Blood Knot: a small town murder mystery (Frank Bennett Adirondack Mysteries Book 3)

by S. W. Hubbard

  “Hmm?” Payne adjusted a crooked picture. “Yes, we were acquainted professionally for a few years. The therapeutic school community is a small one—we all know each other.”

  "You recruited him from another school?”

  “He was ready for a change of scene.” Payne inclined his head with a knowing look on his face. “Trouble with a woman.”

  “Some change! Will there be a memorial service?”

  “His sister in Utah is taking care of that.”

  The door opened after a timid tap, and a middle-aged woman in a white uniform stepped into the room, looking like Dorothy in the presence of the great Oz.

  “You wanted me, Dr. Payne?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Pershing.” Payne didn’t bother to offer her a seat, but left her standing there, trembling. “I wanted to ask you about your procedures for disposing of bacon grease.”

  A blotchy red flush appeared on her neck and face. “I never throw it down the drain! Honest, I never do—I scrape it into the garbage so my sinks don’t get clogged up.”

  “Excellent." Payne smiled at her, but the poor woman wasn’t reassured. “And the trash is thrown in the Dumpster, which is enclosed by a fence with a locked gate.”

  “Who has the key to that?” Frank asked.

  Mrs. Pershing pulled on a lanyard that hung around her neck with three keys on a ring. “These are the keys to the kitchen, the pantry, and the garbage enclosure. I wear them around my neck the whole time I’m on duty, and on my days off, Francine wears them. After the kitchen is locked for the night, I give the keys to Dr. Payne before I go home.”

  “And when is the last time you prepared bacon, Mrs. Pershing?” Payne asked.

  She bit her lip and looked up and the ceiling. “Let’s see—it must be about a week ago. Randy and Bill asked if I could make bacon for Sunday breakfast, so I did."

  Frank wanted to ask her more about the keys, the menu, and access to the kitchen, but it was obvious that if Mrs. Pershing had ever deviated slightly from the established procedure, she’d never admit it in front of Payne. She looked vaguely familiar to him, but he didn’t think she lived in Trout Run.

  “You live here on campus, Mrs. Pershing?” he asked.

  “No, I live over in Verona. I used to be a cook at the Sunnyside Cafe, but when that closed, I was out of work until I got the job here." She smiled at Payne. “This here is a real good job. I like it a lot.”

  Frank nodded. The Sunnyside Cafe had closed over a year ago, a long time to be unemployed. No wonder Mrs. Pershing was so jumpy.

  “Thank you for your time, Mrs. Pershing,” Payne said. “You may go.”

  She took a few steps backwards, as if leaving the presence of royalty, and then turned and slipped out the door. Meanwhile, Payne was writing another phrase on the board: Garbage Secure.

  He tapped the board with the capped pen. “That only leaves one possibility. The grease got on the bag during the trip, but not from our campers. There aren’t many areas on that mountain that offer a good place to camp. That spot’s level, not too rocky, and protected from the wind. Jake’s group wasn’t the first to camp there and they won’t be the last. A previous camping group must have disposed of bacon grease in that area. It soaked into the ground or was covered by leaves, but the bear could still smell it, even if Jake overlooked it.”

  Frank considered Payne’s theory. It was a little improbable, but hell, no more so than Rusty’s insistence on sabotage. But how did Payne know so much about the spot where the group had camped?

  “You never went up the trail to the camp spot, Dr. Payne. How are you able to describe it so accurately?”

  “I didn’t go up this morning, but I had hiked there this summer with Jake. I’ve done all the wilderness outings in the program, so I can honestly tell the students that I don’t expect them to do anything I haven’t done myself.”

  Payne turned his back on Frank and gazed out the window. “I’ve always loved the mountains. I grew up in Montana—hiking, fishing, skiing. What better way is there to spend your time, in touch with the natural world, testing your mind and body against the challenges of the wilderness? Jake shared my passion. He understood the restorative effect that wilderness training can have for these troubled kids. A terrible loss ...” Payne stopped talking for a minute, then coughed and turned to face Frank. “I want to thank you for coming here today.” He grabbed Frank’s hand and pumped it vigorously, his sallow face flushed with emotion. “It was splendid of you to work with me to discover the cause of this tragic accident, and to look into our trespassing problem.”

