Frank Bennett Adirondack Mountain Mystery Box Set

by S. W. Hubbard

  “Katie! That’s not what I meant. I told you we’d try to help you, but things are tight for us, too, right now. I sure don’t want you to lose your house.”

  “I know, I know. But Paul says he’s worked it out. We don’t need to borrow anything from you.”

  Frank looked up at the floor joists, through which the sound of the voices traveled. Katie and Paul—it must be Katie Petrucci talking to her mother in the little back hallway that ran from the kitchen to the bathrooms. It seemed the bank was threatening to foreclose on Katie and Paul’s house; he hadn’t realized their money problems were so serious.

  “But how did Paul work it out?” Katie’s mother asked. “You said the bank wouldn’t budge.”

  “Look, he got the money and we don’t need a loan from you. That’s all that matters, isn’t it?"

  BOB RUSH HAD SWITCHED on the microphone at the podium on the stage and was urging people into their seats. Frank headed down the main aisle but discovered that the only seats were either all the way in the back, or in the front row next to the three Portman children. A tough choice. A seat in the back would allow him to slip outside after a while until the pie appeared. On the other hand, he honestly wanted to see Matthew play. He took a deep breath—in for a penny, in for a pound—and sat down in the front-row seat next to Ernie.

  Easily six-foot-three, Ernie had huge hands and feet. He turned his head toward Frank and studied him without reservation. Apparently Frank passed muster. Ernie grinned broadly. “Hi, I’m Ernie. That’s my little brother up there.” He pointed to the stage, where Matthew had taken his place at the piano. Ernie waved, but Matthew looked over the heads of his family in the front row, scanning the crowd. Frank guessed that he must be looking for Oliver Greffe. He hadn’t noticed the music teacher in the hall, and with his car in the shop, it seemed unlikely that he would make it to the hymn sing.

  Ernie elbowed Frank. “What’s your name?”

  “Frank.”

  “Okay, Frank, you have to promise to be real quiet while my brother plays, okay?”

  “All right, I will.”

  But Ernie couldn’t heed his own advice. He chatted loudly with Frank throughout Pastor Bob’s introduction and welcome, until his sister, Rachel, leaned across Clarice, tapped Ernie on the knee, and held her finger to her lips.

  “Yeah, right,” Ernie said. “We have to be quiet,” he told Frank.

  The hymn sing started out quietly, with “Be Thou My Vision.” Frank helped Ernie find it in the hymnal, but after singing the first familiar line with gusto, Ernie’s voice petered out. When Frank glanced over at him, Ernie was holding his hymnal in front of his face, but peering up at the ceiling. Could he read? Maybe a little, but probably not well enough to follow the lyrics, Frank suspected.

  The folding chair was hard, the hall was stuffy, and Ernie continued to fidget. Bob announced another hymn from his spot at the podium. This event needed Billy Crystal as emcee, and Bob was more like Al Gore. Frank began to regret not taking the seat in the back.

  But then Pastor Bob made a quip about Martin Luther, and a few people laughed. Emboldened by his success, he disconnected the mike from the podium and started strolling around the stage, bantering with Matthew as he introduced the next hymn.

  Before long, Bob had tapped his inner Jay Leno. He called the little children in the audience forward to sing “Jesus Loves Me” and cheerfully let them upstage him. He rounded up a crew of foghorn baritones to sing the refrain in “I Wanna Be a Christian.” And he brought down the house when he hand-selected the primmest Presbyterian ladies and got them to sway and clap their hands to “Ride the Chariot in the Morning.”

  Against all odds, Frank found himself having fun.

  But Ernie, who’d been so affable when Frank had first sat down, now grew cranky. He pulled his hymnal away from Frank and refused to let him help find the hymns that Pastor Bob announced. He shuffled loudly through the pages and dropped his hymnal with a clunk several times. Finally Rachel switched places with her younger sister to try to settle Ernie down, but he pulled away from her, too.

