Frank Bennett Adirondack Mountain Mystery Box Set

by S. W. Hubbard

  “The man wouldn’t be in any trouble,” Frank assured her. “I’d just like to talk to him. It could help us locate the baby.”

  Anita’s eyes scanned the store, focusing on everything but Frank. “Well, see, I feel like I’d be breaking my word, in a way.”

  Frank couldn’t keep the eagerness out of his voice. “I know Mary Pat wanted to keep the relationship secret, Anita. But her death changes everything. This adoption she tried to set up wasn’t legal. With the father’s consent, we could get the baby placed in a good home.”

  Anita waved her hand. “The father, he don’t want nothin’ to do with the baby, that much I can tell you.”

  “What do you mean? I thought you said you didn’t know she was pregnant?”

  Anita shifted her weight from one leg to the other. She looked down at her feet oozing out the sides of unlaced sneakers. “I didn’t. But I got the feeling the guy who was doing her was married.”

  “Anita,” Frank barked, “do you know who Mary Pat was seeing or don’t you?”

  Anita looked him square in the face, her tiny eyes reduced to slits. “Seems to me you’re asking me a big favor. When someone does you a favor, seems to me you should do them one in return, don’t it?”

  Frank pursed his lips. “And what might that be?”

  “My brother Ralph ran into a little trouble over by Placid. Something about drunk and disorderly–they’re always pickin’ on him over there.”

  “I’ll see what I can do. Now, what about Mary Pat? Who’s the guy?”

  Anita pulled a stool out from behind the counter and propped herself on it. “Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t say I knew exactly who he was. Just from things she said, I got my suspicions.”

  Frank took a deep breath. “OK, then, share your suspicions please.”

  “Like I said, I think he’s married.”

  Doug Penniman? But Frank didn’t want to put ideas in Anita’s head. Better to see how much she really knew. “Why?”

  “One night, we was talking and she said to me, do I believe two people could be destined for each other, could be, what’d she call it? Soul mates.” Anita cackled. “I told her all men just lookin’ for one thing—a little pussy. They take it where they find it.” Anita leered at him. “She didn’t like that too much. She said sometimes two people are meant for each other, but circumstances keep them apart.”

  Circumstances like being married to a shrew and having a handicapped son? Frank waited, but Anita said nothing more.

  “That’s it?”

  “Here comes the boss. I’m supposed to be cleaning,” Anita said, heaving herself off the stool and shuffling toward her mop. She looked back at him over her shoulder. “You see about my brother. Maybe something else will come to me.”

  Chapter 14

  “The police chief, Frank Bennett, has been out to Harkness Road talking to everyone, trying to find out who Mary Pat was with before she died.”

  “All you need to do is be quiet. He’ll give up eventually.”

  “Yes, but one of the neighbors told him that he saw her drive past his house a lot. So now Bennett knows she had to be visiting someone at the end of the road. Maybe I should–”

  “Don’t try to be clever. Just keep your mouth shut. And find me another pregnant girl.”

  THE MORNING OF THE great Raging Rapids protest dawned clear and bright. The ground was still warmer than the chill dawn air, so a light mist swirled through the low-lying areas of Frank’s property. With a full coffee cup to keep him warm, he looked out at the peaceful scene from his screen porch: the brilliant reds and yellows of the trees softened by the ghostly mist; a few barn swallows swooping and diving over the meadow; a blue heron standing so still in the brook that he merged with the gray rocks around him. Frank could happily have sat there all day, but no, he had to go attend to this hare-brained protest, a protest that he probably could have squelched without much effort at all.

  Why hadn’t he, just like Herv would have done? No danger of the ACLU coming after him in Trout Run, that was for sure. He’d convinced himself the protest should go forward as a way to shed some light on Nathan Golding’s murder. But Golding’s murder was not his concern—Lew had certainly made that clear.

