“Flare gun?” Hy picked it up and turned it over in her hands.
“You never know.”
Hy was warmly dressed in her good jeans, with no holes in them, and the new Irish knit sweater Gus had made her for Christmas, but she was still cold. The temperature was hovering near zero. Ian switched on the patio heater and poured them each a mug of steaming coffee. The hot mug warmed her hands instantly. Ian sat down close to her, not quite touching, a thread of warmth between them.
Ian had the telescope aimed at the shore. He had spotted something on the water, just this side of Big Bay—a boat, but whose? He stood up, flipped on the night-vision goggles, searched for a name. He could find none. It was a boat with no name and one he didn’t recognize. He knew all the boats that fished out of Big Bay. What was this strange vessel doing so late, entering the harbour on the eve of Setting Day?
He swivelled the telescope over to Hy. “What do you see?”
“A boat pulling around the cape, toward Big Bay. Big deal,” she said. “Name’s The Crustacean. Ever heard of it?”
“Never.” He grabbed the ’scope from her, but the boat had gone around the cape and out of sight. Damn.
Ben and Annabelle were still awake when the unfamiliar vessel slipped into Big Bay, anchored at the mouth of the harbour and lowered a Zodiac into the water. The smaller vessel motored into the harbour, cut its engine and floated silently up to the end of the dock. Ben and Annabelle didn’t hear it. They never heard the two intruders board their boat and cut their trap lines. They didn’t hear them open the bait bin Ben had left on the wharf and spread the herring carcasses on the dock, spelling out the word Killers.
But the vandals heard them. When Annabelle screamed they took off, thinking they’d been spotted. Ben’s grunts only made them go faster, convinced they were being pursued. The pair fled, in a rhythm with the passionate eruptions, back to their own craft. Assuming they’d been discovered, they fired up the ignition. The sound of the throbbing engine was lost in Ben’s low moans rising in volume as he met Annabelle’s passion. They couldn’t possibly have heard a thing except each other.
“A pond? In the cookhouse?”
“Yup. Right at the back, with an intake pipe that goes all the way across the beach and down into the water.”
“That can’t be legal.”
“No, but who’s to stop him? Albert and Jared always did what they wanted with that beach. Always said it belonged to them—all the way to the water.”
Hy and Ian had been discussing their separate meetings with Guillaume and Parker. He’d described the rare works of art he’d seen in the house; she had told him about the cookhouse, including Guillaume’s theories about healthy and humane trapping and killing. “I think it’s creepy,” she ended. “That pond’s just a high-end death row for lobsters.”
“I can’t help thinking it all fits together somehow. These people, here, all at once. The blog.”
Hy dismissed it with a flutter of her hand.
“I think it’s just a coincidence. Parker and Guillaume came because they liked the place and the house. Camilla came because I invited her and brought the legion with her.”
“The blog? How do you explain that?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I just got on the list, I guess. Random.”
“I still think something’s going on.”
Hy raised her eyebrows and groaned. “Not your old drug-smuggling theory?”
“Don’t forget the boat.”
“The Crustacean?”
“I’m glad you saw the name. I wonder if Ben or Annabelle saw it?”
An hour before dawn, clouds moved back in and a soft steady rain began to fall, something more than a Scotch mist, but not much more—a fine spring rain that would green up the grass and set the lawnmowers putting and whirring. A flock of seagulls had descended on the fog-filled dawn to retrieve the herring bait spread along the dock at Big Bay. Ben was cursing and kicking and yelling at them to clear the road. Annabelle took a bucket of water to toss at the birds, but she stopped and wrinkled her brow. Was that a word? Kill. It looked like it spelled out kill. Dead fish eyes like flat marbles stared up from the word, one of them dotting the i nicely. Teenagers. Just teenagers fooling around. She tossed the water onto the dock and sent the birds flapping up into the sky in a great cacophony of displeasure. The gulls would soon follow the boats out of the harbour, hoping to steal bait that fell out of the traps. That’s what they’d come for. The herring on the dock had been a bonus.
