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

by S. W. Hubbard

  He entered his house to merciful silence. The workers were gone for the day. No sign of Penny, but he didn’t mind. Was tonight book club at the library? Probably. He seemed to recall Penny mentioning something this morning.

  A couple hours to himself sounded good. Very good.

  He changed into sweatpants and bedroom slippers, poured himself a beer, and stretched out on his recliner with his new LBJ biography.

  The room grew dim as he read under the glow of the floor lamp. Eventually, his eyelids drooped and fell.

  “Frank! Why aren’t you dressed?” Penny stood at foot of the recliner with her hands on her hips.

  “Huh?” What time was it? What day was it? Should he be at work?

  “The fundraiser.” Penny’s normally cheerful face was a study in outrage.

  “What fundraiser?”

  “The Library Luau. The event I’ve been working on for months! I just popped home because I forgot the basket for the grand prize raffle and I figured you must already be on your way. Why are you napping?”

  Frank dragged himself into a sitting position. The dropped book jabbed his leg.

  “You would’ve slept right through the whole thing if I hadn’t come home. I can’t believe you forgot!”

  “No, no—I just wanted to recharge before the party.”

  Penny grabbed her basket. “Get changed and meet me at the library. How will it look if my husband can’t be bothered to come?”

  His recliner vibrated with the force of the front door’s slam.

  What was wrong with him? Penny had been working long and hard on the Library Luau. If the party was fun and the silent auction successful, then the Luau would become a yearly event in Trout Run’s social calendar, and she’d be able to count on an extra fifteen grand in the Library’s budget. She was already nervous; the last thing she needed was to be irritated with her husband.

  However, making small talk with Trout Run’s most upstanding citizens was the last thing he felt like doing tonight. The brief nap made his desire to crawl into bed even more consuming. During the five long years of his bachelorhood, he’d missed having a partner in countless ways. But going to cocktail parties to be supportive wasn’t one of them.

  Nevertheless, he hauled himself upstairs, splashed cold water on his face, put on a clean shirt and pressed khakis, and headed back into town.

  When Frank pulled up to the town green, the library glowed with bright lights. The daffodils Penny had planted last fall were blooming in cheery clusters beside the front walk. Why were there burning tiki lights by the front door? Oh—Luau, Hawaii. Right. Parked cars lined the street, so the party was well underway. At least he wouldn’t have to make awkward conversation with the early birds.

  He walked into a wall of heat and sound. The library had never been so packed with people. A teenage girl ran up and looped a plastic lei around his neck before he could dodge the assault.

  “How many tickets do you want for the Tricky Tray, Frank?” Ardyth Munger asked from her table at the door. She wore a loud flowered dress and sipped from a glass with an umbrella floating in it.

  Frank handed over a twenty. Ardyth’s pursed lips and raised brows forced him to dig back into his wallet for a second portrait of Jackson.

  “Keep the stub and put your tickets in the basket in front of the items you’d like to win,” Ardyth said.

  The prize table swarmed with sharp-elbowed ladies eagerly depositing their tickets, a crowd Frank had no desire to engage. Occasionally, he caught a glimpse of the prizes: big items like a power-nailer donated by Venable’s Hardware and snowshoes donated by The Rock Slide, and lots of smaller items like handcrafted pottery, necklaces, paintings of Adirondack scenes, toys, fancy food. Local stores and individual craftspeople had given generously, unable to resist Penny’s pitch that having an item in the silent auction would be good for their business. Frank knew he was being a stick-in-the-mud, but he didn’t understand people’s willingness to spend a hundred dollars on tickets for a chance to win something they could’ve bought for twenty-five bucks. Luckily for Penny, most people didn’t share his views, because the action around the prize table got more frenetic by the minute.

  He headed over to the bar table to get a glass of wine.

  “You won’t be able to tear your tickets with a wine glass in your hand,” Gage Shelby, the bartender, warned.

  “What about you? My wife’s got you barricaded here, working instead of partying.”

  Gage handed over a full glass. “Oh, I don’t mind. It’s great to be part of an event that pulls together so many different people from the community.”