  He put his hand on Frank’s shoulder and locked eyes with him. “You’re a man of influence in Trout Run. Act as an ambassador for the North Country Academy. Let it be known that I am still hiring people of good character for well-paying jobs with benefits. But also let it be known that this trespassing must stop.”

  Frank edged away. He was willing to handle the trespassers, but accepting the title of ambassador was pushing the envelope. “I’ll bear it in mind.”

  Frank made it all the way to his patrol car before it registered that Payne had pressed his business card on him as he was leaving, and that he’d been mauling it as he walked.

  He flattened it out and read:

  North Country Academy MacArthur Payne, PhD Headmaster

  “No Payne, no Gain”

  Chapter 6

  Frank tossed restlessly in his bed, his mind still in the office with MacArthur Payne. The man confounded him. There were plenty of things about Payne to dislike. The way he tried to intimidate people, the pompous boasting, the adherence to this crackpot system—all of it rubbed Frank the wrong way.

  Yet there was something compelling about the guy. Not quite likeable, but admirable, somehow. You had to give him credit for turning these kids around when so many others had failed them. And he seemed to be sincere in his love of the outdoor life and genuinely saddened by Reiger’s death.

  Just when you expected him to blow smoke in your face, he’d surprise you with total honesty, like when he’d admitted that none of the teachers were well liked. That performance with the marker and the board was a little over the top, but in the final analysis, Payne's explanation for how the grease got on the bag had some merit, at least to him.

  Frank rolled over and slept.

  The bare branches of the maples in the town green etched a jagged black pattern against the bright blue sky, as Frank walked to the office after grabbing a cup of coffee and donut at the Store the next morning. In the distance, gunfire echoed. The mountains were full of hunters at this time of year.

  He made a wide detour around the old flower shop, fighting the urge to pop in and check on the progress of the library renovation. With every carpenter in Trout Run involved, the project had thirty chiefs and no Indians. Frank knew himself well enough to realize that if he went in to look, he’d be the thirty-first Sitting Bull.

  He'd picked up plenty of scuttlebutt, though, at Malone’s and the Store. Apparently Pete Ringold and George Feeney had almost come to blows over how to frame the checkout desk. Art Breveur, using Rollie Fister’s power nailer for the first time, had attached his thumb to a stud. And, Penny, after approving what had been done so far, would be returning to the city on Sunday but would be back next weekend.

  As he drew nearer to the Presbyterian Church, he could hear music in the air. The front doors of the church stood wide open on this Tuesday morning. No cars around—it couldn’t be a funeral. Maybe Augie Enright was just releasing some heat. The handyman complained that once he cranked up the church’s boiler in October, it couldn’t be turned down until May. The music swelled and Frank stopped to listen. It was the organ, played in a way he’d never before heard in Trout Run. The piece sounded familiar, something Estelle used to play—Karg-Ellert, Bach? The notes boomed through the air, loud enough to shake the rafters of the little church.

  He couldn’t pass by without investigating the source of that marvelous sound. He entered the d
imly lit narthex, passing by the ushers’ table where Reid Burlingame and Randall Bixley oversaw the distribution of the bulletins on Sunday morning, and poked his head into the sanctuary. The organ keyboard occupied the left rear corner, with the pipes arrayed above and behind it.

  Frank watched the long, slender fingers of the young man seated at the organ fly across the keys. One moment his head hunched over the keyboard, the next he flung it back, shaking his straight, dark hair from his eyes. Occasionally his right hand rose up to pull a draw knob or flip a coupler. At the same time, his feet, clad in thin-soled black shoes, performed an intricate dance across the pedals. A boy sat beside him on the bench and, without any cue from the performer, turned the pages of the sheet music. Fully focused on the music, they played on unaware of their audience.

  The piece ended in a tremendous crescendo of the timpani and horn pipes. The sound ricocheted off the polished stone floor and the uncushioned pews on its way up to the vaulted ceiling, where it seemed to hang, almost palpable, for long seconds.

  Frank had no desire to break the spell. The organist’s head finally lifted after the last sound wave faded away. Only then did Frank applaud.

