COFFIN COVE a gripping murder mystery full of twists (Coffin Cove Mysteries Book 1)

by JACKIE ELLIOTT

  Harry sighed. He still went to all the meetings and felt sorry for the young guys as they argued against dwindling quotas, an increasing stranglehold on the industry by unscrupulous buyers and an uninterested government. Their complaints were met with more regulations and paperwork.

  No point in looking back, Harry thought.

  Fishing had served him (and his ex-wife) well. The Pipe Dream was paid for, as was a little house on top of the cliff with a spectacular view of the ocean — currently rented out to his sister Hephzibah. His daughter was a teacher, and Harry owed money to no one. He lived unofficially on the Pipe Dream (against the rules, but tolerated because his constant presence deterred thieves), he made a little cash by hiring himself out as a boat mechanic once in a while, or filling in for an absent deckhand, and he sportfished a few prawns and salmon from his little skiff when he felt like some fresh seafood.

  Once in a while he frequented the Fat Chicken, the only pub left in town. It used to be called the Timberman’s Pub until it burned down after a fight broke out between fishermen and loggers (all because of a squabble over a bout of arm-wrestling). The only item intact when they sorted through the smoking debris was a porcelain chicken without a chip or a scratch on it.

  Harry had been there last night and had left early. Usually he chatted with the owner, Walter, an old school buddy, and spent time making a fuss of Bruno, the pub dog that waited for Harry every night by the stool at the bar where he always sat. Bruno had met Harry as usual with tail-wagging, but Walter was distracted by a raucous group of five or six students (Harry guessed) with weird-coloured hair, ugly tattoos and piercings with attitudes to match.

  A grubby-looking kid with dreadlocks banging on some kind of hand drum had interrupted his quiet beer and burger, singing a protest song about the environment. The kid, with his sneering, cocky attitude, reminded Harry of the last clash with the greenies — especially when Walter tried to quieten him down.

  “Fuck off,” the kid had said, standing up and coming within two inches of Walter’s face.

  Harry had braced, watching from his seat at the bar, ready to step in, and Bruno was on his feet, attentive and growling.

  “There’s no law against singing, is there?”

  Harry noticed that the kid was wearing army fatigues. A few months in the actual military might do this little pecker-head some good, he thought.

  “Nope, no law, just a request for you to respect the other customers in my pub,” Walter replied.

  Harry knew that Walter could de-escalate a situation when he needed to, he’d had plenty of practice breaking up fights, and knew it was easier to just not let them start. He sat and watched.

  The kid made as if to argue, but changed his mind, shrugged and sat down.

  Walter rolled his eyes at Harry. “That’s the third night these little assholes have tried to cause trouble.”

  “Who are they?” Harry asked. “Not seen them around before.”

  “Activists, apparently,” Walter answered, and before he could elaborate, someone else had ordered a drink, and Harry slipped out, leaving payment on the bar.

  As Harry mulled over the dregs of his coffee, he snorted to himself.

  Greenies.

  That’s one thing that hadn’t changed. Hyped-up city kids with nothing better to do than meddle in what they didn’t understand. He felt his anger rise as he remembered the mid-eighties, when Greenpeace launched their Ocean Crusader, protesting against fishing practices in the British Columbian waters. A part of Harry understood their point — the demand for seafood was so hot, and the rewards so high, that some fishermen were breaking the rules. For a while, it had been everyone for themselves, and fish stocks were suffering. But the real fishermen policed themselves. The true fishermen knew that their industry would only survive if they looked after their own product, with future generations in mind. No, it was the tactics they used.

