Something Fishy (11 page)

Someone's going to get hurt.

Anton had retreated to the lounge and stopped answering the phone.

Someone's going to get hurt.

Was that what he wanted? One particular someone?

He shook his head, to clear it. It would not be the pufferfish to blame. He hadn't spent all that money flying in that chef for a botched job. A death at his inaugural dinner wouldn't be good for business.

Or perhaps it would.

He mused on the thought, turning it this way and that, a thin smile on his face.

Chapter Thirteen

Newton hurried across the cape, but slowed as he approached Anton's. The kitchen door was open, and through the screen door he could hear her voice, prattling on.

“No, that's not the right dish…is there another? Oh well, this one will have to do…”

The Japanese chef was becoming so annoyed at her non-stop stream of talk that he was ready to run her through with the knife, but there was so much of her it would be dull by the time he hauled it out – and then it would be no good for the job ahead.

Her squeal caused the chef to make an unplanned thrust with his knife. He scowled in Fiona's direction, but the scowl turned into a half-smile at what he saw.

Fiona – and half of another person, squeezed into her breasts and belly, head turned sideways and squished into furrows of wrinkles, eyes shut tight. Newton, still shaking, burrowed into her, searching for that floating feeling, that feeling of being in the womb, surrounded, protected. He got there, for just a moment, he got there. The book slid from his hand. It fell to the floor, and snapped him out of his reverie. He jerked, a spasm so sudden that Fiona fell back onto the counter. In her struggle to get free of Newton, they rolled along the counter edge, until she was on top of him, and he, red in the face, in fear of suffocating. She pushed herself off him, he hauled himself up, and, as he did, knocked a glass jar to the floor.

“Aiiee” was the first word in English that the Japanese chef spoke.

Fiona looked down at the mixture of broken glass and red powder.

“Oh, no. That stuff is worth a fortune. It's meant to go in with the rice.”

Newton knelt down.

“I'm invoking the however-many-seconds-it-takes rule.” He picked out pieces of glass, and swept the red powder with one hand into the palm of the other. Fiona held out the rice bowl for him, and he dusted it off onto the white kernels, turning them a beautiful orangey-red.

“What is it?”

“Saffron.”

“Oh.” It appeared to mean nothing to him.

“It's worth a fortune.”

“Then let's not waste it.”

He scooped up all that he could, dumped the final handful into the bowl, and wiped his hands on the seat of his pants. It left two red streaks, worth more than the machine he'd wash them in.

“I'm not sure we should have put it all in.”

“Too late now,” said Newton.

The chef had been watching in horror. It wasn't clear, though, what horrified him most – that they had picked up the saffron from the floor, or that they had put so much in.

Fiona kept thinking about what it was worth. So much money in such a small side dish. She hoped Anton wouldn't find out. The saffron gave the rice a beautiful red colour. A study in red – the stained rice and the wine-coloured kidney beans.

She turned back to Newton. He had begun shivering again. She touched him on the cheek.

“No harm done,” she said.

There had been harm done. Newton had realized Fiona couldn't give him what he wanted. He'd been intimate with her, but she didn't satisfy that yearning, the yearning that had been there all his life. To return to the womb. She'd come close just now, but he'd been robbed of the moment. The closest he'd ever come had not been with a woman. It had been five years before, when he was taken into hospital with heart trouble. Real trouble. A ninety percent blocked artery. They'd blown it open, and infused him with warm liquid. He would never forget that feeling, as he would never forget being born. A rush of warmth gushed through him. Warm from the inside out. Chasing the cold that was always in him.

He couldn't stop the shakes. She couldn't stop them for him. No matter how hard she gripped him. His need became disgust at the sweaty smell of her, the neediness of her, as needy as he. Without a word, he turned and left.

On the way out, he didn't notice Viola, sitting on the upper deck outside her bedroom, alternately staring at him and his ugly contraption, and plotting how to get rid of them both.

Viola was used to getting her way.

She did have the advantage over him. She knew who he was, and was hoping the weapon she'd handed him would turn him against himself. Kill the killer.

