She could smell them.
She marched over to the freezer and opened the door. Lasagne aux Homards, Lobsteroe and Tomato Tomalley, stacked in labelled cartons on one shelf. On another, a plastic bag of cooked lobster claws. She shook her head sadly. The carnage.
Her mood shifted. Her eyes blazed. She began pulling the cartons off the shelf and emptying them into the pond, one after the other, shredding the boxes as she tore them open, cutting her hands on their sharp frozen edges, box after box after box, until her hands were red and swollen and dozens of chunks of lobster bobbed on the surface of the water. She cared more than the crustaceans did. Had there been a lobster in the pond, he might gladly have eaten his own.
An object on fire seemed to fly across the room. It was a cloud in a nebula, riddled with young stars, the flickering image dancing with the flames from Ian’s wood stove. He had installed the new screensaver images from the Spitzer space telescope just that morning. The dusty leftovers from the birth of a planet, winds swirling around a newborn star, the silk veil of a space cloud: the otherworldly images brought a strange warmth to the room of life unknown.
The images cut out abruptly but a world very nearly as strange unfolded on the wide screen TV when Ian installed the Legionnaire’s DVD. The picture was dark, blurry and jarring, but riveting. A pair of hands released a lobster from a trap, bare hands with long, well-formed fingers stroked its underside with slow, sure movements—movements of such delicacy that the creature appeared under the spell of the human, and of the inhuman sounds: a strange whispering followed by an ethereal cooing with a high sustained tone. It was not unpleasant—at least the lobster seemed to like it. It didn’t move, not one of its ten legs nor its antennae, until it slipped into the water and suddenly burst back to life, plunging under the surface with a powerful thrust of its tail. Gone—in less than a second. The whole DVD wasn’t a minute long. When it ended, neither Hy nor Ian spoke for a moment.
“So was that her—the one at the Hall tonight?” Ian pressed Pause.
“I guess so. You can only see the camouflage sleeve and…run it again.”
They watched it again. “Pause it,” she commanded. “There.” She pointed at the screen. “See that?”
“What?”
“The ring.” It was a gold Irish wedding ring. “It is her. I saw it on her hand.”
“The things you women notice.”
“Well, Mr. Drug Bust.” Hy poked him in the side. “You have to have a sharp eye if you want to be a detective.” She tossed him the DVD Camilla had given her at the Institute, that she’d found at the bottom of her purse.
Ian put it in the player.
“Exactly the same,” she said as they watched the two hands nestle the lobster and release it, accompanied by the whispering and high-pitched sound.
Ian grinned when it ended. “Sounds a bit like Yoko Ono.”
“Not as unpleasant. What is it? Not a hum, not a chant…”
“No.” He ran the DVD again with the volume turned up. It should have been annoying, especially at that level of loudness, but it wasn’t.
“Strangest thing I ever heard.” Ian shook his head.
“Strangest thing I’ve ever seen.” Hy flopped back in her chair, released from the images that had kept her sitting forward, a prisoner of the screen. Had it made her understand, as Camilla said it might? The images and sounds were hypnotic, more powerful than the rhetoric of either woman. The power was in the visible bond between human and creature—such a creature. Lobsters weren’t cute and cuddly like baby seals. They couldn’t appeal with big limpid eyes. They were trapped and killed well out of sight, not bashed to death by clubs on ice floes crawling with celebrities and photo opportunities. The baby seals appealed to people’s protective instincts, but lobsters? What was to love about them, all wrapped up in their hard shells, with legs like insects and creepy antennae? Maybe they did need an advocate. A champion. Maybe they’d found that in Camilla and the Legionnaire. This much Hy did understand: those two saw something in lobsters that she had yet to see.
When Guillaume saw her, his eyes immediately flew to the lines of white powder threaded across the black granite counter. In his hand he held the silver straw he’d gone back to the house to fetch. He’d been careless.