  Harry’s pulse quickened as he thought about that time when the Pipe Dream and the Ocean Crusader had had a near collision. The Crusader, a much faster vessel, was steaming towards the Pipe Dream. Harry had just set his net and did not believe for a second that the Crusader would deliberately ram his boat, so he held his position and kept on fishing. The skipper on the Crusader had other ideas, and it was only a last-minute manoeuvre, when Harry realized that the Crusader wasn’t slowing or turning, that saved the Pipe Dream. Harry lost his net and the fish, but what really incensed him was the skipper laughing as the boats passed each other so closely that paint was nearly scraped off the hulls. Harry remembered the red-hot rage that consumed him. His deckhands talked him down, worried that he would really get into trouble when he grabbed his shotgun and aimed it at the Crusader’s skipper.

  That wiped the grin off his face, Harry thought. But in the end, it was the Crusader’s crew and the greenies who had the last laugh. Harry narrowly avoided being charged, and the protestors hogged the media, using the incident as another example of the Cowboy Fishermen who were out of control.

  Harry snapped out of his reverie when he heard a sound, like a scream, he thought, muffled by the morning breeze.

  He stood up, looking towards the beach.

  Light was now illuminating the east-facing cliff, as the drizzle gave way to watery blue sky, and Harry could see a figure running towards the steps up to the boardwalk. He reached into the galley, grabbed his binoculars and trained them first on the figure running and then back on the beach.

  He tossed the rest of his coffee overboard.

  Time for breakfast, he thought, as he stepped off the boat, and walked up the dock towards Hephzibah’s tiny café.

  Chapter Three

  For a couple of moments, Andi Silvers thought she might have got away with it.

  She lay still and, without moving her head, she just opened her eyes.

  Huh. Gritty and dry, but no headache . . . yet.

  Andi tested each limb nervously, just stretching out, feeling the change on her skin from the clammy indentation of her sleeping position, to cooler dry sheets. Too much, too soon, she thought, as a familiar queasiness in the pit of her stomach gathered strength into a wave of full-blown nausea. She took a deep breath and pulled herself to a sitting position, and then carefully and slowly swung her legs over the side of the bed. Andi clenched both hands into fists and willed the light-headed, detached sensation to pass. After a moment, she surrendered and staggered to the bathroom. As she gagged into the toilet, the throbbing started behind her eyeballs.

  There it is.

  Hung-over.

  Again.

  She sunk to her knees and then lay down, keeping still on the bathroom floor, her burning cheek against the cool porcelain tiles.

  Just a few minutes.

  She knew only stillness and time would bring relief at this point.

  How much did I drink last night?

  She counted them off in her mind — one glass of wine when she got in from work, then two glasses of wine downstairs at the pub, or was it three?

  She remembered someone telling her an uproariously funny story about tequila — did she have a couple of shots too? She couldn’t remember, but it would explain the vomiting — she rarely got this bad just on wine.

  Water. That’s what she needed now.

  Wincing, she heaved herself off the floor. And then slowly, so the room wouldn’t spin too badly, she pulled herself to her feet, hanging on to the washbasin to steady herself.

  OK. Not too bad.

  She shuffled out of the bathroom to the kitchen corner of her studio apartment and looked for something other than slightly rust-coloured tap water to quench her desert thirst.

  Shit. No fizzy water. Nothing in her tiny fridge, except the bottle of wine from yesterday.

  Empty. Shit. I must have finished that last night. She mentally added that to her drinking inventory.

  She poured some water into a grimy glass, considered and rejected food almost in the same thought.

  Andi sat on the edge
of her bed and sipped the warm tap water, and attempted to piece together the previous night.

  Why did I stay so long at the bar? She had promised herself she wouldn’t do that again.

  She sighed and looked round her little one-room apartment. Clothes crumpled on the floor. Several greasy pizza containers. An open box of junk balanced on the only chair in the room.

  She sniffed.

  Funny smell. Grime, booze and sweat.

  She’d clean up today. This room was an unwelcome reminder of her childhood. She shut her eyes to get rid of the vision of her passed-out parents, slumped on the couch after another night of partying. She’d fought so hard to get out of that life. What the hell was she doing to herself now?

  She turned slightly away from the packing boxes piled against a wall. She didn’t want to look at them. Unpacking them, she felt, was surrendering. An acceptance that this move was permanent.

