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

by S. W. Hubbard

  “He’s got secret stashes everywhere—the kid said so.” Meyerson cracked his knuckles as he paced the room. “I could decide to ignore Ronnie, but I gotta find the kid. His mother’s going crazy. RJ doesn’t have his father’s backwoods skills. That means more men on overtime, thanks to your grandstanding.”

  Frank looked at his clasped hands, covered with bug bites and scratches. “You’re right. I screwed up. My conduct was inexcusable.”

  A long silence hung in the air.

  Frank felt Meyerson’s hand on his shoulder. “How’s Earl?”

  “No change.”

  Their lives had taken on a grim rhythm. Earl’s parents took turns keeping a vigil by Earl’s bedside all day. His aunts and cousins and Penny came after work. That left the early morning hours and late evening hours for Frank.

  “As Queequeg and I are now fairly embarked in this business of whaling; and as this business of whaling has somehow come to be regarded among landsmen as a rather unpoetical and disreputable pursuit; therefore, I am all anxiety to convince ye, ye landsmen, of the injustice hereby done to us hunters of whales.”

  Penny paused in her reading as Frank entered the room.

  “Any change?” he asked, although he could see damn well there wasn’t. Earl still lay there wired to blinking, chirping machinery.

  “Nothing the doctor finds significant, but I don’t know…when I stop reading, I sense that he notices. He stirs a little, like he wants me to go on.”

  Frank yanked out a chair on the other side of Earl’s bed. “You’re imagining things.” He could tell that Penny was wounded by his harshness, but he didn’t care. He’d had enough of cock-eyed optimism and the power of prayer and the will to live. Earl was gone. The body in the bed wasn’t him. It was an Earl-shaped turnip, a vegetable replica of the funny, sensitive, brave young man he’d once worked with. The first time he came to the hospital and saw Earl, the hot rage he’d felt against Ronnie, and the people who’d helped Ronnie, and Meyerson, had energized him. He’d channeled that rage to capture Ronnie.

  And what good had he done?

  Possibly Ronnie was dead. But certainly Earl was condemned to exist like this for years until some infection carried him off.

  And RJ, another mother’s beloved child—was he slowly dying of starvation or exposure? Was he looking for his father, afraid to come home?

  For the first time since Earl had been injured, Frank cried. Once the first tears slipped down his cheeks, he found he couldn’t stop. His shoulders shook and he sobbed, wailed. Penny came to his side of the bed and held him without saying a word. A nurse popped her head in the room and quickly withdrew.

  When the fit had passed, he sat drained and limp.

  Penny took a deep breath and spoke. “I know you don’t believe in my intuition and my feelings, but I sense that Earl is with us.” Her gaze turned to the pale form in the bed. “Our Earl is in there, I know he is. He wants to come back to us. We have to show him the way. We can’t give up right before we’re about to succeed.”

  Cold despair pinned Frank to his chair.

  Penny stood. “I’m going down to the café to get a cup of tea.” Before she left, she reached across Earl’s inert form and placed Moby Dick on Frank’s side of the bed.

  He sat with his eyes closed, the incessant thrum of the hospital playing like elevator music. Where did Penny get her optimism? Where did Bob get his faith? He felt hollow, as empty inside as an old oak brought down by the wind.

  The staticky screech of a loudspeaker announcement summoning some doctor jolted Frank’s eyes open. The gray brick of Moby Dick mocked him from the white blanket. When Frank opened the tome to a random page, the words swam before his bloodshot eyes. He took a deep breath and began,

  “Next: how shall we define the whale, by his obvious externals, so as conspicuously to label him for all time to come. To be short, then, a whale is a spouting fish with a horizontal tail. There you have him.”

  Sweet Jesus, this was one dull book! Why had Penny chosen it? Frank paused and poured himself a glass of water from the pitcher on the bedside table.

  Earl’s hand twitched.

  He’d done that before. The nurses said it didn’t mean anything, just an involuntary spasm.

  Frank resumed reading, but he glanced up more frequently. Why had Penny set him up to feel this pathetic tickle of hope? Earl couldn’t hear him any more than the bouquet of fading flowers on the nightstand could.

