“You’d think she’d have made enough money to fix the place up,” one disgruntled tourist spoke for the others – all of whom had purchased more than their share of fudge.
The locals wasted no time in shaking their heads and tut-tutting about the loss of the tidy beige bungalow on the cape. It had been there since many of them were born. They liked Fiona’s fudge, but they didn’t like change.
“She dragged that trailer up there and plunked her fat ass down.” That was how Jared put it, sucking on a delicious creamy piece of chocolate.
Fiona did have a fat ass. Fat arms. Fat face. Fat thighs.
She’d been a pudgy baby, and never lost the baby fat – just kept adding more. When the family would visit her Uncle Jim on the shore, she’d looked like a beachball in her red bathing suit with white-and-yellow stripes across the middle. It was made out of a material designed for quick drying, a material that looked like bubble wrap. That’s what she looked like. A bubble, wrapped. Kids used to taunt her: “Bubble bottom! Bubble bottom!”
Her parents didn’t seem to notice. They thought it was nice she’d found friends.
She never did. Not on the beach. Not in school. Not in church. Only in the general store, where old “Mac” MacCormack got a glint in his eye when she bounced through the door Saturday mornings, a dollar clutched in her hand. He’d relieve her of it, always tossing in a few extra of the penny candy she loved most – jujubes – to keep her coming back for more.
She got fatter. And fatter. And fatter.
Then she discovered fudge. She found out that it was easy and cheap to make and stretched her pocket money a long way. Its sickening sugar content satisfied a deep yearning in her.
Fiona became a cook. Casserole dishes and stews, anything she could make in servings for four or more she’d eat all in one sitting.
Anton Paradis was the most infuriated with Fiona’s ugly trailer. It was directly in his line of vision. He would never get permission to install the helipad now. He’d been elated at the removal of the cottage, because he could move ahead with his plans. Now he’d been thwarted.
He had spent a good part of the morning looking at the eyesore, frustrated that his guests would not be able to contemplate the beauty of the cape without having to stomach the unpalatable “Fudge Palace,” newly named on a sign Fiona had planted that morning.
Anton’s lips curled in distaste, as he tortured himself, silently repeating the words: Fudge Palace. Spitting it out, pacing about, working himself up to a blistering anger. It was, perhaps, his natural state. He was able to call up past events, slights, assumed and real, and produce a frenzy of feeling as strong as when they had happened. Two veins on either side of his forehead popped out, engorged with hot fury, the blood pulsing in rhythm to his anger.
Anton was not a man to cross. Though he gave every appearance of being a refined, diplomatic individual, a cold fury blazed inside him.
Fury at his insignificant birth, at having to claw his way up from the bottom in Shediac, New Brunswick, in crummy jobs where he boiled lobster non-stop for tourists, made potato salad and coleslaw. Coleslaw! His inner chef rebelled, longed for more.
Now he had it, or almost had it. It was so close he could touch it – success. The inheritance he fully expected and had worked so hard for and this dining experience he had created, bound to catapult him to the top ranks, with a Michelin star shining in his future.
His greatest achievement had been to become the darling of the wealthy set in Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard, but he wanted more, and he wouldn’t stop grasping until he got it.
He would call on those connections for his new business. He hoped for more from one in particular, the opening dinner being held in her honour. Viola. A nasty old bitch, but he’d courted her, enslaved himself to her; in truth, she owned him. He was her make-believe lover, husband, friend, and son. Since she had none of these, he was hoping – and fully expecting – to inherit her millions. Or some of them. She’d hinted as much to him.
A nagging tickle inside him worried that she was trying to keep him sweet, but some of it, surely, was within his grasp. She had so much, and he’d done so much for her.
He’d already blown most of the whack of money she’d given him.
If he couldn’t stave off his creditors long enough to launch this restaurant, he’d find himself sailing from Red Island to a desert island. It was a warm day, but the thought sent the shiver of a chill through him.
Fiona and her fudge and her tacky trailer stood smack in the middle of his guests’ view of the sunset. She would have to go. Money, he was sure, would get rid of her.
He stalked out of the kitchen and marched up to Fiona’s trailer. Fiona knew a bully when she saw one. It was obvious he was coming for her.
“Go back where you came from,” she screamed at him as he approached.
He pasted on a smile, and waved.
“I wanted to discuss a purchase of your land.” Money talked. Money talked for Anton in every encounter he had. Including those with women.
“Not if you offered me a million dollars!”
Anton couldn’t even produce what he was about to offer, but he’d worry about that later.
“This is my land, my uncle’s land, my grandfather’s land, all the way back more than two hundred years. That land you’re on was my family land, too.”
“And that’s been for sale, time after time, so this piece must have a price on it, too.”
“The price is zero,” she crossed her chubby arms over her bosom, as a flicker of hope showed in his eyes. “There is no price.”
What was she saying? Was this an offer, a tease? He would court her if he had to.
“Nothing could make me sell this place.”
His hopes shriveled. He swallowed his disgust at what he had been prepared to do. Had done before.
“Not a hundred thousand dollars?”
