Dying for Murder

by Suzanne F. Kingsmill

  “I wonder why they call it Spaniel Island?” asked Martha. It was a rhetorical question that to our surprise actually garnered an answer. David had materialized at our sides and was gazing at the island with what looked like relish, his green hoodie now thrown back to reveal a circle of bright white hair outlining the bald spot on the top of his head. When he saw us looking at him he rearranged his long thin face and aquiline nose to look more or less neutral. I wondered why he had bothered.

  “It’s the quintessential story of a dog and a boy,” he said. “Originally the island was called Little Island, rather unimaginative, if not descriptive. It is actually only ten kilometers long and maybe a kilometer wide, off its diet.”

  He leaned against the railing of the boat and continued. “It was 1949. A mother and father and their three young children and the family Springer Spaniel were on the beach.” He pointed to the island. “See? The south end on the sea side. They had found a nice place on the white sands, very close to where a tidal creek penetrated into the island. It’s actually still there today. When the tide is going out these creeks become fast moving rivers. The little boy, the youngest, crawled over to the creek and the sandy embankment gave way and he fell in.”

  Martha’s face was illustrating every detail of the story and I almost laughed, but it wasn’t exactly the right moment to do that.

  “The tide was going out, and the little boy was being carried out to sea and was going under. The parents couldn’t swim. That’s when the spaniel catapulted himself into the creek and swam to the child, grabbing it by the back of his T-shirt and swimming with the current until it was weak enough to let the dog and the boy cross over to some islands of sand that had been exposed by the tides. It was a little miracle and the powers that be renamed the island in honour of the spaniel.”

  “Why didn’t they name it after the animal’s actual name?” said Martha, her face a mixture of worry, indignation, and joy.

  “Because the animal was named Bunchkins,” said David as he reached back and pulled the hoodie up over his head. The wind had sprung up and I wished I had a hoodie too.

  We stood in companionable silence for a while, and then I said, “What brings you to Spaniel Island?”

  He looked at me, his eyebrows almost meeting as they rose in a quizzical salute, as if he was trying to size me up. “I’d like to say that I come here quite often to rejuvenate, which is true, but this time I am here on some unpleasant business. In such a place of beauty it seems a shame that the banalities of life should intrude.”

  I couldn’t think of anything to say to that little bomb and, in fact, he didn’t let me. He wanted to know why we were here. After I told him he chuckled. “I hope you don’t think it will be a vacation rooming in with that lot.”

  Hearing him call my research a vacation grated on me, but I let it go. Instead I said, “You know them?”

  He chuckled again and the smile on his face was not soft and warming — it was jeering and predatory and it made me very uncomfortable. “All a bunch of prima donnas,” he said and glanced at me again as if to say “Are you one too?”

  I tried to imagine a research station full of prima donnas and couldn’t. Biologists may be eccentric, even opinionated, but most of them would not be classified as prima donnas. Although, maybe not. He seemed to be reading my mind.

  “All right. Not ALL prima donnas. But they are a strong bunch of individuals and they make me uncomfortable always talking about their research as if it was the only thing on earth.” Did I detect a hint of anger in his voice?

  “They’re just a harmless and dedicated bunch of biologists,” Martha said helpfully. I glowered at her. She had just pigeonholed my life in one lighthearted sentence.

  “Dedicated? Yes,” he said and turned to stare at us. “But harmless? No.”

  chapter three

  We came into the interior of the island through a tidal creek that meandered and wound its way through the glistening of exposed mud banks — the tide was falling and the tall, thick reeds that lined the banks as far as the eye could see were giving up the secret places where little crabs and other crustaceans took refuge. The creek was narrow and the current was fast and it took some skill to drive the boat without bashing into a mud bank. The reeds encompassed us so that we could no longer see the island. We were essentially in a wandering maze, only the cobalt blue sky to show us there was another world outside the reeds. And then we broke out of the reeds to the higher ground of the island proper and the end of the tidal creek. After we landed at a rickety wooden dock, built on stilts to allow for the tides, we found ourselves in a relatively treeless area, on bare, compact sand with numerous buildings spread about — mostly sheds and garages — and lots of ATVs. It was really quite ugly and I wondered what I had got myself into. Trevor had scooted off the boat with lightning speed, after a lightning fast “Welcome to the Compound” speech, and disappeared into one of the outbuildings. But David stood nearby, presumably waiting for a ride, just as we were.

