by Tanya Huff
To keep things moving, all the bands used the Center’s drums and keyboards. Mark had a set of sticks in his hands and two more plus a pennywhistle tucked in behind the waistband of his kilt.
“So,” Charlie said as they stepped out of the shadows, “I forgot to ask; this band got a name?”
“Grinneal! Scot’s Gaelic for bottom of the sea.” Mark grinned and saluted her with the sticks. “It’s sink or swim time, Chuck!”
THREE
THE PELTS SMELLED like fish. Paul hadn’t noticed it before, but piled on the backseat of his car, tucked into suit bags that made fine camouflage but terrible filters, the scent was unmistakable. Technically, he supposed they smelled like the ocean, like brine and kelp rotting on the shore, but the signature, the grace note, was definitely fish. And not fish the way he preferred it, filleted almost transparent and lying on a bed of sticky rice next to a serving of sake; this was fish the way he remembered it from meeting his dad at the docks and nearly gagging on the stink rising off glistening piles of guts speckled silver with scales. It stank of barely getting by and wearing his cousin’s hand-me-downs and being expected to never achieve his full potential because if kids like him went to work for Carlson Oil, it sure as hell wasn’t in the office.
The odor anchored the skins in a pungent reality that removed any lingering disbelief. Why worry about the hard left his worldview had recently taken when his time could be better spent worrying about getting the smell of the docks out of his car. It was the first new car he’d ever owned and he really didn’t want the past he’d worked so hard to shake to take up residence in the upholstery.
He cranked up the air-conditioning another notch and thought about how he’d never have been expected to transport sealskins while working in Toronto. He’d been thrilled when Ms. Carlson had gone from VP to CEO and wanted him to remain with her, but he’d been significantly less thrilled about returning to the Maritimes and his family’s incessant: “Why don’t you drop by, Paul.” “We never see you, Paul.” And the ever popular: “Well, if you’re not gay, what’s wrong with meeting Mrs. Harris’ daughter for lunch? You’re not getting any younger and your grandmother, who’d like to see you settled before she goes, won’t live forever.”
His grandmother had every intention of living forever.
He’d nearly cheered when Ms. Carlson had decided it would be good public relations to temporarily relocate to the Sydney office. It wasn’t out of the province, but at least it was out of Halifax.
“You have reached your destination.”
The voice of his GPS was bland, generic North American; entirely unremarkable for a businessman using a tool. He’d downloaded the Darth Vader program but never installed it, well aware it would give the wrong impression should Ms. Carlson ever need to ride in his car. She hadn’t needed to in the two years, four months, and twenty-seven days he’d worked for her, but that didn’t mean she never would.
Dewie Center Self-Storage consisted of long, beige rectangular buildings with red roofs and doors, bordered by just enough asphalt to get trucks in and out. Paul had already stopped by the office—shared with the local U-Haul rental—to sign the papers and pick up the key. Fake name, fake address, paid in cash.
The middle-aged man behind the counter had looked down at the money and up at Paul. “You hiding a body?”
Paul had looked down at the man’s left hand and the tan line on the empty ring finger, did the math, and said, “No. Just hiding some stuff from my ex-wife.”
There’d been no further questions.
Forty square feet of storage had seemed like a lot when he’d rented it, but Paul had no idea how many pelts Ms. Carlson would eventually need him to store, and moving pelts between units if the space he’d provided turned out to be too small would only attract attention. They didn’t need any more of that. In spite of everything they’d done over the last year to keep the permit process out of the news, Two Seventy-five N had shone the bright light of public opinion on Carlson Oil. Even years later, BP’s adventure in the Gulf of Mexico continued ramping the reaction to maritime wells up to hysterical levels.
Stacked against the back wall, the three bulging black suit bags that had so dominated the backseat of his car looked slightly pathetic, dominated in turn by all the surrounding concrete.
If there was a descriptive phrase more depressing than “surrounding concrete,” Paul didn’t want to hear it.
The bags, or more specifically their contents, didn’t look like they’d provide the leverage necessary to silence the Hay Island group, but appearances could be deceiving. Ms. Carlson gave no outward indication of how entirely ruthless she could be although a growing list of people—and evidently other things—had discovered the inner Amelia. To her credit, she’d never tried to hide it from him. After the other two young men who’d made it to the final job interview had emerged from her office, mere shadows of the arrogant MBAs who’d gone in, Paul had decided he didn’t need to prove how smart or ambitious he was, but how useful. It was, after all, better to stand beside the devil than in front of her.
When he turned and saw the slender figure silhouetted in the storage unit’s open doorway, he had to bite his tongue to keep from shrieking.
“This isn’t good enough,” she said.
“What?”
“Storing them off-site is a good start, but this . . .” Silver bangles clanged together as she gestured. “. . . isn’t good enough.”
Without the sun behind her, the figure became a woman on the downhill side of middle age. Tall and slender, with thick gray hair in a long braid, she wore an ankle-length, sleeveless dress, a mix of blues and greens and yellows, in a batik pattern that had been popular a few years ago. His mother had one but didn’t wear it nearly as well. The legs flashing through the slits in the skirt as she walked toward him were in great shape. This older woman had been a looker once and hadn’t entirely left it behind.
