She pulled herself up again. She couldn’t see anything.
“Do you make a habit of this?”
She let go in shock, fell on her ass and looked up into the pointedly ironic face of Hawthorne Parker. Do had been trying to warn her that he was coming around the front of the building where Hy couldn’t see him.
“Uh…no…I…uh…” She was stuttering again. She pulled herself up as Guillaume appeared behind Parker.
“Guillaume, this is—” Parker paused.
Hy stuck out a hand. “Hy McAllister.”
In spite of his disapproval, Parker was eager to show off his latest possession. He hadn’t been able to show this one to anyone except Guillaume, and the thrill of that was already gone. One shamefully passionate night—the shame was in how easily Guillaume could play him, how he could awaken and satisfy Parker’s otherwise ambivalent sexuality—and then nothing. He opened the door and gestured her in.
“Wow,” she said at the sight of the gleaming stainless steel, black granite and white ceramic. She could hear water flowing somewhere.
“Wow,” she said again, when Parker worked the dimmer switch to gradually illuminate the grotto, bathing it in a soft glow.
“The Lobster Grotto,” said Parker.
“The Lobster Grotto?” She moved forward and peeked in. The pond was empty.
“When the season starts, we’ll fill it with lobster and Guillaume will start cooking…”
She touched Guillaume’s arm.
“You know how to cook lobster?”
He looked at her as if she’d asked him if he could cook an egg. “But of course.”
“When you boil them, do you throw them in headfirst?”
His eyes popped open, an exaggerated expression of horror on his face.
“Dieu, non. I do not boil. I do not throw.” He grimaced as if that last were an action that was inconceivable. He brought out the lobster stunner. Hy found it frightening.
She left with a head full of Guillaume’s theories on live storage and humane killing—surely an oxymoron? She also had recipes for some unusual dishes to use in the newsletter. She’d promised to credit them to the “Internationally Acclaimed, Award-Winning Chef, Guillaume St. Jacques.” Parker had frowned as Guillaume had reeled off his recipes and she’d scribbled them down. They’d included: Homard St. Jacques, Jambes d’Homard Croquants, and Lobster Roly Poly.
Lobster Roly Poly?
Chapter Sixteen
A comet crashed into Jupiter, fading into ice floes on Mars and the Martian landscape, red like the soil of The Island. Ian was staring at his computer screen, but didn’t see any of it—not the exploding star, the Magellanic cloud, nor one of his favourites—the moon with Venus rising. He missed it all because he was over the moon himself. In a few hours, Hy would be coming to spend the night. He was not thinking about her, but about the new female he had met—Jasmine. What a beautiful bird—smart, too, and cheeky. He liked that about her.
It was the eve of Setting Day, and it had become a tradition for Hy and Ian to stay up all night, drinking and star-gazing, waiting on his widow’s walk to watch the boats go out on the water at dawn. Ian had been trying to hook up his night-vision telescope to a webcam out on the roof and have the images play on his computer screen in the house. The webcam looked down on the village and over the water. It was meant for scientific observation of the skies and seas. But Ian not only loved stargazing, he harboured a secret wish to bust a drug-smuggling operation. Prominently on his desk, right by the computer, were the coast guard guidelines for spotting suspicious activity at sea: vessels with no names on them, operating on no fixed schedule, whose crew appeared not to be fishermen, whose hull might be riding low in the water. The fact that there was no evidence of any drug smuggling at The Shores, and never had been, didn’t deter him. He thought the area was ripe for it—especially now that it was so isolated. It was only a matter of time. His chances would be better, he thought, if he could monitor activities day and night.
Even without advanced technology, Ian had seen some interesting stuff through his rooftop telescope. Nothing illegal—just damn interesting.
