They were silent for a moment, but Ian’s logical brain was seeing a pattern.
“I think we’re caught in the middle of something. Think about it. Parker arrives. He builds a gourmet kitchen for his lover, who’s a chef. Lobster’s his specialty. Camilla brings the LLL to the Institute meeting. Pro-lobster blogs begin appearing at will on your computer. The Legionnaire shows up and trashes our lobster supper. She and Parker know each other, but they’re not letting on. Two bullies chase her—and you—out of the Hall. We’ve had trap lines cut and interfered with and the Legion has denied doing it. If that’s true, someone else must have. Don’t tell me there’s nothing going on.”
Hy had to laugh. “When you put it that way…”
“I’m going to see what I can google tomorrow about Parker, Camilla, the LLL, The Crustacean…maybe even Guillaume.”
“You’ll be googling all day.”
“I’d do it tonight, if I didn’t have company.”
“Do you want me to go?” She emptied her brandy snifter.
“I should have said if I didn’t have such fine company.”
The iMac screen filled, like a flower blossoming, with the image of a full moon, its glow cast across the room. It may have been just electronics, but it seemed to have some of the effect of the real thing.
She put her glass down. Stretched.
Was she leaving? He grabbed the bottle from the table.
“Another brandy?”
She had no intention of leaving. She was feeling a bit tight.
“Perhaps just one.”
The fire glowed. The iMac glowed. Hyacinth glowed, as she held out her glass for what would be just the first of several refills. Ian poured, smiling a small, tight smile.
He wanted to touch her hair, but he was afraid she’d pull away.
Jared had retreated to the cookhouse, still holding on to his private parts. He was surprised to find Guillaume there, sitting in the dark, where he’d been sulking for several hours. He’d tried to rescue what he could of his cocaine stash, without success. He’d put some of the claws in the microwave, hoping the drug would dry. Instead, it had shrunk and yellowed. Guillaume snorted it anyway. He’d spent the last couple of hours knocking back a bottle of cooking sherry. He had just emptied the last drop when Jared came into the cookhouse, clutching his balls.
Guillaume raised his eyebrows.
“No lobstair?” he asked.
“No,” Jared glared at him. “No fuckin’ lobster. Bitch fuckin’ stole them.”
Guillaume frowned.
“Oh, zat girl. Yes. Zat girl.”
“I’m gonna kill her ass.”
Guillaume smiled. Perhaps this Jar-aid was not so bad after all. He might be useful. Guillaume sniffed.
Jared looked at him sharply. Guillaume put a finger to his nose. Sniffed again. Jared got the message.
“Coke. You want some coke?”
“You know where we could has some?”
Jared smiled his gap-toothed grin. “Do I? Ye -e-s.” He drew out the word in the distinctive Island way, distorting the vowel sound. “You got coin?”
Guillaume frowned.
“Sorry, Bud, no money, no dope.” Then an idea hit him.
“Can we take the Merc?”
Guillaume looked doubtful. He’d seen Parker come home hours ago. He’d seen the lights go out. “And I snort for free?”
“I drive—you snort for free,” said Jared.
“Eh bien. Allons-y.”
Jared didn’t understand even simple French. It was all gobbledygook to him, but it seemed that Guillaume had said yes.
“Let’s go!” He’d almost completely forgotten how much his balls hurt. Soon, he hoped, his entire body would be numb to pain.
Parker had returned to an empty house. He knew that he would find Guillaume in the cookhouse, but he didn’t dare go down. He was afraid of what he would find. If he did, it would mean the end. It was the end anyway, he thought, as he sat down with a bottle of scotch and a crystal glass. It was, in every real way, already over, but for the final moment, the moment he had been avoiding for over a year. More like years. Then he would be what he feared most…alone. A creature wrapped in a brittle shell of loneliness. He put out the lights and lay in the dark on the soft leather couch, drinking himself into a numb and maudlin state, nursing a thirty-year-old single malt and bemoaning a relationship that was not quite as old, nor nearly as smooth.