  Even at 6:00 at night it was blisteringly hot. The tangy smell of the salt mixed with the pungent decaying smell of the mud and the ugliness of the landing area made it difficult to believe that this was, in fact, a beautiful island, or so Duncan had said. Martha and I found a tiny scrap of shade to hide in and waited. We heard them before we saw them — the unmistakable roar of engines with mufflers no longer used to heavy labour. It wasn’t long before two ATVs came barrelling around one of the sheds and stopped in front of David, who was lounging against a picnic table incongruously placed so it had a view of one of the sheds. David slowly rose to his feet as a woman with gossamer blonde hair and a scary pale face extricated her considerable girth from one of the ATVs and glanced over at David before taking in Martha and me and our luggage. “Good thing we brought the trailer,” she said.

  I glanced at the ATVs. One of them was pulling a rusty, dilapidated, old wooden trailer. It didn’t take a calculator to see that two large women, me, David, our luggage, and the other driver were going to tax the taxi service. And I knew what that meant. Being the smallest, I’d get the trailer. The other driver waved at us as he got off the ATV and walked out of sight behind one of the sheds. I watched in curiosity as the woman more or less ignored us and limped over to welcome David, cane in hand but not being used. She stood square in front of him for a long time, seemingly searching his face for something, before abruptly reaching out and giving him a hug. David stiffened at first and then melted into the hug as if they had been doing this dance all their lives. I wondered how they knew each other, this tall thin man and this tall fat woman.

  Before I could muse on this question any longer David called over to us. “Meet Stacey. The best damned researcher this side of the picnic table.” We stared at him and he laughed. Stacey was frowning but then finally found her manners and we all shook hands.

  “You’re the Indigo Bunting lady, right?” Her voice was soft and high, like a flute on the wind. It seemed at odds with her large size.

  I nodded.

  “Been here before?” She was holding her cane in her right hand, as if she was about to stab someone with it. It was an odd way to hold a cane.

  “No.”

  “Only two real rules. One: make sure you know the location of everyone’s study site. We don’t want you barging in where you aren’t wanted.” Which sounded as though it was everywhere by the tone of her voice. “And two: never ever break the first rule.” For some reason she made me feel as though I was back in kindergarten and getting my knuckles rapped — metaphorically speaking of course — by the time I arrived in kindergarten they had long since stopped rapping little knuckles. I wondered what her research project was. You can tell a lot about a scientist by what they are studying. I realized in hindsight that it would have been a good idea to get a list of all the people and their research projects. I’d have to search them on the Internet. I had been told there was Internet on the island. I just hoped it was high speed. Stacey motioned for us to l
oad our luggage and, as Martha and I struggled with Martha’s suitcase, she and David stood huddled together.

  It seems we were waiting for the second driver.

  “Shit’s going to hit the fan now he’s here.” He’d sneaked up on us and I jumped a mile. I looked at the driver, whose flamboyant hat was hard on the eyes — crimson and royal blue with a lime green logo of a pelican in flight. I thought at first he was about fifteen, but his close-cropped brown hair was beginning to thin so I had to revise my estimate upward to maybe twenty-five.

  “What shit?” I asked, knowing he was counting on me to ask. I mean, it was like a red flag waving at a bull. It would have been hard not to.

  “Always hits the fan when those two are together. They love to hate each other.” I glanced over at Stacey and David. He was handing her a yellow envelope. She was gripping his shoulder and what little blood had been in her face to begin with had drained away. She dropped her hand and leaned over the picnic table as if she was catching her breath.

