The Lure: a small town murder mystery (Frank Bennett Adirondack Mountain Mystery Series Book 2) Read online

  There, a flash of the old, teasing Caroline. Encouraged, he ventured on. “Say, it’s really beautiful up here right now. Why don’t you guys come up for the weekend? We could go canoeing.”

  “I’d love to, Daddy, but Eric’s in California on business and he’ll just be getting back Saturday morning. Oh, here comes the FedEx man—gotta run. Thanks for calling!”

  Frank sat for a moment staring at the dead receiver in his hand. Then he hung up and headed for the office, feeling more blue than he had before he’d called.

  Trotting up the stairs of the Town Office, Frank entered the inner office and pretended not to notice the Solitaire game vanishing from Earl’s computer screen. He was looking for work to improve his mood, not worsen it. “Here you go, Earl. The Mountain Herald, hot off the presses.” Earl’s negotiations with Howard Jenks had not gone well and he was still in the market for a car.

  Earl extended a slightly grimy hand to receive the weekly newspaper. “Garden Club Plans Perennial Border for Village Green,” read the lead headline.

  “Gee, nothing in here about Mary Pat? Well, it only happened two days ago,” Earl continued. “Guess it missed the deadline.”

  “You oughta know Greg wouldn’t put something like that on the front page,” Frank said. With the motto, “The North Country’s Good News Paper,” the Herald was devoted to stories about Eagle Scouts, golden wedding anniversaries and High Peaks High School sports. A more accurate slogan might have been “All the News Everyone Already Knows.” But Mary Pat’s death wouldn’t be official until a blurry family photo of her smiling face and the details of her sad end appeared in print. Maybe then customers at the Stop ‘N' Buy would stop murmuring, “I keep expecting to see Mary Pat behind the counter. I can’t believe she’s gone.”

  Earl continued flipping through the paper. “I guess the obituary will be in next week. I’ll tell you one thing, that’ll be some funeral. Everyone knew Mary Pat and her parents.”

  “Everyone’s related to them is more like it.” Overhearing their conversation, Doris, the town secretary, popped her head in to offer her two cent’s worth. “Joe has five brothers and sisters and I think Ann has even more. And them and their families all live around here.”

  “You’re not related to them, are you, Earl?” Frank asked. He was forever sticking his foot in his mouth by making snide remarks about Trout Run natives, only to learn they were some distant cousins or in-laws of Earl’s.

  “Nah, they’re all such serious Catholics. They don’t go in for cross-breeding with us Presbyterians.”

  “Pity Joe and Ann only had the one child,” Doris rambled on with her own train of thought. “They were married for years and Ann never could get pregnant. Then, after they’d given up hoping, wouldn’t you know Mary Pat came along. Ann must’ve been pushing forty.”

  “Hey, look at this.” Earl pointed to an ad in the Herald classifieds. He’d become as adept as Frank at diverting the flow of Doris’s endless monologues. “‘1989 Chevy pick-up. Four new tires. Runs good. $500 or B/O.’ That sounds perfect. I’m going to call right now.”

  As Earl dialed, Frank casually leaned over his shoulder to scan the rest of the ads.

  A large ad bordered in black dominated the always-short help-wanted column. "Wanted: Experienced masons, carpenters and dry-wallers. Pay up to $20/hour. Call Sean at Nevins & Fine."

  "I can't believe they're still running this ad," Frank said after Earl left a message expressing his unquestioning desire to buy the truck. "They've already got every able-bodied man in the county working up at the Extrom house."

  In the year since Rod Extrom had taken it in his head to build a mountain retreat at the crest of the Verona Range, the communications tycoon had become Trout Run's second biggest employer, next to Stevenson’s lumberyard. Every contractor and craftsman from miles around had been put to work full-time building the huge stone and glass home, and any man who knew which end of a hammer to hold could pick up extra cash moonlighting there. Even Earl had done some framing and roofing. The work had continued from sun-up to sundown seven days a week all summer long.

  "Everyone but you, Frank," Earl teased. "They could really use a good finish carpenter up there now."

  Frank snorted. "I only build things for my own pleasure. I'd have to be on the bread line to work for a snot-nosed punk like that Sean character."

