SUMMER 2000
Beautiful women kept you waiting with a clear conscience because they really believed that the party didn’t start until they got there. Ruby was one of those women, Beth thought, as she waited for her friend in the ornate if faded lobby of the Two Rivers Theater. Ruby was in the ladies’ room, freshening up her face, as she called it. Ruby was always freshening up her face.
Beth only used makeup to hide the bruises. She glanced at her watch. It was getting late. If she didn’t get home before Thomas, she might have more black-and-blue to cover.
Ruby sauntered into the lobby as if she owned the place. Beth envied that confidence. She wondered what it would be like to go through the world believing it was your oyster.
“I’ve got to get back.”
“No, you don’t.” Ruby smiled the Las Vegas smile that had seduced half the men in Lamoille County. “You’ve got to get out. You and me both.”
“Where would we go?”
“Anywhere but Vermont. If we don’t get out of here, I’m going to die of boredom and you’re going to die, period.”
* * *
THOMAS KILGORE WATCHED the two women from behind the popcorn stand on the other side of the lobby, where they couldn’t see him. They were about the same size, but his wife seemed much smaller. Bethie was a mouse of a girl, afraid of her own shadow. Even more afraid of his.
Her friend didn’t look afraid of anything. She was the kind of woman who was bound to get a guy in trouble sooner or later. The kind of woman his wife had no business hanging out with. She was waving her arms around as she talked to Bethie—and Bethie was listening closely to her, her dark eyes peeping out from under her long bangs. The bangs she’d grown to cover that jagged little scar over her left brow.
Bethie’s friend was up to no good. He was right to have followed them. And he’d keep on following them, until he knew what was going on—and what needed to be done.
CHAPTER ONE
Some people take their secrets with them to the grave. Others leave them behind on their deathbeds, riddles for the survivors to solve. Mercy Carr suspected that August Pitts was one of the latter. She stood in the neat living room of his farmhouse, at the foot of the portable hospital bed on which he lay dying. She knew he was dying by the way her Belgian shepherd, Elvis, the smartest dog in the world, huddled with the old man’s golden retriever, Sunny. Both of their noses pointed through the metal bars onto Pitts’ bony hip. One dark muzzle and one yellow muzzle, side by side, shiny black noses stark against the white cotton sheets.
Pitts raised a mottled hand to pet them. The effort was great, and his arm fell limply back toward the bed, catching on the dogs’ ears. Elvis and Sunny licked his knobbled fingers.
He smiled. But even that small gesture seemed too much for him. His weary face tightened against the pain, and the lines crisscrossing his face deepened. He closed his eyes.
She hoped to hell that was a morphine drip in his arm.
“He does that a lot.” Pitts’ sister Eveline stepped up to join Mercy. The heavy-limbed woman wore too-tight yoga clothes and a smile to match. “The painkillers, you know.”
“Will he wake up again soon?”
“Hard to tell. Not usually.” Eveline lowered her voice to a stage whisper. “He’s not long for this world. Every breath could be his last.”
Pitts was in the late stages of cancer; Eveline had told her as much when she called to ask her to come up to Lamoille County to see him. “It’s his dying wish,” she’d said.
Pitts was her Grandpa Red’s last partner. Her grandfather was the sheriff, and Pitts his deputy, when he’d died in an arrest gone wrong when Mercy was nine years old. She still missed him.
“We’ll wait awhile,” she told Eveline.
“Suit yourself.” Eveline pointed to a worn brown vinyl recliner in the corner. “Make yourself at home.” She stomped off to the kitchen nook at the far side of the great room and busied herself at the sink.
Mercy settled into the old recliner and tried not to sweat. The farmhouse was as warm as a hothouse, its noisy old furnace obviously working overtime to keep the cold gales of early March at bay. Elvis and Sunny panted as they continued their watch at the old man’s bedside. Both dogs would need water before long.
Her grandmother Patience had warned her against this trip.