  Frank scanned the room. Gage was right—Penny had managed to attract people to the Luau who didn’t normally darken the doors of the library. He spotted one of the carpenters from the remodeling team at his house and a few guys who would normally be at the Mountainside at this time of night. A small clutch of teenagers grazed around the snack table.

  Alone in a corner, Frank spotted a forlorn Pam Gatrell. With her stood a young man, clearly the elusive RJ. He was a handsome kid with his father’s intense dark eyes and his mother’s wide smile. Frank walked up, sipping his wine. “Nice to see you here, Pam.” He extended his hand. “And you must be RJ.”

  Like a typical young teenager, RJ fumbled the handshake and had a hard time meeting Frank’s eye. “Hi,” he muttered. He looked like he’d shot up recently and didn’t know how to handle so much length in his arms and legs.

  Pam eyed Frank uneasily, as if she expected him to start interrogating RJ right here at the party.

  Instead, Frank said, “Do me a favor, RJ. Go play these tickets.”

  RJ looked confused. “What do you want to win?”

  “Win something for yourself.” Frank held out the tickets. “It won’t look right if the librarian’s husband wins a prize. People will think the drawing is rigged.”

  Frank could see longing doing battle with fierce pride on the boy’s face.

  “I’ll try to win something for you, Mom. What do you want? A vase? A picture?”

  Although her son was nearly as tall as she was, Pam ruffled his hair. “Spread the tickets around however you want, honey. Maybe you’ll get lucky.”

  She watched him lope toward the prize table. “He’s such a good boy. So thoughtful. Thank you for giving him those tickets. He really wanted to play. I didn’t want to come tonight—we can’t afford it—but RJ seemed to want to get out of the house, so I gave in.”

  Frank wondered why RJ wasn’t hanging out with the other kids. Had he approached them and been rejected earlier in the evening?

  “I imagine you’ve had a rough couple of days with the latest developments,” Frank said.

  Pam swallowed a slug of wine. “First the state police came pounding on my door saying they think Ronnie killed that poor fisherman and RJ is smuggling Ronnie food. They had RJ in tears with all their stupid questions. Then the next day, they’re like ‘never mind’ and that Meyerson guy won’t even answer my calls.”

  Frank knew this wasn’t the right time or place, but he couldn’t stop himself. “Pam, is there any possibility that RJ is working with someone else to get Ronnie supplies?”

  For a moment he worried that she would explode right then and there, but then her face crumpled. “Look at him,” she said softly.

  Frank followed her gaze. RJ was tearing off the tickets Frank had given him and thinking long and hard before he deposited each one in a prize basket. Occasionally he would steal a glance at the teenagers in the corner, but turn away quickly if they seemed to be looking back at him.

  “All he wants is for his life to be normal like any other kid’s,” Pam said. “He’s so torn up inside, he can’t even find the words to talk about it.”

  One of the guys who normally drank beer at the Mountainside wandered by clutching a tumbler of wine in each hand. “Hey, Pam—the drug store’s offering a basket of bug spray and first aid stuff. Better try to win that for Ronnie!” He stumbled aw
ay, chuckling at his wit.

  “Ben’s an idiot,” Frank said. “Don’t listen to anything he has to say.”

  Pam’s mouth formed a hard line, her shoulders pulled back in defiance. She stared out at the crowd of people she’d known all her life. “It’s not just him. It’s as if people blame me for what happened, but they don’t blame Ronnie. They’re cheering for him to stay on the loose out in the backcountry at the same time they’re refusing to let me watch their babies or even let their older kids hang out with RJ. Hypocrites!”

  Frank was glad he’d cheered up RJ with the tickets, but Pam fairly radiated hostility. Small wonder no one wanted to chitchat with her. He scrambled for something innocuous to say and came up short. Across the room, he spied Edwin talking to Rollie Fister. Normally, Edwin would be a lifeline in social situations like this, but everything had changed since Olivia’s disappearance. Frank turned his head to avoid making eye contact with Edwin. Really, when he thought about it, wasn’t it odd that Edwin was here at all? Would a father feel like going to a party when his daughter was missing? He scanned the room again. No Lucy. No Anita.