  “Permanent,” she said aloud, and let the word hang ominously in the stale air. She didn’t know what to think about that yet. She didn’t want to think about her future at all. As if thinking about what might happen tomorrow or making plans that didn’t include him would jinx everything. Make it all real. Permanent.

  Andi’s phone trilled, the sound echoing around the room, jarring her whole body. She rummaged through the bedclothes, moving quicker than she wanted to, attempting to grab the phone before it went to voicemail. Seeing the number displayed, she sighed and returned to sit on the bed, the sudden movement causing the blood to pound behind her eyes once more.

  Work. Not Gavin.

  She turned the phone over and over in her hand. It made a soft dinging sound to tell her that the caller had left a message.

  She wondered what she would say to Gavin if he called.

  Andi admitted to herself that it was likely a situation that she wouldn’t need to deal with. The second-to-last time she spoke to Gavin it was face to face, a showdown that made her flush with embarrassment just at the memory.

  * * *

  Not that the memory was entirely clear. They had celebrated that evening. Gavin had brought over two bottles of wine, and she had downed most of a bottle, both exhilarated and exhausted at the end of a six-month-long assignment.

  Andi remembered how he held her in his arms as they slow-danced in her small apartment.

  “You make me feel like I’m eighteen again, and everything is possible,” Gavin whispered.

  And then the same old argument.

  “I have to go,” he said flatly.

  “When is this going to end?” Andi demanded. “When are you going to tell her?”

  And as usual, he sighed and asked, “Why do you have to be like this?” Then he left.

  An hour (and the other bottle of wine) later, Andi’s phone rang.

  “Gavin?” Her heart jumped with hope.

  “Hi honey, how was your day? I’ll get some dinner warmed up for you.”

  An inaudible reply.

  “Geez, they’re working you hard on this assignment, aren’t they?”

  The muffled sounds of kissing.

  A warm comfortable exchange between married people. Happily married people.

  Looking back, Andi couldn’t piece together exactly what happened next — she was too drunk — but she knew that after that pocket-dialled call, she had got into her car and driven across town to the quiet, neat suburb where Gavin lived with his wife of twelve years and their two children.

  Blinking back tears of shame, Andi recalled clearly how she’d marched up the crazy-paving pathway through an immaculately manicured front garden, ignoring the buzzer and the cute brass doorknocker shaped like a dog’s head, and announcing her presence by pounding her fists on the door.

  “What the fu—?” Gavin had bellowed, his facial expression turning from fury to shock as he saw Andi standing on his doorstep.

  “You fucker!” Andi screamed at him. “You lied to me!”

  “Gavin?” A tall blonde woman wearing pyjamas and fluffy slippers appeared at Gavin’s shoulder before he could say anything. “Who is this? What’s going on?”

  “Yes, Gavin,” Andi sneered. “Who am I? Don’t you think she should know?”

  Gavin stood silent for a second, his eyes filled with disgust.

  To Andi’s shock, Gavin’s wife had stepped forward. “I think this lady has come to the wrong house, don’t you, darling?” And then in a harder tone to Andi, “I think you have my husband confused with someone else.”

  “Daddy? What’s going on? Who’s that lady?”

  To Andi’s dismay, a small child with Gavin’s dark eyes and his wife’s blonde hair had squeezed past Gavin’s legs.

  “No one, darling. This lady came to the wrong house. Take her back to bed, Gavin.” Wordlessly, Gavin swept up his daughter and retreated into the house.

  “This lady is nobody,” Gavin’s wife repeated calmly, as she eyed Andi up and down before closing the door firmly.

  Andi was in the office early the next day, red-eyed and unshowered.

  “I’m sorry,” she had texted. “I’m so sorry.”

  No reply.

  Eventually, Gavin appeared at the office door, clean-shaven, neatly dressed as ever, slight shadows under his eyes the only sign of any stress.

