Mind Over Mussels

by Hilary MacLeod

  “Do I ever.”

  The tiny moment of tension broke, and they started laughing at the thought of Ian in the clutches of the voracious Suki.

  They laughed all the way up to the bedroom. Annabelle’s eyes and mouth opened wide when she saw it. She began to laugh again.

  “A shrine.” Hy smiled.

  “Our bedroom, a shrine.” Annabelle snorted.

  “Presumably she doesn’t use this room for the same purpose you and Ben do.”

  Annabelle grinned and shook her head. “I guess not. Ben and I will have to desanctify it when we come home.” She took a close look at the photograph on the vanity. A fat man with a bald head and a saintly smile on his face. He was clothed in a loose white robe with a garland of flowers around his neck.

  “Baba,” she said.

  “What’s with the baby talk?”

  “Baba,” Annabelle repeated. “Father – Buddhist word for a holy man. Don’t know which Baba this is, but…”

  “Is this the same guy – or a different one?” Across the room, on top of Ben’s dresser, Hy picked up another photo of a holy man, balding, bespectacled, and garlanded. She stepped on something that crunched underneath her foot.

  “Oh, damn.” It was a crushed earring.

  Annabelle saw the rest of the jewels scattered on the floor, the box on its side.

  “Shit. Smokey,” she said.

  Smokey was the Macks’ twenty-five-pound grey cat. They’d moved him to the barn for the summer, and Nathan came over to feed him. But sometimes he still slipped into the house. With a guest who had to cross the threshold multiple times when coming or going, Smokey was bound to get in.

  “I’ll have to apologize,” said Annabelle. “This is awful.”

  They began retrieving chains and earrings and rings from the floor and under the furniture. Hy spied the crumpled paper under the bed. She picked it up, smoothed out the creases. Fine lines wrinkled the calligraphy. The paper was dry, bits of it flaking off as she read.

  “In other worlds, I loved you long ago;

  love that hath no beginning hath no end – ”

  This was somebody else’s love, not hers, but Hy was surprised by the small sharp pain she felt. There was scar tissue there, well-formed and thick. It shouldn’t hurt anymore, erupt like this after twenty years.

  She had been free, single and not yet twenty. He – he had been married, with a wife and two children.

  Hy read the two lines again. She folded the paper and slipped it in the box. She put her heart back where it belonged. It had been broken. It was fixed now. Pretty much fixed.

  Annabelle turned.

  “What’s that?”

  “Nothing.”

  From the look of her, Annabelle thought, it was very much more than nothing, but she’d learned not to pry into the secrets of her friend’s heart.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “Pick it up.”

  “Me? That?”

  Alyssa was looking down at the axe with horror.

  “Yes that.” Jamieson pointed at it, propped against the wall.

  Alyssa stuck a tentative hand forward, then recoiled.

  “Is it the – ?”

  “No, that’s not the weapon that killed your…uh…husband. That one’s been dusted for fingerprints and set aside as evidence.”

  Alyssa’s hands came up over her face.

  “Please.” Jamieson used the word as a command, not a request.

  “I can’t. I’m sure I can’t.”

  “I’d like to see that you can’t.” It was a long shot. The woman didn’t appear to have the strength to wield an axe with any force, and besides, it wasn’t the way women usually killed – by one brutish blow of an instrument. They were more likely to attack with a knife, stabbing repeatedly, unleashing not just hate, but thwarted love as well.

  Alyssa moved forward, and put first her left hand, then her right, on the handle of the axe. She gritted her teeth and hauled it up, her face turning red.

  “Higher.”

  Alyssa was supporting the axe with her body. She grimaced as she lifted it, waist-high. Jamieson could see her muscles straining, her face turn red, her pulse quickening in her neck, a bead of sweat forming at her temple. The effort was genuine.

  “All right. You can put it down.”

  Alyssa sighed and dropped the axe to the floor, just missing Jamieson’s foot. Jamieson hopped back and her weight came down on her injured ankle. She crumpled into her chair.

