Right now, Moran held the high cards, but not yet the winning hand. He would never fold. Once Lance arrived, Frank’s gun would come down from the shelf. No more cards would be dealt. Game over.
He had to act now.
Moran had grown weary of standing with his arm cocked at an awkward angle around Penny’s neck. He lowered himself onto a straight-backed chair, forcing Penny to kneel in front of him. The knife never left her neck. Penny had stopped struggling. She watched Frank with the fixed attention of relay racer waiting for the baton.
Frank remained standing. He began to talk. “Kids are hard to predict, aren’t they? You spend all your time watching for certain things—online predators, sketchy friends, booze—and then they come at you out of left field with something you never would have expected.”
Moran stared past Frank, looking at the window where he expected to see Lance’s headlights appearing in the driveway.
“Take my daughter.” Frank edged toward the side table behind him. “Kid was a three-season athlete, healthy as a horse. Straight A student. Always had guys chasing her, so sex was what we worried about.”
Moran didn’t appear to be listening, but his breathing changed. Frank could hear every inhalation. He sized up his opponent. He and Moran were about the same size. Moran was a little younger, but he wasn’t a brawler. Frank knew how to fight.
“One day the school called,” Frank continued. “Teacher followed Caroline into the bathroom and caught her puking up her lunch. Bulimia.” Frank shook his head. “Never saw that coming.”
Moran allowed himself a quick glance in Frank’s direction.
All Frank needed was a split second of distraction.
“She wouldn’t go to a shrink, so the wife and I went. Turned out we were too controlling. We needed to give her more space. Seemed like crazy advice, but damned if it didn’t work.” Frank lowered his voice. “Did you realize how angry Drew was with his mother?”
“I...how could I—” Moran’s left hand twitched in his lap, but the right hand still gripped the knife.
Frank needed a noise. Loud. Unfamiliar. He raised his hand as if to scratch his ear. An abstract metal sculpture on the table behind him clanged to the ground.
Penny flinched. Her captor started to stand.
Frank launched himself at Moran’s shoulders. The delicate chair where he sat tipped over and all three of them tumbled to the ground, Penny sandwiched between the two men.
Frank struggled to pin Moran’s knife-hand. The knife was no longer against Penny’s neck, but Moran flailed wildly. Frank felt heat radiate from his jaw as the small blade caught him.
Penny screamed.
A plume of red stained her pale yellow sweater.
Fierce power propelled Frank. With his hip he pushed Penny out of the way and got his knees on Moran’s chest. Even with both of his hands, he couldn’t stop Moran’s slashing. Hot blood ran into his eye. He didn’t register pain.
He lunged again for Moran’s right arm. The two men strained together, evenly matched, each fighting for what he loved.
Frank pried Moran’s little finger away from the knife.
He twisted. They all heard the snap.
The knife fell to the floor.
THE STATE POLICE ARRESTED Mike and Drew Moran; of course they lawyered up, so no information flowed there. Tom Rayborn, on the other hand, offered the state police’s homicide investigators very little challenge. In the course of a few hours filled with threats, reassurances, and fried egg sandwiches, Tom moved from denial, to clumsy cover-up, to signed confession. Drew, Tom explained, had befriended Jeff and first pitched him with the idea of killing his mother in exchange for a sports car. Not knowing how to respond to his glamorous new friend, Jeff had come to his dad for advice. And Tom had accepted the job. With plenty of chemicals still coursing through his system, Tom was a little hazy on how Drew had worked the finances. All he knew was that Drew’s father had taught him how to play the stock market starting in sixth grade, and by the time Drew turned eighteen, he controlled plenty of his own money.
Apart from a superficial scratch on her neck, Penny was uninjured. The blood on her sweater had come from Frank. Two EMTs had patched him up, warning that without stitches, the cut above his eye would leave a scar. He shrugged and kept working.
