Swallow The Hook Part 6

"He's dead? But I just saw him the other day!"

"I'm sorry, Beth. Was he a good friend?"

"Well, not exactly. I mean, he used to be, but I hadn't seen him for years until he showed up on Thursday here at the shop." Frank's curiosity must have been apparent, because she went on, "I met him when I was in college at Cornell. He was a grad student there when I was a freshman and soph.o.m.ore."

Beth's eyes got that same faraway look they'd had when she was talking about her sons. Frank waited.

"Nathan was so, so...vibrant. People just flocked to him." Beth smiled at Frank. "You remember what college was like in the early seventies. We were all so idealistic, so pa.s.sionate. And Nathan was at the center of it all. Leading every protest, organizing marches, circulating pet.i.tions-all for the environment."

Frank forced his lips up a little in response. That might've been what college had been like for them. He'd worked his way through UMKC at night when he was already married, a father and a cop. It'd taken eight years, and there certainly hadn't been any time for waving banners and marching on the dean's office. He imagined Beth as an eighteen-year-old hippie-chick-he probably wouldn't have given her a second glance in those days.

Beth continued down memory lane. "When I was nineteen, I would've walked across hot coals for Nathan Golding. But then he dropped out of grad school; I finished college, got married, and came here. Of course I knew what became of him-I followed all the news about Green Tomorrow. I even sent the organization a few donations. He said that's how he tracked me down."

"Why did he suddenly want to track you down after all these years?" Frank asked.

Beth began fussing with the packaging of the bowl again. "He was in the area, uh, conducting some research. He said he always likes to look up local supporters when he's working in the field. It was wonderful to see him. Even with the gray hair and a few wrinkles, he was just the same. Still so intense, so committed. I just can't believe he's dead."

"What kind of research?" Frank persisted.

Beth looked up from her wrapping and her eyes locked with Frank's. "Are you investigating his death? Is that why you came in today?"

Frank felt a wave of heat rise through his body. He wondered if he was blushing noticeably. "No, it's the state police's case. I came in to buy a gift. But I saw you talking to Golding at Malone's, and now he's turned up dead. I can't help but wonder-" Frank broke off. Why did he feel the need to explain to her?

"The state police are going to need to know why Golding was here," he finished. "If you can help them, you should come forward."

A furrow of worry appeared above Beth's eyes. "Nathan's been active in protesting the commercialization of wilderness areas. New ski resorts in the Sierras. Golf courses in the dessert. He was here looking into Raging Rapids."

"Raging Rapids? That's just a d.i.n.ky little tourist attraction." Frank had taken his grandsons there last summer, to walk across the catwalks that crossed Stony Brook as it plunged into a deep gorge. "Why would Golding care about that?"

Beth shrugged. "I doubt it has anything to do with Raging Rapids. Nathan was involved in far more controversial things, and he certainly had enemies. That must be why he was killed."

The sound of gravel crunching outside made them both look up. The UPS truck was pulling into the parking area. Beth put the last piece of tape on the box containing Caroline's gift.

"Just in time," she said. "Let me know how your daughter likes the bowl."

"I will." In a rush he added, "Maybe we could have lunch sometime."

"I'd like that."

Before she could say anything else, he left as fast as a mouse who has nabbed a piece of kibble straight from the cat's bowl.

10.

DEBBIE FLINT LIVED IN A TRAILER PARKED on a long, narrow lot that fronted the main road out of Trout Run. Now that it was past five, Frank was sure Debbie would be home from her shift at the Stop'N'Buy.

The trailer, which looked to be about fifteen or twenty years old, had been set up with the least amount of effort, barely a car's length back from the road. There was no driveway, only hardpacked earth where Debbie's ancient Crown Victoria was parked. A tangle of tricycles and trucks and dolls lay in the weedy gra.s.s, and out back a row of tiny shirts and pants flapped on the clothesline. Frank climbed up the unstable pile of concrete blocks that pa.s.sed for a front stoop. Knocking on the door was like rapping on tinfoil.

But Debbie's trailer was clean and cheerful inside. Dinner was cooking in the galley kitchen, and the children were working on a jigsaw puzzle on the living room floor. A flowered curtain separated the main room from the bedroom. If Mary Pat had given birth here, she'd had very little privacy.

