In the Worst Way (Mercy Watts Mysteries Book 5)

by A W Hartoin

  “I will, but you probably won’t like it.”

  “Mercy!”

  I hung up on him. It felt great, but Tiny froze in fear. I looked him over. He seemed fine to me. What wound was I supposed to fix?

  “Did you just hang up on your dad?” he asked.

  “Had to be done.”

  “You’re gonna get me fired, girl.”

  I took his arm. “Never. You’re fine.”

  The Troublesome Trio walked up, glaring at me.

  “Where did you go?” asked Sorcha.

  “Where’s your shoe?” asked Bridget.

  “There’s blood on your shirt,” said Jilly.

  I’ll be damned. There was blood on my shirt. Sly Dog really nailed me with that branch. “I took a horseback ride. I needed to think.”

  “About people killing you?” asked Bridget.

  “I’m trying not to think about that,” I said.

  Jilly hooked her arm through my free one. “Yes. Let’s not talk about that. Let’s talk about Chuck. You still haven’t told me how he kisses.”

  Somebody shoot me. Anybody. Calling all Costillas.

  “It’s twenty minutes until dinner,” said Sorcha. “And they’re doing gourmet s’mores by the fire pit after. We’ll have plenty of time to talk about Chuck and the wedding.”

  Tiny laughed and I began to understand the builder of Cairngorms Castle. Tossing myself off the parapet was starting to sound like a viable option.

  Chapter Nine

  “CAN’T I JUST have a salad?” I asked Leslie as he seated us in the grand dining room.

  Leslie smiled, pulling out all the charm in his beautifully tailored navy suit. He was so elegant and stylish, you couldn’t stop staring at him. “What do you think?”

  “Yes,” I said, hopefully.

  “No. I have my orders.”

  “What about me?” asked Tiny.

  “Aaron has prepared a special menu just for you,” said Leslie.

  “Can I have that?” I asked. Tiny’s food was bound to be lettuce heavy.

  “No,” said Leslie. “Your menu is Northern Italian.”

  “So lots of rice and cheese.”

  “Correct.” Leslie turned as the MVP Grizzly parents came in, dressed like they were attending a business lunch. “Excuse me.”

  Leslie sat them near us and Robin applied a thick coat of lip gloss and immediately started texting, getting her many disapproving looks.

  Her husband, Tim, who did look like he swallowed a watermelon, reached over and pushed down the phone. “Stop worrying. Parker’s fine.”

  “Enrique doesn’t know where he is. Why doesn’t he answer?”

  Tim hid a smile, telling me he knew where his son was, but wasn’t telling the mom. Good dad. “He’s having fun. Lighten up.” He raised his glass and they toasted each other and the team. “To everything working out the way it’s meant to.”

  Then Nicole and the rest of the Vipers came in. Nicole wore a jersey wrap dress, but her hair hadn’t changed a bit. It was pretty in a helmet kind of way. Maybe she used Aqua Net. That’s what my mom used to achieve her enormous hair in high school. She kept a bottle in her bathroom for the sake of nostalgia. I tried it out once and my hair looked like yellow wire.

  Nicole and Cory nodded to me as they walked by and sat at a table close by. Leslie left the dining room and waiters filed in, carrying trays with thick wooden bowls filled with salad. Yes!

  “Is this balsamic dressing?” asked Sorcha.

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Shane, our waiter.

  “I love balsamic,” said Jilly.

  Apparently, everyone else did, too. The Grizzlies and the Vipers smiled and the chatter increased for a few minutes until the Lions came in. It was just Cherie and Anthony, hardly an intimidating pair, but they stopped everyone cold. Unlike everyone else, Cherie and Anthony hadn’t changed for the upscale dining room and remained in their travel clothes. Anthony straightened his shirt as glanced at the jackets and ties. Cherie’s face became defiant, but she hesitated when she saw Nicole and Cory of the Vipers staring at her with malice. Cory rubbed rubbed his crew cut and grimaced before finally looking away. Nicole never took her eyes off Cherie. She dug her nails into the tablecloth so hard that one of her jewels popped off and pinged against her husband’s wineglass.

