Something Fishy

by Hilary MacLeod

  “Elmer?” No response.

  “Elmer?”

  They dithered about whether they should bash in the door.

  Finally they decided to call on Nathan Mack, the self-appointed volunteer paramedic. He came, and slipped a credit card into the doorjamb to flip the lock open.

  Everyone had huddled around him. Now they dropped back or turned with fingers pinching noses.

  The smell.

  Elmer was slumped forward, his trousers down around his ankles, his head slumped onto his thighs.

  “Is he done?”

  “Oh, he’s done, all right.”

  Nathan closed the door. Turned and shook his head at the villagers.

  “We’ll need Dr. Dunn to decide that.” Moira spoke through tight lips.

  Five of the women moved away, chattering in hushed surprise, chasing a cup of tea to soothe their palpitations. Moira stood white-faced and silent as a stone until the aged doctor came. From Winterside, he was at The Shores that day to make his regular house calls on his elderly patients. One advantage of being his age was that he’d seen everything. Twice. This was nothing he hadn’t seen before.

  “Straining too much,” was Dr. Dunn’s verdict. He could sympathize. At ninety-two, he himself was beset with a variety of intestinal and evacuation problems that come with old age.

  “Not that he couldn’t get it out,” the doctor stared with interest at the toilet bowl. “Looks like it came out easy, but there was too much of it and it musta gone on too long. Heart gave out.”

  Moira had turned away from the sight and the smell. Dr. Dunn kept up the refrain.

  “Overstraining. No doubt about it. Popped his heart. Not that unusual. Seen it plenty of times.”

  Elmer’s epitaph was doomed to be, “He Had To Go.”

  Jamieson charged into the hall, Billy Pride in tow.

  “Why wasn’t I told immediately?”

  The doctor and Nathan looked at each other. Shrugged.

  There was no phone in the hall.

  Nathan had phoned from his cell and left a message when Jamieson didn’t answer. She’d been strolling through a potato field, down a long red channel between raised rows of spuds, before her day officially began. When she got in the cruiser, she picked up the cryptic message. Nathan hadn’t felt right about leaving a death notice on a voicemail.

  “Bit of trouble at the hall,” he’d said. Nathan had then called Billy Pride to help him extricate Elmer from the loo. He couldn’t ask any of the women to do it. Billy flagged down Jamieson on the road, abandoning his lawn tractor for a vehicle more suited to the occasion.

  “Overstraining,” said the doctor, repeating himself for Jamieson’s benefit.

  Jamieson’s fastidiousness stood in the way of her police duties.

  She took a cursory look, made a few notes, and deferred to Dr. Dunn.

  It didn’t look like overstraining to her. More like the opposite.

  In spite of his cataracts, the doctor could see the doubt in her expression.

  “Seems odd, but quite natural. Seen it before,” he kept repeating. He passed her the signed death certificate, and she took it, with the slightest hesitation. There was that feeling in her stomach, but she ignored it. She generally tried to ignore her instincts. They were unreliable, unlike facts. Facts like the document in her hand.

  Moira stood ramrod-still. Mute.

  April couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She was wringing her hands in her apron, trying to understand what this man was saying to her, wanted from her.

  Anton sighed. He had not expected that getting kitchen help would be so difficult. He wasn’t looking for a chef or even a good cook, just someone who could do the menial work.

  She hadn’t let him in the door. Peeking over her shoulder, he could see the bouquet he’d sent, hanging limply in the heat of the wood range, and two of her six kids running around the kitchen with roses in their teeth.

  Pearls before swine.

  Even so, she was the best cook in The Shores. That she’d killed a man once with her white cake made her more attractive. Perhaps she could be used as a PR sidebar if she worked out.

  “What kind of food are you serving down there?” She shoved away her youngest, little Alice, who was wrapping herself up in April’s apron, always wanting something.

  Anton’s chest filled with pride.

  “Rare foods. Expensive foods. Dangerous foods.”

  April’s eyes opened in shock.

