by Paula Munier
“Not too close,” she warned. The groundskeeper was at least six and a half feet tall, with enormous feet encased in enormous work boots, with which he could destroy what was now a crime scene. At least whatever was left intact after his dogs’ ruckus.
Gunnar stopped in his tracks and looked past Mercy at the body.
“Well?”
“I do not know her.”
“Maybe your boss does.”
“I do not think so.” He shook his head. “She does not look like a hunter.”
“At least not a local one.” She squatted down again, the better to look at the corpse. “These are expensive clothes she’s wearing.”
“She does not look like a hiker, either.”
“No hunter orange. No pack. No weapon.” She looked over at him. “So what was she doing out here?”
He shrugged.
“Meeting her murderer.”
“Accident.”
“I don’t think so.” She rose to her feet and faced the groundskeeper. “That fletching matches the fletching on the arrows you and your hunting party are using.”
Gunnar crossed his thick arms across his chest. “Only one arrow shot this morning.”
“Florid-face.”
“Mr. Farrow.”
“He’s reckless.”
“His arrow landed in the tree. You saw.”
“I saw. I saw you give him your rifle, too.”
He ignored that. “We need to tell Mr. Feinberg about this.”
“We need to tell the police about this.”
The groundskeeper grunted. Mercy knew he didn’t think much of local law enforcement. She didn’t either, apart from Troy and his search-and-rescue dog Susie Bear.
“I’ll stay here,” she told Gunnar. “You go get your boss. And take your canine friends with you.”
The big man nodded and strode off, the elkhounds on his heels.
While she and Elvis waited, Mercy checked her cell phone. No signal. No way to call Troy and let him know there was a dead body in his woods.
She knelt down next to Elvis, and he licked her cheek. She scratched his ears while examining the body more carefully, snapping photos with her cell phone.
The dead woman wore elegant gloves of butter-colored suede, which matched the thin suede belt she wore under her jacket. The belt held a slim pouch, probably for a phone, although if so it wasn’t there now. The silk scarf tied loosely at her neck was the same color as her pale yellow hair, which framed her face and its empty blue eyes like a broken halo.
The shepherd stiffened at her side. Mercy came to her feet just as Gunnar led Daniel Feinberg and the members of his hunting party into the blowdown. Joey Darosa was not among them.
Leaving Elvis to guard the body, she went to meet her neighbor.
“I’m afraid this is a crime scene now, Daniel. I’ll tape off the area. Meanwhile, keep these people away from here.”
He nodded to Gunnar, who stopped the guests before they could venture any closer to the victim.
She led the billionaire over to the dead woman. “Do you know her?”
He didn’t answer, his eyes on the dead woman. “I’m not sure, but I think she may be Alice de Clare.”
“But you’re not sure?” She could hear the skepticism in her voice. The Daniel Feinberg she knew was rarely unsure of anything.
He gave her a sharp look. “I’ve never actually met her in person. She’s an architect. One of my weekend guests. She was supposed to arrive yesterday, but her flight was delayed.” He paused. “I suppose we should call your game warden.”
She could feel the heat rise on her face, blushing in spite of herself. Curse of the redhead. “He’s not my game warden.”
“The Montgomerys know her. She did their brownstone in Boston.”
“The Montgomerys?”
He swiveled back to face Mercy, waving his arm in the direction of Gunnar and his guests. “They’re here. Let me introduce you.”
He guided her over to the hunting party, who stood in a small clutch, whispering amongst themselves. Silence fell over them as she and their host approached.
“What’s happened?” asked the silver-haired man in a strong Boston Brahmin accent.
“This is Mercy Carr and her wonder dog, Elvis.” Feinberg gestured to the silver-haired couple. “Blake and Katharine Montgomery.”
Blake nodded and his wife murmured a greeting Mercy didn’t quite catch as the billionaire proceeded with the introductions.
“Caspar and Cara Farrow,” he said, indicating the florid-faced man and his much younger, much prettier wife, who looked vaguely familiar. Mercy smiled. Caspar glared at her in return while his better half gave her a cool smile.
