What greater thing is there for two human souls, than to feel that they are joined for life…?
—GEORGE ELIOT
The morning of the wedding Mercy rose early and took a long, hot bath rather than her usual shower, in a hopeful ploy designed to protect the smooth helmet of hair Kelly had sprayed into submission yesterday—a ploy most likely to fail. She put on enough makeup to please her mother and slipped on her bridesmaid dress, a simple sleeveless mauve satin tea-length dress with a V-neck, twirly skirt, and side pockets. The best part of it was the pockets.
“You look great.” Troy offered to zip her up, and she let him.
“Thanks.” She could move her fingers a tiny bit more this morning, but mobility remained limited. And lifting her wrist was still something she could not do. She was grateful for the progress, however slight, and knew she needed to be patient. But it wasn’t easy.
“Aren’t you getting ready a little early? The wedding’s not until this afternoon.”
“Grace wants to take the wedding party photos this morning out at Eshqua Bog, while the weather is still good. It’s supposed to rain later today.”
“Are we talking about the dreaded plan B?”
“I’m afraid so.” She smiled. “If we leave now, we can make it to Annie’s farm and back before the photo shoot.”
“What?”
“We’ve got two hours before the trolley leaves for the bog.” Mercy checked her watch. “But we have to go now.”
“Your mother will freak out.”
“She’s so busy she won’t even notice.”
“Your mother notices everything.”
Mercy had promised Patience that she wouldn’t miss another minute of the wedding weekend, and she wouldn’t. “Nothing is happening right now. Everyone’s just eating breakfast and hanging out.”
“Sounds like a good plan to me.”
“Maybe later. Annie’s already back at the farm with her new guard dog Myrtle. I need to talk to her. And I want to go over it all again. Bodhi, Kinney, everything.
“We’ve been through this,” said Troy.
“Kinney is connected to those guys somehow. No matter what my uncle says.”
“Agreed.”
“What do Bodhi and Kinney have in common?”
“Both special ops guys. Same tattoos. Both liars.” Troy frowned. “Not to talk ill of the dead.”
“Poor Kinney.”
“What am I missing?”
“They both like baseball caps.”
“Lots of guys like baseball caps.”
“Not baseball caps from minor league teams. Bodhi had lots of baseball caps stacked in his closet. I didn’t notice if they were team caps or not but Annie said that Bodhi loved going to ball games, the Red Sox but also the Vermont Lake Monsters and the New Hampshire Fisher Cats. I’d bet money at least a few of those caps in his collection were from minor league teams. And the guy in the goat cam video was wearing a baseball cap.”
“I don’t know. Seems like a stretch.”
Mercy knew from experience that when she had one of these compulsions, she should indulge them. It was as if her subconscious was trying to tell her something and the only way to get at it was to follow her hunches.
Even on her grandmother’s wedding day.
“Okay.” Troy clapped his hands, and the dogs came running. “Who wants to go for a ride?”
Mercy, Troy, and the dogs went out the back exit before anyone—namely her mother—could stop them. With Troy driving The Beast, they were lumbering over Lovers’ Bridge in record time. As they pulled into the drive leading to the Meeting House Creamery, she spotted Myrtle and the goats in one of the nearby pastures. The Great Pyr ran along the fence after them, white fur flying. On task, she barked unrelentingly—and Elvis and Susie Bear answered in kind.
They left the dogs in the truck until they could be properly introduced to Myrtle. Two dogs were a friendship, three dogs were a pack with a pecking order. Establishing that pecking order among these three independent-minded canines would be a process, and that process would go more smoothly when Annie was around.
“No sign of the Crime Scene Search Team,” said Troy.
“They must have finished up and moved on.” Mercy was grateful for that, because she didn’t want to explain to Purdie et al. what she and Troy were doing there.
Annie must have heard the ruckus, because she came out of the creamery wiping her hands on her “Chief Cheesemonger” apron. She looked relaxed and happy and very glad to be home. She gave Mercy and Troy each a hug and then stepped back. “You look nice. But what are you doing here? Aren’t you putting on a wedding today?”
“We just wanted to check on a couple of things,” said Mercy. “How’s Myrtle settling in?”
“She’s awesome.” Annie smiled. “She’s already befriended Cookie and so now the rest of the herd accepts her, too.”
“And you?”
“See for yourself.” She paused, then yelled, “Come, Myrtle!”
The powerful dog easily scaled the four-foot woven-wire fence, and the lower stone wall as well.
“Nice jump,” said Troy admiringly.
“She doesn’t act much like a senior,” said Annie. “We’re two of a kind.”
Myrtle pranced toward them, white coat shimmering. She raised her head for a pat, first from Annie, then from Mercy and Troy in turn.
Elvis and Susie Bear barked from inside the truck.
“Let them out,” said Annie. “She needs to make friends.”
Sometimes the best way to introduce dogs was just to throw them all together in the yard.
Troy let Susie Bear and Elvis out of the truck. The shepherd came to Mercy, nose at her hip. Susie Bear shuffled up to Myrtle and they exchanged some sniffs and snorts and snuffles, then took off up the drive past the cottage. Elvis perked his ears.