  “How’s the job in Plattsburgh?” Frank asked Pam as a last, desperate conversational gambit.

  “Miserable. I come home smelling like a big fried chicken, and I’m away from RJ for too many hours a day. But what else can I do? We can’t curl up and starve.”

  Finally the chairwoman of the Trout Run Garden Club wandered by with a flower blossom behind her ear and Frank asked her a question about spring cleanup day. Having gotten her started on the topic of planting spring flowers, on which she could cheerfully talk for hours, Frank was able to slip away.

  Desperate to avoid Edwin, Frank slinked into the stacks. In the 800s (Biography) he encountered Marilee of the closed Honeycomb Bakery coming through the back door trying to balance two trays of mini cheesecakes and éclairs.

  “Whoa. Can I take one of those for you?”

  “Thanks, that would be a great help. My daughter was supposed to be here tonight to serve, but she just started a new job in a restaurant in Placid and couldn’t get off.”

  Frank took a tray of desserts from Marilee and followed her to the buffet table in the lobby. “I’m sorry to hear about the bakery closing. Glad to see you’re still doing parties.”

  Marilee’s mouth tightened as she bent over her creations, arranging them in artistic groupings. “We were just starting to make some money with the catering. Now, we’re back in debt again. If only I hadn’t listened to—”

  Frank followed her gaze across the room. Leon Shelby stood talking to a young couple. He had his hand on the man’s shoulder. Even at this distance, Frank could hear Leon’s advice. Gage, still pouring wine at the bar, kept one eye on his father. “You can’t go wrong with that property,” Leon told the couple. “Great location. Guaranteed to increase in value over the years.”

  “Huh!” Marilee said. “Those two better watch their wallets.”

  “Leon gave you bad advice about the bakery?” Frank asked.

  “Yes. Leon Shelby was one of our best customers when we were just selling baked goods out of our house. He kept saying we should open a retail outlet, that he’d keep an eye out for a good property for us. I didn’t want to take the risk, but my daughter is young. She kept telling me we had to think bigger if we ever wanted to make our dream of baking full-time a reality. She kept reading me stories about Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerburg, and Gary Erickson.”

  “Gary Erickson?”

  “He’s the guy who makes Cliff Bars. He started out baking with his mom and now his company is worth a billion dollars.” Marilee held the back door of the library open for Frank. “I told her I didn’t need a billion dollars. I’d be happy with a reliable car and a new furnace for our house. I should have known better, but I didn’t want to crush her dreams, ya know? Leon kept saying that property was perfect for our bakery—zoned commercial, low taxes, building in pretty good shape. All that was true, but there’s no drive-by traffic there. We didn’t capture any tourist business. Some days we’d be open for hours before even one customer showed up in the store. Finally, we couldn’t hang on any longer. We had to close down. Now Leon says it might be months…years…before he can sell that building for us. When he was trying to get us to buy it, it was the best place in the world. Now that he’s selling it for us, it’s got no end of problems.”

  Frank set the trays down and Marilee started arranging the tiny cakes. The more she talked, the madder she got until one strawberry tartlet sailed out of her fingers and hit the wooden floor with a splat. Frank knelt to wipe up the mess. “You think Leon tricked you intentionally?”

  Marilee shrugged. “I don’t know. What’s the expression? Cavvy, cavvy-something.”

  “Caveat Emptor. Let the buyer beware.”

  “Yeah. I should have known to beware of someone who was such a smooth talker.”

  Moments later, Penny announced that the winning tickets for the Tricky Tray were about to be drawn. Frank settled in a corner with a plate of broken pastries and watched as grown women shrieked like they had been crowned Miss America just because they won a basket full of Mary Kay cosmetics. The announcement of the winner of the nail gun brought a round of fist bumps from the men. A vaguely familiar young woman who won six cooking lessons at the Iron Eagle wrapped her arms around Edwin, and his startled face disappeared into her cloud of curly red hair.

