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

by S. W. Hubbard

  “Actually, I have a date this Friday night. If it goes well, maybe I can afford to turn Lucy down.”

  “Who’s the lucky girl?”

  Bob looked sheepish. “I haven't exactly met her yet. We’ve only exchanged e-mails. She’s a schoolteacher in Burlington. We got in touch through this Internet dating service for clergy—men-of-the-cloth-dot-com.”

  Frank roared with laughter. “Maybe I should see if they have one for cops—men-with-badges-dot-com.”

  “Don’t bother.” Bob glanced out his window at the town green. “You don't have to look any further than our new library.”

  Thanksgiving Festival Sunday dawned crisp and cold. Four inches of snow had fallen during the night, just enough to make the world fresh and new. The ultra-efficient county road crew had already cleared it, so there was no excuse for missing church.

  Frank put on a tie and sports coat, unnecessary formalities for services at Trout Run Presbyterian, but he deplored the current trend toward attending worship looking like you'd just left off chopping wood. Besides, he sang better when dressed up.

  He arrived early to get a good seat—one in the rear. The pews filled up quickly around him. Frank read the bulletin, stared at the cornucopia, studied the pew Bible—anything to keep himself from looking up at the organ loft or the beam with the bullet hole. He noticed Penny come in—she marched down the aisle and took a seat front and center in the second row. Despite the pastor’s disclaimer, Frank was sure she wanted Bob to be aware of her presence.

  Soon the choir filed in, the crowd silenced, and everyone rose for the processional hymn. Penny kept glancing over her shoulder anxiously. In a moment he realized why. Her reluctant converts—Edwin, Lucy, and Olivia—slipped in and squeezed into a rear pew. But even after she acknowledged them, Penny continued to look for someone. Finally her gaze found Frank in the crowd, and she smiled that dazzling Penny smile. After that, she turned and opened her hymnal.

  From the organ pipes above and behind him, the first notes of "Come, Ye Thankful People, Come” rang out. The choir, all ten of them, sang along, sounding better than he’d ever heard them. The congregation chimed in, getting stronger with every verse as they realized Matthew would not lead them astray with some sudden tempo change or key shift.

  To his left, he heard a strong baritone that faded out on the second and third verses but came back strongly on the refrain. He glanced over and saw Ernie Portman singing lustily, a discarded hymnal on the pew behind him. A beam of sunlight slanted through the high window, a celestial spotlight illuminating his joyous face.

  The hymn ended with a rumbling flourish of the Bombard pipes. An appreciative murmur ran through the crowd as heads turned toward the organ.

  Frank turned and looked, too. The final crescendo still hung in the air. Matthew sat with his fingers on the keyboard, his eyes cast down, maybe listening, maybe praying. For a moment the crowd disappeared—it was just Frank and the musician and the sound.

  Then Matthew looked up and spotted his brother in the crowd. He lifted his fingers in a tiny salute.

  Ernie smiled.

  It was enough.

  THE END

  Scroll the page to read the first chapter of Frank Bennett’s next adventures, the three short stories in Dead Drift.

  Chainsaw Nativity

  The Thanksgiving turkey had not yet been served, but as soon as the first snow fell, signs of Christmas began popping up around Trout Run, New York. The ladies crafts circle hung an elaborate wreath on the door of the Presbyterian Church, while the bartender at the Mountainside strung tinsel over the beer kegs and mounted an erratically lighted sign that proclaimed Merr Ch istmas, a slurred Teleprompter for the patrons perched on his wobbly barstools. North Country Country 93.3 played Dwight Yoakum’s “Here Comes Santa Claus” at least once an hour; every night a few more houses glowed with fairy lights. And, on the town green, Bucky Rheinholz’s chainsaw Nativity was unveiled.

  Frank Bennett dodged through the Nativity-viewing crowd, already dense at ten in the morning. He would have liked to pause and look at the statues again himself, but was already late for his meeting with Pastor Bob Rush. Charging into the church office out of breath, Frank saw he needn’t have hurried. No Myrna at the front desk, no Bob in the pastor’s study. Then, from the kitchen he heard voices.

  “Yesterday the milk disappeared, today it’s the sugar. I tell you, I can’t put anything in this kitchen without it being carried off.”

  “You know they need it, Myrna. Just go buy some more.”

  Frank came around the corner in time to see Bob pull ten bucks from his pocket.

  “If they need help, all they have to do is ask. This is stealing, plain and simple.”

  “Problem?” Frank asked.