It took hours to process the crime scene at Penny’s house. As state police officers and technicians combed through the living room, Penny holed up in her kitchen with a mug of tea and a Jane Austen novel whose pages she didn’t turn.
“Let Earl take you over to the Iron Eagle,” Frank begged for the third time.
Penny shook her head.
“I’ll stop by later, when all this is finished.”
“I’ll just wait here until you’re done.”
“It could be hours. Please—Edwin will take care of you. Or I could call Pastor Bob.”
Penny threw her book down. “Dammit, Frank! I don’t want Edwin. I don’t want Bob. I want you.”
“Then why were you—” The words came out with a raw edge. Penny had already told him and the state police that Moran had come that night to get her advice on how to help Sophie. But that didn’t fully explain the cozy scene he’d walked in on.
“What right do you have to be angry? You don’t want me, but you don’t want anyone else to want me either.”
She was still wearing the stained sweater. Frank flashed on the rage he’d felt when he thought that blood had come from her heart. “Oh, Penny—can’t you see how much I want you?” He put his hands on her shoulders, but kept her at arm’s length. “I’m too old for you. You deserve the chance to have kids. I’m past that now.”
She twisted out of his grasp. “I married Ned Stevenson to get what I thought he had: the perfect big, happy family I’d always longed for. But you know what, Frank? There are no perfect families. We try to love the people we’re supposed to love: mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, daughters and sons. But stuff gets in the way. Disappointment. Greed. Jealousy. Desire. And the family that was supposed to always be there falls apart. There are no guarantees.”
“That a pretty dark worldview.”
“Not dark. Just realistic.”
“Are you telling me you don’t believe in the possibility of love? Of fidelity?”
Penny paced the kitchen, talking without making eye contact. “No, I believe people can love each other if they choose to, not if they’re obliged to. But it seems like every link added to the family chain makes it weaker, not stronger. Parenthood is tremendously risky. Not everyone is cut out for it. Renee Moran shouldn’t have been a mother. Tom Rayborn shouldn’t have been a dad.”
“Good lord, Penny—you’re nothing like them! You’re kind and generous and affectionate. You’d be a wonderful mother.”
Penny shook her head. “Motherhood’s not for me Frank. I’m not brave enough. I don’t deal well with uncertainty. I just want to be Penny the loopy librarian. I want to introduce kids to the love of reading. I want to tell them stories and paint pictures with them. I want to show them how wide the world is. Then I want to send them back to their parents.”
She came and stood before him. “And I want to lock the library door and go home. But I don’t want to be alone.”
Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I’m so alone.”
Frank opened his arms.
They clung to each other. The only sound either one heard was the hard, steady beating of their hearts, not quite in sync.
Thanks for visiting Trout Run...
If you enjoyed these Frank Bennett tales, please post a review on Amazon and Goodreads. I truly appreciate your support! Turn the page to read Chapter One of False Cast.
Once you’ve finished the Frank Bennett Adirondack Mountain Mystery Series, please try my other series, The Palmyrton Estate Sale Mystery Series.
False Cast, chapter 1
Frank Bennett paced in the front hall of his house, leaving faint footprints in the thin layer of sawdust on the
floor. Neither he nor his wife had had the time to sweep up after the contractors who created havoc every day putting an addition on the small cottage that had been Frank’s bare-bones bachelor home.
“Penny, come on!” he bellowed up the stairwell. “We're going to be late.”
The only response was the accelerated tapping of his wife’s high heels across the floorboards above his head. What could she possibly be doing? They were going to Earl's graduation from the police academy, not to the opera.
“I can’t find my cream shawl anywhere. Have you seen it?”
Their lives had been turned upside down by the remodeling project, their possessions continually repacked and shifted as they moved themselves out of the path of the builders’ saws and hammers.
“There’s a scarf-y thing down here in the hall. Is that what you’re looking for?”
“Cream?” Penny shouted.
“No, black. Can’t you just wear that?”
