by Paula Munier
We owe no allegiance, we bow to no throne,
Our ruler is law and the law is our own;
Our leaders themselves are our own fellow-men,
Who can handle the sword and the scythe and the pen
Hurrah for Vermont! For the land that we till
Must have sons to defend her from valley and hill
Our vow is recorded—our banner unfurled,
In the name of Vermont we defy all the world!
Then cheer, cheer, the green mountaineer,
then cheer, cheer, the green mountaineer
As she listened to that last verse of the song she’d learned in grade school, she realized that this float could hold the key to these murders. She sent a text to Troy, telling him about the float and her suspicions. She looked at Elvis, but the dog did not alert. She hustled the shepherd through the crowd along the parade route, following the Green Mountain Boys.
“Search, boy, search!”
Again the bomb-sniffing dog did not alert. In fact, he paid more attention to the unsteady Uncle Sam on stilts. Mercy was so sure that he would find something of interest on that float, so sure that she had been right.
But nothing happened. What was wrong with this dog?
Elvis zoomed on, intent on his search, indifferent to the band and the Vermont Republic float on which they continued to play, now a vigorous rendition of “Moonlight in Vermont.” Much of the crowd tried to sing, or at least hum, along, but the beloved tune was notoriously hard to sing well. The girl singer was botching it, too, which didn’t help the crowd’s sing-along or Mercy’s mood.
She must have been wrong. Maybe her skills as a criminal investigator were as lost to her as Martinez was. Maybe she should have listened to her parents and become a lawyer, after all.
Her head ached, her vest was hot and scratchy, her confidence lagged. She stopped in front of the Ben & Jerry’s storefront, where a cute girl about Amy’s age with dark curly hair and a diamond stud in her nose was handing out free samples of Cherry Garcia and Chunky Monkey ice cream. She chose the Cherry Garcia for Elvis and the Chunky Monkey for herself. “Nice dog,” said the girl, whose name tag read Taylor.
In a rare moment of kindness to strangers, Elvis allowed Taylor to pet him, no doubt inspired by the promise of more ice cream to come. His strategy worked, and he downed another free sample compliments of his new favorite human while Mercy collected herself. The Ben & Jerry’s sugar rush helped, and she thanked Taylor before pulling Elvis away from his friendly supplier of Cherry Garcia. She turned away from the scoop shop to view the parade.
A guy dressed like a Minuteman broke through the crowd on Troy’s side of the street and ran alongside the Vermont Republic float, jumping onto the back as the float continued to move down the street.
“Better late than never!” he yelled. The crowd laughed, and clapped for the intrepid latecomer.
There was something familiar about this Minuteman. His militia tricorn hat hid most of his face, but he was tall and moved gracefully, as had the intruder who ransacked her cabin. He carried a musket; a hunting cartridge, a haversack, and a fife case were slung over his shoulder. A canteen was belted to his hip.
Why a musket and a musical instrument? Mercy wondered. The assumption was that if he were going to join the Vermont Republic float, he was a member of the band. She took a harder look at his hunting cartridge and haversack. Both seemed out of place. Something was off with this guy, she thought, even as he pulled out the fife and began to play.
Elvis didn’t like him, either. The Belgian shepherd’s ears perked up and he pulled at the lead. They circumvented the people waiting patiently for free ice cream and pushed past several rows of parade-goers to get to the curb. They jogged by the Friends of the Library, marching en masse, pushing their metal book carts decorated with art posters ahead of them. She spotted Old Man Horgan among them, widower of the late town librarian Mrs. Horgan. He sported a cane and a vague look of confusion on his face, but otherwise he seemed all right, with an earnest young librarian and Matisse’s Woman Reading With Peaches for support.
She didn’t stop to say hello but smiled at him as Elvis pulled away from her, gaining on the Vermont Republic float, which was running about two blocks ahead of them. A posse of farmers steering bright green and yellow John Deere tractors, a contingent of sharp cadets clad in navy and white uniforms from a military school upstate, and the Old Vermont Fife and Drum Corps were the marchers separating them from the float.
