Revenge of the Lobster

by Hilary MacLeod

  When they finished reading, Hy and Ian had a better idea of who Cam was. The fisherman blood of her Parker great-grandfather flowed in her veins and made it boil at the presence of a poacher. The blood of her love child mother, Claire, made her an idealist. Trace chemicals of the mind-altering substances Astral and Luther had ingested had been a time bomb inside Claire, the seed of the cancer that had killed her. In Cam, those same traces may have accounted for her extreme and offbeat dedication to her peculiar cause.

  Ian had no idea, as he lost himself in Astral and Luther’s alternate reality, that he was missing out on a drug bust in his own backyard.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Gus thought her old legs would never take her down to the shore and no one had offered her a lift. She said later that she hadn’t wanted to gape, mouth wide open like a fish. She had done some of that privately, from her back stoop, staring at the empty sky where the A frame had been for the past five years. She’d soon get used to seeing nothing there and be happy for it.

  She went back inside to fetch the kitchen compost. It was pick-up day. For the first time in a week, she spotted the patchwork lobster square on the floor of the kitchen. Too late to send it now. Was cotton compost? Must be. She went out to the bin to see Toby lying on the ground in front of the green compost cart and Charlie, sitting on top of it. She threw the lobster square into the bin, the white quilt batting sticking out of the rip in the middle.

  When she tried to move the bin, Toby growled, actually growled, at her. Charlie pecked at her hands and flew up onto the edge of the bin. He stuck his beak under the lid. Gus opened it. Charlie snapped up the lobster claw and dropped it to the ground. Gus picked it up. Toby grinned and wagged his tail. The crow’s caw sounded, strangely, calm and satisfied. Gus examined the claw. There was something inside. Not lobster meat. She looked at the quilt block, the stuffing coming out of it, then back at the claw. She snapped it open. It was full of white powder.

  Gus’s experience was not vast, but she wasn’t completely out of touch—she watched crime shows and soaps on TV. Drugs, she thought immediately. What kind of drugs, she didn’t know, but they were drugs, no doubt about it. She forgot all about the compost cart. She left the lid open and Charlie had a feast. Not to be outdone, Toby jumped up onto the cart and flipped it over. He had a feast as well.

  As Gus walked back to the house, she sniffed at the powder and got some up her nose. It was unpleasant. She wet a finger, stuck it into the powder and took a taste. Well, it’s not soda. Or salt. Or flour. Her mouth and nose began to feel numb. She hoped she hadn’t poisoned herself. She was sure of one thing—Charlie had brought her this claw “apurpose.” That’s why he and Toby had been kicking up such a fuss around the bin. She bet it came from Jared’s cookhouse. Ian would know what it was.

  Hy was standing at the open door of Cam’s room. She still wasn’t officially allowed in, but all night she’d been sneaking closer and closer to the door, watching Cam sleep. Now she was awake.

  Cam tried to sit up, but Ed gently restrained her. Slowly, Cam’s eyes focused on Hy and she smiled. Hy’s knees buckled and Ian had to hold her up.

  Hy grabbed him and held him tight. He could feel the full length of her up against him, every piece of her. His body came alive with the force of her embrace and the impact of what it might mean. He was about to kiss her, really kiss her, when—

  “You can come in.”

  They broke apart. Ed beamed at them. Ian could have throttled him.

  Cam’s lips moved.

  No sound came out.

  They moved again. Hy could hear a light whisper. Ed put his ear to Cam’s mouth, to catch what she said.

  Then he laughed. “Hi to you, too.”

  But what Cam had said—her first word after waking from her long nightmare—was “Hy.”

  Ian put his arms around Hy again. She leaned back against him, smiling. It felt good, but the moment had passed.

