Frank scrutinized the carrot sticks Penny had produced from her tote bag and placed before him. Healthy supplements and hipster doofuses were ruining his lunch hour. “Yeah. Fantastic.” Frank gnawed on a tasteless orange twig. “So what does Anita do for him?”
“Coding. Gage says his app is very code-intensive, whatever that means, and he needs someone who’s willing to do a lot of tedious de-bugging. It’s not creative, fun stuff. He had two kids who’d just graduated from college and they both got bored and quit. But apparently Anita is willing to chip away at it. Gage seems very satisfied with her work.”
“How did he connect with her?”
“Some organization that teaches coding to prisoners and ex-cons and gang members and then places them in jobs. Isn’t that great?”
Frank scowled. “How would Mr. Collegiate Granola connect with a group like that?”
“Who knows? LinkedIn? Social media?” Penny collected their garbage, sealed it in a plastic bag, and spritzed her desk with cleaner. She wasn’t much of a housekeeper at home, but she lived in fear of insect or rodent attacks on the library’s collection.
“So there’s no chance he’s going to fire Anita?”
Penny nudged him with the tip of her stylish boot, a gesture meant to be scolding but that Frank found distractingly sexy. “I feel so conflicted. Anita’s job with Gage is a wonderful success story. It’s tragic that her good fortune guarantees Edwin and Lucy’s unhappiness.”
“Just because she’s managing to hold down a job doesn’t mean she’s going to be a good parent. I’ll be keeping an eye on her.”
“Frank! You can’t use your position to interfere. It’s up to Trudy to monitor Anita’s parenting.”
“I’m not interfering. It’s my job to keep Olivia safe. I’ll never abdicate that, no matter who has custody.”
Chapter 21
As soon as Frank returned to the office after lunch, he got a call on his cellphone from an unfamiliar number.
“Hey, it’s Jimmy from the market,” a gruff voice said.
Frank’s mind was blank. What market?
“You told me to call if Wade got any visitors.”
Oh, that market, the market beneath Wade Cochran’s apartment. “Yeah, thanks for calling.” Frank pulled out a notepad. “What do you have for me?”
“Some broad was in here late yesterday afternoon asking for Wade. I got busy and forgot to call until now.”
Frank had given the guy in the market twenty bucks to report on Wade’s visitors. The store clerk hadn’t required much persuading—it seemed no one liked Wade much. Now, Frank kept his voice disinterested, so the clerk wouldn’t embellish his story for a bigger reward.
“Uh-huh. Can you describe her?”
“Hmmm. Nuthin’ special. Light brown hair. In her thirties, I guess.”
That could be Nancy Tomlinson, but hundreds of other women too. Maybe even Pam Gatrell. “Tall, short, thin, fat?” Frank prompted.
“Uhm, kinda in the middle. Not skinny, or, ya know, sexy or anything. But not fat.” He rambled on trying to say something usefully descriptive, but failing.
Frank took a deep breath. No wonder prosecutors hated eyewitness testimony. “Glasses, scars, birthmarks, tattoos?”
“No glasses. I only saw her face and hands. She was wearing a raincoat. She asked if I knew where Wade was. I said he comes and goes. She bought a coffee and sat at one of our tables and read a book for a while. She kept checking her phone for the time, looking annoyed. Then finally, Wade pulled up on his bike. She went out and said a few words to him and pulled something out of her purse and gave it to him. Then she walked away.”
“What she handed him—what did that look like?”
“An envelope, I think. Probably drugs. Wade is always high on something.”
“Did he give her something back?”
“No…maybe he paid in advance.” The clerk snorted.
It could be drugs, of course. That’s what Meyerson would assume. But surely if this woman were Wade’s regular dealer, they wouldn’t be doing their transaction in broad daylight right in front of the market. Wasn’t it more likely that this was another payment? Where was the money coming from?
“Did you see what kind of car she was driving?”
“No. She was parked off to the side. And then it got busy and I couldn’t be lookin’ out the window all day, ya know.”
“Okay, Jimmy—thanks. Call me if she shows up again.”