No sign of Troy or Susie Bear yet. She hoped he’d gotten her text. The game warden had warned her against going it alone but she would have to if he didn’t show up soon. The Belgian shepherd shot through the tractors and the cadets, and Mercy struggled to keep up with him. She stumbled, dropping the leash. A cadet helped her to her feet, and she raced up past the fife and drum corps to join Elvis.
“Elvis!” Mercy panted and kept on running. She was almost there.
But the Malinois didn’t even slow down. He caught up to the Vermont Republic float, keeping pace alongside it.
And then Elvis soared.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
MERCY SAW THE SLEEK SHEPHERD SAIL after the moving target that was the Minuteman on the Vermont Republic float. He landed lightly on all four paws, barking like the hound of Hades.
The girl singer stopped singing. The fiddlers stopped fiddling. The music stopped and the girl screamed and the tall man turned. He dropped his haversack and hunting cartridge to the floor of the float, and raised his musket against the dog.
“No!” Mercy pumped her legs and her arms and lunged for the float. The flatbed hit her at the hip. She pulled herself up onto the platform, and still on all fours, threw herself forward towards the Minuteman’s legs, aiming to trip him. She stared up at the tall man as she clamped her fingers around his ankles. He tried to escape her grip, and his hat fell off, exposing his shaved head. She recognized him at once as the man Dr. Winters had called Max.
He pounded the musket butt on the floor of the float, just missing her hands with the first blow. Mercy let go and rolled away before the musket struck again.
“Get him,” she ordered.
Elvis tackled the guy, chomping down on his wrist as he’d been trained to do. Max cursed, dropping the rifle and wobbling toward the edge of the float, trying to shake off the dog and get away. But the ferocious shepherd hung on, forcing his perp to the floor.
Mercy kicked the musket away from Max, sending it flying right off of the float. The girl singer kept on screaming. The two fiddle players moved in to help Max, but thought better of it as Susie Bear bounded onto the float. She was barking, too, a low guttural bellowing Mercy had not heard before and that impressed her with its fierceness. It worked on the fiddle players, too, who backed off from the fight, edging to the far end of the float and leaving their friend to the dogs.
Troy heaved himself onto the float after his Newfie mutt, nodding at Mercy as he cornered the fiddlers.
“Don’t move, boys,” he said. “You can’t outrun her. She’s faster and meaner than she looks. Stay right where you are or you’ll end up like your friend here.”
Mercy saw Max struggling to sneak a cell phone from his pocket with his left hand. He got it out about halfway when she twisted his wrist, hard, and snatched the device from him. She didn’t know if he was using it as a detonator or not but she certainly wasn’t taking any chances.
“I’ve notified Thrasher,” Troy told her. “Backup is on the way.”
The float rumbled on past the grandstand. No one seemed to notice that the Green Mountain Boys weren’t playing anymore, maybe because everyone was much more interested in the pretty girls riding in the vintage Cadillacs in front of them. Behind them, the cadets marched on and the tractors chugged along and the Old Vermont Fife and Drum Corps struck up “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
Mercy kept her eye on Max and Elvis as two pairs of police officers flanked the float at the front and rear, walking alongside and i
nstructing the driver to make a right at the next intersection. They removed the barriers that flanked Main Street, diverted the onlookers, and then guided the float onto a side street, replacing the barriers as soon as it was clear of the crowd. All with an admirable minimum of fuss.
She called off Elvis and he sat by her, ears up, as the police officers arrested the tall man, who identified himself as Max Skinner from Provo, Utah.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he was telling the cops. “I’m an artist.”
She heard him ask for a lawyer as they took him off to the station.
Troy and Susie Bear joined Mercy and Elvis, and together they left the float, giving the bomb squad the room they needed to clear the vehicle.