  Frank's description of Sean Vinson was kinder than most. The project manager from the architecture firm that had designed the Extrom house took a lot of crude commentary at the Mountainside Tavern at the end of every workday. Still, regardless of their suspicions of Sean's sexual proclivities, no one walked off the job. Twenty dollars an hour wasn’t easy to come by, and smoothed over a lot of moral outrage.

  "Why don't you sign up for some wall-boarding, Earl? It'd give you some extra money for a car."

  "Nah, I can't take all that dust.” Earl ended the pressure to expand his employment by snatching up the ringing phone. "Some tourist just peeled out of the Trail's End parking lot right into Billy Feeney's truck,” he reported. “No one's hurt, but they need to file a police report. I’ll go."

  No sooner had Earl left than the phone rang again. "Hi Frank, it’s Dr. Hibbert.” Frank rolled his eyes. The coroner was such a pompous ass always referring to himself as “Dr. Hibbert.” The next time he called Hibbert he’d say, “Hello, Chuck, this is Police Chief Bennett.”

  “I have the results of the autopsy on the Sheehan girl. She died of septicemia."

  “Septicemia? You mean an infection?" Why couldn't Hibbert just call a spade a spade instead of looking for ways to confuse the issue?

  "Yes. Her death caused the crash, not the other way around. She probably lost consciousness and went off the road. Lucky she didn't kill someone else. That's why doctors say not to drive for at least a week, but these women nowadays just don't want to be tied down."

  What was Hibbert on about? Not drive for a week after what?

  “How long had she been home from the hospital? " the doctor continued before Frank could ask a question.

  "Home from the hospital? She wasn't in the hospital at all that I know of."

  "She had it at home?" Hibbert's voice registered his surprise. "She didn't look like one of those back-to-nature types."

  "What the hell are you talking about?" Frank exploded.

  "The baby."

  "What baby?"

  "Mary Pat Sheehan recently gave birth. From the looks of her, I'd say it was a good-sized baby. Part of the placenta wasn't delivered. It starts a massive infection when it's left in the uterus. Oftentimes a woman won't realize anything's wrong. She figures she supposed to be passing blood, she supposed to be weak and in some pain."

  "Wait, wait. What did she die of?"

  "She died of complications of childbirth."

  "But she wasn't pregnant!"

  Now it was Dr. Hibbert's turn to get testy. "I assure you Bennett, I've delivered enough babies to know what a woman looks like post-partum. Mary Pat Sheehan gave birth not more than a week ago."

  "Her parents didn't say one word about this. And where's the baby?"

  "You tell me. I have a feeling when you find out, I'll be doing another autopsy."

  Chapter 3

  “Why are you calling so late?”

  “We have a problem. The coroner figured out why Mary Pat died.”

  “I knew he would. You were unrealistic to expect otherwise. But you said no one knows you delivered the baby.”

  “They don’t. I’m positive.”

  “Then relax—there’s no problem.”

  A case like this had been in the news recently, Frank remembered as he prepared to go see the Sheehans. A 14 year-old-girl living in a high-rise somewhere near Chicago had given birth in her family’s apartment while her parents were at work. She had scrupulously cleaned up the mess, then threw all the telltale evidence—stained clothes and towels and the baby too—down the garbage chute. In the two or three days of notoriety that followe
d, the girl had faced the television cameras again and again with dead-eyed boredom, as if she couldn’t understand what all the hoo-ha was about.

  Could Mary Pat have done the same–just dispose of what didn’t fit into her plans and move on? Frank heaved a sigh as he got into his truck and prepared to drive to the Sheehans’. Surely Mary Pat wasn’t like that. First of all, she was twenty-eight. Not a worldly-wise twenty-eight, true, but not driven by the convoluted logic of a teenager. And then she was just so undeniably nice. Could someone like that suffocate her infant, or toss it in the trash? After twenty-five years of police work he ought to know the answer to that was yes, but still, in Mary Pat’s case it seemed hard to believe. Of course, there was the religion. Would Mary Pat have committed one terrible sin to cover up another, one that by today’s standards, even in Trout Run, people hardly blinked at?

