A gust of wind came slashing through the door and thrust little Madeline Toombs inside. She held her container of sandwiches and squares in front of her, the door swinging open behind her, creaking as if it would come off its hinges.
Jamieson retrieved the plate, and Madeline strained to push the door closed. She couldn’t. Jamieson stuck the food on top of the clothes rack and pushed a shoulder into the door. She called Hy over. Even together they couldn’t budge it. The problem was not only the wind. It was Murdo on the other side, pushing to get in.
“Give over,” Murdo shouted. They only just heard him above the storm. The three women let go and a blast of wind blew the door open with such force that it hit the wall and dented it.
The four of them managed to close the door.
It opened back up again.
Ian ducked into the Hall.
All five pushed against it to close it. When it was shut, Ian smiled at Jamieson.
“Just came down to see if there was anything I could do to help.”
He walked into the Hall, as if it belonged to him, as if it were not a centre of police operations. He looked at Hy’s laptop with some of the distaste he usually reserved for her truck. It was a good laptop, but the set-up offended his technical sensibilities.
“You using that? Here? Better equipment at my place.”
“Thank you, but no,” said Jamieson crisply, returning to the desk and looking at the screen. The data transfer indicator had hardly moved at all. She frowned. Ian peeked at the screen. The image was Lord’s head, a close-up on the wound.
“Good God,” he said.
Then he noticed the transfer indicator. “Good God.” He looked horrified. “It’ll take you forever. Let me see if I can’t hitchhike you onto wireless.” Before Jamieson could protest, he sat down and began tapping at the keypad, staring at the gruesome photo on the screen.
Jamieson thought if she’d had her uniform, he would never have dared pull such a move. Still, he might be helpful.
“Bingo,” he said. “I’ve got you on. You’re hitchhiking on me. But get to it – it may not last long. What you can get on the hill, you can’t depend on down here.”
Jamieson sat down to send the photographs to the lab in Charlottetown.
“What’s this one?” She’d reached the shot of the sunrise reflected in the water.
“Scenic shot. Personal stuff.”
Jamieson stared at it. She stored it with the others on her flash drive, then erased the file. Hy scowled. It pissed her off, but she remembered she still had all the photographs stored on her camera that Jamieson had forgotten to ask for. Not that she was likely to want to look at them.
“Can I hang on to this?” Jamieson asked, indicating the computer.
“Well…I use it for my work.”
“Just for a day, maybe two.”
“All right.” Hy wasn’t happy about it. She’d been hoping to do some digging herself.
Jamieson turned to Murdo.
“And what of Mabel?”
Hy and Ian looked at each other. Mabel? The only Mabel they knew was a hundred years old, at least. Mabel Schurman. What could she have to do with it?
“Gladys,” said Murdo.
“Gladys, then. What have you found out?”
“All’s she said was he could be anywheres.”
“And where did you look?”
“Around.” He could hardly see a thing with his bad eyes through the thick sheets of rain.
“Status of the vehicle?”
“Still in the field. Nathan says the access lane’s too wet to drive on.”
“Status of the causeway?”
“Still flooded. Nathan says that won’t change today.”
“Status of the ferry?”
“Still not running. Anyway, Nathan says the operator, Chester Gallant’s, stuck on this side of the causeway and the ferry’s on the other.”
Jamieson sighed. “Is there anything Nathan doesn’t say? What about the other vehicle?”
“Billy just went off in it to knock on more doors too far to walk to.”
Damn.
“We should go down to the shore again.”
“I’ll drive you,” Hy volunteered.
“You’ve only got a two-seater. I’ll drive as well.” Ian’s disdain for Hy’s pick-up matched his pride in his “green” hybrid Insight. Even though it had been pulled off the market after two years. It was a manual. It was ugly. The parts were too expensive, as Ian had found out.
Jamieson sighed. She supposed she could have commandeered the vehicles, but she didn’t. She felt as if events were in control of her. The loss of the body to the storm had seeped into her spirit, diluted her confidence.
