thirty-three

Merrit slogged her way toward Fox Cottage. She’d never owned galoshes—rather, wellies—until she moved to Ireland, and now she lived in them for half the year. Puddles squelched underfoot and a giant grey mass of rain hung overhead. She stomped a puddle hard enough to splash muddy brown goo on her leggings.

Life was complicated.

She still didn’t know what to make of Detective O’Neil—no, Simon—asking her out. On a date. And then there was the Easter festival. She jumped with both feet into another puddle. The wind caught the resulting mud spray and blew it back at her. She spit and sputtered, and swiped her hands down the front of her raincoat.

Merrit’s annoyance aside, the project had buoyed up Liam. He was resting in bed but in good spirits as he brainstormed ideas with Mrs. O’Brien. “You want something done in the village,” Liam had said, “you put her on the committee.”

And here Merrit thought she’d gotten rid of the woman for a while.

The wind blew off Merrit’s silly plastic rain hat and she trotted after it. She caught the hat midair and jammed it back on her head. A moment later she entered the cottage. The golden hue on the living room walls made a huge difference on such a dreary day. The kitchen, ditto, with its cheerful mint green. A quick check of the main bedroom showed a rumpled bed cover and no new paint yet. Good for Nathan and Annie, having it off, as the Irish say, on the sly. Gave the place a lived-in feeling that it sorely needed.

She walked around the cottage, noting missing baseboards. The back door stuck, too. She pulled hard to open it. It needed to be re-hung, but in the meantime she would buy the Irish equivalent of WD-40 to lubricate the hinges. The two wooden steps down to the ground were as springy as fresh mown grass. Add replacing them to the task list.

A makeshift shelter leaned against the back wall. According to Liam, Kevin had rigged it up a year ago for the neighbor’s sheep that jumped the drystone wall. She’d grown fond of the sheep since moving into Liam’s house. In particular, the two wall-jumpers amused her with their decidedly un-sheeplike behavior. She peered into the shelter. There they were, chewing cud and looking pretty content.

The smell of soggy wool and lanolin comforted Merrit as she scratched their foreheads. She pulled out some sliced apple that she’d brought with her in case they were about. They lifted the slices off her palms with their precision lips. A plastic tarp that Merrit didn’t recognize caught her attention. Slipping between the sheep, she stooped and peered under the tarp. Oh, but Nathan didn’t need to store his supplies out here. That was ridiculous. She scooted aside a paint roller and paused.

With a quick wrist flick, she shifted the tarp aside. The plastic crackle startled the sheep into trotting outside, leaving Merrit alone with a strange implement caked with red stains. She didn’t know what it was, but it looked suspiciously like a murder weapon.