It was an argument he couldn’t win.
But Letitia was winning fewer arguments these days. She had not the breath to sustain them. She was constantly on her inhaler. When she lifted it to her mouth, he tensed with irritation.
She noticed, and sometimes out of deference to him, when she really needed the relief the puffer provided, she didn’t use it. Inevitably, this resulted in a coughing attack and Ferguson charging out of the room.
She couldn’t win. The lottery, yes. Married life, no.
Ferguson spent most of his time in his den, soothed by the elegant swimming of his pricey tropical fish, thinking of better things, of luxuries he could afford if the money were his and not hers. He’d flip open his laptop and check on his favourite car, the Rolls Royce, in any and all of its manifestations. Sixty-five per cent of Rolls cars ever made were still on the road today, he mused, as he opened a link on the first one, the Rolls Royce 10, built in 1904. In those days, the company only provided the chassis; it was up to the owner to put on a body. They’d built sixteen of them, and four still survived. Now, that was a marvel of engineering. His talents, meantime, were going to waste. Literally.
One of the old cars had sold for five million at auction not too many years ago. Five million. It could have been his, if he had the money Letitia had.
At least he had Letitia. That was a start.
And there was the fish.
Chapter 14
It was Murdo Black who provided the first information about Abel. Murdo was Jamieson’s work partner and the one who had engineered their posting in this backwater. It was self-serving in part. He’d fallen for the village’s best cook, plump and pretty April Dewey. Her cheating husband, Ron, had squealed out of the village leaving behind deep tracks in the clay driveway, and six children. He was, as Gus put it, “living the life of Reilly in Winterside.” She said it a lot, but if someone asked who Reilly was and how he lived, she’d hum a few phrases from an old vaudeville song:
Is that Mister Reilly, can anyone tell?
Is that Mister Reilly that owns the hotel?
Well, if that’s Mister Reilly they speak of so highly,
Upon me soul, Reilly, you’re doing quite well.
Murdo had fallen for April’s family, too – a half-dozen tributes to über-domesticity that had swelled his heart.
Now his belly was swelling, as he gobbled April’s tasty offerings. He was out of shape, and Jamieson couldn’t remember the last time he’d done a lick of police work. He’d lost the temperament for it.
Murdo in love was like a toddler, fascinated and delighted by everything around him. Waking up with April in the morning was a new thrill each day. Sinking into the cozy bed with her beside him and the warm duvet wrapped around them was sheer delight at night. He gloried in the scent of sausages, pancakes, and eggs cooking on April’s old wood range in the morning. The whole world was a constant distraction to him, as if it came new every day. Living in such thrall to the joys of the world made him useless for most things. So for him to come up with a piece of evidence in Abel’s disappearance was remarkable.
Jamieson had stopped by April’s in the faint hope that she could dig up some new clue. She had abandoned any possibility that Abel might be alive, but they must track down his body. April might have been the last one to see him; the only one in the village, apart from Gus, who ever had any idea when he was around. He would follow the scents wafting from her kitchen and beg for scraps at her back door, with Toby the beach dog and Newt, the small terrier mutt who lived nowhere but ate at every house in the village. The dogs were his cover. April actually never saw him. A shadow maybe, that was all.
“I really can’t say…” April responded to Jamieson’s query if she knew where Abel might be.
Murdo was roused from his reverie watching dark clouds scudding across the sky, mingling with the tendrils of smoke still fingering The Shores from the north. He looked surprised, eyes open wide.
“Abel’s missing? Since when?”
“Tuesday.”
“Tuesday. Tuesday.” He rolled it over in his mind. “Now when was that?” He brushed some cake crumbs off his shirt. “I seen him that day.”
Jamieson’s expression, clouded at the state Murdo was in, brightened. Then fell again at Murdo’s next words.
“Or maybe it was Wednesday…”
Unlikely, she thought. Gus had reported Abel missing on Tuesday. The search had begun. They’d have found him if he’d been wandering around the village. It really didn’t matter what day Murdo thought it was. It mattered what he’d seen.
“Okay… Tuesday… Wednesday…no matter. Where was he?”
“On a bicycle, heading for the causeway, round about six in the morning.”
The road was clearly visible from April’s bedroom window.
“Why didn’t you say?” Jamieson’s cheeks flushed red with anger.
Murdo looked confused.
“At the time. Why didn’t you say so at the time?”
“I didn’t know then, did I? That he was missing, I mean. This is the first I heard of it.”
“You knew about it. You searched with the kids.” April looked confused.
Murdo looked confused, too. He thought they’d been playing a game.
Jamieson thought Murdo was far gone.
***
Seamus pulled up, as directed, at the second white house on his right in “the holler.” Ferguson had used the local word with disdain.
He was outside to greet Seamus and led him back to his den behind the cathouse. Seamus tripped over his feet as he stared at the contraption that housed the cats – and at the many cats. This guy was interested in fish?
Apparently so. Seamus stared at the massive wall aquarium, and the fish that came right up and nosed the glass when he entered the room. As he sat down opposite Ferguson, he spied the wood sculpture of the giant American codfish.