  When he’d first come to Trout Run after being forced out of his job in Kansas City, he hadn’t felt up to any challenges. But solving the Janelle Harvey case—his first, and only, big investigation in Trout Run —had restored his confidence. Maybe the satisfaction he’d gotten from unraveling that mess had given him a taste for bigger prey than speeders and Saturday night brawlers. Had he made it easy for Katherine Petrucci to stage her protest because he wanted to get a piece of the Golding investigation action? Just to provoke a little excitement?

  Well, the strategy had most likely backfired. The more he thought about it, the more the Fed’s theory of the case made sense. After all, shutting down a logging operation put a lot more money and jobs at risk than shutting down Raging Rapids, and it provided a lot more motivation to kill. Meyerson’s report on Katherine Petrucci dismissed her as “a hysterical housewife with too much time on her hands.”

  Worst of all, poor Abe Fenstock was just fit to be tied. Most people in town, Frank felt sure, supported Abe. If anything happened today to ruin Abe’s business, Frank would take as much blame as Katherine and her followers.

  He shrugged off his worry. Really, how rowdy could the thing get? A few hippies, a few moms, a few signs—the whole charade would fizzle out by noon.

  He drained his coffee and headed out to Raging Rapids.

  When Frank arrived, Earl was already there. He’d taken the patrol car home last night, while Frank had loaded up the back of his own pick-up with orange cones and slow signs from the road department. Together they blocked off an area for the protesters to march, and prepared to direct traffic around them.

  “Put this other slow sign up ahead where the road bends, Earl,” Frank directed. “I don’t want any cars tearing around that curve.”

  Abe had apparently seen them at work and came trotting across the parking lot, an anxious frown creasing his face. “I’ve got five tour busses scheduled between ten and twelve. Are you sure they’ll be able to get through?”

  “Absolutely. We’ll keep the marchers over here.” Frank indicated a twenty-yard strip of shoulder to the right of the driveway.

  “There’s only you and Earl. Maybe I should send my son out to help,” Abe said.

  That was an offer to put out the fire with gasoline. “No, we’ll be just fine,” Frank assured him. “You attend to your customers, just like any other day.”

  Reluctantly, Abe left them, glancing back over his should several times as he returned to the main building. No sooner had he gone inside than a dusty old station wagon pulled up. All the doors opened at once and six young women spilled out.

  Frank studied Katie Conover Petrucci as she approached: thick wavy hair pulled into a haphazard pony tail, saggy green khaki pants and a shapeless sweater, clunky hiking boots, and not a lick of make-up. He’d never seen such a pretty woman so hell-bent on hiding her light under a bushel.

  Katie extended a slender hand and fixed her steady gaze on him. “I’m Katherine Petrucci,” she said without letting a smile touch her delicate lips.

  Frank shook her hand, amiable but authoritative. “I’d like your group to stay right in this area on the shoulder. Remember, Raging Rapids is private property and you are not permitted to trespass or block the drive. Follow those guidelines and we won’t have any problems, all right?’

  Katie nodded. “If you say so.” She turned to her cohorts, all of whom Frank recognized as young mothers from Trout Run. “Let’s unpack the signs.”

  The others dutifully followed her to the back of the station wagon, but Frank thought Cassie McDonald and Deedee Peele looked a little sheepish. They pulled out signs mounted on wooden poles.

  Another van pulled up and five more women got out. Beth Abercrombie was in this group. Frank and Earl
exchanged a nervous glance. Hopefully, this was it—the letter had said approximately 15 protesters, but Frank hadn’t believed Katie could round up that many.

  Soon, Katie had her followers lined up and they took their positions in the area Frank had laid out for them. Each carried a sign: close raging rapids, birds & fish not $$$, dangerous conditions ahead. Beth carried a stack of large, white placards each with a loop of yarn at the top, which she set on the ground near the driveway. She smiled at Frank and he nodded back.

  Quietly, they marched up and down. When the occasional car drove by on Stony Brook Road, they turned to face the road and waved their signs. Often, the drivers waved back or tooted their horns. So far, so good. He watched Beth as she carried her sign, the slanting sunlight reflecting off her golden hair. What had possessed her to join this goofy troupe? Still, she looked kinda cute, especially in that orangish sweater.

  “What do you think those other signs are for?” Earl asked as they stood watching the totally uneventful event.

