by Paula Munier
“This is the one,” she said.
Troy parked the truck in Pitts’ driveway, which had been recently plowed. Even so, the snow was piling up again.
“I’m not sure how well we’ll be received,” she warned. “I don’t think Pitts’ sister likes me very much.”
“Maybe she’ll like me better.”
“Maybe.” Mercy grinned. “We won’t be long, so let’s leave the dogs in the truck. Eveline is not a big fan of canines.”
“Never trust anyone who doesn’t like dogs,” Troy said solemnly.
“Agreed.”
They stomped through the snow to the front door. Mercy rang the bell. A shrill voice shouted, “Hold on.” A shuffling and then the door opened.
Eveline stood before them, dressed in her usual ill-fitting yoga attire. She looked at Mercy with disdain. “You again.” She slammed the door shut.
Mercy rang the bell again. And again. And again.
Finally Eveline opened the door again. Troy stepped forward. “Game Warden Troy Warner. We’re here to speak to August Pitts.”
“You’re too late.” She glared at Mercy.
“What do you mean?”
“What are you doing here?” Eveline crossed her arms across her chest, straining the seams of her top. “You’re not welcome here. You stole his dog.” She turned to Troy. “This woman stole a dying man’s dog. Arrest her.”
“I did not steal his dog. He asked me to take his dog.”
“That’s ridiculous. Why would he do that. He knew that dog would be perfectly fine with me.”
“Maybe he wanted to keep her closer to home.”
Eveline gave her a blank look.
“Sunny is a Vermont dog.”
“Look at this weather.” Eveline raised her hands as if entreating the heavens to stop the snow. “Nobody in their right mind stays here in the winter. Even dogs would rather be in North Carolina this time of year.”
“I don’t know about that,” said Mercy.
Troy nudged her gently with his elbow. Reminding her to get back on track. She hated to admit it but he was right. “Eveline,” she said gently, “what happened to your brother?”
Eveline sniffed. “He died late last night.”
“I’m so sorry,” said Mercy.
“My condolences,” said Troy.
Eveline ignored the game warden, her sharp eyes filling with tears as she stared Mercy down. “You people got him all worked up. You killed him.”
“What people?”
“You,” she said, “and that other guy.”
Mercy leaned toward Eveline. “What other guy?”
Troy moved between her and Pitts’ sister. “Could we come inside? As you say, it’s wicked cold out here. And we’d like talk to you a little more about the man who came to visit your brother before he died.” He smiled at her sympathetically. Troy had a good smile.
Eveline nodded. She gave a little wave of her hand and they traipsed after her into the living room where Mercy had last seen her grandfather’s deputy. The portable hospital bed had been stripped and the medical paraphernalia was packed neatly into boxes on the old brown recliner.
“What was this visitor’s name,” asked Troy.
“I can’t recall. I’m not sure he even told me his full name. August called him King. Weird, huh?”
“What did he look like?”
Eveline patted the uncased pillow on the bed absently. “Middle aged. Around late forties maybe. I think his hair was gray, but he was wearing a baseball cap so I’m not sure.”
“Right.”
“Anyway, this guy really upset August.”
“What did they talk about?” asked Mercy.
“I don’t know. I wasn’t paying much attention,” she said. “I was busy in the back of the house doing laundry.”
“When was this?” Troy pulled a notebook out of his jacket pocket and started taking notes.
“Last night, around seven thirty P.M. I told him it was a little late for August, with his being so poorly and all, but he didn’t listen. Bullied his way in here.” Eveline sank onto the bare hospital bed. She ran her hand along the edge of the mattress. “August was sleeping. He’d had a rough couple of days, what with you coming and stealing his dog, and I was worried he wasn’t going to make it through the night. You know the doctors didn’t give him much time. You saw that for yourself.”
“Yes,” said Mercy softly.
“My brother took a turn for the worse in the late afternoon. I didn’t want to let the guy in, but he wouldn’t take no for an answer. So I told him he could only have a few minutes. Whether August woke up or not.”