  Gus wasn’t surprised when Ian didn’t answer the phone. Probably down at the cape. She didn’t leave a message. She never knew what to say to a machine. When she hung up the receiver, Gus was surprised to find she was holding a pencil, two paper clips, assorted elastic bands and a baby’s comforter. For some reason she’d been absently organizing the kitchen junk drawer. There was stuff all over the counter, in piles—old cracker Jack prizes from the fifties, elastic bands, expired coupons, pennies. She didn’t know why she’d started cleaning the drawer. She felt quite agitated, gritting her teeth and biting her lip. My Godfrey, I’ve been drugged! She didn’t need Ian to tell her what that white powder was.

  Ian left the hospital when he heard the morning news. The storm and the house going over the cape were the lead stories on every radio station in the Maritimes.

  “…Locals have long claimed that too many cottages are being built too close to the edge of the cape along The Island’s North Shore. Today’s tragedy may result in the setting up of a special commission to investigate proper placement of properties along the fragile cape system. Geologists say that the cape collapse should not have happened on The Island and scientists are keen to study the area. They claim the fabric of The Shores differs from the make-up of the rest of The Island.”

  Ian sniffed with contempt. He could’ve told them that.

  Jared seized his first chance to get back into the cookhouse. He’d been partying and hungover since the night Guillaume died and had missed everything that had happened there. If he’d seen the police going in and out, he might have been a free man today. Instead, when The A came sliding down the cape and all attention was focused there, he slipped into the cookhouse to see what he could find—cocaine, if he was lucky—or unlucky, as it turned out.

  Jared looked everywhere and, finally, in frustration, opened the freezer door and looked at the lobster claws and the specialty frozen foods. The police had ignored them, not of interest in what they’d decided was not a murder—just a nasty accident.

  That gourmet food would bring a few bucks in Charlottetown, where they liked that kind of stuff. He grabbed a packing box from the storage area and loaded it up with Guillaume’s culinary legacy—tails and claws and Homard au Crack Farci.

  Jared’s ignorance of what was in the claws would prove no defense.

  Gus had seen Jared’s truck heading for the shore. She knew where he was going, and she bet she knew what for. She invoked the Women’s Institute phone chain. Gus phoned Estelle. Estelle phoned Moira. Moira phoned Olive—and on through the women of the Institute. All of them, except Hy, were soon huffing and puffing their way to the top of the Shore Lane. They came from every direction—from their houses, from the cape, from the Hall itself, where they were preparing for the Frasers’ fiftieth anniversary lunch that day. The village children later said that they’d never seen old ladies move so fast.

  They gathered just as, down by the cookhouse, Jared was tossing the box of illegal goods into the back of his Hummer.

  “This is important,” said Gus. “ I don’t have time to explain. Just follow me.”

  To their credit, they did precisely that. They walked in the mud and splashed through the puddles all the way down the Shore Lane just as Jared was starting up his engine. They made quite a sight. Most were already dressed in their Sunday best for the Frasers’ party. It’s just as well they were. Not because they were charged with conspiracy to intimidate a roadway—as they very nearly were—but because they, and their photo, became front-page news.

  The Institute women stood en masse in front of the Hummer racing up Wild Rose Lane. Gladys led the pack. Her heft and weight attached her firmly to the ground. She thrust out her chin and clenched her fists. Her eyes burned with determination. If looks could stop a truck, hers would.

  April Dewey was huddled in the back. It wasn’t because she was shy, but because she was mortified at having left her apron on. She’d rushed out in the middle of maki
ng her blueberry muffins.

  There they stood, twelve of the thirteen ladies of the Institute, dressed in their Sunday best. They didn’t move, they didn’t flinch, as the truck came bearing down on them, so sure were they of the righteousness of their cause and that the Lord was with them—so Gus told Hy later. It was the approach she’d used with Abel when he took her to church, the only place she’d drive with him, before he’d been relieved of his driver’s license. She’d known before the authorities did that he was too old to be at the wheel.

  Jared was not a murderer—in spite of what Gus might think—and he certainly wasn’t a mass murderer. Just shy of tiny Madeline Toombs, with Annabelle towering behind her, Jared hit the brakes, did a one-eighty and then slid off the road. It was one of the few things to his credit—that he did not mow the women down.

