Seneca Point A Brandon Webster Mystery

Chapter One

Of the two of them, Brandon Webster never thought his famous brother would be the one to die from a bullet. Now he was being asked to find the killer. Even though he had hunted bad men overseas for years, he usually knew who they were, and to find them he didn’t have to obey any laws, or follow any rules of evidence. When he caught them, there were no defense attorneys and no right to appeal the sentences. A crime investigation would be much different, or so he thought before he started.

It was his brother’s widow, Sarah Webster, who called him on an early September Monday afternoon when he was in his Georgetown home office. He saw her name on caller ID and was surprised. She never had called him before.

Sarah, what a pleasant surprise, he said. While he did not care much for his brother, he did like Sarah, even though they had met only once.

I’m calling because Mike is dead, she said. Someone shot him last night.

Brandon told Sarah how sorry he was to hear this. While he was not close with his brother, and thus did not feel much grief, it was a shock. Unlike him, Big Mike Webster, his older brother by 11 years, was famous, rich and powerful. As far as Brandon knew, his brother was wildly popular for what he had done for the people of their hometown.

He had been the Supervisor of the Western New York Town of Lakeside, for the past 30 years. He had turned what Brandon remembered as a declining backwater into the most prosperous small town in that part of the state. His success, and his methods, garnered national attention with a feature on 60 Minutes.

How did it happen?

She told him that her husband was found shot to death inside his locked SUV in the parking lot of the Lakeside Hotel. The police so far had not found any witnesses. The police chief told her that it appeared to him the killer might have tried to make it look like a suicide, but no one believed it was. Instead, she believed she was the primary suspect.

I had a fight with Mike over the weekend, and we never had fights, she said. But I was really upset. I overheard something at the birthday party we had at our house on Friday night for my brother, Terry, Terry Ballard, who I don’t think you know.

The name rings a bell, but I don’t think I ever met him, Brandon said.

During the evening I overheard a couple of women talking about a woman who visited Mike in his town hall office on Wednesday and Thursday. They said the two were seen kissing.

Who is the woman?

Her name is Lauren Sizemore. No one seems to know anything about her. She’s not from around here. They said she was very good looking, maybe mid 30s.

Obviously I haven’t been around, Brandon said. but that doesn’t sound like something Mike would do..

He never did it before, at least as far as I know, Sarah said. I asked him about it, and he said she was the daughter of a very old friend, and that she was in Buffalo for a conference - he didn’t tell me what kind of conference - and came by to tell him of her mother’s death. He said the kiss was for her mother, and meant nothing else.

Well, that could be true, Brandon said.

I thought so at the time, but the next day I found out there were rumors all over town that he was having an affair. I was mad. We had a huge fight. He denied it again, but I didn’t believe him. So I wouldn’t to go to the hotel with him on Sunday. You probably don’t know this, but the Lakeside Hotel has become the town’s social center, and for years we, and many other people in the town, have gone there on Sunday afternoons.

So you were home when he was killed?

Yes, but I don’t have anyone to verify that, she said. The police chief told me today that the gun they found in Mike’s car is the gun that killed him, and it’s the gun he bought for me after we had a burglary in the house three weeks ago. It had been in the nightstand by my side of our bed. So now it looks like I might have killed Mike. I swear to you, Brandon, I never could hurt Mike. We had a fight, but I loved that man more than anything in the world.

Why did he buy a gun? Brandon said. As I recall, he didn’t like guns. Don’t you have a security system?

No, Mike wouldn’t have one, she said. Our town has the lowest crime rate in Erie County, and Mike was proud of that. I suggested we get a security system, instead of a gun, but he said it would send the wrong message to other people in the town. It wouldn’t look good for the town Supervisor to have to have a security system. He’d always left his cars unlocked.

Tell me about the burglary.

The odd thing is that they ransacked the house, but took nothing, she said. It appeared they were looking for something. The police have no leads. Mike tried to play it down, but I know he was worried.

What do you think the burglars were looking for?

