Who was he kidding? Everyone, everywhere, all over the world, had heard about the crazy old woman who had left her fortune to fish. The celebrity and gossip magazines went so far as to wonder what he, the handsome young lover, could have done wrong to be cut out of the will. There were insinuations that he had strayed with some young pop tart. It made his skin crawl. He fancied himself in a higher stratum of society, squiring Kate’s sister Pippa or one of their high-heeled friends.
There’d be no question of that now. He stuffed Viola’s housecoat into the suitcase, releasing the cloying smell of her perfume, mixed with smoke.
He tried to close the case, but couldn’t, and so left it yawning open. He threw her journal on top, until he decided what to do with it.
He’d learned a few things from that journal. A few things that might be useful.
As he pounded down the stairs, the journal jumped off its perch and skittered under the bedroom chair. There it lay, half-hidden and waiting for the next stop on its travels.
From the huge window illuminating the stairwell and looking out toward the sea rock, Anton spied Hy circling the house. Fueled by Jamieson’s suspicions that murder, not natural causes, had killed Viola, Hy had come to see if she could find out anything Jamieson hadn’t. Anton’s car was there, but there was no answer to her knock, and the door was locked, so she was taking a look in all the windows.
“Of course, I am enchanted that you have come to see me.” Hy was shocked. He had come out the back door and slipped up behind her as she was peering in the French doors. He opened them up and motioned her in. “I don’t for a minute think it is because of my charms. Now, if perhaps I had inherited Viola’s fortune…”
“I have money of my own, thank you.” Hy almost never brought it up, but he was irritating her.
“Then perhaps I should be flirting with you.” How much money could she really have? He looked at her, dressed in shorts and a sweatshirt. Not enough.
Hy ignored the comment. When she said she was going down to Anton’s, Ian had suggested she flirt with him to see what she could find out.
“Be careful, though,” he’d said. “He could be a murderer.”
“I’ve handled them before,” she said.
“And nearly got yourself killed. I better come with you.”
“How am I supposed to flirt with him if you’re there?”
“How about I give you fifteen minutes with him and then knock on the door?”
“Okay. Sure you’re not jealous?”
“Only a little.”
So here she was, partly because she was responding to what she considered a challenge from Ian. She also felt she could find out a lot about a person by observing them at close quarters. Did Anton have the killer instinct? Were there any clues in the house? She felt quite safe – because there had been no charges laid, and until there were, any murderer would be on his best behaviour.
“I’ve come because I’m curious. Maybe I can even help you out. I’d like to figure out what’s happened here. A natural death and an accident, probably, but you never know – ”
“Do you think then that I might be a murderer? You are brave to be here, in that case.”
“I don’t know. You might be.” A flippant reply. It made him admire her more, this vibrant redhead. “I can see why you might – misguidedly – have killed Viola.”
“And that means?”
It was an awkward moment, punctuated by the backdoor squeaking open.
“Delivery,” came a shout from the kitchen.
“Excuse me. I must attend to this.”
Her nerves betrayed her. She had to go to the bathroom. She couldn’t ask. Or wait. She’d never make it. She shot up the stairs.
She shoved open the first door. Success. When she came out, she peeked into the next room. The striped silk pyjamas gave it away. Anton’s room. In the next, there was a suitcase on the bed, packed but open. A bunch of old lady’s clothes. Hy slipped into the room. The possessions of a dead woman, wafting the smell of cigarettes into the room. She stroked the silk of an aqua blouse. Good silk. Not what you’d get in Walmart.
She heard the screen door slam, and it gave her a start. She relaxed at the sound of the two men talking outside.
What clue could she possibly hope to find here?
She turned to leave the room, and her foot hit something. She looked down.
A fawn kid-leather book. Hy grabbed it and flipped it open. Black ink. The hand was neat and tiny, so tiny it could hardly be read.
First page. “Happy news.”
A few pages in: “…parasite…”
The sound of a van door slamming shut.
Flipped to the last entry. The day she died.
“Little bastard. I…” a word Hy could not make out. “…him…”
The delivery van’s engine purred to life.
She couldn’t read the next word either. It looked like “like.”
“…and he…death…”
The screen door squeaked open.
Hy looked out the window. The turbine blades were spinning directly into the room, as if advancing on it, shafts of shadow slicing through the light.
The screen door slammed closed. She closed the diary and stretched her arm forward to replace it in the suitcase, but stopped. Perhaps she should put it back on the floor. Maybe it had never been in the suitcase. Maybe Anton didn’t know about it. Hy was as curious as a cat. A clue, maybe, and what a clue. She couldn’t leave the book behind. Besides, it wasn’t Anton’s, so it wasn’t theft. She knew it might be evidence, but even that didn’t stop her. There had been no charges. She stuffed the book into her large shapeless red leather bag. She shimmied down the stairs, but the stairs weren’t built for speed. She slipped and took the last three stairs on her ass.
Her purse went sliding across the slick hardwood floor.
Anton Paradis picked it up and held it above her, one finger hooking the strap.