  “By the above definition of what a whale is, I do by no means exclude from the leviathanic brotherhood any sea creature hitherto identified with the whale by the best informed Nantucketers—”

  A sound—less than a cough—emanated from the bed.

  Earl’s lips, dry from a week with no food or water by mouth, attempted to come unstuck.

  “Earl?”

  His eyelids flickered.

  “Earl! Earl!” Frank jumped up and ran to the door. “Nurse!” he bellowed into the hall. Then he ran back to the bed.

  Earl’s eyes were fully open now. He blinked blearily. His mouth moved, but was too parched to make a coherent sound. Frank grabbed the water glass and dribbled some liquid across Earl’s lips and down his chin.

  “Why…” Earl whispered.

  “You’re in the hospital, Earl. Ronnie Gatrell shot you in the leg, and you fell and hit your head, and you’ve been unconscious,” Frank babbled, clutching Earl’s hand. “Are you in pain?”

  “Why…”

  Frank lowered his ear to Earl’s mouth to hear better.

  “Why have you been talking about whales?”

  Chapter 46

  “Guess who came into the library today?” Penny threw her arms around Frank’s neck and danced with him around the finally finished kitchen.

  “If you’re this happy, I’m guessing J.K. Rowling dropped by.”

  “No, silly. Earl’s mother. She came in to get him some audiobooks. He’s been released from the hospital and he has to rest at home quietly for another week.”

  Doctors and therapists had kept Earl busy every day since he’d come out of the coma, and Earl’s mother had shooed away all visitors in the evening so her son could get his rest. “Am I finally allowed to see him?” Frank asked.

  “Yes, Earl’s been asking for you. Mrs. Davis said you can stop by tomorrow as long as you promise not to talk about work.”

  Frank found Earl enthroned on his mother’s plaid couch, a North Country sultan attended by a bevy of flannel-shirted handmaidens.

  Despite his partially shaved head and splinted leg, Earl looked remarkably well. Frank would have been happy to sit and stare at the kid for half an hour, but Earl had something else in mind.

  “Mom, could you fix me a cup of tea and some of that date bread Grandma made? Toasted. And put the cream cheese on it. And Carrie, could you go up to my room and find my other audiobook? This one is kind of dull.”

  The two women jumped to do his bidding, and as soon as they left the room, Earl hiked himself up and grabbed his laptop from the coffee table. “I’ve been working on something. I have a lot to tell you.”

  “You’re not supposed to be working. You need to—”

  “I’m so bored. I can’t stand watching another episode of Judge Judy. Or listening to another audiobook. So pay attention.”

  Earl dropped his voice. “Aunt Sheila met with Nancy Tomlinson about selling VitaVine.” Earl tapped a key and Secrets of VV Sales appeared on the laptop screen in bold red type. “Sheila acted real interested, so Nancy would call her every day. Finally, Nancy said Sheila had the talent to be a high-potential seller and she was going to give her advice that she didn’t give to anyone else. She was going to turn her on to some targeted prospect lists and special sales techniques on this website, so she could make a killing selling VitaVine.”

  “Let me guess. If she paid for the honor.”

  “Exactly. See, VitaVine itself is a legit business. It uses multi-level marketing, but that’s not illegal. And it sell
s supplements that are probably useless, but that’s not illegal either. But this,” Earl tapped the screen, “this website doesn’t show up on a Google search for VitaVine. The words VitaVine don’t appear anywhere on the site—just the initials VV. You wouldn’t find it unless you had the website address.” Earl paused for dramatic effect. “Because you’re being let in on the secret techniques. And once you’re there, it offers you the first bit for free. Then this sales video ends on a cliffhanger, so you have to pay ten bucks for the next bit of information. And you probably get something worthwhile, and you make some sales. And then I bet it asks you for more…and more.”

  “Until you’re in over your head.”

  “Right. I can’t keep going further into the website to see how it works without paying money.” Earl looked at him hopefully. “Do we have a budget for that?”

  “No!”

  “Yeah, I figured we didn’t. Anyway, I bet it makes you think you’re just not working the sales system quite right. But if you pay for more instruction, then you’ll bail yourself out and make a fortune on top of that.”

