Revenge of the Lobster

by Hilary MacLeod

  She still hadn’t noticed the message light blinking on the phone behind her.

  Guillaume had spent less than twelve hours in jail—twelve profitable hours.

  “Why? Why?” Parker berated him when he arrived home. He’d had Guillaume taxied all the way from Winterside. Nathan had just left with a big fat tip. Guillaume responded to Parker with a stony silence. Later, when his conversation had advanced to the monosyllabic, he was still sullen. Then he retreated to the loft. Drugs, Parker suspected, but Guillaume was clean. If there had been an attempt to score, it had not been successful. The police had told him Guillaume was driving. He found it hard to believe, but could get nothing out of him.

  Cam was still in the bath. Hy could hear the splashing, the water turned on again, the pump kicking in for another round. Before writing to Eldon, she checked her email. There was one new message. Subject: Bitch. She opened it.

  We know she’s in there. Get her out. Ditch the bitch—or else!

  The smears on the wall, the use of the c word, the manure on the stoop, those had made her feel fearful. Now they were spying on her. That made her angry. Bloody bullies. Nasty and stupid. Juvenile. She bashed the Reply icon.

  Bug off yourself. I’m sure the police will be interested in tracking down the source of all this harassment.

  She signed it: Bitch Two.

  The helpful suggestions that popped up in the right hand column of her screen included links to dog breeding, sexual harassment in the workplace and how to dig irrigation ditches in Botswana. She sat back. These were not ordinary fishermen. Neither local nor from away. Not with a Blackberry. If they weren’t fishermen, why were they after Cam?

  The pump was silent. No more splashing. Hy hadn’t heard the bathtub drain—a rude gurgling and sucking sound that traveled down a fat pipe in the main room. The plumbing had been installed long after the house was built and its workings were both visible and audible. Every time the bath drained or the toilet flushed it sounded just like Archie Bunker’s “terlet.”

  Hy went upstairs. There was silence from the bathroom. She knocked on the door. No answer. She knocked harder. There was still no response. She panicked and tried the door. It wasn’t locked. The tub was still full of water—but Cam wasn’t in it.

  There was a wet trail down the old boards of the hallway, leading to the bedroom. She found Cam there, wrapped in a towel, curled up in a fetal position, fast asleep on the spool bed. Hy put a duvet over her, and returned to the bathroom. Cam’s clothes were lying in a lump on the floor. The knapsack was perched on top of a wicker laundry basket. She hesitated, then gingerly opened it, and felt around quickly. There. She felt the contours of a book. She yanked it out—a journal with a photograph stuck inside. She pulled it out.

  Camilla and Hawthorne Parker.

  Her left hand rested on his shoulder.

  On her fourth finger was a gold Irish wedding ring.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Married to Parker? Unbelievable!

  What attraction could there possibly be—on either side?

  It wasn’t just Parker’s sexual orientation. It was everything. They made an odd match in every way. Extremely odd. Yet the photo showed them smiling, happy, leaning into each other—their body language declaring them lovers, their arms around one another.

  The ring. Cam still had that ring and this old black and white photo. What more convincing evidence could there be? If she weren’t looking at it, Hy would never have believed it.

  In the photo Parker’s face was partly shaded by a hat, but he was visibly younger. Camilla—she was definitely Camilla, not Cam, in the photo—looked the same as she did now. One of those lucky people who don’t change much between eighteen and thirty-eight, mused Hy. The woman in the photo could be either age—or anywhere in between.

  Hy turned the picture over, to see if there was an inscription of any kind, a date. In the bottom corner, there was something in faded pencil. She grabbed a magnifying glass she kept in the bathroom cabinet for reading the fine print on bottles. Yes, there was something. She could make out a C and a P. Nearly rubbed off: Ogunquit, with a partial date, 19—. She flipped it back over again. The clothes were classic, so they didn’t help date it. Camilla was wearing the same set of pearls she’d worn at the Institute meeting and a cotton shirtwaist dress. He was wearing casual whites with a sweater slung across his shoulders. They were standing on a wharf, a stack of lobster traps behind them. Was it a honeymoon shot? Where did Guillaume fit into the picture?