  “And now,” Bob said, “let’s join together on number 181, ‘When I Survey the Wondrous Cross.' ”

  “No!” Ernie leaped to his feet. “No, I don’t want to sing that one. I don’t like that song.” Rachel tugged at her brother’s sleeve, but he shook her off. “I want to sing ‘Amazing Grace.’ Play ‘Amazing Grace,’ Matthew— that’s my favorite.”

  Matthew sat with his fingers frozen above the keyboard, looking frantically from his brother to Pastor Bob. Although startled, Bob recovered quickly. “You’re right, Ernie. ‘Amazing Grace’ is one of my favorites, too, and we’ve waited too long to sing it. Let’s all turn to number 154 now—‘Amazing Grace.’ ”

  Ernie sat down with a satisfied thump. After a slightly shaky intro, Matthew launched confidently into the melody. Ernie made no effort to open his hymnal, but for the first time that evening, he sang.

  Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,

  that saved a wretch like me.

  I once was lost, but now am found.

  Was blind, but now I see.

  He had an amazingly resonant baritone. By the end of the first verse Frank stopped singing so he could hear Ernie more clearly.

  Whatever musical gene had touched Matthew had also been bestowed on Ernie. His voice rang out clear and perfectly on pitch. Soon, other people around him had stopped singing also, and Ernie’s voice rose above those at the rear of the hall. He had every word of the hymn memorized and never missed a beat. He sang with pure, unbridled joy.

  Pastor Bob watched Ernie in wonder. As Matthew neared the end of the fourth verse, Bob approached the piano and whispered something in his ear. Matthew finished the verse and stopped playing.

  Ernie took a breath to launch into the fifth verse, then paused in confusion. “Hey—there’s more to sing!” Pastor Bob walked up to Ernie and led him onto to the stage. “I don’t know how well those of you in the back could hear Matthew’s brother, Ernie, singing this hymn. But he has a beautiful voice and I’m going to ask him to sing the last verse of “Amazing Grace” as a solo with his brother to accompany him.”

  A big grin spread across Ernie’s broad, blank-eyed face. He looked at Matthew for approval, and Matthew smiled back in encouragement. They launched into the fifth verse in perfect synchronicity.

  “When we’ve been here ten thousand years...”

  If there was a dry eye in the house after the last note faded away, Frank didn’t know what heartless soul it belonged to. There clearly could be no more singing after the showstopping performance, so Pastor Bob escorted Ernie and Matthew off the stage and signaled the ladies to bring out the pies.

  Frank made a beeline for the strawberry rhubarb and snagged a big wedge, then sat in companionable silence with Randall Bixley and Art Breveur, whose wives were both behind the serving table. Contentment washed over him. He owed Ardyth and Reid a thank-you for pressuring him to come. There was nothing like loud singing of familiar tunes with a great accompanist to pick up your spirits. And who would’ve thought ol’ Bob had it in him to be such a showman?

  Across the packed room, he spotted a familiar profile. A young woman much taller and slimmer than the two ladies she chatted with lifted her head and looked toward him. Her face lit up, she waved, and began working her way through the crowd. Frank rose to meet halfway—she must have arrived after the singing had begun. But before he could move, she sidestepped the last cluster of pie eaters blocking her path and headed straight for Bob Rush.

  MOST OF THE HYMN SING crowd had driven off when a loud, mournful wail cut through the night air, interrupting the final good-byes spoken on the church steps.

  The siren calling together the members of the Trout Run volunteer fire department echoed against the mountains in a long steady crescendo, tapered off, and began its climb again. Within minutes, pickup trucks were racing down Route 12 to the fire station. Frank jumped in the patrol car and follow
ed them.

  A fire, especially one beyond the reach of the ten hydrants on the town water system, almost always resulted in a total loss of property. The town had one tanker truck, but it didn’t hold enough water to put out more than a small kitchen fire. If the burning house was located near Stony Brook or a pond, enough water could sometimes be pumped to put out the fire before the building was consumed, but usually the members of the fire department could do little more than stand alongside the despondent owners and watch the structure burn.

  Frank arrived as the ladder truck was pulling out of the firehouse, and he followed it as it sped out of town, past the Stop’N’Buy and the Mountain Vista Motel. In his rearview mirror, Frank caught the occasional flashing light of the pumper truck following them. Soon the lead truck careened to the right, down High Meadow Lane, and within minutes, Frank could smell smoke. He knew where the truck was headed.