“No, I can’t wear a black shawl with this dress.” Penny’s voice had that “how dumb can a man be?” tone that Frank recognized all too well. It was a tone that had cropped up frequently in their discussions of where to live once they were married. Frank had favored buying a five-year-old, three-bedroom ranch house with blue vinyl siding over on Foley Road. Penny had pronounced it irredeemably ugly and lobbied for a falling down American Gothic farmhouse with drafty windows and a crumbling chimney that looked like it wouldn’t stand through another Adirondack winter. Charming, Penny called it. Frank reminded her she wouldn’t be at all charmed when a ten-below wind blew through the termite-infested clapboards. So they had compromised on doubling the size of Frank’s cottage, which was situated in a pretty spot above Stony Brook, with a new master bedroom, expanded kitchen and great room. The work dragged on, sometimes testing the strength of their six-month marriage.
“Relax. It only takes a half an hour to get there.” A whiff of Penny’s floral perfume floated down the stairwell with her words. “I’m almost done.”
Frank could hear closet doors opening and shutting, drawers banging open—not the sounds of almost done to him.
“Should we take two cars? I’ll meet you there.” That was his threat of last resort, designed to bring her running.
Instead, Penny laughed. “If we take separate cars, I guarantee you I'll be there first.”
Too true. Penny’s lead foot hadn’t lightened since their marriage despite Frank’s warning that it didn’t do to have the Police Chief’s wife seen speeding through town.
Finally, Penny descended the stairs, a sheer skirt with an uneven hemline swishing around her long legs.
Frank’s irritation dissolved. “You look fantastic.”
“Thanks, dear.” She kissed him, and her lips were even with his. Frank looked down at her feet.
“What kind of shoes are you wearing? You’re as tall as me!”
“Party shoes! I never get to wear them.”
“Honey, the graduation party is in Earl’s uncle’s workshop. The North Country Stompers are playing. You can’t dance in those.”
“I know.” Penny produced a pair of squishy-looking flats from her purse. “I’ll make an entrance, then I’ll change.”
Making an entrance was what Penny did best. Frank still couldn’t believe this lovely woman, fifteen years his junior, had wanted to marry him, a widower with a married daughter and two grandchildren. Penny would probably have been happy to live together, but Frank thought cohabitation unseemly. He felt during their courtship that people in Trout Run must be gossiping about him when they saw his truck parked in front of Penny’s house or the library where she worked, whispering that he was a crazy old fool, or worse, a dirty old man. His imagination ran wild, hearing his sex life as the subject of conversation at Malone’s Diner. “Frank must be gettin’ lucky tonight!”
Once they married, Frank assumed the gossip must have stopped. At least, he hoped it had. What fun was there in commenting on the habits of a married couple? But he suspected people still murmured, “What does he see in him?” when they saw Penny and him together.
He asked that question himself every morning when he woke to find her long, slender arm flung across his chest, and every evening when he came home to find her singing off-key to the country music the workmen played. But when her eyes opened in the morning or she spied him approaching, her face lit up with undeniable pleasure. Despite his incredulity, Penny was just as delighted in him as he was in her. He had already won the lottery. Time to stop calculating how likely the odds were.
“What happened at the library today?” Frank asked as he navigated the mountain roads through Ausable Forks to pick up the Northway to Plattsburgh.
“I’m working on choosing the books for the kids’ Summer Read-a-thon.” Penny twisted in the passenger seat to face him. “Do you think ten-year-old boys will read a novel with a female protagonist?”
“I think your biggest hurdle is getting little boys through the door of the library during summer vacation. Once they’re inside, I’m confident you could persuade them to read the phone book.” A gust of wind pummeled the truck. “But summer sure seems a long way off.”
“April is the cruelest month.”
“It’s nearly May and they’re still predicting snow squalls for the weekend.” Neither Frank nor Penny had been born in the mountains, but just like any native Adirondackers, they never tired of talking about the weather. “But once the snow stops, the blackflies will start hatching.”