  Cherie lifted her chin, took a breath and then smiled smugly at the Grizzlies. The dining room got very quiet. The Grizzlies cast puzzled glances at Cherie and the Vipers were visibly pissed, except for Bill. He took off his Cardinal’s cap and said loudly, “I heard that people get lost in the castle, but I haven’t yet. What about you all?”

  Robin brightened up at the distraction and leaned toward the Viper table. “Deanna keeps ending up in the distillery.”

  Tim snorted into his beer and patted his round belly. Robin elbowed him and shook her head, making her diamonds shimmer in the light as they bounced off her jaw.

  “Don’t you be so smug, Tim,” said Deanna as she directed a waiter to fill her wine glass to the brim. “You spend half the day at the pool.”

  “The pool?” asked Robin. “Are you taking up swimming again?”

  “No. I keep trying to go outside and somehow I’m at the indoor pool.”

  Bill raised an eyebrow at Tim. “Creepy. Isn’t that where one of the owners was murdered?”

  “He wasn’t murdered,” said Robin. “He did a speedball thing and drowned. It’s on the website. Leslie and John are very upfront about all the incidents that have happened here.”

  “What’s a speedball?” asked Tim before downing the rest of his beer.

  “A mixture of heroin and cocaine apparently.”

  Tim shifted uneasily in his chair. “You’d have to be completely bonkers to do something like that.”

  They went on to discuss the owner who put her head in an oven. Nobody was sure if it was completely voluntarily. Her husband wasn’t all that fond of her. There was a mistress who wandered off into the woods and was never seen again. That was pinned on the jealous wife. No conviction, only a divorce. Two owners, not one, jumped off the parapet and another got locked in one of the towers and nearly starved to death before anyone noticed he was missing. I was going to have to look at that website.

  The other Vipers weren’t listening to the tales of mysterious deaths. Nicole stabbed her lettuce and muttered to Cory, who rubbed his head every time his wife spoke to him. If no one thought Taylor Marin was a real contender for the prize, what was the big deal? Whatever the reason there was no more smiling, except at our table. Aaron was in rare form. My cousins were in raptures over the pesto, risotto, and creamy polenta. Tiny’s food didn’t look like diet food either. It was so beautiful, Sorcha kept stealing bites from him. I could’ve hugged Aaron. His food distracted Jilly from grilling me about Chuck.

  Instead, I got to people watch. Leslie in particular. He worked the room, a real pro, and his charm was infectious. He’d stop at a table and have them all happy in seconds, but it didn’t last. When he moved on, the baseball parents snapped back to uncomfortable.

  John never came into the dining room. He lurked in the shadows by a display of Japanese armor. I saw him and he knew I did. I had the distinct impression that he was there for me, counting my bites, of which there were few. I glanced up to see if he was still watching and saw the heavy armor fall over toward John. There was no reason for it to fall. It just did. The innkeeper kept his eyes on me and neatly stepped out of the way as if he expected it to happen. The bamboo and leather plates thumped on the thick carpet and the winged iron helmet rolled away, bumping into a potted palm. It made less noise than you’d think, but the dining staff froze, their eyes going wide with fright. John snapped his fingers and two waiters rushed over the set the armor upright. I gave John a questioning look and he answered me with a shrug. I wouldn’t get more than that. Armor? What armor?

  I turned my attention back to my plate and sighed. Why did there have to be so much? My technique of moving food around
on the plate fooled the waiter like it did Mom, but not Aaron. He kept coming out of the kitchen to check on me. I wouldn’t be surprised if he weighed my plate before and after. Let him. I was doing the best I could.

  After dinner, a two-hour affair, the Troublesome Trio extracted a promise from me that I would come right down to the fire pit after getting Pick from my room. They held on to the bag o’dogfood that Aaron had specially made for Pick, a hostage in case I decided to make another run for it. I wasn’t going to do that. Pick might poop in the Diane bedroom. Besides, Tiny got energized by Aaron’s food and was watching me, poised to run me down. For the first time, I thought he might be able to do it.

  I considered Fiking him anyway. I hated being accompanied everywhere like a toddler, just like Michael Fike, my dad’s first partner, who hated him enough to ditch him at every opportunity. It was safe to say that Fike didn’t consider my dad much of an asset. According to witnesses, Dad showed no signs of his future brilliance. He could belch the alphabet and drink a gallon of beer in one sitting. Tiny wasn’t like my dad and he was an asset. He had a sense of direction that was spot on. Not one wrong turn to our tower. He couldn’t explain how he did it and I couldn’t even remember how many turns we made. It was somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty. Tiny was like a giant homing pigeon and showed up at my door in an astonishingly short amount of time. I let myself in and found Pick spread out on my bed, snout on pillow. He was drooling. Yuck.