She jutted out her chin and settled her arms more firmly into place.
“Two hundred thousand?”
She said nothing. Neither did he. He was not willing to offer more. He didn’t even have a hundred thousand dollars left and there were demands on it. He thought there must be a way to make her cave in. He’d been acting rashly. He’d have to give it some thought. There must be a way to get rid of her.
Of course. She was fat and single; she must be needy. He just had to butter her up. It came to him with a smile and an image he quickly cleared from his mind.
Jamieson shoved her chair away from the table and looked down at the pile of blank white paper beside the printer. She very nearly smiled.
The top paper was her weekly report to headquarters. It included the fish, of course, and a few incidentals. The next page and all the rest were blank. She picked them up and shoved them in a large brown envelope, already addressed. She hesitated a moment before she licked it and sealed it. The slight smile returned. She put it back down on the desk.
It was the latest test.
At first she had written longer and longer reports, to put her superiors off reading them. In her last she had inserted community gossip at the end to see if anyone was reading them at all.
Everyone thought Gladys Fraser had gone missing, and I was called in, only to find her husband Wally had locked her in the shed. He swears he did so unintentionally, but I will be keeping an eye on him in the future.
Jamieson thought if she were Wally Fraser, that’s exactly what she’d do with Gladys. She wasn’t the only one in the village who felt that way.
Still have my eye on Jared MacPherson, although he seems to be keeping out of trouble these days. He found a girl in Winterside who’s moved in with him. She cut his hair. Made him brush his teeth. He looks half-human.
Jamieson could hardly believe herself when she wrote these things. She should have her eye on Jared. He’d killed once – ruled an acci
dent – and maybe twice, but she couldn’t prove it.
No one in Charlottetown seemed to care what went on at The Shores. They never responded to her reports, and she began to slip in more and more outrageous comments.
They’d forgotten The Shores. Forgotten her. At one time, she would have cared. Now she didn’t.
She picked up the envelope, opened it, took up more sheets of paper, and shoved the whole lot in. All blank.
Let’s see what they think about that.
Jamieson had the feeling that they didn’t even open the envelopes. This would be the real test.
Two years before, Jamieson had been a by-the-book cop. Now, she was a maverick. The Shores had taken possession of her. She knew how policing had to be done here. It had to make sense. There was a justice outside the law, the courtroom, the prison. Last winter she’d invoked that style of justice – ruling a possible murder an accident.
She’d been sent here because she was a pain in the ass. Well, she’d keep out of their way. As long as she sent in the reports, they didn’t seem to care what was going on.
She did.
She stuck a label on the envelope. She was sending hard copy because she only had dial-up at the police house and it wasn’t secure. Anybody might have hacked into it; not that anyone in The Shores, besides Ian, could. He was only one who would even be interested.
Other than Hy.
There. She’d done it. Referred, mentally, to Hy by her first name. That ridiculous name. A greeting, not a moniker.
It became quickly clear that no one was watching Jamieson. She had dispatched the envelope to headquarters, and there had been no response – other than the curt, automatic email: Weekly rec’d.
It confirmed that no one cared what she did on her beat. They’d even let Murdo stay with her, though the size of the community didn’t warrant two police officers.
The last official act the detachment had made was to relieve Billy Pride of his duties as a Community Peace Officer. He’d been devastated.
Jamieson wasn’t inclined to acts of kindness, but she’d enlisted Billy to do menial chores around the police house, things that Murdo would have done if he were still there.
Neither of them was obligated to live at the police house, but the fact that it was a house made it convenient. Not quite convenient enough for Murdo.
He’d moved out and was living with April Dewey, the best little cook in The Shores. Half-a-dozen buns had come out of her own personal oven. Six children under twelve, who all seemed to be dangling somewhere off her body most of the time.
Her husband had left her – and no wonder – for his mistress in Winterside, and Murdo had slipped into April’s heart, home, and the chair at the head of the dinner table.
April had allowed Murdo to move in when her ex, Ron, had managed to get their marriage annulled. After six kids. It had soured April on the church. Ron didn’t have any friends, but he must have known some people in high places to pull off that travesty. She quit going to church, invited Murdo to move in, and started taking the pill. Murdo couldn’t understand why. He’d be happy to have more kids.
It should have bothered Jamieson that Murdo was more likely to be seen shingling April’s roof than attending to police duties. At one time, it would have driven her nuts. Now she’d wave lazily as she walked by on her beat, breathing in the sweet salt air of The Shores, feeding her senses on the sights before her, the fields of grain or potatoes rolling down to the shore, and the pond – looking like a tadpole – with its tail running across the sand, a stream of fresh water mingling with the salt of the Gulf, while waves thundered up on the shore the day after a storm.
I’ve turned.
That’s how she thought of it, as if it were treason. The truth of it was that The Shores – the village, the land, the sea, and the people – had seeped into her soul.
Chapter Seven
Moira answered her door to a uniformed man with a package on a dolly.
It was another consignment of slow cookers. Moira had been doing a brisk business selling them in the village. Bulldozing over any objections had been her main sales technique.