  She pulled out a piece of paper. “Remove your gloves, run your hands through your hair, and press your fingerprints on the paper here.”

  Alyssa removed one glove, from her left hand.

  “Both gloves.”

  Alyssa didn’t move.

  “Both gloves.”

  Reluctantly, Alyssa peeled the glove off her right hand. She was self-conscious about the scar from several reconstructions. She hated to look at it. When she did, she saw it as ugly, a deformity people would gawk at.

  Like a child’s, Jamieson thought. And sickly pale.

  Alyssa swept her hands through her hair, plunged them onto the paper, whipped them away, and put her gloves back on.

  “Okay, you can go,” said Jamieson. “But be available for further questioning.”

  “Of course.” Alyssa smiled and floated out of the Hall.

  Annabelle was looking in the cracks between the boards of the old pine floor for missing earrings. Hy was organizing the jewellery case, and, curious, pulled out an appraisal envelope. It contained a photo of a modest diamond ring, probably an engagement ring, one they hadn’t found in the room.

  The two women searched for it, with no luck.

  “She must be wearing it,” concluded Hy. She put the photo back in the box.

  When Alyssa returned from her interview with Jamieson, Annabelle had gone, but Hy was still there and heard the front door open. She scurried down the stairs to see Alyssa come in a final time. Thank God, she thought, that she didn’t have to see the whole performance. She was getting tired of it. What must it be like to live with her?

  Alyssa didn’t notice Hy right away. She pulled off her gloves, wet and soiled from her excursion. Then she saw Hy, and her hands flew to her face in shock. She was paralyzed in that position, and Hy was, too, staring at Alyssa, wondering.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Hy.

  “Fresh gloves. I need fresh gloves. In the hamper.” Hy opened it to find that it was full of dozens of pairs of gloves, in every colour imaginable, but at least half of them were…

  “White lace,” said Alyssa, indicating her choice.

  Hy fished out a pair of gloves and held them out to Alyssa, her right hand hidden in the fabric of her dress. She turned and put them on, then turned to Hy again, her face tormented.

  “You won’t tell anyone.”

  Hy was confused. “Won’t tell…what?”

  “That you’ve seen my deformity.”

  “I didn’t. I didn’t see any deformity.”

  An uncertain smile formed on Alyssa’s strained features.

  “You are kind,” she said.

  “No. Just truthful. I saw nothing.” She hadn’t. A bit of redness, some kind of scar maybe on the right hand, but nothing really.

  “Very kind.” Alyssa was beginning to regain her composure. When Hy offered to make her tea, she inclined her head gracefully – and gratefully accepted.

  Now, Hy thought, she might be able to squeeze some information out of her. She wanted to know why Alyssa had accused Suki of killing Lord. Was it jealousy – or was there any truth to it? Could she get Alyssa to talk about it?

  When the tea was ready, they took it into the double parlour. The Macks were large people and their furniture had been chosen to fit them. Alyssa was swallowed up by the big old armch
air that Ben had been sitting in for the past twenty-five years. There was a permanent depression in the cushion, and when Alyssa sat in it, she sank down so deep that her feet could not touch the floor. She looked like a child, except for the fine wrinkling on her pale skin and skeletal face. Her fair hair was washed out and frizzy with split ends escaping in every direction. Her complexion was pallid, her clothes neutrals, the chair beige, and it absorbed her. The gauzy material cascaded down from the ceiling and around her, making it difficult to see her face, to see her expression.

  Hy told her about finding the jewellery case upset, blamed the cat, and gave Annabelle’s apologies.

  Alyssa seemed unperturbed.

  “I’ll have to check if anything’s missing,” she said.

  “There was a photo of a ring we couldn’t find…”

  “Oh that…,” Alyssa said dismissively, waving her hand with the wedding ring on it, slipped on over the white glove.

  And the engagement ring? Hy wondered. Some women put that on their right hand. It wasn’t on Alyssa’s.

  “Why did you say Suki killed your husband…her husband?”