It had begun so well—with a jolt of desire, when his fingers first touched Guillaume’s. He’d been giving him a cheque, a prize to the best chef in the restaurant chain. That handing over of money was symbolic of what their relationship would become. That he would pay the bills that gave him a right to Guillaume.
They had sex that first night under the deck of the restaurant, with Guillaume taking him roughly up against a post. It went on like that all the long summer, long as only a summer in youth can be. It was their secret, fuelling desire and short, filthy encounters that sent Parker spiraling down to a depth of depravity he never reached again, nor would want to. Then, his every thought had been of Guillaume. He could think of nothing else except those petulant lips on his body, the teeth biting, those deft fingers providing agonizing ecstasy—until he got scared.
It had started to spin out of control, Guillaume insisting on moving into territory that excited, but frightened, him. It was an erotic world he could not inhabit. He ran from Guillaume, from his own true nature, back to the woman he had left for Guillaume and into a short doomed marriage. One, two, three unsatisfactory couplings with the girl, and he had returned to Guillaume, Guillaume, who had pursued him on his honeymoon and made him pay for the desertion repeatedly, making him beg, debase himself physically in every way the distorted chef’s mind could imagine. For a while, this treatment made Parker feel strangely safe—wanted, cocooned in a world of distorted desire, shameful games of slave and master, but he had finally tired of it. Guillaume had tired of him and went looking for boys, fresh meat. It was clear Guillaume didn’t love him now—if he ever had. He knew that without the money, he would not possess Guillaume at all. Even with it, the ownership was tentative.
So absorbed was he in his misery that Parker neither heard nor saw the car leaving. Jared slipped it into neutral and rolled it down the lane before engaging the ignition and the lights. He did so just in time to illuminate a vehicle coming down the road in front of them. He nearly smashed into it, as he gunned the motor and took the corner, the other vehicle turning into the lane he had just left, and heading up to the house. Jared pulled off onto Wild Rose Lane, spitting lumps of wet red clay behind him, and soon was rocketing down The Island Way. It was Jared’s speeding that got them to the last ferry. Guillaume’s eyes were shut tight the whole time—he was scared silly at how fast the car was going.
Guillaume had no choice; he needed Jared; he needed cocaine. The need, and the memory of that last hit, were making him fidget. His tongue was darting all over his mouth, moistening it. It was dry, but everywhere else he was wet—sweat trickling down his forehead, under his arms, coating his palms. He rubbed them together rhythmically, as if trying to erase his agitation. Jared’s driving heightened his discomfort and there was only a brief reprieve as the ferry chugged them across the water. Then they were heading to Winterside, Guillaume hanging on to the seat with both hands, Jared having a blast. “Let’s see what this baby can do.”
It could do quite a bit. The sporty Mercedes, praised by Road and Track for its “impressive handling, precise steering and incredible road holding,” proved no match for Island roads. They’d been laid out with horses, not horsepower, in mind. Just coming into Winterside Jared missed a sharp curve.
The car veered off the road, sailed over a ditch and into a farmer’s field.
Airborne.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Camilla stopped
the vehicle suddenly, just where the land narrowed at one end of the “v.” Not knowing the terrain, she’d almost gone over the edge. She’d seen Jared in the driver’s seat of the Mercedes, Guillaume beside him. That meant Parker would be alone.
The motion light startled her as she approached the door. She knocked several times, then several more times. Someone knocked back. She knocked again. Again there was an echo. It was Jasmine. The parrot had taken up the sound and helped beat it into Parker’s unconscious, waking him. Disoriented by drink and sleep, he struggled up from the couch. He didn’t bother to smooth down his hair—one lock stood straight up on the top of his head, and his cashmere sweater was crumpled.
He peered through the peephole.
Time melted away at the sight of her.