“I was using the bathroom.” She could use it again now. He’d scared the piss out of her, grabbing her bag like that. She reached for it, even before standing up. He yanked it out of her grasp. Cat and mouse. Unfortunately, she was the mouse.
“Did you find it?”
Her head went dizzy at his question. She slumped back on the floor.
“What?”
“The bathroom, of course.”
She nodded. “Uh hmm.” Keeping her lips closed in an attempt to swallow back her breathlessness.
“Odd, because there isn’t one upstairs.”
She flushed red. Then recaptured her presence of mind.
“If there isn’t, I must have peed in a porcelain vase.” It had looked a bit like one.
He smiled. A smile of superiority.
“Just testing. Now, where were we?” He extended the purse. She snatched it.
“We know nothing about Viola. I thought you might tell us more.”
“We? Us?”
“My friend Ian and I.”
“You mean that man peeking in the window?”
Hy turned, and there was Ian, looking flustered, arm half-raised, not sure whether to knock or not.
Anton strode over and opened the French door. He smiled. It was not very convincing.
“Please, join us. I think we may have been waiting for you.” He turned to Hy.
“Your backup?”
She shrugged. Smiled stupidly. Weak, but it was all she had. Especially since she couldn’t concentrate on the moment. Grinding through her mind was “I something him like… I something him like…”
The journal was burning a hole in her bag. At least that’s what it felt like. She kept looking down at it, convinced that the sharp angles poking at the leather were easily recognizable as the stolen journal.
Anton’s cell phone rang. He checked a t
ext message.
“I’m afraid we’ll have to do this another time,” he said, ushering them with an extended arm toward the French doors where Ian had come in.
“The delivery wasn’t correct. I have to make some calls.”
Hy and Ian both were happy to leave, Hy anxious to get a proper look at the book. How she’d return it, she didn’t know. The suitcase was very poorly packed. Maybe he wouldn’t even miss the journal.
He didn’t miss it, because he knew exactly where it had gone. As Ian drove Hy up the Shore Lane, Anton was upstairs, staring with something like a smile at the suitcase. The journal had begun its travels and, with luck, would cast suspicion in the right direction.
The journal’s contents had come as quite a surprise to him. He’d thought it should get into someone else’s hands – Jamieson’s preferably – but he knew he couldn’t be the one to put it there. Not as long as he was a suspect. It would be crude.
This was perfect. That McAllister woman wouldn’t be able to keep what she read to herself, and what she would read should shift the blame. If anyone was guilty of murder, it was Newton, not him. That certainly was the way it would look to anyone who read the diary. He’d found it pretty convincing himself.
He hadn’t planned it this way, but it had worked out well.
He went to the kitchen in search of the turkey pineapple casserole. Of all the village women’s offerings, it was – to his surprise – the most palatable.
Chapter Eighteen
Newton looked almost happy as he circled the tower, with the turbine blades sailing around above him. That old bat hadn’t managed to do a thing about it. Now she was gone, and it was still here, powering energy into his home, storing energy to sell to the Province.
Whoosh, thwarp. Whoosh, thwarp. Whoosh, thwarp.
The sound of the turbine was the sound of more than money to Newton. Some people claimed these machines caused headaches, and worse, cancer, but he didn’t believe it. Just a bunch of NIMBY whiners. He put a hand on the cold metal of the tower and felt a rush of warmth, a heady feeling, like being in love. Newton had only experienced a strangled version of that with his ex-wife Mary, but this, this feeling, electrified him. He stroked the cold metal and stared up at the blades.
It was as if the turbine had turned on him. This wasn’t the feeling he was used to, the union of man and machine.
He became dizzy, clinging to the tower as if it were a life preserver, and he at sea on a rough ocean.
He could not pull his eyes away, and as long as he could not, he would not be free of this dizzy feeling. It was pulling him in and thrusting him out at the same time, as the blades carved their relentless path.
Whoosh, thwarp. Whoosh, thwarp. Whoosh, thwarp.
He felt as if he might be sucked up from the ground to the top of the turbine, sucked up, spun around, and discarded.
He tore himself free, his usually cold body in a sweat of heat, his head spinning… He stumbled to the dome.
Behind him stood Fiona, watching and wondering if she should follow.
“I something him like…I something him like…” Hy was looking at the journal as she kept repeating the phrase. “And he something death.”
“You’re not getting anywhere that way, except to drill what you’re saying into your brain and close it to new possibilities.”
“You try. Look at this.” She held the book out to him. He put both hands up, palms forward, rejecting the offer.
“Bad enough you stole it. I’m not getting my fingerprints on it.”
“You’re a real pal.”
“I am, and if I’d known you took it, I would have made you put it back.”
“Oh, yeah. Oops, Anton, I seem to have picked this up by accident. Must have stuck to the toilet paper.”
“You will have to explain it.”
“First I have to decipher it.” She jumped up. “Magnifying glass. Of course.”
