She watched Noah free the massive cods from the netting, cutting off heads and cleaning guts out from bellies amid the cries of the gulls.
He moved with lithe assurance, almost with dignity, and enjoyed feeling her eyes upon him.
He sometimes raised his head, and the longing that shone in his dark eyes made Lori’s blood course hot through her body.
You must never let this man down, she promised herself.
They leaned against the rail together as they wolfed down their sandwiches. The engine puttered softly.
He asked, with his mouth full, “Gosh, what’s a beautiful woman like you doing with two stinking old fishermen on a boat?”
“Eating a sandwich,” she shot back. And a minute later, “I’m sure I smell like fish now.”
“Because you’re a mermaid.”
She pointed to her windbreaker.
“Look. Scales everywhere.”
He laughed.
“Look good on you.”
“Do you know the fairy tale about the fisherman and his wife?”
“Fairy tale?”
“A German one. We grew up with it, but maybe nobody here knows it.”
She looked out on the water over to the shore while she tried to recollect the details.
“It goes something like this: A fisherman catches a turbot or a halibut but in reality it’s an enchanted prince who asks the fisherman to let him go. The fisherman takes pity on him and sets him free. He tells his wife what happened, and she says he should have asked for something in return. So he goes back and calls for the fish to reappear, and so he does, and the fisherman asks him for a house more beautiful than the old hut they were living in.”
Nate, listening from the open wheelhouse, interrupted her.
“Yeah, wives always want a prettier house and prettier furniture and a new TV.”
“And you buy Emma everything,” Noah commented.
“The wife actually does get a nicer house, but then she wants a castle, and the fisherman has to again ask the turbot for one, and she gets it. And then she wants—”
“A trip to Hawaii,” Nate shouted.
“No she wants to be a queen, and then the pope, and then God.”
“Always knew God’s a woman,” Noah joked. “So nice at first, then comes the punishment.”
“Maybe God is a woman, but not the fisherman’s wife,” Lori corrected him, “because the enchanted prince sends her back to her old hut.”
“Hey, we fellows don’t live in old cottages,” Noah said.
“It’s only a fairy tale, my dear, and a German one to boot.”
Nate emitted a grunt of amusement.
“I’d have grabbed the turbot and not let it go. It would have brought in a heap of money.”
“No, no, the fairy tale’s got it wrong!” Noah shouted. “The fisherman is the enchanted prince, not the turbot. That’s obvious!”
Lori laughed. “So the wife can ask him for anything?”
He looked at her sideways. “Well, what does she wish for?”
She was spared having to answer because a loud swooshing sound made all three of them whip around.
They could just make out a round dance of black and white plunging into the waves.
“Orcas!”
Lori aimed her camera at the spot where the whales had vanished.
“I didn’t know there were killer whales in Newfoundland!”
“We ordered them specially for you, my dear. They know we got a photographer on board.”
Again Lori couldn’t answer because the whales breached a second time, but now she was ready. She even managed to keep her balance, though the boat was rocking hard in their wake. They breached twice more, entrancingly elegant despite their weight, until they disappeared into the infinite ocean vastness.
“Fantastic!” Lori yelled. “How fantastic was that!”
Noah raised his eyebrows in amusement.
“So, am I an enchanted prince or not?”
“Then you gotta take her dancing tonight,” Nate butted in. “The Glorious Jiggers are on.”
“Can’t dance,” Noah muttered as he went back to pulling in the nets.
“Gotta see the Glorious Jiggers,” Nate shouted to Lori. “They’re really good, and all of Stormy Cove will be at the Hardy Sailor.”
He disappeared into the wheelhouse, and the boat’s engine drowned out Noah’s mumbled protests.
