Sheldon was relaxing by visualizing money: Ben Franklin on the hundred dollar bill, Ulysses S. Grant on the fifty, all the way down to George Washington on the one dollar bill, with its reverse of the eye and the unfinished pyramid and the inscription: “Annuit Coeptis—He has favored our undertakings.” In his daydream, “He” was a god of Sheldon’s own making, at his command.
After a few minutes, he opened his eyes and finished his gin and tonic. By then he felt good enough to resume measuring the lawn—except he couldn’t find the damn ruler. It was one of those see-through plastic ones, six-inches long. Later in the evening it would get jammed in the lawn grooming equipment and would lose his gardener a half-day in the never-ending battle to keep the grass just the length Mr. Coffin liked it.
It was past midnight, but there was a fisherman on the water off Vanishing Point—a poacher. He was dressed in black, the hood of his sweatshirt pulled up around his face against the chill spring air. The water was calm, lapping up against his dory, where the lobster lines were.
Each time he pulled up a trap, water slopped up against the boat. And then again. Was that an echo? The poacher darted quick looks around him in case he was seen or, more likely, heard.
He tried to work quickly, but the traps were weighted with concrete and they were heavy. He grunted as he yanked up the load. When the trap was in the boat, he opened its door and tried to grab the lobster, low down on its back. He fumbled and was pinched by a claw, right through the thick rubber of the fisherman’s glove. His thumb pulsed with pain. He tried again. He got the lobster this time, plugged the claws with wooden pegs, and tossed it, with an angry twist, into a bin of ice at the back of the dory. Then he lowered the trap into the water and hauled up the next one.
He had twelve. Another twelve and he’d call it a night.
On the other side of Vanishing Point, someone else was working the lobster lines. Not a fisher. Not a poacher. A member of the Lobster Liberation Legion. Dressed in a peculiar camouflage outfit—not wearing gloves, but it didn’t matter. The legionnaire slid the lobster out of the trap with ease, chanting hypnotic sounds, in a thin, high reedy register, supporting the animal’s body with tenderness, soothing it with soft strokes on its underside, as if it could feel the gentleness of the touch through its hard shell. The human moved slowly, alternating the whispering and the high-pitched hum, and slipped the creature back into the water.
Out beyond the lobster lines, a tall third figure watched from a vessel shrouded in darkness. Two on the water. Two. Who was the second? Hauling lobster into the boat. Not releasing them. A poacher. Just a poacher. Not a concern. It was the other. The Legionnaire would have to be stopped. Coffin had made that quite clear. Quite clear.
Hawthorne Parker saw none of it—not the poacher, the Legionnaire, nor the offshore vessel—as he closed the blinds on the night. He couldn’t see beyond the railing of the deck. He thought he heard something. It was a sound he couldn’t identify—like the earth groaning.
The sandwich board was propped up outside the Hall. In a variety of cheery colours it announced:
ANNUAL LOBSTER SUPPER
Wednesday 6 p.m.
EVERYONE WELCOME
Fundraiser for Hall
Hy was dragging herself around inside, short on sleep and slightly depressed, setting up tables for the supper the following night. The ladies had been cooking the lobsters a day ahead. It meant they’d be a bit tough and not that tasty. April knew this and had argued the point, but common sense and tradition prevailed. They’d always done it this way and how would they ever handle the number required if they had to cook them fresh, Gladys had stuck out her chin and stared at April with a belligerent face, hands balled into fists as if she might strike her. April gave in. Gladys looked around the table, pugnaciously, at each lady in turn, daring them to protest. No one did.
One reason Hy felt low was the cold looks she was getting from the other ladies. It was too soon for them either to forgive or forget the disastrous Institute speaker. Gladys Fraser never would—forgiving and forgetting was not in her genetic makeup.
Hy was also suffering from low blood sugar because she couldn’t eat, not after what had happened in the kitchen when she tried to help April and Annabelle cook the lobsters. Her salivary glands overloaded with nausea every time she thought of it.
