The Fundy Vault

by Linda Moore

  “We never could have found our way here without you,” I said.

  “Yes, that little back road is a well-kept secret. And at high tide this coast is treacherous, but luckily we have some time. Now—two short coves along here to the west is Caroline Beach. You’ll know we’re there because you’ll see the blue marble monument I told you about that looks like a gravestone. The Caroline ran aground here in December of 1831, five frozen bodies on board and all the other passengers and crew missing. A mystery and a tragedy.

  “There are numerous sea caves along the shore, as I recall. Certainly big enough for a man to walk into, but some of them are swamped when the tide is high. So we are here early enough to take a good look.”

  We arrived at the second cove, which formed a wide curve around the area known as Caroline Beach. We paused at the monument. I looked along the jagged shoreline. In the centre of the cove was a point where two huge rock faces came together in a kind of V. Right at the point’s vortex was a dark jagged cut, not so much a cave opening as a narrow crevice.

  “Is that an actual opening into the rock?” I asked Björn.

  “It is,” he said. “As I recall, there’s a smooth floor beyond it and then it drops down a little, and then further in, there is another steep drop—almost like a well.”

  Sophie’s hand was over her mouth. “I—this is what I saw, Roz. I think this is it!” she said, nodding at Björn. She broke into a run. I was right behind her.

  Just as we arrived at the opening, we were startled to see someone backing out of the crevice onto the beach. As we stood catching our breath and silently watching, the person freed himself from the fissure and stood fully up. He was facing the rock. Then he turned and saw me. It was Jacob. A look of disbelief and shock was in his eyes. He tore off along the beach to the west.

  I dropped my bag and ran after him. “Stop—Jacob! Please.” I picked up my pace, managed to grab onto his jacket, and then tackled him just as he was about to clamber up onto a path through the underbrush.

  “Ow! Jesus,” he said, as we both landed hard on the gravel shore.

  “What are you doing here? What’s going on?” I said, pushing down on his shoulders and holding him to the ground.

  “It’s a public beach! Leave me alone—get off me!”

  “No. I need answers, Jacob. You’ve been lying to me.”

  “I just…I brought him some water…but he’s….”

  “What? He’s what? Dead?”

  “No…no, no—he’s—I think he’s unconscious, dehydrated. He’s breathing. I took the gag from his mouth. He swallowed a little water, but he’s not—his eyes didn’t open.”

  “Okay. So McBride’s in there!” I said, almost tearing up. I looked back toward the cave opening; Sophie and Björn were not in sight. They must have found McBride by now. “How did you know he was here?” I said, gripping Jacob’s shoulders.

  “After you told me about finding his dog on the beach yesterday—I just thought he might be…I decided to come and check out the caves this morning at low tide. I came to help him. But…what are you doing here? How did you know where to look?”

  “We’re searching, Jacob—that’s what we’re doing. We’ve been looking for McBride for two days! You knew I was looking for him and you didn’t say anything. So fill me in. Did they drag his body across the beach? How did it work?”

  “I wasn’t there. I didn’t even know he was in there. I just guessed that he might be. And I was right.”

  “So when you found him, why didn’t you report it?”

  “I just found him now—this morning. I was going to report it.”

  “Then why did you run when you saw me?”

  Jacob didn’t answer. He awkwardly turned his head, looking out at the Bay of Fundy.

  “Talk to me, or I’ll have the cops on you.”

  “Didn’t I tell you yesterday to report him missing—remember? Why would I do that if I didn’t want to help you find him?”

  “Well, now there will be a police report on McBride and you’re going to be part of that report, Jacob. You do realize your involvement in all this is serious.”

  “I’m not an idiot.”

  “No, you’re not. In fact, I think you’re really smart and a good person. But maybe those thugs with their fancy armoured SUV make you feel important.”

  “What thugs? I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.”

  “Look, cut the crap! I saw you leaving the grocery store last night carrying their supplies, playing chauffeur.”

  “It’s just the occasional errand. It’s a job, that’s all. It’s nothing.”

  “You’re way out of your depth with those guys, Jacob. Come clean and tell me what you know. You can call it a job, but by the time you decide you’ve had enough, it might be too late.”

  At that moment my attention was pulled back to the cleft in the rock, where I saw Björn push his way out into the light and hurriedly get on his cell phone.

  “Oh dear, what’s happening?” I said, watching him. He finished the call, looked along the beach until he saw me, and began walking quickly towards us. I was still sitting on top of Jacob, holding him down.

  “How is he?” I called out to Björn.

  “He’s alive, Roz.”

  “Thank God for that.”

  “I just called the ambulance. Probably twenty minutes. It comes from Kentville. I think we got here just in time. Sophie is with him. Are you all right?” Björn asked as he got closer to us.

  “I’m a little bruised, I think. This is Jacob. This is Björn.” Jacob turned his head awkwardly and nodded.

  “Hello,” Björn said, somewhat perplexed. He looked at me. “So you two know each other?”

  “We’re acquainted.” I put my hands on Jacob’s shoulders and pushed myself up to a standing position. “Jacob’s the one I mentioned earlier who warned me about the guard dogs. He says he was just here bringing some water to McBride.”