  Alyssa gritted her teeth. “My husband. Who else would have done it?”

  “Who else?”

  “I didn’t kill him, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “What happened that night?”

  Alyssa’s eyes narrowed. Should she tell this woman what she hadn’t told Jamieson?

  “I followed Leone. I saw him in the glow of the moon as he headed down the shore. I wondered what he was doing, so I followed him.”

  “In his footsteps?” Of course, thought Hy. The footsteps in the photo.

  “In his footsteps. I could see where to place my feet by the light of the moon.”

  “Why did you do that? Were you suspicious?”

  “Yes. I was.”

  “And what did you see when you got there? Did you see him kill Lord?”

  Alyssa cast her eyes down. She fiddled with the glove that hid her scarred hand.

  “No. I saw nothing. He wasn’t there when I got there.”

  “And Lord?”

  “Oh, he was there.”

  “Dead?”

  “Dead.”

  “Did you want him dead?”

  The glint sharpened, hardened.

  “No…why would I want him dead?”

  Why would she?

  “The thing is…” Alyssa leaned forward confidentially, her feet now almost able to touch the worn Persian carpet. “Well, the truth is, we were about to reconcile.”

  “What about Suki?”

  An upward shake of the head. Contempt. Eyes narrowing around the hard glint. She pushed forward in the chair. Feet hit the carpet. Suddenly Alyssa seemed larger, not the hunted but the hunter.

  “What about Suki?”

  Had Hy said anything Alyssa hadn’t simply repeated?

  “Did Suki know? Did she care? Did she care about Lord?” You wouldn’t think so, thought Hy, the way she’d been fooling around with Ian.

  Alyssa propped herself up, a hand on each side, pressing against the chair cushion, her chest, with its negligible breasts poking forward in the silky dress, two small cones like a pubescent girl’s. She stood up. Turned halfway to look out the window, down to the shore. The surf was still pounding onto the beach. Hy couldn’t see her face, her eyes, her expression.

  “Suki didn’t know. She doesn’t care. Not about him. He didn’t care about her either.”

  “He married her.”

  “Ha!” The sound was metallic, dismissive.

  “He married her to make me jealous.”

  “Did it?”

  Alyssa turned and stared straight at Hy. Hy couldn’t read her eyes. They’d gone blank. Cold. They didn’t match the smile that spread across Alyssa’s face.

  A smile of satisfaction, but cold, blank eyes. Two separate messages. But what did they mean?

  “Of course not. I knew he was still mine. That he’d be mine as long as I wanted.” The eyes came alive now. “He was mine when he died.” Triumph.

  Hy still didn’t get it. What power did this woman have over Lord? He, with his good looks, with this little mouse.

  “Was Suki jealous of you?”

  Alyssa toyed with her wedding ring, circling her finger with it.

  “Very,” she said, and sat down.

  “Might they have argued…is that why you said…that Suki…”

  Alyssa slipped back into the chair, feet again well off the floor. She looked like a rather uninteresting doll. The fabric undulated around her.

  The Black Widow spider in her nest.

  “Killed Lance? Oh, I think so. Yes, I think so.”

  But Suki had an alibi, thought Hy, when she let herself out the big double doors with the carved St. Andrew’s cross.

  Ian. Ian was Suki’s alibi.

  It was obvious. That’s all Ian was to Suki. An alibi. Ian was in the middle of a dangerous game. Hy headed for his house. It was uphill all the way, and she was out of breath when she got there. Hers wasn’t the only heavy breathing, as she let herself in the kitchen door.

  Not again, she thought.

  Someone was having an orgasm. On the point of backing out of the house, hands over her ears, Hy heard the cries reach a peak, followed by insane laughter and a squawk.

  Not Suki. Jasmine.

  Jasmine was doing a perfect imitation of Suki having an orgasm.

  The parrot squawked again, and then resumed the heavy breathing. Hy followed the sound into the living room, where the parrot was perched on Ian’s shoulder. Ian was oblivious to the bird’s carrying on, lost in his computer screen. No sign of Suki.