The Glorious Jiggers’ loudspeakers beat the most thunderous boat engine by a country mile. In Vancouver, Lori always brought earplugs to rock concerts, but now she was hopelessly at the mercy of the cacophony. But that wasn’t the only irritation that spoiled her listening pleasure; she couldn’t find Noah in the mob of people. He’d promised to meet her in the pub as soon as he was back from the fish plant in Saleau Cove, where he was delivering the cod that evening. She’d gone for a quick walk with Rusty around the bay before washing and drying her hair and putting on her tightest pants and the only sparkly blouse she’d brought from Vancouver. She felt so pretty that she took a selfie. It might turn out to be her author photo for the book.
But no matter how she combed through the crowd in the Hardy Sailor, she found no trace of Noah. Maybe he’d chickened out about dancing in front of so many people, introvert that he was. Or was he afraid everybody would see that he was courting Lori? She felt a thousand eyes on her, but maybe it was just her camera attracting attention as always.
She didn’t rule out the possibility that Noah was there, and she simply couldn’t find him. It was like the Tokyo subway in the bar. There were certainly more bodies present than in all of Stormy Cove; as Nate had predicted, they came from the surrounding villages as well. The Glorious Jiggers were touted as the cultural highlight of the year.
Then it occurred to her she hadn’t seen Nate anywhere either. Same for Archie and Ezz and whatever all those Whalens’ names were.
But she did spot Noah’s sister Greta, who had poured herself into a red T-shirt with gold sequins. Lori waved madly in her direction, but Greta didn’t respond. Lori had no choice but to push through the wall of people, targeting the place where she hoped Greta was. All of a sudden, she was face-to-face with the T-shirt.
“Let’s talk outside!” Lori bellowed as loudly as she could.
Greta indicated the way with a nod and cleared a path faster than Lori could have.
The humidity and heat of the room dissipated immediately in the cool evening air. Lori could breathe again.
“Wow, that feels good!” Greta exclaimed, flapping the hem of her top and setting the sequins dancing.
“Have you seen Noah anywhere in there?” Lori asked. “We were supposed to meet.”
“He’s not here,” Greta answered drily.
“Are you sure? Hard to find anybody in there.”
“Yes, guaranteed. Noah’s out on his boat with the others looking for somebody.”
“Looking for somebody? In the water?”
“Nope, on Frenchman’s Hill.”
“Why? Who is it?”
“You haven’t heard?”
“Heard what?”
Greta was really stingy with her information.
“The reporter.”
“Who?” Lori asked, knowing the answer full well.
“Reanna Sholler. She didn’t show up for work today, and nobody can find her.”
Greta lit a cigarette. Lori had never seen her smoking until now.
“Why—why are they going out there?”
Greta blew smoke to the side to spare Lori. She took her time responding.
“Because Noah took her.”
“He took Reanna out there?”
“Yes.”
The cool air suddenly hit her like an icy wave, and Lori felt like a person drowning.
“But when? I—I was with Noah today and . . . and yesterday evening. He was at my place yesterday evening.”
“Until what time? Days are longer now. He must’ve taken her on his boat after he left
yesterday. She wanted to go real bad, so she begged him to take her when he was finished working on his boat. She wanted to look at the cemetery on Frenchman’s Hill, take pictures of a couple of tombstones in the evening light. She told Noah that John Glaskey would pick her up. But John says he’s never heard of her, they never set anything up.”
“So Noah came back all by himself? He simply left her behind in the cove near Frenchman’s Hill?”
Greta took a stiff drag that rapidly shortened her cigarette.
“Well, it isn’t dangerous over there. Just a cemetery and a flock of sheep. John Glaskey’s sheep. It’s the end of June, so she won’t freeze. And it’s light out till ten.”
“I didn’t know about the cemetery.”
“Folks wanted to keep their dead as far away as possible, apparently.”
Lori folded her arms. She was shivering. But beads of sweat appeared on Greta’s forehead.
“Who said Reanna was missing?”
“Will. Will Spence. She didn’t come to the office this morning, and he couldn’t find her at her place. She’d been out all night, evidently. She has a room in Effie Spence’s house—Will’s mother. Nobody knew where she was.”