It was awful—the wild thrashing about when she dropped them into the boiling water—headfirst didn’t make any difference. The lobsters emitted high piercing squeals, clawed the sides of the pots in a frantic attempt to escape and jerked their tails six times—always six times. Hy had counted. She’d wanted to pull them back out, but she knew it was too late. After cooking one pot, she’d traded with Estelle and offered to clean and set up instead.
The clean-up had taken a long time. Cooking even a couple of lobsters makes quite a mess. Cooking dozens—along with pounds of potato salad and coleslaw—had taken the ladies all evening. It was midnight before they’d finished making a mess. It was two in the morning before Hy headed home.
The Legionnaire slipped the dory into the cove, several inlets west of Vanishing Point in the shadow of Big Bay. Dragged up on the sand beside the old ruin of a boat shed, flipped over and covered with busted lobster traps and clumps of eel grass, it looked—if you could tell it was a boat at all—like some old wreck washed up on shore. Sand kicked around concealed the most obvious of the marks made from dragging the boat. Not that anyone would see them—nobody came to this place. It was The Shores’ only rocky beach. Masses of seaweed gathered here, pushed in by the current, and it was like a jellyfish Killing Fields in the summer—hundreds of the slimy blood-red creatures, as big as a plate and as small as a quarter, were impaled or stranded on the rocks when the tide came and left without them. The locals called it Bloodsucker Cove. The beach was almost inaccessible except by boat. By land, it was a long climb down steep cliffs from one of the windiest capes on The Island. To get to the cliffs was a hike through a patch of prickly brush, from a lane that was not maintained and treacherously rutty.
The Legionnaire had a knack for finding such secret places and was blessed with a talent no one else possessed—the ability to tickle lobsters into a state of ecstatic insensibility. Sheldon Coffin always said it was a shame that such a talent was so squandered. Who knew the ways in which the fishing industry might benefit if it were only used for the right purposes—his purposes.
When she got home, Hy checked her email. Just one. She opened it.
You brought that bitch here. Now get rid of her.
Blood rushed to her head from embarrassment and anger. Who’d sent it? It just read C. From my Blackberry. Couldn’t be a fisherman. Or anyone local. No one at The Shores had a Blackberry—except Ian. She’d figure it out later when her nerves stopped singing. Now she was going to get a decent night’s sleep, if she could. It would be another long day tomorrow.
Just how long, Hy had no idea.
Chapter Twenty-One
The villagers began arriving at the hall before 6 p.m. The only person not there was Gus. She couldn’t stand to be in the same room with the smell of lobster. Abel was nowhere to be seen either, but that wasn’t unusual.
The folding wood tables with metal legs were set up in three rows down the full length of the main room. They were covered with white paper tablecloths and at each seat was a plastic knife, fork and spoon wrapped together in a paper napkin and stuffed into a Styrofoam cup. Baskets of dinner rolls and biscuits Gus had baked were placed down the centre of the table, along with tiny bud vases holding daffodils and crocuses. The tables were filling up quickly, some napkins already tucked under chins and placed on laps, knives eagerly spreading butter on rolls and biscuits.
Ben caught up to Harold going into the hall. “Nice night.”
“Yup.” Harold paused on the stoop and looked up at the clear sky. “’Spect it’ll rain by nightfall.”
“Hello there, Ben, Harold,” Ian called from behind. “How’s tricks?”
“Well, to be honest…here, come sit down.”
The Hall was packed. They sat at the end of the last table. Hy came over to take their order.
“Lobster or chicken?”
Ian tucked his napkin into his sweatshirt collar and smiled up at Hy. “Lobster, of course.”
Ben grunted. “Not for me. Can’t stand the stuff. I’ll have the chicken.”
He turned to Ian. “Never could abide lobster. Makes a good living, most times, but I don’t know how people can eat ’em. Just like big cockroaches to me.”
He likely didn’t know how right he was, thought Hy, as she headed to the kitchen to get their meals.
“Even a cockroach would be tasty dipped in butter and accompanied by the ladies’ potato salad.” Ian had a single man’s appreciation of home cooking.
Ben was fiddling with his 50/50 ticket, folding and unfolding it.
“So what’s on your mind, Ben? You look troubled.”
