“I’m her sister,” she blurted out. She looked away. “Her…our father…he can’t come right now. There’s been a—” she almost said ‘another’—“death.” Too much information, she thought. When you’re lying, keep it simple.
Dr. Diamante and Ed, the huge intensive care nurse with a blonde crew cut and an earring in his left ear, looked at her doubtfully. Sister? They didn’t look anything alike. But they were both clearly from away, so it was anyone’s guess.
“She’s not in a living state.” The doctor coughed, looking at Hy with those big bovine eyes.
He didn’t say dead.
“She’s in a coma. If her heart had stopped—we are not sure of that—her cells may have begun to shut down. They could continue to die for days. The cold may have protected the brain, lungs and immune system, but—”
“You don’t know.”
“No. She seems stable,” he said, “but she could be digesting herself.”
“Digesting herself? What do you mean?”
“The body could be breaking down, slowly being eaten away, by itself, from inside.”
Was this real medical opinion—or just his inability to explain himself clearly in English?
His next words were plain enough:
“Be hopeful, but prepare for the worst.”
Chapter Forty-Five
It was four in the morning when Jamieson and Murdo finally arrived at Parker’s. He took a while to answer the door. He was still collapsed on the couch, drifting in and out of a tortured twilight—sleep, cut with periods of unconsciousness. The banging on the door took a while to get through to him. He sat up, polished off the Scotch in the glass, and walked to the door like an old man.
“Responding to a 911 call. Report of one, possibly two, deaths. This the house?” Jamieson asked curtly.
He thought she might have been pretty if she didn’t have her hair so severely drawn back. Her skin was immaculate. An odd thing to notice at such a time, but how could you not notice it? Pale, unblemished, smooth as silk. Odd that it could contain such a hard creature.
“Constable Jane Jamieson.” She appeared to be the one in charge.
“Squawk! It’s the law! Run!” Jasmine had woken up, her cage still covered. She startled the two Mounties.
“My bird,” said Parker.
“Murdo Black,” said the constable behind Jamieson.
“Hawthorne Parker.” He should be reluctant to let them in. Not all of his treasures would have passed a customs inspection. He wished this were just a customs inspection.
“Please, come in.” He opened the door wide.
Jamieson didn’t move right away. Her eyes swept the room. She was a tall woman—six foot, and she bent out of habit as she entered the door. The older Island houses made it necessary. Not this one though. Murdo, shorter, rounder, friendlier, came in behind her—always a step behind her, mentally and physically.
Neither of them had been in a room—a house—that looked anything like this before. They gazed around them. Jamieson registered the dozens of objets d’art that she knew must be worth a small fortune. She looked, puzzled, at the huge canvas with the red blotch. She was sure that was worth something too, but she couldn’t see why.
“You the owner of this residence?”
Parker nodded.
She flipped open her notebook.
“The 911 call came from here?”
Parker nodded again.
She walked farther into the room.
“I have a report of a death. Where’s the body?”
Parker said nothing.
Jamieson looked at her notes. “There is a body?”
“Yes,” said Parker.
“Where?”
“Down at the cookhouse. In the pond.”
“In the cookhouse—or the pond?”
“Both. There’s a pond in the cookhouse.”
“Who found the body?”
“I did,” said Parker. “No—I didn’t find it. It happened while I was there.”
“What happened?”
“Well, it was an accident.” He was becoming adept at lying. “We—”
“We?”
“Guillaume—”
“Guillaume!” Jasmine shrieked. She sniffed…sniffed again. “Guillaume!” Sniff. Sniff. She laughed hysterically.
“Who is Guillaume?” Jamieson had heard that name before, just recently.
Parker looked down at the floor.
“My chef.”
Jamieson looked at Murdo. He was biting his nails. He shrugged. No one said anything for a moment or two. She considered silence a valuable detection tool. People began blurting things out, just to fill the void. Parker was no different, in spite of his apparent sophistication.
“Guillaume is—was—a friend.”
“…and the victim?”
“Yes. The…victim.”
She waited.
“He is—was—also my partner.”
“Business?”
“Yes.”
“Your chef, your friend, your business partner, the victim.” This sounded familiar. “Anything else?”
He bit his lip. It was known in the village anyway.
“My life partner as well.”
Guillaume. Life partner. This was the owner of the car.
“So, what happened, and what does—” Jamieson rifled through her notes—“this other incident, the boat, the hypothermia, have to do with it?”
“Nothing. It has nothing to do with it. That is a separate incident.”
Jamieson sighed. It was going to be a long night.
“Okay. What happened in the cookhouse?”
“Guillaume and I were having an argument. Things got out of hand. He tripped over an electric cord and fell backwards into the pond. He was electrocuted.”
“I think you better walk me through it. At the scene.” Jamieson flipped her notebook shut.
Two words popped into her mind. Domestic dispute.