Ferguson tossed his copy of Time Was across the desk. He propped it open at the page with the picture of Abel and the fish. “You’ve seen this.”
“Of course,” said Seamus. No. Not this. Not the book. He wanted to snatch it.
Ferguson gave it a small shove, tempting Seamus with it.
“Do you know this guy?”
Seamus grabbed the book. His eyes feasted on the photo cutline, only part of which he’d ever seen. Abel Mack. He knew that now, but he had a number of other names for him. Mr. Tilley Hat. Sometimes just The Hat Man or The Old Man.
“Yes and no.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Well, I know who he is, but I’ve never met him.” Seamus wasn’t prepared to show his cards yet. Not until he knew there was a deal to be made.
“He’s alive?”
“Yes, but –”
“But?”
Might as well stick to the story all over the village.
“He’s missing.”
Not anymore, thought Seamus, but that was his secret, for now.
Ferguson leaned forward and thrust a finger at the book.
“I want that fish.”
“Who knows where it is…or might be? That man’s the only one who could know.” Seamus smiled, secure in the knowledge that he had the best shot of finding that fish.
He had the fisherman. He would tell Ferguson when – if – he needed him.
“There’s no reason we can’t both have this fish, if it exists.” Ferguson leaned forward, a glint in his eyes. “I want to set a record with it. And you?”
“I want to restore the fishery. In Newfoundland. Not here.”
“So you want to breed it?”
Seamus hadn’t thought it all through. Did he want to breed it? Was he looking for a mating pair? When he thought this way, he realized how much he didn’t know. How little time he had to play fast and loose w
ith the fisheries department’s resources. How much he might need to join forces with this guy and his money. Then find someone with the know-how. It might not be in the right order, but it was the only direction he could go in. He did know that the first thing was to find the fish.
He was beginning to see items on the Internet that led him to believe that there were other people, like him, who had their eyes on the same prize. He had seen sites, too, that dismissed them as “kooks,” these adherents to the growing worldwide movement of “Gigantisms,” as it was being called. It had its roots in the giant vegetables grown in Findhorn, Scotland, in the 1960s. One site claimed to have found water circles containing giant cod off the Isle of Skye. The site, ignoring copyright, used the slogan “Feed the World,” as its rallying cry, along with the song of the same name. Seamus wanted to be in the forefront of the movement – or would be, if he could get ample backing.
“We’ll keep each other informed.” Ferguson stood up to usher Seamus out. At the door, they shook hands, each thinking he would get the better of the deal.
***
Seamus was no sooner out his door than Ferguson left the house, headed in the opposite direction.
He knew precisely which house to go to, to try to find out what he wanted. He knew that in a Maritime village the person who knew everything would live in the house with the best view of the place.
Ferguson knocked on the door and stirred Gus from a light snooze in her recliner, her knitting needles, hands, and yarn in position to take the next stitch.
Who would be knocking at the door? It must be a stranger.
She dropped her knitting on the floor, straightened her apron, and shuffled to the door.
By the time she got there, Ferguson’s nose was pressed up against the screen, trying to see if anyone was coming to answer.
When she opened it, he stuck a hand out to shake hers, and all she could do was rub her hands up and down the sides of her apron. She wasn’t used to shaking hands.
“I’m Brock Ferguson.”
She nodded. “The new fella. The cat place up the road. Come in.”
“Oh, I don’t want to bother you. I just want to talk to Abel Mack.”
“Me and all,” she said. Did this person know anything about Abel going missing?
She pointed to a jacket hanging from a hook.
“He should be wearing that, day like today.”
“Does he live here?” Ferguson couldn’t believe his luck.
“Usually he does.”
“But not now?”
“I never know where Abel is.” Gus was backing off being honest with this man. What if he had something to do with Abel’s disappearance? What if he wanted to know that she was alone in the house, with no Abel to protect her?
“Hasn’t been around a lot lately. Reckon you should check at Wally Fraser’s.”
After finding out from Gus where Wally Fraser lived, Ferguson went and knocked on that door. Gladys answered, face like a bulldog.
“I’m looking for Abel Mack,” he said.
“You won’t find him here.” She slammed the door on him.
It was the same everywhere – no one was willing to tell a complete stranger where Abel was or wasn’t. They didn’t know, did they? So why should they say anything?
***
Murdo went with Jamieson along the Island Way and pointed to the precise spot he’d seen Abel. Jamieson got out of the cruiser, and kicked around the side of the road, but it seemed a trivial pursuit. She jumped back in and drove to the causeway, where they got out.
The ferry had just landed, with a full load of eight cars. One of them was Ian’s. Ian had bought yet another iMac. He got a new one every two years. Even the disappearance of Abel couldn’t prevent him from going into town when it was shipped. Hy was with him. She wouldn’t have minded using Abel as an excuse to avoid going to the dentist, but she’d lost a filling that had to be replaced.
