“As soon as the Reverend Rose is free. Why wait?”
That’s what Frank had been thinking.
“On the beach.”
After the truncated meeting, Annabelle and Hy were walking down the Shore Lane. “That’s quite avant-garde for Moira.”
“Oh, she’ll have had her mind made up by her Cosmo magazines.”
Moira thought no one knew she read Cosmo, but they all did. There’s no foolproof way in a small village to keep your recycling secrets. A strong wind can tip over your cart. A fox or raccoon can split a plastic bag. A nosy neighbour can spread its contents all over the village before a person could clean up the mess.
The two friends stopped at Annabelle’s house. There was an unusual silence over the cape. They’d become used to the whirring of the turbine as part of the background sound to their lives, but the blades were not moving at all.
It was dead calm.
Hy shivered.
“You cold? In this?” It was a brilliant day with a blue sky and no wind.
“It was involuntary,” said Hy, looking over at the turbine.
“I don’t like the noise it makes when it’s moving, but it’s spooky when it makes no sound at all. Just stands there.”
“You’d like it maybe to walk?”
Hy grinned. Then furrowed her brow. “Don’t you find it creepy? I’ve always admired the look of them, but sometimes when I see a wind farm, I find them unsettling – as if they’re aliens about to start marching and take over the world. And this one, this solitary turbine here at The Shores...sometimes it does give me the shivers. So does its owner.”
Annabelle decided to steer the conversation back to a healthier topic.
“Do you think we’ll be invited to the wedding?”
“I expect so,” said Hy. “She’ll want to rub my nose in it.”
“What, me?” Hy was more interested in chasing murder suspects than marriage.
Moira had asked Hy to be her bridesmaid.
Hy choked back an emphatic “no” in favour of the more diplomatic, “What about Madeline?”
“Oh, she’ll be one, too. You don’t think I’d pick just you.” Moira’s words sounded like a sneer.
Madeline and me, thought Hy. We’ll look ridiculous – Mutt and Jeff. Maybe that’s the point.
It was one of them. Moira also meant to underline to both that she – not they – was getting married. She had waited so long that she wanted to wallow in it. She already had Madeline waiting on her. She would glory in getting Hy to kowtow.
“Well…” Hy was desperately looking for something to say, a reason why she couldn’t…
“I would expect that, as we are both members of Institute...”
Damn. Moira was calling on the solidarity of the Women’s Institute. Hy’s relationship with the group was checkered at best. She couldn’t go against the W.I. Moira knew that.
“Okay.” Hy tried to sound as if she’d meant to agree all along. “What do I have to do?”
“Oh, nothing much.” There was triumph in Moira’s tone.
Bright light pierced the sky from Hy’s house late into the night. Neighbours who observed her patterns – and anyone who could see the house did – knew that Hy either went to bed early, or sometimes not at all, and kept her lights low, often using only candles to light her tiny home. The Book of Bitching had changed that. Full lights blazed late into the night as she continued to comb through it.
She found a reference, but it told her nothing.
He’ll burden me with no grandchildren. If he was ever capable.
The last was intriguing, but it didn’t reveal what Hy wanted to know. It was obvious that Viola did not like kids – hers or anyone else’s.
Fiona had no one to mourn her. No one had been her friend. Newton wasn’t a friend. He’d used her to satisfy his puerile needs. She was almost entirely forgotten.
Jamieson hadn’t forgotten. She suspected Paradis had murdered Fiona. And she also suspected Fanshaw had killed her. One or the other. Both? One to push her off the cliff, the other to seal it with a rock?
Sometimes, when her imagination got away from her, she fancied the wind turbine had done the deed.
She had a clear view of it from the picture window in the living room of the police house. If she were very, very still, she could hear it as a deep rhythmical whirr, sent from its blades, down through the tower, into the ground, fanning out everywhere in The Shores.
Noise pollution – of a kind to make a person sick? Dizzy enough to fall off a cliff? She turned from the window and sat down at her computer. She was on the dial-up. As usual, it wasn’t co-operating. She grabbed her notebook and walked briskly down to Ian’s.
He was there, on his computer.
He turned and smiled at Jamieson when she came in. She was looking good. She had some colour in those pale cheeks. The colour heightened under his stare.
“How can I help?” Judging from her uniform and notebook, this was not a social visit. Those were usually in the morning, before she went on her community rounds.
“Wind turbines. What do you know about them?”
“The basics. What do you want to know?”
“About the health effects. Are they real or imagined?”
“I imagine they’re real.” Ian grinned. Jamieson did not.
He turned back to the computer, and soon had a variety of sites on the health effects of wind turbines.
“Affects sleep hormones, causes chronic insomnia, nausea, headaches, anxiety, depression…mental instability, a smorgasbord.”
“Mental instability. Interesting.” Could it cause someone to kill? She dismissed the idea. But it might cause someone to fall.
“Dizziness?”
Ian stared at the screen, scrolled down.
“Yup, dizziness.”
“Bad?”
Ian checked several sites.
“They all mention it. I gather it has something to do with noise, balance, and the inner ear.”
“So that turbine could have sent Fiona off the cliff – without human help.”
