The Hiding Place

by Paula Munier

  Although Patience would need a new one now, a desktop version that the new assistant could access, too. Like it or not, she was going to have to make some changes. Allow other people into her world, permanently. It occurred to Mercy that she and her grandmother were very much alike—and not always in the best ways. Why was it that the advice she was so tempted to give to others was always the advice she loathed to hear herself?

  “Remember to tell the Cat Ladies to save the big black one for me to give to Mr. Horgan,” she told Claude as they prepared to leave. He’d left the dogs in the Rufus Ruckus Room and stood by the back entrance, personally escorting Mercy and Troy out of the clinic.

  “Will do,” Claude said. “And you be sure to tell me what you find out.”

  “I’m sure Patience will tell you herself.”

  “Don’t be so sure.” Claude sounded tired, and Mercy wondered if all this drama was wearing him out. He seemed suddenly sadder and older.

  “She doesn’t like to tell me anything that might encourage me to worry about her,” he said. “Or God forbid, to help her.”

  “You’re helping her now,” said Troy quietly.

  “And the Cat Ladies and Bea Garcia.”

  “It took a broken bone for that to happen.” Claude sighed, and in that sigh, Mercy heard more than fatigue and frustration, she heard resignation.

  She wished her grandmother would just marry the guy already. “She’s very independent.”

  “There’s a difference between independence and isolation,” Claude said.

  Mercy had never thought of her grandmother as isolated. “But she has lots of friends and family. She has you.”

  “She doesn’t have me, not really. She won’t have me. She won’t have anyone. That would mean letting us do for her the way she does for us.”

  “I never thought of it that way.”

  “No, you wouldn’t.”

  Troy smiled.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “Nothing.”

  Claude took her gently by the shoulders. “Think about it. You don’t want to make the same mistake.”

  Mercy flushed. “I’d better get this laptop over to Patience.” The sooner she got away from the well-meaning Claude, the better. She fished her keys out of her pocket.

  Troy stepped forward and she avoided his concerned glance. “We’ll give you a ride.”

  “No need.”

  “You shouldn’t be driving,” said Claude.

  “I’m fine.”

  “Don’t make me call your grandmother,” said Claude. “Or your mother.”

  She knew he was only half kidding. And she was barely holding the weariness that threatened to overtake her at bay. She may as well surrender graciously. “Okay, but no fair bringing my mother into it.”

  Claude laughed. He was still laughing when she and Troy followed Susie Bear and Sunny out to the truck.

  * * *

  THE RIDE TO her cabin was mercifully quiet. Troy seemed to understand that she wasn’t in the mood to talk. He kept his eyes on the road and she stared out of the window. It was tough driving this time of year; frost heaves and salt and sand battered the roadways and you had to watch out for the patches of black ice hiding in the mix of gray mushy snow and mud that splattered the ground. The early evening sky was gray-white, too, that full-of-snow color that meant a winter storm was on the way.

  The truck bounced along and they sat in silence, the only sound the thumping of Susie Bear’s tail and the huffing and puffing of her breath on Mercy’s neck. She tried not to think about Troy and Madeline and his divorce, and her bereavement, and Wesley Hallett and Elvis, and the fact that someone had tried to kill her grandmother, one of the best people she knew and the one human on earth besides Martinez who really loved her for who she really was.

  She tried not to think at all. Just waited for the snow to fall—and when it began, slowly at first, in big fat flakes that shone in the headlights, she realized that she was caught in this snow globe of a pickup truck with a good-looking game warden and his friendly dog, a Hallmark happily-ever-after movie waiting to begin—if she believed in happily-ever-afters. Which she didn’t.

  It was a long ride, if only in her mind, and she was relieved when Troy finally pulled into the long driveway that led up the hill to her cabin. Elvis was waiting for her. She could see his handsome profile in the window, a dark shadow with triangular ears that disappeared the moment he recognized the sound of Troy’s Ford F-150 and abandoned the window seat for the front door. She didn’t know what she’d do if he weren’t there waiting for her.