  “Beats me.”

  When Raging Rapids opened at ten, the first customers of the day pulled in and Frank braced himself for possible trouble. But the women continued to march up and down in their designated spot waving their signs toward the drivers, who seemed perplexed by the protesters, if they noticed them at all.

  Frank grew tired of all the standing and perched on the guardrail. He checked his watch—one more hour to go. The worst part of this protest was the tedium. He considered sending Earl inside for coffee from the snack bar. Better not—he couldn’t very well pee in the weeds in front of all these women. He yawned and listened to the distant knocking of a woodpecker. It sure was shaping up to be a nice day.

  “I see the first bus!”

  The shout startled Frank onto his feet. Suddenly all the protesters had thrown down their signs.

  “Link arms!” Katie shouted.

  Frank watched in astonishment as all of the women ran to the driveway. Some picked up placards from the stack and hung them around their necks. Then they rearranged themselves, and linked arms to form a human chain. The two on the ends each grabbed a gatepost. The six in the middle formed a word with two-foot letters on their chests: unsafe.

  The tour bus, first in a convoy of five behemoths, pulled up to the driveway and honked its horn. The women refused to move and began to chant: “Raging Rapids kills fish and birds! Raging Rapids is unsafe for children and seniors! For a green tomorrow, close Raging Rapids today!”

  Frank ran over to them. “All right, Katie—that’s enough. We agreed you wouldn’t block the driveway.”

  “I don’t recall agreeing with you on anything.”

  “Ladies, break it up. Let’s move along back to the shoulder, please,” Frank demanded.

  But they all clung to each other fiercely and refused to move. Frank felt as helpless as he had when his grandsons had refused to get out of the spaceship ride at the mall until he put in two more quarters.

  He put his hand on Cassie McDonald’s elbow and tugged slightly. “Come on, now, Cassie. Let go of that gatepost.”

  “He’s hurting her!” Katie shrieked. “Stand firm, Cassie.”

  Cassie looked from Frank to Katie, wide-eyed. Clearly, she was more intimidated by Katie, because she didn’t let go of the gatepost.

  Next he tried his luck with Beth. “Be reasonable, Beth,” he said in a soft voice, looking her straight in the eyes. “You guys can’t block the drive like this. Get the others to let go.”

  Her face, flushed by the excitement and the cool breeze, was inches from his own. If he hadn’t been so thoroughly annoyed he would have been tempted to kiss her. She looked away from him. “I can’t, Frank. This protest is important. It’s something we’ve got to do.”

  By this time, Abe had shown up. “Arrest them!” he demanded.

  But that was easier said than done. With just him and Earl, one set of handcuffs, one patrol car, what could he do? These were girls from Trout Run–he couldn’t very well start whacking their arms with his nightstick. They had him between a rock and a hard place.

  “I’ll have to call the state police for back-up,” Frank said.

  “That’ll take too long. These busses aren’t going to wait forever,” Abe shouted at Frank. Then he banged on the door of the bus. “Tell everyone to get off,” he told the tour director. “They can walk into the complex on this little path through the trees.”

  A broad-beamed lady with a clipboard and a hairdo like a curlicued football helmet stepped down on the bus steps and peered out. One look at the chanting protesters and the overgrown path Abe wanted her elderly group to use sent her scurrying back on board. A few moments later, the busses lumbered off.

  “Come back!” Abe shouted. “You can come back this afternoon.” But his voice was drowned out by the diesel roar.

  Abe turned on Frank, apoplectic with rage. “Nearly three hundred people at seven dollars a head—I just lost two thousand dollars! I knew you couldn’t control this. And you—,” He spun around and turned on Katie, but Frank held him back.

  The need to call the state police was now past. The protesters had broken their line and were jumping up and down, cheering and giving one another high fives.

  “We did it! We did it! Way to go, Green Tomorrow!” Katie screamed. The protesters began retrieving their signs and chatting excitedly. Katie stepped back, standing on the edge of the road and clapping her hands to get their attention. “Our next meeting will be—”

  Just then, a big extended-cab pickup appeared from around the bend. Instead of slowing, as the sign warned, it picked up speed and headed straight for Katie. Frank, still trying to calm Abe, could only scream a warning.