  “And you think that’s how Nancy and Ronnie both lost so much money?” Frank asked.

  “Yep. I don’t know which one fell for it first, but one pulled in the other.”

  In the kitchen, the teakettle whistled. Frank glanced over his shoulder. “So, is the Secret of VV Sales site part of the VitaVine company?”

  “No, I think it’s separate. Someone developed it because they saw the potential.”

  “Potential for….?”

  “Being duped. Because if you’re dumb enough to think you can make money selling VitaVine, you’re dumb enough to fall for this scam.”

  Earl slapped the laptop shut as his mother appeared bearing a tray. “I’m sorry, but I didn’t make any for you, Frank. Earl needs to take a nap after his snack.”

  “Of course, I don’t want to wear him out. May I stop by again tomorrow?”

  Mrs. Davis beamed. “I think you cheered him up. By all means, come again.”

  Sitting in Earl’s living room, Frank had found it easy to get caught up in his partner’s enthusiasm. How great to see Earl back to normal, his brain fully functioning! But back here alone in the office, Frank wasn’t entirely sure what to make of Earl’s theory. The kid was simply speculating on how a scam might work. Maybe it wasn’t a fraud at all, just a self-help website set up by a fellow VitaVine salesman. And if the Secrets of VV Sales website really was a fraud, it might be run out of Russia or Nigeria or Silicon Valley. Definitely out of his jurisdiction.

  Regardless, Earl was right about one thing: Ronnie and Nancy had come together through VitaVine. If he worked to prove the connection, he might yet get Nancy arrested for facilitating Ronnie’s escape. But did he care? All that really mattered now was finding RJ.

  And what could he do to help? The Department of Environmental Conservation Search and Rescue team had joined the search for RJ, but no one had found a trace of him in the woods. Nor had there been any break-ins. Frank worried that the kid had died of exposure although his mother hadn’t given up hope. She called Frank, Meyerson, and the DEC rangers every day begging for updates.

  He hated not having anyone to bounce an idea off of. No point going home early—Penny was off at a librarians’ meeting in Placid. He’d just called Caroline and the kids yesterday. Pastor Bob was at a weeklong retreat. Even Doris was otherwise occupied preparing for the town-wide spring cleanup. This was the kind of evening when he would have taken himself to the inn. Popped in the back door to see what Edwin was cooking and finagled a dinner invitation.

  But that was out of the question. Olivia was back to living with Anita although under closer supervision from Trudy. Frank didn’t know how the child had resolved her longing for her foster parents; Edwin and Lucy were still furious at him for suspecting them of being involved in Olivia’s disappearance.

  Frank paced restlessly around the office. A week ago all he did was bargain with God to let Earl live. He would give anything, everything.

  And God had granted his wish.

  Now, here he was unhappy.

  Humans were never satisfied.

  His stomach rumbled. It looked like tonight was the night to patch things up with Marge and eat dinner at Malone’s Diner.

  The place was nearly empty, but Frank sat at the counter. Nothing made Marge madder than having to walk clear across the dining room to wait on a singleton.

  “Evening, Frank.” She handed him the menu instead of slapping it down in front of him. “Beef stew special tonight. But take your time deciding.”

  Take your time deciding? Had he entered the Twilight Zone?

  “Beef stew is my favorite. I haven’t had it in a while. Quite a while.”

  Marge hugged the menu to her ample bosom. “Look, Frank. I’m sorry. Seems you were right about Ronnie all along. If Earl had died or, or never woken up, I—” She shuddered into silence, her mouth agape.

  Frank watched in fascination. He’d never before experienced Marge at a loss for words.

  “Well, I wasn’t entirely right. Ronnie didn’t kill that fisherman after all.”

  Another customer entered and ended their awkward apologies.

  How quickly life went back to normal! His feud with Marge over, Frank basked in the familiar charms of the diner—the hiss of the coffee urn, the brief blast of country music audible when the door to the kitchen opened, and most of all, the flavor of the stew. Ah! He hadn’t enjoyed Marge’s stew since…

  …since that day when he’d been sitting in this exact seat, next to the vegetarian girl who had pissed Marge off so much.