Mercy remembered how Deputy Pitts had dozed off and on during her short visit. “How long did he stay?”
“Not long. Maybe twenty minutes, half an hour at the most. But after he left, August was very agitated. Off his head, really.”
“Did he say anything?” asked Troy.
“Nothing that made any sense.”
“Try to remember,” said Mercy. “It could be important.”
“He kept saying something about Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe and lame men and limping. I don’t know what he meant.”
Mercy thought about it. “If you live with a lame man, you will learn to limp.”
“Something like that, yeah.”
Mercy nodded. “Plutarch.”
“What does it mean?”
“I’m not sure,” Mercy said.
“What happened after he left?” asked Troy.
“I heated us up some supper. Beef stew in a can.”
Poor Deputy Pitts, thought Mercy. What a terrible last meal.
She looked over at Troy and could see from his face that he was thinking the same thing.
“When I took August his bowl, I saw he’d passed over.” Eveline stared at the pillow, as if her brother were still there.
“And this was how long after the visitor left?”
“Maybe an hour, maybe less.” Eveline looked from Mercy to Troy. “What are you thinking?”
“What did the doctor say?” asked Mercy.
“He said it was to be expected.”
“I suppose it could be a coincidence, his dying right after this mysterious visitor pays him a visit, an encounter that clearly agitates him.” Mercy heard the sarcasm in her voice and tried to soften it. “What do you think, Eveline?”
“I think he was getting tired.” Eveline sighed. “That’s when they go, you know. When they get tired of fighting to stay alive. They just give in to death.”
The three of them fell into silence for a moment.
“Where’s the body right now?” asked Troy finally.
“At the crematorium.”
“What? You’re having him cremated before the funeral?” Mercy asked. Uh-oh, Mercy thought. No body, no autopsy, no evidence.
“No funeral. We’re going to have a memorial service instead. Come spring. August loved the spring.”
“Eveline, we think that your brother might have been the victim of foul play.” Troy explained that with George Rucker out of jail, her brother’s life could have been at risk. “We’d at least like to rule it out.”
“You think that King guy killed him?”
“We think it’s possible,” said Mercy.
“We’d like to do an autopsy. But we can’t do it without a body.”
“I’ll call the crematorium.” Eveline stood up. “Winter makes people do crazy things up here. I can’t wait to get back to North Carolina.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“Harrington isn’t going to like this,” said Mercy as they left the farmhouse. “You could get reprimanded big time.”
“He’ll like it less if we let them cremate evidence of a murder.”
“What will you do?”
“I’ll let Thrasher handle it.” They got into the truck and Troy contacted the captain to tell him what was going on. “We’re good. The captain is on it. Where to next?”
“The libr
ary,” she said. “That’s the one place Beth Kilgore is known to have frequented on a regular basis. And that’s where she was last seen before she disappeared.”
One of the things Mercy loved best about her home state was its libraries. Vermont had more public libraries per capita than any other state in the union. The Peace Junction Free Public Library was one of the oldest libraries in the state, endowed by a local merchant in the mid-1800s. Housed in a former general store, the lovely nineteenth-century white clapboard building stood on the town common between the old Town Hall and the Peace Junction Historical Society.
The library had just opened for the day, but there were already several patrons roaming the stacks and using the computers. Mercy and Troy headed for the information desk, anchored by a very young woman with black semi-rimless glasses and dark brown hair braided into a long plait that hung over her left shoulder and fell down across her heart to her waist. Mercy wondered how anyone dealt with hair that long. She could hardly manage her shoulder-length mane and was tempted to cut it off every other day. But the shorter it was, the curlier it was—and that presented its own set of problems. So she kept it just long enough to pull easily into a ponytail.
