A Borrowing of Bones--A Mystery

by Paula Munier

  “Whatever she needs. You know best.”

  “Remember that.” Her grandmother retrieved a cat carrier and slipped the kitty inside. “I’m afraid it’s quarantine for you, little one.” She waved Mercy ahead of her. “Let’s take her into the kitchen with us for a cup of tea. She needs food and water anyway.”

  “I should get going.”

  “You need to eat something before you head off after an armed robber.”

  Mercy knew there was no point in arguing with her. Patience had an infuriatingly gracious way of making you feel like an unreasonable boor if you disagreed with her. “Can we check on Elvis on the way?”

  “Sure.”

  They found him curled under the long window seat in the living room, hiding from the world. He was already dozing off, his light snores the bass to the sweet purring of the half a dozen cats—all rescues—stretched out on the plump velvet cushion lining the window seat right above him.

  “As you can see,” said Patience, “he’s fine. That sedative will last him awhile.”

  Mercy was relieved to see that he was breathing easily and sleeping normally. She’d promised Martinez she’d take good care of him, and here she’d gone and gotten him shot. She would never forgive herself if anything happened to him on her watch.

  “Feeling guilty?”

  She didn’t answer, but she didn’t have to. Her grandmother had been reading her mind since she was three years old. Maybe longer.

  They walked through the reception and through the French doors that separated the clinic from the kitchen in the house proper. Not that there was much difference, apart from the medical equipment. The house was decorated in the same clear and bright Zen palette as the hospital. Patience believed in the healing power of color, and every room was painted according to the desired effect—calming blues and greens for surgery and treatment rooms, soothing violets and purples for recovery and post-op rooms, cheerful oranges and yellows for the reception area and the kitchen. Music played in the background, an eclectic if melodious mix of mellow reggae and soft rock and harmonious Gregorian chants and kirtan. Patience insisted the music encouraged positive behaviors in dogs and cited the studies to prove it when Mercy expressed any skepticism. Which she never did anymore, now that she knew from her own time on the mat with Elvis that it worked.

  The kitchen was her favorite room in the house. Her grandmother loved to cook, and she’d modeled her chef’s kitchen after the ones she’d visited in the south of France. A large, welcoming space dominated by a big island topped with white marble, the room reminded her of a Van Gogh painting come to life. The deep yellow walls nearly glowed in the natural light that poured in from the big windows and French doors leading out onto the porch that wrapped all the way around the house. Gleaming copper pots and pans hung from the ceiling and colorful pottery from Provence brightened the open shelves. And there on the long pine table, just where she hoped to see it, was a freshly baked carrot cake.

  “Put her down in the corner.” Patience handed her the cat carrier.

  She placed it on a Windsor chair by the baker’s rack, then pulled up a stool at the island and watched while her grandmother turned on the electric teapot and then filled two cerulean blue bowls, one with water and the other with kitty kibble.

  Mercy placed the bowls in the carrier with the kitten, who wasted no time in availing herself of what might be her first real meal in way too long.

  “You cut the cake and I’ll pour the tea,” Patience said.

  Time for a chat, thought Mercy. Tea and cake was how her grandmother always began delicate conversations. Not that there was ever anything delicate about her direct approach.

  “And how are you?” Patience handed her a bright orange mug filled with spicy chai.

  “Fine.” She sipped. “Tastes as good as it smells.”

  “Fine? Really?”

  “Why wouldn’t I be? I’m in your kitchen eating your cake.” She slipped a generous bite into her mouth. “Good cake.”

  “Let’s see.” Patience counted down on her capable fingers. “You found and lost a baby, then you found and lost her teenage mother, you discovered a corpse and maybe explosives, your house got tossed by an armed intruder, your dog got shot … have I missed anything?”

  “When you put it that way…”

  “And you met a man.” Her grandmother snapped her fingers. “I knew I forgot something.”

  “What?” Mercy laughed. “Who?”

  “Troy.”

  “Seriously?”

  “You could do worse.”

