A Roux of Revenge (26 page)

“I never did. Miriam.” He struggled to use her name. “I
never
abandoned you.”

Before she could quell the rush of emotion, she cried, “You never came! I waited. For days I waited. You left me there.”

“No. No. It wasn’t like that. They kept me at the camp that
day. I was like a wild man. I fought them, but there were too many of them. They were so sure you’d come back if they held me prisoner. They never thought . . .”

“That I wouldn’t return?” She finished his thought.

He nodded dumbly. “Please believe me, Morag . . . I’m sorry. Miriam. I loved you then, and I love you still. I would never have left you out there on your own. Can’t you find
it in your heart to forgive me? My life was taken from me as well.” Her silence was a stone in his heart. “I searched for you everywhere. Every town, every village. Every time we broke camp. There was never a time I traveled through a place and didn’t look for you, didn’t ask if anyone had seen someone of your description. They made a terrible mistake. They realized it eventually. Everyone wanted
to find you, to bring you back.”

“I would never have gone back to them. Never! I would have killed myself before I . . .”

Eamon fell silent. Miriam could see the lines etched into his face, the gray hair at his temples. He was still a fine-looking man, but he had aged. The life had aged him. Perhaps sadness had aged him.

“It’s all different now. Not the same family you left. I’m head
of the clan now.”

“
You?
”

“Yes.” He smiled slightly. “The man who would have left it all behind for a life with you.” He searched her face. “Have you had a good life? Are you happy?”

She hesitated. “I have had a life at least. A real life.”

Eamon stepped closer. Close enough that Miriam could smell the warmth of his skin. Memories were flooding through her mind, as if the door she
had closed and locked years before had burst open.

“How long has she known about me?”

“Not until a few days ago. I told her. That’s why she won’t speak to me.”

“She’s been with the woman from the restaurant. They came to see me. But you say she’s not there now?”

“They went to see you? Where? At your campsite?” Miriam asked.

Eamon nodded in response.

“Something’s happened
to her, then.” Miriam struggled against the panic that threatened to overwhelm her. “I don’t believe she’s run away again.”

“We’ll find her. Everyone will help.”

“No. Not them. I’ll find her.” She turned away.

Eamon grasped her arm. “Wait. Please.”

Miriam pulled her arm away and stared at him.

“You’re as beautiful as the day I first fell in love with you.”

Something inside
her melted, a part of her that had been cold for a very long time. She felt a sob rise in her chest. She struggled to breathe. “Stay away from me.” She turned and ran across the field, toward the parking lot and escape. Eamon called after her, but she didn’t turn back.

Chapter 37

A
LL THE JACK-O’-LANTERNS
around the room were flickering as if tiny spirits lived inside each pumpkin. The room felt alive with unseen energies. Jack had put a CD in the player, and a soft
clarinet solo filled the room. Lucky had turned off all the lamps but one and poured two mugs of chamomile tea hoping it would help them relax and give them a few quiet moments before each headed home.

Jack’s phone started to ring. He fumbled in his pocket to retrieve it and squinted at the caller ID. “Can’t see a thing,” he grumbled. He hit the button a moment before the call would have gone
to voicemail.

Lucky heard a man’s voice on the phone. “It’s Nate,” Jack whispered.

“Oh!”

“No. Sorry, Nate. Nothing new at our end.” Jack paused. “I see. No. I don’t like the sound of that either.”

Nate’s voice was audible but garbled. “Good night.” Jack clicked off.

“What’s happened?” Lucky asked.

“They found Janie’s car this afternoon. They’ve towed it to the police station.
Nate’s not trusting the impound lot after what happened to the van.”

“Where?”

“In the parking lot of the Harvest Festival.”

“Do you think Janie could have gone to her father?” Lucky asked.

“No idea.”

“I can’t see why she would do that. She had such a negative reaction when she saw him onstage at the festival.” Lucky thought for a moment. “Do you think her father could have
taken her against her will? There were a lot of people at that encampment. And we know they have guns—shotguns at least.”

“That’s not as sinister as it sounds. They probably need them for hunting, for food.”

“I guess.” Lucky sighed. “I just wasn’t thrilled to see one aimed at us. I just can’t imagine how they live, even if they do hunt wild game in the woods. Where do they get money to
buy all the other supplies they’d need for a life on the road? Surely having a short stint at a festival like ours wouldn’t pay them that much.”

“Those men can do all sorts of odd jobs, day labor, that type of thing. They arouse a lot of suspicion because of some bad apples, but I’d say most of ’em are decent. They’re not all out to bilk people.”

“What about the guy Joe’s been chasing?”

Jack shrugged. “Joe could be right. Who knows? Maybe a traveler was involved in that robbery years ago. And maybe that’s the dead man Nate found by the side of the road. We just don’t know. It’s a lot of maybes. But I can tell Joe’s one of those men who are like pit bulls. Persistent. Just can’t let go of the one case he couldn’t wind up.”

“Miriam told me that her family . . . clan, whatever
they call themselves, are from Cape Breton originally. She grew up speaking Gaelic. Their own dialect of Scottish Gaelic. Can you imagine that, Jack?”

“Oh sure. If they’d stayed isolated from other Gaelic speakers for generations, the language would change, grow into something else. They’d have to speak English for sure and undoubtedly French or at least Québécois if they move through Quebec
a lot. They’d have to, just to get by. But they maybe can’t read or write a word of it.”

“And that’s another thing. How can they get across the borders if they don’t have real identification?”

“They’ve been traveling this landscape forever. They’re not gonna pay any attention to borders or countries. Even now that things are a lot tighter. Years ago it didn’t take much more than a driver’s
license or birth certificate, if that, to cross into Canada or back to the US. Now all that’s changed. Our border with Canada is hundreds of miles with numerous crossing paths these people would know about. All the governments in the world couldn’t properly stop them.” Jack took another sip of his tea. “There used to be towns that straddled the border between here and Canada. A street could start
in the US and end up in another country. A plumber in Canada could fix a sink at the other end of town and be in the US.”