I don’t really know, but whatever it was could have been in the secret space. They didn’t find that. Do you know about it?

Sure, Brandon said, "the old closed up staircase and the second floor room. I found that when I was a kid. What do you keep in there?

Mike has some files and material in the secret room, stuff he's been collecting, she said. We have this religious group that came to town about ten years ago called ‘The Disciples of Christ.’ Mike liked them initially and helped them out. They seemed like nice people with good intentions. Mike became convinced that he got fooled. During the last year he was obsessed with them, believing that they were criminals of some kind. He was trying to get the state to investigate them.

And what happened with that?

I think they told Mike that he did not have enough to justify an investigation, she said. That just made him more determined.

Sounds like Mike, Brandon said.

So I’m worried, Sarah said. Someone close to us got that gun and killed Mike. I don’t know why. I can’t imagine anyone in the family, or among our friends, who would have any reason to do that, to say nothing of being capable of doing it.

Except for the party, who has been in your house since the gun was purchased?

Just family members, Mike and Susan, you remember them, don’t you? They now have a baby.

Mike was Big Mike’s eldest son and Susan was his wife. Brandon had met them once.

Yes, I remember them, he said.

They came over a couple of times, with their baby. She’s six months old, Sarah said. Also, Terry, and his wife, Cynthia, were here a couple of times. No one else I can think of.

So unless one of the family took the gun at some other time, or if you had another burglary you don’t know about, it must have been done on Friday night, Brandon said.

That’s what I think, Sarah said.

Have you given the police the names of every one who was at the party, he said.

I haven’t. I didn’t think of it, and Chief Lambert didn’t ask today. It’s been a tough day today. He said he would be back to talk with me in the next couple of days.

Well, give that list to him, and think about everything that has happened since the burglary, anything unusual, any chance that someone else could have gotten into your house, possibly another burglary.

It’s been hard to think about anything other than Mike today, she said.

I’m sure, Brandon said. Did your police chief say anything about wanting to search your house? It seems to me they would have done that already if you really are the primary suspect.

He didn’t say anything about it, she said. He did ask me about what I did yesterday, and about the gun. I’m very worried because I don’t have an alibi. I think they may charge me with the murder.

It doesn’t sound that way to me, Brandon said. I’m not a crime investigator, he said, but I know something about it. They aren’t acting like they think you did it. Almost certainly they are going to find a better suspect.

Well, I don’t know that they will, Sarah said. The police chief is a close friend and when I talked to him today I sensed that he was worried for me. We haven’t had a murder here in ten years, and our police are not experienced in investigating them. I think they could use some help. I know I need some. I don’t know who I can trust here.

He wasn’t sure what of what she told him he could believe. He was a naturally suspicious person, and had survived because he trusted very few people. She knew a lot more about him than he did about her. Sarah was one of the very few people who knew what he had done during his 20 years with the CIA that ended five years ago. She knew nothing of his secret missions for the Pentagon since then.

Brandon knew he would go to Lakeside, if for no other reason than the funeral. However, he also felt compelled to help Sarah until the police solved the crime. While he wasn’t a crime investigator, he had worked with the FBI on numerous terrorist bombings and observed their procedures. By now, he believed, if the police believed her to be the principal suspect, they should have searched her house and checked her clothes for gunpowder residue. And even if they did not suspect her, they should have zeroed in right away on who had access to that gun.

So just in case Sarah was right about the competence of the Lakeside police, he would go prepared to do more than hold her hand. As with any operation, first he needed intelligence. He needed to know a lot more about what was going on in Lakeside, and he would approach the town as he always approached any foreign culture, with deception, and in disguise.

I will try to get up there tomorrow, he told her. It probably will be late in the day.

Chapter Two

Big Mike’s death was about the only thing people were talking about Tuesday morning in the Melody Café, located at the corner of Main Street and Lake Drive in the center of downtown Lakeside. A story in the Buffalo News that said police were looking for a mystery woman to question concerning Big Mike’s death was generating astonishment and wild speculation about lovers’ triangles and arguments.