  “Not my type.”

  “If I remember correctly, you were pretty sweet on Troy when you were younger.”

  “I was fourteen,” Mercy said, her mouth full of cake.

  Her grandmother continued as if she hadn’t heard. “After he saved that copy of Romeo and Juliet from the Landry boy, you proclaimed it your favorite play.”

  “It was always my favorite play when I was a kid.”

  “You slept with it under your pillow.”

  Mercy rolled her eyes. “At the risk of repeating myself, I was fourteen years old. It was just a schoolgirl crush on an older man.”

  “Older man?” Patience scoffed.

  “He was a senior,” repeated Mercy. “I was just starting high school.”

  “You’re a big girl now. Troy is only, what, four years older than you are. That’s nothing.” Mercy’s grandfather had been twenty years her grandmother’s senior.

  “He seems older.”

  “You both seem older than your years. Due to your shared military experience, no doubt.”

  “Maybe.” Certainly she felt older than most of the people she met her own age.

  “Four years. You wouldn’t even need a Plan B.”

  Mercy knew she was talking about her grandfather again. Patience had often told her that while she’d loved every minute of their time together, good and bad, they always figured that given their age difference, she’d need a Plan B.

  As it turned out, it happened far sooner than they’d thought it might. The life of a cop is always on the line—and thanks to an arrest gone wrong, Patience ended up the widow of a man cut down in his prime, rather than an old man doddering around the house while she played nursemaid. She would have done it, and done it happily, but the last thing he’d told her before he went into surgery to repair the gunshot wounds that killed him was “Live your life, Patience.” Her grandmother was fond of repeating this advice whenever possible.

  “Live your life, Mercy.”

  And there it was. She tried another tack. “Troy Warner is married to the most beautiful girl in the county.”

  Patience refilled her cup from the teapot. “She ran off with a doctor from Orlando.”

  Mercy nearly choked. “Seriously? When?”

  “Christmas before last.” Patience sighed. “They moved back home after he left the service, and within six months she’d hooked up with this orthopedist. It hit him hard.”

  “I bet.”

  “It was inevitable,” Patience said.

  “Maybe.”

  “That lightweight was never right for him.”

  Calling someone a lightweight was the worst thing her grandmother could say about anyone. It meant that she believed that you were not up to the hard work and hard choices of real life.

  “A match made with a lightweight is a match made in hell,” continued Patience.

  Mercy had heard this theory before. Notably when her first love, a wrestler she’d met her freshman year of college, was expelled for steroid use and tried to take her down with him. Patience had warned her against him when they’d visited her over Thanksgiving break. If only her grandmother had met Martinez. She would have liked him. He was made of strong stuff. She suspected Troy Warner was as well.

  “And the game warden is no lightweight.” Mercy smiled at Patience.

  “He’s a good man with a good dog.”

  “So you’ve said.”

 
“Have some more carrot cake.”

  Mercy cut herself another piece. She knew there was a lecture coming on—and her grandmother believed that a spoonful of carrot cake helped the medicine go down.

  “I’ve been a widow now for nearly twenty years.” Her grandmother leaned in. “I’m not lonely, mind you, but we women do have needs.”

  “Patience.”

  “I’m serious. That’s why I have Claude.”

  Claude Renault was an animal surgeon from Quebec, a congenial man who had kept her grandmother company for several years now. Mercy was sure he’d like to have a more permanent place in Patience’s life, but he wasn’t the first man to amuse her and Mercy suspected that he may not be the last. That said, she liked the guy, and sometimes she felt bad for him.

  “Don’t look at me that way. I got married, I raised my children, and now I can play. With Claude.”

  “He died. I buried him.”

  “I know, sweetheart.” Patience reached for her hand and squeezed it. “But maybe you need a Plan B, after all. Just as I did.”

  “I’m not as brave as you are.”

  “Nonsense. You’re braver than I’ll ever be. And you’re young. You need to get married, have a family. You owe it to yourself.”

  “I can’t do that now.”

