by Paula Munier
Troy strode into their little patch of scrub, pushing a handcuffed young man with wild hair in front of him.
“Arlo!” said the woman on the ground.
“Mom.”
“You haven’t said anything, have you?”
Mercy helped the woman to her feet.
“Thank you,” she said, then turned to her son. “Don’t say another word. You are so grounded.”
Arlo Martin hung his head. “How did you find me?”
“That’s for me to know and you to find out.”
Troy took in the scene before him and raised his eyebrows at Mercy. “What do we have here?”
She smiled at him. “Let me introduce you to Beth Kilgore and Ruby Rucker.”
* * *
HALF AN HOUR later, Mercy and Troy were back at Bea’s house with the dogs and Captain Thrasher, watching Harrington with the two women as he tried to sort out who was who and what was what.
“Ask Mercy,” said Thrasher. “I’m sure she can tell you whatever you need to know.”
Bea and Ruby stood together, each as silent as the past they had tried to outrun. Harrington—never known for his patience—finally addressed Mercy.
“What do you know about this?”
“Have you ever read Strangers on a Train, Detective?”
He looked at her blankly.
“It’s a novel by Patricia Highsmith.”
“I know what it is. But what does it have to do with this?”
Mercy smiled. “Let’s go back to the beginning, shall we?” She looked at Bea and Ruby Rucker aka Isobel Martin. “Twenty years ago, two unhappy women meet at the town library. They discover a mutual love of film, and especially film noir. They both want to leave their husbands, one because her husband beats her, the other because her husband bores her. They devise a plan, inspired by Strangers on a Train.”
“Where two men meet on a train and decide to murder each other’s adversaries,” interrupted Harrington. “Yes, I know. So Bea Kilgore and Ruby Rucker decide to do the same. Which is how Thomas Kilgore ends up dead in a barrel.”
“No!” said Bea. “That’s not how it happened.”
“Lawyer,” said Ruby.
“I think that was probably an accident,” said Mercy. “They just wanted to get away, and not be found. So they traded identities.” She paused, waving an arm in their direction. “Two women about the same size, brown eyes, fair skin, similar features. Ruby is a little curvier, but close enough. Easy enough to switch hair color. The only real difference would be the nose. Thomas Kilgore broke Beth’s nose.”
“Their noses look fine to me,” said Harrington.
“I think you’re looking at a very good nose job,” said Mercy.
Ruby Rucker laughed.
“Remember, this was before 9/11,” said Mercy. “Before Real IDs and TSA PreCheck. All they needed to do was trade Social Security cards and birth certificates and get new IDs when they settled in new places. And both remarried quickly and kept their new husbands’ names. Elizabeth Ann Verdette Kilgore became Ruby ‘Bea’ Garcia and Ruby became Isobel Martin. Isobel being the Spanish for Elizabeth.”
“Sounds pretty far-fetched to me,” said Harrington.
A man of no imagination, thought Mercy. She’d have to spell it out for the detective. “They left town and went to the old lodge, one of Ruby’s listings.”
“The lodge where we found Thomas Kilgore,” clarified Troy.
“I think he must have suspected something and followed them,” said Mercy. “He confronted them, and he ended up dead. Given his history of violence, that’s really no surprise.”
“Sounds like murder to me,” said Harrington.
“Or self-defense,” said Mercy.
“So they put him in a barrel and leave?” asked Thrasher.
“Beth dyes her hair blond and Ruby dyes hers brown. Or maybe they wear wigs.” Mercy looked at Ruby, who smiled at her coyly.
“And?” Harrington was nothing if not impatient.
“They drive to Albany, where Ruby goes to the Planned Parenthood to get an abortion, but she can’t go through with it. She takes Beth to a tattoo parlor to get the same ink she has.” Mercy looked at Ruby as she blinked back tears. “Check their wrists. You should find identical cherry tattoos. Lady Luck.”
“Let’s see ’em.” Harrington nodded to Becker, who inspected their wrists.
“She’s right,” Becker said with a smile.