“Will there be…?”
“Yeah. Another twenty. If you notice some more details.”
Frank hung up. He was probably throwing money down a rat hole, but if the woman returned, he would get the clerk in to look at a photo array with Nancy Tomlinson’s picture included.
Common wisdom held that everyone knew everyone else in a small town. But the truth of small town relationships was more subtle. Sure, people waved to every passing car, greeted anyone they encountered while shopping or dining or getting something repaired. But combined, Trout Run and Verona had nearly four thousand residents. Everyone didn’t literally know everyone else.
However, that expression that there were only six degrees of separation between any two people was really true here. In fact, there were probably only three degrees of separation between any two people in the High Peaks, as Earl managed to prove on a daily basis. So the trick was to uncover the degrees of separation between Nancy and Ronnie.
Nancy had eliminated the obvious choices: work, neighborhood, church, hobbies. Pam herself verified that she didn’t know Nancy. So what could have brought Nancy and Ronnie together? Frank thought about the network of friends and acquaintances he and Estelle had shared back in Kansas City. It seemed like Caroline was the common denominator in most of them. He still got a Christmas card from a couple they’d befriended during pre-natal exercise class.
Nancy’s son Max was two years younger than RJ Gatrell, and they hadn’t gone to the same school. Could the boys have been friends though some activity?
Frank jumped as Earl walked into the office.
“Why are you staring into space like that,” Earl asked.
“What are some activities that boys of different ages do together?”
Earl was used to Frank’s tendency to answer a question with another unrelated question. “Uhmm…Boy Scouts, 4H, Little League. Why?”
“I want to know if RJ Gatrell and Max Tomlinson know each other. Who runs those organizations?”
The question was barely out of Frank’s mouth before Earl was on the phone with leaders and coaches. In fifteen minutes, he had an answer. “RJ is in Boy Scouts, but not Max. Max is in 4H, but not RJ. They were both in Little League last year, but now RJ is too old for Little League, so this year only Max plays.”
“When are the games?”
“Tuesday and Thursday afternoon practice, Saturday morning games. The season just started.”
Frank looked at his assistant, imagining him as an energetic child. “Did you do all that when you were a kid?”
“Boy Scouts and 4H. I loved 4H—won a prize for my rabbits. Little League, not so much. I dropped out by fourth grade. I was okay in the field, but I wasn’t much of a hitter. Too skinny.”
“Did your parents go to your games?”
“If they weren’t working. My cousins were on the team too, so my aunts and uncles and parents took turns coming and cheering for us.”
“But the team parents all knew each other?”
“Oh, definitely.”
When Frank completed the afternoon patrol, he headed to Pam Gatrell’s house. The landscape was as bleak as his thoughts. Mud, mud everywhere, with no end in sight to the relentless rain. Had Ronnie found an empty house to offer him a dry bed, or did he have nothing but a damp tent over his head? It seemed to Frank that a few days out in this weather would make a man surrender.
Or drive him to take crazy risks.
The Little League connection had unleashed conflicting theories in Frank’s mind. Pam
and Ronnie were devoted parents, so if both of them had attended RJ’s games, why had Pam denied knowing Nancy? Could the women actually be close friends? Had Pam convinced Nancy to help her husband escape? Pam’s anguish over her collapsing way of life was real, but maybe her desire to have Ronnie back behind bars had been a carefully performed act.
Frank didn’t want to believe Pam had been involved in Ronnie’s escape, but he couldn’t ignore the possibility. On the other hand, maybe Pam really didn’t know Nancy, but Ronnie did. Maybe Ronnie and Nancy had been carrying on behind Pam’s back.
Through the gray drizzle, Frank spotted the bright colors of the Happy Camper sign and made the turn. Late afternoon would normally have been a busy time at Happy Camper Daycare when parents came and went picking up their kids. But today rain fell on an empty driveway. The house stood quiet and dim, with only one light glowing in a side window. Frank could see movement behind the curtains and guessed Pam was in the kitchen. He pulled up as close as possible to the back door and dashed through the downpour.
