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Ivy’s strong voice rises behind Jane from the bushes. “I’ve got a gun too,” she says. “Drop yours, Lucy, or I’ll shoot you.”
Lucy snarls. “You don’t have a gun.”
“Don’t I?” says Ivy. “If you hurt Janie, I’ll make your knees explode. Now drop it. I’m going to count to one.”
What happens next happens so fast that Jane can barely follow it. Jasper launches himself at Lucy. Lucy tries to shoot him. Jane screams and runs at them, Lucy’s gun goes off, and Jasper’s teeth are clamped around Lucy’s knee. Lucy goes down again, Lucy is screaming in pain, and Jasper is bleeding. Jasper is bleeding! Jane falls on Lucy and wrests the gun from her hands. She doesn’t know what to do with it once she has it, but then Ivy is beside her, taking it away. Ivy trains Lucy’s gun on Lucy, who’s still screaming, still struggling to escape the grip of Jasper’s teeth. Jasper is holding on hard.
“Brave dog,” Jane says, grabbing on to him. It’s just his ear. Lucy’s shot a hole through the flap of his big, floppy ear. Tears stream down Jane’s face. “Jasper, you brave, brave dog. I’m so sorry. Are you okay? Let go. Let me look at your ear.”
Jasper lets Lucy’s knee go. Jane hugs him and he licks her face, bleeding all over her. She cries into his fur. It’s a big wet mess. His ear is bleeding copiously and Jane presses on it with her sleeve, not really sure how to help him, until Ivy suggests Jane remove one of her layers and use it to tie the ear tightly to his head.
“I’d give you one of my layers,” Ivy says, “except that I’m not taking my eyes off this asshole.”
“It’s lovely, your concern for the dog,” snarls the asshole in question, rocking over her injuries, moaning. “I’m in bad shape here.”
Jane can’t stand the sound of Lucy’s voice in her airspace. “If she talks again,” she says to Ivy, “shoot her.”
“Changed your mind, then?” asks Ivy in a gently teasing tone.
Jane is too ashamed to look at Ivy. She tries to fashion a bandage for Jasper with her hoodie. It’s not going well. She’s still crying, and frightened, and shaking too hard.
She takes a deep, steadying breath.
“Hey, Janie,” Ivy says quietly. “You know we’re all going to be okay, right? We’ve got this.”
* * *
The three women and one dog make an odd procession back to the house. Jane is still in her Doctor Who pajamas, she’s covered in Jasper’s blood, and her face is tear-stained. Her hoodie is wrapped twice around Jasper’s head, its sleeves tied in a bow. Jasper doesn’t seem to mind looking silly. His head is high and he walks with a spring in his step.
“Jasper,” Jane says to him, “you are the picture of heroism.”
Several feet ahead of them, Lucy snorts. Lucy is bloody, bedraggled, and limping, her wrists locked together with restraints Ivy pulled out of her backpack.
Ivy walks behind her, Lucy’s gun held coolly in her hands, like some sort of ninja wondergirl.
“Who were you waiting for back on shore, Lucy?” Ivy asks. “After your friends in the boat left and before you heard us talking? Who were you expecting?”
“No one.”
“Bullshit,” Ivy says. “Who did you leave the house with early this morning, carrying a flashlight and the Vermeer? Janie saw you.”
“You’ll never link me to the Vermeer,” Lucy says. “Janie must’ve seen the guys from the boat.”
“No,” Ivy says, “she didn’t. Only one of those guys had wet pants legs.”
“So maybe the other one changed into dry pants when he got back to the boat.”
“What happened,” says Ivy, “is that you and an accomplice carried the Vermeer from the house to the forest this morning and passed it to the guy in the boat. The guy with wet pants was a lookout for the other one. We saw him sitting in the ramble. The person you left the house with acted as your lookout. I want to know who it is.”
“I don’t have an accomplice,” Lucy says in a bright, musical voice.
“Right,” says Ivy sarcastically. “Whoever your accomplice is, I expect all your wailing chased him neatly away, so, well done with that.” Then Ivy reaches an arm around to her backpack again, pulls out a walkie-talkie, and speaks into it. “Hello,” she says. “Somebody pick up. Mrs. V? Mr. V?” No one answers.
Jasper, struggling his way up the hill beside Jane, slipping on leaves and beginning to pant, makes Jane’s tears rise again. “Are you okay, buddy?” Jane asks him. “Do you want to be carried?”
“Almighty god,” says Lucy. “Maybe we should stop so you can build a shrine to the dog.”
“The dog is the reason we’re safe and you’re in trouble,” Jane says coldly to her back. “That’s why you keep making snide remarks about the dog. The dog kicked your sorry ass.”
Now Ivy is chuckling. Reaching once more into her backpack, she pulls out a chocolate bar and hands it to Jane. Jane tears it open, amazed at how hungry she is.
Again Ivy tries the walkie-talkie. Finally, as they break out of the trees onto the lawn, Mrs. Vanders’s voice comes crackling through. “Ivy-bean?” she says. “Where are you?”
