by Paula Munier
“I didn’t drag Elvis into anything. And we’re not even sure what this is about yet.”
“You know what I mean. You’ve gotten involved in these murder investigations. Putting yourself and Elvis in harm’s way.”
“Coming home doesn’t keep you out of harm’s way.” Mercy stared him down. “Surely you’ve figured that out by now.”
He backed off, sinking down into the orange plastic chair, his arms at his side. “That’s a very pessimistic attitude.”
“That’s the reality. And you know it.” She paused a moment. “Besides, Elvis loves to work.”
“You love to work.”
Mercy sighed. “Elvis needs to work.”
“He’s earned his retirement.”
“Of course he has. We all have. But some of us are not ready to retire. I’m not, and neither is Elvis. We still have work to do.” That was the truth, whether he recognized it or not. And she was ready to fight for that truth.
“There are all kinds of work. You’re just replacing one mission with another.”
“And what’s wrong with that? We all need a mission, even after we leave the service. Maybe even more after we leave.” She gave him the same appraising look he’d given her. One worthy of her mother. “How’s retirement going for you?”
Hallett flushed. “I told you I had a rough time for a while. But I got through it.”
“Because you found a new mission.”
He stood there, his face creased with emotion now. “I work with vets at the veterans hospital in Springfield.”
“Vermont?”
“Missouri.”
Missouri, she thought. What would Elvis do in Missouri? What did anyone do in Missouri?
“I could give him a good life. A safe life.”
“Safety is an illusion.” Every soldier knew that. But she figured that Hallett was one of those soldiers who was not ready to admit that. He wanted to believe that now that he was home, everything would be all right. That was his prerogative, but she wasn’t going to let his delusions dictate Elvis’s future. She’d just have to play along with them. She wondered if he knew she came from a family of brilliant and uncompromising attorneys. Not that asking her mother for help was ever an appealing option. Maybe Troy’s divorce lawyer handled dog custody battles.
“Elvis is safe with me.” She wasn’t letting Elvis move to Missouri. Martinez would never forgive her and she would never forgive herself. What’s more, Elvis would never forgive her. “What happened today is an anomaly. Elvis is fine.”
“This time.” He stood up and leaned over her. “He got lucky. You got lucky.”
“Does Elvis seem unhappy to you?”
“No. But he’s never known anything else. He’s never had the opportunity to know anything else. Elvis would live with me. Keep the other vets company. They would love him.”
“You want to turn Elvis into a lap dog. No way.”
“You’re always going to get into trouble. You can’t help yourself.”
Mercy laughed. “You don’t know me.”
“We have other dogs, too. He’d have friends.”
“Elvis has friends.”
Hallett frowned. “I thought you had a falling out with that game warden and his search-and-rescue dog.”
“Time for you to leave.” Troy Warner appeared at the door of the hospital room. He was in uniform, and Susie Bear was with him.
Hallett seemed surprised to see him and his dog. He didn’t know that Susie Bear had special privileges, even here at the hospital, thought Mercy. She had a feeling Troy would see to it that he learned the hard way.
“Speak of the devil.” Mercy laughed.
Hallett just looked confused.
“How did he even get in here?” Troy asked Mercy, ignoring Hallett.
“I don’t know. He must be hanging out at Crossroads.” Crossroads was a place on the outskirts of town where locals showed up to drink coffee and chat. Part gas station, part general store, part pizza parlor, part deli—a whole far greater than its parts in terms of gossip.
Susie Bear bounded in ahead of Troy, knocking Hallett back into the orange plastic chair as she clamored to Mercy’s side. He plopped down heavily, catching the sides of the chair to steady himself.
“Sorry,” said Troy, without a trace of remorse. “She gets a little excited when she sees Mercy.”