Pam answered his knock promptly, but she seemed less eager to see him this time. Maybe she could tell from the expression on his face that he hadn’t come bearing good news. He followed her into the kitchen and sat at the table. She didn’t offer coffee.
Frank dove right in. “Last year, RJ was on the Little League team, correct?”
“Yeah—what about it?”
“Did you and Ronnie go to all his games?”
Pam shook her head. “Ronnie took RJ to practice and went to most of the games, but I couldn’t go on Saturday mornings last season. I had two customers who needed me to babysit on Saturdays. With money being so tight, I couldn’t afford to say no.”
“Did Ronnie talk about the parents of the other players?”
She shrugged. “Sometimes they’d take the kids out for pizza. I think he liked them all. Well, he thought one dad coached from the bleachers, but I told him that was the pot calling the kettle black.”
“He ever mention the mothers?”
Pam narrowed her eyes. “What are you getting at?”
“I have to ask you this. Is there a possibility Ronnie had a girlfriend?”
Pam’s eyes widened and her lip trembled. She let her head drop onto her folded arms on the kitchen table. Her shoulders shook, but her sobs made no sound. Frank let her have the time she needed. He wouldn’t have thought Ronnie had the capacity to hurt her any further, but apparently he did.
Finally, Pam lifted her head and stared at him through swollen eyes. “What do you know?”
Frank shook his head. He wasn’t going to plant any possibilities in her head. “Money…revenge…sex—those are what motivate people to take crazy risks. And helping Ronnie stay on the lam is a crazy risk.”
“A year ago I would have said no way. Ronnie was the love of my life. But now I’m not sure. I don’t know. He’s capable of anything.”
“But before the stand-off, did he show any signs of seeing someone else? Phone calls that he wouldn’t answer in front of you? Sneaking out at night? That sort of thing.”
Pam squinted up at the ceiling. “Ronnie was always getting calls from the bank and from lawyers. He’d go out on the porch to talk to them because he knew it upset me to hear the arguments. Who knows—maybe some of those calls came from a woman.” Pam leaned across the table as determined to pry information from him as he was to get it from her. “You suspect someone from the team? You mean to tell me when I was working my ass off, he was at the games picking up other women?”
Pam snatched up one flyer among many pinned to the fridge with magnets. Frank saw the Little League logo at the top of the page and watched Pam scan what was obviously a team roster. Her brow knit in concentration as she considered each woman on the list. Then Frank saw her eyes widen. The list fluttered onto the floor. “Nancy Tomlinson. She’s the nurse at the jail that the state police asked me about. You think she helped him escape, don’t you?”
“There’s no solid proof, but Nancy told the state police she didn’t know Ronnie. Said she recognized his face because she might have seen him around town, but nothing more.”
“Liar! Ronnie knew all the kids on the team, knew their strengths and weaknesses.” Pam studied the roster again. “Max. Max is her son. Ronnie used to talk about how Max needed extra help with batting. He said the kid’s father wasn’t in the picture, and he had no one to practice with him”
Pam twisted her fingers together. Her eyes were glassy with a second batch of tears. “Once, he and RJ were really late getting home from a game. When I asked about it, Ronnie said the game went into extra innings. But RJ was really quiet and acting funny. He went to his room and said he wasn’t hungry for dinner. Ronnie claimed RJ had struck out and felt bad. He told me not to say anything about it, and the next day RJ seemed fine, so I let it drop. Now I wonder…maybe Ronnie drove somewhere with Nancy and her son. Maybe RJ knew there was something fishy with that. Kids can tell.”
“Is RJ home now?”
Pam shook her head. “He’s at his friend’s house playing video games. Normally, I limit his screen time, but honestly, those games are the only thing that lets him get away from what’s going on in his life. And thank God Denny hasn’t abandoned him like some of the other kids.” She waved a weary hand. “Let him play.”
“I’d really like to talk to him. How’s tomorrow?”
Pam stiffened. “I don’t want RJ upset. He’s suffered enough. I’ll talk to him and let you know what he says.”