"Hi, Debbie, I need to talk to you about Mary Pat Sheehan for a minute," Frank said as the young woman let him in. "Was Mary Pat over here on the evening of September seventeenth? That's the Thursday the week before she died."

"Here at my house? Of course not-why would she be?"

"Her parents said she baby-sat for you that night and slept over. That she baby-sat for you all the time. Is that true?"

"Baby-sat? For me? The only person who watches my kids is Sue Estes, while I'm at work."

"So Mary Pat never baby-sat for you?" Frank confirmed.

"Well, I take that back. Once, about a year ago, I had a court date in Elizabethtown about my support payments, and Sue got sick and I was upset about it at work, and Mary Pat volunteered to watch them and so she did stay with them for a couple of hours that one time," Debbie explained. "Now, what's this all about?"

"Mary Pat's death was not quite what it seemed," Frank began, and then listened to the now-familiar disbelief as he told her about the concealed pregnancy, the birth, and the sale of the baby through Sheltering Arms. "So," he concluded, "it would appear that Mary Pat was using you for a cover when she met her boyfriend. And I'm pretty sure she gave birth that Thursday when she told her folks she was baby-sitting for you. Now I have to figure out where she really went, and who she was with, and who put her in touch with Sheltering Arms. Any ideas?"

Debbie shook her head, her dirty-blond hair swinging back and forth with the vehemence of her denial. "Wow, and I thought my life was screwed up!"

"Can you remember if there was anyone she talked about a lot? A man she went out of her way to talk to, or flirted with-"

"Flirted!" Debbie interrupted. "Mary Pat didn't even know how to flirt. She was just the same nice Mary Pat to everyone, young, old, ugly, handsome. It didn't matter to her."

"Well, she treated someone different, and the Stop'N'Buy's gotta be the link," Frank said. "Where else would she meet anyone? She spent all her free time with her parents or at church."

"Mommee? I'm hungry!" a little voice piped from the sofa.

"I'm coming, sweetie." Debbie opened the door for Frank. "I guess the guy must've been someone who came in later in her shift, when she was alone. Maybe Anita would know something. She comes in three nights a week to clean."

"Anita who?"

"Anita Veech."

On the short ride into town, Frank thought about Mary Pat's lover. Was the guy grief-stricken now, or relieved? Had he known how sick Mary Pat was in the days before she died? Had he urged her to see a doctor, or had they both been so anxious to keep the pregnancy quiet that he'd prevented her from getting the help that could've saved her? Or could he have just been a one-night stand, someone pa.s.sing through that Mary Pat had gone with out of sheer loneliness?

Such a waste. Such a terrible, terrible waste, and nothing Frank did could change that. He'd spent the whole day getting bad news and giving bad news. He hadn't accomplished jack s.h.i.t. Now he felt an overwhelming need to fix something-to just use his hands and head to make one thing, one stupid little thing, come out right.

Driving back to the office, he switched the patrol car for his pickup, checking to see that his toolbox was in there. Then he headed out to the Iron Eagle Inn.

Edwin and Lucy Bates owned Trout Run's one entry in the charming country bed-and-breakfast category. They'd escaped the high-pressured life in Manhattan and now spent their days catering to the whims of the type of people they used to be.

The Inn was a perpetual repair project, as Frank had discovered when Caroline had booked him into the Iron Eagle for a restorative fishing trip after Estelle's death. During his stay, he'd walked in on a contractor giving Edwin some harebrained advice on porch repair. Unable to stand by quietly as a catastrophe unfolded, he'd replaced the rotting floorboards himself, and an unlikely friendship was born.

Edwin and Frank had nothing in common. Edwin, a former English professor who hadn't made tenure, was particular about everything: the books he read, the clothes he wore, the food he ate. Frank was an omnivore: He read everything he got his hands on, ate anything that was put in front of him, often with disastrous consequences, and wore whatever was given to him for Christmas and his birthday.

But one thing they shared: Edwin understood what it meant to lose a job you loved, and he had persuaded Frank to reject the career in corporate security he'd been considering in favor of taking over the police chief's job in Trout Run. It was the best advice Frank had ever received, and he repaid Edwin by continuing to repair things at the Inn.