The big dog planted her pumpkin head on the bed at Mercy’s feet. She leaned down to give the Newfie mutt a good scratch between the ears. When she sat back up, she caught Troy smiling at her. It was the first time she’d seen him since that awful evening at the Wild Game Supper last autumn, where she’d had an unexpected and unpleasant encounter with his estranged wife. She and Troy were dancing, and Madeline cut right in. Mercy winced at the memory, or maybe it was the pain in her head. She wasn’t sure.
Madeline had run off to Florida with an orthopedist a couple of years before—but she’d come back to reclaim her husband before it was too late. Mercy had assumed Troy was divorced. And the discovery that he was not—right there on the dance floor in front of the whole town—surprised and unsettled her.
Troy had lied to her, by omission if nothing else. He was not the man she thought he was. She was done with dancing. Done with men. Done with Troy Warner. Period.
She’d gone out of her way to avoid him ever since. But she was wildly glad to see him now. And Susie Bear, too. For once, she really felt like she needed the backup.
Hallett rose to his feet and introduced himself. Troy shook his hand, and then pointed to the door. “You shouldn’t be here. Family only, you know.”
“And you’re family?”
“Family and law enforcement.” He tapped the badge secured above his left breast pocket.
“Understood.” Hallett bowed at Mercy. “I’m very glad you and Elvis are all right. Please think about what I said. I’m sure you want to do what’s best for Elvis.”
Susie Bear lifted her head at the sound of Elvis’s name. Mercy nodded at Hallett and watched as he walked past Troy, each man eyeing the other. Two soldiers sizing each other up.
When he was gone, Troy shut the door. “That’s the guy who’s after Elvis.” A statement, not a question.
“Yes.” The captain must have told Troy about meeting him at her cabin. She wondered what else he told him. “Have a seat.”
He took Hallett’s place in the orange plastic chair, which was a little small for him. He stretched out his long legs in front of him, his boots under the bed. “Thrasher had me run his plates.”
Mercy smiled. Of course he did.
“His name is Wesley John Hallett. Thirty-two years old. Born and raised in Springfield, Missouri. Served two tours in Afghanistan. Infantryman, then dog handler. Wounded when his Humvee hit an IED. Lost his left foot.”
“He told me that.” Mercy looked at Troy, and from the way he squared his jaw she could tell he was holding something back. “What didn’t he tell me?”
Troy frowned. “Awarded the Purple Heart.” He paused. “And the Silver Star, for pulling two fellow soldiers from the wreckage. Saved their lives.”
“With only one foot.” Mercy sighed, and blinked back tears. Her head ached again, and this time she knew it wasn’t from the explosion. “I won’t hand Elvis over to him no matter how many medals he’s won. I suppose that makes me a terrible person.”
“No, it doesn’t.” Troy took her hand in his.
She wanted to pull away, but instead she found herself wrapping her fingers around his. Any port in a storm, she thought. But that was unfair. If anyone could understand how she felt about this extraordinary Belgian shepherd, Troy could.
“You have to do what’s best for Elvis,” he said. “And what’s best for Elvis is you.”
“Hallett will never believe that.”
“Then we’ll just have to prove it to him.”
“We?”
“You, me, Susie Bear, Elvis, Patience, the captain. Between us we’ll think of something
.”
“Excuse me.” A perfectly coiffed blond head popped up around the door.
“Mom.” Mercy didn’t know whether to be glad or mad. The effect her mother inevitably had on her.
Troy stood up. “Ma’am.”
“Warden Warner.” Grace nodded at Troy and strode to the other side of Mercy’s hospital bed. She snapped her fingers at Susie Bear, and the dog shambled away over to Troy. For the daughter of a veterinarian, her mother was not very fond of animals. Or game wardens sworn to protect wildlife. Grace—Mercy called her Mom at her insistence but somehow always thought of her as Grace—wanted her to go to law school, join the family firm, marry a nice up-and-coming lawyer, and have two lovely children destined to become lawyers themselves. A Carr–O’Sullivan dynasty of attorneys.
Mercy would rather eat dirt.