“Go ahead,” Mercy told him—and off he went after his canine companions.
They watched the dogs disappear around the barn.
“What do you know about Toussaint Inc.?”
“The dairy giant?”
“Owned by the Renault family.”
“Right.” Annie gave her a sharp look. “I wondered when you’d ask me.”
“You knew Claude was one of those Renaults?”
She nodded, pigtails bouncing. “I recognized Philippe Renault at the inn. That’s quite a family your grandmother is marrying into.”
“What do you know about them?”
“Toussaint Inc. is the Kraft of Canada. Philippe is the King of Bad Cheese. If you can call it cheese at all.”
“I don’t,” said Mercy.
Annie nodded approvingly. “Once people try the good stuff, they never go back.” She frowned. “The Krafts and Toussaints of the world flood the market with inedible product. Legitimate cheese- mongers hate those companies and the sharks who run them.”
“Sharks?”
“The founders Toussaint and Gianna came from fine cheese- making families. But Philippe’s father Gaston was more interested in making good money than making good cheese. He bought up a lot of small dairy producers, here and in Canada. And what he couldn’t buy, he stole.”
“Stole?”
“Unfair business practices. Ran his competitors into the ground. And then snapped them up cheap.” Annie looked out over the pasture where her beloved goats were grazing. “That’s why I built my business completely off the grid. Off the grid, off the banks, off the radar.”
“And now?”
“Philippe is the worst. His father was unethical, but he’s criminal. I have a friend who started out making cheddar around the same time I started making chèvre. He expanded too quickly and was on the verge of bankruptcy. Final blow came when someone cleaned out his warehouse. They never recovered the stolen cheddar, and insurance wouldn’t cover it. Guess who bought him out of fore- closure?”
“Philippe?”
“Yeah. And my friend wasn’t the only one. Huge black market for cheese, you know.”
“What happened to him?”
“He’s working for Toussaint Inc. now. Making crap cheese.” Annie crossed her arms. “Cautionary tale.”
“I’m sorry.”
“What goes around comes around.” Annie smiled. “They say Philippe’s in too deep now and will have to sell out to save his skin. I hope he gets what’s coming to him.” She looked at Mercy. “By the way, there are fifty rounds of cheese missing from the cellar where they found poor Kinney. I told Purdie.”
“Good move,” said Troy.
She leaned toward Mercy. “I don’t imagine Philippe Renault stole it. But he is bad news. Warn your grandmother to stay away from that side of the family.”
“Will do.” At least I’ll try, thought Mercy. Again.
“You didn’t come all this way on the day of the wedding to talk about cheese.”
“No. I’d like to take another look at that goat cam.”
“Sure. The laptop is upstairs by the sofa. You go on in. I’ll hang out here with Myrtle and the goats.”
Troy whistled for the dogs. All three came racing down from the barn. They were muddy from their horseplay.
“Down,” ordered Mercy, trying to spare her dress. “My mother is going to kill me.”
“If you know what’s good for you, you’ll clean them up before that wedding.” With those last words of wisdom, Annie and Myrtle went over to the pasture.
The rest of them went inside the creamery, which was still closed. That worried Mercy, as weekends were prime selling times. “Annie’s lost a lot of business through all this. We’ll all have to eat nothing but Meeting House Creamery cheese for the rest of our lives.”
Troy smiled. “That shouldn’t be much of a sacrifice.”
They paraded past the empty tasting tables. Mercy huffed up the stairs, Troy and the dogs on her heels. The laptop was just where Annie said it would be, perched on a stack of cookbooks on an old trunk next to her chintz-covered couch.
Mercy pulled it into her lap with her good arm and sat down on the sofa. Troy joined her. Susie Bear and Elvis curled up at their feet like two furry bookends. They knew that when their humans were on the computer, nothing much fun ever happened and they might as well take a nap.
Mercy used Annie’s old yellow notebook, the one Bodhi had filled with codes and passwords, to refresh her memory. She found the files with the video goat cam recordings.
“Here they are.”
Troy looked over her shoulder and read aloud: “Christmas Goats, Yard Goats, Baby Goats at Play, A Frolic of Goats.” He paused. “How exactly does this help?”
“Yard Goats.” Mercy hit play on the video. Cute little kid goats appeared on the screen, skipping, spinning, and springing around the pasture near the cottage. Cookie and her nanny goat companions busied themselves browsing on brush and brambles and wildflowers while their kids played.
“I don’t get it,” said Troy.
“Hartford Yard Goats.”
“The minor league baseball team?”
“I felt sure there would be something here.”
The kids kept scampering and the mama goats kept snacking for another five minutes.
“We may as well quit and go back to the inn.”
“Your instincts are usually right,” said Troy. “Only two more minutes. Let’s watch it till the end.”
Two minutes later the screen went black.
“That’s it.” Mercy couldn’t believe she’d been so wrong. She closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the couch.
“Wait.” Troy pointed to the screen. “Look.”
Mercy opened her eyes. There on the screen was a video clip of children playing baseball. “Hit play, please.”