Jamieson was too well-trained to show surprise when she entered the cookhouse, but she was surprised—more by the gourmet kitchen and the lobster grotto than by the corpse itself—though that was a bit of a surprise too. A lobster was clawing at the corpse’s face. Her instinct was to grab it and throw it off, but she couldn’t disturb the scene. It may turn out to have been an accident, but with no actual witnesses and only Parker’s word, the Major Crime Investigation Unit would have to be brought in.
“You’re sure he’s dead?” She strode across the room.
“It’s been several hours.”
Jamieson looked at the open eyes. Lifeless.
“Tell me exactly what happened. Start at the beginning please, and try to be precise.”
When he had finished, she asked him to tell her again—partly to check the facts, partly to see if the story was the same the second time around. Checking to see if it sounded like he’d memorized it and was repeating by rote, or if it had really happened the way he said it had and he was simply telling the same story again, required excellent listening skills.
One of Jamieson’s strengths was that she was a good listener—not caring or supportive, mind. She heard exactly what was said, unfiltered, and could parrot it back verbatim. She could also tell the difference between truth and lies. She listened to every nuance in Parker’s voice and his choice of words. His anguish, as far as she could tell, was not faked—nor was the anger that had precipitated the event—anger that still burned in him and which he did not try to conceal. It had the ring of truth. His guilt? That had yet to be determined.
“You’ll have to come down to police headquarters to make an official statement.”
Jamieson and Parker drove off—she in the RCMP vehicle and he in his rental car. Murdo stayed at the cookhouse to secure the scene and wait for forensics. He tri
ed to wrap yellow police tape around the building, but it blew away on a gust of wind. He went inside and spent several unpleasant and cold hours guarding the dead man, until the forensics team arrived, investigated the scene and took the body away. During the long wait, Murdo had looked in the freezer, tempted to grab one of the lobster claws and heat it up, but he lost his appetite when he saw the beast clawing at the corpse’s eyes.
Cam was out on the water—the only place she ever felt truly at peace. The lapping of the waves was soothing.
The sense of calm ripped apart with the image of a body, splayed out in a pond, his eyes staring wide open, full of shock, a lobster clawing at them.
She grabbed the creature and threw it across the room.
I should not have treated the lobster that way.
She felt bad about the lobster, really bad.
“Ms. Samson? Ms. Samson?”
Ed shook his head—still no response. Hy thought it might have helped if he’d used the right name, but no one knew what that was. Samson? Parker? What name would she answer to, if she were able to?
Parker drove by the hospital after making his statement. The police had cautioned him to remain in the area. He had assured them that he wasn’t going anywhere. Except, now, in circles. He drove by the hospital several times. He went as far, once, as the parking lot. He sat there for…he didn’t know how long. Then started the car again and left, regret following him all the way home. If she were alive, she wouldn’t welcome him.
A child is not meant to die before its parents.
Perhaps this one would not.
The parent might die before her.
The thought, at first, surprised him.
By the time he got home, it had taken hold of him.
Chapter Forty-Six
“Why’d you never tell me?” Ian had arrived at the hospital shortly before seven that morning. He was sitting with Hy in the small waiting room across from Intensive Care, probing her about her past.
“Because it scared the shit out of me. I couldn’t talk about it. It would make it real. I thought if I talked about it, the nightmares would get worse.”
“Or maybe better,” he said. “Did you think of that?”
“Well, no.”
“How did you ever go out on that boat with Cam and then get back to shore?”
Hy smiled, a soft reflective smile. “Don’t ask me. Adrenalin. Maybe it was the catharsis I needed.”
“I don’t think you needed that.”
She thought he was wrong. I feel different now. Different about the dream.
Parker stood up, shaky on his feet, grabbed the bottle of Scotch and began to stumble around the room, looking at his treasures, one by one. He picked up a Greco-Roman statuette. Things. My life has been about things—beautiful but inanimate things. Cam was—had been?—as fine and beautiful as any of it. She should have been my treasure, not these things that could not love me back.
He put the statue down carelessly. It slipped off the pedestal and smashed on the floor. Broken. Irretrievable, just like she will be—if she lives. Hopelessly broken. It was his fault. He should have made it clear to Sheldon that she was not to be bothered.
He hadn’t—a sin of omission.
The only real beauty in my life and I have failed to care for her.
But I can take care of this.
She, not he, would be the last of their line. He would make a bargain with the jackal.
Jamieson had caught up with Hy and Ian at the hospital.
“Can you describe this boat you say bore down on you? What kind was it?”
You say. Hy heard doubt. Was Jamieson doubting the story?
She wasn’t, particularly. She just liked to put people on an uneven footing.
“Boat? What kind of boat? A fast one. A big rubber one.”
Probably this cop could reel off boat makes and models. She looked highly trained and well-turned-out, not a wrinkle in her outfit, not a hair out of place—a perfect specimen of Mountie training. Hy knew how hard it was to get in. It took years. They often rejected you several times first. She’d done a web profile of ten candidates once—five successful, five unsuccessful. You had to be the brightest and the best. Then you got posted to some backwater like this. You didn’t get to be a Mountie by just lacing your boots correctly—it was a tough job. Constable Jamieson’s boots were laced perfectly, of course, but, to Hy’s satisfaction, they were also covered in red clay.
