Annabelle spurted a mouthful of tea across the table. Hy laughed. Soon they were making fun of Suki in a duel of name-calling:
“Meet me in Saint Suki.”
“Suki of the Bounty.”
And more of the same stupidity. None of it was really funny, but their laughter gave them a much-needed release from the tension created by Lord’s murder.
“Well,” Annabelle said, out of loyalty, because she had not met Suki, “there’s no accounting for some men’s tastes. Mind you, I expect Ben would take a look at her, from the sounds of her.”
“That’s different,” said Hy. “And you know it.”
The whole village did. Ben was deeply in love with Annabelle. He had been ever since they’d met at a high school dance in Winterside thirty years before. He looked at other women – Ben liked women – but he never considered anyone but Annabelle.
“I know. He looks.”
“Suki’s gorgeous. But this is Ian, Annabelle. Ian. So reserved.”
“He is a man.”
“Oh yeah. Lust I can understand, but long-lost love? Does Ian even know the difference?”
Hy did. Hy knew the difference. For a moment, she was silent, thinking of him, her lost love. She no longer thought of him every day, and that sometimes made her feel guilty. But it had been twenty years ago, a past she’d learned to live with, a man she’d learned to live without. But Suki? How could she possibly qualify as a lost love? How could Ian’s and Suki’s bond compare to the tug on Hy’s own heart when she thought of her own love?
Annabelle caught Hy’s change in mood, saw the look in her eyes, sensed that her thoughts were somewhere else. Was she about to say something? Something about Ian? She’d never said what she felt about him, not to Annabelle.
Not to anyone. Not even herself.
But it was not about Ian that Hy was thinking.
The moment passed. Hy shrugged off the useless longing, as she had learned to do. It became easier every year.
When the women left the Hall, Jamieson began to fleece Murdo.
“Just how long were you in that woman’s kitchen?” Her tone was sharp, impatient. Murdo mumbled something about meeting Gladys and going into MacAdam’s house.
“Without a warrant?” Though she had done the same thing herself.
Murdo flushed bright red.
“Did you question her?”
Murdo began biting his non-existent nails.
“A bit,” he mumbled through his right thumb. Gladys had scared him with her hard shell. When she softened with the fear of what Jim might have done, it scared Murdo even more.
“A bit? What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Not much.”
“A list. We’ll have to make a list. Of suspects. People who can answer questions, like this…Mabel.”
“Gladys.”
“Gladys.”
“Does she know where MacAdam is?”
“I don’t know.”
“Because you didn’t ask.”
“Well…no.”
“Go ask now.”
Murdo didn’t move. He didn’t know who scared him more – Gladys or Jamieson.
“Go ask,” she repeated. “And then look for him – in the places she says he won’t be. Billy, you go, too.” She looked at Murdo. “If you don’t want to get your feet wet, have him do the dog work. Then take him home to mom.”
The two men looked reluctant. Jamieson tossed Murdo the car keys and stared out the window, the rain and wind pounding on it. It had a view of the road on one side, and the capes on the other. The rain dashed down on the slick asphalt of the Island Way, which ran a few kilometres past the village, beyond Big Bay with its sheltering spit of sand dunes, and then turned in on itself. One of the island’s main roads and a prominent scenic route, by the time the Way ran through The Shores, it became a dead end.
The grey, metres-high waves were crashing onto the shore, mocking the ruin of her case, the case she had hoped would be the making of her. What a fool she was. She didn’t even have a damn body.
Where had Jim MacAdam gone in this weather and without his truck? Perhaps he’d borrowed or stolen a vehicle. Clearly, he’d been desperate to get away. Clearly, he had done it, in a fit of testosterone-fueled rage. It was the most plausible explanation. Still she’d have to go through the tedious questioning of all these villagers and take down copious irrelevant notes, all the while waiting – for what? For the body to show up?
Her confidence was unraveling like the threads on the hem of her now torn dress. Like it, the case was shredding into pieces she might not be able to sew together. She didn’t know what to do next.
She wanted a computer. She wanted her uniform. She wanted this bloody weather to let up.
“Lance Lord.” Her voice startled, but did not surprise him. Hy had let herself in the door and was now pacing across Ian’s living room, scratching her long bony fingers through red curls that the rain had turned into ringlets. Then she stopped. “You know who he is, right?”
“Of course I do. Mr. No Trespassing.”
“But I mean, do you remember who he really is…was?”
Ian dragged his eyes away from the computer. They were blank.
“He was Lance Lord.” He looked bewildered.
“Not just Lance Lord. The Lance Lord. I told you about him when he came here.”
Sometimes, he thought, she was daft.
“Oh, Ian.” She shook her head in frustration. Then smiled. She knew the perfect way to remind him who Lord was. So he wouldn’t forget.
She charged across the room, shoved him aside, and rapped at the keyboard and swirled the mouse around. Alarmed, he fell back on his office chair and almost upended.
“L…a…n…c…e…L…o…r…d…” She spelled out the name as it appeared in the Google window. And up it came. Over and over again. Lance Lord. Lance Lord. There were a lot of sites.
Not all of them had anything to do with him.
