Away with the Fishes (16 page)

Or was he boasting of his crime by taunting Raoul? Egging him on, daring him to find the evidence?

So on and so on, the flies that accompanied Raoul home multiplied in the wake of the ones that came before.

By the time he reached the cottage, his tummy was grumbling for breakfast and his head was a-hum with bugs. The paper, which he would re-read a dozen times that day, was folded in thirds. He grasped it tightly in one hand and slapped it, over and over, against the palm of the other as he studied the cottage wall that had once borne Rena’s name. The scraped and yellowish wall now housed only the sloppy pink cloud that Raoul had painted in the dark to cover the letters. Annoyed, he realized he would have to scrape the wall again to put on a more even first coat of paint. Ms. Lila was picky about things like that.

Raoul started to calculate how many hours of his next “day off” the second wall would require, when he remembered that the third was as yet unfinished, too. He sighed and went to have a look at it, to remind himself how far he had gotten before leaving it to go and search for clues.

“What the…?” he said when he saw it, and dropped his paper on the ground.

Now
this
scraped and yellow-ish wall was marked with pink, too! Only instead of a cloud there were letters. Another request from the murderous message-writer? A clue to Rena’s whereabouts? Raoul stood back to take in the words. D-A-G M-O-R-E. DAG MORE. What did that mean? He read it again. “Dag more”
was no kind of command. “
Dig
more,” maybe, but this definitely said DAG. As Raoul repeated the strange syllables over and over, and surveyed the wall again, he realized the words were not two, but one. DAGMORE was what the wall said.

Huh.

Not
Captain
Dagmore? The one who had crossed Raoul’s mind only two days before, the one so worried about magic? What could he possibly have to do with any of this? Dagmore was long dead, jumped from the rocky perch where once he lived. All of Oh knew the story (or so they thought!). Did this mean that Rena was dead, too? Had she done herself in just like Dagmore? Perhaps her murderer had pushed her off a precipice? Was that what the message meant?

Suddenly Raoul’s appetite was gone. His head was a hive of questions and there wasn’t an answer in sight. Lovelorn fishermen and hits-and-runs and Rena Baker messages might all be connected, but surely this dead Dagmore was a separate kettle of fish?

“Just a minute!” Raoul said out loud. How had this message appeared on his wall when his paint tins and brushes were put away and locked up? He picked up the newspaper, ran to the front of the house and burst inside.

“Now what?” Mrs. Lila asked him, looking up from her breakfast. But Raoul was too busy to answer. He rushed to where he had stored his paints and brushes and they appeared to be untouched. One of the brushes seemed a bit wet with paint still, but was that the one he had used late at night, and in the dark not properly cleaned? Or had the vandal been inside his home?! Raoul dropped immediately to the ground and crawled backward from the closet that housed the paint paraphernalia to the cottage’s front door. He
could see no sign of drippings or dirt or footprints anywhere on the floor. Next, he crawled to each of the windows, but they were all pristine as well. Had the picky, polishing Ms. Lila inadvertently wiped away the traces of whoever had broken in?

“When was the last time you cleaned the floors and the windows?” Raoul asked her as she shared a fishcake with Fragile, who sat on her lap.

“Why?” she demanded defensively. “Are they dirty?”

“No, damn it! They’re as clean as can be!”

“Why are you so upset? Aren’t they supposed to be clean?”

“We’ve been robbed, and you’ve wiped away the clues!”

“What in the world are you talking about?” Ms. Lila asked him. “I don’t see anything missing.”

“I don’t see anything either! That’s the problem!”

Before Raoul could keep Ms. Lila talking in circles the whole of the morning, making them both late for work, she deposited Fragile on the floor, stood up, and gently pushed Raoul onto his favorite chair. She put two fishcakes in front of him, and a stiff cup of coffee, which she demanded that he down in one gulp. Then she returned to her place at the table and as a calmer Raoul sliced tentatively at his breakfast, she asked him to begin all over again with whatever it was he was trying to get off his mind. “Take your time, dear,” she said.

Raoul told her about Trevor’s talk with Bruce, about Bruce’s article, about how Madison couldn’t possibly be a murderer. He told her he was mulling the lot of it over in front of the first vandalized wall, when he peeked around the corner and found the name DAGMORE splashed across the next.