  “Maybe not. But you will. You must.”

  That was enough grandmotherly advice for one day. Mercy pulled her hand away gently. “I have to go.”

  “I know. You want to catch your masked man.”

  “He’s long gone by now.”

  “But you won’t rest until you know that for sure.”

  “I should sit with Elvis.”

  “It’s not like he’s going to die,” Patience said gently. “Promise.”

  She hesitated.

  “Go on. Elvis will be fine. I’ll take good care of the wonder dog.”

  Her grandmother had been married to a cop for years; she knew the drill. Which was more than Mercy could say for her parents.

  She smiled her thanks. Patience held out her hands, and Mercy obliged her with a hug. Her grandmother gathered her in her arms, just as she had done when she was a little girl. There were few things on earth more comforting than this kitchen, this carrot cake, this woman hugging her.

  They walked out to her Jeep together.

  “Take your gun,” Patience said. “And name the cat.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  AS SOON AS SHE GOT HOME, Mercy slipped her Beretta into her belt, grabbed a light pack, and went out to track the intruder. She followed his boot prints easily across the lawn to the tree line. She looked for shell casings but didn’t find anything, and didn’t really expect to. This guy knew what he was doing. And he knew better than to leave shell casings behind.

  She continued through the bramble into the forest. The damp leaves and mud and debris readily revealed the man’s trail. Too easily.

  She realized that he hadn’t cared if she could track him or not. He must have known he could get away. She pushed on through a long thicket and around a small patch of bog, coming to a thick line of spruce. Swatting pine needles away from her face, she shouldered through the close crowd of trees. On the other side of the copse was an ATV trail. The prowler’s prints ended there, on the flank of the trail, where disturbed ground indicated that a large weighted object had recently occupied the spot. He must have come by ATV, parked it here while he tossed her house, then raced back to his machine and disappeared down the trail. Leaving behind nothing but tread marks in a tangle of tread marks left by the heavy traffic of the holiday.

  She could hear the roar of several all-terrain vehicles speeding along; their numbers would grow as the day went on. ATVers were nothing if not notorious for riding on private property without permission, driving while under the influence, riding unlicensed vehicles, and more.

  Most of the land out here was owned by a flatlander from Boston, an investment banker named Daniel Feinberg who’d bought a big estate named Nemeton that included a large tract of timberland. They say he’d bought the land to preserve it from logging, and had mostly done just that, apart from weekend parties in the summer and skiing parties in the winter. Guilt money, many Vermonters called it, but Mercy didn’t mind as long as the forest benefited. She was sure Feinberg would not welcome trespassing ATVers any more than he welcomed poachers on his land. Still. Absentee owners often led to trouble, sooner or later.

  Nothing more she could do here, for Feinberg or for herself. At least not today. It was late afternoon now and she was tired. Long day. Long two days.

  She trudged back through the woods, missing Elvis. She’d grown more attached to him that she’d thought possible. Truth was, she used to envy him. Just a little, anyway. Her fiancé had loved that dog, and in some ways was closer to him than he was to her. She’d been a bit jealous. Ridiculous. She’d share Martinez with a kennel full of dogs if only she could have him back just for one walk in these woods.

  Back at the cabin she began the thankless and time-consuming job of cleanup. She reshelved books, replaced pillows, restocked her desk, repacked clothes in drawers and closets. She swept up the debris of her emptied pantry and kitchen cabinets and bathroom vanity.

  A mess, to be sure, but nothing seemed to be missing. What she most valued—her books and her pictures—were mostly no worse for the violation. But the bastard—for that was how she thought of the intruder now—had broken the frame of the photograph of her and Martinez. The one Amy said she looked so happy in. She did look happy, her face alive with a luminosity that occurred only when her freckles and her pale skin aligned in rare moments of true contentment. She wondered if she’d ever be that happy again. She wondered if that happy woman was lost to her forever. Trapped in the past with all her memories.