When it was time to move the boats out past the sand bar to wait for the signal to start the season, it had become what Gus called a dirty day. Sheets of rain chased across the water by blasts of wind. The wind, from the North, was blowing off the cold water, enshrouding the bay in fog. Annabelle took the wheel while Ben, his mouth set in a thin angry line, began replacing trap line. He was snarling and shaking the water out of his beard like a wet dog.
The lobster boats sat out beyond the sandbar for some time, their engines throbbing under the crash of the waves on the shore, a long low hum of anticipation. They looked, from a distance, like lobsters themselves, their sterns weighted down by traps, their proud prows sticking up out of the water, their bow lights like beady little eyes, shining with expectation. They waited, hungry to begin the season. A fisheries official, in a boat out on the water with them, gave the signal at precisely six a.m. The low hum turned to steady drumming, as the Big Bay fishing fleet moved out of the harbour into the open Gulf, leaving one huge wake behind it.
The morning mist made it difficult for Hy and Ian to see the flotilla when it came around the cape. They got only one good look at the boats heading into the water and the fog. The fleet disappeared, leaving one old wooden boat in view. Both it and its owner should have been long retired, but retirement meant death to eighty-two-year-old Wyman Matheson. He wasn’t ready to go to his grave yet. His old tub, with just a few dozen handmade traps aboard, was dragging along, bobbing behind in the massive wake the others had churned up.
Watching the boats bob and rock on the water suddenly made Hy feel queasy. She shoved the ’scope to the side and sat down, bending her head to her knees.
“Anything wrong?”
Flashing lights. A migraine? No, just the old torment. Get over it. Will I never get over it?
She shook her head.
“No, I’m fine.” She managed to produce a smile. “Just felt a bit dizzy for a moment.”
When she looked up, even Wyman’s boat was gone. As abruptly as it had begun, the start of the lobster season had ended. The boats were hidden, the fishermen laying down their lines in thick fog. The show was over.
“I’m glad we stayed up.” Ian said those very same words every Setting Day.
“Yup, not the best year, but still pretty cool.” Hy stretched. “Happy New Year.”
That’s what she always said. It always felt like the real new year at The Shores—a new beginning, fresh hope—the threshold to summer days of warm weather and bountiful harvests from the ocean and the earth.
Camilla, watching the boats disappear into the Gulf, thought of it quite differently. She thought of it as the beginning of the slaughter. It was why she was here. There would be work for the legionnaire tonight, and this was the perfect place to do it. Here—where he lived—his mind might be changed. Here there might be a big victory for the LLL. So far they had saved one lobster at a time, like the Chinese proverb said: Little drops of water wear down big stones. This time, the Legion might succeed in knocking down a whole pile of big stones.
After the rest of the boats had left, Scott Bergeron and Tom McFee took theirs out on the water, with not too many traps aboard. They didn’t care if the other fishermen got into the season ahead of them; it meant more catch for them to poach, less work, and longer lie-ins on summer mornings. They headed out of the harbour to the high cry of a lo
ne gull—another latecomer, wondering where the boats and bait had gone.
Scott and Tom would be wondering the same thing in the coming days, when they found the traps they tried to poach empty, inside each a small capsule containing a slip of paper spouting lobster rights.
After all the fishermen had returned home late in the morning, two vessels remained on the water—one, a small wooden dory. In it, a lone figure was wearing lobster camouflage and studying a local map of the Gulf bed. The fog made it difficult to see much farther than a few feet, but there was the odd break in the mist, allowing a man in the second, bigger, boat to spy the dory and its lone occupant.
“There!” the short man called to his companion, who grabbed the binoculars, looked through them, and said a rather odd thing.
“Coffin was right.”
