“Of course… I killed her.” Then once again. “Of course… I killed her.”
“Turn that off!” Ferguson’s voice drowned out his own taped voice.
Seamus looked up, thumbs poised. He raised an eyebrow. Ferguson’s face was flushed with anger.
“You tampered with that. You know I said: ‘Of course, people will think I killed her.’ Not: ‘Of course I killed her.’”
“Got that now,” said Seamus. He’d been recording Ferguson again. He replayed it.
“Of course I killed her.”
Seamus smiled at Ferguson. “The unedited confession.” He slipped the phone into his pocket. “I could play more of our conversation, but I find that’s the most interesting part. Don’t you?” His eyebrows rose. He smiled. The best use he’d ever made of a phone camera.
“Of course I killed her.”
Both men were startled by Ferguson’s voice emanating from the rafters of the barn.
Jasmine flew out, circled the space and was out the barn doors before Ferguson could shut them, taking with her his voice.
“Of course I killed her.” Followed by a trail of meows, borrowed from the captive cats.
Jasmine had come for a visit and was going home with a whole new repertoire.
Ferguson’s eyes followed her, and then fixed on Seamus, who smiled smugly and savoured his own next words.
“Now let’s talk money. Moola. Dinero.”
Ferguson was eyeing the distance between his hands and Seamus’s throat, separated by the barrier of the desk between them.
But he wasn’t a murderer.
Certainly not that kind of murderer.
For now, he’d talk money, even though he didn’t have it. Then he’d think about a mass execution of the cats. See who the money would go to then.
And the parrot. He had to shut her up. Whether it was true or not, her repetition of it all over the village – in his voice – would taint him with the murder of his wife.
The truth was, he was sorry about Letitia. Very, very sorry.
***
“Could you feed Jasmine for me?” Ian asked when Hy arrived.
“Jasmine? Where is she?” Hy quickly scanned the room, for all the parrot’s usual perches. “I’m surprised she’s not on your shoulder.”
“It was too painful,” Ian grimaced. “It was painful shrugging her off as well.”
“Has she gone off in a snit?”
“Could you look around?”
Hy combed the house and couldn’t find Jasmine anywhere.
“Do you think she’s at the cattery?”
“I hope not, but she could be.”
Hy’s cellphone rang. They both jumped. Ian yelped with pain. Hy looked at the screen. Finn.
“Where have you been all night?” Finn’s tone was teasing, but he had been slightly concerned. With Abel’s disappearance, who knew what might be going on?
“I was home.” She had been. For a few hours.
“So you say.”
“Stuff it, Finn. Ian’s done his back in.”
“How’d that happen?”
“I don’t know. He leaned over to pick up a pencil.” Sarcasm edged her voice. He heard it but ignored it, teasing her.
“Really?”
“I told you, I don’t know. Could you come up and stay with him for a while?”
“Happy to. Do I get his room?” There was no other suitable room in Ian’s house. Finn knew that.
“I think it’s safe to say yes. This lad’s not going to be climbing stairs for a while.”
Finn could “charm the birds out of the trees.” That’s what his grandmother used to say about Ray, father of Hy and Finn. “He could charm the birds out of the trees.” Said in a way that made it a reprehensible ability.
Whatever it was, Finn had inherited it, and it turned out to be handy, because by the time he got to Ian’s, Hy and Ian had decided that Jasmine must have got loose and was at the cattery again.
They found her there – outside, in a tree, of all places. Jasmine didn’t normally do trees, but standing beneath her was Ferguson, watching intently, waiting for the bird to make a move so he could grab her.
Hy tried to coax her down with treats, but it didn’t work.
She turned to Ferguson. “Could you please leave? I think you’re upsetting her.”
“Ordering me about on my own property?”
“Is it?” It was, she knew, in half-ownership with Billy and Madeline. It was unlikely Ferguson would put up with that for long.
He frowned and turned back to the house.
Still Jasmine would not come down.
Finn tried. Finn was a different matter.
With a whimper, an unbirdlike whimper, a human whimper, and a sigh, Jasmine fluttered down when he called her and landed, claws digging into his shoulder so that he winced. He smoothed down her ruffled feathers, and she began to groom – herself, Finn, herself again, picking away at imaginary fleas in her feathers and his hair. It was something she loved to do, but never could with Ian, he had so little hair.
They left, Ferguson glowering at them through the front-door window.
***
The evening was cooling. Ian dragged a shirt over his T-shirt, grimacing as he did so, every movement a discomfort. Jasmine flew off her perch and landed on his shoulder. Even that hurt. He was about to scratch her head when she said it.
“I killed her. Of course.”
It was the unmistakable voice of Brock Ferguson, coming out of Jasmine’s beak.
Ian was thinking about what prompt he could use to get her to say it again, but he didn’t have to. Jasmine was on one of her repetitive jags. She’d caught Ian’s full attention, and had no plans to let it go.
“People… I killed her. Of course.”
That deep voice. Cream and whisky.
Ian hardly noticed the pain shooting across his lower back as he leaned forward to grab his cellphone. Number two on his speed dial. Jamieson.
***
The rope hung like a limp sneer, mocking Seamus.