“They go to the bus station in Ruby’s silver Audi and leave it in the parking lot. Beth, now posing as Ruby, boards the next Greyhound for Las Vegas. She mails that postcard, which Ruby has written beforehand.”
“Clever,” said Thrasher.
“Yes,” said Mercy.
“And Ruby?”
“Ruby loved Las Vegas. But she couldn’t go back there. Louise Minnette, the librarian, told us that she loved travel books. What’s the next best thing to Vegas? Miami.”
“That’s quite a story,” said Harrington, “but that’s all in the past. What has it got to do with what’s happening now?”
“Arlo Martin happened,” said Thrasher.
“Ruby told him George Rucker was his father, and he contacted him. Rucker broke out of jail with his pal Simko’s help and told Arlo Martin to meet him here to collect his inheritance.”
“The money in the trunk Elvis and I found in Bea’s hidden room.”
“There’s no trunk,” said Harrington.
“It was there.” Mercy glared at the detective.
“No trunk.” Harrington crossed his arms, triumphant.
“What? You think I’m making this up?”
“I think you should write fiction.” He hooked his thumb at Becker. “Book the ladies.”
Hooked it again at Mercy. “Time for you to leave.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Troy and Susie Bear dropped by the cabin to see Mercy and Elvis. He had something to tell her, and he knew she wasn’t going to like it.
He parked the Ford F-150 at the top of the drive by her Jeep. Susie Bear jumped out and scampered off to find Elvis.
Mercy was leaning back in one of the old rocking chairs from her porch, her eyes closed and her red hair a curly cloud around her face. She’d pulled the chair out to the grass close to the flagpole, where the flag flew rain or shine or snow. No snow or rain today. Forty-five degrees and sunny, not a cloud in the sky. It wouldn’t last long—the forecast called for freezing temperatures by sunset—but it did serve as a promise that spring was just around the corner.
He walked up the gravel path, which led from the driveway past the flag to the porch. The snow was melting, and patches of green peeped through the dead grass. Mercy didn’t move when he approached her. Wrapped in a blanket, she was obviously enjoying the unseasonably warm weather. She may have been napping. Either way she looked beautiful.
Elvis and Susie Bear raced up from around the barn. They flanked Mercy, each laying a furry head on her lap. She smiled, eyes still closed, and petted the dogs. “Hello, Troy.”
“Hi. Aren’t you missing a dog?”
“Sunny is inside napping with little Helena. I think sometimes Elvis wears her out,” she said, eyes still closed, her face a pale moon dotted with freckles. “Shouldn’t you be out on patrols?”
“Yeah.” Troy couldn’t wait to get back out in the woods where he belonged. “But I have some news.”
Finally she opened her eyes. “What is that?”
“We got the results back from Deputy Pitts’ autopsy.”
“He was murdered.”
“Yep. Want to tell me how you knew?”
“You wouldn’t have come all the way out here to the cabin if it was natural causes.”
He squatted down to talk to her, and the dogs moved in for their belly rubs. He didn’t disappoint them. “Rucker insists they never killed him. Just went to talk to him about the money, which Pitts claimed to know nothing about. And Ruby was in Tampa at that home decor convention, just like
she said she was, until law enforcement located her and she realized Arlo was gone.”
“How did she trace him to Bea’s house?”
Troy grinned. “His cell phone. She had a tracker on it.”
Mercy laughed. “Poor Arlo.”
He straightened up and the dogs ran off again. “Don’t feel too badly for him. Ruby’s lawyer got him out on bail and it wouldn’t surprise me if they end up dismissing the charges altogether.”
“Ruby turned out to be a very good mother, after all.” She waved a pale hand at the other rocker on the porch. “Go get yourself a seat.”
Troy retrieved the rocker as instructed. There was nothing he’d rather do than sit with Mercy and talk. Or not talk. Whatever she wanted.
For a moment they said nothing, just rolled back and forth in their rockers, in unison, like an old married couple. Like Patience and Red must have done, once upon a time.