She had the lobster claws out of the bag and in her hands when he came in. She turned to him and his eyes fixed on her face, the bandana that had covered it looped around her neck.
“You,” he said. An accusation.
“Yes.”
“Does he know?”
“Oh, yes, I think so.”
“Why do you come?”
“To stop the slaughter.”
His mouth twisted with bitterness. Disbelief clouded his eyes. He kept darting glances at the cocaine on the counter, licking and biting his lips. He could feel the drug’s metallic taste in the back of his throat from the line he’d already done. It was just enough to make him want more—even with her here. One line. One rush. Then he’d get her out. He leaned down, the silver straw poised above the powder, one eye on her.
She held up a lobster claw, dangled it over the pond and dropped it in.
His head jerked up, the straw slipped across the counter, and the cocaine scattered and spilled to the floor.
She held up the second claw, dangled and dropped it.
He charged at her.
She held up the third and let it go.
She backed away as he lunged forward, but he wasn’t coming for her. As she dashed behind the island and headed for the door, he went straight for the pond, scooping the claws out of the water, dropping two, clutching the other to his chest as if it contained something very precious. It did—the last of his cocaine stash, obtained while at the Sunaura Spa. Clinics were ideal places to score drugs.
At the door she looked back at him with contempt. He was pathetic—kneeling on the floor, clutching the claws to his chest, a sobbing mess of a man.
Satisfied, she got into the jeep and headed for Bloodsucker Cove.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Hy was frowning, thinking about the trouble she’d brought to The Shores, now spreading through the community and hurting people she loved, like Ben and Annabelle.
Ian was fussing with the fire.
“No one but us has seen The Crustacean.” He closed the woodstove doors. “I asked Ben—he hadn’t, but said he’d ask around.” He poured two brandies. “Who do you think it belongs to—the Legion, or those two thugs who chased you out of the Hall?” He handed Hy a glass.
“Mutt and Jeff?” She swirled the brandy around and took a sip.
Ian looked quizzical. “You know them?”
“Idiot. Mutt and Jeff. Tall and thin. Short and fat.”
“Oh, yeah.” He said it uncertainly, as if realizing it was something he should know, and trying to act as if he did. He’d never been a comic book or cartoon kid.
Their real names were Bill and Wendell. Bill had a record as long as his thin arm of assaults, all the result of drinking bouts. He had one assault with a weapon—when he took a baseball bat to his buddy at a game one time. Wendell had been up for exposing a part of himself that was as short, stubby and insignificant as he felt. He got away with it for years, in spite of numerous sightings and reports to police—until he flashed a youngster whose mother was the head of a child protection organization. Both men had served time—not for being dangerous exactly, but nasty.
Ian sat down beside Hy.
“That was gutsy of you—and her—standing up to them like that.”
“I didn’t think about it. She did. She knew what she was doing. They’re bullies—they don’t know what to do if you stand your ground.”
“Still, I’d watch out, Hy. They’re after her—and now they’re mad at you too.”
“They’re not the only ones.”
�
��They’re the most dangerous ones.”
“Who do you think they are?”
“I never thought I’d say this in all honesty, but they’re from away, that much I know.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if the Legionnaire and Camilla know them. Old enemies, something like that.”
“Well, be careful, because they’re your enemies now, too.”
She didn’t care about them. She cared about what people in the village thought of her—the Institute women, Annabelle and Ben. She flushed at the thought of the ugly looks she’d received that night. She felt dizzy with despair. What Ian said next didn’t help.
“Ben’s going to get the fishermen together to talk about what they should do. They want to get those Legionnaires out of here.”
“It might not be the Legion, you know.” Hy had told Ian about the Legionnaire’s denials in the parking lot, those honest eyes, but he brushed it off, then and now.
“You’re too soft, Hy. It’s obviously them.”
“I have to try to find Camilla and speak to her.”
