All is Clam

by Hilary MacLeod

  Stuck in a backwater. Jamieson’s own thoughts echoed Murdo’s. Would she go adrift with this posting?

  Ever since she’d come to Red Island, Jamieson had been trying to get away. Now she’d been assigned permanently to The Shores, the most isolated area possible. The unusual posting was a result of a number of separate incidents over the past couple of years. Three murders. Two manslaughters. On her watch. Now, it really was her watch. Until now, there had been only a community liaison officer, in the form of handsome, well-intentioned, but not very bright, Billy Pride. He’d been the only one who’d volunteered. He had made an accidental drug arrest so there was no question of replacing him. But he couldn’t be in charge. Thankfully, Murdo Black, her regular partner, had been sent out with her.

  She didn’t know that Murdo had engineered it. It was partly self-serving and partly because he knew how hard this assignment would hit Jamieson. He was a kind man. Jamieson would have been furious if she’d known that he had done it, and how he had done it.

  “A woman – out there all alone,” Murdo had appealed to his superior’s outdated but charming chivalry, and also to his view of The Shores as a barren, uncivilized outpost.

  “On a trial basis,” had been the decision. They had few enough officers to let two go out there for a few hundred people. It was all those deaths last year that did it. And the fact that Murdo knew something about the superior officer that he wouldn’t want his wife to know. It wasn’t mentioned, but it was in the air.

  Murdo had come out beaming.

  His motives weren’t entirely selfless. April Dewey, the plump little cook who’d captured his heart and stomach last year, would be just minutes away. She was married. She was Catholic. Well, Murdo was Catholic, too. He imagined his intentions were honourable. In a way, they were.

  The closer they came to the causeway that joined Red Island to The Shores, the more excited Murdo became. He began to speed – rocketing across the causeway that usually made him nervous. A few years back, a storm surge had severed it – sea ice had sliced through the roadbed, and flung houses into the water. Cars were tossed into the sea, and boats onto the road – people had died. The province patched the causeway, threw a river ferry into service, and left The Shores to fend for itself.

  Until now. It was an unusual agreement with the RCMP to provide police presence.

  Jamieson had been so caught up in her bitter thoughts, she’d hardly noticed they had crossed the causeway. She hadn’t noticed much as she’d brooded all the way from Winterside, but as they crested the last hill, the black cloud hanging over the village below moved off, and it was bathed in sunshine. The neat white shingle houses with their green and black roofs, the Hall with the greenest roof of all. The patchwork fields in the soft velvety greens and yellows of late fall, cut through by the red clay and neat lines of evergreens, lay like a giant quilt blanketing the landscape. The meadows tripped down to the sand, and the grey sea with its foaming waves clung to the shore. The pond was shaped like a large tadpole, its run of fresh water curving across the sand and flowing into the great Gulf of St. Lawrence.

  Jamieson felt her spirits lift. The sun, she thought. But she was wrong. It was The Shores. It might not be Toronto or Halifax or Montreal. It might be a backwater. But it was her backwater, more than she knew. She felt odd. Better than she thought she would. To her surprise, as they descended the long high hill that dropped down into the village, it felt like she was coming home. But the feeling was mixed with disappointment. Jamieson was ambitious. So much had already happened here that nothing would ever likely happen again. Nothing to propel her to promotion and the big city. Any city.

  There had been too many deaths here. How had it happened – in this quiet place, where people were supposed to live and die the way they always had? Where people from away, like McAllister, came to find peace and solitude. And others came – for what? Running from demons they hoped would not pursue them here. But it seemed they did.

  Jamieson had her own demons. She knew how they followed you, no matter where you went. She could feel them at her back, always.

  Having exhausted the topic of Wild Rose Cottage, Hy asked the question she’d been meaning to ask Gus for days.

  “Any chance you’ll be in the Women’s Institute skit this year?”