  Myrna and Bob froze. “Nothing we need police help with, thank you anyway, Frank. Myrna’s being called to do God’s work.”

  Myrna took the cash and stalked out the door.

  “Seems to be a little static interfering with His signal.”

  Bob smiled. “If everyone could hear the message loud and clear, I’d be out of a job. Now, tell me what you want to do about this traffic problem I’ve created.”

  They walked to the front door of the church as a tour bus from Albany pulled up to the green, disgorging fifty camera-toting senior citizens.

  Frank had watched in amazement the week before as Bucky Reinholz and three burly men wrangled the well-wrapped pieces of the Nativity off a flatbed truck borrowed from the lumberyard. Each statue was as big as the men who carried it, and by the time they had them all unloaded the crew was red-faced and sweating even in the brisk November air.

  Frank had helped cut away the paper and padding protecting the figures and as each cover fell away, he grew more amazed. Chainsaw art cropped up all over the Adirondacks, in little souvenir shops, craft fairs, or set up on front lawns with hand-painted “for sale” signs. Mostly totem poles or bears sitting on their haunches--if you’d seen one, you’d seen them all.

  Frank fell squarely into the “I don’t know much, but I know what I like” school of art criticism, but even to his unschooled eye, Bucky Reinholz’s chainsaw Nativity qualified as a masterpiece. The kneeling Mary radiated a tender joy; the shepherd looked curious and a little fearful; one of the three kings glanced skyward as if he wasn’t sure that star could be trusted. The infant Jesus in his manger had been carved from an enormous stump, the baby emerging as if the tree itself had given birth.

  Frank had wandered from statue to statue, entranced. Up close, the rough cuts of the chainsaw seemed to obliterate the figures’ features, but when you took a few steps back you saw that the grooves themselves were what created their astonishingly lifelike expressions. The effect was magical, and Frank couldn’t stop examining them.

  “You did all this with a chainsaw?”

  “A five horsepower Husqvarna, mostly,” Bucky said.

  “How long did it take?”

  “Umm, close on to three years, I guess. Had a little trouble with the first baby Jesus. Wood wasn’t fully dried, and after I had it all carved, I came out to the shop one morning and found it cracked right down the middle.” Bucky grinned, revealing the large strong incisors that had given him his nickname.

  Frank thought he seemed awfully good-natured about his setback. “Didn’t it bother you to lose something you’d worked so hard on?” He’d built a pretty mahogany end table once, and a wild little friend of his daughter’s had knocked it over and taken a big chunk out of it. He still bore that kid a grudge, twenty years later.

  “Oh, no use to complain. Besides, the second one turned out even better.”

  “Are you going to move all this back to your shop after Christmas?”

  Bucky slapped his thigh. “Hell, no. This is my gift to Trout Run. Pastor Bob and Ardyth Munger have some crazy notion it’ll be a tourist attraction to raise money for the church.”

  And the crazy notion had proved true. Which brought them to today’s proble
m. The chainsaw Nativity was attracting so many sightseers that traffic in the one-stoplight town was totally balled up. “Earl spends his whole day out here directing traffic,” Frank complained to Pastor Bob. “The kid hasn’t had a day off since the Nativity went on display.”

  “You’re not suggesting we take it down, I hope?” Bob asked. “All the businesses in town are benefiting.”

  “No, no—I really like it, too. But could you organize some guys from the church to help with traffic control?”

  “No problem. I’ll pitch in myself if you think Earl will let me wear that orange reflective vest.”

  They strolled onto the green, wandering among the statues. This time, Frank took particular notice of the Joseph. Bucky had carved him sitting, gazing at his wife and the child. He looked stunned, as if he couldn’t absorb what had happened to him. Frank remembered feeling that way himself in the delivery room, staring at Estelle and the wrinkled little bundle that was their daughter, Caroline.

  “I think of all the statues, Joseph is my favorite.”

  “Yes, I like him too,” Bob agreed. “Joseph is so underrated. Just think—his fiancée comes to him with this extraordinary story that she’s pregnant, but still a virgin, and the child she’s carrying is the son of God. And instead of casting her out to be stoned to death for adultery, he agrees to protect her and marry her and raise the child as his own.” Bob touched the puzzled but trusting wooden brow of Joseph. “He believes Mary.”

  Frank continued to stare at the statue. Trust. Maybe that was what made the Joseph so unusual. Trust wasn’t an expression you saw much on the face of a grown man. And Bucky had somehow captured that with his chainsaw. Go figure.