“What about my grandmother?” she asked finally, breaking the silence.
“Rucker says the pipe bomb and the kidnapping were all Simko’s idea. Simko believed your grandmother knew where the money was, and that he could scare her into telling them.”
“He didn’t know Patience.”
“Rucker claims he’d never hurt a woman.”
“I can believe that.” She stared off into the distance, beyond the barn to the purple mountains beyond. “But what about Colby?”
“Wrong place, wrong time—if you believe Rucker. He told Harrington that they stayed at the lodge their first day in Vermont. Simko went off to gather firewood and got lost. Colby caught him on camera and he panicked. Snatched the camera, Colby tried to stop him, and Simko freaked out and killed him.”
“I can believe that, too,” said Mercy. “Simko was a Mississippi boy. Didn’t know enough about winter in New England to keep from getting lost in the woods or riding a snowmobile into a thawing lake.”
“He’s not the first flatlander to die up here, and he won’t be the last.”
Neither of them said anything for a while. The only sounds the wind whistling around the trees and the dogs barking down by the barn.
Mercy stopped rocking. “What about the trunk?”
“I don’t know. Simko is dead. Rucker’s in jail. Arlo’s with his mother. Looks like none of them took it. It’s still missing.”
“Maybe they didn’t kill for it, either. Maybe Pitts’ death has nothing to do with the Ruckers.” She sat up abruptly, shaking off the blanket. “Field trip?”
Troy grinned. His patrols would have to wait. “Sure.”
* * *
ON THE RIDE up to Peace Junction, the dogs napped in the back cab while Troy and Mercy talked about Joey Colby and the dwindling moose population, Beth Kilgore and Ruby Rucker, George and Arlo, and the power of storytelling.
“If it weren’t for Patricia Highsmith writing Strangers on a Train, all this might never have happened,” said Mercy, her face flush with excitement. He loved how worked up she got over literature.
“Beth would have stayed with Thomas,” she went on. “Under his thumb.”
“Until he killed her.”
“Maybe.”
“But Ruby still would have left George.” Troy had learned the hard way that women like Ruby—and Madeline—needed more than Vermont could give them. More than he could give them.
“Yes. No doubt about that. She would have gone home to Las Vegas for good.”
“Where George could have found her. And maybe kept her.”
“Interesting theory.” She looked over at him, and he could practically see the machinations burning up that sweet brain of hers.
“He was obsessed with her,” she said. “And if she weren’t worried about going to prison for killing Thomas Kilgore, she could have used the baby to get George to give her the good life in Las Vegas that she wanted.”
“The perfect marriage of passion and greed.”
“Go ahead,” she told him. “Say it.”
“Say what?” He loved teasing her.
“People don’t change.”
“But they can grow.” He grinned at her.
“Smart ass,” she said, laughing.
Troy wanted to spend the rest of his life making her laugh.
* * *
THERE WAS A Ford Explorer with a U-Haul trailer hitched to it in the driveway and a FOR SALE sign in the front yard at August Pitts’ farmhouse now. One of Mary Lou Rucker-Smith’s signs. He pointed at the sign. “So Eveline knows Mary Lou.”
“Interesting,” said Mercy. “Schemers, the two of them.”
Troy parked on the street. They left the dogs in the truck—Mercy said she didn’t trust the woman around dogs, and he didn’t, either—and they went to talk to the deputy’s grieving sister. He rang the bell several times before Eveline relented and answered the door.
“What do you want?”
“We’d like to talk to you about your brother’s death,” said Troy, using his “because I’m law enforcement and you’re not” voice.
“Nothing to talk about,” said Eveline, but she let them in anyway.
The house was nearly empty. Everything had been cleared out; all that was left in the living room was a ladderback chair, two cans of paint, several rolls of wallpaper, and assorted brushes. So much for the crime scene.
“I’m sorry to have to tell you that your brother did not die peacefully in his sleep.” Troy explained the autopsy results to Eveline. “He was suffocated, by person or persons unknown.”