  I stepped away from Jacob and looked back at him. “We’re not done, you and I, but right now I’m going to see McBride.”

  “I’m going back to the car, Roz,” Björn said. “I’ll drive out to the road proper, to wait for the ambulance and lead the medics in.”

  “I’ll come with you,” Jacob said to Björn.

  I ran back along the beach to the fissure in the rock, picked my bag up from where I’d dropped it, and stepped carefully through the crevice into the darkness. I stood still for a moment, waiting for my eyes to adjust.

  “Roz,” Sophie said. “We’re just over here.”

  As I moved further in towards her voice, my shadow cleared the entrance and the light coming through brightened the space.

  “Oh, Sophie,” I said, seeing McBride lying on the ground. Sophie had folded her shawl and placed it under his head. I bent down beside them. “Is he awake?”

  “He’s in and out. When we cut the restraints from his wrists and ankles, he came around for a minute. He knows I’m here. I can feel his heart beating.”

  She took my hand and put it on McBride’s heart. “It feels strong, doesn’t it?” she said.

  “McBride’s pretty tough.”

  “I hope so….”

  “Sophie, you’re amazing. You saved his life! You found him.”

  “He’s the man of my dreams, Roz. Literally,” she said, laughing and crying.

  I looked around the interior of the cavern. The floor was gravel, rocks, sand, and bits of shells and seaweed. By the sidewall, a few feet beyond McBride, something shiny glinted and caught my eye. “What is that?” I said. Standing to my full height was just possible in the centre area, and as I moved towards the side I had to stoop over. I reached the point where the floor met the sidewall, and crouched down. What had caught my eye was a silver lipstick tube.

  I went to pick it up and examin
e it, but my training kicked in and I realized I shouldn’t touch it. The top was missing, and the lipstick itself was almost gone, roughly worn away. I looked at the rock face that rose up near it, but it was too murky to see clearly.

  “Do you have a flashlight, Sophie?” I said.

  “There’s a small one on my key chain,” she said, reaching into her jacket pocket.

  “Perfect.” I shone the light over the rock face. It was low to the ground I spotted the letters, awkwardly drawn with the cherry-coloured lipstick: A-U-R-E-L and then nothing.

  “Sophie. She was here. This must be where they kept her before they—”

  “Kept who?”

  “Aurelia…. She’s written the first letters of her name here. This proves they’re one and the same—Aurelia and the girl in the tree. Doesn’t it?”

  “I don’t know, Roz—I…it’s all so crazy.”

  I quickly took a picture of the scrawled letters with my phone, and then found a baggie in my rucksack and used it to pick up the lipstick tube. I returned the key chain to Sophie, and asked her to shine her flashlight on McBride so I could get a picture of him on the floor of the cave. McBride’s eyelids fluttered open, and he mumbled something.

  “What did you say?” Sophie asked leaning over. He whispered in her ear. She looked up at me smiling. “He says he’s ready for his close-up.”

  Chapter 14

  The shriek of the ambulance broke the early morning silence. Sophie and I looked at one another, relieved.

  I leaned over and put my hand on McBride’s shoulder. “Help has arrived, my friend.”

  I ducked out through the opening and into the light. I was startled by how far the tide had advanced. I paced around in a state of unease, thinking about Aurelia and the startling evidence I had just found on the cave wall.

  Finally, the paramedics appeared, a man and a woman, rounding the bend in the shoreline, running with their medical gear and a stretcher. Björn led them.

  “Roz, this is Charlene and J. P.,” he said indicating the medics.

  “You two are heroes,” I said.

  “Heroes or fools,” Charlene said, looking at her partner.

  “We’re breaking all the rules today,” J. P. said as he shoved his gear through the opening.

  They maneuvered themselves and the stretcher awkwardly through the crevice in the rock. I could see that getting it back out of the cave with McBride strapped to it wasn’t going to be easy .

  “What did they mean about the rules?” I asked Björn.

  “Once the tide is this far in, they’re supposed to have water rescue in place just in case. And I don’t think that dirt track up there is actually a road. But I convinced them they’d be able to turn the ambulance around—which they have already done.”

  “You’re the real hero,” I said to Björn. “Jacob ran off, I suppose.”

  “Not exactly. He asked me to tell you he had to go to work at the arts centre. He says he lives close by—just above the beach here on Old Mill Road. So he went home to get his car.”

  “That’s right. When McBride and I first met him, I remember him telling us he lived out this way with his mother and sister.”

  “You know, I like him,” Björn said. “But what’s his involvement in all this?”

  “I’m not sure, but he knows a lot more than he’s telling me. And whoever did this to McBride isn’t who he should be hanging around with, much less working for.”

  Sophie emerged. “Okay,” she said. “They’ve got him secured. Here we go.”

  The medics rolled the stretcher very carefully out of the cave at ground level, and then lifted it. McBride was grimy with blood and dirt, his face badly bruised, his lip swollen, and he could not stay fully conscious for long. It took the three of us to keep the way cleared of rocks and bits of driftwood as they rapidly negotiated a path from the cave to the ambulance.