  “Darcy,” said the man beside me, as if he was talking about buying a head of lettuce. I looked down at him; he was a good four inches shorter than I was.

  “Pardon?”

  “The name’s Darcy. Who might you be?”

  I introduced Martha and myself.

  “Right. The Bunting Lady. Well. Welcome. As you can see, Stacey isn’t much of a social coordinator. That’s why I came along.”

  I bit my tongue and did not point out to him that he had skedaddled as soon as he arrived and that Stacey had at least stayed put.

  He laughed. “Had to pee.”

  I looked at him in astonishment.

  “What else could you have been thinking?” He laughed again. “Aren’t you going to ask me what I do?”

  “What do you do?”

  “I’m Stacey’s assistant.”

  “And what do you assist her with?”

  “Flowers, plants, grasses, admin stuff …”

  So she’s a botanist, I thought. Methodical, detailed. And probably not a risk-taker, at least not in the field.

  I was about to ask what she was working on, but he broke in. “Better get those two back to the research station before they either kill each other with affection or with venom.” David and Stacey were hugging again. He winked at me and called over to Stacey to get a leg on, which seemed a little cruel given the state of one of her legs.

  As I had expected, I got the trailer. I arranged myself well away from Martha’s killer luggage. One wild ride around a corner and it was likely to pinion me. We were barely out of the compound when the island showed its other face, the one you want to look at and live with forever.

  It was a riotous mass of towering live oaks and hip-high palmetto, where the roads were mere trails, packed sand carpeted with live oak leaves. You could almost see the breadcrumbs if you tried hard enough. It was easy to imagine that nothing had changed on this island since the days of Columbus. No signs of civilization except for the trails. Not even electrical or telephone wires marred the view. I lay back against the head of the trailer and looked up at the magnificent oaks, leaves carving a lacey pattern in the sky. As we drove down the trails the only thing out of place with this timeless, ageless island were the ATVs.

  My reverie was broken by Martha, who was yelling at me. “Darcy says the island residents formed a co-operative and designed the development to have a tiny environmental footprint. No paved roads, underground hydro wires, and none of the cottages are allowed to be seen from the beach.”

  It took her multiple tries to get this across to me above the roar of the ATVs, which were certainly not environmentally friendly. But the underground wires were good, and the prohibition on building anything with a sea view was pretty impressive. I wondered how many of the co-operative had railed against that. I was lost in thinking about myself walking down this trail at the dawn of time, when the ATV screeched to a halt and Darcy pointed at something ahead of us. I had to squint because it was pretty small, whatever it was, but as the vehicles inched closer I saw it was an armadillo, that very prehistoric looking creature with the funny back. It meandered across the road, looking lost and vaguely like Piglet with a set of armor. It scurried into the palmetto and was lost to sight. But we could still hear it rustling, the same way its ancestors had done for countless generations. What is it that makes the passing of time, huge amounts of it, seem so sad and melancholy? Is it that such vast amounts of time are something we can never know and bridging the gulf between our own small lives and eternity is impossible? We can only imagine. Wow, I thought. This island is pretty powerful. Not that my musings really hold much water. It’s a barrier island after all, and barrier islands come and go, shaped by the wind and the ocean’s currents. Regardless, this island had been around longer than I had, and the armadillo’s ancestors were older than mine.

  I spent the rest of the trip watching the live oaks recede down the trail and was somehow disappointed when we reached our destination. I shouldn’t have been though. It was pretty impressive and not what I had imagined at all. In my head I had seen the station overlooking the sea, but since this wasn’t allowed I had altered my vision to match the ugly one we had seen at the compound. The research station was a series of tasteful wooden buildings built seemingly at random among the live oaks that soared overhead. But the centre of attention was a large wooden staircase that snaked its way up the face of a dune to a handsome log building that poked its roof out through the canopy. I had read up a bit on barrier islands and this one was essentially long and narrow. Behind the beach, which we hadn’t seen yet, were a series of dunes that marched inland. The further inland they were the more clothed in vegetation they became. It was this vanguard of dunes that the large building was perched on, its underbelly exposed to anyone looking up at it. Apparently the island residents had been loath to cut down any trees, because everything seemed positioned so as to avoid any of the trees. Or so I surmised.