“Dagmore?” she interrupted. “Dagmore Bowles? The dead one?”

He told her he wasn’t sure, but that there had never been another Dagmore on Oh as far as he could recall. He told her that he couldn’t imagine how all of it fit together, the anonymous messages, and the hit-and-run, Rena and the suicidal sea captain. Then he told her the worst of it: that whoever had painted Dagmore’s name had broken into their house to get at the brushes and Playful Rose.

She assured him she hadn’t cleaned for at least three days and that if there were no clues to be found, it was because the culprit hadn’t left any behind.

“Not unless,” she chuckled, “it was the work of a ghost. Maybe old Dagmore is your message-writer. Do you think we could get him to paint the whole house?”

Raoul was in no mood for jokes. Certainly not jokes about spirits or spooks, which were in his book just another branch of magic. His very own wife should know better and he told her so. No fishcake, however golden or crispy, was worth listening to this!

Raoul started to get up from his chair, to gather his things for work, but a repentant Ms. Lila stopped him.

“Now, now,” she said. “Don’t get so hot and bothered. I have an idea that might help.”

“What’s that?”

“You want to know if your two messages, FIND R. BAKER and DAGMORE, are connected, right?”

“Right,” he answered cautiously.

“Well, you can’t talk to Rena, not unless you find her first, and since you haven’t the faintest idea where to look—”

“Is there a point to all this?” Raoul interjected, offended.

“You can’t talk to Rena, but you can talk to Dagmore Bowles—or at least to the next best thing. His Mrs. Jaymes.”

“His
who
?”

“Mrs. Jaymes. She was his cook and his housekeeper. She married his handyman, Hammer Coates, after she married off Dagmore to some girl she hand-picked for him herself. She looked after Dagmore. She knew his life inside and out. My guess is she was his only friend in the world. If it weren’t for her, Dagmore Bowles would have lost his sanity in that big empty house of his.

“He jumped off a cliff and into the sea. That doesn’t say ‘sane’ to me.”

“Maybe,” Ms. Lila agreed, “but I know for a fact that if anyone can tell you about that crazy old Captain, it’s Dorothea Jaymes.”

Hmm.

Ms. Lila might be right, but Raoul was bothered by the prospect of interviewing the Captain’s former maid. It smacked of ghost-hunting, and though his methods were unorthodox, he hadn’t yet ever resorted to
that
!

What truly troubled him, though, was a different ghost entirely: Rena Baker’s. He didn’t really believe she was dead…or didn’t
want
to believe it. But finding a dead man’s name on your doorstep—or nearly—was bound to rattle even the staunchest proponent of the plain-as-noses-on-faces philosophical school.

21

T
he
Morning Crier
was notoriously hit or miss. Either it scintillated to the point of selling out, or was so dull that not even the chickens could abide it at the bottom of their coops. The edition that named Madison Fuller a suspect in the murder of Rena Baker was of the former sort, striking a bull’s-eye of the kind that only Bruce could manage. No islander talked of anything
but
. Raoul couldn’t stop re-reading it. At the bakery they couldn’t stop discussing it. May Fuller couldn’t get it off her mind.

As she walked farther and farther from Branson’s beach and from their stunning early morning interview, her thoughts turned more and more to Madison and the accusations against him. She was so agitated and so angry by the time she reached her house, that she walked right past it and headed straight to the grimy-windowed office of the
Morning Crier
. There was no time, she decided, to explain things to Madison or to cajole Trevor into getting the truth from Bruce. May would handle the matter herself.

“Bruce!” May shouted, as she burst through the door. “Where are you? I’ve got some business to discuss with you!” Bruce didn’t answer, because he wasn’t there. He had opened up the office and
lined up his pencils, then gone off to the bakery for breakfast. (Not that her shouting would have bothered him if he
had
been there. He had grown accustomed over the years to women barging in and yelling at him, what with his line of work.)