“So that guy killed him. The one who came to visit August the night he died.” Eveline crossed her arms across her large chest, stretching her tight yoga top to the breaking point. “I told you I didn’t like the look of him.”
“We don’t think so,” said Mercy. “He insists that he didn’t kill the deputy.”
“He’s a liar.”
“He had no motive.”
“He’s a liar,” repeated Eveline.
“Maybe.” Mercy looked around the stripped-down room, and her eyes came to rest on the painting and wallpapering tools neatly stacked in one corner. She rolled her eyes at Troy, and he knew she was thinking what he was thinking: Eveline had not wasted any time mourning her brother or any of his earthly possessions.
“What?” said Eveline. “You know you can’t sell a house these days without staging it. Might as well get on with it.”
That was Mary Lou Rucker-Smith talking, thought Troy.
“I thought you were going to keep it,” said Mercy.
“Why would I freeze my ass off here when I could be back home in North Carolina?”
A rhetorical question, thought Troy.
“Your brother must have left you a nice little nest egg.” Mercy smiled at the woman. One of her insincere smiles.
“That’s none of your business.”
“It speaks to motive.”
Eveline narrowed her eyes at Mercy, and in that dark look Troy saw a glimpse of her true character. He was glad he was armed.
“August was dying. I was going to inherit everything anyway. Just a matter of time. I didn’t have to kill him for it. All I had to was wait.”
“Not if he changed his will.”
Eveline glared at Mercy. “He didn’t change his will.”
“But he wanted to. He was going to leave it all to his son.”
“August didn’t have any children.” Eveline edged toward the paint.
Troy wondered if she really planned on torpedoing them with a can of semi-gloss. He stepped forward. “Stay where you are.”
“I’ll do what I please. This is my house.”
“Just barely,” said Mercy.
Eveline lunged at her, fists raised. Troy stepped between them, grabbing her wrists.
“Let me go.”
“Settle down.”
“George came here that night to tell your brother that Ruby bore a son,” said Mercy. “He showed him a picture of Arlo. All that strawberry-blond hair. Just like August had, back in the day, before
old age and chemo. Told him he wanted the money for Arlo.”
“That’s ridiculous.” Eveline tried to wrestle out of Troy’s grip but failed.
“Is it?”
“You can’t prove anything.”
She was right, thought Troy. They couldn’t prove anything. And he didn’t have a warrant. And he was out of his jurisdiction. Not to mention Mercy was a civilian. He gave her a warning look.
“Not yet,” Mercy said to Eveline.
“I’m going to let you go now. Behave.” Troy released Pitts’ sister.
Eveline rubbed her wrists. “Police brutality.”
“He’s a game warden.”
“Whatever. You’ll be hearing from my lawyer.”
Troy ushered Mercy quickly out of the house. “Well, that went well.”
“We knew she was too tough to cave,” said Mercy. “But I was hoping to learn something that might help us.”
The dogs jumped up and down on the back seat, pressing their black wet noses against the window glass.
“I think they need to go out,” she said.
“It was a long ride. But I’d rather not let them out here.”
“I think it’s the perfect place to let them out.” Mercy winked at him and flung open the back passenger door.
Elvis soared out of the truck and onto the lawn. Susie Bear followed, with an admittedly lumpier landing.
The dogs charged up the yard and around behind the house.
“I don’t like it,” Troy told Mercy as they waited for the shepherd and the Newfie to return.
“They’ll be back,” she said.
They stood together at the edge of the road, leaning against the hood of the truck, enjoying the sun, even if it was cooler up here in Lamoille County than it was down south in Northshire.
Just as Troy whistled to call Susie Bear back to him, she appeared at the side of the farmhouse. She scrambled past the U-Haul down the driveway to greet them. Troy slipped her a treat from his pocket.
Elvis blazed around from the back yard, headed straight for Mercy. But at the halfway mark he slid to a dead stop. Right at the trailer hitch between the Ford Explorer and the U-Haul. He sank into his standard alert position, the one Mercy called his Sphinx pose.