“God,” said Hy, “Look at this. It’s some kind of sadomasochistic religious cult thing.”
Now she had Ian’s interest. She scrolled down quickly. He stared mesmerized at the screen, as she called up the next site.
“Lance Lord,” she read, “Kiss of the Demon Lover 1972.”
“Planet of the Perfected People, Art Film 1973,” read Ian.
Hy: “Futurefear. Mockumentary. 1974.”
They looked at each other. Hy pursed her lips. Ian shrugged. Neither had heard of any of them.
“Bingo!” said Hy, at the next and final entry: “‘All Around the House. 1976-79. Popular Canadian TV series spoofing government and politicians in Ottawa. Lance Lord in minor role as cunning chauffeur to a succession of Cabinet Ministers. Gained him a small cult following.’ Don’t you remember?”
Ian pushed back his chair. He didn’t watch television.
“I don’t remember the TV show, but I guess I do remember you mentioning this.”
“Guess? Mentioning?” They had been drinking brandy at the time, but still –
He noticed how Hy’s green eyes darkened to emerald when she got emotional in any way. It was one of her most attractive features, next to her hair.
“So this is Lord?”
“Of course. I told you…I watched that show every week. I never missed an episode. It may have been thirty years ago, but…” Hy scrolled down as she spoke, and there he was, in full colour and thirty years younger. “Well, look.”
Lord’s younger but unmistakable likeness filled the screen – eyebrows and all. They were bushy, almost meeting in the middle. The full lips. The crystal blue eyes that burned with cold intensity. The teeth were different, not as white or straight.
“You’re right. It’s Lance Lord, all right. But what does it mean? If anything?” Ian took over the mouse, scrolling.<
br />
Hy rolled her eyes. He was acting like it was a new discovery. His discovery.
“It means he had a past and people in it we don’t know. There could be something in that past that led to his murder. It might have nothing to do with anything here. I’m sure it has nothing to do with Jim MacAdam. It’s much more likely to be some dark secret out of his past.”
“Why must the past always have secrets, and why are they always dark?”
“That’s the way the past works, dummy,” Hy spoke as if it were a fact of life. And maybe it was. She hit print.
“I think it was someone we don’t know, someone out of his past who killed him, for some reason we don’t know yet.” The photo and scant details of Lance Lord’s slim acting career spit out of the printer.
Hy’s eyes widened. “Or maybe someone out of his past we do know. What about Suki?”
“I don’t think that’s likely.” He didn’t look at her. His mouth set in a grim line.
“Well how likely do you think it was Jim MacAdam? Because that’s what the police think.”
“Well, not at all, but…”
“No buts. I think we should be looking into Lord’s past and Suki’s, and forget about MacAdam.”
For now, Jim MacAdam, like Lord, was missing – but he was about to make an appearance more dramatic and unforgettable than anything his rival had ever accomplished onscreen.
The rain continued on and off all day, coming as forecast in bands of rain. When it rained, it fell as a heavy curtain, slicing sideways, chased by the wind. The wind was strong enough to knock tiny Madeline Toombs off her feet when she came out her door with sandwiches and squares for the police. For Billy, really. She’d been watching him at her window. His good looks and height fascinated her. She barely scraped five feet and weighed less than a hundred pounds. Madeline picked herself up and pushed forward across the open picnic area between her house and the Hall, facing both the fury of the weather, and her sister Moira, if she found out Madeline was “giving good food away.” Moira was mean, in spite of all the muffins she took to Ian. She’d been too busy to notice Madeline leave, too busy looking at herself in the mirror. She was getting all made up by that Suki woman.
The first thing Suki had noticed when Moira had let her in was the impressive grandfather clock that stood at the bottom of the stairs, grandly displaying the wrong time. Moira’s father had rescued it from the garbage. Most of their furniture had come that way, but this was the best of it. It was her father’s pride, even though it no longer did what it had been built to do. It looked good. He’d tried to fix it but the hands wouldn’t stay in place. They drooped down, and told the time just twice a day, at six-thirty in the morning and evening.
Her father had made a point of consulting it at these times if he was home, and would smile in a satisfied way and say “right on time.” Every time.
There was something of that same satisfied smile when Suki saw the clock and its obvious deficiencies. She smiled again as she watched Moira wind up the only other clock, which had run down overnight.
“I never know the time,” said Moira. “That one doesn’t work. This one runs down, and my computer, it’s…” She searched for the word. “…digital time. I’m not used to it.” The way she said it made digital time seem a personal insult.
Perfect, thought Suki.
Now, in the living room of the Toombs’ modest one-and-a-half-storey home, Suki was yanking a comb through Moira’s Brillo pad hair. Moira was wincing.
“You’ll have to lose the perm.” Suki pulled out the comb, and with it a hank of Moira’s hair. Suki dropped it on the floor. “Loosen up. Let it go free. A bit of colour. Reddish.”
Like Hyacinth, thought Moira. Red like Hyacinth. Of course. Why hadn’t she thought of it? Perhaps that was the attraction for Ian. Still, here was this Suki, with honey-blonde hair. But no, she, Moira, could never be a blonde. Not in The Shores. Annabelle was a blonde and she looked like a tart. Anyone would think she was one.
