Mind Over Mussels

by Hilary MacLeod

  Even if they hadn’t been, Jamieson might have been assigned to this one. In spite of its new popularity with tourists, her bosses didn’t care about The Shores. Some doubted it existed. Most had never visited it, never gave it a thought.

  The Shores had been in Jamieson’s thoughts often since she’d first answered that call here last year. She liked to think it was a professional interest. It was more than that, but she didn’t know it yet. The Shores had begun to claim her for its own.

  April Dewey had just taken the tea cloth off her pan of fresh bread dough, two fat loaves nicely risen and ready to bake in the oven, when the RCMP cruiser screeched around the corner at the top of the road. The rain was pouring down and the vehicle laid tracks through the wet clay of the lane. There should have been clouds of pink dust billowing up behind it on an August-dry road, but it was soaked, and the car was ploughing through the clay, leaving deep ruts in its wake. Like driving through fudge, thought April, stirring up chocolate icing for her white cake. It was something new. She normally used a white butter icing, which Abel Mack had declared “the food of the gods.” Instead of making April smile, it had made her frown. She was a devout Catholic. God’s food was manna. If that seemed a bit boring, she tried to suppress the heretical thought.

  “Wrong turn,” said Jamieson as Murdo sped toward Wild Rose Lane. “We want Cottage Lane. Next one over, after the Hall.”

  He braked in a deep puddle. He spun his wheels in the water and murky red clay, trying to back up, until Jamieson couldn’t stand it anymore. Her case. This was going to be her case, if only the fool would hurry up and get them there. Who knew what evidence might be destroyed by the delay? She grabbed the door handle, flung the door open, and stepped out into the puddle of cold, murky, red water, ankle deep. Both boots had a leak.

  She strode around the car, yanked open Murdo’s door, and with a sharp jerk of her head, said, “Get out.”

  Murdo hauled himself out of the car, and stepped into the sloppy puddle. As Jamieson leaned to get in, Murdo could see there were red clay splatters all over the back of her dress. She’d refused Hy’s offer of a change of clothes, anxious to get down to the shore and the murder scene.

  Hungover and in a dress. Murdo shook his head, and waded to the passenger side.

  The reclusive woman who’d rented Ben and Annabelle’s house was peering down at the shore from an oval-shaped attic window underneath the teardrop gingerbread that lined the gables.

  She was still frowning from heaving herself up the attic stairs, steep and hard to climb. She didn’t use the railing, because it might dirty her white lace gloves. She wore them to hide her right hand. There was nothing wrong with it that anyone else could see. If she’d taken the glove off, they might have noticed a small scar. A scar she couldn’t stand to look at. Ugly. Imperfect. A terrible reminder.

  She had gone up to the attic because she’d heard the siren – and seen the police cruiser threading down to the shore and Lance Lord’s cottage. He was the reason she was here. He and Ed. She was staring now at the body on the shore.

  Lance. Her face was streaked with a sort of sadness, but there was a strange satisfaction in her eyes. Lance was gone. Unexpected – but it made him hers. Forever. Now no one could take him away.

  It was cold in the attic, which was insulated only by loose fill and seaweed stuffed between the rafters. The front wheel and handlebars of a fifty-year-old red tricycle stuck out of the primitive insulation, one mouse-shredded goalie pad lay on top of it, and a few rotting trunks, bulging with old clothes and books. Spiders and cobwebs clung to the beams, hundreds of dead flies ensnared in them. Her frown deepened. If she’d known she was living underneath this horror, she might not have rented the place. She had to stand up on a stool she’d found in the junk, because she was so small and the window so high. Grasping the window frame, she peered out again into the dark day, the wind and the rain and the waves, the thickening clouds. Now she could see better.

  Her frown slowly turned right side up. A secret smile.

  That was Lance, there on the sand. In his ridiculous get-up.

  Lance. Dead. Dead.

  She was sure of it. Her eyes shone with tears, and several spilled down her cheeks.

  The smile remained.

