Mercy Read online

  Jamie shook his head. "Let's just say I'm not quite the optimist you are."

  Graham cleared his throat, then fixed a smile on his face. "The preliminary hearing is next Wednesday," he said brightly, as if this were good news.

  Allie glanced at Jamie, but he was staring out the window at the dull traffic of Main Street, his face closed and inscrutable. She licked her lips and leaned forward, crossing her legs. "Which means?"

  Graham shrugged, making a trickle of water from his hair run over the collar of his olive herringbone suit. "It's a formality. We go back to court and the DA tells a judge they've got a body, and then they'll make Cam get up on the stand and connect Jamie's confession to the evidence, and the judge decides there's probable cause and we all go home."

  Allie shook her head. "What about Jamie? Why can't he give his side of the story?"

  Graham turned to look at his client, who was still staring out the window. "It's traditional that at a preliminary hearing, the defense doesn't present evidence. We save that for the big shebang. Don't want Jamie to have to go through a prosecution's cross-examination twice."

  Jamie surprised everyone by walking across the room to the window and banging the flat of his hand against the glass. "How long?"

  "How long till what?" Graham said.

  "How long till this is over?" Jamie asked, turning to face him. "How long till I'm just locked away?"

  Graham stood, but still had to crane his neck to look up into Jamie's face. "Hopefully never. That's the point."

  "But assuming we don't win," Jamie said slowly, "then I just spent a precious half hour waiting for you to get your ass off the Stairmaster at the gym."

  Graham flushed all the way to his hairline. "It won't happen again." Flustered, he sat heavily in one of the swivel chairs at the table and began leafing through the manila file. "Speaking of which, we ought to discuss your defense. I'm going to need a list from you of people who can testify to Maggie's illness, and neighbors or friends or relatives who knew the two of you--"

  "Relatives," Jamie snorted.

  Graham darted a glance at Allie and began to draw tiny circles at the corner of the page he had before him. "Well, we're going to have to find someone to swear to your character."

  "I will," Allie said.

  Graham grinned at her. "I need someone who knew him before he showed up at the station. But you might be helpful in collecting witnesses, since they're likely to cooperate with a police chief's wife." He thrummed the pen against the edge of the table and turned to Jamie. "We need other people. We need a parade of witnesses who look appropriately shocked that you'd be brought up on charges of murder."

  Jamie lowered himself to the swivel chair beside Allies. He swung from side to side, pushing off the balls of his feet and almost letting a smile ghost its way across his face. "And who is going to break the news to these paragons that I'm pending trial?"

  Graham blinked. "I will, of course." He nervously fingered his tie as he felt Jamie's gaze slide from his Adam's apple to the notch of his belt buckle and back up to his face.

  "No," Jamie said, and leaned back in the chair, crossing his ankles on the mahogany conference table.

  "No?"

  "No." Jamie smiled pleasantly, a neat baring of his teeth. "I want Allie to go." Allie started at the sound of her name, which seemed like a lullaby on Jamie's tongue. He sat up and rested his elbows on the table. "Who's going to sway a prospective witness more? A wet-behind-the-ears lawyer or the proverbial police chief's wife?"

  Allie turned to him, knowing he understood that she did not like being credited for her role rather than for herself. She put her hand over Jamie's, slipping her fingers between the cracks of his own. "I'd be happy to go," she said, surprising herself. "I'll talk to people in Cummington, and I can walk through the house and pick out photos and the marriage license and things like that."

  "You can't," Graham said, although he couldn't think exactly why not.

  "Can't you deputize her or something? Give her a warrant to break into my house. I don't care."

  "That's not the issue here--" Graham began.

  "The issue," Jamie interrupted, "is that I trust Allie. I do not trust you."

  Jamie had raised his voice, and he rose from the table, his palms pressed flat, to stare Graham down. At that moment, Duncan MacPhee, the elder lawyer in the practice, stuck his head through the cracked door to see his son cowering before a client who was charged with murder.

  "Is there a problem?" he asked.

  "No," Allie said, at the same time that Graham did. Jamie sat down in a single movement, the wind gone from his sails.

  Graham nodded. "We're just arranging the best way for Mrs. MacDonald to feel out the citizens of Cummington." He stood up, excusing himself for a minute, and walked to the door, wondering if Jamie MacDonald could see that his knees were shaking.

  As soon as Graham disappeared down the hall, Allie rounded on Jamie. "You were very hard on him," she scolded. "He's only trying to help you."

  Jamie grinned and pulled a sheet of yellow paper off the pad in the manila folder. "Don't you know, Allie, that you can't help someone who doesn't want to be helped?"

  Allie swallowed and stared out the window. Her eyes naturally fell to the police station, where someone was walking out the front door. He moved too quickly and Allie was too far away to see who it was, but she pretended that she had gotten a glimpse of Cam, and this made her feel better.

  Jamie had picked up a pen beside her and was neatly printing a list of names. "I don't have all the addresses," he said. "You can get them from a phone book."

  Allie nodded. She wondered how she was going to tell Cam what she'd spontaneously agreed to do. She wondered if Mia would be able to handle the flower shop all by herself, having been an employee for less than a week.

  "You can stay at the house. I've got the keys at Angus's." He hesitated only a second. "Feel free to look through whatever you want. Take whatever you think I'll need." He finished scribbling a name and tossed the pen down. "There." He smoothed the paper with his palms, and let his hand linger when he passed the paper over to her. "Thank you," he said quietly. "I know you don't want to leave him to do this."

  There was no question in her mind as to whom Jamie was referring. "It's only a few days," she reasoned aloud. "Cam'll be here when I get back."

  Jamie kissed her forehead and stood up. He paced a few times in front of the chalkboard behind the table, then crossed to stand at the window again. He glanced up at the sky, looking.

  He imagined himself locked up in one of the maximum-security prisons in Massachusetts--maybe Concord, where he would hear the traffic screaming around the rotary all night--cut off from Wheelock and Cummington forever. He thought of Maggie, dancing through the streets of these towns on translucent feet, peering through windows and cracking thick doors in an effort to find him'. He considered heaven, empty and aching without her, as she soundlessly searched for someone who'd left without a trace.

  "You need to do me another favor," Jamie said, resting his forehead against the cool glass. "When she comes, when Maggie comes . . ."

  "I'll tell her," Allie replied, standing so close behind him he could feel her breath against his shoulder. "I'll tell her where to find you."

  Unlike other New Age believers, Ellen MacDonald didn't much care who she had been in her past life, unless it had something to do with her late husband.

  Eight years ago, when Ian was still alive, if someone had mentioned the word "crystal" to her, she would have asked if it was Waterford or Baccarat. Now, she wore a small dagger-shaped pendant about her neck made of quartz that had been dug out of a holy cave in Arizona. She wore clothes made of recycled cotton, she believed in thought projection and chakras, and she was getting a degree in naturopathic medicine through a correspondence course with the Mothers of Light New Age Community School, run out of a farm in northern Vermont.

  Most of the people in Wheelock thought she'd lost it a little when Ian