They sat on a fence fronting a Victorian charmer housing a real estate office and watched as the rest of the band were escorted away for questioning. The dogs sat at their feet.
“The fiddlers are Paul and Louis Herbert,” Troy told her. “Wayne Herbert’s little brothers.”
“They’re wearing the same belt buckles as the one we found with the bones.”
“Yeah. You’d think they would have mentioned that when I talked to them. I wonder what their mother, Flo, will have to say about that.”
“Who’s the girl?”
“Sarah Lavery, a sous chef from Bennington. Not sure what she’s got to do with this yet.”
Together they watched as the bomb squad checked out the float, and found no evidence of explosives. Or of anything else criminal. The hunting cartridge that Skinner had carried was empty. The knapsack held a tambourine. And the canteen was filled with water.
“I don’t understand it,” said Mercy. “Elvis is a bomb-sniffing dog. He’s trained to alert to explosives. That’s what he does.”
“They didn’t find anything.”
“He alerted to PETN in the woods. Your own people confirmed that.”
“Yes, but not this time,” said Troy. “Maybe it was Skinner himself. If he was your intruder, Elvis may have alerted to him.”
“I know he alerted to something.”
“They would have found it.” Troy leaned in toward her. “You know Elvis has been all over the place lately. I knew a dog handler who used to say that his sniffer dog loved granola bars and would alert to them everywhere they went.”
“Elvis does not alert to granola.” She tossed her head, not caring that it still hurt like hell whenever she did that. “Look, can we go now?”
“You’ll have to make a statement.”
Mercy knew they were missing something. She was missing something. Time to go home with Elvis and have a good think, as her grandmother liked to say. And maybe some of her carrot cake.
“I really don’t feel up to hanging around the station for hours.” She touched her crown gently to underscore her meaning. “And it looks like rain.”
“Of course.” Troy stood up. “Stupid of me. You should be home in bed. Or whatever Patience thinks you should do. I’ll explain to the captain.”
“I don’t want to get you in trouble with Thrasher.” Mercy stood, too, and stared up at the storm clouds that had suddenly darkened the sky. “Or Harrington.”
“Don’t worry about it.” He offered her his arm and she took it. The dogs followed them as he led her along the side streets, avoiding the crowds, to his truck. He was so solicitous of her that she almost felt guilty.
“I am sorry,” she said. “This is not what I thought would happen.”
“I know.” Troy ushered them all into his vehicle just as the downpour began.
“I was so sure.” Mercy couldn’t understand how she could be so wrong. About the parade. About Elvis. About herself.
“You may have been wrong about the parade, but you aren’t wrong about the case.”
“You don’t have to say that.” She appreciated his good intentions, but the more understanding he was, the worse she felt.
“Something is going on here.” He switched the windshield wipers on high and pulled out onto the road, proceeding carefully as people rushed to their cars to get out of the rain. “We’ve got the dead bodies to prove it.”
“And a missing mother and child.”
“Yeah,” he said, maneuvering the big truck through the traffic that crowded the slick streets. Visibility was poor, even with the lampposts. “Still no word on them.” He looked over at her with concern. “But the evidence team did clean up that pendant. I’ll text you the images.”
“Okay.” She knew he was just trying to make her feel better. Not that it was working. “If I don’t figure it out soon, Amy and Helena may be the next…” She stopped. She couldn’t say it out loud.
“It’s not all on you. We’ll figure it out.”
“What about Harrington?”
“You let me worry about Harrington.”
They fell silent. Mercy stared at the rain slashing at the windows. “It just doesn’t add up,” she said finally. “Yet.”
Troy smiled. “You’re like a dog with a bone.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize,” he said, keeping his eyes on the road. Now that they were out of town, it was slow going as the deluge continued. “All the best cops are.”
She wasn’t a cop anymore and he knew it. But she appreciated the sentiment. She smiled back at him, then leaned her head back against the headrest and closed her eyes.
“Are you all right?”
