IT WAS AFTER SEVEN O’CLOCK when Troy dropped Mercy and Elvis off at the cabin. Her grandmother’s convertible was still parked there at the side of the house.
He and Susie Bear insisted on walking them to the door.
“We’re fine,” she told him.
“Elvis was great.” Troy smiled at her. “You, too.”
“It was a team effort.” She patted the shepherd with one hand and the Newfie mutt with the other. “You’re a pretty good shot.”
“Look who’s talking.”
Troy laughed, and Mercy was reminded again that he had a nice laugh.
“I loved the way Elvis took down Wayne Herbert,” he said.
“And don’t forget Max Skinner at the parade.”
“Another great leap for canine kind.” Troy grinned as he joined Mercy in spoiling the dogs with affection, scratching and rubbing and patting their ears, their tummies, that sweet spot just north of their tails. “It’s been quite the Fourth of July.”
“That it has.”
He straightened up, and she followed suit. They stood there for a moment, looking at each other. Troy’s short sandy-brown hair had fallen across his forehead, and without thinking she reached up to brush it back. He caught her hand and held it tenderly in his own warm palm.
It felt good. Way too good. She thought about asking him in but decided against it. They still had work to do. She gently pulled her hand out of his grasp and looked down at the shepherd beside her. “I am proud of Elvis. He was solid.”
“Solid as a rock.”
She rolled her eyes at him, and he laughed again.
“Seriously,” said Troy. “He’s cured of whatever ailed him.”
Mercy nodded, too moved to speak. She’d fulfilled her promise to Martinez. She’d found his dog and adopted him and taken care of him until he was his old self again. Mission accomplished.
“Get some rest.”
“We need to find Amy and the baby.”
“You’ve done enough for one day.” Troy nodded at Elvis. “You both have.”
“But they’re in trouble.”
“Relax. Everyone’s on it. Local PD, the sheriff’s office, the staties, us. Even Harrington.”
“They don’t know where to look.”
“And you do?” He shook his head. “Have you been holding out on me?”
“No.” She frowned. “I don’t know where they are, but I feel like I should know.”
“Of course you do.” Troy’s voice was serious and quiet now. “And if anyone can figure it out, you can. Sleep on it.”
“Okay,” she said, knowing that was what he wanted to hear. “Good night.”
“Good night.”
She and Elvis watched Troy and Susie Bear go back to the truck. She felt bad that it was scratched up a bit, even if it did still drive fine. But she knew he’d want it back the way it was. Men were very sentimental about their trucks.
She watched as he backed his vehicle down her long driveway, remembering the feel of her hand in his. A kind heart he hath …
“Get a grip,” she said aloud, and Elvis nudged her hand with a cold nose. She rubbed his dark muzzle. “I know, I know. I’m not fourteen anymore.”
Elvis whined, leaning forward. He wanted to follow his friends in the truck.
“Easy, boy,” she said as the Ford F-150 disappeared from view. “Come on. It’s been a long day.”
Mercy led the dog inside, and he settled onto the couch. He dozed while she took a shower and poured herself a glass of wine. She whipped up some ham and eggs and shared them with the hungry shepherd.
“We did good,” she told him, scratching his handsome head. He licked her hand and trotted back to the sofa, settling onto his side with the teal quilt. He was snoring within minutes. No sign of nightmares now.
She should be sleeping, too. But she was restless. There was still no word of Amy and Helena, and Skinner insisted he didn’t know where the young mother and her baby were.
He admitted to shooting at Elvis and ransacking the cabin, looking for the security key to the Nemeton estate, just like she’d thought. He also insisted that he didn’t kill Adam Wolfe, whom he described as his “comrade in arms.” But the Herbert brothers said Skinner was responsible for killing the artist and Don Walker.
Nobody seemed to know whose bones were buried in the woods. Based on the belt buckle and the broken femur and Flo Herbert’s grief, they’d assumed that the vic was Wayne Herbert, but they were still waiting for the DNA tests to confirm that. Now who knew what the tests would reveal, and it would take weeks, Troy had told her. With any luck, they’d know more then.