  “Elvis isn’t going anywhere,” said Troy.

  Startling her out of her thoughts. And unsettling her as it always did when she caught him reading her mind. “I hope you’re right.”

  She grabbed the laptop and scrambled out of his truck as soon as he switched off the engine, stumbling through the newly fallen snow in her mother’s fancy ankle boots. The temperature was dropping as the sun slipped behind the mountains and the snow intensified. She threw open the door, stepped inside, unzipped the boots, kicked them off and under the window seat. Then she fell to her knees and hugged Elvis, who favored her with a rare lick of a kiss and then placed his muzzle on her shoulder. She inspected him from head to tail, and he seemed no worse for the wear by his brush with death. He licked her cheek again, and then wiggled out of her arms to greet Susie Bear and Sunny, knowing they were just outside.

  “Come on in,” she yelled.

  Troy, the Newfie, and the golden blasted into the cabin on a burst of cold air and wet flurries.

  “Go on through.” She came to her feet and followed them into the great room, where she found her grandmother seated next to her mother on the couch by the fireplace. Her father was stoking the fire. Elvis, Susie Bear, and Sunny made the rounds, getting good belly rubs from everyone but her mother, who ignored them.

  Mercy kissed each of her loved ones on the cheek in turn, while Troy said his hellos. Her mother greeted the game warden stiffly, but her father was gracious as always.

  Everyone loved him; Duncan Carr had the gift of making you feel like you were the only person in the room. Even Mercy felt this glow, although as his daughter she knew that her mother was the only person in the room for him, as he was in return for her. They were one of those couples who created their own orbit; it was their own little world and everybody else was just, well, everybody else.

  Mercy sat on the floor by the sofa close to her grandmother. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.” Patience knocked on her neon-pink cast with her other hand. “You’ll have to sign this thing. Draw a flower or something.”

  “Sure.”

  “You, too,” Patience said to Troy, and then addressed Mercy. “How about you? Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You’re both delusional,” said Grace. “Duncan, say something.”

  “Fine is in the eye of the beholder.” Her father winked at Mercy when he thought her mother wasn’t looking.

  “You’re as bad as they are,” said Grace.

  Mercy ignored the exchange to focus on her grandmother. “You still have that camera on the porch, right?”

  Patience shrugged. “Well, I did until that pipe bomb went off.”

  “So you can go online and check the footage from yesterday.” She handed her the laptop.

  Patience stared at her for a moment. Her eyes brightened when she realized what Mercy meant. She took Mercy’s face in her free hand. “You are a genius.”

  “Let’s see if it works first,” she said.

  No one spoke as her grandmother balanced the computer on her knees, punched on her computer, went online, and signed onto the website—all with one hand.

  “It’s here,” she said.

  Everyone gathered around Patience as she fast-forwarded through the footage to that recording yesterday afternoon. She hit PLAY and up popped Patience’s porch and lawn, as seen from the high corner of the porch c
eiling to the left of the front door. There were Mercy and Elvis, Patience letting them into the house. Then nothing until a slender figure in jeans and a hoodie approached the porch, holding a cardboard box in gloved hands. Sitting the box down and knocking quickly, then bolting down the hill.

  “The kittens,” said Mercy.

  “Looks like a young man,” said her father.

  “Unremarkable clothing,” added her mother. “Not helpful.”

  “And he’s wearing gloves,” Patience pointed out. “Maybe to avoid fingerprints.”

  “Or maybe he’s just cold,” said Mercy.

  “He must have parked down the hill on the side of the road,” said her father. “Route 7 is always busy that time of day. Maybe someone saw him. Or the vehicle.”

  “Harrington should have officers canvassing the neighborhood,” said Troy. “This could help.”

  They continued to watch. Another figure came into view from the other side of the frame, this one shorter and stockier than the last, wearing dark ski clothes and gloves. Face hidden by a balaclava. Carrying another cardboard box, similar to the first. The figure bent over the box, blocking the view from the camera. Rising up and sprinting to the right and out of sight. A flash of light and then nothing.