  “Get into the senior editor’s office now,” were the very last words he uttered to Andi, before turning his back and walking away from her.

  Andi hadn’t had time to tend her broken heart. The next two hours were spent trying — and failing — to save her job.

  She had screwed up. She had failed to corroborate a tip-off from a source. She had written an article, sure that everything was fine (and assuring Gavin that the source was solid). It wasn’t fine. The tip had been bogus, a prominent businessman had threatened to sue. It was a horrible mess. The newspaper would have to apologize publicly.

  Andi was fired. She still felt the sting of humiliation. They issued Gavin a warning, she discovered later. She had tried to contact him, calling, texting, and even emailing. One curt text came back that filled her with a little hope:

  “We’ll talk later.”

  Three months later and they still hadn’t spoken.

  In a month, Andi’s money ran out. She hadn’t found another job. She was toxic now. She had been a rising star, a tenacious reporter and talented writer. But nobody would touch her résumé or even return her calls.

  In desperation, she answered a small ad for a reporter/assistant editor/administrator for a place she had never heard of on Vancouver Island. To her surprise, the Coffin Cove Gazette, an independent publication, offered her an interview immediately.

  She accepted, hoping that the owner would not probe too far beyond the carefully presented portfolio she sent ahead of her appointment.

  A two-hour ferry journey and Andi was on the island, following the directions that Jim Peters, the owner and editor of the Gazette, had sent her.

  After half an hour driving from the ferry terminal, she assumed she must have read the directions incorrectly. She was driving north, and after turning off the main island highway, she found herself driving along a small winding road along a cliff edge. She pulled over and checked the directions again. Frowning, she pulled out her cell phone. No service.

  Shit.

  On impulse, she got out of the car. The salty breeze on her face and the expansive view of the ocean both calmed her and reminded her of her aloneness. Standing on top of the cliff, she acknowledged — painfully — that Gavin had been more than an office fling. She had become obsessed with him. Her whole life had revolved around him. She had spent her spare time waiting for him to call or text. She lived for the stolen afternoons when they would sneak out of the office “on assignment”. He had never lied about his marriage. But he had allowed her to believe that eventually the affair would be much more.

  “And now I’m just a cliché.”

  Standing on the cliff, plunging into the unknown, Andi wiped angry tears away. Stupid, stupid, stupid �
�� for allowing herself to think it could be anything more. The cool way she had been dispatched out of Gavin’s life by his wife told her that this probably wasn’t the first time. She hadn’t been special. A sudden surge of fury motivated her to get back in the car.

  Jim Peters, her new boss, had given her a chance.

  When she finally arrived at the Coffin Cove Gazette that day, there was no efficient receptionist to announce her arrival. Just a shabby office with an ancient photocopier in one corner and an oversized desk in the other. A man with glasses perched on his balding head was typing furiously and made no sign to acknowledge Andi’s presence.

  Not sure what to do, Andi nervously cleared her throat and opened her mouth to announce herself.

  “One minute.” The man squinted at his screen, and then typed again for a few seconds.

  “There. OK. Andi, is it?” He gestured to a seat in front of his desk.

  “Hi, yes, sorry, I’m a few minutes late . . .” Andi sat in the sagging chair opposite the man she assumed was Jim Peters.

  “Yes, yes, not a problem, we are hard to find. So, tell me about yourself and your work.” The man leaned back and folded his arms across his chest. Andi noticed that his hands were bony and wrinkled, an elderly man’s hands. But as he interrupted her, and questioned and assessed her with intense blue eyes, Andi realized that whatever his age, this man’s intellect and curiosity made him a match for any journalist she had ever worked with before. And she realized something else. She really wanted this job.

  After an hour of probing questions, Jim Peters got up from behind the desk and perched in front of Andi.

  “I know what happened. There’s no excuse for what you did. I won’t tolerate any corner-cutting. This is a small community. We report on the things that matter to the people who live here, and we are only concerned with the facts and truth, got it?”