  When we finally got him up onto the road, Sophie asked if she could ride along, and they told her they’d be breaking another rule.

  “Oh well, in for a penny…. Go on, get in,” Charlene said.

  As I had observed over the years, if Sophie wanted something, people somehow couldn’t say no. I hugged her, and she climbed up into the ambulance. Björn and I watched as it sped off with the siren blaring.

  My plan was to return with Björn to Kingsport, where I would get my car and then join them at the Kentville hospital. We drove in silence for a few minutes. Then he spoke: “What are you going to do about this, Roz? There’s been a crime. This was a serious assault on McBride. He may have been left there to die. And he likely would have died if we hadn’t found him by some crazy Sophie miracle. That’s twice she’s astounded me with her dreams.”

  “There are more things, Horatio,” I said, as we turned left onto Gospel Woods Road and began to make our way towards the valley turn-off.

  “When are you going to contact the police?” he asked.

  “You’re right. There is a crime, and I think this business with McBride is just a small part of something much larger. When I asked the police to help me look for him yesterday, they certainly didn’t jump in with both feet, though later they did send out a constable who managed to find his car. But then he went off duty and they didn’t take it any further. On the other hand, they had warned McBride—and me—to keep our noses out of what we had begun to investigate. In my experience that either means there’s a cover-up, or the police are in the midst of their own investigation and don’t want us to stir the pot.”

  “But you think what happened to McBride is connected to the industrial bridge and the trucks you mentioned earlier.”

  “Everything points that way. That’s what McBride was investigating when he disappeared. Once he’s conscious and hopefully able to tell us exactly what went down, we’ll arrive at a course of action. Don’t worry, Björn, we won’t just walk away from this.”

  “And what about right now, Roz?” He pointed in the direction of Jasper Creek Road. “Should we take a quick run down there?”

  “You want to see that bridge for yourself, don’t you?”

  “North Mountain is part of my world—I need to see what they’re doing to it!”

  “Let me call Sophie first, just to check in.”

  He pulled over to the side just before the turn-off to Jasper Creek Road.

  “Sophie! How are things going?… He did? That’s two jokes!… Listen, Björn and I were just thinking of taking a quick run down Jasper Creek Road. I could pick up McBride’s car at the quarry and then we’ll have it, but I wanted to make sure you were okay first…. I’ll see you soon. Don’t hesitate to call if need be.” I could feel myself relax a little as I put the phone away. “They’re getting ready to check him in. She sounds relieved.”

  “So…?” Björn asked.

  “So yes, let’s go!” Björn pulled away from the side of the road and turned left, heading down the now familiar Jasper Creek Road to the coast.

  “Open the glove compartment, Roz,” he directed me. “There’s some trail mix in there—I’m a little bit hungry. And there’s a bottle of water in the door there if you’re thirsty.”

  “Perfect,” I said.

  After a couple of kilometres, we were about to pass the driveway to the arts centre. “Do you know this place?” Björn asked. “Grace and I enjoy coming up here in the summer to see their performances—always wonderful plays, interesting actors. And all off the grid!”

  “How long have you and Grace lived in the Valley?”

  “We bought that house in Kingsport seven years ago, when I took the job at the university. I already knew the area quite well from my years of researching the Fundy shoreline. Grace and I had spent time vacationing up here, and when that Kingsport house came up for sale we jumped at it.”

  “I don’t blame you—it’s a fabulous place. It’s a big house.
”

  “Well, Grace has a large studio on the second floor. She’s a well-known painter. She has an agent in Ontario—she used to work in Toronto. But now, you couldn’t pry her out of Nova Scotia.”

  “You mentioned that she was out painting with a watercolour group. I didn’t realize she was a professional artist.”

  “She started the group—loves it—they find all kinds of interesting places to paint, and she says there are several inspired painters among them. What about you, Roz? You said you work with Mr. McBride?”

  “I did for several years, but right now I have a research job with the Prosecution Service. I’m a criminologist. But I also work in the theatre. That’s how Sophie and I first met. I was planning to spend this vacation investigating Samuel Beckett’s short plays. It’s a project I’ve begun working on with a company of four actors.”

  “I’m very fond of Samuel Beckett,” Björn said.

  “Really, Björn! Are you joking?”

  “I’m quite serious. I grew up seeing some of his work in Denmark. He was very popular—you know we Danes like the dark stuff. It’s those long winters.”

  “Oh! There’s the sign coming up—do you see it? The quarry entrance is just across the road from it.”

  From what I could see of the quarry, all was quiet. McBride’s car was still sitting on the far side, barely visible through the tall roadside trees and brush.

  “So let’s take a look at the bridge first, and on the way back I’ll pick up his car and go straight to the hospital from here. That is, unless there’s a great big tanker truck blocking the entrance.”

  I explained to Björn how Sophie and I had concluded the quarry was used as a holding area if there was more than one tanker truck waiting to cross the bridge.

  “So do you have any theories about what they’re actually doing?”

  “That’s the question, isn’t it.”

  “How large are they?”

  “I looked them up online last night. They’re the biggies—single tanks. It said they carry eight to ten thousand gallons.”

  Björn raised his eyebrows. “Serious business then.”