My God! Had The Hat Man got away? Got away? From him. From his kidnapper. Seamus slowed to a halt, reluctant to face the possibility. Probability. He squeezed out of the car, huffed over to the van, and yanked the doors open. Wide open.
Inside?
Inside it was dark. He peered in, placed a hesitant foot up onto the back step.
And was shoved inside. So fast, so sudden was it that he couldn’t push back. He tipped forward, his weight taking him down, wedging him between the two cots.
The doors slammed shut behind him. He couldn’t move. He was stuck where he was, his face jammed inches from the floor, breathing in the rusty metal smell, his clothing smeared with rust-red clay.
He could hear the ropes being wrapped around the handles of the door.
“Help! Let me out!” The sound was muffled. The old man was paying him no attention. When the rope was secured, he patted the van a couple of times and made a nimble retreat to Seamus’s car. Keys in. As they should be. He started it, but couldn’t pull out at first. It was stuck in the clay.
Forward. Reverse. Forward. Reverse. The sound of the car punctuated by Seamus’s weakening cries for help.
The car came free, and the old man, with a smug smile on his face, pulled a 180 and headed into the night.
Chapter 30
It came as a shadow in the night. Hy couldn’t sleep and had been puzzling over the disappearance of Abel and Dot, still inaccessible on her cell or email. She kept going over it. Ferguson coming to the hall on the hunt for Abel, and Seamus O’Malley phoning her about him. There was that email, asking where Abel had found the cod. Were they all after the big fish? She spent some time googling, copied the links, and fired off an email to Ian.
She
was waiting for an answer when a shadow crossed her side window, the one that looked out on the field that rolled down to the shore. It had passed under her outdoor light and flickered an image she couldn’t quite capture. It went by again, some minutes later, as if it had rounded the house, intent on casting the shadow again.
And a third time.
Hy grabbed her jacket, stuck her feet in her desert boots, and grabbed a flashlight but didn’t turn it on.
The shadow slipped on up ahead of her, into the field of timothy.
She followed. Could it be Abel?
Why would she expect to see Abel now, now that he was missing, when she’d never seen him in all that time she’d spent in his house? All those years she had been his wife’s close friend. Twenty years and more, and she had never seen him.
But she was beginning to share Gus’s faith that Abel was alive, that his was the shadow she was following, that, as Gus had suggested, he was after the big fish. That’s what she had told Ian in the email, told him to check out the links to see if he agreed that O’Malley and Ferguson might be on the trail, too, for their own reasons.
She shivered in the cold autumnal night, the cool bringing with it a clear sky so full of stars and satellites it made her dizzy and delighted to look up at them. She shouldn’t be distracted. She had to follow the shadow. But there was no movement ahead of her now. She stood, frozen, until she could no longer feel her limbs, aching to stretch them, to fight the pins and needles numbing her legs, from the small prickles in her toes to the shaking of her thighs.
Finally, there was rustling in the tall grass, but no one to be seen, even on a night like tonight, when the smoke was blown away and the village was bathed in starlight, light and sound travelling easily through the crisp air. She heard the rustles, and she saw the tips of the grass moving as the creature – human or otherwise – made its way across a fallow field.
Hy followed, keeping her distance and her own rustling to a minimum, but, if she fell back, her prey slowed, too, as if waiting, inviting her along.
As the moon began to rise almost perfectly aligned with Ethan Cooke’s chimney, she thought that she caught a glimpse of a Tilley hat, but black clouds threatening a storm soon shrouded the night again, and she saw nothing more.
She followed blindly, she was not sure whom or what.
Inevitably, she lost her way. She’d lost the rustling sound to the whipping of the wind; the night was dark as pitch. She had lost the road, too, and found herself stumbling on rough terrain, not entirely sure where she was headed, with no stars visible to guide her.
She ended up going in circles, the circles widening and confusing her sense of direction.
Circles. Circles were part of it. Explained in the links, the places where the big fish gathered, mated, bred. She’d seen the circles. Here on Red Island. Not mentioned in any of the links.
She could hear the ocean near but had no idea she was on the edge of a cape until she stepped off it and went tumbling down, sliding to the bottom, scraping her hands as she tried to grasp onto the sandstone. She fell sideways onto the sand and lay there several minutes, trying to figure out what to do next. Where to go.
Wait until morning. It wouldn’t be long now.
***
When he got to Big Bay, the old man concealed Seamus’s car behind a derelict building, home to a colony of feral cats. He was tempted to take the Annaben, his brother and sister-in-law’s boat, or one of the other lobster boats. He couldn’t take another fisherman’s boat. No, that wasn’t done, unless the fella said you could. He wanted a smaller vessel anyway.
He looked into Ben’s fishing shack. There was just what he needed.
A triumph. A triumph of remembering. He knew why he was here, what it was he wanted. Fishing tackle and an inflatable boat. It took him several trips to get it all to the water’s edge. His strength and focus increased with each step.
He inflated the rubber dinghy, powered by a small and ancient one-cylinder motor. It took only five minutes until the oars were snapped in place.
Then he waited out the tide.