  Chapter Six

  April Dewey watched the police cruiser pull a sloppy U-turn. Then she shrugged, turned away from the window, and put the icing in the fridge. She thought she saw a figure darting through the stand of spruce that separated her property from the elder Macks’. It would be Abel. He had an uncanny way of knowing when she was cooking, April thought. It wasn’t uncanny at all. Abel knew when all the village social functions were coming up – and precisely when April would be cooking something special for any one of them. Abel had a sweet spot for April Dewey. It wasn’t just her cooking. He found that odd smudge of flour on her cheek captivating. He liked the dimples, too, and her inviting, old-fashioned body. Just looking at her was a comfort to him. Pleasantly plump. Like her baked goods, rounded, well-formed, and quite delicious.

  Stick-thin Moira Toombs was baking this morning, too – a dozen blueberry muffins for Ian. From her house right beside the Hall, she had a clear view of his kitchen and living room window on Shipwreck Hill. She’d seen a woman go in last night. Not Hy. As far as Moira knew, and she knew quite a bit, last night’s woman had not come out. Moira was always spying on Ian, jealous of his comings and goings with Hy, of the nights Hy spent there, of the times Ian went to Hy’s for dinner or took her to town and did – or didn’t? – come home. Moira couldn’t always stay awake to find out or get up early enough to see if Hy had slipped out of Ian’s at dawn. But this morning she intended to find out if that woman, that statuesque stranger she’d seen slipping into Ian’s after midnight, was still there. She popped the muffins in the oven, then went to fix her hair, its tight, permed curls already well-cemented with hairspray. She applied more against the heavy weather. She had to find out what was going on.

  The wind blew up the east coast of the United States and Canada, stopping for nothing. Billy’s head was down, his eyes closed, to keep the sand from his eyes as he emerged from the cottage. So he didn’t see the awful thing that had happened. His world had been reduced to fighting against the wind shrieking inland, whistling through the trees as it stripped them of branches, pounding at buildings that creaked and groaned in the onslaught, battering him, punching waves up the shore, the wet salt spray dousing him as he descended the cape, the rain streaming down, so he was unable to distinguish where the water was coming from, the sky or the sea.

  Where did birds go in weather like this? Gus wondered. When it stopped, perhaps there would be no birds at all.

  And then it did stop. Dead calm fell on the village. The wind stalled, the rain sputtered, the sky ceased its shrieking. The houses stopped swaying and sat convincingly on their foundations once more.

  Dead calm. A dread calm. Terrifying. Gus was unmoving, a statue of fear in her purple chair, coat on, handbag in her lap, worrying – where was Abel?

  And then it began again, a fury unleashed, the terrible moaning, the high-pitched whistle of the wind, the hissing, pounding rain.

  Billy opened his eyes and saw the most terrible thing. He ran from it, back up the cape, tripping over his feet, panic making him clumsy, dragging himself back on all fours, heading for the phone again. Dread calm. For him, it was dread calm. He dreaded the call he was going to make.

  How was he going to tell them?

  In the end, he didn’t have to.

  It was much worse.

  The cruiser arrived as he reached the cottage.

  He was going to have to tell Jamieson that Lord’s body had disappeared.

  Ian was anxious to go to the shore, but he needed a shower and Suki was in the bathroom. He was wearing just his boxers. He preened briefly in the hallway mirror, glad he’d been working out recentl
y. His stomach was flat, his arms, legs, and chest well-muscled. If he only had just a bit more hair on his head. But Suki didn’t seem to mind. She’d stroked and kissed his bald spot as enthusiastically as the rest of him.

  Ian was standing in the kitchen, stuffing back a muffin, when Moira came in the door, her jacket soaked through.

  She flushed red. She didn’t think of him like that. Not like that.

  “You cutting me off?” Suki breezed into the kitchen, wearing his terry cloth robe, loosely secured, a generous slice of cleavage showing.

  It was Ian’s turn to blush. Moira’s face got redder, too.