It was a good thing Guillaume had made Jared put on his seat belt. They were stunned, freaked out, but otherwise okay. Jared, who thought he never got any breaks, had gotten one tonight. The car’s impact was softened by a big stack of hay bales that had been sitting in the field for years. After police had completed their measurement and analysis, the accident was used for years in training exercises.
Getting down wasn’t easy. They half-slid, half-fell, to the ground.
“Run!” yelled Jared. Guillaume looked at him in complete disbelief. No one had ever said that to him before.
“It may catch fire!”
It was a distinct possibility. One spark from the car and the straw would ignite. Jared had been brought up on a diet of TV and movies in which cars were always bursting into flame, and he knew hay could spontaneously combust. He got away from it fast, with Guillaume stumbling along behind him.
Even through the peephole, he could see that she looked the same—exactly the same—the sleek honey-blonde hair, the sweater set, the pearls.
He came back to the present.
Good Lord, she still had them. A surprise after what she’d tried to do with them. Could he speak with her? She had made the first move. He should make the next. He put his hand on the deadlock.
“Okay,” said Jared. “Here’s what I think. I think you better stay with the car. If the cops come and find I’ve been drivin’ it, I could be in a heap of trouble. Car theft, maybe, I don’t know.” He didn’t add that he’d been driving without a license.
Guillaume looked as if he were about to protest, so Jared kept talking quickly.
“Here’s the deal. We’re not far from town. I’ll hoof it into The Lazy, Eh? and make the deal. You handle the cops and, when it’s all done, get them to take you there. I’ll find us a ride home.”
Neither questioned the idea of having the cops act as an escort to a drug deal. Jared just wanted to get away from the scene. He hoped to be in and out of the Eh before the police came to rescue Guillaume. He was so desperate, he would have said anything, and Guillaume was so drunk and drugged and panicked he swallowed it.
“What if no one comes? But I cannot stay ’ere all night.” The road looked dark and forbidding. It was late. There wouldn’t be much traffic. In fact, after Jared managed to hitch a ride, there wasn’t any for hours.
“I’ll make sure the cops know when I get into town. Even if I have to walk, it’ll take me, say, twenty minutes to get there. You wait maybe a half-hour. Just don’t say who was drivin’, mind.” He stuck a dirty finger in Guillaume’s face. “Don’t tell them, don’t tell Parker. If you do…” He sliced a finger across his neck. “No deal.”
“But I will freeze.”
Jared looked over at the Mercedes.
“Get back in the car. I think it’s safe now. Nothing’s happened, nothing will. We could drive it off there.” He laughed at Guillaume’s look of horror. He approached it and sniffed. No gas smell. He hadn’t imagined how Guillaume would have climbed up. Guillaume had, and it was not going to happen. Before he could say anything, Jared took off. There was a car coming down the road. Maybe he could thumb a lift.
Guillaume slumped to the ground. It was wet. He started to cry.
Parker lifted his eye from the peephole. His hand dropped down from the deadlock. Not now. He couldn’t do it now, in this turmoil with Guillaume. Why had she chosen now? He turned, and with slow steps of discouragement, returned to the couch. He half-filled the glass with Scotch and knocked it back, ignoring the sound of Jasmine replicating the trickle of the liquid into the glass. It burned through his chest, bringing a false warmth to his cold heart—at least he could feel something. A few moments passed. He waited, body tensed, for the knocking to begin again, but it did not. Instead, he heard the sound of a car starting up. The glow of the motion light was extinguished and he was in darkness again. She was gone.
He fell into a disturbed sleep, a dream that he was a young man again and full of feeling. It was a moonlit night on the shore and his lover had shoved a rough hand between his legs. The dream turned into a nightmare with a soft caress on his cheek. It was her, wearing only the pearls. There, with him, in his shame, with Guillaume.
He woke up in a sweat and felt the house moving around him, a noise deep in the earth.
She’d failed to get through to him. Camilla realized there would be no big victory for the Legion. Just the wearing away of stones, tiny drop by tiny drop, one lobster at a time. Maybe time to move on—to more fertile ground. This place was too small—every tremor caused an earthquake. Time to consider a change in location. She found her way to the Legionnaire’s hiding place.