  Hy could not have known that Guillaume had been the one taking the photograph. It might have turned out better if he hadn’t been burning with rage.

  Hy shook her head, puzzled. She was struggling with her conscience about looking in the journal. One quick peek, she thought, as if brevity would make it less intrusive. She thumbed the pages and they flipped by in a blur until her keen editorial eye caught two words: The Shores. She stopped and opened to the page dated March eighteenth. Almost a month before she had contacted Cam. It might be nothing—Hy’s own agenda entries were haphazard, actual dates didn’t matter to her. It might be the same for Cam—or it might be something else…

  There was a thump in the hall and Hy dropped the journal as if it were on fire. She didn’t move, not an inch, but stood there listening, listening for another sound, wondering where the thump had come from. Then, a cascade of sounds, and she knew immediately what had happened. The book propping open the bedroom shutter had been knocked down by a gust of wind and the shutter was banging against the wall, its slats clattering in the breeze. It might have woken Cam.

  Hy quickly retrieved the journal and the photo from the damp floor. She rubbed them mostly dry on her sweater. Then came the problem of replacing them. Where did the photo go in the book? Was there a special page? She slipped it in about halfway. Her hands trembling, she shoved the book to the bottom the knapsack where she had found it. Then she picked up Cam’s clothes. They had salt water and red clay stains on them but they smelled oddly sweet—of seaweed and sand and the shore. She went downstairs and put them in the wash, then tossed them in the dryer.

  She snacked on crackers and cheese while she waited for Cam to wake up. The cheese was a bad idea. Nightmare food. Overcome with utter exhaustion, so tired her sight was blurring, her brain singing, her hands trembling, she went to the living room to lie down.

  And she was tugged into the dream. The damn dream, punctuating her sleep with fear and foreboding, her frayed nerves and exhaustion fueling the nightmare. Down, down she went, the room hummed around her and the lights began to flash on the dark water, and something electric sizzled through her body.

  Jared was experiencing a similar sensation, but of a different origin. He was buzzing with the cocaine he’d been snorting all day long, alternately fired with energy and crashing down when the hit wore off. Right now he felt euphoric, in total control. Perhaps that’s why he was getting ready to go out on the water, without thinking Parker might not want him to do so after last night. In a lucid moment, when the drug was wearing off between lines, Jared did think that Parker might not have any use for him anymore, but snorted another line and dismissed it. He was willing to bet that the fat Frenchman had kept quiet. He was down to his last line when he remembered that he’d meant to save some for Guillaume. He paused for a moment. Well, there wasn’t enough left anyway. He drew the whole line of powder into his nostril. Too bad for Guillaume.

  Full of false energy, Jared decided to go out on the water early, as soon as it was dark, to make sure he got the lobster in before the rain came. In spite of what Parker was paying him, Jared had been spending freely and he was short of cash after last night. He grabbed a mickey of rum to warm up before he went out. When he finished it, he stuck another mickey in his pocket and jumped into his Hummer. His car payment was due in a week and he didn’t have it. With an overdose of courage born of cocaine and booze, Jared
was prepared to get nasty if Parker cut him out of the poaching gig. Anyway, he’d make sure he was paid for tonight.

  The last person Parker was thinking of was Jared MacPherson. All he could think of was Guillaume—up there in the loft, sulking. He knew he must end it—soon, but how? There was no question now of any return to intimate relations. Guillaume hated him. It was in his every look, the sharp way in which he dodged body contact, the denial of his bed since that one night when he’d received his gift. One night in one year, Parker brooded. For all his money, fine art and furnishings, he’d been sleeping on the couch.

  That’s where he was sitting now, resisting the urge to drink a Scotch. He didn’t want to lose control. He’d wait until five, a respectable time to open the liquor cabinet. The silence from upstairs was deafening.

  Jasmine seemed to be mimicking it.