“Surely you have some idea of a type?”
“No.” Hyacinth drew out the word in exasperation.
“Calm down, Hy. She’s just trying to help.” Ian liked the look of Constable Jamieson—sexy in a severe sort of way. Hair he’d like to get his hands on—mess it up. Beautiful alabaster skin. Full rose lips.
Hy didn’t like the way he was looking at Jamieson. “Yeah, yeah, I know.”
“Is the dory still down at the shore?”
“I guess so. We pulled it up high so the tide wouldn’t get it.”
“We’ll have a look at it later. I don’t suppose there’s much it will tell us. They didn’t come in contact with it?”
“I don’t believe so.”
“It appeared to you to be intentional?”
“Appeared! They came around repeatedly—and only took off after we ducked under until my lungs burst. Damn right it was intentional.”
“Intent to kill?”
“I don’t know. Intent to frighten, for sure.”
“Aimed at you? Her? Both of you?”
“Her, certainly. Me, maybe.”
“Do you know why?”
“Because Cam had been stirring up trouble around here.”
“Ian!”
“Well, she was. People didn’t like what she said—or did.”
“Who were these people? Who had a reason to dislike her?”
Hy and Ian looked at each other. They weren’t going to name names…except for two they didn’t know. Hy told Jamieson about Mutt and Jeff, the threats, and the attacks on her house.
“What did she do that people didn’t like?”
“Terrorize by day. Liberate by night.” Ian regretted his flippancy immediately. He was punch-drunk tired.
“Terrorize?”
Hy told her about Cam’s performance at the W.I. meeting, and about the disruption of the lobster supper.
“She’s a lobster tickler.”
“Lobster tickler?”
“You know, like a horse whisperer. She’s a guerilla fighter for animal rights.”
Jane Jamieson felt as if she’d slipped into an alternate reality. These people were odd. She couldn’t wait until she was posted somewhere more civilized. She didn’t realize there is no such place in law enforcement.
“She was freeing lobsters from their traps. That’s what she was doing last night.”
Jamieson looked up sharply from her notes.
“That’s poaching,” she said.
“What? Even if you throw the lobster back in the water?”
“Still poaching. Theft. You can consider yourself an accessory.”
“But I’m a writer. I was doing research.”
“Writers commit crimes, and you may have done so by being a party to your lobster tickler’s illegal activities.”
“It was no party,” Hy muttered.
“Excuse me?”
A parent is not meant to outlive a child.
This parent would not. It seemed to him that he had always been gnawing at the bone of regret. He’d lost the taste for life. Fear had made him live in this small, bitter way. Fear of not being good enough, not good enough to be loved—and with good reason.
What had he ever done to deserve love?
He could not smooth out all the dark coils of his misunderstanding, could not untwist the
m far enough, long enough to see that love is not deserved, it is simply given.
I can do nothing right.
Only one thing.
One thing.
This one thing right.
He pulled himself up from the couch, full of resolve. He slid out a sheet of paper from a roll-top desk that had once belonged to Thomas Jefferson. The paper promised to resist fire and water damage and last four hundred years, but this document did not need to last that long. It only needed to outlive him, and that would not be long at all. He pulled out his Aurora solid gold and burgundy fountain pen and the gold tip scratched across the paper.
I, Hawthorne Parker, being of sound mind and body…
He wondered if what he was about to do would negate that statement.
Chapter Forty-Seven
Ian had gone home with instructions from Hy:
“Bring back her knapsack—in the guest room—vanity case by the door, laptop. Bring it all.”
No one had yet asked for a Medicare card, which Hy was sure Cam didn’t have. She’d have to look through her stuff to see what documents there were.
Ian had tried to get Hy to come with him, but she refused to go. She wouldn’t leave the hospital. She felt as long as she was there, Cam would stay alive. The nurses and doctors were used to people feeling that way and were businesslike in ushering friends and family out when they got in the way—but they found it unusual that Cam’s vital signs grew steady and rhythmic when Hy was in the room. Those signs flickered when she left. So they let her sit by Cam’s bedside, a human link in the technological tangle of wires and tubes and monitors keeping Cam alive. She was hanging onto a thread that may have been more firmly attached to Hy than to the respirator or the IV—an invisible filament of friendship, linking her to life.
Hy talked non-stop. “Look at me,” she’d say. It was the same calming technique she had used with Cam in the water. It had saved her once, it might again. Never mind that Cam’s eyes were closed. That didn’t stop Hy from repeating, “Look at me,” as she held her hand through the long day into the night.
She was swimming. Really swimming. She felt gloriously free, and she wondered why she’d never tried it. It seemed as if she had always been able to do it, never had to learn it. But she was underwater. How was she able to breathe?
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