“I think I read about a place recently,” Lucky replied. “Can’t remember where. But there’s an area that’s in the US, and the people of the town believe they should be part of Canada. Or maybe it’s the other way around. Canadians that want to be part of the US. Wish I could
remember.”

“As far as this man Eamon goes . . .” Jack rested his feet on a chair. “I think he was being straight with us. I think he was shocked to figure out he had a daughter, and he just wanted to make some kind of contact with her. And we know it’s his twin who was shot. No doubt in my mind they stole the body from the morgue and we stumbled into a wake that night.”

“If Joe Conrad’s
right, Eamon’s twin brother, Taran, was the man involved in the robbery. What if he took off with the money and his partner in crime caught up with him?”

“If Joe was chasing a traveler, it’s no wonder he never caught the man. And the other guy—the inside man at the armored truck company—may not have been a traveler. Just your ordinary citizen—ordinary criminal I should say. They could’ve gone
their separate ways and had no further contact with each other—till now.”

“Which may be why he ended up dead by the side of the road,” Lucky replied. “Was his killer looking for the money? Was that why the van was stolen from the impound lot? That’s what I’d like to know. For all we know, the travelers could have stolen it. They’d probably consider it their property anyway. It’d be a real
feather in Joe’s cap if he did manage to identify one of the robbers, especially since the company forced him into retirement.”

“I can understand how the guy feels. Nobody who’s grown older with years of experience wants to be considered unwanted. My hat’s off to the man.”

A movement at the front door caught Lucky’s attention. Horace was standing outside, a plaid scarf wrapped around his
neck. He carried a book tucked under his arm and a shopping bag with handles. Cicero, next to him, was wagging his tail. Lucky jumped up to let him in.

“I hope I didn’t stop by too late this evening,” Horace said.

“Not at all,” Jack replied. “Come on in.” He reached over to rub Cicero’s head.

“I found this in my library, and I was just so excited, I had to bring it over so you could
both have a look. I knew I had it somewhere, just couldn’t remember where. I am turning into the proverbial absent-minded professor.” Horace placed the heavy book reverentially on the table. “But first of all, to a very important order of business.” He reached into the shopping bag and lifted a carved pumpkin out. His jack-o’-lantern had protruding ears, a mouth that sported crooked teeth and a
carrot for a nose.

“Oh, that’s really a good one, Horace. I like it,” Lucky said.

Jack stared. “Looks a little bit like Guy Bessette,” Jack said, referring to Guy’s unfortunate crooked smile.

Lucky hit Jack playfully on the shoulder. “Stop that.”

“Oh! You think so?” Horace asked. “I didn’t mean that at all. Maybe I should carve those teeth differently. I certainly wouldn’t want
to hurt Guy’s feelings.” Horace looked from one to the other.

“It’s fine, Horace. Don’t worry. I’ll give your pumpkin a number.” Lucky placed the pumpkin on the long display table. She rummaged through a drawer behind the counter and retrieved a small bundle of cardstock. She wrote the next number with a black marker and slipped it into a holder in front of Horace’s pumpkin.

“You have
some pretty impressive entries there. Don’t know if mine will be in the running, but I’m happy to compete.”

“No worries. It’s just for fun,” Lucky said. “Would you like some tea?”

“No thanks, not tonight. I can’t stay long.”

“What’s this book?” she asked, returning to the table.

“Well, you remember I was telling you about the professor who had a theory about the carvings on the
megalithic stones. At the time, he was laughed at, but now a lot of academics are coming around to his way of thinking.

“Here’s a picture of one carving.” Horace opened the book to a full-page illustration and turned the book so they could see.

Jack peered at the markings. “Can’t see how anybody would make sense of these.”

“They look like funny stick figures,” Lucky said.

“That’s
exactly it. It’s Ogam, a form of stick writing,” Horace said. “That professor I mentioned had a look at the Bourne Stone in Massachusetts and claimed the markings were a variation of the Punic alphabet found in ancient Spain. He called it Iberic and translated the script as recording a land claim in Massachusetts by Hanno, a prince of Carthage, if you can believe that. That would have been centuries
later than the Bronze Age though.”

Horace was warming to his subject. “You have to realize that at the beginning of the twentieth century, experts were of the opinion that no Europeans had ever landed in America until Columbus arrived. American scholars actually went to Europe to study Bronze Age sites and completely ignored the megaliths in the Americas. The markings are ascribed to Ogam,
an early form of pre-Gaelic, and that writing has been found all over North America. It’s important because now it’s impossible to ignore that a written language existed in prehistoric America. What’s strange about Ogam is the way the language is organized—you know, with vowels and consonants. Ogam had, I’m not sure, either fifteen or seventeen consonants and five vowels. The only other language
constructed like that is Basque, so of course, linguists believe there’s a connection. And to make matters stranger, Ogam is suspected to have originated in West Africa.”

“I thought you said it was early Gaelic?” Jack asked.

“No. What we call Gaelic didn’t exist then. Some scholars believe Ogam came to Ireland from North Africa with the missionaries who were preaching early Christianity.
And then, some linguists believe that it may have originally reached North Africa from invaders from the North Sea and Baltic civilizations centuries before, so Ogam might really be an early form of a Norse language. The other alphabet found right along with Ogam on some of these stones is Tifinag. Tifinag is the writing that the Tuaregs, a race of Berbers that live in the Atlas Mountains of North
Africa, use.”

“It’s hard to believe prehistoric peoples were able to travel across the North Atlantic and land in the new world,” Lucky remarked.