  Or it could be love. Maybe love for whatever man had gotten her into this mess had overwhelmed mother love, and Mary Pat had agreed to let the father get rid of the baby. He might even have tricked her–helped her deliver, then told her the baby was stillborn. That seemed more like it; Frank could imagine Mary Pat desperate to please the rare man who'd shown some interest in her.

  He parked his truck in front of the Sheehan’s house and sat for a moment, steeling himself for what lay ahead. The visit two days ago to break the news of Mary Pat’s death had been bad, but this return trip to destroy her parents’ illusions was even worse.

  He gazed at the house, a tiny Cape Cod painted pale yellow with green trim, hardly bigger than a fancy suburban garden shed. How could the Sheehans have lived in such close quarters and not noticed the changes in their daughter?

  His eyes traveled to the shrine in the front garden. An old claw-foot bathtub had been stood up and the drain end buried to create a makeshift grotto. Inside, a three-foot statue of the Virgin Mary wearing an iridescent blue robe, mournful despite the brilliant pink hue of her cheeks and lips. She stared at Frank reproachfully, oblivious to the ceramic bunnies and chipmunks cavorting at her feet.

  “Don’t look at me like that. You’re part of the problem,” Frank muttered out loud. Obviously Mary Pat would never have considered an abortion, even if she’d been able to find a doctor in these parts willing to perform one. And her parents’ involvement in the church, and her own, would have made it hard for her to brazen it out as a single mother. As for homes for unwed mothers and quiet adoptions, common enough in his own youth, they had probably gone the way of other valuable services like home delivery of milk and doctors’ house calls. Maybe hiding the pregnancy wasn’t so crazy after all.

  Noticing a movement of the lace curtains, Frank covered the distance between his car and the Sheehans’ front door in a few long strides. Before his finger touched the bell, the door opened and Joe Sheehan ushered him in. The house was as impeccably neat as it had been on his previous visit, except that today sympathy cards covered every level surface.

  “Sit down Frank,” Joe waved him toward the afghan-draped sofa. The Sheehans faced Frank across the coffee table, each perched on the edge of matching gold-upholstered chairs. Grief had drained the usual animation from their faces and they stared at him, waiting. Silently Ann Sheehan reached out for her husband’s hand. The thin gold band she wore on her left hand had sunk into her plump, freckled flesh over the course of forty years of marriage.

  As Frank hesitated, trying to think how to start, Joe asked, “Is there some news on what caused Mary Pat’s accident?”

  “Well, yes, there is. The coroner completed the autopsy.”

  “Oh, thank the Lord,” Ann said. “Now we can schedule the funeral. Father Ryan has planned a lovely Mass. The choir is going to sing…” A sob overtook her, and she trailed off into quiet weeping.

  Frank took a deep breath. Already this was going badly and he hadn’t even broken the news yet. “You see, when Dr. Hibbert examined Mary Pat’s body he discovered she died of an infection. She apparently lost consciousness and that’s what made her run off the road. The accident didn’t kill her.”

  Joe looked at him quizzically. “An infection? What caused that?”

  Frank focused his eyes somewhat to the left of Joe’s shoulder. “She died of complications of childbirth. Apparently some of the placenta was left behind in the, uh, uterus.”

  The silence that greeted this statement was more terrible than any screaming or shouting. Mary Pat’s parents could not have been more perplexed if Frank had suddenly started speaking Urdu.

  “Dr. Hibbert estimates that she gave birth about a week ago.” Frank hesitated. “I take it you weren’t aware she was pregnant?”

  Joe ran his hand over his face as if trying to brush away a cobweb he had stumbled into. “Mary Pat wasn’t pregnant,” he said, not agitated yet, just struggling to get things straight. “Hibbert must have confused her autopsy with someone else’s.”

  Frank shook his head. “I’m sorry Joe, but there’s no mistake. I know it’s a terrible shock, but these things do happen.”

  Joe continued to look at him, expecting more explanation.

  “Mary Pat was tall.” Frank kept talking to fill up the silence. “If she didn’t gain much weight, and the clothes the girls wear today are kinda shapeless–it’s possible to conceal it.”