  The gates of the North Country Academy were already wide open and the procession sped up the long driveway. A cluster of people stood outside the main administration building, watching smoke billow out the second-story windows. As Frank got out of the car, he saw MacArthur Payne speak briefly to the fire chief, Andy Kubash, before the firemen adjusted their oxygen masks and charged into the building.

  The people surrounding Payne were all staff members; at this hour the students were presumably all safe in their beds. “The building is empty?” Frank confirmed as he walked up.

  “Yes, Ray was doing his final check when he smelled smoke, then saw a cloud of it in the second-floor hallway,” Payne answered.

  “You’re sure no one’s in the isolation room?”

  A spasm of irritation crossed Payne’s face, but he answered levelly, "All the students are in their dorm rooms. They’ve been counted twice.”

  Payne winced at the sound of shattering glass as a fireman broke a large window and signaled to the crew below to direct the water there. Several of the men were unrolling long lengths of hose to reach the stream that bordered the property. Flames were briefly visible in the room with the broken window, but after about twenty minutes the clouds of smoke started to thin out. Soon, a sooty Andy emerged from the building.

  “Think we got it under control. Most of the fire damage seems to be confined to two rooms at the end of the hall. 'Course you’ll have smoke and water damage throughout, but that can’t be helped. Lucky this old building is mostly stone and solid plaster—the fire didn’t spread too much.”

  “Any idea what started it?” Frank asked.

  Andy grimaced. “Can’t be positive—we should get the experts in—but I’d say an accelerant was used.”

  Payne’s gaze flicked rapidly from Andy to Frank. "Surely not. Surely it was just faulty wiring. The building is so old—”

  “Definitely not electrical,” Andy said. “I’ve seen enough of those in my time.” Then one of the other firemen called to him, and Andy went back into the building.

  Frank watched Payne, who was swallowing hard as if fighting off nausea. Oliver stepped forward from the crowd of school employees milling around anxiously.

  “Come on, Mac,” he said gently. “There’s nothing else you can do here tonight. Why don’t you go back to your house and try to get some rest. There will be a lot of work in the morning.”

  Payne looked at the music teacher for a moment, as if trying to place who he was. Then he nodded and allowed himself to be led away.

  The firemen were starting to roll up their hoses, so Frank assumed it must be safe to enter the building. The big stone-floored foyer was undamaged except for water and streaks of soot. He made his way up the granite staircase, sidestepping puddles. At the end of the upstairs hall he could see the worst of the damage: two classrooms whose wooden doors were now charred skeletons and whose plaster walls were blackened.

  Frank followed the sound of voices and found Andy and another fireman in the last room on the right. Andy was in the far corner pointing something out.

  “You see this?” He pointed to a scorch pattern on the floor. Then he looked behind him to a wall that, unlike the others, had buckled and seemed close to collapse.

  “This wall is made of Sheetrock, not plaster,” Andy said. “Looks like they built a new interior wall here at some point—there’s space behind this.” He motioned to the other fireman. “Better knock this down so we can be sure there’s nothing smoldering back there.”

  The fireman swung his ax at the charred and soaked wallboard, which crumpled inward between the two studs. A terrible smell rushed out at them, entirely separate from the acrid scent of smoke.

  Frank’s stomach lurched as he stuck his head through the opening and looked down.

  The blank, distended eyes of Heather LeBron stared back up at him.

  Chapter 21

  MacArthur Payne sat on a wine-red leather wing chair, cradling his shaved head in his hands. His face drained of all color, the veins crossing his temples stood out like roads on a map. “My God, I never thought Glen Costello would go this far to get back at me. To kill a child ...” His voice cracked and he twisted away from Frank.

  Frank watched him in a cold fury. He remembered Payne dismissing Heather’s pleas for help as an Academy Award-winning performance. Well, who was acting now? He’d never believe another word this man said.

  But what was the point of raging against Payne? He had no one to blame but himself for what had happened. He could’ve prevented Heather’s death if only he had listened to her, asked more questions, believed in the poor kid.