  It wasn’t anything Anton had said.

  Little Alice was poking her in a private place. She grabbed the girl’s hands and hung on to them.

  “Let’s say unusual foods – hedgehogs, the rooster’s coxcomb, bird’s nest soup.”

  “Bird’s nest soup?” Now April was shocked, without Alice’s help.

  “Bird’s nest…you don’t mean…”

  “Yes, I do. Perfectly edible. Good for you. Just the swallow nest, water, and sugar. It makes itself. Most expensive food in the world. And nutritious. Provides iron, calcium, and magnesium.”

  “Real bird’s nests?” April’s needle had caught in one groove.

  “We might even manage a local version. You have cliff swallows here, the type of bird that produces the nests in China.”

  “What they eat in China is their business. I don’t think we’ll be eating that here.”

  “I’m not asking you to eat it. I’m asking you to cook it.”

  “No, no.” She disentangled Alice who had wrapped her arms around April’s knees. The child didn’t like her mother’s attention going to anyone else. She was the baby, and spoiled.

  “I don’t cook what I won’t eat. I’ll have nothing to do with cooking a bird’s nest, fond as I am of birds. I wouldn’t be eating my house either, unless I scrubbed every inch.” Though she would have liked to, April despaired of that. A clean house with six kids? Impossible.

  “So you’re saying no?”

  “Yes. I mean no. I’m saying no.”

  After she shut the door on Anton, April turned to Murdo, who’d heard every word from his seat at the table by the window.

  “He wants me to cook birds’ nests. Did you ever hear of such a thing?”

  Murdo had heard of bird’s nest soup, but he didn’t say so. He’d never realized the bird’s nests were real. He was a fellow who would eat anything, but not that.

  Anton approached Fiona’s trailer.

  Fiona watched him stride over the cape towards her property. She looked at the lovely bouquet on the drop-down trailer table. An apology, she’d assumed. So what was it he wanted now? Was he going to start up again about moving the trailer or buying the land?

  But no. He had a job offer.

  “I am asking that you assist with food preparation.”

  Fiona flushed bright red.

  “Me? Why me? Surely you have a chef.”

  “Of course I do, but I need someone to assist.” He wondered, briefly, if she would fit in the kitchen, but remembered that his Japanese chef was small. It would balance out.

  “Why do you want me?” Fiona was savouring the moment. She wasn’t used to being wanted.

  She didn’t know she wasn’t Anton’s first choice.

  He didn’t make the same mistake he’d made with April, although it wouldn’t have bothered Fiona to be told she’d have to cook snails, eels, and bird’s nests. It was all food to her. And all food to her was good.

  Fiona didn’t even listen as Anton itemized the things she would be in charge of. She was just happy to be asked. She’d been sweetened up by the flowers she thought Anton had sent. He’d noticed the bouquet, with Lili’s signature lily, and looked puzzled. Must have been a mistake. If so, it was to his advantage now. She was in such a flush of pleasure, she forgot to thank him for them.

  “Of course I
’ll do it,” she said. “You can count on me.”

  Anton bowed, and Fiona clutched her hands together in pleasure. He turned with a slim, secret smile. You attract more bees with honey. She’d soon be eating out of his hand. Honey. The vinegar remained, unnamed, in his thoughts.

  He hoped he hadn’t made a bad mistake in hiring her. In other circumstances he’d never have considered her. He’d use her only as long as he had to.

  “I wish I’d been there.”

  Ian took his eyes off the computer screen, where he’d been hunting for cases of things falling from the sky and estimating the likelihood of such a thing ever happening at The Shores.

  “To see an old man, half-naked, dead on a toilet full of poo?”

  Hy considered the question for a moment.

  “Yes.”

  “Good Lord, why?”

  “Moira was there.”

  “And?”

  Hy was playing with the arm of one of Ian’s chairs, pulling it off and replacing it. His furniture was rickety castoffs of his parents’ Danish Modern furniture, not made for the swelling and shrinking in the damp of the seaside locale.