“I guess, but I’m no expert. I know I’ve felt dizzy when I come close to that monster.”
“Yes.” Jamieson bit her lower lip. “Yes. I have, too.”
“Still it could appear to be the cause, an alibi for intent, if you will.”
“You mean that somebody pushed her, hoping dizziness caused by the turbine would be considered the real killer.”
“Yes,” said Ian. “And maybe it was.”
The turbine as killer. Newton Fanshaw as killer?
New suspect number one.
There turned out to be a lot more than nothing for Hy to do as Moira’s bridesmaid. Madeline was hiding out, and Hy had to do everything. Madeline wasn’t being mean. She was just working to exhaustion with Billy making money for their own marriage. In spite of her size, she was helping Billy with the lawn-cutting business he now shared with Nathan. Billy did the tractor work and Madeline used the whipper snipper that was almost as big as she was. Moira didn’t need her help. Moira had never needed her help. She just liked to have Madeline to kick around. Now she was going to try it on Hy.
Moira insisted that she would wear her mother’s wedding gown. It was much too short and barely fastened – thirty-six tiny buttons down the back, straining at the loops meant to hold them. Moira was slim to the point of being scrawny, but women today can’t fit the dresses of women a generation before. Nutrition has made us all bigger, Hy thought, as she tugged at the dress, trying to find some slack to ease the tension on the button and loop she was trying to secure. It was hell to get them done or undone. It became easier after the waistline, fastening down the full skirt, but still the buttons were small, tiny. Pearls they were supposed to be, but some were chipped – not really pearls at all.
/> Try telling Moira that.
The last one came off, its threads so old and dry they disintegrated. The button hopped across the floor and slid under a dresser.
Moira spun around, reproof in her eyes. Hy wanted to smack her.
“I can’t get it.” Moira turned back to the mirror and smoothed the bodice of the dress. If it hadn’t been a wedding dress – and her mother’s – she never would have worn clothing so tight. The only place there was any slack was at the breasts. Even smaller than her mother’s, but her mother had been pregnant when she’d married – something Moira didn’t know.
Hy was sprawled on the floor, her nose itchy with the dust. Dust. Something she had never expected to find in Moira’s house. She sneezed.
“It’s dusty.” Hy couldn’t resist pointing it out.
Moira bristled. It was the spare room. She had been neglecting it. She had no Bed and Breakfast customers lined up for the summer. She didn’t realize that the house and the rooms were not inviting. Potential guests never went past the dull photos on the website. Plain and Spartan. Now dusty, too.
Moira chose to ignore Hy’s comment.
“Did you find it?”
“I can’t see it anywhere.” It was dark under there. Hy groped around with her hand, stretching her arm as far as it would go, feeling in the dust, until she gave up.
“It’s not worth it, Moira.”
“What? Perhaps not to you. Every bit of this dress was my mother’s, including that pearl. Pearl, Hyacinth.”
Should she say something? She sighed. It wasn’t worth fighting it. Those pearls were no more real than the ones strung around the pig’s straw hat on the ceramic savings bank on the dresser.
As she pulled herself up from the floor, Hy saw it. Tucked under the claw foot of the dresser leg.
She grabbed it and stood up.
Moira had been toying with asking Hy to sew it back on. That was the sort of thing bridesmaids did, wasn’t it? That might be pushing it too far. Perhaps it was enough to have the satisfaction that she was getting married and Hy was not. Of having her as a bridesmaid, answerable to her whims. That tipped it.
“Will you sew that back on for me, Hyacinth?”
Hy slammed it down on the dresser.
“No, I will not. I don’t want to be responsible for such a precious thing.”
Moira returned to admiring herself in the mirror.
“I understand. The quality. You wouldn’t want to ruin it.”
“That’s not what I meant. Anyway, I think the dress is all wrong. Too tight. Too short.”
Moira looked down. Her stick legs, unshaven, with black hairs around the ankles, stuck out from the bottom of the dress. It cut across her legs at mid-calf. Not flattering on anyone.
“Perhaps we can add a frill…a flounce.” She liked the world flounce. It had vibrancy.
“We could.” Hy’s response was slow and unsure. “With what?”
“One of my mother’s lace tablecloths. I have quite a few tucked away.”
They went to the linen closet in the hall, Hy bristling with the role Moira had placed her in. She was feeling spiteful in response to Moira’s high-handedness.
“You know I can’t stop thinking about Elmer,” she said.
Moira’s back and shoulders tensed.
“What about Elmer?”
“Well, if he had any beans.”
Moira stopped and turned, eyes wary.
“What beans?”
“The ones you gave him.”
“How do you know – ” She stopped, mid-sentence, realizing she’d been caught.
“Oh, those beans.” Her tone was dismissive, and she turned away again, but Hy caught the truth in her eyes.
“There was nothing wrong with those beans.” Moira pulled the cupboard door open.
“No?” Hy came alongside her. Moira avoided her glance. She pulled open another drawer.
“It’s as the doctor said. Heart attack from overstraining. Like the Mayor of Winterside.” The last said as if it were a trump card.
Hy let it go.