Moira took a kitchen knife and cut along the seam of one of the boxes Frank had brought into the kitchen. Inside was an envelope. She opened it. It was a large red card in the shape of a maple leaf, covered with glitter that flaked onto the floor. Moira frowned.

Dear Moira,
read the impeccable cursive hand.
We have despaired of your ever getting married. Don't take this as a criticism. The despair is that we've had your wedding gift in the back room since you were born, forty years ago, and we can't wait any longer to give it to you. We've been in an agony of excitement since we completed the purchase ten years ago. We hope you love them as much as we do. Happy Canada Day. Your loving aunts, Bessie and Jessie.

Though “fragile” was printed all over the package, the contents were not. They were twelve place settings of unbreakable, dishwasher-proof white plates made of hard plastic. Cornish Ware. A knock-off of the better-known glass brand. Moira's aunts had bought them by saving black stamps at their local grocery store in Tatamagouche. It had taken five years to collect the dishes, and they were short twenty-five to complete the set when the black stamp program was phased out. The store manager helped the two batty old ladies find the last of the dishes they needed, forgotten in a warehouse in Halifax. For Bessie and Jessie, it was the mother lode.

Beautiful.
Moira delicately lifted one of the dishes out of the box, turned it over.
Just beautiful.
She slid the plate back into its nest and closed the box.
Too good to use.

“Could you move these one more time for me?”

Frank swiped a sleeve across his mouth and stood up. “Sure? Where?”

Moira motioned to a cupboard in a back corner of the room. Frank huffed and puffed the boxes across the kitchen. Moira opened the door. Inside were a few pieces of silver plate, polished so severely that there were gunmetal grey patches where the silver had been rubbed off. A set of china dishes belonging to her grandmother, cheap but cherished.

Frank placed the boxes on the floor of the cupboard.

Moira looked at them, with one small twinge of regret. They were practical. Tempting. She closed the door on them.

They would stay there for another forty years.

Moira made a mental note to send a thank-you card to Jessie and Bessie. Not right away. Let them wait.

The marriage comment had annoyed her. It had also inspired her.

Frank liked her, she knew. She began to plot how she could force his hand.

Anton was livid when he found out about the upset jar of saffron.

“This has cost me hundreds of dollars!”

“Oh, no,” said Fiona with the eagerness of a puppy anxious to please. She held up a bowl. Red rice and kidney beans.

“We scooped it up – five-second rule – and put it in the salad.”

Anton looked horrified, but the look of horror quickly
vanished and turned to a sly smile.

“Can't have too much of a good thing.” He dipped a spoon into the concoction and tasted a small sample.

“Just what I says to the chef here.”

Fiona was tense until Anton left the room, although he had taken it well. She fanned herself. She was sweating, hard, from fear, relief, and the heat of the kitchen. The meal was more or less ready. She cleaned the counter, and began to sweep the floor.

That's when she noticed it. The fawn leather book.

She picked it up, her sweaty, floury hands leaving black-and-white smudges on the leather.

She opened it up.

“Can't read a damn thing,” she muttered. The words were so small. She could just make out one word on the first page. “Viola.”

So it must be hers. How'd it get here in the kitchen? She dusted it off on her apron, and went looking for Anton. He was in the lounge.

“This must belong to Miss Viola.”

She held out the book.

“What's this?” He reached for it, and opened it to the first page.

Journal of Viola Featherstonehaugh.

He flipped a page and began to read, with a growing intensity that made him forget Fiona was in the room.

She cleared her throat. He waved her away. Closed the book.

“Thank you,” he said. “I'll give it to her.”

When Fiona left the room, he opened up the book again and sat down to read it. He had to squint, but his eyes were sharp. He didn't miss a thing, including one very important thing. The final piece of the puzzle.

Interesting. Very interesting. How had he never known this?

He felt luck coming his way.

The inaugural dinner at Anton's Paradise that night began with cocktails and
amuse-bouches
in the lounge, following which the guests slipped into the dining area to find green turtle soup in glass bowls at their places.

Spoon poised to attack, the CBC reporter was compelled to ask, “How is this dangerous?”

“Salmonella. Tons of it.”

Viola had already taken a spoonful. She spat it out and lit up a cigarette to calm her nerves. Anton smiled, a broad smile.