Outside of her mother’s view, Troy waggled his eyebrows at her, and she bit back a laugh. She had to admit, if only to herself, that one of the things she liked best about him was how unsuitable her mother believed the game warden to be for her one and only daughter. And how unperturbed he was by that disapproval.
“Warden Warner, if you don’t mind…” Grace spoke with the cultured Yankee cadence of Katharine Hepburn, but her intent was clear.
“Ma’am.” Troy stepped forward toward Mercy and leaned in, whispering in her ear. “Let me know when you can talk. Something’s come up that you should know about.”
“Warden Warner.” Grace’s tone was downright icy now.
“We were just leaving.” He smiled at Mercy, then addressed her mother. “Take good care of her.”
Grace just glared at him.
“Thanks for coming.” Mercy gave the Newfie one last pat.
“No problem. Come on, Susie Bear.”
She and her mother watched them go.
“That young man has some nerve showing up here after that unforgivable scene at the Wild Game Supper.”
“He didn’t know Madeline would be there.” At least she hoped he hadn’t known.
“Everyone in Northshire knew she’d be there.”
Mercy flushed. “I didn’t know.”
Grace sat on the edge of the bed, smoothing her skirt. She was dressed in her usual Ralph Lauren ensemble: black wool crêpe pencil skirt, cream silk blouse, and fitted black wool crêpe jacket. Tasteful gold jewelry. Artfully applied makeup. Italian leather equestrian-style boots, her mother’s only concession to the wintry mix that was New England weather in early March.
In other words, the picture of Newbury Street elegance. Mercy sighed in anticipation of the carefully worded attorney’s argument to come. Her head pounded again. Having a lawyer for a mother was a headache waiting to happen even when you didn’t feel like you’d just gotten hit by a truck.
“Of course you didn’t. You never were one for gossip.” Her mother brushed a perfectly manicured hand across Mercy’s brow, pushing away the wayward curls she’d spent her daughter’s entire childhood trying to tame.
As soon as Mercy left home, she’d abandoned all hair products and let her tangle of red hair revert to its wild state. It drove her mother crazy.
“Even as a teenager,” Grace went on, “you were oblivious to the machinations of the mean girls at school.”
Not oblivious, thought Mercy, just indifferent. She’d stayed above the fray, saving her strength for battles that mattered: Defying her parents and joining the Army. Fighting in Afghanistan. Finding Elvis.
And now keeping him. If Troy could help her do that, then Madeline didn’t matter.
“You’re not listening to me.”
“Sorry.” She changed the subject. “How’s Patience?”
Her mother shook her head, her chicly cut blond hair sliding to and fro across her cheeks before falling perfectly back into place. “You know how she is. Says she’s fine, even when she’s not.” Her tone made it clear that Mercy was just like her grandmother, and that Grace did not appreciate it. “She broke her scaphoid bone. One of the carpal bones of the wrist, apparently the one that takes the longest to heal.”
“Poor Patience.”
“She’s in a long arm cast. At least it was her left wrist.”
“She’s going to hate that.”
“She needs to take it easy. It was a clean break, but she is not getting any younger. Neither are you.”
Mercy ignored the reference to her upcoming birthday. “Does she remember what happened?”
“Not a thing. At the risk of repeating myself, she’s not getting any younger.”
“My recollection is a little hazy, too.”
“Of course it is. You were in an explosion.”
“And I’m not getting any younger, either,” she said, beating her mother to the punch. She smiled in spite of herself. “Where’s Elvis?”
“He’s at your cabin with Patience.”
“How is he?”
“From what I understand he’s fine.”
“What does that mean?”
“Physically he’s fine, according to your grandmother. A little shell-shocked, which is to be expected.”
More ammunition for Wesley Hallett, Mercy thought. “And Sunny?”
“Sunny?”
“The golden retriever I’ve, uh, inherited.”
“You don’t need another dog.”
“Sunny was with me at Patience’s house when the pipe bomb blew. How is she?”
“I don’t know. I assume the dog is fine, or we would have heard something.”
“That’s only so reassuring.”