“Fishing season brings tourists. You and Earl will start getting busy again,” Penny said. “Have you talked to Earl yet about his job prospects?”
“No, I wanted to wait until after the ceremony and the party. Why rain on his parade?”
“What did Lloyd say?”
Frank’s foot pressed on the accelerator as he recalled the conversation. “He said what I expected the head of the Town Council to say. There simply isn’t enough money in the Trout Run municipal budget to raise Earl’s salary up to the level of an entry-level sworn officer in other departments in the region. As much as everyone loves Earl, Lloyd said he should look for a new position, and I should hire a new civilian assistant. That’s all Trout Run can afford.”
“That’s depressing.” Penny squinted out the passenger window, but there was nothing to see but the dim outlines of trees flashing by in the reflected glow of headlights. “Can’t he just wear the uniform and keep collecting his civilian assistant pay?”
“Well, yeah—but that kinda defeats the purpose of going to the academy. He’s tired of having to sneak around with the girls he dates, but he can’t move out of his parents’ house and live on twenty grand a year.”
“So after all you’ve done to help Earl get through police academy, now you’re going to lose him.”
Frank sighed. “Yeah, just when he was getting really good at his job. I’ll have to break in some other teenager, I suppose.”
“Do you regret encouraging him to go to the academy?”
“Of course not. I would never want to hold him back. I was hoping for a fairy tale ending where we could both get what we want, but life isn’t like one of your story hour books.”
They sank into silence until Frank exited the highway in Plattsburgh. It dawned on him then that he might have silenced his wife with a remark that came out more snappish than he’d intended. Frank had very quickly slipped back into the habit of being married. After spending twenty-two years married to Estelle before a brain aneurysm plucked her from his world, he now had picked up the thread of married life as if the six long years of unchosen bachelorhood had never happened. He didn’t see Penny as a replacement for Estelle—God knew they were totally different. It was more that the reassuring comfort of being able to say out loud whatever thought passed through his mind had snapped back into place.
But maybe it shouldn’t have. Penny wasn’t high-strung—he wouldn’t have been attracted to her if she were. But she wasn’t yet inured to Totally Unfiltered Frank.<
br />
Frank took his right hand off the wheel and patted Penny’s knee, as close to an apology as he could go.
She squeezed his hand briefly then twisted her head. “Turn there!” Penny pointed to a green road sign for the Division of Criminal Justice Services Training Center that Frank was about to sail past.
He took the corner on two wheels and they pulled into the parking lot laughing.
Inside the packed auditorium, the Davis family occupied all of Row J, with two empty seats in the middle that clearly awaited Frank and Penny. Earl had finagled two extra graduation tickets from a fellow graduate with a small family. Even so, some of Earl’s cousins had been excluded from the ceremony. But Great Grandma Gert was there, her cane propped against the seat, her blue eyes bright with excitement.
“I never thought I’d live to see this day,” Gert said as the speeches ended and a recording of “Pomp and Circumstance” crackled over the sound system.
“She means she didn’t think she’d live this long, not that she didn’t think Earl could manage to graduate,” Earl’s mother clarified to Frank.
Gert was always predicting her own demise, but the 98-year-old looked remarkably spry. “There he is! There’s Earl!” she shouted as the first row of cadets marched across the stage.
Antonini...Applebee...Bannister...Beyn...Bonkowski...Connor...Curnow... Frank gripped his armrests and leaned forward.
“Earl Davis,” the commander intoned.
Row J erupted in cheers. Uncle Wayne blasted an air horn. Great Grandma Gert slashed the air with her cane. Down on the stage, Earl struggled to maintain a dignified demeanor. But as soon as he shook the commander’s hand and accepted the diploma, a grin split his face. He looked up at them, and it seemed he was exerting superhuman self-control to keep himself from waving.
Frank Bennett Adirondack Mountain Mystery Box Set Page 62