  Farmers, itching to get on the land, wouldn’t allow their tractors in the saturated fields yet. But in Jared’s truck went. Even though it was an off-road vehicle of near military capabilities, the local mud proved too much for the Hummer. It stalled in the thick sludge of Island clay.

  Jared jumped out and tried to run, but the red mud sucked both shoes off.

  By now every dog in The Shores was, for a change, earning its keep. Led by the valiant Toby, the dogs had circled the field, blocking off all possible escape routes, doing such a fine job of growling and making menacing movements you’d never have guessed that they spent most of their time sprawled out and semi-comatose. Even Newt was there, all twelve pounds of him, snarling in the direction of the man who used to be his master.

  Lester Joudry couldn’t believe his luck, following hard on the heels of what would become his award-winning photo of the Mercedes on the haystack. He’d been heading down to the shore to take pictures of the mess that had yesterday been a home, when he recorded another journalistic coup: the ladies, Jared, the truck and the dogs—the whole thing on video camera, which he sold to the local CBC TV news and with which he insisted on regaling the whole community at the local Christmas concert several years in a row.

  Lester got some great shots on digital camera, too, including the group photo that was his third professional sale. The Winterside Weekly ran the photo on the front page under the headline: “Institute Women Sew Up Drug Case.” Toby was front and centre, nearly obscuring tiny Madeline Toombs. You could barely make out a blueberry smudge on April Dewey’s apron. The dogs hammed it up for the camera, baring their teeth. They looked threatening, but they were actually grinning.

  Toby had the biggest grin of all.

  Most of the women didn’t know whether to smile for the photo or not, looking tense—as people do when they’re told to pose in a group. There’s no chance everyone will look good, but they could hope, at least, to look respectable. As it turned out, all of them, except April Dewey, looked as neat as a pin in her Sunday best.

  They were glad of that.

  It was all over by the time Ian boarded the ferry. Ben had been called in to restrain Jared until the Mounties got there. Constable Jamieson arrived and made the arrest. The police vehicle was waiting to get on the ferry when Ian got off. He waved at Jamieson as she drove on, never suspecting that Jared was slumped down in the back seat, handcuffed, sulking about the fact that he never got any breaks. Nor could Ian have guessed that the trunk of the police vehicle contained evidence for the drug charges Jared would face. When he did find out, it put him in a bad mood for days.

  Ian drove along The Island Way, up and down the rolling landscape, until he topped the highest point of The Shores, the ocean spread out before him, as if, in that instant, it had been newly born. It happened every time at the top of this hill, the sudden display of breathtaking beauty, always beautiful, no matter the light, the weather or season. Today, its splendour was marred by devastation. As if on cue, the radio announcer described the sight in front of Ian’s eyes, as he threaded his car down the curving incline toward home.

  “The lobster fishery is in disarray. Thousands of traps have been thrown onto the shore by last night’s wind and wave action. Fishermen will have to work hard—recovering, repairing, replacing and resetting the damaged traps. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans is considering extending the season to allow fishermen to recoup time and money lost as a result of this devastating storm.”

  There were at least a hundred lobster traps littering MacPherson’s Shore.

  There was a hole where The A should have been, a missing tooth on the horizon.

  Ian sped up, drove down into the village and onto the cape. He parked at the top and looked down on the shore and the ruin below. Search and rescue volunteers were making slow progress. Unable to bring any heavy equipment over the delicate dune system, they were using muscle strength alone to work through the debris.

  Would they find Parker dead—or alive?

  Chapter Fifty

  Cam was looking at the photograph of Parker and her mother, Claire. Her eyes were wistful. So were Hy’s. She was nursing a sense of emptiness and regret. For Cam, there were so many emotions wrapped up in the photograph—love for her mother—maybe hate for her father, and longing for what might have been. When Hy looked at her own family photos—the bearded father and braless long-haired mother, the babe in arms, she felt nothing.