“Nothing good ever came of your grandfather’s association with that man and nothing good will come of yours, either.” Pitts was late to work the day her husband died, and Patience believed the deputy’s absence contributed to his death. She had never forgiven him, and her dislike of the man only intensified over the years.
“He says he needs to see me. For Grandpa Red’s sake.”
“He’s unreliable and untrustworthy. You can’t believe a word he says.”
“I’ll hear him out. It may be nothing.”
“You just want to get out of Dodge. To avoid running into a certain game warden.”
It was true that she’d had a falling out with Troy Warner a few months ago, but that had nothing to do with this. This she had to do for her grandfather.
“Out of the frying pan into the fire,” her grandmother said when she realized there was no talking Mercy out of heading north to Lamoille County.
But as she sat there watching August Pitts, his breath shallow and his lips moving in his fitful sleep, she could see no fire. No fire at all. Only the cool specter of death, hovering over the old man as he slept. His death’s upon him, as Shakespeare would say.
“He left those for you.” Eveline was back, a kitchen towel tossed over her shoulder. She pointed to a stack of dilapidated cardboard file boxes stacked in the corner next to an old brown crock filled with fishing poles and hockey sticks. “Something to do with Sheriff O’Sullivan. He wanted you to have them.”
Deputy Pitts opened his eyes, staring at Mercy. He grabbed the bed rails and pulled himself up, his watery blue eyes still on her.
Eveline rushed forward, grabbing the remote and pressing the button to raise the head of the bed. “You know you’re supposed to use the control, August.”
Pitts ignored his sister. He leaned forward, and started to speak, his voice weak with pain. Mercy left the recliner, squeezing between Elvis and Sunny at the edge of the bed.
“Find the girl,” he whispered.
“What girl?”
He fell back against the pillows, wheezing.
“That’s enough,” said Eveline, pushing Mercy aside and stepping on Sunny’s paw in the process. The retriever yelped.
“Sorry, dog,” Eveline said.
You don’t sound sorry, thought Mercy. As if to confirm her suspicion, Elvis growled.
Eveline ignored the shepherd. “He’s upset. Talking about that girl always upsets him.” She put down the remote and picked up a glass of water from the table next to the bed and placed the rim up against her brother’s lips. “Drink, August.”
“I don’t know anything about any girl,” said Mercy.
The old man jerked his head away from the glass, spitting water at his sister.
“Great,” said Eveline crossly. She used the kitchen towel to wipe the spittle from her face and then her brother’s. He whined a bit under her rough ministrations. “That’s enough out of you.” She turned to Mercy. “You need to go now. Take those boxes with you.”
“Sure.” She told Elvis to stay and spent the next several minutes loading the boxes—all labeled BETH KILGORE—into the back of her Jeep. Pitts watched her from his bed, but he didn’t say anything, maybe because his sister was standing guard, her arms crossed and her lips pursed.
“I think that’s all of them,” said Mercy. “Do you think we could come back and visit again?” She knew she’d have questions about what was in those boxes.
Eveline shrugged. “If he’s still alive.”
Mercy glanced over at the old man, and was relieved to see he appeared to have nodded off again. She pulled a card from a pocket of her cargo pants and handed it to Eveline. “Please keep me informed of his condition.”
“Hold on a minute.” Eveline disappeared down the hallway. As soon as she was out of sight, Pitts spoke, startling Mercy.
“Save my dog,” he said, his eyes still shut.
“What?” She wasn’t sure that she’d heard the old man right.
“Find Beth for Red,” he wheezed. “Save Sunny for me.”
At the sound of his sister’s footsteps he fell silent again, appearing even closer to death than he had before.
Eveline handed Mercy a sheet of paper with a photo of a much younger August Pitts with a full head of strawberry-blond hair, and a headline that read “Obituary.” At her dismayed look, Eveline frowned. “The paper said to have it ready. The information about the memorial service is all there. All I have to do is add the date when the time comes.”
Copyright © 2021 by Paula Munier