  Gus pressed her lips together. In more than sixty years she had only ever once appeared in a skit at the annual Christmas pageant. Just a few years back, her performance, of one line, the punch line to the piece, had been received with a genuine standing ovation. She had decided to quit while she was ahead.

  “Oh, c’mon Gus.”

  “And what part could I play?”

  “I fancy you as the fairy godmother.”

  “The fairy grandmother, more like.”

  “Well then, the queen.”

  “There is no queen in that story.” Gus smiled a smug smile.

  “There could be.”

  Hy always wrote the Women’s Institute skit for the Christmas pageant. This year she’d written “Shores Ella,” a spoof on “Cinderella,” and was still trying to cast it and rehearse in time for the show on Christmas Eve. It wasn’t easy. The women took it as their duty to act in the show because the proceeds went to maintenance of the Hall and village life. The Hall was the only public building still standing in the village. But the Institute women were no actresses. If Hy weren’t so determined to do a good job, she’d realize that’s what made it so entertaining.

  “I’ll just make my squares,” said Gus. The highlight of every event in The Shores was the bake sale. But the Christmas show had a special appeal. It wasn’t just squares and muffins, nor April Dewey’s lemon cake. It was the Institute women embarrassing themselves, the children losing shoes and lines and courage, and always, always a little magic. There had never been a Christmas show without it. So far that magic was missing.

  “And I’ll be making something now.” Gus stood up and smoothed down her apron. “For those poor souls as think they can live in that place this winter. P’raps I’ll do them a quilt. The Log Cabin or the House on the Hill. What do you think?”

  “How about the tent?”

  “No such pattern.”

  “You could create it.”

  “Oh, not me. You know me. I can copy it, but I can’t make it up.”

  “You might surprise yourself.”

  “I wouldn’t want to do that.”

  Gus didn’t like surprises.

  “No, I think I’ll do the Log Cabin. Lots of small pieces and they don’t have to match.”

  She shuffled off to her back room to see what material she had. More than she’d ever need the rest of her life.

  Chapter Seven

  The new police house was one of Abel’s rentals. It was on Shipwreck Hill, just above Ian’s. It was the oddest little house in The Shores, called the Lego house because addition after addition had been attached to it in no logical pattern. A series of rooms had been added on willy-nilly to the main structure, some of them larger than the original house. It could not be said to have a shape at all. Geometry couldn’t describe it.

  Jamieson soon carved it into shape inside. She sectioned off an office area, quarters for herself and Murdo, and common areas. When they were settled in, she went out to establish herself in the village, walking the beat, knocking on doors, providing police presence, as she’d been instructed.

  Murdo took the opportunity to snoop through the house. He remembered the one time he had been to Jamieson’s apartment in town, to pick up a uniform for her during a disastrous murder investigation. The place had been clean, organized, sterile. Nothing personal. It was the same here, too. Bed made within an inch of its life. Sheets and bedspread starched, pulled taut and tucked in tight. Nothing on the dresser. In the closet, uniforms, and just a few civilian clothes that looked like uniforms, too – white shirts and black pants and ski
rts.

  In the living room were the furnishings provided with the rental. The only books were Murdo’s detective novels and Jamieson’s forensic reference books. A photo of a bloated body, on the cover of a book called Drowning for Dummies, graced the coffee table. There were no knick-knacks, no magazines or photographs, no cushions, no feminine touch.

  Jamieson had brought her own pots, pans, dishes, and small appliances. Everything was white. Murdo didn’t care. He’d eat off any colour.

  Jamieson didn’t have any personal items. She had her graduation photo from police college, framed, but it was stuffed in a drawer. She didn’t like to look at herself staring back from a photo. There was a reason Jamieson had so few things, but she hadn’t told anyone about it. She didn’t like to think of it. She didn’t want them to get the wrong idea about her.

  Hy had gathered most of the Institute women at the Hall to discuss their skit and hand out the parts. There were thirteen of them, an unlucky number the women were always trying to change. But as soon as they got one new member, another would leave, get sick, or die. The aging membership meant that most monthly meetings included time spent signing condolence, sympathy, and get-well cards.