  Suki cupped Ian’s chin in her hand and kissed him full on the lips. He crushed the muffin, and it fell in crumbs to the floor.

  Moira turned to leave.

  “Oh, don’t go,” said Suki, pushing Ian away and placing a hand on Moira’s shoulder. “Ian, don’t be rude. Please introduce us.” Suki had seen Moira staring at her from the window when she walked up from Lance’s last night.

  Ian made the introductions, and the two women scanned each other.

  A spinster of a certain age, Moira shopped the Sears catalogue, kept up-to-date with all the latest fashions, and wore them whether they suited her or not. She had the sallow complexion of someone who never spends time outdoors. Her hair, though damp under the hood, had kept its tight curls, texture of a steel wool pad and dull colour of a sick mouse.

  Suki could see more than that. She could see hunger in Moira’s eyes, hunger for Ian. Although myopic, Moira wasn’t blind about Ian. She could see the way he looked at Suki, hunger in his eyes for Suki. And Suki? There was no hunger in her eyes. Only cold calculation as she looked first at Ian, then at Moira.

  She grabbed a muffin, and spoke with her mouth full. “Mmm. Delicious.”

  This Moira might be useful.

  “Gone? What do you mean gone?”

  Jamieson was shuddering with cold in the flimsy dress, now wet through. Sand and salt spray were slicing at her bare legs, stinging them.

  Billy was pointing towards the angry waves, grey and black like the sky, rising and seeming to rear back, before they thrust forward to attack the shore in a foaming fury.

  Jamieson had never been so close to waves so high.

  “Gone? On the water?”

  Billy nodded numbly.

  “You idiot!” Jamieson was shivering with fury and cold. She clutched the jacket around her, its smell redolent in the rain, punching up her nose, but that didn’t matter. Her corpse was gone. She had a murder – but no victim.

  “Get inside,” she said.

  She and Murdo were stunned by what they saw. The A-frame that they’d been called to last year at Vanishing Point had been full of antiquities – including a life-sized statue of Anubis, the Egyptian god of death. This – this was full of Hendrix memorabilia. Didn’t people bring sand buckets, spades, and books to the beach anymore? Jamieson’s eyes swept the room, from the cardboard cutout of Jimi Hendrix in the corner, to the table and the remnants of the meal. She walked over and scanned the offerings, making notes. Two place settings. Two bowls in the centre of the table. One tipped over and still containing a small portion of potato salad. The other held discarded lobster shells. She took a closer look at the dinner plates. On one, she could see clear remnants of lobster – the tiny legs sucked clean of their sweet, semi-liquid interiors, and the skin of a baked potato, greased with butter. The other plate had that dull sheen of being licked clean, so there was no evidence of what it had contained. The napkins were soiled and crumpled.

  “Viagra.” Murdo pulled on a plastic glove, picked up the pill bottle from the counter and slipped it into an evidence bag.

  “What?” Jamieson looked up from inspecting wine glasses smudged with fingerprints, one edged with lipstick.

  Plenty of evidence about who had been eating here.

  “Viagra.” He tossed it at her.

  She caught it. Looked at it. It had a generic name on it.

  “How do you know?”

  Murdo blushed scarlet.

  “Men know these things.”

  She shrugged and slipped the bag into a jacket pocket.

  Hy thought Jamieson looked oddly vulnerable in the dress, bare legs, overwhelmed by the jacket. It hung over her slim shoulders. Jamieson tried to hook her thumbs into her belt, but there wasn’t one.

  The rain and the wind had eased off, a temporary lull in the storm’s progress. They had gone down to the shore so Hy could show Jamieson where Lord’s body had been, the same spot Billy had shown her, now covered in a wash of water. Scoured clean of evidence. And no body. No body, thought Jamieson. Who cared where it had been? Where was it now? Desperately, she looked out to sea, but she saw nothing, nothing but the water that had taken the body away.

  “How did you find him?”

  “I tripped over him,” said Hy.

  “Literally?”

  “Yes.”

  “When did you find…trip over…the body?”