Together they watched the old, grainy video of girls and boys in shorts and blue-and-white T-shirts playing baseball on a simple diamond cut into a field of wildflowers with woods on three sides. The players ranged in age from around kindergarten to junior high and very few of them were any good. In less than five minutes the outfielders made three errors and two hitters struck out. Half a dozen older teenagers in baseball caps that read “Coach” on the bills shouted from the sidelines as more kids cheered and booed from portable benches on either side of the throw-down home plate. A blue-and-white banner reading “Camp Comity” was tacked along the edge of the bleachers.
“Camp Comity,” said Troy.
“That’s where Brittany Simon was working as a counselor before she disappeared.”
“Do you recognize anyone?”
“No. Do you?”
“No.”
“What does it mean?”
“I don’t know. Yet.”
The video ended as abruptly as it had begun.
“Let’s take another look.” Troy hit rewind.
“I’m going to record it on my cell.” Mercy focused her camera on the screen while the video ran a second time. “We should get back to the inn. I need to talk to Father Bernard.”
UNCLE HUGO AND FATHER BERNARD were in their usual spot, playing Scrabble.
“Now what?” asked the colonel, his eyes on the board.
“I have a question for Father Bernard.”
“Of course. Just one second.” The priest laid the word “parish” across the board.
“What was the name of that summer camp you said you went to as a kid?”
“Camp Comity. We always called it Camp Comedy.” He smiled at the memory. “Why do you ask?”
She pulled her cell from the pocket of her satin dress and pulled up the camp video. Both men watched the entire clip.
“That’s the camp, all right. I recognize the baseball field, such as it was.”
The colonel turned his attention back to the game before him, adding “abit” to the h in “parish” for “habit.”
“And it was on this property.”
“Well, not here at the inn. This was reserved for adults. The faculty, the kitchen staff. Our parents stayed here when they came to visit. We were only allowed here when we got rained out.”
Mercy rewound to the frame where she’d seen the tree house in the background. “And this?”
Father Bernard squinted at the screen. “I think that’s Jojo.”
“No, I mean the tree house in the back.” Mercy pointed to the structure, partially hidden by the trees.
“I see it now. We loved that tree house. We used to sneak up there to smoke. And to meet girls, when we were older.” Father Bernard laughed. “Not that we did anything. At least I didn’t. All very tame, really.”
Jojo. Mercy slapped her forehead with her good hand.
“What?” asked the colonel.
“You said ‘Jojo.’ Sometimes short for ‘George.’”
“That’s right. My sister Odette’s boy.”
“George Patton Randall.”
The priest stared at her. “His father was a military man. Loved Patton, if you can imagine that.”
“I love Patton,” said the colonel.
“You would,” said Father Bernard, moving around the tiles on his letter rack.
“George Patton Randall is Bodhi St. George’s real name.”
“You mean the spa director who got shot? The man you and Nick saved? I don’t understand.” The priest made the word “bible” from the b in “habit.”
“We found this video on Annie’s computer at the creamery where Bodhi lives.”
“Interesting,” said Uncle Hugo.
“I haven’t seen Jojo in years,” said Father Bernard. “I did hear that he went off the grid when he came home from his deployment. Many soldiers struggle to put the past behind them and make new lives for themselves. But from what you’re telling us, Jojo has completely abandoned his past.”
“You mean his family.” Mercy frowned at the priest. “Your family.”
“His mother ran away to California at fifteen. We never heard much from her until she married late in life and had Jojo. She died just months later of cancer. Heartbreaking.” Father Bernard closed his eyes for a moment, his lips moving in a silent prayer. He opened them again and went on. “Jojo’s father was stationed overseas most of the time. I didn’t really know the child. Of course, he’s much younger. Different generations. My nephews might know more.”
I bet, thought Mercy. All the other Renaults could have seen Bodhi on the brochure and made the connection. And Claude could have made the connection even earlier. He could have met Bodhi at the grand opening of the inn. And recognized him. And vice versa. “Let’s look at the video again and see if you recognize anyone else.”
They watched the video again, but Father Bernard didn’t see anyone else who looked familiar.
“It’s so blurry. I’m sorry.”
“You said that all the Renault boys went to the camp.”
“We did. Claude and I went every summer from the time we were around seven, eight years old until we were off to college. I don’t know about the younger boys. They must have gone at some point as well. You’d have to ask them. Or Claude.”
Mercy slipped her cell back in her pocket. “The camp closed in 2002. After a local girl went missing and one of the camp maintenance workers was accused of the crime.”
“The girl whose bones you found on the woods by the tree house yesterday.”
“Yes.”
“I had no idea,” said Father Bernard, crossing himself. “How terrible.”
Uncle Hugo tapped one of his tiles against the glass top of the coffee table. X, eight points.
“Why do you think he kept that video?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you’re going to find out.” Uncle Hugo gathered his tiles and spelled out “codex” using the last letter of the word “bible.” He leaned back and smiled.
“Nice one,” said Father Bernard absently.
The colonel stared at her with those keen blue eyes that missed nothing. “Be careful.”