She let Troy take the lead, since he was the one in uniform. American librarians were resolutely protective of their readers’ First Amendment rights, and the ones here in Vermont were no exception. Like Mrs. Horgan, the Northshire librarian who’d befriended Mercy as a girl and encouraged her interest in Shakespeare’s work (even the tragedies that her mother, Grace, would not have deemed appropriate for a ten-year-old). Mrs. Horgan had been charged with obstruction when she tried to stop the arrest of a library patron who dared to ask challenging questions of the guest speaker at a public book event. The charges were later dropped—and Mrs. Horgan became an even more mythical figure for Mercy and her fellow Northshire bookworms.
Troy introduced her and himself to the young woman, who in turn introduced herself as Kelsey Vo, Head Librarian. Ms. Vo looked barely old enough to vote. Mercy knew that didn’t mean anything; she’d served with a lot of young recruits who had guts to spare.
“We’re working on a cold case,” said Troy. “The disappearance of a woman named Beth Kilgore in 2000. She was last seen here at this library.”
“I’m afraid I wasn’t here at that time.” Kelsey smiled at Troy.
Of course not, thought Mercy. You were just a kid back then, like us, only you were still in diapers.
“Right,” said Troy.
“Do you have any records from that era?” asked Mercy. “Anything that might help us understand our missing woman’s frame of mind?”
“If you’re talking about accessing a library user’s borrowing records, you’d need a warrant for that.” Kelsey fingered the thick braid at her breast and then tossed it behind her back. “Even if you had a warrant, odds are those records are gone. We purge our user data on a regular basis.”
“Understood.” Mercy smiled at the young librarian. Mrs. Horgan used to say that all librarians were subversive by nature, and Kelsey Vo was no exception. The First Amendment rights of Vermont readers were safe here at the Peace Junction Free Public Library. She couldn’t help but be glad about that. Mrs. Horgan would approve. “Is there anyone you can think of who was here at that time who might remember Beth Kilgore?”
Kelsey started to speak, and then hesitated.
“Beth Kilgore’s family has been waiting a long time for answers,” said Troy.
That seemed to sway her. “There is Louise Minnette. She was the head librarian here for many years. She’s mostly retired now, but she still helps out from time to time. She’s organizing books for our quarterly book and bake sale right now.”
“That would be great. Thanks.”
Kelsey pointed down the length of the library. “You’ll find her in the back room, at the very end of the building.” She pulled her braid back around her neck and held it like a rope against her chest. “Good luck.”
“Do you think she’ll remember her?” whispered Troy as they headed to the back room.
“Mrs. Horgan would remember.”
“True.” Troy smiled. “She knew everyone who ever came into the Northshire library, and she always remembered what they liked to read.”
“Exactly. If Louise Minnette is anything like Mrs. Horgan, she’ll remember Beth Kilgore.”
They came to an antique oak door with frosted glass panes and a small brass plaque that read BACK ROOM.
“This must be the place.” Troy opened the old door and they stepped into a wonderland of books. Towering heaps of hardcovers, trade paperbacks, and mass-market titles crowded the floor like giant Jenga puzzles. In the middle of these looming columns of literature sat a small elderly woman in black at a massive antique oak pedestal desk whose wooden pulls were carved in the shape of a lion’s face. She looked rather fierce herself, with her cloud of white hair and the sharp brown eyes of a mature red-tailed hawk. Pen in hand, she looked up from the big ledger before her, the only thing on the broad expanse of leather desktop. She fixed a no-nonsense gaze on them.
“May I help you?” she asked, in the plummy, perfectly enunciated Yankee manner that served as a warning that she did not suffer fools gladly.
Mercy smiled. She figured they were in good hands with Louise Minnette. They introduced themselves and explained why they were there to see her.
“Beth Kilgore. Of course I remember her. She was an avid reader,” Louise said approvingly, paying her the highest compliment a librarian can bestow. “I’m not sure what more I can tell you. Ask me what you will, but I do not promise to answer to your satisfaction.”
“Fair enough,” said Troy.