“I’m not going to say anything to anyone. I just want you to know that I know.” Moira’s hands trembled as she sorted through the layers of material in the drawer. It was real lace, but had yellowed and become brittle, rotting away in the drawer all these years.
“Perhaps make a veil out of the best bits of it…” Hy ventured. Moira looked at her with eyes of stone. That suggestion was going nowhere.
Instead, they went plowing through Moira’s linen drawers. From doilies, to antimacassars, to linen napkins, tablecloths, all never used, all wrapped in plastic, all various shades of yellow.
“Here, this will do,” a triumphant Moira carefully slipped a lace tablecloth from its wrapping.
It was yellowed and brittle.
Like the dress.
Yes, thought Hy. It would probably do.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Eeeeeech.”
That may not have been exactly what Hy said, but it sounded like it to Ian. It sounded that way to Jasmine, perched on the top of the tallest bookshelf in the room.
Hy slammed the kitchen door behind her and came into the living room.
“Eeeeeech.” Jasmine tried it out, and liked it.
“Eeeeeech. Eeeeeech. Eeeeeeeech.” She swooped down from her perch and landed on Hy’s shoulder. Hy was the only woman that the parrot could stand. She was jealous of any others.
“Eeeeeeech,” Hy and Jasmine said it again in chorus.
“What? What’s up?”
“Oh, Moira and this whole wedding thing. She’s made me her bridesmaid out of spite.”
Hy fell onto the couch. Ian continued to be absorbed by whatever he had called up on his computer. Hy reached into her bag and pulled out the Book of Bitching. She leaned back and turned on the area light above the couch. She was reading passages over and over, hoping to catch a clue.
“It is him. This ill-conceived embryo, this discarded child.”
Hy was sitting upright. This was something. Something. It didn’t tell her who he was, but it did tell her that he was here. That meant she was talking about Anton or Newton, as Hy had suspected.
Which one?
“We are gathered here together…”
It was a sunny morning when Moira got married, or tried to. There was a brisk breeze that kept lifting and snapping the bride and bridesmaids’ dresses. It gusted so strongly as the minister began to speak that the buttocks of all three women were revealed. It was agreed later, among the men gathered for a beer at Ben’s barn because the wedding was dry, that Hy had the best bum. It was the kind of man-talk Ian never engaged in, and he didn’t now, except to privately agree.
Whoosh, thwarp. Whoosh, thwarp.
The wind turbine was a huge metronome, marking time to the marriage ceremony. It was a quick Anglican nuptial, ten minutes, start to finish. That’s the way the minister liked it. Moira had made two fat gold-trimmed white velvet cushions that Frank and she could kneel on for the prayers.
“The union of husband and wife in heart, body, and mind is intended by God for their mutual joy.”
It was a dream come true for Moira, even in her unsuitable dress. She was the first woman to be married on this beach, for once an object of envy, not ridicule, to the young village girls. Who needed Mexico? All you could want was right here.
White surf chased by pale blue water churned onto the shore, its rich golden sand tinged with the red signature colour of the island. The beach was beautiful, more beautiful than the bride. So were her bridesmaids, in spite of Moira’s best efforts. No self-respecting bride wants her maids to look better than she. That’s why they tend to dress them in purple.
Hy had worked magic with her little-used sewing needle and trimmed their dresses with a
cream colour next to their skin. She’d also given the dresses shape. They both looked great. Moira didn’t know what had gone wrong.
Newton ran to the tower, as if being chased by the devil himself. He grabbed the first rung, and, with a huge effort hauled himself up. After that it was easier, except that he was shaking and that made his grip less sure. Rung by rung he climbed up, his stomach churning, fear slicing through his brain and heart.
Paradis had begun the climb behind him. Newton looked down. A mistake. Dizzy, he felt dizzy. He looked up. Another mistake. Dizzier. He pushed on, to the very top, Paradis gaining behind him.
To rescue Newton – or to kill him?
It was hard to say.
“Into this holy union Frank Connor and Moira Toombs now come to be joined. If any of you can show just cause why they may not lawfully be married, speak now; or else forever hold your peace.”
“I do. I do. I do.” Jasmine had been to a number of weddings. She didn’t usually interrupt. But she sometimes couldn’t resist the “I dos.”
The minister scanned the crowd to see who was disturbing the ceremony. Ian had lifted Jasmine off his shoulder and was trying to feed her a carrot to shut her up.
“Will you have this man to be your husband; to live together in the covenant of marriage? Will you love him, comfort him, honour and keep him, in sickness and in health, and, forsaking all others, be faithful to him as long as you both shall live?”
Moira looked at Frank, straight in his eyes. She was every inch his height and everyone there knew she wouldn’t honour him for long. That she loved him they were willing to accept. They agreed, later, that she looked almost pretty as she said, “I will.”
The minister turned to Frank, who was calculating how long they’d have to stay at the hall before he could finally get this woman into bed. He had to admit that the old way of saving yourself until marriage did whet the appetite. He’d seen the thirty-six buttons on the back of Moira’s dress, and he knew Moira well enough that he’d be undoing them, not ripping the dress off. Too bad, he thought. Ripping the dress off would be a much better start to the marriage.
Something Fishy Page 19