  Chapter 15

  Ten seconds of chaos seemed to elapse over an hour.

  Earl lunged forward, grabbed Katie by the sleeve, and tumbled with her onto the shoulder. The truck careened past, just inches from their sprawled legs. The other protesters ran screaming in every direction, blocking Frank as he tried to reach Katie and Earl. Earl sat up, rubbing his head, then pulled Katie to her feet. He waved Frank off. “We’re all right.”

  Frank leaped into the patrol car and took off after the truck. It was already well ahead of him, out of sight. But the road followed Stony Brook here for several miles, so there was no place to turn off to the right. And to the left rose the Verona Range, with only a few parking areas at the trailheads. With sirens blaring and lights flashing, he pushed the car up to sixty, but as he tore around a blind curve he knew it wasn’t safe to him or anyone who might be coming in the opposite direction to be taking the road at that speed. He slowed a bit, and continued toward Lake Placid, without seeing any sign of the truck. When he reached the intersection of Route 73, he had to accept that whoever had tried to run down Katie Petrucci had gotten away.

  THE FIFTEEN PEOPLE present at the protest came up with almost as many different impressions of the color, make, model and license plate of the truck. Finally, relying most heavily on his own, Earl’s and Beth’s recollections, Frank put a search through to Motor Vehicles to see what would turn up. If the truck was local, he was sure he’d recognize it when he saw it again.

  The stunt struck him as the kind of thing Roy Fenstock would pull, but Roy must have been working inside Raging Rapids at the time, since his father had wanted to send him out to help manage the protest. Had Abe said that as a cover for Roy, knowing that Frank would never take him up on the offer? Surely Abe wouldn’t go along with a scheme that might have gotten someone killed. Or had Roy lined up some yahoo friend of his to do the dirty work?

  But maybe it was more serious than that. Maybe whoever had killed Nathan Golding was determined not to stop until he had destroyed the entire Green Tomorrow organization and scared off all its supporters. In that case, Beth Abercrombie and all those girls who had been swept up in Katie’s fervor could be in for a lot more trouble than they ever bargained for.

  The problem was convincing them that he wanted to protect them,
not shut them up. Especially since he wouldn’t mind if shutting them up was a by-product of protecting them.

  He stood up and stared out the window, watching the wind drive little tornados of leaves across the green. Tomorrow might be a good day to try to have lunch with Beth. Maybe he could get her to tell him why she and Katie and Green Tomorrow were so determined to close down Raging Rapids. And then what? Convince her to give it up?

  A cold front had moved in since this morning, replacing the blue skies with dark, lowering clouds. A few storms like the one that was brewing would bring all the leaves down and mark the end of the best season of the year.

  He shifted his gaze to the parking lot, where Mary Pat’s Escort sat in a reserved space. True to Frank’s prediction, Joe had offered Mary Pat’s car to Earl at a very reasonable price. He wondered how well the little car would do this winter, when Earl had to make the drive in from the outskirts of Trout Run.

  He pivoted. “Earl, is your car unlocked?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “I want to look inside.”

  “At what?” Earl trotted after Frank out to the parking lot.

  “I never searched Mary Pat’s car. It just struck me that if Mary Pat wanted to hide something from her parents, especially her mother, her car would be the best place. Ann doesn’t drive anymore, so she’d never be in it without her daughter. But, maybe it’s too late now.”

  “It was still at Al’s Sunoco when I picked it up, but it’s clean as a whistle inside.”

  Frank opened the glove compartment: map, owner’s manual, registration and insurance. Under the seats: nothing. He popped the trunk: a spare tire and one of those roadside assistance kits. He opened the case, pulled out the jumper cables and flares, and there it was: a square white envelope.

  Inside was a card with the standard-issue Hallmark drivel. On the cover, a wildflower in a beam of sunlight; inside, the printed inscription “special people like you set the world alight.” It was signed with a very ornate scribble.