Chapter Nineteen
Over breakfast, Ian and Hy rehashed the mystery of the blog, the drama of Camilla’s performance at the Institute meeting and the appearance of Parker and Guillaume in the neighbourhood. They munched on warm blueberry muffins Moira had produced the day before—not as good as April’s but still delicious, with fresh farm butter melted into them. She would have laced them with laxative if she’d known Ian was sharing them with Hy.
They couldn’t come to any conclusion—or agreement—about what was going on, but determined to quiz Ben and Annabelle at the lobster supper the following night. Perhaps that would turn up a few answers.
When Hy got home, there was a crumpled piece of paper stuffed between her screen and storm doors. It was a clever copy of her invitation to the lobster supper. Superimposed on it, in red print, it read Cancelled.
She knit her brow. Who could have done it? Worry about that later. Have to undo the damage first. She got on the phone. Gus had received one just like it. Ian had one stuffed in his mailbox. Call after call went out. Everyone seemed to have received one. It must be Camilla. More guerrilla tactics. Hy used the W.I. phone chain and organized the women to call everyone they could think of to make sure no one paid attention to the bogus mail-out. She made over forty calls herself.
“What does it mean?” Wayne Mahew, a very literal individual, asked. “It says cancelled, but still and all, it is an invitation. So which is which?” There was more of the same. Agnes Cousins, one-hundred-and-four and the oldest villager, when told it was a hoax, deemed it “the devil’s hand at work in computers, typewriters, even the telephone, but not the warshing machine, no, not the warshing machine, that’s a godsend.”
The calls took all morning. There were chats with the shut-ins, delighted at receiving a phone call, conversations with people Hy hadn’t had a chance to talk to in a while.
“That Woman.” Annabelle had called Hy immediately when she got home and pulled the fake invitation out of her mailbox.
“I’m afraid so.”
“Look, someone cut our trap lines and spread bait on the wharf. I think it spelled out a word—I think it said kill.”
Hy bit her lip. “That sounds like her.” Except she couldn’t imagine Camilla getting her hands dirty with fish bait. The legionnaire must be here as well.
“I tell you, this is bad. Ben’s growling. Came in off the water soaking wet, angry as a bear.”
It was hard to imagine, but Annabelle knew Ben better than anyone. Other people just saw his easygoing side.
“I had hoped she was gone,” Hy said after an awkward silence. “Maybe she is. This might be the other one.”
“You mean there’s more?”
“Well—” She was reluctant to admit it. “Well, there could be.” She told Annabelle about the Lobster Liberation Legion.
“I really thought she was gone. Nathan picked her up after the meeting. I was sure he had taken her to the ferry. Do you know where he took her?”
“No, he never mentioned it. I’m only his mother.”
“Can you ask him?”
“No.”
“No?” Was she that pissed off?
“He’s not here. You know Nathan always disappears for a few days around Setting Day.” Hy knew. Nathan had gone fishing with his father since he was old enough to haul a trap, but when he reached puberty, the strangest thing had happened. The Setting Day he turned fourteen he became violently ill. He was so seasick he was rolling around in the bottom of the boat most of the way out and all the way home. Ever since, he’d made sure to be away when the season opened. That’s when Annabelle had started fishing with Ben. They liked it so much, they didn’t mind if Nathan came or not.
“Won’t be back for a day or two. You can ask him then.”
“Is the sandwich board sign ready?”
“Yup.”
“Let’s put it up outside the Hall.”
“Already there,” said Annabelle.
“Great. Thanks.” While she was on the phone with Annabelle, Hy had changed the original invitations. When she got off the phone, she printed up the new copies with a bold headline at top: Supper Still On. She got back in her truck—this was costing her gas!—and delivered every one of them. In some cases, the bogus flyer was still in the mailbox, so she simply removed it.