  Nothing at all. She had no idea what parents are. Her only relationship with her parents had been one of absence. Their absence. She supposed she was meant to love them, but how could she love someone she didn’t remember? Not like Cam.

  “She does look exactly like you. Except for the eyes. Were they a different colour?”

  Cam nodded. “Hazel. I’ve got Parker’s eyes—and feet.” Cam wiggled a set of webbed toes out from under the sheets.

  Hy took the photo from Cam. Even though she knew it wasn’t Cam, it still looked exactly like her.

  “You can see how I was mistaken. And the ring. You wear the ring.”

  “Only as the Legionnaire.”

  “Oh yeah.”

  “She always wore it. I don’t know why. I wear it to remind me of her.”

  Maybe, thought Hy. Or maybe they both wore it for what might have been.

  Cam’s hand grasped at her neck. Her eyes and mouth flew open. “My pearls.”

  “Parker took them off you. I’ll get them back.” She couldn’t tell Cam about Parker now. She didn’t know anything anyway, aside from the news reports that the house had collapsed off the cape.

  “Why would he do that?”

  “Something to hold on to? To keep you alive? ”

  Cam looked perplexed, then shrugged.

  “I took them to Cartier’s in New York last year to sell them. Well, not really. It was more shock theatre. I’d been tailing him, planning how and when and if I would approach him. I saw him go into Cartier’s. I was wearing them—I have since the day my mother died—but I took them off and shoved them in my pocket as if I didn’t care about them. I came right up beside him. He did a double take. He knew that she was dead, but there I was, just like her—and the pearls confirmed who I was.”

  “But not that you were his?”

  “Looking like my mother was no proof he was my father. All it would have taken were three little words to convince him.”

  “I love you?”

  “No. Has your feet.”

  They laughed.

  “Maybe it wouldn’t have made a difference. Guillaume made sure Parker had nothing to do with me. He had this hold on him, right from the beginning. He pursued them on their honeymoon. He took this photograph. That’s his shadow on Parker’s face. Guillaume was always in the way.”

  “Not anymore.”

  “He’s dead then? I didn’t just dream it?”

  Hy nodded.

  “What happened?”

  “Electrocution—by lobster stunner.”

  Cam smiled, a slow, satisfied smile.

 
“Good,” she said. Her brow furrowed. “But it’s too late. Without Guillaume—who knows what might have happened? They might have had a marriage no better and no worse than the rest of the Parkers. They were only able to pump out one heir apiece. Ever think about that? Hawthorne may have been the only genuine one among them. He, at least, came out of the closet.”

  “I read the letters—your mother’s and Parker’s.”

  “What a prick he was. I never knew until I saw that letter. When she died, I read it, and began the LLL. I wanted to get to him, to get at the empire.”

  “The octopus.”

  “Yeah, the octopus. So you’ve been to the sites. You know what a big deal it is. If the Legion could infiltrate that—well, you can imagine.”

  “One lonely little Legionnaire could have major clout.”

  “Maybe. Maybe still.”

  If Parker were alive.

  Hy thought about Claire’s letter to him. “Where does the name Camilla come from?”

  “My great grandmother’s name. Camilla. Mother was grateful to her, in a way. The old lady was only serving her own purposes, but she encouraged the elopement. Neither of my parents told my grandmother about me, or that I’d been named after her. My mother was a free spirit, an independent spirit. She took the money from him, because she thought she’d earned it. But otherwise she didn’t want anything to do with him—him or his family.”

  “But you? You did. You wanted something from Parker.”

  “I wanted him to see me, to know who I was.”

  Hy wondered how Cam would feel if Parker was dead—as he surely must be.

  Ian turned off the ignition and got out of the car. The shore was a mess. There were easily a hundred traps on the beach. He counted twenty-three smashed up against the sea rock. Then there was The A. He trudged over and came within about fifteen feet of the rubble.