Mercy was tired just thinking about it. So much about the past five days still didn’t make any sense.
She sipped her Big Barn Red and wandered around the house in her pajamas, glass in hand, too restless to sit. She went to her bookshelves and stared at the spines of her beloved collection of Shakespeare and company. She pulled out the limited edition of A Midsummer’s Night Dream that she’d shown Amy.
“I should have given it to her,” she told Elvis, who snored on, ignoring her, as he always did when she talked Shakespeare.
Still thinking of the teenager, she replaced the book, thinking of that morning she’d met Amy and her conversation with her. She remembered that Amy, who’d named her baby after Helena in the Bard’s most popular comedy, had been reading Othello—a far darker reflection of “Love is blind” than A Midsummer’s Night Dream.
She found the slim volume of Othello on the shelf. When she held the paperback in her open palms, the book fell open to Act III, Scene IV.
Someone had folded down the corner of the page of the scene in which Emilia speaks to Desdemona about the nature of jealousy. The ink was smudged over the words But jealous souls will not be answered so; / They are not ever jealous for the cause, / But jealous for they are jealous: ’tis a monster / Begot upon itself, born on itself.
Mercy used bookmarks. She would never fold the corners of any pages of any of her books. As the book collector she was, she considered it a sacrilege. Just like Feinberg must feel about thieves who cut canvases out of frames and rolled them up to steal them.
Poor Amy was not an art thief, she was just a kid under a lot of stress who marked the pages of paperbacks by folding down the corners like most of the rest of the readers in the world liked to do. Which was why Mercy rarely loaned out her books.
It was obviously Amy who had marked this page and fingered Emilia’s speech about the terrible curse that is jealousy. The distraught girl could have been drawn to this passage because of her boyfriend’s possessiveness of her. Stage-five clinger.
But possessiveness was not the same thing as the sexual jealousy that drove people to murder. Amy had insisted all along that Adam was not a violent person.
If that was true—and so far it appeared to be—then maybe Amy’s marking the passage was not a reference to him, but to one of his art groupies who hated her. An unhappy ex.
Like Dr. Winters.
She shut the book. Amy had never mentioned the professor specifically, but then, she hadn’t appeared to take any of her boyfriend’s former paramours seriously. And she was young enough that she probably dismissed any rival over thirty out of hand.
But Dr. Winters was not the sort of woman you should dismiss out of hand, Mercy thought. Amy was just too naïve to know that. And as far as Mercy knew, the professor was the only one of those groupies who was still hanging around the compound. She’d gone right there after Mercy and Troy paid her that little visit to question her about Adam Wolfe. And odds were she was still there when Mercy talked to the bird-watcher, aka Adam, about Amy and the baby. Still there when Mercy got hit in the head. Still there when Adam died.
The professor had the means and the opportunity to kill him.
And the motive. Maybe she wasn’t over Adam Wolfe, after all. Maybe all of the merger-and-acquisitions attorneys in the world couldn’t make up for the genius who enshrined you in art. Maybe she was the Othello to Wolfe’s Desdemona. Or the Iago to his Othello. Either way, Amy was the Desdemona in this scenario, and that meant things could go very badly for her. And the baby.
If Mercy was right—and she knew she was—then they didn’t have much time. Dr. Winters was supposedly on her way to the south of France. So she’d need to get rid of Amy and Helena before she left.
Mercy swapped her pajamas for her usual uniform of T-shirt, cargo pants, and hoodie, and pulled her hiking boots on over thick cotton socks.
“Come on, Elvis.”
The shepherd jounced up, ready to go.
* * *
THIRTY MINUTES LATER she pulled the little red convertible onto the street where Dr. Winters lived in Bennington. She’d texted Troy, but she hadn’t heard back from him yet. She was on her own, no gun and no vest.
But she did have Elvis.