  “Hey, Marge,” Frank asked when she came to refill his coffee. “Remember that day you yelled at the flaky vegetarian girl and told her to go eat in Keene? Who was that, anyway? A tourist?”

  “Nah, I would never talk like that to a tourist. She was the girl who worked for Gage Shelby before he hired Anita. She’d come in here every blessed day asking about what on the menu was vegetarian. There are only three vegetarian entrees.” Marge held up three fat fingers. “I told her that, but still she’d ask questions about every single item every day. Finally, I blew up. I felt kinda bad about it later, ‘cause she was a friend of Darrell’s.”

  “Darrell?”

  Marge waved in the direction of the kitchen. “My morning grill guy. The one with the nose ring. Nutty but reliable.”

  “Darrell didn’t forgive you?”

  “Oh, what I did turned out not to matter. Gage fired the girl for the same reason she bugged me. She never stopped asking questions.”

  Chapter 47

  On Friday, Frank went fishing.

  A lot had happened between Thursday evening’s stew with Marge and Friday morning’s maple cruller coffee break. Penny had verified that Gage said all his previous coders had quit of boredom. She also reported that Gage had finished editing the John Brown video. Darrell the grill guy had denied having a contact number for his question-asking vegetarian friend, but Frank’s phone had rung with a call from her twenty minutes after his chat with Darrell.

  The girl had a lot to say, much of it expressed in acronyms and jargon Frank didn’t understand. But he grasped the bottom line: the project she had been coding for Gage had nothing to do with a hiking smartphone app. When she’d confronted him with that knowledge, Gage had encouraged her to find another job. Quickly.

  All of which brought Frank to Gage Shelby’s office on a fishing expedition.

  Gage had a charming stone house with a view of Trout Run’s covered bridge. A nicely crafted wooden sign over the side door read Bridge to the Future Applications. Frank walked up a flight of stairs to a loft area above the garage and knocked on the interior door.

  “C’mon in,” a male voice called.

  Frank entered a sunny room filled with three desks, several monitors and keyboards, and the video equipment he’d seen at the reenactment.

  No Anita. Maybe she was out getting coffee.

&n
bsp; “Penny told me the video is finished. I was wondering if the husband of the star could get a preview.”

  If Gage was annoyed by the interruption, he certainly didn’t show it. In fact, he seemed delighted by his guest. “Sure! Sit right down. I was just cleaning up a few little glitches before I upload it to YouTube and the Historical Society’s website.” Gage pulled up a chair for Frank near a large computer monitor. “You won’t even notice the blips. I’m a crazy perfectionist.”

  Despite his suspicions of Gage, Frank found himself quickly caught up in the video. Penny could give any PBS narrator a run for her money, and Gage had even managed to make the guy playing John Brown sound convincing.

  “Outstanding! Honestly, when Penny and I were at the reenactment, I had my doubts about the guy playing John Brown. I heard Ronnie Gatrell did a better job last year.”

  “Yeah, too bad I didn’t shoot this video before Ronnie went off the rails.” Gage fiddled with some controls on his equipment. “People say Ronnie’s dead. You saw what happened to him. What do you think?”

  “Not sure.” Frank watched Gage. “Seems like his body should have washed up by now. And Ronnie is a survivor, I’ll give him that. You know what his last words to me were?”

  Gage rolled his desk chair to an adjacent computer. “No, what?”

  “He admitted all that government conspiracy, revolution stuff he spouted was BS. He said money was the only liberation, and he expected to be liberated.”

  Gage arched his eyebrows. “Well, Ronnie always has been a talker.”

  “You’ve known him all your life?”

  “Used to watch him play baseball and basketball for the high school when I was a kid. He set some records.”

  “Yeah, Ronnie must be about the same age as Anita.” Frank looked around the empty office. “Where is Anita, by the way?”

  Gage gave the empty desk a careless glance. “She doesn’t work here anymore.”

  “You fired her?” This was not the information Frank had expected to reel in. “Have you told Trudy Massinay? This job is part of her custody agreement.”