  Crime in Trout Run peaked each week between 4PM on Friday afternoon when the men at Stevenson’s Lumberyard received their paychecks, and 2AM on Saturday when they had drunk them half away at the Mountainside Tavern. Frank made a point of stopping by the Mountainside late every Friday night.

  Tonight’s crowd wasn’t rowdy, but a certain edginess hung in the air. A group of men in hunters’ camo sat at the bar complaining.

  “Greg Haney’s had my rifle for close on two weeks and he still don’t have it fixed. What am I supposed to do, with buck season starting in three more days?”

  “I don’t care if he is a cripple—that just ain’t right.”

  “I heard he kept Herb’s shotgun for nearly a month.”

  “And what’s more, when you call up to ask about it, he won’t talk to you. Make’s his girl say he can’t come to the phone. Hides out behind his kids ‘cause he knows I won’t swear at them.”

  “I have half a mind to go out there and collect my gun. I don’t care if it’s in a million little pieces.”

  “Greg’s a helluva gunsmith, but it seems like he can’t keep up with the work since the accident.”

  The grousing continued, but since everyone agreed about Greg Haney’s poor service, and the object of their complaint wasn’t present, Frank left them to it. He checked out the action in the game room, where Ray Stulke was trying to hustle a pool game from two young men clearly marked as tourists by the lift tickets stuck to the zippers of their expensive ski jackets. They might as well have worn signs reading Fleece Me. Frank sat down, estimating ten minutes for Ray to lure them into a double-or-nothing bet, three for him to sink every ball on the table, and thirty seconds for the fight to break out.

  But the tourists were both better gamblers and better pool players than Frank gave them credit for, and Ray had to work hard to win. The game ended in laughter and backslapping and offers to buy the next round. Frank rose to leave as the jukebox began to play “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen.” He’d judged the atmosphere at the Mountainside all wrong. Maybe, just for the Christmas season, he should take a page from Joseph’s book and be a little more trusting. The sound of the crowd joining in on the refrain followed him into the parking lot, and hung in the still, cold air:

  “Oh tidings of comfort and joy, comfort and joy.”

  As Frank drove past the green on his way home, the floodlights illuminating the Nativity snapped off. In the split second before the brilliance evaporated, Frank thought he noticed something off-kilter. He drove around slowly, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the soft reflection of moonlight on snow. The wooden shepherd offered genuine concern for his shivering lambs. The three kings still marched toward their goal. The donkey’s big eyes studied the store and the diner.

  When Frank reached the third side of the square, he realized what was wrong.

  Joseph was gone.

  To keep reading, download Dead Drift.

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  Have you read all the books by S.W. Hubbard?

  Frank Bennett Adirondack Mountain Mystery Series

  Take the Bait

  The Lure

  Blood Knot

  Dead Drift

  False Cast

  Palmyrton Estate Sale Mystery Series

  Another Man’s Treasure

  Treasure of Darkness

  This Bitter Treasure

  Acknowledgements

  Very special thanks to Anne Tomlin for suggesting the title for this book.

  I would like to offer my sincere thanks to fellow writer Lieutenant Kenneth Didion, NYS DEC DLE, for generously sharing his knowledge of black bears in the Adirondacks and DEC procedure (any errors are my own), and for allowing me to draw inspiration from his tales of bear behavior and misbehavior.

  I continue to be grateful for the guidance and support of Pam Ahearn, Pamela Hegarty, Ann Hubbard, and Kevin Hubbard. Finally, I’d like to thank Dr. James Hicks, organist of the Presbyterian Church in Morristown, and Carol Hubbard, my mother- in-law, for instilling in me a love of the king of instruments, the pipe organ, played well and played loud!

  About the Author

  S.W. Hubbard is the author of the Palmyrton Estate Sale Mysteries, Another Man’s Treasure, Treasure of Darkness, and This Bitter Treasure. She is also is the author of three Police Chief Frank Bennett mystery novels set in the Adirondack Mountains: Take the Bait, The Lure (originally published as Swallow the Hook), Blood Knot, and False Cast, as well as a short story collection featuring Frank Bennett, Dead Drift. Her short stories have appeared in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine and the anthologies Crimes by Moonlight, The Mystery Box, and Adirondack Mysteries. She lives in Morristown, NJ, where she teaches creative writing to enthusiastic teens and adults, and expository writing to reluctant college freshmen. To contact her, invite her to your book club, or read the first chapter of any of her books, visit: http://www.swhubbard.net.

  Copyright © 2015 S.W. Hubbard

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