  Silence was a new sound for her. There hadn’t been a peep out of her since Guillaume had returned home, mute with anger, already blaming Parker for his incarceration, for the entire episode.

  Parker dropped his head into his hands, rubbed his eyes, and then his whole face, trying to relax the tense muscles.

  I’ve made all the wrong decisions in life.

  He did some shoulder rotations.

  Maybe I should have stayed with her…

  His back cracked and creaked like an old man’s.

  It’s possible I might have been truly loved, by one person.

  He fell back against the cushions.

  Instead, here he was, with that monster upstairs, weighing down his life with worry and fear and unpleasantness, more public airing of dirty laundry. When he thought of it, his cheeks flushed with displeasure and embarrassment.

  Upstairs, Guillaume was tossing on the bed, craving the drug, sweating, his hands trembling. His mind was a jumble of desire, hate, sensations that made him shiver. He couldn’t grab hold of a thought. Sparks were flashing around his brain, fires blazing in dark corners, illuminating them. His whole body began to shake.

  Hy woke up, dry-mouthed, in the late afternoon, her nerves singing. She teetered on the edge of the nightmare—just a tremor, the aftershock of last night’s full-blown nightmare at Ian’s. She rolled over on the couch and sank down into a troubled but less disturbing dream in which she was unable to finish a newsletter for the Super Saver. She kept writing it and it kept disappearing from her computer screen. She received an email in the dream from Eldon that read: Bug off bitch. She woke with his name on her mind, but all thoughts of the Super Saver were swept from her head when she remembered the photograph and that Cam was in her house.

  It was getting dark. Clouds had moved in and the wind had picked up. She could hear it rumbling against the gutters and the empty compost cart banging up against the oil tank. I really must move that thing, but not now. She got up and stumbled upstairs to the bedroom. It was empty. The duvet had been carelessly folded. In the bathroom, the knapsack—with that provocative photo and journal inside—was gone.

  Married to Parker?

  It now seemed like one of her dreams, so impossible was the thought.

  She washed her face, bunched her rebellious hair into a short ponytail and sped out the door. She had no intention of letting Camilla get away on her—not without answering a whole mess of questions.

  Married to Parker!

  She slammed out the door.

  She stared at the patch of grass in front of the house where her truck should have been.

  It was gone, just like Cam.

  She went back in the house and saw the note on the hutch where she always put her keys: Sorry, I’ll be back.

  Then Hy noticed the blinking message light on her phone.

  There were three messages—all from Ian. She had hardly given him a thought all day.

  The first was from seven that morning: “Hy. Ian. Call me.”

  The second at nine: “Hy. It’s Ian. Where the hell are you?”

  The last must have come when she was outside with Annabelle.

  “Hyacinth.” His use of her full name gave the message urgency. “Call the minute you get back. If you are back, pick up, for God’s sake.”

  When she didn’t pick up the third time, Ian had wondered if Hy was avoiding him. Was she perhaps upset about last night? It troubled him briefly, but he soon forgot it and headed back to the computer. After a while, he quit. He stretched his back, kinked from bending over the keyboard, eyes fixed to the screen. He wanted to find out more about Parker, but he needed a break first, a bit of fresh air before the rain came. He went up on the widow’s walk. He thought he might spy The Crustacean, but he saw nothing on the water. Soon he was thinking of Hy again, watching her truck heading down the road. He thought she might be coming to see him, but the truck sped right past the intersection, past the Hall, past the triangle of land where Abel Mack’s General Store used to be and sped off out of sight down The Way.

  Where was she going? Why hadn’t she called back?

  Hy rang Ian’s number. No answer, but she could see his lights on. She’d have to walk there. On her way out, she noticed that Cam had left the blue vanity case by the door. She inspected it. Samsonite. The letters C.P. embossed on it. She tried to open it. Locked. She put on her sneakers and left the house.

  Gus had been watching the sun set on the mackerel sky, the clouds rippling like the scales of a fish, tipped with rose-red hues. For about ten minutes, The Shores lay under its neon pink canopy. Then angry black clouds moved in and choked out the sun.