  The glass had shattered and the silver frame was bent beyond repair. Carrying the mess to the kitchen, she dumped the glass and the frame into the trash. Carefully she brushed the picture free of shards with a paper towel. She’d need a new frame, but for now she simply hung the photo on her fridge with a magnet. She stared at the man she loved, eye to eye now, squarely facing him. He looked happy, too, but as always his handsome features were animated with a life force that went beyond happiness. He was a man who believed in passion—in body, mind, and spirit. Time to get with the program, he seemed to be saying, get moving, get on with your life. She loved to look at the photograph, even when it hurt. But at this eye-to-eye level, it suddenly seemed like a rebuke. She turned the picture over and placed it back on the fridge. Nothing but an empty white space now, dated with a time stamp long expired.

  It was nearly suppertime and she was hungry and thirsty. What she needed was dinner and a glass of wine. Not necessarily in that order. Mercy poured herself some Big Barn Red and pulled a frozen lamb shepherd’s pie from the Northshire Union Store out of the freezer. She popped it in the oven. The new owners of the two-hundred-year-old store had added frozen gourmet to-go dinners to their menu that Mercy—and Elvis—loved. When she didn’t feel like cooking, which was admittedly most of the time, she simply opened her freezer, stocked with homemade lumberjack vegetable soup, chicken pot pies, mac and cheese, and her hands-down favorite, lamb shepherd’s pie. Whenever Patience complained that she wasn’t eating enough, she just invoked the sacred name of the Northshire Union Store.

  While the frozen dinner heated up in the oven, Mercy curled up on the couch and sipped her wine and thought about Elvis’s close call. She closed her eyes, and tried to breathe through the fear that she’d failed him and Martinez. Just as she’d been breathing through her grief for the past year. Never mind step by step—breath by breath was how she’d made it this far.

  She kept on breathing, and eventually her inhalations and exhalations allowed her to surrender to her exhaustion. Mercy dozed off, finally, dreaming of masked men and crying babies and lost lovers.

  * * *

  THE OVEN TIMER was chiming and the doorbell was ringing and her wine was perched precariou
sly at the edge of the coffee table when she awoke with a start, the name of her lost soldier on her lips.

  “Coming!” She stumbled as she scrambled off the sofa, and caught the nearly empty glass just before it stained her lap with the last of the Big Barn Red. Jogging for the front door, she checked the peephole. There on her front porch stood her grandmother and Elvis, on his feet if a little groggy. And more than a little perturbed at the unwieldy protective cone around his handsome neck.

  “Elvis!” Careful to avoid the cone and the bandage on his butt, she body-hugged the dog, burying her head in his soft, shiny coat. Whether he was more embarrassed by the cone or the hug, she wasn’t sure.

  “He’s fine.” Patience pushed her way into the cabin.

  Elvis shook Mercy off. She stepped aside and watched as they passed by, wondering if the shepherd held her responsible for his injury. He trotted breezily behind her grandmother, as if he were returning from a holiday picnic rather than the animal hospital. Despite the cone, which he obviously considered an affront to his dignity. He turned to look back at her with those dark eyes, as if to say, Come on, Carr. Move it! Just like his sergeant would have done.

  She traipsed after them into the kitchen. Her grandmother snapped off the timer and peeked into the oven. She retrieved the shepherd’s pie, which bubbled around the edges but was still frozen in the middle.

  “You’re supposed to defrost it first.”

  She shrugged. “I just secure the perimeter and eat around it.”

  Patience laughed. “At least it’s Northshire Union. You could do worse.”

  “Elvis likes it.”

  “I bet he does.”

  Mercy got down on her hands and knees so she could get a good look at him. She whistled and he trotted over to her, dropping into his favorite Sphinx position. She leaned forward, headfirst, into the cone. Now they were nose to nose. His was cold and wet, and now hers was, too. She laughed.

  “Good boy,” she said, her voice high with praise.

  He licked her face, a soppy sign of affection he’d always reserved for Martinez alone. She let him lick her cheeks again and again before finally pushing him away, still laughing. “Okay. Enough.”