“I’ll see what I can find out for you.”
“Thanks. You’re sure Patience and Elvis are okay?”
“Yes,” her mother said briskly. “Your father is with them. They’ll stay there until the police are finished processing the crime scene at her house. Then Ed will drop by and do what he can to secure the place before she goes home.”
Ed was her cousin, a master carpenter who could fix anything. He’d built the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves in her great room. Complete with a rolling ladder. He loved Patience, who kept him in truck dogs. He had a lab mix now, a friendly brindle rescue named Joiner.
“Sounds good.” Mercy paused. “Did Thrasher tell you anything?” Her parents were friendly with the captain; they were friendly with everyone worth knowing in New England, from Boston to Vermont and back again.
Grace’s forehead wrinkled prettily. “They’re still working on the forensics. But he told your father it was probably a homemade device. The kind of pipe bomb anyone can build with nails and matches and a detonating cord. The instructions can be found all over the internet.”
“No sign of the perpetrator?”
“No.”
“Was it the same guy who left the kittens?”
“What kittens?”
Mercy tried to think. Beyond the beating in her brain was a persistent niggling that told her she was forgetting something. Something significant. “I can’t remember.”
“Let it go.” Grace took Mercy’s clammy freckled hands into her pale, cool ones. “There’s a reason they kept you here overnight. And that they’re keeping you here today for observation.”
“I’m fine. Just a little sore.”
“Nonsense. You’ve been sleeping for nearly twenty-four hours. You obviously need your rest.”
“I’m missing something. I have to figure out what’s going on before something worse happens.”
“Leave it to law enforcement. That’s their job.”
“I can’t do that.” She squeezed her mother’s hands, then shook free of them.
“Why do you always feel that it’s up to you? You’re just one person.”
“Have they captured George Rucker?”
“George Rucker?” Grace hesitated. “What does he have to do with this?”
“I don’t know. But he’s escaped from prison and he’s on the run.” Interesting that the captain failed to tell her mother that. Maybe he didn’t want to worry her. Maybe he told her fath
er instead, and that’s why he was with her grandmother right now. On guard duty. Her father may be a citified attorney, but he was also a very good shot.
“I need to talk to Patience.” Mercy pulled the drip out of her arm and swung her legs over the bed, ignoring the drubbing under her skin.
“What are you doing?” Grace stood up, facing Mercy, fists on her narrow hips. “You aren’t going anywhere, young lady.”
“Thrasher says George Rucker bears a grudge against Grandpa Red. And with Red long dead and gone, he might be going after Patience instead. When I asked her about it, she got very cagey.”
Grace dropped back down on the bed. “What did she say?”
“Basically that he was not in his right mind and didn’t know what he was doing when he shot Red. But I know she was lying.”
Grace looked down at her lap and picked an invisible piece of lint from her skirt. Buying time, Mercy knew, to compose herself.
“She was making a doberge cake.”
Grace looked up at Mercy, fully composed now. Or so she thought.
No one reads a mother’s body language better than her child. Mercy searched Grace’s inscrutable face for confirmation—and found it in her slightly flared nostrils. Her mother’s only tell.
“You’d better tell me, Mom, before someone else gets hurt.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Grace left her seat on the hospital bed and went around to the other side of the bed. She pulled the orange plastic chair closer to Mercy and sat down, crossing her long legs. She looked like she needed a cigarette. She’d given up smoking when she’d had kids, but Mercy and her brother Nick would sometimes find her on the balcony of their brownstone in Boston late at night, her blond hair hidden by a silk scarf and her eyes covered in dark sunglasses, sucking on a Marlboro Light as if her sanity depended on it. Maybe it did.
“Your grandmother told us not to pay any attention to the talk around town,” she began, staring at the wall behind Mercy as if she were watching a film. “Just small-minded people repeating small-minded prattle.”
“But you knew better. Because you’re good at gossip.”
Grace gave her a sharp look. “All hearsay.”
Always the lawyer, thought Mercy. “Go on.”