by Paula Munier
“It’s Henry’s favorite movie,” said Lillian. “Apart from Batman movies, of course.”
“Of course.” Henry was nothing if not an intriguing little boy. But he was still a little boy.
Surrounded by Elvis and Susie Bear, he looked happier than he had all day.
“There’s a boy who needs a dog,” Mercy whispered to Troy.
“I heard that,” said Lillian. “Don’t even think about it. I’ve already got my hands full with Ethan and Henry. Besides, you know I’m a cat person.”
Troy laughed. “Roger that.”
But as soon as Lillian turned her back, he whispered back. “We’ll think of something.”
He clapped his hands and Susie Bear shambled to her feet. “We’d better get going. More patrols to do.”
“First Cal, now Troy and Susie Bear.” Lillian put her hands on her hips and addressed Mercy. “You aren’t leaving, too, are you?”
“Of course not. Elvis and I are staying the night. As promised.”
“And I’ll check in with you first thing in the morning,” said Troy. “Try to get some rest.”
“We’ll be fine,” said Mercy. “You’re the one who needs a break. Doesn’t Thrasher ever let you sleep?”
Troy laughed. “I can sleep when hunting season is over.”
* * *
LATER, AFTER TROY and Susie Bear left for night patrols, Mercy and Elvis watched as Henry—back in Batman pajamas, of which he had several pairs—curled up in his Batmobile bed. Lillian tucked him into his Batman sheets and pulled his Batman blanket up around his chin. His grandmother kissed him good night, which he tolerated with a quiet stoicism. Not willing to push him too far, Mercy settled for blowing him a kiss.
Elvis cocked his triangular ears at her, and she nodded. The handsome shepherd lay down at the foot of the Batmobile.
“Elvis wants to sleep with you tonight,” Mercy told Henry. “If that’s okay.”
Henry nodded.
“All right then. Good night.” She paused at the door. “If you need anything, just whistle.”
Henry leaned up on his elbows, put his lips together, and tried to whistle. But only a faint toot sounded. He frowned.
She’d forgotten how literally his mind worked. “No worries. You can just yell.”
Just as she closed the door, she heard a loud thump. Cracking it open again, she saw Elvis up on the bed, snuggling into the curve of the boy’s legs. Henry barked his funny little laugh, and she sneaked one last peek at the boy and the dog in the Batmobile before shutting the door one last time.
Lillian put Mercy upstairs in Ethan’s childhood room, done up as a ski lodge with a loft bed and slalom posters. There were also the usual textbooks, action figures, and video games, along with a TV and assorted electronics. Twin pine dressers lit by twin swing-arm lamps held books, photos, and school trophies. A blue beanbag chair sprawled in the corner, where Lillian had left a pair of neatly folded flannel pajamas and a new toothbrush for her. She’d also dressed the loft bed in soft cream-colored linens and a plush down comforter. The perfect hostess.
Mercy got ready for bed, but before climbing the ladder to the loft she checked out the closet and rifled through the books, then went through the drawers of the long dresser. There was just the usual teenage tangle of clothes, sports equipment, and board games.
She went back to the long dresser and took a closer look at the photos and trophies that littered the surface. There was Ethan with his mother, Ethan with his siblings, Ethan with his fellow Eagle Scouts, Troy among them, looking as earnestly handsome as always.
Ethan at his graduation, Ethan hiking, swimming, skiing. Ethan playing tennis and soccer and hockey. The trophies celebrated wins in debate, chess, and archery. Ethan had been a champion archer. Mercy had forgotten that, if she’d ever known it. Harrington would certainly use that as another nail in his indictment.
There were a couple of photos of Ethan with Henry as a baby and as a toddler, but no pictures of Ethan and Billie as a couple or the three of them as a family. Lillian must have removed those; or maybe Ethan did himself, as a way of sparing his son—and himself—the pain of Billie’s absence. Apart from the more recent photos of Ethan and Henry, the room was a portal into the past. A typical young Northshire boy’s past, seemingly unrelated to the successful Manhattan financier’s present.