“It’s been a long day.
“And night,” said Troy.
“I just want to go home.”
“Not to your grandmother’s?”
“Home.”
“She won’t like that.”
“Home.”
Elvis barked.
Troy laughed. “Home it is.”
If there was one thing Mercy hated, it was going home in defeat. But retreat was not always defeat.
So she’d retreat … for now.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
MERCY TEXTED HER GRANDMOTHER, and by the time Troy dropped them off at the cabin, Patience was waiting for her at the dining table. As the storm raged on, Patience listened to her sad story of humiliation and defeat at the Northshire Fourth of July “Arts of America” Parade with generous offerings of sympathy and red velvet cake. The dark red sheet cake was iced in white cream cheese frosting and decorated with blueberries and sliced strawberries to look like the American flag. Lovely and delicious and perfectly suited to the holiday. The next best thing to carrot cake.
“What are you going to do now?”
“I don’t know.”
“The proper answer would be ‘CT scan.’”
“Not in this weather.”
“They say the storm will be long gone by morning. It’s just going to last long enough to postpone all the fireworks until tomorrow night.”
“I’ll go tomorrow. Promise.”
“The swelling is down, and your vitals are good, but I’m still going to hold you to that. Better safe than sorry.”
“I feel good. Really. My pride may be hurting but my head is fine.”
Her grandmother watched her wolf down her painstakingly created dessert with those bright blue eyes. “Certainly your appetite is healthy enough. But you still need your rest.”
Mercy glanced over at Elvis, who was curled up on his side of the couch, snoring lightly, content after the good vet’s ministrations and an early dinner of steak and hash browns. “Elvis would obviously like the rest of the day off.”
“Why don’t you join him in a nap?”
She popped a blueberry into her mouth. “I won’t be able to sleep. Amy and Helena are out there somewhere.”
“The police will find them.”
“But maybe not in time. Harrington doesn’t think Amy’s in trouble, he thinks she killed Walker.”
“Then you’ll find them.”
Mercy wished she could channel her grandmother’s confidence in her. “My mind keeps circling back to some fleeting something just out of re
ach. The key to this whole business.”
Her grandmother poured her another glass of milk. “Drink up. You need your calcium.”
“And vitamin D.” Mercy grinned. She’d heard this before. “I got plenty of vitamin D at the parade this morning. A useless exercise, other than that.”
“Not really. Your grandfather used to say that eliminating possible solutions was as important as nailing the right one.”
Having finished off the cake on her own plate, Mercy plucked another blueberry off the sheet cake. “I eliminated one solution in high style today. Grandpa Red would be proud.”
Patience slapped her hand away from the cake playfully. “And now which are left to investigate?”
Mercy stared at her. She reached for her borrowed phone. “Troy said he was going to text me the photos of the pendant we found at the crime scene.”
“The magpie Munchkin.”
“Exactly. We think maybe the jeweler who made the belt buckles made this, too.”
“Why don’t you take a look while I clean up. But try not to think too hard. Give that pretty little red head of yours a break.”
“Thanks.” Mercy abandoned the table for the couch, giving the dozing Elvis a sweet scratch between the ears before settling on her side with the phone and her laptop. She pulled up the photos and looked at the maker’s mark on the pendant. She read off the letters and numbers that ran along the perimeter of the back of the piece: POM 925, followed by an image of a calla lily:
“What did you find?” Her grandmother stood behind her, looking over her shoulder.
She pointed to the symbols. “POM should be the designer’s initials; 925 means it’s sterling silver, that is, 92.5 percent pure silver. And the calla lily is probably the designer’s logo.”
“And you know this how?”
“Mom.” Mercy’s mother knew all there was to know about the finer things in life.
“Of course.” Patience laughed. “Who would believe that I would raise such a fashion plate?”
“I need to track down this artist.” The initials and the calla lily held the secret to the jeweler’s identity. Just as a jeweler’s stamp should.