  “I’d like to be Cinderella,” Moira Toombs piped up.

  “Shores Ella,” Hy corrected, buying time. Moira – Cinderella? Ludicrous with her tightly permed curls, pasty skin, and height – almost as tall as herself and Annabelle. And Shores Ella had to at least be likable.

  “How about the prince?” she offered in a panic.

  Moira took a moment to taste the possibility. The second most important part, or so she thought. And maybe she could upstage Shores Ella.

  “All right. I’ll do it.” She said it as if she were doing Hy a personal favour.

  Hy chose Gladys Fraser, a bulldog of a woman, short and square and surly, with never a smile on her face, belligerent by nature, as one of the ugly sisters. And because she was so short and Hy’s friend Annabelle so tall that they would look ridiculous together, she chose Annabelle as the other ugly sister. Annabelle got it right away. She laughed. That’s why they were friends.

  Annabelle was not ugly. She was tall and glamorous, with blond hair that tumbled in loose curls past her shoulders. She wore plunging necklines, high heels, and had perfectly manicured fingernails. In the off-season. She fished with her husband Ben, Abel Mack’s much younger brother, and at the opening of the season the hair went up and under a baseball cap, the nails were cut off, the high heels traded for rubber boots. She still, somehow, looked glamorous.

  “April, I’d like you to be the fairy godmother.”

  April Dewey blushed with delight and bashfulness. She was pretty, pleasantly plump, with a characteristic streak of flour on her cheek. It would be perfect, thought Hy. Fairy dust.

  She also thought that any one of the women might make a perfect wicked stepmother, but chose Estelle Joudry, Gus’s neighbour. Estelle was thrilled. She was addicted to her “stories,” the soap operas on afternoon TV, and delighted to be given a real acting part. If she could only memorize the lines.

  Everyone was waiting to find out who would be Shores Ella, looking around now to see who was left.

  There was only Madeline.

  Not Madeline. For a moment, something like vulnerability passed across Moira’s face. Her teeth clenched. Her left eye twitched. Her hands closed in tight fists.

  Madeline? It was a communal, unspoken question.

  “Madeline,” said Hy. Tiny, shy Madeline Toombs, overshadowed and under the thumb of her big sister Moira, looked at Hy like a frightened deer. Hy smiled.

  “I’d like you to be Shores Ella.”

  Madeline started shaking her head before the words came out of her mouth.

  “Oh, no. I couldn’t. I…I…I…” Madeline had always helped, usually handling the curtains – heavy red velvet ones on a pulley – but she’d never acted.

  Moira’s pasty skin had turned an unhealthy red. Madeline. Shores Ella? Not if she had anything to do with it.

  “Just say yes for today, Madeline,” Hy coaxed. “We’ll see how it goes day by day. We won’t force you onstage.”

  Madeline nodded dumbly, unable to say no to anyone. Moira was already hatching a plan to keep her offstage. She’d learn the lines and step in to save the day when Madeline welched, as Moira knew she would, especially after she’d finished with her. Every day, for the next several, she’d ask Madeline if she was sure she was up to it. That would put an end to it.

  When the meeting was over, Hy and Annabelle were alone in the Hall.

  “Do you think that’s going to work?’

  “What?” Hy knew exactly what.

  “Little Madeline.”

  “I don’t know. I thought I’d try to bring her out of her shell. Let her be the centre of attention.”

  “I’m not sure she wants that.”

  “We’ll see. Anyway, I’ve got news. They’ve come.”

  “Who?”

  “The Wild Rose Cottage people.”

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.”

  “No – Fitz, Rose, and Jamie.”

  Annabelle let out a guffaw.

  “Tell me all about it.” She started to stack chairs.

  Finally, thought Fitz, Jared had found out what they were supposed to be looking for.

  “A diary.”