The key to Ethan’s transformation must be Henry himself. Maybe his ambition was all down to providing the best he could for his son. Making enough money so that Billie could stay home with the little boy, when day care was not an option. Tough enough to support a family on one income in Vermont, much less Manhattan.
She climbed up to the loft and slipped under covers. Comfortable, but wide awake. Kicking off the comforter, she tried deep breathing. No good. She wasn’t used to sleeping in a real bed anymore—and she missed Elvis. When she came home from the war, she hadn’t the heart to sleep in the four-poster bed she and Martinez were supposed to share. She would curl up at one end of the couch instead—and the shepherd would join her at the other end of the couch, his head on her feet. Now it was a habit she was unwilling to break. The dog was her comfort and her anchor these days. And nights.
She went back down and settled into the beanbag chair. She pulled her cell phone from her pack and searched online for information about Skellig Michael. The uninhabited rocky island off the southwestern coast of Ireland had been home to a monastery during the Middle Ages. Storms and Vikings forced the monks to abandon their signature stone beehive huts for good in the twelfth century. Now the twin-pinnacled crag attracted pilgrims, Star Wars fans, and seabirds, serving as a breeding ground for storm petrels and puffins, kittiwakes and peregrine falcons, Manx shearwater and gannets. But she wasn’t sure what any of this had to with Alice de Clare’s murder. Apart from the peregrine falcon feathers on her hat. If there were some other meaning, it escaped her.
Mercy plugged her cell phone in to charge, visions of the spectacular Skellig Michael still dancing in her head. That would be one place worth leaving Vermont to visit, she thought.
She crawled up into the loft bed, but sleep still eluded her. The room was too warm for her to sleep—apparently Lillian liked her furnace working overtime—so Mercy opened the long window running the length of the loft space, just enough to welcome a slice of cool breeze and the not-so-distant calls of barred owls. She thought of Elvis guarding Henry in his Batmobile bed. She wondered if the boy counted prime numbers instead of sheep to go to sleep. Maybe she should try it.
Two. Three. Five. Seven … Mercy dozed off to the sound of the great streaky, brown-eyed birds of prey hooting their usual call, who cooks for you, who cooks for you, who cooks for you. She dreamed of raptors and green fletched arrows and boys who count in prime numbers.
CHAPTER TEN
FORECAST: SUNNY AND COLD, FLURRIES, TURNING TO SNOWFALL AFTER DARK.
ELVIS’S BARK GREETED Mercy the next morning. It was just after dawn, and Elvis was a morning dog. They usually began their day together hiking through Lye Brook Wilderness, but there was nothing usual about the day following a murder.
Especially when the only witness to the murder might be the nine-year-old boy who stood at the bottom of the ladder to the loft in his Batman pajamas, clutching the shepherd’s collar and saying, “French toast, French toast, French toast” over and over.
“I guess you like French toast.” Mercy climbed down to meet them. She gave Elvis a scratch between his ears. Henry watched; then he, too, scratched the dog between his ears. Elvis rewarded the boy with a nudge behind his knees.
“He likes you. He doesn’t nose-kiss everyone’s knees, you know. Elvis is a very choosy dog.”
“French toast,” said Henry.
She heard Lillian puttering down in the kitchen and could smell the coffee brewing and French toast frying. As could Elvis, if his twitching nose was any indication. He understood that until Mercy had her morning coffee, his day did not really begin.
“Bat
hroom,” she told Henry, escaping into the blue-and-white fleur-de-lis wallpapered guest bath next to Ethan’s room. Dog and boy followed. She heard them outside the door as she ran her fingers through her messy red curls, always a tangle in the morning, and brushed her teeth. Swapping Lillian’s red flannel pajamas for yesterday’s clothes, Mercy made a halfhearted attempt to smooth her T-shirt, grateful that yoga pants never wrinkled.
That will have to do, she thought. As long as she didn’t run into her mother.
Opening the door, dog and boy had their eyes on her, waiting.
“Okay, okay.” She ushered them down the stairs and through the wide archway that opened onto the gourmet kitchen.
“Good morning.” Lillian, bright as a penny in a copper-colored sweater and dark blue jeans, handed Mercy a steaming cup. “Pumpkin spice latté.”