“Well, and I am.” Ben leaned his big elbow on the table and cupped his chin with thumb and forefinger, rubbing away at the coarse beard and thinking maybe he’d shave it off. His face was full, round and ruddy, weathered by the Gulf winds and salt spray.
“Someone cut my lines on Setting Day, upended a bin of bait on the wharf—Annabelle swears it spelled out kill—and now there’s been tampering on my lines.”
“Poachers?”
“I’m not sure if they’ve taken lobster or not—I can’t say my catch is down—we’re havin’ a good season. But I run off my gear to the west and I’ve found some of ’em the odd time runnin’ east.”
“We’ve had strong winds. Couldn’t the motion of the water and the currents shift them?”
Ben looked doubtful.
“Never seen it happen before. S’pose there’s always a first time.”
Hy arrived with their suppers, two heaping platefuls—one lobster, the other chicken, each with potato salad and coleslaw in the shape of an ice cream scoop. She put down the plates just as Ben was saying:
“You know, the other thing is, I run my lines nice and tight. I lower a trap down, then I play out the line all the way before I set the next trap down. I’m finding some of mine all in a bunch.”
More trouble, thought Hy. Cut trap lines, herring bait on the wharf, the cancelled invitations and now Ben saying someone was messing with his trap lines. It had to stop. She’d have to find some way to stop it. She thought about the email. Someone else wanted to stop it too. And not, from the sound of it, in a nice way. She grit her teeth. Her head was starting to ache.
“That’s robbery!” A high-pitched voice focused all eyes on the entrance where a white-faced Madeline stood with mouth wide open, unable to utter a sound, her mute stare frozen on Hawthorne Parker. He was dressed in pale olive slacks and a cashmere turtleneck—a perfect fit—his black hair slicked back, his lips so tightly clamped together they were as thin as the razor line of his mustache.
“Twenty dollars!” He patted his pockets, in search of his wallet. “That’s far too much. I’ve seen those lobsters practically leap into your boats.” The real problem was that he couldn’t find his wallet. He’d left it at home. He had only the neatly folded ten-dollar bill he always kept in his pocket. Embarrassed, he pulled it out and looked at it, as if it might magically turn into a twenty.
“Ten is surely enough for whatever—” he gazed around at the diners and their dinners with eyes half-closed in contempt “—you have cooked up here. That’s an awfully strange sign you have outside, I might add.”
Annabelle, delivering dinners along with Hy, glared at Parker. She had made the sign. She made all the signs for all the events. She’d even won an Island poster contest several years before. She was used to compliments on her work. Certainly no one had ever complained before.
It wasn’t the best way for Hawthorne Parker to introduce himself to the community. Only a very few locals had seen him at all. Now they were getting an eyeful and an earful. Tiny Madeline straightened up to her full height.
“But it’s for the Hall,” she squeaked.
“Oh, it’s for the Hall,” said Parker, his voice rising high with irritation. Then, more to himself, but loud enough for Madeline and those nearby to hear, “All for the Hall. All for one and one for all.” He brushed his mustache with one finger and smirked, thinking himself terribly clever.
Hy wondered if he was drunk. He wasn’t, but he was angry—angry with Guillaume. They’d had a big fight before he came here. He’d caught Guillaume snorting cocaine. He had raged at him, demanded to know where it came from and if there was any more. Guillaume had said not a word, but sat stubbornly on the couch, arms crossed, lips closed tight. If only Jasmine had been as silent, but she chose to echo Parker. She especially liked repeating “bloody hell.” Parker had been so furious he had made himself dizzy. It had felt a bit like the floor was moving beneath him, but it couldn’t have been. “Bloody hell…bloody hell…bloody hell…” Jasmine’s screams had risen to a crescendo, and Parker had gritted his teeth and slammed out of the house. He’d gone for a drive to cool off. He’d forgotten all about the Hall supper until he saw the sign.
When he’d seen it, of course he’d had to come in.
Parker handed Madeline the ten dollars. It was U.S. currency. “This should do, surely.” She looked carefully at the American money. The bills all looked the same. When she saw it was not a twenty, she looked around the room like a scared rabbit and caught Ian’s eye. He got up and went over, pulling a clump of crushed bills out of his pocket.