“How . . . how did people know that . . . Noah . . .”
“They were seen together. Don’t you know? People see everything around here.”
Greta trod on her cigarette butt.
Lori stood there as if paralyzed.
Noah and Reanna were seen going away, then he was seen coming back alone.
“I told him he’d better keep his hands off.”
“Off what?” Lori knew she didn’t want to hear the reply.
“Reanna looks like Glowena. Glowena Parsons. Spittin’ image.”
She took a few short steps to the entrance and adjusted her neckline.
“Let’s go. We don’t want to miss the whole concert. No use mucking around in the past. That’ll get you nowhere.”
Carl Pelley, 54, detective, from Corner Brook
Of course crimes are committed here. Happens here, there, and everywhere. Why should people living here be superior? Just because they’re in small, isolated communities? When I read in the papers that this place is supposed to be safe, I feel like tossing the paper on the fire. Yes, I know, people here leave their homes unlocked. But only in rural areas. Definitely not in St. John’s anymore. Where there’s money, you’ll find crooks. And where there’s poverty, too.
I’ve always been convinced that the Jacinta Parsons case can be solved even after twenty years.
People in Stormy Cove hoard their secrets, of course. They don’t go to the police if they know something. Unless they’re the injured party. And sometimes not even then. They want nothing to do with cops. Their motto: I won’t hurt you, and you won’t hurt me. But a lot goes on under cover of darkness, that’s for sure. Fishermen steal one another’s tools or gasoline. Or the fish out of their nets. I’ve seen it all. I remember when some sheep disappeared in Stormy Cove, a long time ago. The owner didn’t have the least idea who did it. Until some years later when a guy got plastered and bragged about it. And do you know what? The thieves didn’t live far away. So-called friends. They stole the sheep from a family with a dozen kids. But I swear, if that family’s house had burned down, those same people—those thieves—would have built them a new house with their bare hands. They’re like that around here. Nothing’s black-and-white.
I’ll tell you something: you just wait long enough, and somebody’s going to talk. They think nothing’s going to happen to them after twenty years. They think time fixes everything. But it ain’t so, uh-uh, that’s not the way it is.
We’ve never given up on Jacinta. Who do you mean? The fisherman’s wife, the one who wanted to leave her husband and then disappeared? Yes, OK, so we do have some unsolved cases. But what do you expect—anybody here can easily disappear, and sometimes it’s quite natural. In a blizzard. Or falling out of a boat. Or a hunting accident that’s hushed up. God knows I’ve gone through enough of that in my time.
Sure we had suspects. But no evidence. And no witnesses. Just rumors aplenty. And you can’t build a case on rumors. Whenever you’re starting to get serious—omertà, as the Italian Mafia says. Silence. Just a wall of silence.
And then, suddenly, something gets the ball rolling. Something nobody saw coming. Then skeletons crawl out of the closet, and tongues start wagging. And if the guilty parties don’t talk, others do it for them.
CHAPTER 33
“Every stone, every grain of sand speaks to us,” Lloyd Weston pronounced.
He stood with legs wide apart beside the burial mound as Beth Ontara and two students cataloged every single stone and its precise location. The monument was to be reconstructed exactly as it had been found.
Lori photographed each step of the procedure but had difficulty concentrating. Noah and the search party had combed every corner of Frenchman’s Hill until dark but didn’t find a trace of Reanna.
Will Spence had alerted the police. Reanna Sholler was now officially a missing person.
When Lori came home the previous night from the Hardy Sailor, she found Noah’s message on the answering machine, saying he couldn’t come to the pub because he was helping look for a missing person.
She tried to reach him the next morning, but by then it was six o’clock and his boat had probably just set out.
Weston phoned her an hour later. She first thought it was a good idea to fly with the archaeologists to the Barrens. That would get her mind off her dark thoughts and hidden fears about Noah. She was determined to find out the exact circumstances of his trip to Frenchman’s Hill with Reanna—and his intentions.