Next to the Farrows stood the lady with the camera, a Nikon D5 by the looks of it. She stepped up to Mercy with an outstretched hand. “Lea Sanders.”
Mercy shook her hand. A firm but friendly grip.
“And I think you know each other,” said Feinberg, coming to Ethan Jenkins.
“Yes,” they said in unison.
Ethan was Lillian Jenkins’ son. Lillian ran the popular Vermonter Drive-In restaurant and, in her off-hours, virtually every nonprofit in Northshire. She and Mercy’s grandmother Patience were old friends. Mercy had known the family for most of her life. But she hadn’t seen much of Ethan since he’d moved to Manhattan to work for Feinberg after getting his MBA at Harvard.
“What’s going on?” demanded Caspar Farrow. “I’ve got a bear to get back to.”
His young wife laughed. “You missed. Twice.” She removed her cap and undid her ponytail, unleashing a waterfall of copper-colored curls that fell past her shoulders in shimmering waves. She had good hair and she knew it.
“I did not. That bullet hit him. Grazed him at the very least.”
“We are not here to hunt bear,” Gunnar said, as much to Mercy as to the florid-faced man.
“What’s happened?” asked Blake again, the Boston Brahmin accent thickening.
“I’m afraid Mercy and Elvis have come across a dead woman,” said Feinberg. “A woman we may know.”
“Impossible,” said Katharine.
“Who is she?” asked Cara Farrow, her bored expression replaced by a feral curiosity framed by all that shining hair.
“I think it might be Alice de Clare,” Feinberg told them.
Mercy watched their faces as they absorbed the news. Blake frowned and lowered his eyes, staring at the ground. Caspar and Cara exchanged a glance.
“How horrible,” said Cara, but in her voice was an odd note of triumph. Mercy wondered what that was about.
Lea looked angry. “How could that happen?”
Only Katharine seemed truly disturbed by the news. “Oh, no.” She stumbled back, as if avoiding a blow. Her husband caught her, steadying her against his chest.
Ethan said nothing, his face gray as stone, his hands clenched into fists at his side.
“We’d asked Alice to refurbish a property for us. She was here to show us her plans.” Feinberg’s dark eyes, which usually held warmth or wariness, depending on the situation, folded into a weariness Mercy had never seen before. He suddenly looked ten years older. “We’ll need someone to confirm her identity.”
Caspar blustered. “We didn’t even really know the woman.”
Blake stepped forward. “I can do it.”
Katharine paled, and Lea went to her side, taking her husband’s place as her consoler.
“We should wait for law enforcement,” said Mercy.
“I’ll do it.” Ethan ignored her, pushing roughly past Blake. “I should be the one to do it.”
“Whoa.” She grabbed his arm as he approached the body. He tried to shake her off, but she held firm. “Not too close. This is a crime scene,” she repeated.
“Right.” He stuck his fists in his pockets, then leaned so far forward she worried that he might fall over onto the victim. He swallowed hard, looking down at the face of the woman stretched out in death beneath him.<
br />
His voice was hard. “It’s Alice.”
It was clear to Mercy that this woman Alice had meant something to him. “Are you all right?”
“I don’t understand. I just saw her. She was fine.”
“What do you mean?”
Ignoring the question, he turned to her. “What the hell happened here? Who did this?”
“That’s what the police are going to find out. That’s why we need to protect the scene.” She nodded to Feinberg, who ushered Ethan back to Blake and Katharine. Lea was quietly shooting pictures again. No one stopped her.
Mercy slipped off her pack and pulled out her Swiss Army knife and the duct tape she always carried in an outside zippered pocket. You just never knew when you’d need them.
Like now. She ran the tape in long strips around the trunks of trees and the branches of bushes to isolate the body as best she could, feeling the eyes of the hunting party on her as she worked.
After securing the last of the tape, she turned back to the billionaire. He was speaking into his sat phone. She was surprised he could get a signal up here, but then they weren’t too far from the mansion on his Nemeton estate, where everything worked like clockwork despite its isolation. He probably had his own satellite.