Last August he’d viewed Hy and that American scientist down on the beach, the day after he’d teased her about the guy. She’d laughed and said nothing was going on. If it wasn’t, it sure was by the time he spied them—or spied on them. Ian wasn’t a peeping Tom. He’d been searching for suspicious boats on the water when the telescope had slipped—to a pair of male hands pushing up a woman’s dress. Ian knew that dress—and he was reasonably familiar with the anatomy. Hy wasn’t wearing panties. She had a nice ass, with or without clothes, but especially without. He’d felt differently about her after that. Sometimes, when he was with her, he would think about what he’d seen. She’d been so energetic, so joyful. But they were friends. Just friends.
Ian’s real obsession with bringing night views inside was the technological challenge of setting up the system. He might never use it. Bent as he was on completing the hook-up, he was still distracted. He kept thinking about Jasmine. Maybe he needed a bird in his life.
Hy was pleased with Guillaume’s contribution to her Super Saver newsletter, especially the Lobster Roly Poly recipe. She’d written them up and now she was working on a sidebar. She’d called it “Lobster Lore: Five Things We Bet You Didn’t Know.”
1) Lobsters can weigh 50 pounds and live one hundred years.
2) Island lobsters that had been tagged and transplanted to B.C. swam home—all the way down the west coast of North America through the Panama Canal and back up the east coast.
3) Lobsters are related to cockroaches and spiders. Deep-fried tarantulas are a delicacy in some parts of Asia.
4) Boiling lobsters alive is illegal in Reggio, Italy. The fine is up to $600.
Then she ran out.
She needed one more fact.
She googled lobster. And it popped up again.
The Lobster Lover’s Blog
Lobsters have two things going against them: they’re ugly and delicious. If you’re delicious, it doesn’t matter how ugly you are. If you’re ugly, you’re toast…or on toast, in a sauce, over the flames, barbecued, grilled, boiled to death.
Just because lobsters are ugly, doesn’t mean they’re stupid. Traps are a dumb way to catch them. Scientists found that out when they stuck an underwater camera on a lobster trap. It got over 3,000 “hits”—attempts by lobsters to get into the trap and eat the bait, which was fresh herring. Since lobsters usually eat garbage, this was like a gourmet meal. They lined up to get some, like humans at a popular downtown restaurant or bar. They jockeyed for place, fought each other, lost a few limbs, and fewer than fifty got in. Of those, almost all got out.
When it came time to count the catch, there were only two edible lobsters left.
Even two is too many.
Hy printed the blog to take with her to Ian’s. Maybe he could explain why she kept getting them. In the meantime, she now had fact number five—how easily lobsters can escape their traps. She had brief second thoughts about using the bit that linked lobsters with cockroaches and spiders. Customers might not like it. The Super Saver public relations department might not like it either. The head of PR, Eldon Frizzell, was a bit of a tight ass.
To hell with him. It was true, wasn’t it? She did a quick edit, a spell-check and posted the newsletter. She was finished—several hours ahead of deadline.
Chapter Seventeen
All the local seagulls were circling over Big Bay Harbour the night before Setting Day, swooping and squawking as the fishermen loaded their boats with baited traps. They were stacked five feet high, with their curved wood and lath tops and flat bottoms, weighted with concrete. Green netting and wire caging enclosed the traps on sides and ends and divided the inside into two rooms. A hooped funnel was the way into the “kitchen,” where the bait was
, but the only way out was through the second, smaller room, the “parlour,” with its small exit to let undersized lobsters escape. Yellow and green trap lines puddled on the wharf below each stack of traps and from the trap lines hung buoys in each fisherman’s distinctive colours—bright pinks and oranges, neon greens, sober navies and brilliant blues, stroked with identifying numbers in black.
There were a baker’s dozen of lobster boats—blue, green, red and sparkling white, their names painted in script on bows tipped upward: Bay Runner, Tide’s In, The Caper.
The boats were mostly modern, remaining true to the traditional exterior look. Inside, some were equipped with all the latest GPS technology—and all with a more rudimentary convenience: “the head.” It was now politically incorrect to pee in the water, but they still did.