  “Where is she?”

  He jerked his head in the direction of the Hall.

  “Being questioned by Jamieson.”

  Hy slumped down in a chair. The arm fell off.

  “You know you could be sleeping with a killer.”

  “I could be, but I’m not.” He said it in that smug way of his, but something nagged at him. Something Suki had said about Lord: “He can’t and you can.” Ian had taken it to mean that Lord was impotent, but might it be because she knew he was dead? Because she’d killed him?

  “Then what was that you were doing on the couch yesterday?”

  “We weren’t sleeping.”

  “That’s for sure.”

  “Credit me with a bit of sense. The woman is not a killer.”

  “And what particular sense tells you that – touch, smell, taste? Or is it what you see – or hear?” Hy let out a long, seductive moan. Jasmine copied it. Hy did it again, in a duet with the parrot. In the heightened state Ian was in, the sound stirred him.

  “Don’t do that unless you mean it.”

  She grinned.

  “Mean it. Do you mean it?” asked Jasmine.

  He flushed.

  “You didn’t see him at all? Didn’t visit your husband?”

  Suki shook her head and her thick hair bounced around her shoulders. Product.

  But she didn’t actually speak. Didn’t say no.

  Jamieson leaned forward, to ask the question again and press her point. Then she caught it. That scent. Poison. That was the name of the perfume. Jamieson choked on it, its heaviness invading her lungs. She pulled back.

  “You were there.” It was the scent she’d smelled at Lord’s. And she could see him and Suki – Suki had been the one in the bed, a bed where she’d failed to find satisfaction. And Lance Lord was trying to give it to her in the only way he could.

  “This is for you, my electric lady.” He’d be balancing one of his guitars, the Fender Stratocaster, on his knee and playing a medley from “Electric Ladyland.” All dressed up as Jimi Hendrix. Maybe he thought it would turn Suki on, and make up for
his inadequacies.

  “No. I wasn’t there. I was with Ian. He’ll tell you.”

  “In the bed. You were in the bed.”

  There was a long silence. Suki hadn’t expected to get away with her denial, but she thought she’d try it. She had nothing to lose, and nothing to hide, as long as the police believed her story. And why shouldn’t they?

  “Okay, yes, I was with Lance that night. We had dinner together.”

  “Lobster,” said Jamieson, without looking up.

  “Yeah, right, lobster.”

  “From?”

  “From? I don’t remember where from. Does that matter?”

  Jamieson looked up sharply.

  “In a murder investigation, every detail matters.”

  “I don’t remember. Some fish shack on a wharf. The cabbie took me there.”

  “You came by taxi?”

  Suki nodded.

  “From?”

  “Charlottetown.”

  “Someone had something else.”

  “Yeah, Lance. I bought him the steak in town. He doesn’t eat lobster.”

  Jamieson noted the details. Not particularly important, but she liked to keep track of everything.

  “Okay. You had dinner. Go on.”

  “We ate.”

  Jamieson suspected Lance was at his most charming. Flashing smile. Burning blue eyes. A great body in those tight bellbottoms that showed how well-endowed he was.

  “We ate – and we got…” Suki was all blushes and lowered eyelids. A small smile lit her face and eyes.

  “You got?”

  “…we got intimate.”

  “It looked like there was only one person in that bed.”

  “Well, Lance was…it was…”

  Silence. The silence Jamieson expected would make Suki blurt out something to fill the vacuum. Suki did not. The second hand on the school clock at the back of the Hall ticked until Jamieson couldn’t stand the silence.

  “Didn’t he use the Viagra?” Jamieson bet the Viagra had upset Suki.

  Lord smiling, his matinée idol smile, the too-white teeth, too perfectly aligned, flashing at her.

  “Viagra?” She jumped up, threw her napkin down on the table.

  “Viagra?” Louder, as she marched the length of the table toward him.

  “Viagra?” Her face within an inch of his. The smile on his gone, replaced by a perplexed look.