  “I don’t know. I guess I was wondering if she had anything to do with Elmer’s death.”

  “Oh, Lord.” Ian stood up and took a chair opposite her.

  “Don’t we have enough murders here, without seeing them around every corner?”

  “I didn’t say murder. I don’t believe Moira would murder anyone.”

  “There you go.”

  “No. No. I think it’s odd. With the beans and the chili cook-off. She always dumps her leftovers on Elmer.”

  Hy had told Ian the full details of the slow-cooking beans problem.

  “That wouldn’t kill anyone.” He’d said it at the time and he said it again.

  “Not necessarily. If you’re old and have a poor heart…”

  “Didn’t the doctor say overstraining? I thought this was quite the opposite.”

  “Yeah, but you can strain even when it’s flowing like soup.” Hy smiled, a cheeky smile.

  Ian grimaced. “Oh, please…”

  “I’m just saying Moira might have given him the beans.”

  “She might have given him the runs. That’s not murder.”

  “I know. But she would have known by then what the beans could do. And he was old and frail, not able to survive the attack. I wonder. That’s why I said I would like to have been there to judge for myself.”

  “What would you have done?”

  “I’d have asked her.”

  “In front of Jamieson?”

  “Maybe not in front of Jamieson.”

  “But in the moment?”

  “Yup…” she paused to consider. “Yup…but the moment’s passed.”

  “Viola who?”

  “Viola, my patroness.” Anton always avoided using her last name. It was too confusing. And she rather fancied the one-name recognition accorded to the likes of Cher or Celine.

  “I have to have a full name, or I can’t publish it.”

  Anton frowned. He grabbed Lester’s notebook and wrote. And wrote. And wrote. Lester wondered when he would stop.

  Finishing up with a few more letters, Anton gave the notepad back to Lester.

  “Feather…F…e…a...t...h…e…r…s…t…o…n…e…h…a…u…g…h.” Lester spelled it out, because he couldn’t say it. Featherstonehaugh. “Featherstonehuff?” he ventured.

  “Not even close.” Anton waved a hand dismissively.

  “Well, what is it?”

  “I can’t say.”

  “Why not?”

  Because he didn’t want to get into it, not now, nor any other time.

  “Get the spelling right. That’s all you need to do. You don’t have to pronounce it, do you?”

  “No.” Lester looked down at his notebook, the letters of the word in Anton’s scrawl getting smaller as they moved across the page and anticipated the edge of the paper.

  Anton called her Viola, and she’d always seemed fine with that. It suggested an intimacy with him that flattered her.

  Lester was there for an update on the guest list for the first dangerous dinner. Anton listed the other guests who had confirmed their appearance. Among them were the local riding Member of Parliament, the Minister of Tourism for Red Island, the Mayor of Charlottetown, Miss Harvest Festival, and a CBC reporter. Lester stopped writing for a moment. Why not himself? The mustard stain on his jacket lapel might have told him. Anton had observed the same stain on the same jacket the day after the fish fell from the sky. Besides, the CBC reporter was female and, like Miss Harvest Festival, a looker. Anton was hoping, even under Viola’s watchful eye, to discreetly make a little time with both of them.

  He was a man of large and varied appetite, but mostly in his mind.

  “Oh, I almost forgot this.” Lester held out a slim newspaper. “Thought you’d like to see it. You get a mention in today’s paper. Page five. Not a big mention, but everyone in Winterside reads The Last Post.”

  As Lester walked down the lane to his car, Anton opened the paper to page five of only six. There, next to the obituaries and above the start of the classifieds, was one small bit of editorial content. The headline: Two New Eateries Open in The Shores.

  Anton crushed the paper, threw it to the floor, and stamped on it.

  Eatery. His restaurant called an eatery.

  He shuddered. That wasn’t the worst of it.

  The other eatery was Fiona’s Fudge Palace.

  His eyes blazed and narrowed.

  I could kill her.