“The hair will have to wait. We need Product.” Suki said the word with a capital P. Moira felt a tingle in her spine. Product. Yes, she’d have some Product for her hair. Was Product expensive?
“Let’s see the face.” Suki cleansed and exfoliated Moira’s dull complexion. She began to apply foundation. Foundation to Moira’s face and to the story she would tell police.
“You know when I arrived, don’t you?”
Like a grateful puppy, Moira nodded, causing Suki to streak the foundation.
“Oh yes, I saw you arrive.”
Suki knew that. When she had passed the house last night, the upstairs light had been on and Moira’s face pressed up against the window, looking in the direction of Ian’s house. She’d guessed that Moira spied on him.
“And you saw me in the morning.”
“Yes.”
“Still there,” Suki prompted.
“Yes, you were still there.”
It seemed to be the right thing to say.
“Anything else?”
“No. You came about midnight…”
“Before midnight.”
Moira’s forehead wrinkled. Suki stopped applying the foundation and looked straight into Moira’s eyes. “Well before midnight,” she repeated. “I’m sure it was, aren’t you?”
“Yes…uh…” She blinked her eyes as Suki painted on eye shadow. Big eyes.
For the first time in her life, Moira had big eyes.
“You said yourself you never know the time.”
“Yes…You must be right. It must have been well before midnight.”
Suki began to apply mascara. Moira couldn’t believe how good she looked.
“I think it was about ten o’clock.” Suki knew Lance had still been alive then. She didn’t know how precise police forensics might be, but she wasn’t taking any chances. Ian, she knew, had no idea when she’d come. She’d made sure of that, fogging his brain with all-night sex of a kind he likely hadn’t experienced since he was a young man – if ever.
“And I was there all night?” It didn’t hurt to cover all the bases. Just in case.
“You must have been. You were there when I arrived in the morning.”
“And that’s what you’ll say.”
“Say…?”
“To the police.” Suki had managed to eliminate the dark circles under Moira’s eyes. She looked ten years younger. “You’ll say I was there from about ten o’clock on – through the night.”
“Well I didn’t stay up all night checking.”
Suki’s eyes drilled into Moira’s in the mirror. Yes she did. That’s exactly what she’d done. Suki’s eyes told Moira’s eyes she knew it.
“From ten, all night – as far as you know. How’s that?” Suki finished applying the foundation.
Moira looked in the mirror. She felt pretty for the first time in her life. She owed Suki.
“Of course. That’s what happened.”
Jealous as Moira was about Suki and Ian, the woman was fast becoming her heroine as she expertly dusted blusher across Moira’s non-existent cheekbones.
Chapter Thirteen
“Excellent,” said Jamieson, staring at the dead Lance Lord spread out across the screen.
Hy had brought her laptop to the Hall with the photos she had taken on the shore, and some fresh clothes for Jamieson, whether she wanted them or not. She did. She’d been shivering in the Hall, and though she’d turned the furnace on, to a temperature that would have given Olive MacLean a hot flash. The dress was still wet and Jamieson was still cold. She had cleaned up in the Hall’s bathroom and was wearing a pair of Hy’s jeans and best Irish knit sweater, the one Gus had made her two Christmases ago. Still not very professional, but a lot better than that dress. She’d stuffed it in the garbage bin in the Institute room, giving it a fierce thrust she hoped would take all
thoughts of the wedding with it.
Hy had made fresh tea, and Jamieson had broken her own rule. She’d accepted and downed most of it.
“Excellent,” she said again, and squinted at the screen. That wound. Looked nasty. Like pus. Had it gone septic? That might help establish the time of death, often hard to pin down precisely enough to get a conviction.
She beckoned Hy.
“Thanks. Thanks for these.” She pointed to the photos on the screen.
“Now all you need is to find the body.” Hy grinned.
Jamieson frowned.
“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t mention that.” She realized it was probably too late. Hy’s silence confirmed it. The whole village knew what senior officials didn’t know – that the corpse had gone missing. Jamieson had yet to report it to the detachment. She was reluctant to admit to any weakness, even though it had happened before she arrived. She should’ve been here sooner.
She wasn’t prepared yet to admit she’d lost the body. At least she could send photos. That would be a start. She straightened and clicked to connect to the Internet. It took forever to get on. Forever to access email. Forever again to send – a molasses slow transfer of digital data. After fifteen minutes, not even one photo had uploaded. She shoved her chair back and went over to the big window. From here, she could see the dome, like a pimple on the landscape, shining white in the black sky; and she could see the angry water and the surf surging across the sand and smashing up against the cape.
What a disaster. Her first case. A case she should own – and look what was happening. Clues had been lost, not just in the first twenty-four hours but in minutes – with the sweeping of Lord’s body out to sea. The case should have been simple to crack. Jim MacAdam was her man. He had the motive, the strength, and the weapon, but he was missing. Gone like the corpse. She had no killer and no victim, no evidence – it was all gone on the wind and the waves.
Not quite all. She remembered the papers in the jacket pocket, hanging on the coat rack.
Mind Over Mussels Page 10