  Heather’s body had shown no cuts or wounds of any kind, although there had been blood on her clothes. When Dr. Hibbert, the medical examiner, noticed bruising around the neck and broken blood vessels in the eyes, he had offered an unofficial pronouncement of the cause of death: strangulation. There was no doubt about it— Heather LeBron had been murdered.

  MacArthur Payne had been flattened by the news Frank delivered, but now he seemed to be pulling himself together. “Have you made the arrest yet?” he asked.

  Frank noted the odd choice of words: “the” arrest, not “an” arrest. “No, why—”

  Payne sprang out of his chair. “Good Lord, man, what are you waiting for?”

  Evidence seemed the obvious answer, but Frank refused to spar with this man anymore. He wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.

  “Dr. Payne, the idea that Paul Petrucci is somehow involved with your former partner is a just one lead that we’ll have to follow up on.”

  “Lead? It’s a fact—I’ll give you proof!” Payne started ticking off points on his fingers. "Petrucci wasn’t on duty the night Heather was killed. He sneaked back on campus, killed her, and hid the body behind that new wall. He’s worked here longer than anyone else. He was here when the previous owners did that remodeling project. He's the only one who would’ve known about that little space.”

  Payne paused and glared at Frank, whose face must have been etched with skepticism. “You don’t believe me! You don’t believe someone from your precious town could do such a thing. Take off your blinders, man! Petrucci is desperate for money. Costello probably offered him thousands—people have killed for far less.”

  Frank took a deep breath. “Dr. Payne, sit down, and let’s go over this calmly and rationally.” Payne opened his mouth, but Frank cut him off "I’ll lay out what we know—hear me out.

  “Jake Reiger was killed in a bear attack that may have been intentionally provoked. He worked for both you and Glen Costello previously. Heather was present when Reiger was killed. Next, Heather gets lost on a school hike and claims she was abandoned, that someone was trying to kill her.”

  “That's ridic—”

  Frank held up his hand for silence. “Let me finish, please. Heather confides in me that she can’t bear being sent to the isolation room, yet she does something— intentionally, if the other students are to be believed— that gets her sent there. According to Ray, she is locked in the empty isolation room. Lorrie is supposed to let her out at t
en, but we don’t know if she ever did that. Ray discovers the bloody room at eleven and calls you. Lorrie Betz, Justin Levine, and Heather are all discovered to be missing.

  “Now, you believe that Heather smeared her menstrual blood around that room to make it look like she had attempted suicide, and that Paul Petrucci slipped back onto campus, supposedly to release her and get her off campus. Instead, he strangles her and hides her body in a crawl space created during remodeling that you claim no one else knew existed. Are you with me so far?” Payne nodded.

  "All right, let's ask ourselves...Why? You claim your ex-partner wants to destroy your school with a scandal and gain a competitive advantage. Now, why would he choose a bear attack on a teacher to do that?”

  “Glen knows that a hallmark of my program is the emphasis on strenuous outdoor activity—hiking, climbing, camping, boating. I’m sure he’s trying to undermine parents’ confidence that these activities are safe and well supervised. The Web site for his new school in Mexico shows sunny, sandy beaches, but I've heard the place is on a godforsaken, snake-infested patch of real estate in the Yucatan. But this is his ploy—asking parents if they want to send their kids to a place where they can frolic in the surf, or to a school where they’ll be attacked by wild animals.”

  Frank remained stony-faced. There was always a certain logic to Payne’s explanations; that’s how he reeled you in. “But why sabotage a teacher’s sleeping bag— wouldn’t it have been more effective to attract the bear to a student’s tent?"

  Payne stretched his long legs out in front of him and studied his shoes, as if the answer could be found in their glossy surface. “Perhaps,” he said finally, “Heather was reluctant to set the bear upon one of her friends.”

  “Heather didn’t seem to have any friends—the other kids all shunned her.”

  Payne’s thin lips drew down in exasperation. “An unstable young girl was recruited to do the dirty work, Bennett. You can hardly be surprised if the plan didn’t come off without a hitch.”