“Just the person,” Ian said. On spying Jamieson, he had stopped his car next to the cruiser. “How’d you like my old iMac?”
She would love it. Of course she would.
“Can’t afford it,” she said.
“Not selling,” said Ian. “I’d be happy to give it to you.”
Ian always gave away his old computers. It was a personal mission to get his friends up to speed with the best equipment. Well, not the absolute best. That was whatever he had most recently acquired. He gave away the next best thing.
A few years back, he’d even given an iMac to Gus. He’d set it up in her kitchen while she was napping, with a screen saver of swimming fish. When she woke and saw “that contraption” she first thought that she’d had a stroke, and then that someone had installed an aquarium.
Gus used the computer to Skype her daughter Dot when Dot was in Africa or Antarctica or other remote places of the world. It was on a computer screen that she first saw her granddaughter, Dottie, just hours old and half the world away. It was a strange and beautiful sight, Hy often thought, to see Gus, born in the opening years of the twentieth century, putting a finger to the onscreen image of the infant born in the opening years of the twenty-first. A communication across time and space.
Gus’s computer had been relegated to the back room when Dot had come home for the year. The back room was a former porch that housed Gus’s quilts and quilt patches. So now it was also a computer room. Another strange and beautiful juxtaposition, the piles of quilt blocks and patches illuminated by the cool glow of a computer screen. Two preoccupations, separated by a century or more.
The computer was for Dot – and Abel. Gus didn’t use it anymore, but Abel was all over it. Like everything he did, largely unseen; he spent hours on it at night. Dot, as her father began to remember what hadn’t happened and forget what had, would follow the Internet trail of where he’d been, interested in what his interests were. She couldn’t make sense of it at first, but it soon became clear.
She said nothing to anyone. They’d think he was crazy.
Chapter 15
Seamus had a smile on his face.
The old man was going to take him to the fish.
In return, Seamus had promised everything Abel would need to catch the cod himself – including, of all things, a dory. Dories had a history as the workhorse of the east-coast fishery, the tiny twenty-eight-foot dory with high sides and a flat bottom, used in all weathers to transport boatloads of cod, hundreds of pounds at a time, to be sliced, gutted, and salted on the mother ship. When the mother ship was full, the dories were stacked up, one inside another, for space-saving transport to and from the harbour. People thought that dories could be tippy, because of their flat bottoms, but they weren’t. They gave a bumpy ride over the waves but in high seas were remarkably stable.
At first, they were rowed by oar, and then powered by one-cylinder engines, never more.
There was a dory revival going on – among people with more money than sense, rich people who spent their summers on the east coast of the United States and Canada. Old fishermen could never have afforded the new dories with their custom features, beautiful woodwork, and bright colours. Except for some catches from sport fishing, there was rarely an actual fish on their shiny flat-bottom decks.
No, the old man would not be getting a dory – new or old. You couldn’t put even one of them aboard a Red Island fisheries vessel. But Seamus had promised he would provide one – after The Hat Man showed him where the fish were.
Kidnapping and lying.
He’d let him have an inflatable if he insisted on going after a fish himself. Seamus was hoping the old man would be happy if they caught one on the fisheries vessel. He could stop feeling guilty then. And maybe let him go.
Or maybe not.
***
Jamieson was tempted by the thought of an iMac, but right now it was finding the bicycle that
was on her mind.
“We’ll talk about it.” She hesitated. “We’re on Abel’s trail,” she added, uncharacteristically offering up information.
“I thought the trail had gone cold.” Ian leaned farther out his window, his interest piqued.
“Maybe not,” said Jamieson. She indicated that he should park at the side of Nathan Mack’s coffee stand.
“What are we looking for?” Hy jumped out of Ian’s car. It wasn’t often that Jamieson invited her into an investigation. She spent more time discouraging Hy from sticking her nose into police business, but four people could get more accomplished than two.
“Either Abel…or his bicycle.” Jamieson was betting bicycle. She expected he had cycled here and got on the ferry, but the ferryman denied seeing him. So where had he gone? Where was he headed? They spent about a half-hour searching through the brush on either side of the ferry launch. Then they crossed the causeway and tried the other side.
No luck. Not surprising. The darkness from Quebec had created poor visibility. They were about to give up when the sun peeked out, shimmering on the sooty clouds, and Hy caught a glint of silver in the tall grass. She didn’t say anything to the others, who had their backs turned to her.
She dove into the brush and triumphantly tugged it out.
“Got it!” she yelled, wheeling it out onto the asphalt.
“Sure that’s his?” Ian looked skeptical. “It’s a girl’s.”
Hy shrugged at Jamieson. “Ask Gus. She’ll know.”
***
“I couldn’t rightly say.” Gus scratched her head. “All I know is he kept it there in the building. I got so I didn’t notice if it was there or not.”
“Let’s see if it’s there,” said Jamieson.
“Or not,” Hy chimed in, unhelpfully.
“There should be two over there.” Gus pointed to the far end of the building. “Right there.” She was pointing straight at an empty corner.
Cod Only Knows Page 9