Ian kept one in a pencil holder on his computer desk. Hy grabbed it and placed it over the page, moving it up and down until she got the best focus.
“I think the two ‘something’ words are the same word, more or less.”
Ian came and stood beside her.
“Looks like a ‘g.’’.”
“Then an ‘i.’ See the dot. I gi’ him like. I gi’ him like. He gi’ death.”
“This is like a word game.”
“Give, give, give, that’s what it is. ‘I give him like. He gives me death.’”
“Life. Not like. Life. ‘I give him life. He gives me death.’”
“So now that we’ve figured it out, what does it mean?”
“For starters, who is he? Look, Hy, don’t you think we better give this to Jamieson?”
“Why?”
“For the same reason you’re interested in it. It may mean something.”
“Yup, and I want to be the one to figure it out.”
“It’s stolen property.”
“How can you steal from a dead person?”
“Lots of ways.”
“I borrowed it.”
“If Jamieson decides there has been a murder here, that will be stolen, withheld evidence.”
“I’ll cross that causeway when I get to it.”
“Hy…”
“Ian…” She grinned. He grinned back, shaking his head.
Impossible. She was impossible. Another reason he liked her.
The California redwood table was polished to a mirror shine, not a smudge on it. The setting sun was shining across it and the glow lit up the silverware, simple and elegant. Anton let the environment do the work of establishing the setting. One row of guests looked out on the shore, the midnight-blue water, puffs of foam slipping over the golden sand, tinged with pink. Magnificent. The sun, spilling down over the cape, tipping the steel roofs of the cottages behind, where the other row of guests looked out. Giant hay bales smacked with a kiss of orange sunlight.
Perfect. Except for Fiona’s trailer.
Anton patted the napkins – pure white linen, fanning out of the generous wine goblets.
The guests arrived, together, in two limousines—a party Anton had not mentioned, because they had requested strict privacy. Anton was able to provide it only so far. Stretch limousines had never been seen before in The Shores. Not even one, certainly not two in tandem. Everyone would notice.
“Did you ever?” Gus was on the phone to Estelle, who had missed the cars going by. Gus was disappointed. She’d wanted to chat about them. She invited Estelle over to look at the limousines through her big picture window.
Estelle arrived in time to see the women getting out of the cars.
“High heels.” Estelle took a long breath. “Long dresses and high heels. Imagine.”
“You don’t have to imagine. It’s right there in front of you.”
Between holding their dresses out of the sand, and negotiating the soft surface in heels, the women were having a hard time of it.
Anton, watching from inside, became tense and tight, infuriated all over again by Fiona. If he’d been able to use a helicopter this could have been avoided.
He charged outside.
“Excuse me,” he said to the first woman, a blonde in her forties. He scooped her up and carried her inside, while she giggled and became quite breathless. He deposited her in the lounge, and went to get the next one, a redhead in her fifties, who responded in the same manner. Fortunately there were only three. The last, another blonde in her twenties, giggled in an even higher register than the previous two.
The three ladies were delighted. The men followed, put out that they hadn’t provided the same service. They were all considerably older than Anton, and not nearly as fit. They were also all married, but not to the women they were with. That was the reason for the secrecy.
C
ocktails and the amuse-bouches course went smoothly. The air outside was chilling, but the setting sun glowed into the room and warmed it.
One of the guests dropped her drink at a banging and rattling of the French doors. There was Fiona, holding a placard. It was a big white cardboard sign, attached to a piece of driftwood. On one side, it read:
“Anton Does’nt Pay His’ Wage’s”
On the other:
“Anton’s’s Worker’s Cheated”
She was marching in front of the glass doors, displaying first one side of the sign and then the other. The six guests and Anton stood inside, unmoving, their mouths open. Anton sprang for the French doors, and not giving a thought to appearances, snatched the sign and attempted to rip it apart. It resisted. So did Fiona, grabbing at the sign, trying to get it back. Anton crushed it, pulled off the driftwood handle, threw it all to the ground and stomped on it, while Fiona clutched him, trying to stop him.
“Get out,” he yelled, pointing up the cape. “Get the hell off my property or I’ll call the police.”
“Good. Then we can talk to them about my wages. Until then, I’ll sit here with my sign.”
Anton felt like he was about to explode. Inside, his guests had been watching the scene. He had better return and try to salvage the evening. He locked the French doors behind him, and tossed the key into a fake fern pot.
With apologies, “a little misunderstanding,” he refreshed their drinks and ushered them into the dining area.
There were “oohs” and “aahs” over the redwood table and over the views. The men gallantly gave the sea view to the ladies, and took the hay bales for themselves.
Anton had just served the sea turtle soup. He gave the usual rundown: dangerous not only in itself, a salmonella carrier, but also full of pesticides and heavy metals. He then smugly assured his guests that these sea turtles came from a pesticide-free zone. No one questioned if there were such a place. The guests were lapping up the soup made from the jellyfish that ate the algae that ate lord knows what, when there came more battering and vibrating on the big French doors facing the shore.
Something Fishy Page 15