There were dozens of bait bins, filled with fresh dead herring, their glassy eyes staring up blankly. Some seagulls stood on the traps, or on the wharf, motionless, wary, closely watching the humans and the bait, facing straight ahead, able to see every movement peripherally. The odd brave one trotted a few steps closer to its object, stopped, moved a few more steps forward, then stopped again.
Ben and Annabelle’s boat had a hundred and sixty traps squeezed and stacked onto every inch of the deck, with just room to get by them to the wheelhouse. Ben was like a big kid on Christmas Eve—he could never go to sleep the night before Setting Day, so he and Annabelle would stay on the boat. Ben had bought it because it had a folding double berth—and because of the way the seller had advertised it: Lobster Love Boat. Share Work and Play. Dual Steering Systems and a Custom Bunk Built for Two. One heck of a deal and slightly negotiable. It became The Annabelle, but folks had begun calling it by Hy’s nickname for the couple, AnnaBen, their own local Brangelina.
Annabelle did not look as glamorous in rubber boots and fishermen’s gear as she did in high heels and plunging neckline, but Ben thought she looked great. He abandoned the last bait bin on the dock, jumped onto the boat, and squeezed into the wheelhouse behind her. He wrapped his arms around her, hands clutched under the familiar weight of her breasts, his head nuzzled into her neck. He was a tall man, but her legs were very nearly as long as his. They tucked comfortably into one another.
Neither spoke. They stared out at the setting sun, glancing off the clouds and streaking across the water, beams of red shining on the bay like a good omen, a blessing on the day to come. The thin layer of cloud held the colour as the sun slipped down and the sky became a red-pink canopy.
“Red sky at night, fisherman’s delight,” Ben chanted softly in Annabelle’s ear, breathing in the sweet scent of her hair, like wild roses, burying himself in it, moving his hands up onto her breasts. She turned to him and they held each other, locked together, as the sky behind them darkened.
He kissed her as the last weak rays of golden light gave up the day and they went down below the wheelhouse where Annabelle had made up the double bunk with clean sheets that smelled of fresh Island air. The smell of herring was stronger, but it didn’t bother them. This night was their little island of calm.
Visitors would soon invade The Island—ten times the population would arrive wanting food, shelter and fun. They were attracted by the laid-back lifestyle, but no one was busier than Islanders from May to September. These six hours were the last relaxed time Ben and Annabelle would have for months and they always spent it here on the boat, in each other’s embrace. Annabelle would manage a few hours’ sleep, but not Ben. He would hold her all night, breathe in her scent, and wait for the signal in the morning, the rush out to the water, the thrust into the short, intense season of hard work, here on this boat he loved, on the water he loved, with the woman he loved. They were squeezed into the bunk like sardines, happy in each other’s arms.
Ian was skimming The Lobster Lover’s Blog that Hy had just handed him.
“What is this?” He frowned. “Are you turning into an animal rights activist?”
“No. At least, I don’t think so. It popped up on my computer. Appeared out of nowhere.”
Hy was sitting on the floor in front of the woodstove. Ian had the same furniture he’d had in university. It had come out of his parents’ house—Danish modern. At least it had been modern in the fifties. It was incongruous in this historic home and not suited to the dry heat of the woodstove combined with the damp climate of The Island. It was always collapsing.
The room was lit only by the fire and by Ian’s screensaver images, currently flashing the birth of a new star across the room.
“It’s not the first time. It’s happened a few times.”
“You must have accidentally subscribed.”
“How do you do that? You always have to answer all those questions…name, address, email address, password, password again. I didn’t sign in, log-in or call it up. The first time it popped up, I’d been working on the Super Saver newsletter. I fell asleep on the couch. When I woke up, I hit the space bar and there it was.”
“Did you use gmail? Did you press a link?”
“Well, yes, but not until later. Anyway, it doesn’t come through email. It comes anytime.”
“You must have been doing something wrong. You said you’d been sleeping. Drinking wine?”
“That’s right, blame it on me. The human’s wrong, never the almighty computer.”