“The game warden should be here shortly,” he said. “Detective Harrington and his team may take a little longer.”
Troy and Susie Bear were almost always the closest law enforcement around, whenever bad things happened in the woods.
And this was bad, thought Mercy, as she and Elvis stood sentry to the woman struck down on opening day.
CHAPTER THREE
It is illegal to take any wild animal by shooting with firearm, bow and arrow, or crossbow from any moving vehicle.
—VERMONT FISH AND WILDLIFE REGULATIONS
VERMONT GAME WARDEN TROY WARNER and his Newfoundland retriever mix Susie Bear were bumping down one of the many unpaved roads to nowhere in southern Vermont on a perfect autumn morning, the kind that reminded him that he had the best job in the world. The windows were down, and Susie Bear had her square, shaggy black head hanging out in the fresh air, long thick tongue rolled out like a mottled pink rug.
The Green Mountains were ablaze with color, and the woods smelled like damp earth and decaying leaves and evergreen and fallen apples. This was their busiest time of year. Between the peepers and the hikers and the hunters—all of whom were out in force now, overrunning the roads, thronging the trails, gunning the wild game—he and his fellow game wardens all over the state were pretty much on call twenty-four hours a day.
Dispatcher Delphine Dupree had called him on the radio with an anonymous tip about a guy taking shots at deer from his truck up this way. Shooting from a vehicle was illegal, not to mention dangerous as hell for all concerned.
As for game wardens, hunting season was a dangerous time of year, period. Every time Troy approached a new situation, he was dealing with armed people who killed for sport. Most were lawful hunters who harvested game that would feed their families during the freezing cold winter ahead. Some were good old boys who thought of hunting as a kind of frat party, just another reason to get drunk and stupid and shoot at anything that moved. And the worst were the poachers who killed at will for profit—endangering the wildlife Troy was pledged to protect, for this generation and those to come.
These lawbreaking hunters could prove as deadly for him as for the wildlife. The good old boys because they were often inebriated and reckless, the poachers because they tended to be repeat offenders—the offenses being ones that carried significant fines and jail time they’d prefer to avoid—and because they tended to be very, very good shots.
The road took a sharp turn to the left, then stopped abruptly at a T fronting a small meadow. An unmarked road ran at right angles into forest on both sides. This was where the anonymous tipper had told Delphine they’d spotted the hunter shooting from his truck.
To the right was woods, and to the left was woods.
“Flip a coin,” he said to Susie Bear, and hung a right.
About a half mile up, Troy saw an old gray pickup parked on the side of the road where the meadow met the woods. The description of the vehicle matched the one given to Delphine—as did the partial plate number. Two men stood at the back, lifting something into the bed of the truck. Something that could be a deer.
He pulled up behind them and got out of his Ford F-150. “Stay,” he told Susie Bear, who was rocking the truck in her excitement to get out and go to work.
“Game Warden Troy Warner,” he said by way of introduction. “How’s it going?”
The two guys turned toward him. Sandy-haired twins in hunter-orange vests, brown flannel shirts, blue jeans, and well-worn duck boots, separated only by age. Father and son, that was Troy’s guess. The father looked about forty; the kid was tall for his age, which Troy estimated at about fourteen.
The older one reached back and pulled up the tailgate as Troy approached. Not a good sign.
“Step away from the vehicle,” he said.
“We just got a bear,” said the younger. But he looked away from Troy as he said it.
“On our way to the tagging station now,” said the elder with more confidence.
“I’ll need to see your IDs and hunting licenses.”
“In the glove box.”
Troy looked into the bed of the truck as he followed them to the cab. A black plastic tarp covered a large object. His gut told him it was no bear.
“Where are your guns?”
“Just one rifle. In the back seat.”
Troy watched as the older guy opened the glove box and pulled out a couple of wallets and two laminated hunting permits. He fished out the driver’s licenses along with the hunting permits and handed them to Troy.