“It’s okay, Madeline, I’ll get it.” Ian singled out a reassuringly purple and thoroughly crumpled Canadian ten and stuck it in her hand with Parker’s green bill. It was an unusual gesture for Ian, who parted with money reluctantly, except for what he spent on his toys. But he was still hoping to get Parker to agree to his GPS experiment. This might help his case.
Madeline looked at The Shores’ only eligible bachelor with adoring eyes. Ian looked at the rest of the crumpled bills in his hand and stuffed them back into his pocket. He turned to Parker. “Why don’t you come sit with us?”
Ian introduced him to Ben. “Of course, you know Harold,” he said as they sat opposite the two men. Parker was trying hard to remember Ian’s name. Hy came up to the table. “Mr. Parker, glad you could come.”
He nodded curtly and looked around him with distaste. Why had he come in?
The sign, of course, the sign.
“Came to meet the locals.” Parker’s eyes shut and held just a moment too long. It struck Hy then what the tic meant. Insincerity. Discomfort. She took his order as the three other men turned their attention to their meals. She thought Parker looked odd and lonely sitting there, completely out of place, and she felt a bit sorry for him. She remembered what it was like the first time she had walked into the Hall, a stranger, and all eyes had turned on her.
A few had their eyes on her tonight too. There were some ugly stares, sour looks, from Germain Joudry, Estelle’s husband, and some of the other fishermen. Their wives had told them all about the disastrous Institute meeting. Hy was trying to smile her way through it.
Near silence fell on the Hall as the villagers dug into their suppers. The lobsters had big claws and fat tails, a generous contribution from the Big Bay fishermen. Ian split open a claw and the salt water spilled out, stinging his arm. He stuck his fork into the white and pink-tinged flesh. It came out of the shell in one clean, perfect shape, the way he liked it. He dipped it into the pot of melted lemon butter on his plate. As he stuffed it into his mouth, a thin trickle of butter escaped down his chin. The lobster meat was sweet but not as tender as he liked it. It should have melted, like the butter, in his mouth. It would if it were freshly cooked. Still, he made a quite genuine moan of appreciation and slid the next claw ou
t of its shell.
Harold liked to save the best for last. He was sucking on each little leg, drawing out the tiny treasure of flesh inside, slowly building up to the claws and tail.
“What brings you to The Shores?” Ben asked, one cheek chubby with chicken, another forkful already on its way up to his mouth. He was what Annabelle called a good eater.
“Personal reasons,” said Parker stiffly, in a way that made Ian look up from his meal. “None of which I care to discuss.”
Ben shrugged and turned his attention back to his meal. Hy caught the comment—and Ian’s eye—as she delivered Parker’s lobster. She had just set the plate down when there was another disturbance at the door.
“Free the Lobsters!”
Startled, Madeline accidentally upended the big jar that held the 50/50 money and tickets. She crawled under the table, chasing the rolling coins, glad to be out of the line of fire.
“Welcome the Lobster Liberation Legion!” A figure, dressed in full lobster camouflage, face covered with a bandana, strode into the hall waving a sheaf of papers.
“It hurts to boil to death!”
Everyone stopped eating.
“Read this and weep!” The Legionnaire slapped down a pamphlet in front of Germain. He was not a nice man and was a militant supporter of the controversial seal hunt that had just ended to the usual round of international protests. Grumpy was as good-natured as he ever got. There was the sound of a sharp intake of breath—a communal anticipation of Germain’s reaction, in which Hy joined. Fortunately, his English was not all that good, and he hadn’t yet figured out what was going on.
The Institute ladies came out of the kitchen and peeked around the doorway. Moira covered her mouth with her hands. Olive gripped her apron. April bit her lip. Rose Rose sat down on the stairs with a thump. Annabelle, two lobster suppers held aloft, pushed her way past the others, her eyes burning with what Ben called her man overboard expression. That was the look that made him, as he put it, give her a wide berth. Normally easygoing, she was very easy to read when she was riled. She nudged Hy with an elbow. The plate in her hand tipped precariously.
Revenge of the Lobster Page 11