“Computer error is always human error. Except that when computers go wrong, they’re easier to fix.”
“I swear that machine has a mind of its own. Look at all the links that pop up when you post a gmail.”
“That’s just a technical trick—word recognition.” He tapped a finger on the piece of paper. “This has to have an explanation, too. How did this one appear?”
“I was writing the newsletter and needed another fact, so I googled lobster.”
“Just lobster?”
She nodded.
“And this came up, straightaway?”
She nodded again.
“No Google page?”
“Nope.”
He wrinkled his brow. “Have you ever googled the blog?”
“I told you—no.” There was an edge to her voice. “Well, I did once, but only after two of them appeared on their own.”
“That must be it.” He crossed the room and tapped the keyboard. The birth of the star was suddenly aborted. He tapped some more. He stopped and stood back for a moment, looking puzzled. He tried again. Nothing.
She came up behind him. “What are you doing?”
“Googling The Lobster Lover’s Blog.”
“I told you I’d tried.”
“Yes, but—” He wouldn’t give up. “There are a ton of blogs about lobsters and lovers and—well, you can imagine—but nothing by that name. Yet it’s right here, slugged at the top of your page.”
“I know.” She looked smug. “Face it. That computer’s only human. Made by a human with an imperfect brain.”
“It’s ridiculous.” He was getting frustrated, hammering at the keys with increasing speed. “What’s the point of a blog if it’s not public?” He scrolled down, his body stiff, his movements abrupt.
“There has to be a logical explanation.”
“You’re just trying to prove I screwed up. I didn’t. I know I didn’t.” She sat on the floor again. “What’s bothering you is you can’t prove I’m wrong.”
“Just give me a minute.”
The minute became five.
“Give it up, Ian. Let me tell you about murder at the W.I.”
He responded with a grunt.
“Are you sure you didn’t just write this yourself?” He punched a few more keys.
“It’s not to get back at me for my Christmas gift?”
She shook her head. “Nope.”
The “gift” he’d given her had been to secretly install screensaver images on her computer that in
cluded satellite photographs of Hurricane Katrina obscuring much of North America in its swirling fury; thunder clouds over the ocean; winds scouring the Sahara and a close-up on the eye of a storm over a small island. He’d done it to torment her, but she actually liked the images. It was only the wind battering at her house and making it sway that she hated—and the way Ian was acting now, all his attention on that damn computer.
“Are you listening? I said there was murder at the W.I.”
Finally, he looked up. “What? What murder, where?” He came over, and sat in a chair beside her. The arm fell off when he rested his hand on it.
As he fiddled to put it back in place, Hy told him all about Camilla Samson and her performance at the Hall, the Google pages with the photograph by the river Dee, the Lobster Liberation Legion’s activities in Europe and then returned to The Shores and the W.I. meeting.
“She called us murderers. Murderers!” She had to smile, thinking of it now.
Ian laughed. “I don’t know why you bother with that bunch of old crows.”
She looked offended. “Don’t say that. I like crows.”
A dark figure moved with quick, nervous steps through the village, along the road and up and down the lanes and driveways, wherever there were houses—scurrying, darting quick looks to all sides, making sure no one was awake or watching. The sleepy little village was completely dark—the only lights were those glowing in Ian’s living room. Mailbox to mailbox, the night messenger went, putting a notice in each one.
Chapter Eighteen
Most of the clouds had moved out on a soft wind and the sky was clear when Ian and Hy climbed to the widow’s walk. It was clear and bright with the moon nearly full, so that only a few of the brightest stars could be seen. Last year, the sky had been dark and dusted with the light of millions of stars, but Ian had kept his telescope trained on the green blip, blip of a satellite. Gadgets. Ian’s obsession, thought Hy. Gadgets. They were all around as she unfolded a lawn chair and sat down: webcam; night-vision binoculars; telescope; patio heater and flare gun.
Revenge of the Lobster Page 9
