Pieces of Hate (A Wendover House Mystery Book 4)

by Jackson, Melanie

  He grinned. His deeply trenched face was working on some new smile lines.

  “No thanks. Kelvin left it here for a while but I had to send it back. People were complaining about the smell. Put them right off their suppers, it did.”

  So much for that idea.

  “Need a ride home?” Bryson asked. He was smiling again. “The ferry is long gone by now.”

  “Yes. If you don’t mind my stopping at the store first. I need some coffee and tennis balls. Poor Barney is so desperate for things to play with that he has taken to chasing barnacles.”

  Bryson chuckled.

  “The shifts some of us are put to.”

  “And I better get Kelvin some catnip or I’ll never hear the end of it.”

  Bryson picked up the check. He’s old fashioned that way.

  “Tess,” he asked as we stepped out into the headache haze, “do you think we’re going to have another storm tonight?”

  I opened my mouth to insist yet again that I had no control over the weather but changed my mind about what I was going to say.

  “Maybe. And if there is, it might be a good thing if no one was out in it.” I said this pointedly since Bryson and Everett made periodic whisky runs into Canada.

  “Okay. I’ll pass the word to stay off the water.”

  It only occurred to me later that he might not mean that he would call his brother and delay their whisky run, but that he would also put the word out among the fishermen.

  “It’s a good thing that you aren’t a timid woman.”

  No, I’m not timid. But I am not insanely brave either. And sometimes it would be nice to pretend that I am a little timid so someone else could be courageous.

  Chapter 4

  The sun was lost in leaden vapor and the wynd was sullen and winter cold. Belatedly I was smote with remorse for my avarice, but repentant as I was there came no forgyvness and my acts lived in my mynd with the frytful vitality of a present evyl deed. The storm built itself around the greed and shameful fear which made me murder those wretches before my crew.

  —from the unbound journal of Halfbeard

  It didn’t take more than a glimpse of a bottle of cognac to convince me that Bryson deserved a reward for bringing me home since he was protecting and serving above and beyond the call of duty. But it would have to be a short reward. I didn’t want anyone on the water after dark and not just because it might storm. I had a creepy-crawly feeling at the back of my neck.

  Catnip, check. Coffee, check. No tennis balls, but a Kong—check. And cognac, big, big check. I also decided to try one of Blu Barry’s Truffles, though technically they shouldn’t be called truffles because of the conglomeration of nuts and candied “blu barrys” coagulated in a rather dubious nougat.

  The canned goods I ignored. Though I know that they are not actually old enough to have reached a state of decay, they still manage to give that impression. It must be the light that makes everything on the shelves appear dusty and faded, but I have no interest in eating anything that looks old enough and dented enough to have traveled in Paul Revere’s saddlebags.

  The younger Mrs. Mickle filled me in on the local gossip as she rang me up. Slowly. Though showing the early signs of senility, she was still the self-appointed record keeper of illegitimate births and marital infidelities. Not that she was inclined to ignore any other kind of misdeed, mayhem, or strangeness that happened in her realm. Mrs. Tudor’s piratical death vision got a full and probably greatly embellished telling, and I couldn’t escape until she had gnawed the story to the bone though I very much wanted to avoid hearing about it again.

  “There aren’t any whys without becauses,” she finished and tapped the counter with a calloused finger. “Mark my words.” And then she was off again.

  I think I gasped in the right places but didn’t add anything at the end of the performance except that I thought it might be coming on rain that night and hoped no one would be abroad. Mrs. Mickle’s eyes got very big and she nodded solemnly.

  I had a vision of my own as I stepped out of the shop, so clear it passed for divine—or perhaps diabolical—insight. There was a mass of clouds rolling in on the islands like giant boulders thundering down a mountain and the sun was driven into a boiling sea. The image was nourished into almost certain reality by the smell of ozone gathering in the air in spite of the sky being completely clear by that time.