“I’m sorry,” he said politely. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Her dark eyes narrowed, and he had the strangest urge to run. Then she smiled. “Where are my manners?You’re Paul Belleveau.” It wasn’t a question. She knew who he was. “I’m Catherine Gale.”
He felt like a butterfly pinned to a corkboard. “These . . . those . . .” He nodded toward the back of the unit and fought to get a grip on his reaction. “. . . are yours.”
The second and third pelts had appeared as mysteriously in the Sydney office as the first had in Halifax. Delivered mysteriously by Catherine Gale.
“Mine? Don’t be ridiculous. They’re yours now. I’m merely the intermediary,” she added before he could protest.
Paul didn’t need the emphasis to know that the woman in front of him had never been merely anything.
“However,” she continued, the curve of her lip suggesting she knew exactly what he’d been thinking, “it turns out I need to become more involved in order to keep my plans from being disrupted.”
“Plans?”
“You don’t think items like these can be picked up without planning, do you?”
He didn’t. He also didn’t believe that was what she’d meant, but he had no intention of challenging her on that. He liked his balls right where they were, thanks very much, and anyone who thought Catherine Gale wasn’t following her own agenda had never met her. He’d been in a storage locker with her for barely three minutes and it was entirely clear to him. “I’m sorry, go on.”
“You can’t leave the items here.” Her tone suggested here was the equivalent of a damp cardboard box. “I’ve found them.”
“Why were you looking for them?”
“To see if I could find them.”
“Ah. So you think they’ll find them?” It was the only logical conclusion.
“Oh, please, tradition suggests they can’t find the damned things if they’re wrapped in a shawl and stuffed in a box under the marital bed. No . . .” Catherine Gale ran a hand down the drape of her dress, reminding
Paul of a cat smoothing its fur. “. . . there’s a new player in the game, and once she realizes she’s playing, she’ll need to prove something by returning these to their original owners.”
“Prove what?”
“That has yet to be decided.” The last time Paul had seen that smile, it had been on a shark. “You have a short grace period while this new player gets up to speed.”
“I see.” Paul suspected the new player was yet another thing he’d prefer not to believe in. “How long is short?”
“I have no idea. But the number of angels who can dance on the head of a pin depends entirely on the dance.”
“What?”
“You wanted to know how long short was.”
“That’s not what . . .” She knew it wasn’t what he’d meant. He bit off the rest of his protest and took a deep, cleansing breath. It smelled of fish. Not entirely reassuring. “Not to presume, but can’t you deal with the new player?”
“I can.” But I won’t came through loud and clear.
“All right.” Given where they were in the suburbs of Sydney, it took a moment to lock his phone onto a wifi signal. “I’ll need as much information as you can give me.”
“You have as much information as I’m going to give you.”
“But . . .”
“The rest is no business of yours.”
“No offense, but it sounds like it’s very much my business.” No point in mentioning that Carlson Oil had bet everything on this roll of the dice. If they hadn’t already invested so much that sinking this well was an absolute necessity, they wouldn’t have accepted Catherine Gale’s impossible offer.
“It’s only your business if she finds the pelts, which she won’t if you put them somewhere safer.” A business associate had once declared Amelia Carlson had a smile that could flay small animals. Current evidence suggested that business associate had no idea what that particular smile looked like.
Thankful he’d emptied his bladder before leaving the office, Paul considered his options.
What was safer than an anonymous storage locker? A vault would require a lot more paperwork and, even if he could get access to one, there was the whole fish stink to consider. It would have to be an empty vault and emptying one would also cause the kind of attention they wanted to avoid. On the other hand, Carlson Oil owned a lot of property in Nova Scotia.
“We have mines. Closed mines,” he expanded.
A steel-gray brow rose. “Are there still open mines? Rhetorical question,” she added. “Dropping them down a shaft is not . . .”
“I’d secure them in a cross tunnel. It would be impossible to stumble over them by accident and difficult to find them on purpose. The link between Carlson Oil and the mine is well hidden inside a number of shell companies,” he added reassuringly. “Coal gets no respect.”
Catherine Gale frowned thoughtfully, drawing the fingernail of her right index finger along the bracelets on her left wrist, head cocked as she listened to them chime. “Do any of these tunnels extend out under the water?”
“Of course. It’s not that large an island.”
“Excellent. Water will slow her down.”
“Her?”
The shark smile returned. “The new player. She’ll work around it but, fortunately, you only need a short-term solution. I believe you were promised a decision on the permit by the end of August?”
“Now the public knows . . .”
When Catherine Gale snorted, Paul half expected smoke. “Given what’s in those bags, Two Seventy-five N will issue the requested retraction and, in this province, where Two Seventy-five N stands on environmental issues, so stands the public. If the potential for public embarrassment leading to an election loss is all that’s holding back the permit, you’ll have it by the end of August.”
“Before the legislature breaks for Labor Day.”
“That would be the end of August.”