“We have taken all the precautions in cooking. No more fear with salmonella here than with your Christmas turkey.”

A few of the diners took a taste.

“Mmmmm,” was the general opinion.

“Of course, there are the heavy metals and pesticides.”

The guests looked up, disconcerted. Viola's reaction was hidden by a cloud of smoke.

Anton smiled again, that broad smile.

“These were raised in a pesticide-free zone.”

If there is such a place, thought the CBC reporter, making a mental note to research that point. She wasn't here, after all, to endorse this project. She must treat it as a sample of the experience, not a bribe.

The rice came next. Saffron rice and red kidney beans, cooked and cooled.

“Such a beautiful colour.” The Mayor of Winterside was eyeing the beans, a personal favourite.

The pufferfish looked like any other piece of fish. It was disappointing. Anton gave a full description of the terrible way its poison could kill, and how the Japanese chef carefully cut out most of it, leaving them the tingling sensation of stepping close to death. He ended, with a smile:

“Bon appetit.”

Hesitation. Then Viola stubbed out her cigarette on the bread plate and tucked in.

The MP was first to go. He hadn't had a good sleep in days – between here and Ottawa and Washington and Alberta, as he delighted in recounting to people. In fact, he did work hard, and it took its toll now as, first, his eyelids grew heavy. They were well-muscled from attending countless boring meetings, so for some time he was able to pull them open again, and again, until finally, defeated, he let go, and his head dropped down onto his chest. His breathing became heavy.

Next to go, as if falling asleep were catching like yawning, was the mayor of Winterside. Sleep for him was an escape, and he wanted to escape this meal before he had to eat the deadly pufferfish. Danger for dinner wasn't his cup of tea. He'd stuck to the rice and beans. He and the MP harmonized little puffs of air with rattling snores.

That was the cue for the Minister of Tourism and the CBC reporter. Hardened by endless meetings and little to do the rest of the time, they had managed to ride out the wave of exhaustion that gripped them until finally they succumbed. The Minister's head dropped forward, as did his comb-over, revealing his baldness and flirting with his food. The CBC reporter would be horrified to find out that she'd fallen asleep with her head tipped sideways, her mouth open, and drool running down one side of her chin. When he saw her, Anton crossed her off his list of potential bedmates. And he decided against Miss Harvest Festival, too, who was too young anyway. Unlike the others, she hadn't fallen asleep because she had only picked at the food and was taking photos of everyone with her cell phone to post on Facebook.

The most fragile of all, Anton's patroness, Viola, was not affected by sleepiness at all. Instead, she began to laugh. It started as a titter. She lifted her hand to staunch the flow, but it escaped in a big burst.

“Ha!”

And again.

“Ha!”

The laugh spread right across her face. There was also panic written there. She could not stop laughing. She wrapped her arms around her torso to try to contain the laughter, to ease the muscle pain in her abdomen. She stood up to relieve it, but it only caused the laughter to tumble out more freely.

“Oh…oh…oh…whoot!”

That last woke everyone up, and soon the whole table was laughing, tears streaming down faces, fists pounding the table. Viola had dropped to the floor, rolling around in an agony of mirth.

The MP didn't like the look of things. He jumped up from the table and hurried off into the lounge, to phone his second-in-command and start some damage control. He excused himself to Anton and left.

Viola had begun to hiccup. Huge intakes of air were followed by loud expulsions, which became weaker and weaker as she lost strength. The CBC reporter was standing, recorder in hand, capturing what had become alternate hiccupping and belching. In an effort to stop herself, Viola grabbed at the table linen, and stuffed some of it into her mouth. The plates, glasses, and dishes came tumbling down. The reporter recorded that, too.

The beauty queen from Winterside, with the vapid face and brain, was on her cell phone “ohmigodding” to friends, holding it up to take photos and email them.

The mayor of Winterside was having a hard time. He knew exactly why – too much of the wrong food. If he'd felt better, he'd have gone to help Viola. He was, after all, a retired doctor.

On and on it went, until Viola was gasping for breath, still laughing, but gasping. Then she stopped. The others did, too.