat had the baby there–she could have been anywhere that night. We’ll have to talk to Debbie.” Frank thought back to the afternoon in the Stop ‘N' Buy when Mary Pat hadn’t shown up for work. If Debbie had known about the birth she would have suspected the reason for Mary Pat’s absence, but she had seemed truly puzzled. He didn’t think she was that good an actress.

  Joe looked at Frank in confusion. “You think Mary Pat lied? That she just told us she was at Debbie’s and she wasn’t really?” This seemed to shock Joe almost as much as the pregnancy.

  “Did this babysitting thing come up suddenly?” Frank asked.

  “Yeah, as a matter of fact, it did. She just told us about it an hour or so before she left for work. That’s what got Ann so riled up. She said Debbie just had Mary Pat at her beck and call. But Mary Pat would never hear a bad word spoken about anyone. She said Debbie had a rough life and deserved a little fun and she didn’t mind helping her out.”

  “Maybe she felt some contractions and figured the baby was coming, so she better make a plan. Although how she managed to get through her shift at work if she was in labor–” Frank shook his head. “Do you know who she would have been visiting on Harkness Road?”

  Joe shrugged. “I don’t know. I can’t really think of anyone she knew over there.”

  Frank hit the intercom button and told Doris to bring in the property tax record book. She responded with unusual alacrity, then dragged her feet on the way back out, hoping to gather a tidbit of information. Frank remained silent until she was back at her desk.

  “Here Joe—look over the list of property owners and see if that jogs your memory.”

  After studying the book, Joe shook his head. “I recognize most of the names. Mary Pat probably knew most of them by sight too. But I don’t think any of them were special friends. She never mentioned visiting them.”

  Frank sprang up, startling Joe. “I’m going to have to talk to Debbie Flint about Wednesday. And I’ll have to go out to Harkness Road and talk to everyone there. I don’t think this can stay secret much longer, Joe. You better do what you can to prepare Ann.” His voice sounded harsh even to his own ears, but he didn’t care.

  Joe nodded silently and slowly headed toward the door. With his hand on the doorknob, he turned back to face Frank. “I lost everything here, Frank. My daughter. My granddaughter. The life we used to live. Ann is all I got left. Don’t blame me for wanting to keep her safe.”

  Frank stared at the door that had closed behind Joe. He didn’t think he could have felt any worse than he had when the man had opened it, but he did.

  Chapter 8

  It would be impossible to talk to Debbie while she was working at the Stop 'N Buy, so Frank decided to head over to Harkness Road first, then swing by and talk to Debbie after her shift.

  He stepped into the outer office where Doris sat chatting animatedly on the phone while making occasional stabs at her keyboard. He might have known she wouldn’t be fazed by his sharp words. Earl was another matter. He sat at the desk shared by the tax collector and the building inspector when they were in, typing with unusual speed. Frank could tell by the uncharacteristic straightness of his assistant’s back and the elaborate attention he paid to the computer screen that Earl was truly pissed.
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br />   “Earl, I have some interviewing to do out on Harkness Road and I’m going to need your help,” Frank announced loudly. Earl made a great show of finishing his typing and shutting down the computer before he looked at Frank. He maintained a dignified silence all the way out to the patrol car.

  “Hey, I’m going to pick up a sandwich at the Store before we take off? You want a donut? A Kit-Kat?”

  “No thank you,” Earl answered.

  Frank pressed his lips together; he didn’t like having his peace offerings declined. He bought the candy bar anyway and left it on the console between their seats in the car. Steering with one hand, eating with the other, he filled Earl in on the Sheehan case as well as the shooting on the Giant trail.

  “Right here!” Earl warned, as the car threatened to shoot past the faded sign that marked the beginning of Harkness Road.

  Frank succeeded in making the turn, but not without sending up a spray of gravel from under the patrol car’s rear wheels. “I told you I needed your help.”

  Earl grinned and reached for the Kit-Kat.

  The houses on Harkness Road, though modest, all sat on large acreages. They had big, wild yards that ran into thick woods at the back of the properties. Frank drove past the first two houses. He’d found Mary Pat’s car beyond these two, heading back out to the main road, so she couldn’t have been visiting them. The next house after the spot where Mary Pat’s car crashed belonged to Vivian Mays, who’d found the body. As he’d already spoken to Viv at length, Frank kept going. They stopped at the fourth house despite the fact that Earl said the couple who lived there both worked in Plattsburgh and wouldn’t be home. He was right, and they continued on.