  “Come on, hair hound,” I said.

  He leapt to his feet and barked. His black fuzzy hair was standing on end and he seemed to have put on twenty pounds. He did not jump off the bed. Pick’s rule was never leave your cushion unless there’s food.

  “Food.”

  Then he jumped off and set about sniffing us. Finding no food, he gnawed on my leg while I put on his leash.

  “What’s he doing?” asked Tiny.

  “He has issues,” I said.

  “Dogs be weird. Aunt Willasteen’s dog only pees in her houseplants.” He pried Pick off my leg and we retraced our steps and went out to the fire pit. Three stone circles matching the castle sat to the left of the formal gardens. Adirondack chairs, piled with cushions and lap blankets, surrounded them. Sorcha, Bridget, and Jilly were there already and they had the bride book. I’d been hearing about it all day. It was a thick binder with every dream Bridget had for her wedding. By the look of it, she had plenty of dreams.

  “I have a date,” I said, checking my phone for the time. Quarter to nine.

  “A date?” Tiny frowned at me. This date was clearly not on the schedule. “With who?”

  “The head of the baseball camp, Oliver Jakes.”

  “Aren’t you in love with your cousin?”

  I stopped short. “First of all, he’s not my cousin by blood. Second, I don’t know what I am to him anymore.”

  “I can see that.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “It means you don’t know which end is up.”

  That sounded about right, but I still didn’t like it.

  “I’ll give you a hundred bucks to distract the Troublesome Trio so I can book it out of here.”

  Tiny crossed his big arms. “You really got a date?”

  John appeared at my shoulder. “Yes, she does.”

  I jumped and bumped into Tiny. “What the… How did you know?”

  “He’s cleared,” said John.

  “For what?” asked Tiny.

  “For Mercy.”

  “You sure?”

  John held Tiny’s gaze until Tiny nodded. “I’ll take the dog.”

  I looked at my cousins bent over the book, poised to talk wedding for the next three hours. “What are you going to tell them?”

  Tiny shrugged.

  “Mercy has diarrhea,” said John, just as blank as ever.

  Tiny grinned at me. “Yeah, yeah. She has to wash out her drawers.”

  “Oh my god,” I said. “Do not say that.”

  John nodded. “And clean up the bathroom floor.”

  “That would take some time,” said Tiny.

  “It’s down in the grout,” said John.

  “It was explosive like Ebola diarrhea.”

  “Are you sure you’re not a Watts? You sound like a Watts,” I said. “Do not say that!”

  Tiny tapped his chin. “Maybe you got it on the stairs.”

  I slugged his shoulder. “Can you hear me? Do not say that!”

  “You want to go on that date or not?” asked Tiny between guffaws.

  Not really. But it’s better than wedding talk.

  “Yes.”

  “You got a better idea?”

  “Anything’s better than that,” I said.

  “Anything that would keep them from demanding your presence anytime soon?” asked John.

  “Um…”

  “That’s our story then,” said Tiny, taking Pick’s leash and walking off to the fire pits.

  John turned me around and took me back into the castle. “They’ll see you if you go that way.”

  “You know that story’s going to get around,” I said.

  “I have no objection.”

  “Nice.”

  John walked through the castle, passing through the armory with decorative displays of deadly weapons covering the walls and going out a door hidden in the heavy oak paneling. I took a deep breath of the clean country air and tried to get my bearings. As it turned out, I had no bearings to begin with. “Where are we?”

  John pointed at a flagstone path lit by tiny flickering lights in the grass. “Follow the path around the castle to the carriage house. Oliver has finished his evening seminar with the players. He’s waiting for you.”

  The path led away into the darkness and my chest tightened up. Dad’s warnings about the Costillas rang in my ears and a chill went down my back. Me. In the dark. With a price on my head. Perhaps not a great idea.