“Daryl Buskey.” The game warden raised his eyebrows at the father, and he nodded. Then he addressed the son. “Tyler Buskey. You’re sixteen.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Any relation to Johnny Buskey?” Johnny was a small-time poacher who’d been lucky enough to avoid jail time so far, despite several run-ins with law enforcement. Troy was determined to change that.
“Second cousin once removed or whatever.” Daryl looked down at his feet. “We aren’t close.”
“Uh-huh.” Troy was not convinced. Poachers ran in some families, like certain cancers. He examined the hunting permits, which were up to date. “All good. Let’s see your firearm.”
Daryl opened the back-seat door and retrieved a .22 rifle. He passed it to Troy.
Troy checked that the safety was on, but when he opened the action, he saw that the weapon was loaded. He emptied the chamber and slipped the ammo into his pocket. “You know it’s illegal to have a loaded weapon in your vehicle. And it’s dangerous. One bump in the road, and bang.”
“Stupid. I know. Sorry.” Daryl looped his thick fingers into the waistband of his jeans.
“That’s one serious violation right there.” Troy held onto the guy’s gun, tossing his head in the direction of the truck bed. “I got a feeling that’s no bear back there. When I pull up that tarp, you could be in big trouble. So why don’t you just tell me what happened before I do that.” While it was currently bear-hunting season and bow-and-arrow season for deer, rifle deer season didn’t begin until next month. If, as he suspected, there was a deer in that truck bed, shot with that loaded rifle, that was another serious violation.
Neither father nor son said a word.
“If you tell me the truth, things will go better for you.”
Tyler Buskey coughed, and stared down at his boots.
His father sighed. “We just came across this deer dead in the road. Didn’t look like anyone else was gonna harvest it, so we figured we may as well. Didn’t want it going to waste.”
“We, huh?” Troy couldn’t believe the guy was implicating his kid.
Daryl seemed to realize his mistake. “Well, me, I mean. Tyler here was just along for the ride.”
“Still warm,” the father said. “So we gutted it.”
Troy grabbed the edge of the tarp and tugged. The covering fell open, revealing a fair-size buck laid out on a green tarp. Two tips. Shot right in the boiler room, about where his heart and lungs should be. Gutted, and ready to be tagged. “Stay right there.”
He walked back to the Ford F-150 and called in to check on the plates and any records the state may have on the Buskey boys. He secured the rifle in his truck and let Susie Bear out. “Heel,” he said, and she trotted along next him, her nose at his hip.
“This is Susie Bear,” he told the guys, who stared at the big dog with trepidation. “She’s trained to find bullets and spent shell casings. I’m going to let her loose in that field, and she’s going to find the casing from the bullet that killed that deer. And maybe the bullet, too, if it’s not still in the deer. That’s as good as a fingerprint for our forensics guys.” Troy stared hard at Daryl. “Then I’ll calculate the trajectory of the bullet—and I’ll bet it will prove that the rifle that fired the shot that killed this deer out of season was fired from the road. Another violation.” He paused. “Could be costly, when you add up all these violations. We’re talking big-money fines and jail time, Mr. Buskey.”
Susie Bear wagged her tail and barked.
“She loves her job.” Troy smiled. “Search is her happy place.” He reached down to unsnap her lead.
“I did it,” said Tyler.
Troy straightened up and waited in silence, wondering if Daryl would really let his son take the fall for his own actions.
“No, you didn’t.” Daryl Buskey squared his shoulders and looked Troy in the eye. Preparing to accept responsibility. “We were just driving by, thinking about hunting bear. And we saw a couple of does in the middle of the meadow. We pulled over, and I got out the gun. The deer took off. But a beautiful buck followed them right across the field. I got him.”
“Through the window.”
“Yeah.”
“I appreciate your telling the truth.” Troy left Susie Bear to guard the guys and went back to his truck, where he checked their records. They were clean. No previous arrests or convictions. Unfortunately, being Johnny Buskey’s second cousin once removed—or whatever—was not a crime.