  Two heads swiveled.

  “It is Karg-Ellert,” Frank said. “My wife loved to play that piece, but she claimed she wasn’t fast enough to do it justice.”

  “Speed isn’t everything.” The organist smiled and extended his hand. “Oliver Greffe. And you must be Frank Bennett. I’ve heard about you, but not that you are a music fan.”

  “Oh, people often forget to mention my good qualities—they’re so few and for between.” Frank turned his attention to the boy sitting beside Greffe. “So, Matthew—I hear you’re taking over as organist here. You might bring me back to church permanently.”

  Matthew Portman ducked his head and smiled. “Oliver—Mr. Greffe—is teaching me. I'm not too good yet.”

  “Don’t believe him.” Greffe patted Matthew’s shoulder. “He’s coming along marvelously. A natural talent.” Matthew flushed under the praise, but Frank could see he enjoyed it. The poor kid had suffered a lot of bad luck in his short life. His mother had died last year in an accident on the Northway, his father struggled to support the family and care for the kids, and his older brother was mentally retarded. These lessons offered a break from the heartache at home. And Greffe didn’t look more than twenty-two—he’d make a good role model for the boy.

  “So what brought you to the North Country Academy, Oliver?” The young musician was obviously very talented. Why squander it teaching juvenile delinquents? “I imagine the students you teach there aren’t quite as committed as Matthew.”

  Oliver smiled at his student. “Teaching Matthew is a real pleasure. My other students are a little more . . . uh . . . challenging. But I can’t complain. The pay is great, and I’m not doing it forever.”

  Matthew suddenly looked forlorn. “Oliver got into a master’s program to study the organ at the Curtis Institute of Music. He’ll only be in Trout Run for a year."

  “We can accomplish a lot in that time, Matthew.” Oliver turned to Frank. “I want to devote myself entirely to music while I’m at Curtis, so I took the Academy job for a year to earn enough to cover my living expenses for next year. With the free room and board, I can save a lot of money."

  So, Oliver could earn enough in one year at the academy to support himself for two. That was some teaching job. “And do you enjoy the work?” Frank asked.

  “It’s eye-opening. I’m realizing that I’ve led an awfully sheltered life. Ever since I learned to play the piano when I was four, music has been my whole world. These kids have problems I never even imagined, and they require a lot of patience.”

  Matthew jumped off the organ bench and began stuffing sheet music into a backpack, each page going in more forcefully than the last.

  Oliver laid a restraining hand on his student's arm. “Hey, take it easy.”

  Matthew looked up with a scowl. "It’s not fair that your have to spend so much time on those academy kids when they don’t even appreciate you.”

  Oliver met Frank's eye over the top of Matthew’s bowed head and smiled slightly. “I don't have a lot of free time, because even when I'm not teaching a class at the academy, I have supervisory duties. Matthew would like me to come and hear him play at the hymn sing next week, but I’m not sure I can get off. I’m going to try, though.”

  Matthew continued to sulk, and Oliver tried to jolly him out of it. He patted the boy’s shoulder. “Hey, you should have been in my vocal class the other day. I had these four kids with tattoos singing ‘Ave Verum Corpus,’ and they sounded pretty good.”

  Matthew’s head snapped up and his eyes flashed. “Yeah, I would love to be in your vocal class with only three other kids singing Mozart. But instead, I’m in Mrs. Fleischman’s ninth-grade chorus, singing tunes from Cats with forty kids who would rather be in study hall.”

  Oliver looked like he had been slapped, but Matthew went on. “Those academy kids grew up with big houses and fancy cars, and all they can figure out to do with their lives is take drugs and shoplift. They don’t deserve to study music with you.” He grabbed his backpack and ran out of the church.

  “Wow! Where did that come from?” Oliver asked as the outer door slammed.

  “Oh, don’t take it too seriously,” Frank answered. "It’s always hard to be fourteen, and Matthew’s had a tougher ride than most. Probably next time you see him, it’ll be like that never happened.”

  “I hope so.”

  “Is he right? Are all your academy students drug addicts and shoplifters?”