Jared never did notify the police—he was stupid, but not that stupid. Guillaume spent most of the night huddled up against the haystack, alternately shivering and sniveling. No cars went by for three long hours. Finally one did, in the wrong direction, but the driver must have spotted the headlights high up on the haystack, because shortly thereafter, the police arrived.
“Whew,” Murdo Black shook his head at the sight of the Mercedes perched on the haystack. Murdo was stocky, dark-haired and his fingernails were chewed down to the quick, especially since he’d been partnered with Jane Jamieson, tall, thin, raven-haired and strictly by the book. Fact was, Murdo got a lot more out of witnesses and suspects with his friendly manner than she did with all her strict adherence to the rules.
She pulled out her notebook.
“Name,” she said.
“Guillaume St. Jacques.” She spoke no French. He had to spell it for her.
“You the driver?”
Murdo was walking around the haystack, still shaking his head. He paced out the distance to the road, making mental notes. As usual, he’d left his notebook in the car. Constable Jamieson took enough notes for both of them.
“No…uh…yes…well…”
“Yes or no?” She snapped, unsmiling.
“Well, yes.”
“License.” She popped the pencil behind her ear and held out a hand.
“Well, I…uh…” He shrugged.
“No license?”
He shook his head.
“Not here? Not on you? Or not at all?”
He just kept shaking his head.
Murdo hauled himself up on the haystack. The driver’s door was wide open. He reached in and turned off the lights.
“But you were driving?”
Guillaume nodded. She pulled out the pencil again and wrote Driving without a license.
Guillaume couldn’t drive, but he couldn’t think of another, better story. He was also remembering Jared’s warning and still hoping he’d score. If not—well, jail might open up some new options. That’s how desperate he was.
The Legionnaire was exhausted, aching from the effort of hauling up the traps and fending off the disgusting poacher. She’d be glad to clear out of here. It was under consideration anyway. She’d go wherever the LLL needed her to be. She snuggled into her sleeping bag. It was chilly. After a while, she warmed up. A glow lit her little hideaway for another hour or so, until it, too, went dark
like the night.
“Your car?”
“Oui. Mais non. It belongs to my partnair.”
Part-nair? “Your wife?”
“No. My partnair.”
Murdo closed the driver’s door and crawled around the vehicle to the passenger side. That door was also open.
“Business partner?”
“No, in life. Mon mari.”
Jamieson raised a cool eyebrow.
“Registration?”
Guillaume lifted his hands, palms upward.
“Got it here,” Murdo called down. He pulled it out of the glove compartment, jumped down and handed it to Jamieson.
She looked at it. The original. When would people learn not to keep the original in the vehicle? Registered to Hawthorne Parker. His partner? For all she knew, the car was stolen.
“So what happened?” Murdo asked.
Guillaume tried to explain. It didn’t sound like he’d been driving. Jamieson knew he was lying, but couldn’t figure out why he’d say he’d been driving if he hadn’t.
They took Guillaume to the police station and booked him with reckless driving and driving without a license. They were still considering a charge of driving a stolen vehicle. That would depend on what they found out when they contacted the owner. They put him in a cell with a local drug dealer.
It wasn’t long before Guillaume had struck a deal for a delivery to be made to The Shores the next day. He was confident he’d be out in twenty-four hours—and high shortly after that. The thought helped calm his nerves.
Parker had been drifting in and out of sleep interspersed with memories. It was coming close to dawn and the sky was beginning to lighten. He was thinking about the pearls—and the time he’d seen her in New York—Cartier’s. She came up right beside him and pulled the necklace out of her coat pocket. Her pocket! Parker could see the jeweller had the same thought as he did when she dumped the strand on the counter, a hard gleam in her eyes. She wanted to sell them. The jeweller touched them tentatively, reverently, hunger in his eyes.
Revenge of the Lobster Page 14