“Wow. Thanks.”
“’Tis the season.” Lillian grinned. “Ground from organic Vermont Coffee Company beans, and flavored with purée made from my own pumpkins and my secret pumpkin-pie spice recipe. Far better than any you’ll find at any chain store, anywhere. If I do say so myself.”
Mercy took a sip. “Outstanding.”
Lillian beamed and sprinkled a little more cinnamon on top of the frothy latté for her.
“Have a seat.”
Henry had already climbed onto one of the ladder-back stools at the marble island. He pointed to the stool next to him, and she took a seat. Elvis lay patiently at their feet, his fine head resting on one of the spindles of Henry’s stool. He liked French toast, too.
Lillian placed yellow-and-blue plates piled with thick slices of French toast smothered in syrup in front of them. “French toast, Jenkins style, with eggs from our own chickens and maple syrup from our own trees.”
“You baked the bread?”
“That goes without saying.”
Mercy laughed. “Lucky us, huh, Henry?”
Henry nodded. The boy ate French toast the same way he ate mashed potatoes, carefully loading each bite with precisely the perfect amount of syrup before raising his fork to his mouth.
Elvis had no such manners, waiting only a split second after Lillian put down his plate before chowing down.
Mercy took her time, still finishing long after Elvis, and long before Henry.
The dog watched the boy and his diminishing stack of French toast as she brought her dish to the farm sink in the marble island. She and Lillian did the washing up while Henry meticulously cleaned his plate.
“Time for Elvis’s morning constitutional.”
At the sound of his name, the shepherd perked up his triangular ears.
“Walk.” Henry pushed away his plate and slipped out of his chair, standing next to Elvis, ready to go.
“Okay, but you need to wear regular clothes,” she told him.
Henry shifted on his feet, and for a moment she thought he might protest. Elvis leaned against his hip, nearly pushing the boy over, and Henry turned and trotted off to his room, the dog trailing behind him.
“And shoes,” she called after them.
Lillian laughed. “That was easy. Maybe you and Elvis could take him with you every morning.”
Mercy smiled. “Doesn’t he have to go to school?”
The bright light that was Lillian Jenkins faded a bit. “His mother always homeschooled him. Since she left, Ethan has cycled through a parade of tutors. He’s looking for the right school for him now. We’ll have to see what happens.” Her eyes filled with tears and she looked away.
“What about the Vermonter?”
“Victor and Lucas will cover for me until I can get there.” Victor Santos was the grill chef at the Vermonter, and his son Lucas was his assistant. They’d worked for Lillian for years. “I need to find out what’s going on with Ethan.”
“Let me do that.”
“Ethan really is in trouble, isn’t he?”
She didn’t know what to say, so she said nothing.
Lillian took Mercy’s hands in her own. “You know he didn’t do this. You need to find out who did. Before that detective locks up my poor boy for good.”
“I’ll do whatever I can to help. But that will mean poking around in your lives a bit.” She felt uneasy enough about going through Ethan’s closet, but it was going to get worse.
“Better you than Harrington.”
“There’s no stopping Harrington, I’m afraid.”
“But you’re smarter than he is.”
She ignored that. “What can you tell me about Ethan’s relationship with Alice de Clare?”
Lillian slid onto a stool at the marble island. “Not much. He never told me about her, but then he’s never told me much about his love life. Even when he was a teenager. I think I was the last person in Northshire to know he got Billie Whitaker pregnant.”
Mercy nodded. The Ethan Jenkins she remembered kept himself to himself.
“They were happy for a while. But Billie, well, you know Billie. Henry’s too much for her. Hell, life’s too much for her.” Lillian slapped the marble with her palms. “When she left, Ethan did the best he could. Work and Henry—that was his life after she took off. Then he changed. He got happier. I figured there had to be a new woman in his life.”
Mercy changed tack. “I’d forgotten Ethan was a champion archer back in school.”
Lillian blanched. “That woman in the woods was killed by an arrow.”
“Yes. But he’s not the only guy in Vermont who can use a bow. This time of year, the woods are full of bow hunters.”