  Winner after winner went forward to claim a prize. Frank watched RJ anxiously checking his ticket stubs every time a number was called. Was it too much to ask that the poor kid would win some trinket? Now the big lady who’d won the cooking lessons was standing with Edwin, Pam, and RJ. Edwin said something and the boy nodded and scuffed his sneaker into the floor. Finally, with just a few more prizes left to be awarded, RJ’s face lit up and he darted forward with his ticket stub in hand. The announcer handed him a pair of porcupine quill dangling earrings made by the hippie chick sisters who ran a combination organic vegetable-funky craft stand at the farmers market. The prize wasn’t much, but RJ seemed elated. At least he’d had the thrill of winning something.

  The Tricky Tray ended and the party began to wind down. By 11:30, only Penny, Frank, and Ardyth remained. “Whew!” Penny blew upwards to blast her drooping bangs out of her eyes. Her eyes beamed with excitement above her smudged mascara. “Lots more people came than I expected. And people bid on the strangest things.”

  “Yes, Carl Fisk won the selection of homemade jams and fudge, and I know he’s diabetic. And RJ Gatrell won a pair of earrings.”

  “I think he bid on those for his mom,” Frank said.

  Ardyth and Penny exchanged a glance. “Boys never know what their mothers like,” Ardyth said. “Pam would never wear those.”

  “But I think everyone had fun, right?” Penny asked.

  “No doubt about it,” Ardyth said. “And I’ve done a rough tally of the money—$18,000!”

  “Oh my God—now we’ll be able to afford some online subscription databases like a real library.”

  “You did a fantastic job, Penny.” Frank pulled her into a hug. “I’m so proud of you.”

  Penny snuggled against his shoulder for a moment, then stretched to look around him. “What’s that on the prize table? Someone forgot to take what they won?” Penny sighed. “Now I suppose I’ll have to deliver it to the winner tomorrow.”

  “I can do it for you when I’m on patrol,” Frank said, and moved to get the basket.

  Ardyth beat him to it. “No one won this one. No one even bid on it.” She grimaced. “I’m not surprised. One year’s supply of VitaVine Nutritional supplements.” Ardyth tossed the pill bottles in the trash.

  Chapter 33

  Frank walked into the outer office the next day to find Doris already on the phone with a personal call. “Yes, I see why you’re worried…that does seem odd.” She caught sight of Frank, lowered her voice, and swiveled her chair. “Look, I can’t talk now. Maybe later.”

 
“What’s up with Doris?” Frank asked Earl once he’d shut the door behind him. “She seems to be taking a lot of personal calls lately.”

  “Her niece is getting married soon. Must be wedding plans.” Earl spoke without moving his gaze from his computer screen. “Frank, a response from Facebook came in overnight.”

  Finally, some useful information. “About where that picture was posted from? What do they say?”

  Earl looked up with a frown. “The ISP address of the computer she used to post that picture—it belongs to the Iron Eagle Inn.”

  Frank scalded himself with the coffee he was pouring. “Shit!”

  Earl offered him a paper towel. “Shit, you burned yourself or shit, Edwin might be involved in Olivia’s disappearance?”

  “Both. Well, that explains why he was having fun at the party last night. He’s not worried about her. How could Edwin be so stupid? Did he really think we wouldn’t check?”

  “Now what are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to go straight over there and—” Frank pulled his chair beside Earl’s. “You better explain this Facebook thing to me in detail first.”

  “Wouldn’t it make more sense for me to talk to Edwin? I know more about it, and…well, there will be less emotion between us.”

  Frank looked at his partner. Earl was his partner now. “I should recuse myself, right?”

  Earl lifted his shoulders slightly. “Probably for the best.”

  “Okay. Go.”

  While Earl went to the inn, Frank occupied himself with the morning patrol. On his way out, he again heard Doris murmuring furtively on the phone. He hoped his glare and forceful door slam would encourage her to get back to work.

  Thank God his patch of the Adirondacks was peaceful today. He had no patience for fender-benders or roads blocked by fallen trees when his brain was churning with anxiety to hear what Edwin had told Earl. In an hour and a half, Frank marched back into the town office.

  Still, Doris was on the phone.