“Right.” Paul fought the urge to apologize for stating the obvious. He knew he could maintain a perfectly neutral expression regardless of the patronizing, sexist, and racist comments tossed his way by the old school oil men he dealt with on a daily basis. He was young, he was attractive, and he was black. Even worse, he worked for one of the few women who played with the big boys and won. He knew he could maintain that neutral expression indefinitely, because he had.
Catherine Gale looked right through it.
“Relax, cutie, or your face’ll freeze that way and you’ll never get laid.”
“Hey, you got a new van.” Charlie patted the side of the big silver box. “What did you do, mug a soccer mom?”
“I did not so much mug a soccer mom,” Mark said, sliding the bags holding his cymbals in along beside the snare, “as I charmed a lovely woman into giving me an excellent price provided I got TIM TO CALL HOME on occasion.”
Charlie leaned away from the sudden increase in volume and grinned at Tim. “Your youngest sister went away to college and your mom wanted to unload the mom-mobile?”
Grunting under the weight of one of the amps, Tim managed a single, abrupt nod.
“How do you remember that family shit?” Shelly asked. Her own vehicle crammed full, she leaned against the hood and watched them tesseract the van.
“I’m good at family shit,” Charlie told her. “And trust me, next to my family, remembering a couple of sisters and a mom with a van is nothing much.”
“As I recall from our previous time together, Chuck’s family is large and enthusiastic. Largely enthusiastic. And a bit weird.” Mark jumped out of the van, examined the odds and ends still piled on the gravel and then, head cocked, mentally measured the crammed interior. He beckoned to Charlie without turning and she handed over her gig bag, watching not exactly nervously as he slid it into a space with about a millimeter to spare on all sides. It had been charmed against every possible type of damage she could imagine . . . but this was Mark.
Shelly snorted as the remaining spaces began to fill. “Good thing Bo travels light.”
“And speaking of the one man we can’t do without because Lord knows an accordion, a bodhran and a pennywhistle can walk into as many bars as they want, but they won’t win shit in a Celtic festival without a fiddle. Where the hell is Bo?”
Tim smacked Mark on the shoulder and pointed at the ancient pickup truck pulling into the parking lot. It paused long enough to disgorge their missing fiddler and an old hockey bag before roaring off in a cloud of dust.
It wasn’t Bo’s girlfriend behind the wheel, unless she had what looked like a ’70s pornstache attached to her upper lip. Not that Charlie was judging.
While Shelly, Tim, and Mark argued over who was to ride with whom—although as usual Shelly and Mark were making most of the noise—Charlie joined Bo, who’d taken over Shelly’s spot slumped against the hood of the car.
“You look like shit.”
He scratched at stubble and yawned. “Gee. Thanks.”
“You get any sleep last night?” They’d closed up the ceilidh around three when the poor women who’d had to lock the Center behind them had finally kicked the last musicians out. Charlie’d crashed in a cheap motel room walking distance from the Center with the other three but Bo lived in Port Hastings, close enough to go home.
He yawned again. “Not much.”
“Girlfriend still upset?”
His fingers drummed out a tune Charlie nearly recognized. “You know the phrase weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth? Multiply by ten.”
“By ten? What the hell did she lose?”
“It’s a . . . thing. A family heirloom . . . thing.”
To Bo’s credit, he was a terrible liar. He knew exactly what the “thing” was. Charlie wondered if he was embarrassed about the actual object or embarrassed because he’d agreed not to identify it to anyone and that made venting awkward.
“She actually thought I’d taken it. I mean, I was there the night she lost it. With her the night she lost it, so how . . .” He slapped hi
s hand down against the hood, loud enough for Shelly to turn and yell at him to fuck off or he’d be riding with Tim and Mark. “Okay, she didn’t mean it, not really, but her and her sisters, they’re talking Gaelic now, like they don’t want me to know they’re still suspicious of me, but I feel like I . . .” He sighed, shoulders sagging. “Fuck it.”
Charlie filled in the next bit of the lyric line. Who knew that year playing country music would come in so handy. “You feel like you failed her even if she doesn’t blame you.”
“You don’t know her.” Both hands pushed thick, dark hair up into spikes. “How do you know she doesn’t blame me?”
“Dude, you’re here while Tanis is still freaking about what she lost, so she obviously told you to go. She gets that the festival is important to you. If she really blamed you for taking her . . .” Air quotes. “. . . thing, she wouldn’t care how important it was to you. And, while she might have told you to get out, you’d have shown up acting all defensive.” Charlie slapped him in the chest. “Which you’re not.”
Bo’s eyes widened theatrically. “I’m not? Okay,” he added after a moment, “I’m not. I feel guilty for leaving, though. Even if she didn’t want me there.” He managed half a grin. “I miss her, you know? I just left her an hour ago, but I really miss her. Is that pathetic? Because it sounds pathetic. She says she’ll join us up coast,” he continued before Charlie could agree that, yeah, it sounded pathetic. “She has more family up there and . . .” His laugh held little humor. “I think she thinks she’s going to need to defend me when they find out.”