***
Morning came as black as night. Hy wasn’t sure when night had turned to day. She’d been wandering for several hours. It must have been well past daybreak when she found a sheltered spot, soft sand scooped into a hole in the cape. She had snuggled down, promising herself she was only taking a short break.
She woke several hours later, shocked that she’d fallen asleep. Hours lost. She jumped up and stumbled along the shore, crawled up the cape, and back on the road to Big Bay.
Dark storm clouds scudded across the water from the west and thick smoke billowed in from the north. It was one of Harold MacLean’s “dirty days,” as he proclaimed them with a trace of affection in his expression, nostalgia for storms past, so many he’d weathered.
Hy had found her way, uncertainly, along the shoreline to Big Bay.
***
The small boat was bobbing on the water off Big Bay, hidden behind the swell of the incoming tide over the sandbar that sheltered the entrance to the harbour.
The woman on the wharf wearing a Tilley hat had been certain he would come, as sure as the moon rose up on the chimney line of Ethan Cooke’s hovel.
She waited, snakes of impatience squirming in her stomach.
Let the hunt begin, she was thinking, as she unlooped the Annaben from its moorings. She hoped Ben and Annabelle would forgive her for stealing their boat, but she had to follow him, to make sure he was okay. She had to make sure he didn’t see her, unless she had to rescue him. He wouldn’t forgive her watching over him. That’s what she called it. He would call it intruding.
At least he was back in her sights.
He would be easy to follow.
The rubber dinghy was nearly out of sight, rounding the capes with the massive dunes reaching up to the sky, the nine-foot boat churning out into the open sea. She pulled the rope free and started up the vessel.
Just as she did, a deep boom thundered down the coast, black clouds chasing the sound.
They were in for some weather.
For a few moments, she stared anxiously after the inflatable, but it kept propelling around the cape, distancing itself from her.
He would not be giving up.
Neither would she.
The storm, when it came, would last all night. It would come, like the sea, in waves.
***
The Annaben wasn’t there. There was a gap in the lineup of boats at the harbour. Between Tide’s In and The Caper. Hy was sure Abel must have taken it. He’d be after the fish, no doubt.
It was Abel she’d been following until she got lost. Now he must have taken to the water, but she couldn’t see a thing. The black storm clouds had dropped down low on the horizon, shrouding everything.
She listened carefully – she heard the low thrum of a boat’s motor, mingling with the thunder rolling up the coast. It must be the Annaben. It must be Abel.
The Annaben was the only boat Hy had ever captained. Years before, after she had overcome her trauma-induced fear of water, she went out with Ben and Annabelle frequently to “learn the ropes.” Eventually took the helm and found she had a knack for it. It was not a skill she had ever expected to need.
She strode down the line of boats, a physical urgency propelling her from one to another, rejecting one after another. Whose could she take? Who would be forgiving?
None of them.
She spotted Will Fairweather’s Cape Islander, both the name and the type of boat. The perfect boat in a storm, designed for big, long, ocean swells. Its flat bottom would pound over the waves. Fairweather was a summer resident, and it was more boat than he needed. He certainly didn’t need it now. He’d left The Shores soon after the smoke began billowing from Quebec. He’d asked Hy to email him when things cleared up. He’d never expecte
d it would last so long. Hy knew where he kept the key. He’d taken her for a spin once. He rather fancied her, and he was used to women falling for, if not his personality, his money.
But Hy had money of her own. And he had no personality.
With luck, he’d never know she’d taken it out.
***
“Hy is missing? How do you know?”
Finn shrugged. “We pass like ships in the night, but when you live in the same house as someone, you know if they’ve been there or not. I see no sign that she’s been home since last night. No sign of her, but her bicycle and truck are both there.”
Jamieson frowned.
“When did you last see her?”
“We rescued Jasmine yesterday from the cattery.”
“That’s still going on?”
“I don’t think Jasmine will be going back. She got a good scare from Ferguson.”
“Why?”
“Not sure why. Thought he liked her. Anyway, she’ll stay home now, I think. Unlike Hy.”
“She’s been gone less than twenty-four hours. Not exactly enough time to call out search and rescue.”
“I know. But doesn’t Hy have friends in high places?” He winked.
The thought of Hy being missing made Jamieson feel strangely lonely.
Gone only a day, but missing. What if she were really missing? Jamieson felt hollow. Without Hy, she was on her own. She felt it, reluctantly admitting to herself that what she called Hy’s “interference” was actually helpful to her. So she was glad to have Finn tag along, arguing all the way as Hy would have.
Jamieson and Finn were looking for Nathan’s van, driving up and down lanes and farm roads, all the way to the end of the Island Way and back, and no luck.
Where the cruiser couldn’t go, they walked. The wind had shifted again with the impending storm, and they breathed in the smell of another place, Quebec, other troubles. People had lost their homes, others were waiting, packed and ready to leave if they had to, to lose their homes to the fires that were engulfing that province.
It made their worries seem small. Yes, a man missing, but an old man who’d had a long and fulfilling life. And a woman missing, Hy, but there was no reason to believe, not yet, that anything had happened to her. If it had –
Cod Only Knows Page 20