Mercy stared up at the intimidating Victorian pile that the professor called home. The painted lady was dark tonight. Only the nineteenth-century lampposts framing the walk up to the house were lit. The sun was setting now and the place was falling into a deep gloom.
She and Elvis cased the property, but there was no vehicle in the detached garage out back and no sign of life in the house. She banged the angry-gargoyle knocker, but no one came to the door.
She considered picking the locks and taking a look inside, but she really didn’t think the professor was there. This afternoon she’d been leaving the gala reception with the mergers-and-acquisitions attorney for what looked like a little merger of her own. She could still be negotiating her next acquisition, as the night was young. And this was still the Fourth of July weekend. The fireworks were just beginning.
But Mercy didn’t believe that’s what the professor was doing. She texted Troy again, and this time he called her back right away.
“What are you doing?” He sounded angry or frustrated or both.
“I’m at Dr. Winters’s house.”
“You’re supposed to be at home. I promised Patience you would rest tonight. You promised Patience you’d rest tonight.”
That was true. The only reason Patience hadn’t come right over after hearing about the excitement at Feinberg’s estate was because Mercy had abandoned her at the gala and run off in her car. Her grandmother said she’d get a ride home but not before exacting a promise that Mercy would go to bed and stay there. “I know, but this is important.”
“What do you think you’re going to find?”
“Nothing here. The professor’s gone.”
“She’s probably out recreating. It’s a holiday, remember?”
“I think she knows where Amy and Helena are.”
“Why would she know that?”
“Othello.” She knew this was not an answer he’d like.
“What’s Othello got to do with it?” From the tone of his voice, he didn’t like it one bit.
He was going to like her explanation even less. She told him about finding the book and the quote. “She’s jealous of Amy and the baby. I think they’re in danger.”
“I’m not sure that makes any sense.”
“Think about it. She was probably still there at the compound when Adam was murdered and I was left for dead and Amy and Helena were last seen.”
“True.”
“I was wrong about her. She still loved Adam Wolfe. He dumped her for Amy, swapped her out for a younger Muse. That must have infuriated her.”
“I can see that. But you’ve done enough for one day. Let me call it in.”
“Harrington won’t do anything about it. He’ll say it’s another wild-goose chase. And by the time you convince him otherwise, it could be too late. Remember the south of France.”
Troy sighed. “She does have a lake house on Lake St. Catherine, and anyone with a lake house spends the Fourth of July weekend there.”
Lake St. Catherine was a lovely lake about an hour north of Bennington in the Lakes Region of Rutland County. The popular destination bordered Lake St. Catherine State Park, and vacation cottages and four-season houses dotted its shores. This time of year the lake attracted summer people and year-round residents alike for its swimming and boating and fishing and every other kind of summer fun. But even with all this activity, Mercy knew that many of the houses there were surrounded by trees and somewhat secluded.
“Not a bad place to hide a young mother and a baby,” she said. “We need to go now.”
“I’ll meet you there. Don’t do anything on your own. Wait for me.”
“Over and out.”
Troy texted her the address, along with another admonition to wait for him.
“Come on, boy,” she said to Elvis. “Let’s go to the lake.”
The shepherd licked her face, and she laughed.
They got back into the convertible and headed for the professor’s house on Osprey Point Road. She punched the address into the GPS. An hour and ten minutes.
But if she drove this little sports car as fast as her grandmother did, she might make it there in under an hour.
* * *
THE WOMAN WAS infuriating. Troy stared at his cell phone. She hadn’t answered that last text he’d sent, which meant if she got there before he did, odds were she’d barge right ahead without him. Because she was stubborn and headstrong and reckless.
But she’d been right about practically everything so far.
Thrasher told him that Max Skinner still wasn’t talking, and the Herbert brothers had finally shut up. But they all insisted that they didn’t know anything about Amy and Helena. The captain thought the girl had just skipped town with her baby.
But Mercy didn’t believe that, and neither did Troy.
He and Susie Bear were up at Branch Pond. It would take them about an hour to get to Lake St. Catherine.
If he drove fast enough, maybe he’d get there first.