The Melody Café had been the downtown gathering place in Lakeside since the early 1950s, and while it had changed hands, except for minor alterations and repairs, its décor had not. It was just as Brandon remembered. A white Formica lunch counter with 20 chrome stools with red seats divided the restaurant down the middle, with 10 red vinyl-covered booths on the right, each equipped with a small coin-operated juke box, providing the source of the café’s name. The food was basic Middle American, highlighted by southern Italian dishes. The morning smells of bacon, toast and coffee mingled with the aroma of the pasta sauces simmering in the kitchen.

The cash register sat on the counter at the front, close to the front door. Presiding by the cash register sat 60-ish Stella Soriano, who looked like someone’s rosy-cheeked grandmother, her thick, somewhat graying hair held up in back with a clip, and her ample body in loose-fitting slacks and a blouse. She had been in that spot for most of the past 25 years, telling customers what they should order that day and freely commenting, often sarcastically, on any conversation she heard – and she seemed to have very good hearing.

She also made sure no one got out without paying, and the consequences of one such attempt by a customer, who pulled a gun on her, were memorialized in a browned newspaper clipping in a frame hanging on the wall near the register. It included photos of Stella and the man she wounded with the Beretta she kept under the counter. Today she was carrying on several different arguments, doing her best to dampen the talk about girlfriends and lovers’ triangles.

Mike didn’t have no girlfriend, she had said several times already that morning. That wasn’t like him. Whoever killed him did it for some other reason. There are a lotta people around who didn’t like him, mostly scum, though, and those creeps out on Seneca Point. He treated the good people of this town real good. It’s bad that he’s gone.

It had been going on like this since Brandon arrived, disguised as Robert Kincaid, a retired government bureaucrat from Virginia who now was a part-time book scout traveling to places off the beaten track, looking for underpriced rarities that could be sold to high-end dealers. He was wearing Buddy Holly glasses and contact lenses that changed his dark brown eyes to dark blue. He also spoke with a cultured Virginia accent.

Brandon built the Robert Kinkaid persona over the past several years to use in the U.S., should the need arise, by making contacts in the book community that could be checked out. He thought that people might like talking to a book scout. Many had books they thought might be valuable. Usually they weren’t, but it could be a way to get into someone’s home, or place of work, without suspicion. The Kinkaid disguise could work in Lakeside because the town had a bookstore that received an outstanding review in an on-line directory of used bookstores. It was said to have many unusual and rare books at reasonable prices.

That the disguise was a good choice was confirmed when he entered the café and Stella, who seemed to know everyone who came in, asked him who he was and why he was in town. When he told her he was there to shop at the bookstore, she laughed.

Another one trying to find some treasure there. I guess they must have some because we get people like you almost every week.

Brandon was in a center booth, having a leisurely breakfast of pancakes, eggs, bacon and strawberries, and appearing to be reading the local weekly carefully, along with the Buffalo News, but listening closely to the conversations. Mike’s death was the major local news story. He already had read all the coverage on the Internet, and had seen all the videos on the local television station websites.

Many of the local merchants were stopping in to get coffee and pastries, or an egg sandwich, before opening their stores, and chatting with Stella and with each other. Brandon was on his third cup of their very good coffee that competed successfully with the Starbucks in the shopping mall just outside of town when two men sat in the booth next to him and began to talk quietly.

Big Mike was on to them, you know, one said. They got him before he could get them.

You can’t be sure about that, the other said. What about this woman thing? Sarah wasn’t with him on Sunday. She’s every bit as tough as he was. I bet when she heard about that woman she reamed him a new asshole. Maybe she killed him.

Not a chance. You’ll see when it all comes out. He wasn’t having any affair. He never played around. And Sarah loved the guy. She might have chewed him out, and probably it wasn’t the first time for one thing or another, but no, she’d never hurt him.

Then who was that woman?

I have no fucking idea, but nothing will come of it, you’ll see.

How can you be sure?