  “That’s it,” said Patience.

  “Did you recognize him?” asked Troy.

  “I don’t know,” said Patience.

  “Do you think it could be George Rucker?”

  “I haven’t seen the man in twenty years,” said Patience. “I thought he was taller. It was a very long time ago.”

  “How tall is Rocky Simko?” Mercy asked Troy.

  Troy checked his phone. “Simko is the ex-con we believe helped Rucker escape. Says here he’s five-seven, one sixty-five pounds.” He held up his phone to show Simko’s mugshot, an unflattering picture of a man in his early thirties with a tattoo of the word Skins high on his forehead.

  “George Rucker was around six feet, I’d say,” said Patience triumphantly.

  “This could still be Simko.”

  “Impossible to imagine George Rucker with friends like that. I just can’t believe that he could be behind this. Such a mild-mannered man.”

  “He’s a murderer, Mother,” said Grace.

  Patience frowned. Whether at Grace calling Rucker a murderer or calling her “Mother” was anyone’s guess. But Mercy suspected both annoyed her. She knew that her grandmother preferred to be called Patience by everyone, and that included her own children and grandchildren. She’d always honored that preference, but her mother honored it only when she cared to—and she hardly ever cared to when she was unhappy with Patience. Like now.

  Mercy looked over Troy’s shoulder as he pulled out his phone and tapped, bringing up the mug shot of Rucker on the All Points Bulletin issued when he escaped from prison. The middle-aged man in the photo looked tired and tough. He had a square face with a short salt-and-pepper buzz cut, deep circles under his dark eyes, and what looked like a Celtic tattoo on his neck.

  Troy passed the cell phone around so everyone could see Rucker’s photo. “Good memory, Patience. According to this, Rucker is five-eleven, one eighty-five pounds.”

  “He certainly looks like a murderer,” said Grace. “Then as now.”

  “More now,” said her father. “Prison life has not been kind to him.”

  “Of course it hasn’t,” said Patience. “He doesn’t belong there.”

  “Well, he’s not there now,” said Grace dryly.

  “He belongs in an institution. He’s not a well man.”

  “I’ll say.” Grace rolled her eyes. “He killed your husband and maybe just blew up your house.”

  “That was not George Rucker. And he did not plan to kill Red. He just snapped. Up until the day he killed your father, he had never committed a violent act in his life.”

  “Even if that’s true, people change in prison,” said her father. “Mild-mannered men do not survive incarceration for very long. He’s survived two decades. He’s not the same man you knew.”

  Troy had borrowed the laptop and was watching the footage from Patience’s porch again. “Definitely two different people. The one dropping off the kittens seems too young to be Rucker.”

  “And the one with the bomb is too short.”

  “But it could be Simko.”

  “If they were male,” said her father.

  “Looks like males to me,” said her mother. “The way they walk, the way they run, the way they carry themselves.”

  “Maybe the techs can tell us more,” said Troy.

  “Either way, it’s clear that the bomber used the distraction of the kittens and the rescue drop-off to his advantage,” said her father.

  “Agreed,” said Troy. “He was definitely watching.”

  “Which begs the question,” said her father, “was Patience the intended target?”

  “What do you mean?” Grace’s voice was unnaturally high. “It was her house.”

  “But Mercy answered the first knock,” said Troy. “She got the kittens.”

  “If he were watching—and we think he was—then he would have known it was Mercy answering the door the first time, and so he might assume that she’d answer it the second time.”

  “If it’s Rucker,” said Troy, “and if he wants revenge, he may not care who gets hurt, as long as it’s someone related to Red.”

  “What George Rucker wanted was his wife back,” said Patience. “It’s all he’s ever wanted.”

  “Did he ever look for her?” asked Mercy.

  “She sent him a postcard from Las Vegas,” said Patience. “All it said was something like, ‘I’m not coming back. Get over it. XOXO Ruby.’”