The four of them left the Hall, hardly noticing Madeline was still there, sitting with her sodden tray of sandwiches, wondering if she should wait for Billy to show up.
Hy drove Jamieson. Ian took Murdo. The two vehicles navigated through the puddles and deep ruts of Cottage Lane, winding down to the shore. The rain had stopped again. They parked as close as they could to the pond.
They all saw it at the same time.
A body floating in the pond. Lord? Was it possible?
A second look.
A body floating in the pond. In colourful clothes.
Not an orange dashiki.
Blue-and-white-striped pyjamas, slightly yellowed.
They had found Jim MacAdam.
Chapter Fourteen
Ian was staring at Jamieson. She was well out of uniform now, stripped down to white cotton bra and panties, about to jump into the pond to retrieve the body. It was face down, the white polyester of the pyjamas yellowed, an old beige cardigan sweater floating on the water, the wool pilled. He was wearing socks and one ancient leather slipper. The other was bobbing on the water a few feet away. His body was tucked in behind a duck blind. He could be seen only from where they were.
They had gone as far as they could, their feet sinking into the marsh, like a giant sponge soaked in muddy clay, tugging at their shoes. Jamieson was still wearing the billy boots. First one, then the other, had been sucked off, and she had to stick a hand in the slimey muck to find them. Now Jamieson had shucked the boots, the sweater and the jeans. Hy was clutching them.
“Will you be okay?” asked Ian.
“I expect I’ll be okay.” Jamieson arched her back, and brought her hands above her head. She dove in.
“She’s a triathlete,” said Murdo.
Ian coloured, partly at Murdo’s remark, partly because Hy had caught him staring as Jamieson executed her perfect dive.
She came up almost all the way across the pond, very close to the body. She couldn’t budge it at first, and then realized he was hooked onto the blind by the collar of his sweater. She had to work him free, trying all the while to avoid the sight of his crushed and bloody skull. Not a drowning. The sweater had stopped him from sinking to the bottom. Thank heaven for small mercies, thought Jamieson, as she worked to free the body. It became like a dead weight. She almost lost hold of him, but she was not going to lose another body. No. She used all the strength of her body and mind to roll him over and revealed the bloated blue face and cold dead eyes of Jim MacAdam, staring up into a grim sky they could no longer see. Jamieson put a hand under MacAdam’s fleshy chin, a soft spot on a body can harden with rigor mortis. At least she knew it hadn’t happened that recently. She began hauling death to shore. An eel, a large one, brushed up against her, and a wave of nausea hit her as she propelled the fat dead man through the water. Lord’s rival. The man he had fought with every day over who owned the right of way.
Had it ended in murder? How had it happened? Lord taking a step forward, lifting the arm holding the sign, to strike MacAdam.
Jamieson let her imagnation run free, partly to distract her fr
om this horrible task of hauling the corpse through the water.
Lord would have had to turn, startled by something behind him perhaps. Did MacAdam then raise the axe?
The sky rumbled as Jamieson stroked through the wind-riffled waters of the pond.
And struck Lord. Is that how it was? But then who had killed this one?
She dragged him through the pond, her mind racing with images.
Lord’s body lay on the sand. MacAdam turned and ran through the tall grass toward the pond, heart pumping. Was he pursued? Had he dropped the axe and now someone else had taken it up?
It wasn’t making sense. Not yet. But it would.
She reached the edge of the pond, where Murdo grabbed hold of the body and Ian and Hy helped her out.
Shaking with cold, and the aftershock of dragging the dead man through the water, Jamieson shivered back into Hy’s clothes, grateful for the warmth of the wool sweater, wincing when the hard seams of the jeans scraped her wet skin.
They could not get him out. MacAdam was a big man, almost three hundred pounds, with heavy bones and a body mass index that should have killed him long before now. Their feet sank into the spongy ground, and so did the corpse, sinking further into the soft mush at the edge of the pond each time they eased up. Murdo thought it was like trying to land a big floppy fish. He’d brought in a four-hundred-pound tuna once. This was a bit like that, only without the gear.