  Chapter Twelve

  Viola strode across the cape, her tiny stick figure full of purpose as she headed for Newton’s house. She’d seen it immediately when she woke up from her nap and gazed out the window at the shore, all blonde sand, bright umbrellas, and people looking unsightly in their brightly coloured bathing suits. She’d looked to the right of her at the large sea rock – a piece of the cape broken off and leading its solitary existence a few yards out from the shore. She’d gazed to the left, over the cape and straight at the wind turbine. She’d gone from musing to fury in an instant. Her anger had propelled her down the stairs, out of the house, and across the cape. She marched in rhythm to the blades.

  Whoosh thwarp. Whoosh thwarp. Whoosh thwarp.

  Whoosh thwarp. Whoosh thwarp. Thwack!

  A bloody seagull came straight at her, a feathered home run. The bird smacked her on the head. She yanked it off, and, dead gull in hand, marched with even more resolve toward Newton Fanshaw’s door. With her free hand she knocked sharply.

  He eased the door open a crack. She shoved the gull through it, right at his face. He let it drop to the floor, and there it lay, marking the boundary between them.

  “Do you know what you’re doing?” She thrust an arm and an accusing finger at the wind turbine. “That is a killing machine. That machine could kill hundreds of birds on this small stretch of shore alone.”

  Newton had hardly been listening. He’d been mesmerized by the number of wrinkles set firmly in her face and the dozens of small fissures that made weblike patterns all over it.

  “Hundreds.” He was referring to the wrinkles, not the soon-to-be dead birds.

  “Yes, hundreds.” As she said it, her wrinkles changed shape.

  “Gulls. Argentinian swallows. Herons. Plovers. They will all be victims of that…that…monster.” Finding the word, her mouth set in satisfaction.

  “You, Sir, are a murderer.”

  Newton straightened up to his full height. It gave him an inch on her.

  “I, Madam, am a scientist.”

  “And these birds are dying in the name of science?”

  “A small sacrifice to make for the betterment of mankind.”

  “You are
not making the sacrifice. These helpless creatures are.”

  Both looked down at the gull. It was a large, ungainly creature.

  “I would appreciate it, Madam, if you would remove yourself – and that – from my doorstep.”

  She picked up the bleeding bird. It was still warm and she thought she could feel a heartbeat. She hugged it to her.

  “You, Sir, have not heard the last of this.”

  “Oh, yes, I rather think I have.” His eyes pierced into hers. “Oh, yes,” he repeated, “I think I have.” He spoke without thinking about what he meant. He didn’t really mean anything by it. It seemed the thing to say – out of a movie script, not real life.

  She spun around and strode away, head down, refusing to look at or acknowledge the turbine. She didn’t see Fiona come out of her trailer, fresh white apron like a tent on her body.

  Smack.

  Viola rammed right into her, and ricocheted backwards, head tingling unpleasantly from the encounter with Fiona’s solid flesh.

  Viola looked at Fiona as if she were to blame.

  “Get out of my way, you tub of lard.” She shoved by and continued on, leaving Fiona with tears gushing down her cheeks. She was vulnerable to insult, neither her skin nor her soul thickened, in spite of what she’d put up with all her life.

  Newton saw it happen, heard it, but made no move to console Fiona. He watched Viola return along the cape, his eyes pinned on her. With each step his eyes narrowed, so that by the time Viola reached Anton’s, Newton’s eyes were almost shut tight. There was something about the woman he didn’t like. Something that went beyond her attitude and accusations. She was cold. Cold-blooded, he thought, like the birds she championed. He began to shiver, though the day was calm and warm. He couldn’t stop.

  He went inside and sat at the desk at the back of the dome. From the bottom drawer, he pulled out a plain brown paper envelope, and, from it, he slid a stack of what appeared to be black-and-white photographs.

  He leafed through them, until he found his favourite – the thumb-sucking one. A soft smile spread across his face. He stroked the photo. He looked for another. A moan escaped his lips, but, for the first time, the images did not comfort him. He remained cold on the inside, ice water flowing though his veins.