They heard Henry down the hall, saying, “Walk. Wolf. Walk.”
“Let us watch Henry. You go to work.”
“I don’t know.”
Keeping busy might be the only way Lillian would get through the day without worrying herself to death, Mercy thought.
“Elvis is not leaving Henry’s side, whether you’re at work or not. You may as well go. You don’t want to disappoint all those hungry peepers.”
Lillian closed the dishwasher. “This is our busiest month of the year.”
“Go on then.”
“I’ve got paperwork to do here, then I’ll head on over. After you’re back from your walk.”
“Deal.”
Elvis bounded into the room, Henry on his heels.
“Looking good,” said Mercy. He was wearing dark blue jeans, a green long-sleeve T-shirt with a yellow pi symbol on it, and Timberland boots. The blue puffer jacket he was carrying had the Batman symbol emblazoned on its back.
She grabbed her pack, her parka, and Elvis’s lead. “Let’s head out.”
Outside, the sun shone brightly in a cloudless blue sky. The air was cold and crisp; a thin frost coated the long lawn between the house and the barn and silvered the fallen leaves littering the grass, still green but not for long. There were only a couple of other houses on the street, barely visible through the oaks and maples that formed a bower overhead.
Mercy headed to the right, toward town. Henry had spent enough time in the woods lately. Elvis stayed between her and the boy, the best kind of middleman.
They’d gone about a hundred yards when Henry bolted off the sidewalk and into the woods. Elvis chased him.
“Henry!” She ran after them, scattering leaves as she went. She found him sitting on a fallen log, Elvis facing him, his front paws on the boy’s knees. He wasn’t going anywhere.
“Good boy.” She waved her hand and the shepherd dropped back. “Henry, you have got to stop taking off like that.”
She grabbed his small hands and pulled him to his feet. “You’re the one who needs a leash.”
Henry looked away from her.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.” But it was a good idea regardless, she thought. It might be the only way to get through this walk without losing this kid every five minutes. “If it’s good enough for Elvis, it’s good enough for you, right?”
The boy turned to face her. He grinned.
“Okay.” She looped the
leash around Henry’s waist, snapping the carabiner onto the dog’s collar. “Let’s try this again.”
She strode back to the road, confident that dog and boy were right behind her. When she reached the street, she slowed down and let them catch up. She slapped the outside of her right thigh, and Elvis stepped up beside her. Henry followed along like a pull toy dragged by a toddler.
They marched on toward town. Whenever the boy’s attention strayed—he spotted a hawk in the sky or a chipmunk in the leaves or a wild turkey in the scrub—and he wandered off course, Mercy slapped her thigh and Elvis tugged Henry back to her. This wandering, course correction, wandering, course correction pattern continued the mile into the town center, where they stopped at the Northshire General Store to pick up a newspaper, half a dozen crullers, and three pints of milk. She also bought Henry a red whistle on a chain, which she placed around his little neck. “Just until you learn to whistle on your own.”
Henry tucked the whistle underneath his shirt.
The mile back was the same, punctuated by doughnut and milk breaks. Henry and Elvis really, really liked crullers.
She was pleased with herself—and her partner, Elvis—as they guided Henry back to his grandmother’s house. Lillian smiled at the sight of the boy tied off to the dog, then pulled Mercy aside. “Daniel called. He told me he’s doing all he can to help Ethan.”
“That’s good news.”
“He also asked if you could come by to see him at the inn, at your earliest convenience. Apparently, Harrington will be there. He won’t be put off any longer. He wants to talk to Henry today.”
Mercy agreed to take Henry to the Bluffing Bear Inn, with the understanding that Cal would meet them there. Lillian went to work at the Vermonter as planned, satisfied her grandson was in good hands.
Henry and Elvis riding shotgun, she set off in the Jeep for the inn. She called Patience on the way, asking her to brief her on the history of the old place. Her grandmother did not disappoint, providing an encyclopedic look that could give Henry a run for his money.
The ski resort owed its name to the original building on the property, a nineteenth-century hunting lodge built on a sweet piece of land on Bluffing Bear Mountain, not too far away from Stratton, in the southern Green Mountains.