But Ian had gear. He hurried to his car and opened the trunk. It was, like his home, equipped for a 72-hour emergency. A small generator. Flashlight. Flares. A container of dried food. A water cleansing system. Blankets. A top-of-the-line first aid kit. After what had happened the previous year with Hy and that lobster lover down at the cookhouse, Ian was determined to be ready for any emergency. Under the blankets was a fat coil of thick yellow rope with clips at both ends. He hauled it out. He attached one end to the vehicle, and unrolled the rest back to the pond.
Jamieson, recovered from her strange experience, having dismissed it as nonsense, grabbed the rope, knowing what Ian intended. Murdo and Hy had figured it out too, but they were frozen in disbelief.
“It’s not elegant…” Ian and Jamieson manoeuvred the rope around the corpse, working it under both arms and tugging until it felt secure.
“Let’s hope it holds.” Ian gave the rope one last tug. Jamieson patted it to make sure it was tight.
Murdo crossed himself. Hy didn’t know what to do. She wasn’t Catholic. Not a believer of any kind – except, perhaps, in respect for the dead. Ian looked up, and caught her expression.
“Would it be better to leave him here?”
She shook her head, biting her lip, her eyes fixed on the dead face of Jim MacAdam. Pale. So pale. He’d always been so ruddy. She’d have thought a heart attack would be the end of Jim MacAdam. Not murder. Here at The Shores? It was unthinkable.
“I’ll be gentle.” Ian looked grim as he returned to the car.
The wind was howling and they didn’t hear the engine turn over when Ian switched on the ignition, but they did hear the burbling sound of MacAdam’s body being sucked out of the pond, as Ian edged the car forward, checking in his rear-view mirror for Jamieson’s hand signals, encouraging him forward, forward, the body slurping up out of the pond onto land.
She kept signaling. Forward some more.
“Surely that’s far enough,” said Hy. She had covered and uncovered her eyes when MacAdam came out of the pond. She couldn’t bear to look at him, but was too fascinated not to peek. Jim MacAdam, being hauled along like a beached whale. That’s what he looked like. Only worse. Human. Covered in sludge. Pale dead face streaked with mud.
Nobody said beached whale. But they were all thinking it.
Jamieson signaled Ian to stop when the body had cleared the mushiest ground. He unhitched the rope from the car and helped Jamieson untangle it from the body. She rolled MacAdam over again. In the back of his head, there was a gaping wound, full of pond scum and marsh debris.
“Just like Lord,” said Hy.
Jamieson shot her a sharp look. Hy and Billy were the only ones who’d actually seen Lord. She and Murdo had only the photographs to work from.
“Just like Lord?”
Hy nodded, slowly.
“Nearly.”
“In what way – nearly?”
“This wound is muddy. The other one seemed…like it had pus in it. You saw the photo.”
Jamieson gave a quick nod, still not fully recovered from dragging the corpse out of the water.
A shadow flitted across her vision. A fox clawing up the dune?
Like MacAdam’s pursuer – on all fours. MacAdam might have bent over to catch his breath, and his pursuer taking the advantage, sliced the axe down and shattered his skull.
“What do we do with him now?” Ian was looping up the rope.
Despair clouded Jamieson’s eyes. She squeezed the unwelcome images out of her head. She would never drink again. What a mess. The victim’s body – missing. The key suspect, murdered himself. And the questions began again. Here by the pond? Or elsewhere? Transported here? If so, how had the murderer got MacAdam into the pond, when it had taken four people and a car to move him out? Who had killed him? Why? What connection did his death have to Lord’s? If they hadn’t killed each other – clearly impossible – who had killed them?
She had to answer all these questions, but the most pressing was what to do with the body.
“We can’t leave him here on the ground. In this weather.”
Ian shot a glance back at his car. He didn’t want to transport the dead man in it. It wasn’t so much that he was dead, but that he was dirty. He was fussy about his car. Besides, where could they take him?