“Fragile,” said the deliveryman, his eyes grazing up and down Moira’s body. She wasn’t fragile. Scrawny. Still – he hadn’t had much luck lately, though this was a great business for meeting the ladies.
Moira managed a half-smile, her eyes quickly darting up the hill, as they did at all such opportunities, to check if Ian might have seen her with this man.
She opened the door wide, her eyes alternating from Ian’s house to the stack of boxes the man was wheeling in on the dolly.
As he crossed the threshold, she stuck a hand out to stop him. She put newspapers on her floors to keep them clean. She had just lifted the papers to sweep and mop.
“Be careful,” she grabbed the sleeve of his jacket.
Strong. He stopped pushing the dolly forward and looked back at her. Not bad-lookin’. A tad white in the face. Still, his mother had always said that was the mark of a lady.
“The floor.” She pointed at it, but she was looking at him. She flushed.
Now that’s better, he thought. Some colour, that’s the ticket.
Moira didn’t know much about men, but she did know the difference between Ian’s thoughtless indifference and the spark of interest this man was displaying. He had a cheeky look about him, face formed in a smile, a wink always at the ready. His hair was greased into a cowlick at the front.
“Let’s put them in the kitchen,” she said, playing her strong suit, taking him to the only room in the house that was homey, especially when it smelled of freshly cooked muffins, as it did now.
He began to push the dolly forward, and she put a hand on his chest to stop him. Now she felt it.
Strong. Yes, he was strong. She felt a frisson of excitement.
“If you could, possibly, pick them up and bring them through.”
He did as she asked, taking his time, his long, lanky legs strolling in and out of her uninspiring kitchen. It was beige and white, yellowed with age. The linoleum was older than she was, and she was a bit over forty. The counters dated to the same era. They were worn in patches, the swirls of brown, made to look like marble, rubbed off in places by constant application of cleaning product and elbow grease, but otherwise undamaged and scrupulously clean. In spite of its über cleanliness, the kitchen was inviting. The scent of Moira’s muffins had seeped into the walls, so that even when there weren’t any in the oven, it smelled like there were.
“Cup of tea?”
“Don’t mind if I do.” He sat down at the old wooden table, thinking something stronger would be even better. At some of the houses he delivered to, he was offered rum or vodka. Sometimes he was offered more than that. He gladly accepted.
“Muffin?” She pushed a plate forward on the counter.
“If you insist.”
Moira busied herself finding him a plate, still thinking about Ian, about how she might parade this man in front of him and finally win his interest.
She put the tea and a plate of muffins down in front of him. He took off his hat, and extended a hand.
“Frank,” he said.
She took his hand. “Moira.”
Moira now began to order the slow cookers one at a time, and he would deliver them, one by one. The slow cookers had caught on. The villagers couldn’t wait to start cooking slow. And Moira couldn’t wait for Frank’s next visit.
He was quite a catch. Except for the cowlick.
“Slow cookers?” Gus shook her head and wrinkled her brow, dropped a stitch from her knitting and didn’t notice.
“Slow cooking?” she said again, to underline her disapproval.
Hy grinned. She’d seen it coming.
“Alls I ever wanted to do was cook fast, and get it out of the road. Cooking’s slow eno
ugh for me already.”
Hy nodded and sat down.
“Cooking’s so slow at my place it doesn’t even happen.”
Everywhere else in the village, the slow cookers were placed proudly on kitchen counters beside the little-used microwaves, indoor grills, and sandwich makers.
Moira even bought them for the cottages she was cleaning, including bills with a percentage added for herself, expecting that none of the wealthy cottagers would be so cheap as to reject the offer. She’d make a tidy sum.
Moira was turning into quite a businesswoman. She even purchased a cooker on behalf of the Hall, to Olive MacLean’s dismay. Olive was treasurer of the Women’s Institute, and as close with the “public funds,” as she referred to them, as she was with her own purse.
But there it was, spanking new, the packaging already distributed in the various recycling bags by Moira, fastidious daughter of a “waste management supervisor.”
The ladies were too embarrassed to say anything. Only one of them had ever returned anything to a store. Gladys Fraser. She had the nerve of a bull to go with her looks. It had been a vacuum cleaner that blew dust all over her living room on its maiden voyage across her carpet. She claimed to the storeowner, a lad she’d taught in high school, that she would never be able to remove that dust. Never, she had said emphatically, the pissed-off look on her face scaring him as much now as when he had been a callow, pimply youth thirty years before.
She got an exchange. And then some. A year’s worth of vacuum bags for the replacement machine. When the former student made the offer, he didn’t know how many bags Gladys used in a year. A lot. Or at least that’s what she’d said. She’d claimed she vacuumed every day and changed the bag each time. Anybody who’d been to her house knew that wasn’t true.
She’d had to store the bags in the shed, where, over time, they’d mildewed.
It was one of the few times anyone had ever seen Gladys smile. She made a triumphant return to the village, holding the new machine aloft as she strode up her walk.
Something Fishy Page 5