Moments later, calls have been made and a contingent of New York State troopers is on its way.
“They’ll also search the waters between the island and the mainland, with the hopes of intercepting that boat,” says Mrs. Vanders’s scratchy voice. “And I’ll send a couple people into the ramble to look for the accomplice.”
“And a vet,” Jane says to Ivy. “Jasper needs a vet.”
“Yes,” says Ivy into the walkie-talkie. “Jasper needs a vet. Lucy shot him. He’s got a bleeding hole in his ear flap.”
“My god!” says Mrs. Vanders. “How unnecessary! Patrick!” Jane hears her bellow. “The dog needs a vet!”
“Has anyone snuck into the house in the last few minutes?” Ivy asks.
“Ivy,” says Mrs. Vanders’s voice, “are you forgetting it’s a gala day? The doors have been wide open and people have been streaming in and out since the sun came up.”
“Damn,” says Ivy. Then she says to Lucy, “Your accomplice is having one hell of a lucky day. Kind of makes you jealous, doesn’t it?”
“No doubt it would,” says Lucy, “if I had an accomplice.”
“You do realize you’ll go down for the Brancusi too, don’t you, Lucy?” says Ivy.
Lucy’s only response to this is a tight mouth and a closed face.
“Maybe they’ll even reopen the case on the Rubens,” says Jane.
“Yeah,” says Ivy. “Good point, Janie.”
When the group reaches the house, they’re met on the back terrace by Mrs. Vanders, who comes forward to clap a hand on Lucy’s shoulder and lead her inside, face grim. Octavian the Fourth, looking sallow in his paisley dressing gown, is also standing on the back terrace, as is Ravi, who is wide-eyed and speechless. Ravi’s eyes on Lucy are disbelieving. He looks like a hurt little boy. Lucy stares back at him. When a tear slides down Ravi’s face, Lucy begins to cry silent, angry tears of her own.
* * *
The police divide into two groups, one searching the forest for Lucy’s accomplice, the other commandeering the billiard room, because it has only two doors, and they both close. They’ve made clear their intention to talk to the entire household, one by one, starting with Lucy, then Jane, then Ivy, then Ravi. Then everyone who was awake when Jane and Ivy brought Lucy back to the house, which includes Octavian, Mr. and Mrs. Vanders, Cook, Patrick, all the regular staff, and all the temporary staff hired for the party. Then everyone who was asleep, or claimed to have been, and wandered downstairs after the fact: Phoebe Okada, Colin Mack, Kiran.
The vet has also arrived, a big bear of a woman who’s in the kitchen making a gentle fuss of stitching Jasper’s ear. She says Jane did well with the improvised bandage and shouldn’t be alarmed by the blood. “Ears bleed like that,?
?? she says, “but it looks worse than it is. This dog is going to be just fine.” Nonetheless, every time Jane looks at Jasper, tears start sliding down her face. When he gazes back at her lovingly, it only makes the tears come faster.
The police, armed with the basic story, talk to Lucy alone for a very long time.
Jane and Ivy wait their turns in the gold sitting room, which adjoins the billiard room. Ivy sits quietly, watching Jane sniffle and rip her cuticles until they bleed. Jane looks back at Ivy once and notices that her irises turn purple at the edges. She doesn’t look at Ivy again.
Finally, Ivy speaks. “Are you mad at me?”
Jane finds some dirt under a fingernail and digs at it, only managing to lodge it deeper. Ramble dirt, no doubt. Crime-fighting, mystery-solving, confusion dirt.
“I’ve been trying to imagine what this is like for you,” says Ivy. “Especially since it sounds like—you know about some things. Like, you saw something, or overheard something, with Philip? Maybe with Patrick?” She pauses. “Anyway, I’d be mad.”
“I don’t see why I should tell you what I saw or heard,” Jane says simply, “when you haven’t told me anything.”
“You’re right.”
“And I don’t know why you’re asking me if I’m mad,” Jane continues in an even tone, “when you’re the one who’s been acting like you’re mad at me.”
“I’m not mad at you,” says Ivy dismally.
“Well, you’ve been wandering around with your camera,” says Jane, “making that shutter noise, pretending to take pictures of the art, and then, when you see me, you act like you’re mad.”
“I’m not mad at you,” Ivy repeats. “I’m mad that I’m not allowed to tell you what’s going on.”
“Well,” says Jane. “You need to improve your directionality.”
This almost elicits a surprised smile from Ivy.
“I’ve been failing lately,” Jane says, “pretty hard, at figuring out who to trust.”
“That’s partly my fault,” says Ivy, leaning toward her. “It’s Lucy’s fault too. She tricked you. She took advantage of your better nature. She’s the sucky, faily one, not you.”
“I should’ve known,” Jane says. “You knew right away.”
“Yes, well,” says Ivy with a wry expression, slumping back in her seat. “Not trusting people isn’t something to be proud of, either.”