  "I don’t know each kid’s history, but I don’t teach the really difficult ones. Music classes are one of the privileges—the kids have to earn their way into them. You see, Mac really believes in the power of music, both positive and negative.”

  Mac? Frank couldn’t imagine being friendly enough with MacArthur Payne to call him that.

  “Most of the kids are fans of heavy metal, Goth, headbanger music. When they enter the school, Mac takes away all their CDs and iPods and they go completely silent for a while. Then gradually, they earn the privilege of coming to me. I get them singing in small groups—Mozart, Vivaldi, Tallis.”

  “They must just love that.” Frank grinned.

  “They start out sort of sullen,” Oliver admitted. “But as I was telling Matthew, I had a group of them singing Mozart. I recorded them and played it back, and they all looked very pleased with themselves. I think I’m getting through to them."

  “It sounds like you're doing a great job,” Frank agreed. And maybe MacArthur Payne was, too.

  A door in the front of the church opened and a tall man in a clerical collar came hurrying down the aisle.

  “Fantastic!” Pastor Bob Rush started gushing before he’d reached the middle of the church. “I could hear you all the way back in my office. Who would’ve thought our little organ could even produce such amazing sound?”

  “Actually, it’s an Austin organ—a pretty fine instrument for a rural church,” Greffe said. “But it hasn’t been well maintained. I’m trying to avoid its weak spots, but that will be more challenging for Matthew. The organ could use a complete overhaul, if you can afford it."

  “Whatever it takes.” Bob’s bright blue eyes glowed with enthusiasm. “Get me an estimate.”

  Frank glanced around. One pane of the leaded-glass window was still covered over with cardboard; the peeling choir loft cried out to be repainted. Hadn’t Reid been complaining last week that the collection revenues were so sparse that Pastor Bob might have to forgo his last paycheck of the year? Not that Bob relied on the pittance he earned as a minister to support himself; he had family money to cover the breach. Maybe that’s how he planned to repair the organ, as well.

  Frank’s negative thoughts seemed to draw Pastor Bob’s attention to him. “Were you looking for me?”

  An entirely neutral question, but Frank heard an underlying coldness. He and Bob ha
d never really patched up their differences over the Janelle Harvey disappearance case.

  “No, I heard Oliver and Matthew playing and came in to listen.”

  Bob’s lips moved into a smile, but the effect wasn’t too convincing. “I think it’s best that Matthew’s lessons not be interrupted. It’s hard to learn in front of an audience.”

  Frank decided to turn the other cheek, mainly because he thought that might irritate Bob more than a protest. “Absolutely right. Nice to meet you, Oliver.” He waved and sauntered out, but not before he heard Oliver Greffe say, “What a nice guy.”

  Bob didn’t answer.

  As Frank walked back toward the office, he saw Earl’s little beige Escort shoot out of the parking lot and speed south on Route 12. Doris was standing in the doorway of the office. He broke into a trot.

  “What’s wrong? Where did Earl go?” he asked as he came up the steps.

  “We got a domestic disturbance call from Peg Betz. Lorrie’s over there making trouble.”

  “And Earl went to handle it on his own? Goddammit, he knows he’s not authorized to do that!”

  “I told him to go get you, Frank. Honest, I did.”

  Frank turned his back on the hand-wringing Doris and jumped into the patrol car. What in God’s name had possessed Earl to go out on a dangerous call alone? Hadn’t they been discussing how unpredictable domestic situations could be, when Earl was studying for the police academy entry exam? Just when he thought he was making some headway with that kid, Earl would let him down by doing something stupid.

  Frank threw on the siren and raced toward Peg and Len Betz’s home. They were Lorrie’s in-laws, and everyone knew Lorrie’s divorce from their son, Chuck, had been messy. Len and Chuck were both avid hunters, which made for a very real possibility that guns would play a part in this disturbance.

  And there was Earl, heading into it with no more than a pen in his pocket.

  Chapter 7

  But when Frank screeched into the driveway, he saw Earl leading a teary-eyed Lorrie away from the house. She was as tall as he was, with an athletic build, but he had his arm around her shoulders and she was listening to him intently, nodding occasionally. Earl put her into the passenger seat of her car and got into the driver’s side, choosing to ignore Frank’s arrival.