“Bruce!” May tried again. “I’ll find you,” she yelled at the empty room and rushed back out the door. No use wasting all this anger, she thought, and she proceeded to the bakery, where she planned to give Trevor a good talking-to about his friend Branson, who—she was still convinced—had placed the ad and now would not admit to it. When she got there and found Bruce as well, she was only too happy to kill two birds with one stone.

“Aha! There you are!” May planted herself an inch from Bruce’s face.

Poor Bruce! May was not the only one of a mind to reprimand him on that shiny, early morn, for Trevor and a handful of bakery regulars were already up to their elbows in biscuits and how-could-yous, while Bruce, for his part, countered with how-could-I-whats.

“I thought you were going to help matters, not make them worse,” Trevor scolded him.

“What have I made worse? I put right in the article that the man had no prior indictments!” Bruce replied.

“And you accused
me
of obstruction of justice!” Trevor added.

“Ooohh,” Bruce growled. “You all think I invent the news, do you? I simply report the facts as they stand.”

“Facts?” May squealed. “You want to talk about facts, do you? Well how about, as a matter of
fact
, you tell us who it was who placed that stupid ad that has those stupid officers accusing my brother of murder.”

“How many times do I have to say it? I don’t know who wrote the ad!”

“With all due respect, Bruce, you have to admit that’s hard to believe,” Trevor said, in defense of May’s position.

“You!” May whirled around and pointed her index finger right at Trevor’s nose. “You’re one to talk! It’s that stupid friend of
yours
who placed the ad, and now he’s too ashamed to come forward and save a man’s life!”

“What are you saying?” Trevor asked her, confused.

“Branson Bowles is what I’m saying. Just ask
him
what he knows about dainty hands and good cooking!”

Trevor couldn’t imagine Branson doing something so outlandish as to advertise for love. Nor could he believe for a minute that, had Branson done so, he wouldn’t speak up and save the day. He tried to say as much to May: “I hardly think…”

“I’ll say, you hardly think,” she interrupted him. Then she stomped out the door, twisting her torso back inside to add, “If you don’t get Branson to come clean, I’ll smash that big hat of yours flat as a roti skin!”

Such fury, and without May’s even knowing yet that the police were at that very moment elbow-deep in hers and Madison’s personal effects, executing the search warrant they had procured the night before. Unawares she continued her walk home, alternately cursing under her breath and beseeching the skies, eyes heavenward.

How could Bruce be so irresponsible? she asked herself. How could Trevor stand by and watch? And Branson! Well, he was the most shameful of all! How could he do this to her? And why, she wondered, did it bother her so much? She was worried about her brother, yes, but there was more to it than that.

May always spoke her mind, to others and to herself, and what her mind was saying now, May didn’t want to hear. All it talked
about was Branson Bowles. About their long-ago plans for marriage and for a house with a verandah. About how Branson had studied harder than ever before, as if his zeal could somehow make the school years pass more quickly, while May had baked and stewed and fried. She recalled how her father, wary of love too-young, had taken every step imaginable to ensure that Branson and May were kept apart. How weeks went by in which May didn’t see Branson or hear a single word from him.

Perhaps she had been mistaken about him all along, her teenaged heart had told her. Whenever she caught a glimpse of him in town or at the market, and hoped to read in his eyes some declaration of love or some flicker of shared suffering, he averted her gaze.

Young Branson wasn’t avoiding her, or with his avoidance declaring his indifference. The very sight of her moved him to tears, and he was forced to look away to maintain his public composure. He missed her more than he knew it was possible to miss a person, and yet he feared that she wasn’t missing him nearly as much as that. Surely if she were, she would find a way to slip him a note or send him a message. (Neither Branson or May had a telephone back then, the Oh-Tel Communications Company having temporarily run out of numbers.)

Thus each had engaged in his (and her) private suffering, avoiding gazes and entertaining doubt, neither suspecting of the other’s pain. When the school year finished and another had come and gone, Branson decided that May no longer even remembered who he was. She remembered—of course she did—but while Branson’s heartache had matured into a steady, romantic malaise, May’s had blossomed into vexation. How dare he let her go without so much as a second thought! All those recipes, her most expert and
delectable, devised for him alone! May got herself so worked up that when she sought out Branson’s eyes at the market after that, it was to stare into them, mean and indignant.