  There was a whole bevy of ATVs at the bottom of the main staircase, like a miniature army taking a break in operations. It was dinnertime. We could hear voices wafting on the breeze — the windows were all open. I was hot and sticky and cranky and feeling decidedly unenvironmental, and open windows meant no air conditioning. Stacey made way for Darcy and the trailer, with me still in it, and he pulled up in front of the stairs to the dining room. As soon as he stopped, in the still evening air a horde of no-see-ums descended on us and my skin began to itch all over. No-see-ums, punkies, sand flies — those irascible insects, with their gigantic jaws, that are no bigger than a grain of salt — the entire insect, not the jaws. If you’ve never met a punkie you would swear you had some awful itching rash or worse, because they are really hard to see. In fact there’s a story about two medical students on a wilderness trip in Newfoundland who actually thought they had come down with some exotic and nasty disease after being bitten by no-see-ums. They cut short their trip and made a beeline for the nearest emergency room where they were laughed all the way out of the waiting room.

  We went up those stairs faster than they deserved — as I sprinted by I could tell they were beautifully made out of two-inch cedar — just to get out of the clutches of those swarming no-see-ums. Ah, the wilderness, blessed with beauty and cursed with biting insects. I shivered and raced into the dining room ahead of everyone. Unfortunately for me my entrance coincided with the moment when everyone was taking a break from talking, and they all stared at me as if I was an apparition. The ten seconds it took for Darcy to land at my side was an eternity, both to me and to them. Their curiosity was palpable.

  But most of them lost interest and turned back to their meal when I didn’t do a pirouette while standing on my hands. At least, that is, until Martha catapulted into the room, frantically waving her arms around and jerking her body about as if she was convulsing. She gave me a venomous look as if I had been the one to force her to come down here in the first place. Once again everyone was looking at us and I felt an overwhelming
urge to stand on one of the tables and announce who Martha and I were. So I did. Not stand on the table, but I just bellowed out the news that I was a zoologist studying buntings and I looked forward to meeting everybody while I was here. I mean, no one else was introducing us. I had to break the ice somehow. I felt Martha clutching at my arm.

  “Jesus, Cordi. What was that all about?”

  “Just trying to be friendly.”

  “You never do that. Ever.”

  The building we stood in was a wooden panabode and it was dark, even though the sun was still high in the sky. The windows were small and there weren’t many of them, and it was hot as hell in there. I could see sweat glistening on just about all the diners as the stark electric lights strung from the ceiling made a stab at turning the darkness into light. Six wooden picnic tables filled up most of the space but only two were full — the two farthest away from the hot kitchen. What with the cramped space I shuddered to think what it would be like when every seat was taken. The pungent smell of sweat was covering the smell of the food, but by the looks of it, it was some kind of fish. Actually, it didn’t look half bad and I kind of wished I could smell it.

  Darcy motioned us over to one of the tables. “This is the mess,” he said. I surveyed the tables quickly. Two people deep in conversation occupied the one closest to me and I felt reluctant to interrupt, so I chose the other table. It was occupied by a diminutive redhead sporting a shiner that clashed with her hair. She seemed distracted, or maybe depressed. Whatever it was had made her face look sour and pinched. I wondered what could have happened to her. She was so young. Maybe twenty-three. Too young to be embittered, surely? She was sitting alone at our end of the table, as if by choice, and at the far end was a man who was engrossed in a magazine with the headline: “Sex and Lies.” Stocky, plain looking with unkempt, long, straggly black hair and a heavy beard shadow, he didn’t seem the type to be reading a gossip rag.