“The cookhouse,” said Jamieson, answering his unspoken question. There was a walk-in freezer in the cookhouse where the body could be stored. It was large enough. They all knew that from past experience.
In the end, they called Nathan. He had the van and the stretchers, a cot to lay out the body with dignity. Something MacAdam had not experienced in the last twenty-four hours.
Nathan came thundering down the lane, having left Lili puttering around the house, chanting “Ommmmm” as she wielded her dust rag. As he reached the bottom of the lane, a small clear break in the clouds sent a shaft of sunshine bursting through the gloom. The edge of the storm was passing almost as suddenly as it had arrived.
He saw the four of them, wet, bedraggled, and frowning, standing over the body.
“Jesus,” he said. “Old MacAdam.”
Then again: “Jesus.”
“You said that.” Hy had a grim smile on her face.
“Not about that.”
Nathan pointed at the ocean. The surf was still high, but when each swell ebbed off, a strip of the sandbar rose above the water. There, in his garish outfit, was the body of Lance Lord, washed up onto the bar.
“Thank God,” said Jamieson.
Nathan gave her a peculiar look. He didn’t know what she was talking about. His whole world had been revolving around Lili all day, and he still had no idea there’d been a murder – two murders – at The Shores.
“Who – ?”
“Lance Lord,” the other four chorused.
“But…”
“We’ll have to go get him.” Jamieson sighed. The last thing she wanted to do was strip down and get back in the water again. She looked at Murdo. No point. Son of a fisherman, his whole family took an odd sort of pride in the fact that they could not swim. Murdo had learned, but he wasn’t good at it, and didn’t like it. She looked at Hy. She was a good swimmer, but she and Ian were civilians. She couldn’t ask them to retrieve the body. She began a slow walk to the water. Should she even attempt it?
On either side angry waves were raging, wave after wave crashing onto and breaking on the shore in a gush of
white foam, then swirling, still angry, back into the sea. Straight ahead, where Lord’s body had been tossed onto the sandbar, the waves parted at a deep hollow in the ocean floor. In front of the bar, the water was shallow, its progress slowed and the fury of the waves diminished. Yes, she could do it – she must. She couldn’t lose him again.
“Now just hold on there, ma’am.” Nathan had kicked off his sneakers, and was yanking his jeans off one leg at a time, hopping behind her, trying to keep up. She stopped at the edge of the water. Nathan’s long skinny legs, white and covered with goose bumps, stuck out of his boxers.
“I’ll go.” He pulled off his sweatshirt, and, not giving her the chance to stop him, ran into the water.
“Nathan, be careful.” Hy had come up behind them and yelled at him. She couldn’t tell if he’d heard. He just kept plunging forward toward the sandbar.
“Be careful? It’s only up to his waist.” Jamieson was originally from Ontario. Most Islanders assumed that meant Toronto. But she was from further north, where there were lakes with no tide. She’d been here almost two years, but still didn’t know all she should about the shore and how dangerous it could be.
“Riptide.”
“But he’s young, strong…”
“Doesn’t matter. Riptide took a fellow down the coast a few years back. He was a Canada Games athlete and the water was only waist deep. It took him away. You can’t fight it. You have to go with it. Nathan knows that. At least I hope he does.”
Jamieson’s brow furrowed. She squinted at the sea. Except for Newfoundland, there was nothing but water between here and Europe. She shivered. The cold? Or the enormity of the ocean and its power?
They all rolled up their pants, kicked off their footwear, and waded into the shallows to help Nathan bring Lord in.
He shook off the water like a wet dog and pulled on his clothes.
“Now what?” He looked at Jamieson. She’d been wearing a dress before. It had been a mess. So were her jeans.
Jamieson was silent, thinking about the cookhouse. Where else could the bodies go? The Hall? She didn’t want to battle that one out with the women. And it was bad enough sleeping with Murdo nearby, without a couple of corpses as roommates. Besides, they’d start to rot quickly in the heated building.
Mind Over Mussels Page 11