  I shook the hallucination off, but disquiet remained. There was no fighting it when these moments happened and I surrendered to the inevitable. A storm was coming. Possibly something else as well and the thought of it made me cold.

  Bryson put away his cell and sniffed at the air as he reached for the cardboard box I had tucked under my arm. I hoped that he had begun passing the word while I shopped that people should stay off the water. I didn’t want to leave the task to young Mrs. Mickle alone, formidable gossip though she was.

  We took the direct route to the docks. It came as a bit of a shock to see people cavorting about in costumes in front of the Emporium. There were pilgrims and pirates, women in hoopskirts and bonnets that might have come off an old-fashioned Easter card, soldiers in red coats and soldiers in other color coats with coonskin caps carrying around very realistic muskets, all of which had likely been dragged out of people’s attics. There were some bows and quivers of arrows being toted by people in anachronistic dress. There were a lot of whiskers, beards, mustaches, and muttonchops, but these did not come from the attic. They were standard face-wear among certain islanders, though usually they did not gather all their beards in one place. The scene was absent any vendors selling ice cream or popcorn, but the street was as crowded and disorganized as opening day at the county fair and had the same air of expectation.

  The sight was more disconcerting that amusing. I was used to everyone in their proper place in proper dress. This trying on of other identities made the world seem skewed at a time when I wanted things to be normal.

  Could they truly be oblivious to the danger drawing in around us?

  The buildings seemed to know we were threatened. They huddled together as though wishing they could touch. I followed the boards of the Emporium all the way to the peak and the thick hoisting beam that stuck out like a gallows. It was black against the sky.

  The public address system had been hooked up, or perhaps was in process because I am pretty sure that grumblings about quahoggers being plumb brainless were not part of any official speech though it probably pleased Reverend Ezekiel Burke, a transplant from Salem who was mostly made of cartilage and ill will and the sourest creature our islands had ever been encumbered with.

  “They’ll need to fumigate if he stays long,” I muttered. “Can’t someone pass an ordinance?”

  The reverend was retired, which was a good thing because there was a lack of takers for his kind of religion and it was generally felt that his attendance was enough to disfigure any event. In part it was his charmless personality but it did not help his cause that he looked like someone had skinned a nightmare and then pulled it on over his skull. Certainly he looked alarmed and aware of danger. Of course, he always looked this way. I couldn’t imagine what kept him in the islands.

  I made a point of turning away from him. He doesn’t approve of my godless family and we don’t often speak. He could disapprove of me from sea to shining sea so long as he kept a civil tongue in his head when we were in public. In front of others I demand respect.

  Someone was hanging patriotic bunting on the railing in front of the Emporium and singing “Grand Old Flag” in a monotone so flat that you couldn’t get a spatula under it. The Emporium always looks vaguely like a memorial monument, or at least classical. It was built by a ship’s carpenter just after the civil war and was the sturdiest building in town. It was also the most impressive and had a nice echo when you stood under the overhang. It was where people forgathered when they had some large public event. Whether the Emporium wanted them or not. Another time and I might have hoisted myself
onto a convenient barrel and watched the train wreck.

  This was apparently a popular idea because Jonas and Saul, local brewmasters, did just that, making sure there was room in the shade for Amos, the Great Dane. As usual, the dog looked despondent. They must be out of beer again. Jonas, the jelly-bellied one, pulled out his portable checkers game and began to set up on the railing. The skeletal Saul, looking more than ever like he had been picked over by crows, turned to survey the colorful and strange spectacle with a slightly malicious eye.

  “What on earth are they…?”

  “Rehearsal for the Goose Haven Founders Day Pageant,” Bryson murmured when I kept gaping and wrinkling my nose at the growing scent of mothballs which was getting thick now that the choir had gotten organized and concentrated their smelly costumes in a large mass about ten feet to our right and downwind.

  His words recalled to mind that we were again due for the traditional, seasonal celebration. The news wasn’t welcome since I was supposed to give the keynote speech that year. I had a rough draft started a month ago, but it was very rough and I needed something polished by Friday. At the moment, that felt like an impossible goal.