  “That’s brutal,” said Mercy. She avoided looking at Troy, whose own wife, Madeline, had done something similar to him when she’d run off with the orthopedist from Florida. But Madeline had come back, after all.

  “It was a poor match from the start,” said Grace. “That woman was never going to be happy with George Rucker. Or with life in Lamoille County.”

  “What ever happened to her?” asked Mercy.

  “That’s what Harrington is trying to find out.” Troy gave the laptop back to her grandmother. “They think she could lead them to Rucker.”

  “If he’s still obsessed with Ruby,” said Mercy.

  “His cellmate in Mississippi believed he was,” said Troy. “He told the authorities that he never stopped talking about her.”

  “Then why come after you?” Mercy asked her grandmother.

  “George believed that your grandfather was having an affair with Ruby,” said Patience. “It was ridiculous.”

  Grace rolled her eyes again and Patience slapped at her hand. “It was ridiculous. Red was no angel, but he was no cheater, either. And even if he were, he would never have cheated on me with a woman like that.”

  “Why did she marry George?” asked Mercy.

  “They met in Las Vegas,” said Patience. “That’s where she was from. George was kind of cute in a baby-faced poor little rich boy kind of way. He worshiped her, and he had money. I think she figured once she married him, she could talk him into moving back home to Las Vegas, or New York or L.A. Anywhere more glamorous than upstate Vermont.”

  “But George wouldn’t leave,” said Grace. “His family was in real estate; they were tied to Vermont.”

  “Look, it was clear she was unhappy,” said Patience. “She wanted out of her marriage and she wanted out of Lamoille County.”

  “And so she took off,” said Mercy.

  “Yes. It had nothing to do with your grandfather.”

  “How can you be so sure?” asked Grace. “The rumors were fierce. And where there’s smoke…” She let her voice trail off.

  “Your father was good at keeping secrets,” Patience told Grace. “He could have had another family in New Hampshire or Maine or Quebec and I would never have known about it. But he never would have fooled around in his own jurisdiction. Too risky
.”

  “Don’t poop where you eat,” said Mercy.

  “Exactly.”

  “That was one of Grandpa Red’s favorite expressions,” Mercy told Troy.

  “Only he preferred the more colorful version,” said her father. He cleared his throat. Mercy knew that meant he was about to change the subject. For her mother’s sake, because he understood that all this talk with Patience about her grandfather’s possible infidelity was making his wife uncomfortable. Her father hated seeing Grace uncomfortable. “The bomber took pains to disguise himself. Maybe he knew about the camera.”

  “Or maybe he just didn’t want to take the chance of being recognized,” said Troy.

  “If it were Rucker, Patience may have recognized him,” said her father. “Even all these years later.”

  This was a conversation going nowhere, Mercy thought. Or maybe she was just tired. The explosion catching up with her. She closed her eyes for a minute, and felt her mother’s cool fingers on her forehead.

  “You feel warm,” Grace said. “You should have something to eat and drink and go to bed.”

  “I’m fine, really.”

  “I don’t think so.” Grace rose to her feet. “Let me make you something.” She fixed a stern prosecutor’s gaze on the others. “She needs her rest. And you do, too, Mother.”

  “Absolutely right,” said her father. “Troy, maybe you could drop Patience off at Lillian Jenkins’s house. She and Claude are staying there.”

  “Sure.”

  “Thank you, Troy. We’ll hang out here with Mercy.”

  “That’s not necessary, Dad.” The last thing she needed was her mother hovering over her. “Are you staying at the Athena?” The Athena was a five-star historic hotel and spa complex, the most luxurious in Northshire, where her parents invariably stayed when they were in town.

  Her father nodded, but it was her mother who spoke. “We insist.”

  “Amy and Brodie and Helena should be back soon,” said Mercy. “I won’t be alone.”

  “They won’t be much help, if any.” Her mother set a glass of milk and a plate holding a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in front of her.