But it turned out she was just hanging around without much to do most of the time while the others painstakingly brushed off the top layer of the burial mound. She watched Beth lugging a boulder that weighed at least twenty-five pounds. Although Beth was strong, it must have been backbreaking work.
A drizzle set in later, and the site was covered up with plastic tarps. Gideon flew her back, along with a representative from NORPUNT visiting the site, while the excavation crew crawled into their tents.
So Lori found herself back home much earlier than expected. Her plans to call her mother for advice were derailed when she saw she had a visitor.
She didn’t immediately recognize the classy, well-dressed lady emerging from a white rental car. But Molly’s words popped into her head. Maybe it hadn’t been Selina Gould asking for her? The stranger came up to the house and knocked on the door.
“Hello! I hope I’m not disturbing you,” the lady said with a pronounced accent. Lori now recognized her: the German baron’s wife. She hurried downstairs.
“Please come in,” she replied before bringing her visitor up to the kitchen, then deciding on the living room.
“So you do recognize me,” declared the lady, who hadn’t removed her shoes.
“Yes, but your name . . .”
“Ruth, Ruth von Kammerstein. But please call me Ruth—everybody uses given names here.”
Ruth turned down Lori’s offer of a coffee.
“Might you have some water? Bottled spring water?”
Lori didn’t, but went to get some orange juice, which Ruth thinned with tap water. Lori poured herself some juice—undiluted—as well, and sat down. The baroness took off her green loden jacket with embroidered sleeves—Lori had seen ones like it in Germany—and laid it beside her on the sofa. Lori estimated that she was in her late forties, a soignée, slim lady with a broad face but surprisingly small hands and expressive eyes. Her dark blond hair was straight and pulled back with a red band.
“You’re probably wondering why I’m here,” her visitor began as she smoothed down her casual dark blue pleated skirt. It occurred to Lori that Ruth von Kammerstein might well be the only woman ever seen in Stormy Cove wearing a pleated skirt.
“I came by last week, but you weren’t in. I . . . I’m here in fact for a friend of mine, Wal
traud; she’s the mother of the young woman who used to live in the therapeutic community at Lindenhold. You lived there once, didn’t you?”
The baroness immediately recognized her faux pas. “No, not in the community, of course, but in the house, am I right?”
The palms of Lori’s hands felt damp. This was about Katja’s death. It had to happen. Eventually the past always catches up.
“I know it must be very difficult for you to recall your time there; it’s hard for all of us, but particularly for Waltraud and her husband. Waltraud implored me to talk to you, since we were already in Newfoundland. Do you remember Katja?”
Ruth von Kammerstein’s voice was firm but not unfriendly. If Lori hadn’t lived with Germans before, she’d have probably regarded her visitor’s presence as slightly pushy.
It suddenly dawned on Lori who it was that had quizzed Andrew: Katja’s parents.
She sat bolt upright in her armchair, “Did your friends speak to my son in Lindenhold recently?”
“Yes, exactly,” the baroness said in delight, as if Lori had uttered a password. “Your son told them you were here in Newfoundland—isn’t that a crazy coincidence! Although”—she leaned forward as if sharing a secret—“we would even have flown to Vancouver. You see, we’d go to any length for poor Waltraud.”
Lori turned cold. “What’s so urgent that you would have come to Vancouver to find me?”
“You see, Waltraud always wanted to tell you something, but somehow didn’t have the courage to—she suffered so much because of Katja. Her daughter’s death aged her twenty years, believe me.”
Lori was speechless, her head spinning. Ruth couldn’t know anything about her confrontation with Katja in the kitchen, nor could Waltraud. Unless Katja told them? But did Katja have the time for that before her . . . terrible end?
The baroness sipped her juice, holding the glass in both hands as if she had to cling to something solid. Which didn’t offer Lori any comfort as she waited, mesmerized, for whatever Ruth was about to disclose. Reproaches. Accusations. Or even worse: the threat of revenge.
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