False Cast: a small town murder mystery (Frank Bennett Adirondack Mountain Mystery Series Book 5)

by S. W. Hubbard

  Chapter 1

  Frank Bennett paced 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 ranch house with triple glazed windows and an energy efficient furnace. Penny had called that house’s yellow kitchen “eye-scalding” and lobbied for a falling down American Gothic farmhouse with a termite-infested wrap-around porch and a claw-foot bathtub connected to poisonous lead pipes. Charming, Penny called it. So they had compromised on doubling the size of Frank’s cottage, 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—not the sounds of almost done to him.

  “Should we take two cars? I’ll meet you there.” 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 she 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 all 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 Reid 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, Reid 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 the 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 Estell
e 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.

  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.

  Earl’s mom leaned across her grandmother and grabbed Frank’s hand. “I want to thank you for all you’ve done for Earl. I didn’t think he should do this at first, thought he should train with my brother to install furnaces, but Earl just loves everything he’s learned. He loves working with you.”

  Frank felt an uncomfortable thickening in his throat. “Right. Me too.”

  When Frank pulled up in front of Earl’s uncle’s house, the sound of bluegrass music echoed through the valley. Every neighbor in a ten-mile radius had been invited to the party, so there was no chance of complaints. Frank helped high-heeled Penny pick her way down the gravel driveway to the big workshop behind the house where all Davis family events were held.

  “Look at the stars.” Penny paused to gaze at brilliant canopy above them. “What a beautiful night!” Then she threw her arms around Frank’s neck and kissed him, long and hard.

  He responded, forgetting about the likelihood of other arriving guests. When they finally pulled apart, Frank tugged at his jacket fruitlessly. “Geez, Penny, now I have to walk into a crowded room.”

  “Oh, no one’s looking at you.” She took his hand and led the way.

  Inside, the big open building was packed with friends and relatives. The band played on an improvised stage at the far end of the room, while folding tables covered with bright plastic cloths held enough fried chicken, potato salad, and venison stew to feed the entire county. Earl was in the center of a crowd of well-wishers, so Frank and Penny gravitated to their own best friends, Pastor Bob Rush and Edwin and Lucy Bates.

  “How’s business?” Bob was asking Edwin and Lucy when Frank and Penny showed up.

  “No guests at all,” Edwin complained. “But I’ve started a cooking class and I have six people signed up for that.”

  “March and April are terribly slow,” Lucy complained. “We’d close the inn and go on vacation except that Olivia has school.”

  Olivia tossed her hair. “I could skip a month of school and still pass eighth grade. My classes are super easy.”

  Lucy and Edwin’s foster daughter seemed to have shot up another three inches since Frank had seen her just a few weeks ago. She was straddling that awkward line between gangly and willowy, and Frank knew enough not to comment on her height. He remembered the days when Caroline towered over all the middle school boys and moaned about being what she termed “freakishly tall.” Now, at twenty-eight, his daughter was a perfectly proportioned five-seven.

  “I love that shirt, Olivia,” Penny said. “You look so pretty in green.”

  Olivia barely lifted her head to acknowledge the compliment. “Thanks.”

  The Stompers chose that moment to launch into their biggest hit, “There’s a Bear in my Trash (and he better git gone).” Frank’s eyes lit up. “Hey, Olivia—they’re playing our song! Wanna dance?” He held out his hand. The last time he’d been to a party where the Stompers played, Olivia had worn him out dancing the two-step.

  Olivia shot him a glance that truly redefined the expression “if looks could kill.” Then she spoke to Lucy. “Can we please go? This is so boring.”

  “Olivia, Frank asked you a question. You’re being very rude,” Lucy scolded. She took a breath to say more, but Olivia bolted away.

  “Looks like you’re stuck dancing with me, dear,” Penny said as they watched Olivia plop into a folding chair and pull a paperback from her jacket pocket.

  Lucy ran her hands through her hair. “I’m sorry, Frank. I don’t know what’s gotten into her. Yesterday she was all excited about coming to the party.”

  Frank laughed. “I’ve been turned down by plenty of girls in my time. I’ll survive.”

  “Well, there’s no excuse for being rude,” Lucy said. “I’m going to make her come back here and apologize.”

  Frank reached for her arm before she took second step. “Relax, Lucy. Pick your battles. This one isn’t worth having.”

  Edwin shook his head. “One day, she’s playing with Legos, the next day, she’s demanding pierced ears and eye shadow. Then she’s back to Legos and wanting to be tucked in at night. My head is spinning.”

  “Welcome to the difficult ‘tween years. It’ll get worse before it gets better, believe me.”

  Edwin put his arm around Lucy. “We’ve figured out this parenting thing pretty well so far, right, Mama?”

  Lucy’s stern expression softened. “Just when I figure out one stage, we’re on to the next. There’s never a dull moment with that girl.” She looked across to where Olivia sat, twirling a strand of her long brown hair as she read. “I can’t even remember what life was like before we got Olivia.”

  The party rocked on. Frank joined in the fifty-person contra dance, and by the time it was finished, he saw that Olivia had disappeared from her reading nook. Edwin wasn’t much of a dancer, so they had probably all gone home. Penny was dancing with Earl’s uncle, leaving Frank to peruse the dessert buffet, when Trudy Massinay came up.

  “Hey, Trudy—ready for a treat? That chocolate cake is not as good as it looks, but the banana cream pie will knock your socks off.”

  “Thanks for the advice. I shouldn’t be eating any of it, but maybe I’ll try one of these blondies.” The sturdy social worker took a bar from an overloaded plate and nibbled around the edges.

  “How’s Mrs. Kepler adjusting to assisted living?” Frank had found the old woman wandering on a road two miles from her house and had called Trudy in to get her assistance.

  “Hmm? Oh, pretty good.” Trudy glanced up from her dessert plate. “She misses her cat, but she likes the food and the bingo.” Her gaze returned to the plate and she fell silent.


  Standing there like a post, Frank wished Penny would return from the dance floor. He’d never before had such a hard time making conversation with Trudy.

  “Frank, I don’t want to ruin the party for you, but there’s something you need to know and I’d rather tell you in person.” The sentence popped out of her in a rush.

  He looked at her worried face and paused with a plastic forkful of pie halfway to his mouth.

  “Anita Veech has been released from prison.”

  The fork tipped and the pie fell with a splat.

  “What? She got fifteen years. She had to serve at least seventy percent of her sentence. She’s not supposed to be out until—” He attempted to do the math in his head, but he’d done it many times before. Not until Olivia was over eighteen. Not until she was an adult. That’s what he’d promised Edwin and Lucy.

  “I know it’s unexpected. But they’ve started this program to release nonviolent drug offenders early. Part of the movement to end mass incarceration and shrink the prison population. Anita applied and was approved. Apparently, she’s been an exemplary prisoner.”

  “Well, she wasn’t an exemplary mother.”

  A partygoer angling for the brownies frowned at Frank’s sharp tone.

  He lowered his voice and steered Trudy away from the buffet. “The court won’t return Olivia to Anita, will they? Please tell me you won’t let that happen.”

  “If she wants to regain custody, there will be a hearing in Family Court. Anita will have to show that she can provide a home for Olivia.”

  “A home! That tarpaper shack in the woods that they were living in before Anita was arrested doesn’t qualify as a home, does it?”

  Trudy pursed her lips. “Look, Frank—just because Anita won’t be able to offer her daughter an antiques-filled Victorian doesn’t mean that the court will let her stay with Edwin and Lucy. The court always favors the biological parent unless there are extraordinary circumstances. As long as Anita can offer a safe living environment, however modest, she may regain custody. And Anita was never violent.”