  “Maybe we should call Oliver and have—” I turned to John and he’d vanished. “You’ve got to be kidding me.” I searched the wall. The door was there. I’d just come through it, but there wasn’t a handle or a button or any sign that it was there. Crap.

  There was a soft rustling over my head. I looked up at the parapet, lit by the gleaming moon, and saw a thin shadow against one of the towers. I swallowed hard. It was fine. John put me out here and Dad trusted John. You could count the number of people Dad trusted on two hands and a couple of them were dead. John must be okay. Better than okay. It was fine. Of course it was.

  “Hello!” I called up at the shadow.

  No response.

  “I can see you there!”

  Nothing.

  Okay. Time to go. I darted away down the path. Once I was at the edge of the other tower, I looked back up at the parapet. He was still there, but he’d moved to my tower, his identity hidden by its shadow. I turned and ran down the path. It took a winding, inefficient way, looping out into the woods. I wasn’t happy about that, but I dared not leave the path.

  I slowed down when the parapet was obscured by the trees and spotted a light up ahead to the right. The path split. Great John. Thanks. The right went to the light and the left back in the direction of the castle. I went with the left.

  My sandals made no sound on the flagstones so they didn’t compete with the voices that echoed through the trees from the direction of the light. Voices raised in anger. Fast and furious so as to be indistinguishable from each other. My path curved sharply to the left and I was even with the light, which turned out to be a wide arched doorway in what looked like an adobe mound.

  In the gloom, I could make out a thin pillar of smoke drifting out of a hole in the roof. There was a sweat lodge appointment on my schedule. That must be it. The scene was singularly peaceful, except for the angry words erupting from the golden glow in the doorway. Figures walked back and forth, momentarily blocking the light. A man and a woman from their sizes.

  The woman stepped into the doorway and yelled, “You l
isten to me, you son of a bitch. You—” She turned to look out toward me. Cherie, the mom from the Lions, squinted into the darkness and I froze. “Is somebody there?”

  I sucked in my lips. I wasn’t about to reveal myself. Cherie hesitated and then turned away. When she did, I continued down the path, glancing back to see if they’d come out. They hadn’t, but the whole thing gave me an uneasy feeling. Not like one of Dad’s famous feelings. He was known for having a sense that something wasn’t right. But this wasn’t like that. It was more heavy and foreboding. I kept waiting for a gunshot or a scream to ring out behind me, but the woods were silent with only the frogs singing in the darkness.

  After a few more turns, the carriage house appeared in front of me. I almost ran to it, my relief was so great. I’m proud to say I controlled myself and walked up to the open center door where a guy wearing a track suit stood smoking a cigarette. The red tip lit up the darkness with each deep breath and he smiled at my approach. “I thought Oliver was shitting me,” he said after a last puff.

  “About what?” I asked.

  “A date with you, Miss Marilyn herself.”

  “The name’s Mercy, not Marilyn.”

  He put up his hands in surrender. “Sorry. I’ll get him.”

  A few minutes later, Oliver came out. He wore a pressed white polo and slim-fitting jeans. The effect was excellent. Unfortunately, it only reminded me of Chuck. Nobody wore jeans like Chuck.

  “They’re having s’mores up at the fire pits. I thought we’d go up there,” said Oliver.

  “Well…um…I”

  “There’s not really anything else to do around here at night.”

  I racked my brain for another idea and came up empty. Oliver held out his hand and I forced myself to take it. I was on a date. Dammit. How did this happen? I’d have to tell Chuck at some point, although I didn’t know why. He’d taken off, not me. We had no understanding. I didn’t know if we had anything anymore at all.

  Oliver squeezed my hand and insisted on introducing me to his staff, a bunch of rugged retired pro players. They were polite about staring at me. The boys weren’t so much. Oliver introduced me to all the players. He began with the Grizzlies and I wondered if that meant something. Enrique was the front runner for the prize, according to pretty much everyone. He was there with the rest of his team. He had a shy smile and firm handshake. Enrique didn’t look much like a star athlete being small and wiry, but in his eyes was a solemn determination. His two brothers, Parker and Kellan, were both big blonds that resembled Robin, the woman from the mud baths, but they had their father’s hair. Enrique must’ve been adopted. He didn’t resemble anyone. Robin’s boys and the rest of the team were extremely polite. Their eyes flicking to Oliver to check his responses to their behavior.