  “God is merciless,” I muttered. “What, no gallows? No pillory? Where are the typhoid victims? The prohibitionists? I don’t think this is historically accurate.”

  “Don’t give them any ideas. We already have one Founders Day casualty,” Bryson muttered back. “Mrs. Biggs isn’t speaking to Mrs. Warwick. They both want to play the Indian maiden and the committee ruled in favor of Mrs. Warwick since Mrs. Biggs played her last year. Angered at the decision, Mrs. Biggs has taken her spear and moccasins and gone home.”

  Big cities have short memories, but not so little towns. These champions of good, old-fashioned values forgot them fast enough when it came down to deciding who got to be the princess. Things might be forgiven but they wouldn’t be forgotten. This feud could last decades. There was still anger from when the historical society had taken over the local museum from the descendant of the original founder who had turned out to be a scurvy knave who used funds earmarked for acquiring artifacts to repair a leaking roof. This might have been forgiven if the roof had been of period slate, but the old director was a fan of Southwest architecture and had opted for a tile rook imported from Mexico which is, I have to admit, a bit of an eyesore on the gray clapboard building.

  “What Indian maiden?” I asked against better judgment. “There was no Indian maiden in Goose Haven. Well, not after the white men came along. Probably not before then either. Nobody lived on the islands back then.”

  I knew this from doing preliminary research for my speech. And anyway both women were long past the age when they could pass for maiden anything so the quarrel was especially stupid.

  Bryson shrugged.

  “All I know is the insults are flying and the turbulence has spilled over to the historical society and museum, since each is refusing to work if the other one is there, and it’s thrown off everyone’s schedules.”

  And probably no one would be happy with the suggested compromise of having two Indian maidens.

  “For pity sakes, let’s make a dash for the docks before they see us and demand arbitration,” I urged. “I don’t want to get dragged into this.”

  “Now, Tess, you know I don’t dash.”

  But he didn’t dawdle either. Bryson knows all about the better part of valor and there were no winners in skirmishes like this one. An onlooker might have thought that I was herding Bryson for his boat, but really it was a question of who was herding whom.

  I wondered who else would end up as mortal enemies at the end of the affair. Events like this always spawned quarrels because there were way too many chiefs without any tact, and not enough Indians—and apparently too many Indian maidens—who could abide bossiness in silence.

  The reminder of the pageant and the fact that I hadn’t chosen a costume had put my other concerns briefly out of mind, but they reappeared the moment we got near the water. It wasn’t that I actually felt something bad would happen in daylight, but there was the sense that there was something under the waves. Watching. Aware. Nothing would get me out there after dark.

  I was also very aware of the enclosed shed of weathered gray wood. The islands have a lot of historic charm that somehow hasn’t carried over to this plain building that has no purpose except to hold the bodies of drowned fisherman until they can be removed. Actually, to hold dead anyone, and that likely included Mrs. Tudor.

  Who had died babbling about pirates. That couldn’t be good.

  Some people will stick their head in the sand and hold it there forever rather than admit to something they don’t like or weren’t expecting. I am not one of them, but I sure wished I could be. This kind of free-floating fear wasn’t dignified in someone who represented the founding family.

  “You’re being awfully quiet,” Bryson said. “This worries me.”

  “I got some cognac for us,” I said as we climbed aboard. It wasn’t actually cold, but I felt chilled and took a lap robe out of a locker and spread it over my legs while we cast off. I kept well back from the gunwales and did not peer into the water.

  “Good. I could use it. This will be a hard week. Saturday folks will be out decorating in the silent city and I shall have to be on hand to direct traffic and keep the peace. Hopefully the weather will be clear by then or it will be a muddy mess.”

  “Decorating?” I asked. “Where is Silent City?”

  “The cemetery.”