  “Just before I called it in. As soon as I got over the shock, I called 911 right away…”

  “And what were you doing here on the beach?”

  “Morning run.”

  “Early.”

  “Always early.”

  “Do you know who he was?”

  “Of course. Lord.”

  “No reason to swear. Who was he?”

  “I mean Lance Lord.”

  “That’s his name?”

  “Yup.”

  “For real?” For a moment, Jamieson lost her usual professional composure.

  “As far as I know, but I don’t know that much about him.”

  “What do you know?”

  “From away. Lived in the cottage there. I’ve never been in it before today.”

  “You went in?” It sounded more like an accusation than a question.

  “Well, yes, to phone…” Hy’s voice rose, defensive.

  Jamieson nodded.

  “Can you describe what you saw? The body?”

  “He looked like Jimi Hendrix.”

  “And what’s that look like?” The cardboard cutout in the living room?

  “Bell-bottoms, an orange dashiki, lime-green bandana.”

  “Anything else?”

  “An Afro wig.”

  “And?”

  The two women stood, neither speaking for a moment.

  “Well…” said Hy finally, wondering if she should mention it. It didn’t seem credible.

  “Well what?”

  “I think…I thought…” Should she say? “Well, I thought I saw a lobster sticking out of the wound…”

  Jamieson’s eyes narrowed to slits.

  “A lobster sticking out of his head? You can’t have seen that.”

  “The seagulls and crows were pecking at it.”

  “At the lobster or his head?”

  “Well, I guess his head, really.”

  Jamieson looked at Billy.

  “Did you see it?”

  He looked down at his large feet.

  “No,” he mumbled.

  “What?”

  “No.” He looked up. His eyes shot an apology at Hy.

  Hy sighed. Had she seen it?

  “I’m not exactly sure…I…I…”

  “This lobster,” said Jamieson finally. “Where’d it go?”

  “Well…it disappeared.”

  “Disappeared?”

  Hy felt ridiculous. Jamieson doubted her and she doubted herself. What had she seen – or not seen?

  “I’m just not sure.”

  “It was a shock.”

  “Yes, a shock.”

  Jamieson made a note of it, but didn’t take it seriously. Eyewitnesses were valuable, but often unreliable, especially in the
face of death, and if they were high-strung like this one.

  “I have pictures.”

  “Of the lobster?”

  “No – of the body.”

  Jamieson brightened. Thank God. Something.

  “Where?”

  “On my camera. Back at home. Billy asked me to take them.”

  He gave Hy a look of gratitude when Jamieson looked at him and said, “Good work.”

  “We’ll be asking for those – the photos and the camera. For evidence.”

  “Of course.”

  “What else can you tell me about Lord?” Jamieson’s eyes were scouring the water for any sign of the corpse. Her first bona fide murder case, and she’d lost the victim before she’d even started the investigation.

  “Not a lot. He liked Jimi Hendrix.”

  “And who didn’t he like? Any enemies?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Hy.

  “Who?”

  “Well Jim MacAdam for one.”

  “Jim MacAdam?”

  Hy jutted her chin in the direction of the nondescript brown cottage between Lord’s and the dome.

  “Summer resident?”

  “No, a local. Lives here summers, but has a farm back on The Way. Recent widower.” And Gladys Fraser’s “fancy man,” Gus would say. It wasn’t true, of course. What was true was that Gladys had always fancied Jim. Always. That made Hy smile, imagining Gladys Fraser, president of the Women’s Institute and a bulldog of a woman, with a secret love.

  “And why was this…” Jamieson looked at her notes. “…MacAdam an enemy of Lord’s?”

  “Well, Lord believed that the right of way down to the shore was his land. MacAdam thought it was his. They spent most of the summer fighting about it, with Lord putting up ‘No Trespassing’ signs and trying to stop anyone – everyone – from coming down here.”

  “So he had a lot of enemies.”

  “Well, yes, I guess. Most of the villagers…”

  “Were you one of them? Ever have any confrontations with Lord?”