Death Notice. Todd Ritter
Until today.
Driving up Main Street, Kat wondered how the town would handle something as disturbing as George Winnick’s death. It left her rattled and uncertain. She assumed the town felt the same way.
Tucked among the mountains of southeastern Pennsylvania, the town bore the name of Mr. Irwin R. Perry, who had deemed the area a worthy enough place to build a lumber mill. Fueled by abundant forests of pine, the mill prospered and the town grew. Perry Hollow was never large; nor was it ever rich. But it was comfortable, which was good enough for the folks who lived there.
The whole town had revolved around Perry Mill, which stood at the far end of Lake Squall. Homes were built to house the mill’s workers, who frequented stores that kept track of every mill payday. Even Kat was a product of the mill—her grandparents met while working there.
The first blow came in the sixties, when demand for lumber faltered. It only got worse in the ensuing decades. When the mill closed in 1990, Perry Hollow shuttered itself along with it. Residents left in droves, and a drive through town was a depressing tour of vacant storefronts and crumbling homes.
In 2000, when a restaurateur from New York City chose Perry Hollow as the location for a fancy French bistro, no one thought it would last very long. The food was so expensive that no one in town could actually afford to eat there. But out-of-towners could, and the restaurant thrived. “Destination dining” it was called, and it worked. For the first time in years, people actually stopped in Perry Hollow instead of cutting through it on their way to the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
Other businesses eventually followed. A gourmet bakery opened next to a bed-and-breakfast. An art gallery specializing in modern painting moved in, along with several upscale dress shops. Longtime residents such as Kat suddenly and surreally found themselves living in an arts community.
No one who lived there could have predicted that the town would experience such a rebirth. But whether one liked it or not—and Kat did—it looked like Perry Hollow was there to stay.
While she drove up Main Street, Kat scanned the thoroughfare. There was Big Joe’s, doing steady business both day and night. Beyond it sat Awesome Blossoms, where Jasper Fox probably still waited in vain for his missing delivery van, Gunzelman Antiques, and Wellington’s, the dress shop. The other side of the street boasted a bakery called Neverland Cakes and a store specializing in designer handbags.
Each storefront was decked out oh-so-tastefully for the upcoming Spring Fling, one of Perry Hollow’s numerous festivals designed to bring in day-trippers from Philadelphia and New Jersey. The festivals worked. Last year’s Spring Fling, with its flower sales and Ferris wheel, had drawn thousands of visitors. Attendance for that was surpassed only by July’s Independence Day street fair, which advertised food, fun, and fireworks, and October’s Halloween Festival, which lured tourists with the promise of fall foliage and hot apple cider.
How much of a draw the events would be now that Perry Hollow was the location of a brutal murder remained to be seen. As Kat drove, every pedestrian on Main Street glanced at the Crown Vic. When she looked into their eyes, Kat saw fear reflected back at her. Every man, woman, and child in town had by now heard about the murder. Kat was certain those staring bystanders on Main Street wondered where she was heading—all the while hoping it would be to catch a killer.
Only one person didn’t pause when Kat passed. Dressed in a shirt and tie, he sprinted off the sidewalk and into the street in front of her so fast she had to slam on her brakes to avoid hitting him. The man hurried to the car and gestured for Kat to roll down her window.
“Afternoon, Martin,” she said.
Like Kat herself, Martin Swan was one of those people who never got around to getting out of town. To his credit, Martin made it farther than Kat had, getting all the way to Temple University. Then his mother died, forcing him to come back home with only three years of journalism school under his belt. It was enough for the Gazette, which hired him as a reporter, and it seemed to be enough for Martin himself.
“You got a minute, Chief?” he asked. “I wanted to ask you a few questions about George Winnick.”
“The investigation is still ongoing,” Kat said. “So I don’t have much information to give. When I have something, I’ll tell you.”
Her statement—or lack of one—didn’t deter the reporter. Whipping a pen and small notebook out of his shirt pocket, he asked, “Was George murdered?”
The answer was yes. George didn’t sew his own mouth shut before he died. Nor did he deposit his corpse on the side of the road. Yet she wasn’t going to tell Martin that until there was an official cause of death.
“I don’t know yet,” she said. “We’ll have a better picture after the autopsy is conducted.”
“Is it true he was found in a homemade coffin?”
Unfortunately, Kat couldn’t lie about that. A truck driver saw it. So did several dozen cops.
“It was a wooden box, not a coffin,” she said, not even convincing herself.
She expected Martin to bring up the premature death notice that had been faxed to his own newsroom. When he didn’t, Kat realized Henry Goll was telling the truth. He hadn’t informed anyone at the Gazette about it.
Thinking about the obituary writer created a question of her own, which she immediately posed to Martin.
“How much do you know about Henry Goll?”
Martin gave her a sly smile. “You’re the second person to ask me that today.”
“Who was the first?”
“My sister,” he replied. “She said he had a cute phone voice and wanted to know if the rest of him matched it.”
“What did you tell her?”
“Yes, but only if his voice cracked.”
Kat frowned at his cruel reference to Henry’s scar. Martin noticed and quickly apologized.
“That was mean of me. The guy can’t help how he looks.”
“Do you know what happened to him?”
Martin shook his head. “No idea. Henry Goll is pretty much a closed book.”
“I thought that was the case,” Kat said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to get moving.”
She shifted the Crown Vic into gear and started to slowly pull away. Martin followed next to the open window, keeping pace with the car.
“Come on, Chief,” he begged. “I have to file a story by seven and I have nothing to go on.”
“I have nothing to tell you. I wish I knew more.”
Martin had fallen behind. He was now beside the patrol car’s back window, but Kat could still hear him call out, “Are there any suspects?”
Kat called back: “We’re looking at all possibilities.”
Although the reporter tried, he couldn’t keep up anymore. He stopped in the middle of the street and, with labored breath, yelled, “Tell me as soon as you find something!”
Kat stuck her arm out the still-open window and gave him a thumbs-up sign before speeding up the street. In the rearview mirror, she watched his retreating figure return to the sidewalk, shoulders slumped in disappointment.
At the end of Main Street, Kat turned onto Old Mill Road, which ran as far as Lake Squall. Perry Mill still stood there, now only a shadow of its former glory. Despite the town’s revitalization, no one had thought to restore the one thing that had led to its formation in the first place. So the mill was left in ruins. Its crumbling outbuildings had collapsed into piles of rotted wood. Its roads became pockmarked with gullies and potholes. Its long dormant railroad tracks vanished into the weeds.
All that remained of the compound was the mill building itself, a formidable structure