  Fitz spat some tobacco off his tongue and onto the ground. A fucking diary. Jeez.

  “A diary?”

  “A real old one. Family thing.”

  “Worth money?”

  “I dunno. I don’t think so. Can’t see much in it for me.”

  Fitz’s hand came down hard on Jared’s back.

  “There must be something in it for somebody, else he wouldn’t be sending you on this chase.”

  Jared chewed the inside of his cheeks. He hadn’t thought about it. Why hadn’t he thought about it? He’d just seen it as a few easy bucks. Suddenly, it was getting complicated – but maybe more worthwhile than he’d thought.

  “Tell you what.” Fitz lit another cigarette. “I’ll help you find it. You’ll connect to the geezer, and we’ll split the payoff.”

  “Wait a minute…”

  “You wait a minute. You ain’t finding that thing without me. If it’s in the house, well, you can’t go in the house unless I let you.”

  When Jared left, Fitz went back inside.

  “A book?” he said to no one in particular, eyeing the pile in front of the stove. Jeez, a fucking book. There were dozens of them. More – hundreds. Some he’d already got rid of, burning them in the stove just to keep warm. They weren’t much good even for that. They were rotting, rat-eaten, and mildewed, and didn’t burn well. He was supposed to look through them for a fucking diary? He wasn’t even really sure what that was. It made him think of tough times on the toilet after a night out.

  Jared probably didn’t know what it was either.

  Fitz planned to outwit him.

  Moira Toombs was disappointed when she cleaned up the police house after Jamieson and Murdo’s arrival. There was nothing to be found. Moira was a snoop. She liked turning up people’s secrets. She didn’t use them, just hugged them to her like something precious. It was perhaps the only thing that gave her joy, knowing something about someone else that they didn’t know she knew.

  She knew a lot about Ian – especially since she’d learned to use a computer herself. She cleaned for him and was also in and out of his house frequently, whether he was there or not. She’d check his email – received and sent. She’d check his History, Bookmarks, and visit the sites he’d been visiting.

  Oh, yes, she knew a lot about Ian – things even Hy didn’t know. Things she might use, someday, if she thought it would bring Ian closer to her, or push Hy away. She was waiting to find the right thing, snooping the Internet, followi
ng him around electronically. There was bound to be something. Someday.

  Today, it seemed she would find out nothing about Jamieson and Murdo.

  Until, at last, she found it in a small pocket of a suitcase in a back closet.

  A newspaper clipping.

  Moira read it with interest. It should have saddened her, but she came away smiling. A plum piece of information.

  By the time she got home, she was frowning. As she walked down Shipwreck Hill, she spied Billy Pride and her sister Madeline kissing on the front stoop.

  Kissing, where everyone can see. Disgusting.

  Bristling with sanctimonious outrage and burning jealousy, Moira quickened her pace, marching forward toward the guilty pair who didn’t notice her. Marching, then nearly running. When she was within shouting distance:

  “Billy Pride!”

  He pulled away from Madeline, both of them flushed red, a combination of the excitement that had been building up from the kiss, and the fear of what Moira was about to do – or say.

  “Get you home, Billy Pride. Leave. Now.”

  Billy, well over six feet of muscular male, physically dominated the stoop and the two women on it. But that did not make him brave when confronted with Moira’s rage. He’d been brought up by his mother to cower before women. Perhaps that’s why he was attracted to tiny, fearful Madeline. No one could cower before her.

  His shoulders dropped, he turned, and, miserably, made his way over to the Hall, where he had parked his Smart car, inherited from an uncle. To see big Billy squeeze into that tiny car was like Cinderella’s ugly sisters trying to negotiate the glass slipper. But he made it, curled up, and sped by the two women as Moira was hustling Madeline inside the door.

  And then it began, all her spite and jealousy spitting out of her:

  “You won’t marry him, you know. You won’t go living in that house with his mother.”

  Madeline had seen the house – and the mother. She didn’t want to live in it or with her.