If he was screwing someone, everyone would have known it. A guy like Big Mike never could get away with it, he said. No, it has to be those Disciple assholes. Big Mike told me that he was going to get them out of town. That’s why I renewed my lease. He promised me that things would get better, and you know, he always kept his promises.

Well now things are going to go to shit. We’re screwed. Little Mike’ll probably become Supervisor but he’s not like his father. They’ll roll over him.

Well, we’ll see, you might be underestimating him.

I hope so. Like us, everyone around here is having problems. I don’t know how much longer I can hang on, and I keep hearing rumors that some more stores are going to close.

Brandon heard a lot more at the bookstore, operated by Bob and Joyce Smith, who looked a little like aging hippies. Both had long hair and wore large glasses. She was all in black, a black pullover and black slacks. He was in jeans and a lightweight sweatshirt. A sticker on the front door displayed their membership in the prestigious Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America.

Brandon established his bona fides as Bob Kincaid, the book scout, by dropping the names of some other ABAA dealers with whom he had done business and exchanging some anecdotes about them. The two Bobs chatted off and on while Brandon perused their books, mostly in the collectible room, occasionally asking a question about the town, and the murder of Big Mike. Brandon accumulated almost two boxes of books, worth several thousand dollars. For his investment he got a wealth of information from Smith, who was more than happy to sit and chat about the town.

He told Brandon that the town’s economy was suffering. He blamed it on a combination of the recession, a large mall just outside the town limits, and the Internet.

"The worst thing is that peoples’ buying habits change. They find sites on the Internet and then keep using them. When they go to the shopping center outside of town to look at shoes – since we no longer have any shoe stores in town – they also go in the other stores.

Big Mike’s ideas were good once upon a time, Smith said. "He kept the chains out. He helped the local merchants be competitive. People made money here and it shows. But times have changed, and his approach wasn’t working anymore, and people were starting to organize against him, publicly and in other ways.

When he helped some Muslims open a restaurant in an old wooden building that used to be a general store, he got a lot of resistance. It was firebombed a week after it opened.

Then we’ve got the Disciples of Christ, he continued, a very weird religious group that first located out on Seneca Point, but now they are moving into other parts of the town. At the rate they are growing they soon could control the town. They don’t shop in town. They have their own school. They stick to themselves. Rumors were going around that they and Big Mike were not getting along.

The buildings in downtown Lakeside originally were relatively plain, one and two story, and most were built in the late 19th or early 20th Century. They looked much better to Brandon than he recalled, having been gentrified with style. There were more retail stores and restaurants. It was a revelation to walk through the passageways between the buildings with their courtyards, kiosks and small shops. He saw a few vacant stores. He was told the businesses had failed after Big Mike refused to let them become franchises for chain stores. He asked what happened to the owners, but no one seemed to know.

The shops he visited were not very busy. He bought something in every store he visited to prompt some casual conversations. He learned that many of the merchants were just getting by, and the turnover of businesses was increasing.

Everywhere Brandon went the talk was mostly about Big Mike. He had helped most of the merchants get into business, and stay in business. There was great sadness and concern. However, here and there he picked up the feeling from some that Big Mike’s time had passed. While Big Mike had helped the merchants fend off the competition from the nearby shopping center, he had been slow to comprehend the impact of the Internet.

He also heard that Big Mike was alienating increasing numbers of people by being more arbitrary than he used to be. The town was changing, maybe not for the better some said, but Mike was not keeping up with the changes, or was refusing to do so. He did not have the support he once had. One merchant said he was not sure Big Mike would have won another election.

You sort of got the feeling that Big Mike’s dream was slowly fading, and I think he was realizing that, said the owner of one of the town’s oldest businesses, a meat market and deli. Maybe he just couldn’t accept that.

However, another merchant had a different opinion.

There are people in this town who want control of it, to use it for their own purposes, and don’t care what happens to the town, he said. "That religious group, the Disciples of Christ, is one of the main ones. They clashed with Big Mike. He could see what would happen if they got control. The town would decline, would