  Joe leaped up and turned his head from side to side as if he were searching for some escape route from the small living room. “You’re talking pure craziness, man. My daughter was a good Catholic girl, and you’re saying she got in trouble, and lied to us, and, and had a baby. Now how could she do that when she was right here with us every day? It’s just plain crazy. It couldn’t be,” he said with finality, and sat back down.

  Through all this, Ann had not spoken. Now her mouth began to move, but no words came forth. “Why? Why?” she finally gasped, then covering her mouth, she ran from the room.

  Joe jumped up to follow his wife, then fell back and faced Frank, his fair, freckled face now etched with simple amazement. “But if she had a baby, where is it?”

  Frank only raised his eyebrows.

  Joe began cracking his knuckles, producing a sound so loud that Frank could not help but wince as each finger popped in turn. Joe finally spoke, his voice quavering as he choked out the words. “You think she killed the baby don’t you? You think if you find where she had it, you’ll find its little body, buried or in the trash.”

  Joe seemed to read agreement in Frank’s silence. He leaned forward, his hands on the coffee table separating them. “I’m tellin’ you Frank, that can’t be. I know my girl.”

  Frank met Joe’s defiant glare without blinking. Amazing how often he’d heard the phrase, ‘I know my child,’ when he presented irrefutable evidence to shocked parents. He himself had never been tempted to make that claim. He loved his daughter, was proud of her, enjoyed her company, usually. But know her, no he’d never say that.

  He remembered when they’d brought Caroline home from the hospital. She’d cried and cried, her little face bright red and screwed up with rage, and he and Estelle had tried everything to calm her with no success. “I can hardly wait ‘til she can talk,” he remembered telling Estelle. “Then she can tell us what’s wrong.” But it seemed that every passing year had only taken Caroline further along a road that led away from him. He’d never understood her better than he had the day he’d first carried her into their house.

  “We need to figure out when the baby was born and who might've helped her,” Frank said to bring them back to neutral ground.

  Joe’s blue eyes met Frank’s brown ones and the two men stared at each other for a moment. “I got to see to Ann now,” Joe said.

  "Maybe I could just look around Mary Pat's room for a minute?" Frank felt a twinge of guilt for pressing Joe in a weak moment, but sometimes that's what it took.

  Joe hesitated, then raised his head. "Upstairs," he said as he left the room.

  Frank climbed the short, steep staircase to the second floor. Below, he could hear Ann wailing, but h
e shut the sound out. Two doors opened on to a tiny landing; one led to a sewing room, the other to Mary Pat's room. Frank surveyed the cramped space. He could only stand up straight in the center, the dormers sloped so steeply. Pink and yellow flowered wallpaper covered the walls, interrupted only by a crucifix and a picture of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. A nightstand, a chest of drawers and a small desk that must've dated from Mary Pat's grade school days completed the furnishings. One look at the impeccably clean pale yellow carpet told Frank Mary Pat couldn't have given birth here. Still, he went to the bed and pulled back the handmade quilt and white sheets until he could see the bare mattress–unstained.

  The very sparseness of the place unnerved him–a calendar on the desk, an alarm clock on the nightstand. No make-up, no photos, no books. He opened the desk drawer: some note cards, stamps, pens. The nightstand drawer: pale blue rosary beads and a white prayer book. The closet: so shallow it barely fit the hangers with Mary Pat's meager wardrobe. The dresser drawers: underwear in the first, socks in the second, sweaters in the third. Could anyone's life really be this blank a book?

  Frank tapped his foot –the room had to hold some clue, unless this baby was the second Immaculate Conception. He went back to the dresser. Feeling like a pervert, he slid his hand around underneath Mary Pat's big cotton panties and bras. Under the paper lining the drawer, his fingers touched a slightly raised area. Lifting the liner he found a plain white envelope.

  Inside was a hand-written letter.

  Dear Birth Mother:

  We have been happily married for ten years and we want a child to make our family complete. We would be so happy if you would give us the privilege of becoming the parents of your baby.

  We are both teachers, so children have been at the center of our lives for many years. If we are able to adopt your baby, Eileen plans stop teaching to be an at-home mom. We want to share all the things we love with the child we adopt—hiking, sports, music, travel and history. Most of all, we want to share all the love in our hearts.