Frank glanced at the dashboard clock. Almost seven-he could get some satisfaction from fixing Edwin's latest plumbing problem and get a free meal in the bargain. He hoped it wasn't anything too weird. The last time he'd eaten there, Edwin had fed him ratatat-something, full of eggplant and tomatoes and suspicious little flecks. It had tasted all right on the way down, but had roiled his digestive tract for hours afterward.

Frank marched into the kitchen without knocking, encouraged by the comforting smell of garlic and roasting meat. Jen Verhoeff, who helped Edwin with the cooking, was flying around, muttering under her breath, "Seven minutes to cook a whole pot of green beans, my a.s.s! Fine if you're feeding beavers, but people like to be able to chew their vegetables."

"How's it going?" Frank asked, sitting down at the long oak table, well away from the big six-burner stove.

Jen let out a little shriek. "Geez! You scared me. Where did you come from, Frank?"

"Sorry. I came to scrounge a meal."

"Well, get in there. You missed the appetizer, but I'll set you a place for the main course."

Frank tugged at the khaki shirt of his uniform. "I'm not dressed for company. I thought I'd fix the toilet in the Blue Room, then just eat leftovers out here."

"I guess that's all right, if you can finish before the guests are done with dinner. Go up the back stairs."

Frank carried his toolbox up the narrow steps and crossed the hall to the Blue Room. He tapped on the door, and when no one answered, walked in. None of the Inn's locks worked-it catered to trusting souls.

The guest's suitcase lay open on the floor. Instinctively he checked out the contents as he stepped over it to get to the bathroom. He could hear the toilet gurgling away.

"I can't believe people pay Edwin $125 a night to stay in a room with a little sign taped to the toilet telling you how to jiggle the handle to get it to flush," he muttered as he set to work installing a new ball and plunger. In just a few minutes the toilet responded to his test with a gratifying whoosh. He pulled the sign off, but stopped short of throwing it away. Might as well save it for when the next one broke.

Frank came down the back stairs just as Edwin entered the kitchen from the dining room.

"Frank, what a nice surprise. What brings you here?"

"Fixed your toilet." Frank took the half-empty serving platter from Edwin's hands. "I'll take my payment in roast beef."

"Lamb," Edwin corrected. "And don't wrinkle your nose like it's fried goat eyeb.a.l.l.s. I'm going to serve the guests dessert, then Lucy and I will come back and have coffee with you."

Frank watched as an impressive-looking chocolate cake rode out to the dining room on a serving cart. He hoped there would be some left over, but his fears were groundless. Before long, Edwin and Lucy both were back in the kitchen, bearing nearly half the cake. "So many people on diets these days," Edwin complained. "It's hardly worth baking. I should just serve fresh fruit."

"Don't be rash, Edwin. You can always count on me," Frank said, slicing himself a large piece.

"Ah, if only everyone had your metabolism, Frank," Lucy said as she served herself a piece of cake so thin it dissolved into a pile of crumbs on her plate. Lucy complained constantly that Edwin's cooking would soon push her from a size six to a size eight, a lament that didn't earn her much sympathy from the other women she knew.

Edwin poured coffee all around as Jen loaded the dinner plates into the dishwasher. "Well, the talk at dinner was all about the shooting on Giant. I hope they're all talked out; otherwise I don't know what we'll do at breakfast tomorrow."

"Meredith Golding, Nathan's widow, is staying here," Lucy explained. "She arrived this afternoon, but she had to go right out to the morgue to identify the body. She hasn't come back yet-I guess the police are still talking to her."

Frank raised his eyebrows. "She had time to find a cozy little B and B when her husband's just been murdered?"

"Oh, we know them. She and Nathan have stayed here before-they both like hiking in the High Peaks."

Frank set down his fork with a bite of cake uneaten. "Nathan Golding was here last night?"

"No, no-he wasn't staying with us. Apparently he's been up here on business. I heard he was staying at the Mountain Vista Motel. It's cheaper over there, and Nathan's pretty thrifty. Why are you so interested? Will you be part of the investigation?"