  Gus knew a mackerel sky always brought rain. Even weather forecasters knew that much—they were calling for rain tonight and maybe a lightning storm. She’d have to make sure to have her coat and purse by the door before she went to bed, just in case.

  She was closing the curtains when she saw Hy half-walking, half-running along the road. She’d seen her go by a few times today. She’d driven down toward Big Bay and back in the morning, then headed that way again without ever calling in. Twice today in the truck—and her so mean with gasoline. Now here she was, on foot this time, coming from her house again. Gus wrinkled her brow. She could have sworn she hadn’t taken her eyes off the intersection in the last hour.

  Be there. Be there. Be there.

  The chant went through Hy’s head in rhythm with her feet as she rounded the corner up Shipwreck Hill. The outside light was on. That didn’t mean a thing. Glow of the iMac from the living room—ditto. As she came closer to the house, she saw the kitchen light on and Ian at the sink.

  She burst through his back door.

  “Hyacinth. Where the hell have you been?”

  “I’ve found Camilla. And—well—I’ve lost her.”

  She was rewarded by a look of astonishment on his face.

  Cam, a single tear of frustration at the edge of her lashes, gazed at the wreck of her jeep. Not a complete wreck—but it couldn’t be driven. Every one of the windows was smashed to bits—shattered spider webs of glass, hammered at repeatedly with what could only be fury and malice. So they’d been here. Found her hiding place. She had lied to Hy, fibbed really—she didn’t know their names, but she knew who they were. Coffin’s henchmen. They’d been everywhere she went for the last six months, getting in her way.

  It had only made her more stubborn, more determined. One word to Parker and they’d be called off. She knew that. She had gone to talk to him, but not about that. He’d closed her out. She wouldn’t try again—not even for the cause. She stuck out her chin, pressed her lips together in a firm line, and strode over to the edge of the cape, looking for The Crustacean. She peered across the water, but saw nothing.

  She groped her way down the side of the cape and hauled out the dory from under the tangle of seaweed and sand. She’d bought it from a fisherman in Winterside and had told him to deliver it to the cove by water. The idea was to avoid setting tongues wagging, but the fisherma
n had been doing quite a bit of talking about the odd woman and the odd place she’d had him leave the dory. He’d been talking it up in a bar in Winterside just before Setting Day. There had been a couple of strangers in the bar—one tall and thin, the other short and fat, who were very interested in his story and had bought him a few beers over the limit. That didn’t stop him from driving home anyway, though the white dividing line looked more like two after he downed the last beer in the cab of his truck.

  As they drove to Bloodsucker Lane, Hy told Ian about the dual role Camilla had been playing. He told her about the Parker octopus and its tentacles.

  “That’s the world Parker was born into—massive wealth and privilege.” He turned on the windshield wipers to clear off the few drops of rain that had begun to fall.

  “Born into,” she said, “but didn’t fit into.”

  “Not entirely. He may not be getting his own hands dirty in business, but he certainly likes sticking them into the pot of gold.”

  “Well, I don’t like sticking mine in shit.”

  He looked quizzical. She told him about the mess in her back room and on her stoop. “The pump engaged when Annabelle came by and she was suspicious that it might be Cam, which of course it was, but then decided it must be you having a bath in my house.”

  He laughed, but they were both thinking about last night. How she had come gasping out of the dream, waking him with her cry in the night—then him holding her, comforting her. She—paralyzed with fear. He—wondering what had made her tremble so. Hy couldn’t figure out what was making the dream recur so often. It hadn’t been like this since she was a teenager, feeding off her raging hormones. Now it seemed to be fuelled by the trouble Camilla had brought with her to The Shores.

  Hy didn’t tell Ian about the photograph of Parker and Camilla. She wanted to, but didn’t want to admit that she’d been snooping and still couldn’t believe what she’d seen. She had a lot of questions she wanted to ask Cam first—if she got the chance. As the car neared Bloodsucker Lane, the chant began again in her head.