The sun had set and the moon had not yet risen. When it did, it would be too bright, and she’d have to head for shore. Until then, she was hauling them up, trap after trap, freeing the lobsters one at a time, then sliding them back into the water, carefully laying the lines back in the direction she found them. Jared, over in the next cove, was keeping the lobsters and tossing the lines and the traps back any which way. She became aware of his presence first. As she let go of a trap the sound started up again, like an echo. Someone else on the water?
She held her breath, all movement frozen, a silent listener in the silent night. A trap splashing into the water—from where? She stayed still. Then—the sound of a trap being hauled into a boat—from beyond the point. A poacher.
She was hot with anger. She hated poachers. Fishermen were one thing, but poachers—scum, vermin, she thought. She hauled up her anchor and began rowing toward the sound.
“I don’t know why Parker was slumming it with the locals—and he came without Guillaume. I don’t know what that’s about either. I do think he’s hiding something.”
Hy looked up from staring into her glass, swirling the brandy around. “Why?”
“It was the way he and the Legionnaire looked at each other. Like they knew each other.”
“Really?”
“It looked like it. A long stare.”
“So what do you think the connection might be?”
“Beats me.”
“Lobsters?”
“Well, he likes eating them, like the rest of us.”
“Speak for yourself. I wonder if I’ll ever be able to eat another…after hearing them claw away at the pots.”
“Just a natural escape response.”
“Exactly. That’s what upsets me.”
“I mean without thought. There are few creatures with a smaller brain than a lobster. A mosquito maybe. You kill them.”
“I do not,” she said. Hy had literally not killed a fly until she moved to The Shores. They were thick on the air in summer and fall when the farmers spread manure on the fields. They lived in attics and walls in winter and in the spring came out to travel up and down sun-warmed windowpanes. They were stupid and dozy and died easily, stuck lifeless to curtains or fell dead into your hair. They were disgusting. Oh, yeah, she could kill flies, but they didn’t scream when you swatted them.
“You like a burger now and then. You eat steak, I’ve seen you do it. Don’t you think it’s worse to kill a cow than a lobster?”
Hy thought of the cow that Gladys Fraser’s husband Wally had fattened up one year. He kept it in a pasture smack in front of the house. Every evening when he came home, the cow charged across the pasture to greet him and trotted back alongside the car as it drove up to the house. The cow made eye contact with everyone who went by, gave a toss of its head and a welcoming moo. She became a village pet with a variety of names: Bessie, Bossie, Judy and Liza. Wally just called her The Cow—and one early morning in late Fall, he drove her off to be butchered. Her moos and bellows of distress woke the whole village. Most villagers refused to eat at Gladys and Wally’s that winter. He had never fattened up a cow for the kill again. Killing and eating livestock had once been the way of life in The Shores, but the villagers now preferred the aisles of the Super Saver, where their beef came in anonymous packages.
Some organic farmers had begun to put names on the animals they raised as food. Last Thanksgiving Hy had eaten an organic chicken called Eva. Eva was delicious, but Hy hadn’t liked eating something with a name. Maybe that’s where she should draw the line.
“I know I eat animals. I just don’t like to think about it.”
“You’ll be reduced to eating chips and chocolate bars like Atwood’s Edible Woman. Then somebody will start campaigning for junk food rights. They’ll say it’s cruel to trap potato chips in dispensing machines and talk about the pain they feel when they’re dropped into the tray.”
“Yeah, yeah.” She stared into the flames.
Ian stared at her.
Usually she looked boyish, but tonight she looked pretty, with the blouse and the skirt, and those curls. Like copper.
He couldn’t stop looking at her hair.
Jared had finished for the night. As he rowed back to shore, he heard another pair of oars dipping in and out of the water. He jumped out of the boat and pulled it up, just able to make out the other dory as it came closer. He watched it, wary.
The dory scudded up on the sand. The Legionnaire jumped out, landing light on her feet, gave the boat a jerk, pulling it up beyond the water line. She marched over to Jared’s boat and, without a word, lifted a lobster out of the bin, took the pegs out, waded into the water and released it. Then she came back for another.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
“I might ask you the same thing,” she said coolly, taking the second lobster into the water and releasing it.