Moira smirked when she saw Hy at her mailbox. She’d seen her go up to Ian’s house last night and not emerge until morning. It happened every year and every year she watched and the bitter knot inside her tightened. Serves her right, thought Moira, turning her attention from the window to the oven. The muffins would be ready to take to Ian in just fifteen minutes. She went to change into a new dress. She didn’t make any of the phone calls Hy had asked her to make.
It was late afternoon when Hy got home and dragged herself up to bed. When she awoke, it was nearly evening. She made tea and checked her email. She had an entire screen full of new messages.
Re: Your newsletter referring to lobsters’ kinship to cockroaches, the first one began, this is to inform you that I shall be making an official complaint…
She scrolled to the bottom. It was from Clarence Cadogan, President of the The Island Fisherman’s Association. It didn’t bother her too much. He’d find any excuse to write a letter of complaint. She opened the next one:
How dare you…
Deleted it and opened the next:
I was disgusted…
Delete. Open.
The state of the fishery is bad enough as it is without people from away like you sticking their oar in and stirring the soup…
Interesting mix of metaphors, thought Hy. She deleted and scrolled to the next. They were all like that, email after email, expressing disgust, shock, fury. She steeled herself to keep looking through them. There was one relatively benign but religious email from The Island’s most fanatical animal rights advocate, Maisie Alexander:
Were you meaning to cast aspersions on the cockroach? Let us not forget that the cockroach, too, is one of God’s creatures…
Finally, Hy got to the last one.
Please be in touch A.S.A.P. regarding monthly newsletter…
It was from the Super Saver’s Head of Public Relations, Marketing and Advertising—as his emails always reminded you. Eldon was probably going to give her the can.
Can of worms, she thought.
Chapter Twenty
“Yes?”
Sheldon Coffin held a cell phone in one hand and a ruler in the other. The phone was registered to a numbered company. He used it whenever he didn’t want anyone to know what he was up to.
He was crouched on the lawn behind his oceanfront home, measuring the length of the grass. It swept down in one manicured swath to the shore of a private cove. What he heard next cleared the idea of daily lawn measurement right out of his head.
“Jesus Christ. Not again…”
Her again. Butting into his business.
“Deal with it.” He threw the ruler across the lawn, stood up and brushed some loose clippings off his bare
knees. It was a bit early in the year to be wearing shorts, but he warmed easily. He was sweating and dizzy from being crouched over and standing up so suddenly. He pulled a handkerchief from his shirt pocket and wiped it across the glistening round bald patch at the top of his head. It was surrounded by snow-white hair, clipped close like his lawn. The bald patch was turning pink under the warm Maine sun.
“How should I know? You figure it out. I don’t want this knocking at my door.”
He flipped the phone shut and threw it on the ground—end of conversation. Many of his conversations ended that way—always had. Only it wasn’t like the old days, when you had the satisfaction of hanging up on someone by slamming down the receiver.
By the time he reached the stone patio—and a much-needed gin and tonic—Sheldon was short of breath. He was a large man, made of solid fat. The circumference of one of his thighs exceeded the waist measurement of his perfectly kept wife, Stella—or so she claimed. It was her duty, part of the job of a wealthy man’s wife, to remain reed-thin. It was also part of the unspoken job description that she be significantly younger than he, which she was—forty-something to his sixty-something—and that she should anticipate his every need. She was waiting for him on the flagstone patio in front of the French doors, his gin and tonic in hand. He grabbed it and slumped down in the soft pillows of a wicker chair. It creaked under his weight.
“Troubles, darling?” She instinctively made the word plural. It made it more innocuous. She didn’t want to rile him. He riled so easily.
“Nothing.” He said curtly. “Nothing at all.”
Then what, she allowed herself a traitorous thought, was his cell phone doing in the middle of the lawn? She went over to pick it up. He took a long, slow haul on his drink, leaned back, shut his eyes and tried to calm down.
Stella placed the phone quietly on the table in front of him and slipped into the house. She knew better than to disturb him when his eyes were closed like that.
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