  The silent city—right. And he meant putting flowers on graves and weeding and straightening tombstones that tend to lean and topple over time. It was a local version of Tomb Sweeping Day, enacted on the anniversary of some triumphal skirmish or other since the weather would be too beastly for housekeeping tasks on the traditional date for funerary maintenance.

  Thankfully I was an islander. I didn’t need to care about this mainland tradition. Especially since I had real doubts that the body in the mausoleum was actually my great-grandfather.

  The Founders Day celebration was another matter. That was an island affair and I would have to find time to work on my speech, since I had stupidly failed to anticipate a cursed treasure washing up on my beach and promised to give it.

  The trip was utterly uneventful, discounting a few shrieking gulls who decided to relieve themselves while flapping overhead. Neither bomb hit its target but they drew frowns from both of us when they got too close. Perhaps because Bryson sensed my uneasiness with the advancing hour and my prediction of a storm, he did not really relax either and it was easy to read something into the seagulls’ frantic screeching.

  We got to the dock to find the boxes of groceries gone. Ben must have come down during the day and collected them. He always did this if I didn’t beat him down to the ferry. In some ways, Ben is very old fashioned and it is amusing as well as flattering that he persists in seeing me as a delicate female who can’t lift anything heavier than a purse.

  Things were eerily quiet as we walked up the path and Bryson commented on the strange seaweed that smelled so awful. It was much more dissolved and disgusting than it had been that morning.

  It was nice to have Bryson with me while I gathered up Barney from Ben’s place. Ben was either still sleeping or so involved in research that he didn’t answer my call. I knew he frequently left his front door open for air and so didn’t feel alarmed to find it that way, but the emptiness of his cottage felt strange. Usually there was some sign of habitation.

  We went up to the house where my carton of groceries waited on the stoop. I opened the door slowly. Kelvin sat in the middle of the foyer looking at me with large eyes that were probably saying something though I couldn’t guess what. He looked away only long enough for a quick nose rub with my unusually subdued puppy.

  Shaken and ill at ease, I poured out the cognac and suggested we be comfortable in the parlor, since the groceries could easily wait to be unpacked, but after a single drink Bryson admitt
ed that he needed to be away and I was actually glad to be alone with my thoughts. I was turning into a recluse just like my great-grandfather.

  The groceries were put up quickly and then I was left with nothing to do except work on my speech or look at boxes of documents, tasks which needed doing but for which I had little enthusiasm.

  Kelvin indicated by the patting of my ankle with mostly sheathed claws that he had been locked up indoors all morning and that he wanted to go out back and survey his domain, and since he went out, Barney also followed though hesitantly.

  Kelvin took care of some important cat business and Barney followed suit. It was convenient, if a little weird, to have a dog that buried his own messes.

  The quiet persisted. There was a wind but it was silent and even the waves’ crashes were muted.

  I noticed that the ground to my left seemed to be heaving and went to investigate. I wasn’t happy to find ants on the move out by the sunflowers. To begin with, one shouldn’t have ants on an island. But it was also annoying because the dispossessed could easily decide to take up residence in the kitchen while they were searching out new digs. And they were leaving their old home for good—larvae, leaf mold, a giant I assumed was the queen, everything was being disgorged from the ground.

  But they weren’t headed for the house. Intrigued at the exodus and wondering where they thought they were going, I followed them along the north wall of the garden where they stayed about twelve inches from the foundation and then up toward the hedge that ringed the cliff that housed the entrance to the smugglers’ cave. They passed between boulders I was obliged to scramble over or around, and I was necessarily slow since the rocks were not cemented in and it was a long fall if something gave way.

  Once over the rise and through the vines I forgot the ants, my attention being wholly taken up with the horde of seagulls massing on the tiny strip of steep, crumbling land at the top of the cliff. They huddled together on the high ground, terrified into silence but unwilling to take flight. There were also rodents and smaller birds bunching among them. It was as though they had been driven to the cliff’s edge and could go no further without falling into the sea.