“It would be better—”
Pam stood, looming over him. “I don’t want you putting ideas in RJ’s head about his dad having sex with some—” Her voice cracked. “I know what’s best for my son. I’ll talk to him.”
At that moment, the phone on the kitchen wall began to ring. Pam glanced at the caller ID. “I have to answer this.”
He was dismissed.
“Okay, Pam. Call me if you learn anything, either about Nancy Tomlinson or anyone else.”
Pam nodded as she kept talking to whoever was on the phone and walked Frank to the back door.
In the cluttered mudroom, Frank had to squeeze past a tower of stacked cardboard boxes. He caught his boot on the bottom box, which jutted out further than the others.
Pam gave the box a vicious kick, and it rattled. “Another one of Ronnie’s stupid projects,” she muttered under her breath while listening to her caller.
“Talk to RJ and let me know what you find out,” Frank said.
She nodded and held the door for him.
Once Frank was back in his car, he wrote one word in his notebook.
Denny.
“You know what I’m in the mood for?” Frank had peeled off his wet socks when he got home, grateful for a warm, dry house, even if it was full of construction dust.
Penny eyed him as she shook some bagged lettuce into a bowl and prepared to squirt it with Wishbone. “A gourmet meal prepared by a wife who can cook?”
“Nah. A baseball game.”
“The Red Sox are playing the Yankees tomorrow.” Penny was a devoted Yankees fan, while Frank still rooted for Kansas City. “We could watch it at that bar in Lake Placid that serves the amber ale you like.”
“The last time Boston played New York, I got called to the Mountainside twice to break up fights. I’d better stick closer to home…like Stevenson’s Lumberyard vs. Al’s Sunoco tomorrow at nine. I think you could recruit some boys for your summer book club if you showed an interest in their Little League games.”
Penny handed him a jar of spaghetti sauce to open and watched with her hands on her hips. “You’re up to something.”
Frank attempted to open the jar with one twist, but the manufacturer of the marinara with basil and garlic wasn’t about to let him look heroic to his wife. “I thought we could help each other,” he said through gritted teeth.
Penny took the jar away and ran it under hot water. “Why do I suspect that I’m the one who will be doing all the work?�
�
“Not work. Just do what you do best—be friendly with the other parents, chat with them about their kids, and let me observe.”
“Observe what?”
“The jail nurse who might have helped Ronnie Gatrell escape. Meyerson has explicitly forbidden me to talk to her. But he hasn’t said a word about you.”
“Oooo! Is this a sting operation? You want me to entrap her?”
“You’ve been reading too many mystery novels. I just want to get a sense of what kind of person she is. You chat; I’ll listen.”
“Chat about what?”
“You’ll think of something.” He accepted the warm jar back and popped it open. “You’re the brains of this operation.”
Chapter 22
On the way to the baseball game, Penny stared out the window at the beaten down grass in the front yards of the houses in town. Occasionally, a few daffodils would lift their brave yellow heads toward the watery sun that had finally emerged. As they drove further away from the center of Trout Run, the mist hanging over the meadows refused to burn away unless the sun cranked out a little more wattage.
“Oh, no! Look at that!” Penny shouted.
Instinctively, Frank slammed on the brakes.
He swerved onto the shoulder. “What?” There was no sign of an animal, alive or dead, on the road.
“I’m sorry.” Penny pointed to one of Leon Shelby’s Mountain Realty signs pounded into the muddy grass in front of a boarded-up building. “The Honeycomb Bakery is out of business? I’m shocked.”
Frank peered out the window. The cheery yellow paint made the deserted little store seem even sadder. “They only lasted six months.”
“I thought they were doing okay,” Penny protested. “That cake you bought for my birthday was delicious.”
“Yeah, but we haven’t been back since. The place is so out-of-the way. For a special occasion, customers might drive over here, but you’re not going to go ten miles to get a coffee cake on Saturday morning.” Frank pulled out onto the road again. “And they were pricey for Trout Run.”
False Cast: a small town murder mystery (Frank Bennett Adirondack Mountain Mystery Series Book 5) Page 12