She waved at the books surrounding them. “I’d offer you a seat, but as you can see, I’m surrounded here.” She surveyed the room, then slapped the ledger closed and swept it onto her lap. “You’ll just have to perch on the edges of this big old thing.”
“It’s a beautiful piece,” said Mercy.
“Scottish. Nineteenth century.” She paused. “I thought you young people didn’t like brown furniture. Isn’t that what you call it these days?”
“Not me,” said Mercy.
“Not me, either,” said Troy.
“How very ingratiating of you,” said Louise, pursing her lips.
Mercy shook her head. “We’re not saying that just to please you. We value our Vermont history. Troy here lives in an old fire tower.”
Louise tapped her pen on the desk, as if she were applauding the tower. “How fascinating. And you?”
“I live in a hunting cabin, circa 1920.”
“Filled with brown furniture, no doubt.” Louise put her pen down on top of the ledger in her lap and patted the surface of the desk. “Go ahead and sit down. It’s as solid as granite.”
Troy took up one corner of the immense desk and Mercy the other.
“I remember when Beth Kilgore left town. They said she and her husband went to California.” Louise shook her head, and the white cloud shimmered around her face. “I never understood the appeal of Los Angeles. All those people crowded together on beaches and highways and at open-air malls. All that relentless sunshine. When do they read?”
“Not your kind of place.”
“Heavens no. I went there once, for my cousin Donald’s wedding. I couldn’t wait to get back to Vermont.”
“Do you think L.A. was Beth Kilgore’s kind of place?”
“I wouldn’t have thought so. But Beth was a very private person, and if she did have such plans to go there, she certainly did not share them with me.”
“My grandfather could find no evidence that they’d gone out West. They both seemed to disappear without a trace.”
“Your grandfather?”
“He was the sheriff at that time.”
Louise smiled. “Of course. That red hair. You’re an O’Sullivan.”
“Yes. I’m Grace O’Sullivan’s daughter.”
“And Patience Fleury O’Sull
ivan is your grandmother.”
Mercy nodded.
“A splendid woman. I was so sorry to see her leave after her husband died. But I could understand why she would want to start fresh somewhere else.”
Mercy wondered if that were a reference to her grandfather’s affair or his murder or both.
“How is she?” asked Louise.
Mercy told her about Patience’s career as a veterinarian and the Sterling Animal Hospital. “She’s well, but she is also part of the reason we’re here.”
“How so?”
“Someone left a pipe bomb on Patience’s porch,” said Troy.
Louise looked from Troy to Mercy, the question she seemed reluctant to ask hanging in the air between them.
“She’s okay,” said Mercy. “This time.”
“She’s still in danger.”
“You are referring to George Rucker’s escape from prison.”
Troy nodded.
“I read about that. Not the sort of boy one would think could end up in prison, much less escape it. He was a dreamer, George. He read a lot of fantasy as a boy. C.S. Lewis, Tolkien, Terry Brooks.” Her dark eyes softened for a moment, then sharpened again as she regarded Mercy. “What does this have to do with Beth Kilgore?”
“We’re not sure. Maybe nothing. But she and her husband left for California that same summer George’s wife left him and he killed my grandfather. And now George Rucker has escaped and August Pitts has asked me to look into Beth Kilgore’s disappearance. The timing all seems, well, odd if nothing else.”
“I understand.” Louise folded her hands over the pen on the ledger in her lap. “How can I help?”
“Tell us what you can about Beth Kilgore.”
“I’ll talk and you sort.” She pointed to the stacks to her right. “Go through those and sort them by genre: Romance, mystery, science fiction, etc.”
“I’ll do it,” said Mercy. “Troy needs to take notes.” She moved to the tallest of the stacks and carefully removed a small pile to sift.
“Ready when you are,” said Troy, still sitting on the desk, pen and notebook at the ready.
“Yes,” said Louise. “I knew Beth as a reader primarily, of course. I must have met her when she was around twelve. By that time she’d read all the books in the school library and was looking for more here. Slowly but surely, she made her way through most of the books in this library, as well.”