"No, this belongs to the state police. I've got my own problems."

"You sure do. Tell us all about this scandalous secret life that poor Mary Pat Sheehan was living," Edwin said, settling into his chair as if it were a theater seat.

Hot coffee sprayed from Frank's mouth. "How the h.e.l.l do you know about that? Did Earl tell you? Wait'll I get hold of him."

"Earl? No, we haven't seen him for days. We heard it from Jen," Edwin explained. "Her nephew's engaged to Dr. Hibbert's secretary. She transcribed the autopsy notes."

"You can't keep a secret in this town for more than a few hours," Frank said.

"Mary Pat seems to have kept a pretty big secret for nine whole months," Lucy pointed out.

"It beats me how she managed it," Jen said from her spot at the big old cast-iron sink. "Whenever I was pregnant, Bill used to swear I'd grown a couple of inches every time he looked at me."

"Maybe that's how she did it," Edwin said. "No one ever really looked at Mary Pat, did they? She was just part of the background."

They all sat for a moment until Lucy broke the quiet. "So what do you have to do with this, anyway, Frank? After all, even if Mary Pat did something to the baby, she's dead now. There's no one to arrest."

Frank hesitated. Part of him still wanted to protect Mary Pat and her family from the wagging tongues in town. But Debbie Flint already knew about the baby-selling scheme, and tomorrow he'd have to tell Anita Veech. So he told them about the letter and the Finns. "So now I'm trying to figure out who helped Mary Pat with the baby, and who put her in touch with this Sheltering Arms," Frank concluded.

Jen's mouth had dropped open halfway through the story. "I just can't believe she'd sell her own baby. I mean, when you've given birth and you see that little face looking up at you for the first time, you just melt." She paused in her relentless scrubbing of the counters, her eyes lost in wistful memories. "You're in love."

"Maybe the experience is a little different when you're giving birth on a dirty bathroom floor, with the jerk who knocked you up as your midwife," Lucy said.

Edwin, Frank, and Jen all turned to her, surprised by the harshness in her voice.

"It's not like that," Jen objected. "When you're a mother-"

"Oh, right. I wouldn't know. I haven't been there. I'm not a member of the club." Lucy began picking up the dessert plates, not bothering to remove the forks, and they teetered in an unsteady tower in her shaking left hand.

Jen's eyes opened wide in amazement. "Lucy, I didn't mean-"

"It's nearly nine, Jen," Lucy cut her off. "I'll finish up here-I know you like to get home before your kids are in bed."

Jen looked at Edwin for support, but he simply shook his head very slightly. "I'll see you tomorrow, Jen. Thanks for your help."

Frank rose as well. "I better be going, too."

"No, no, Frank. Go on out to the parlor. We'll have a gla.s.s of port," Edwin insisted. Frank edged nervously toward the door, watching Edwin put his hand on Lucy's shoulder as she stood at the sink. He murmured something, his head bent close to hers.

She nodded and straightened her back. "I'll just get the dishwasher going," she said with false brightness. "I'll join you in a minute."

In the parlor Frank sank into the worn leather chair next to the crackling fire. Suppressing the urge to blurt, "What was that all about?" he accepted the rosy-gold gla.s.s of port that Edwin offered. It reminded him of the homemade elderberry wine his grandmother used to give him for a sore throat.

Edwin rolled his port gla.s.s between his palms, warming it before he spoke. "Lucy and I tried for eight years to have a baby. Drugs, surgery, inseminations, in vitro-we did it all, in every fertility clinic in Manhattan. It was like a merry-go-round you couldn't get off. Every time we'd make up our minds to stop trying, some fifty-year-old we knew would get pregnant with a new treatment or a new doctor, so we'd start all over again. The doctors kept feeding our hopes-it was like they wouldn't give us permission to quit. The constant disappointment was eating away at Lucy.

"If I'd won tenure at NYU, we'd probably still be at it. Buying the inn was the best thing we could have done. We're hundreds of miles away from the nearest fertility clinic, so the temptation is removed. We've made up our minds that we can have a happy life without children," Edwin said.

Frank nodded, but he must have looked doubtful, because Edwin continued, sounding defensive.

"I guess you wonder why we don't adopt?"