Jared grabbed her wrist when she returned for the third. He twisted it and she winced. He gripped her so that she couldn’t budge without sending searing pain up her arm.
“Those are my lobsters,” he said, through gritted teeth.
“I doubt it,” she responded, still cool in spite of the twist he gave when she said it, hot pain radiating from her wrist up through her arm and shoulder.
“Well, they’re mine now,” Jared grinned, revealing a gap where he had lost an eye tooth in a fight the night before. It had been over a tart he’d nailed to the wall outside the washroom at the Legion. She’d belonged to someone else. He’d lost the fight and the broad. It had left him feeling horny and frustrated. He was ripe for some action. This one isn’t bad. A bit scrawny.
He reached out and clamped a hand on her breast. Not much to feel, he thought, but it would do. He pulled her close. She smelled of fish. She smelled like she’d already been doing it, but she hadn’t done it with him yet. He tore open her jacket and shoved a hand up under her sweater. She struggled with him. He liked that. He liked a bitch with a bit of fight to her. He slapped her. Once. Twice. He could feel himself getting hard. He hauled up for a third and she kneed him in the groin.
Then she was gone. Sheer adrenalin and sense of purpose propelled her at an astonishing speed. She grabbed the bin from his boat, heaved it into her dory, jumped in and took off, oars flashing. She rowed as fast as she could, but he did not pursue her. He was bent over, nursing the pain, the swelling that now had nothing to do with desire.
“Bitch!” He yelled after her. “Fuckin’ bitch!” he repeated. “I’ll fuckin’ kill you!”
She kept on rowing. When she got out deep enough, she slipped the lobsters, one by one, back into the water.
Moira Toombs stopped abruptly on her way out the Hall door and her sister Madeline bumped into her stiff, unyielding back. She had a c
lear view of Ian’s living room up the hill, the flickering of the wood stove, the pulsing glow of the iMac and two figures with heads so close together, they might have been touching. Or kissing? She turned her head away sharply and picked up her pace, leaving Madeline struggling to catch up.
It wasn’t fair. Hyacinth didn’t even want him, or else what had she been doing fooling around with that tourist last August? Moira couldn’t sleep for thinking about it, jaw clenched, teeth grinding. An hour later, she got up and looked out from her window. The lights, and the fire, were still on in Ian’s living room. An hour later the lights had been replaced with candles, dancing with flickering flames. It was after midnight.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“You know, maybe you’re not to blame.” Ian had kicked off his shoes and loosened his shirt collar. “Maybe Parker’s the reason the Legion is here.”
“Don’t I wish…”
“He said he spent his childhood in Maine. There could be a lobster connection.”
“Mutt and Jeff are from Maine.”
“How do you know that?”
“They used the word ‘bug.’ That’s what some Maine fishermen call lobsters. It said that on the blog.”
“Let’s say the Legionnaire does know him, and that she knows Matt and Jeff—”
“Mutt.”
“Okay, Mutt and Jeff. That connects them. There must be a reason they’re all here.”
“And that reason is…?”
“Beats me.”
“I still say it’s entirely coincidental. Camilla and the Legionnaire are here because I invited them, well Camilla anyway. I have no idea why Parker came here, with his Gourmet Guggenheim-by-the-sea, but he and Guillaume are not the first weird tourists we’ve ever had.”
“True.”
They were both thinking of the New York financier who’d bought a field right across from Hy, leased back all but a small patch to the farmer he’d bought it from, and spent several weeks every Fall there—sleeping in his Cadillac while potatoes were harvested around him. One year, he had put up a shed, lived in it for a few weeks and then never came back. Now it was falling apart, door broken off, contents spilling into the fields—nothing worth having, as the thief had found out. Jared?
Revenge of the Lobster Page 13
