Something Fishy (16 page)

Anton strode over and opened the French door. He smiled. It was not very convincing.

“Please, join us. I think we may have been waiting for you.” He turned to Hy.

“Your backup?”

She shrugged. Smiled stupidly. Weak, but it was all she had. Especially since she couldn't concentrate on the moment. Grinding through her mind was “I something him like… I something him like…”

The journal was burning a hole in her bag. At least that's what it felt like. She kept looking down at it, convinced that the sharp angles poking at the leather were easily recognizable as the stolen journal.

Anton's cell phone rang. He checked a text message.

“I'm afraid we'll have to do this another time,” he said, ushering them with an extended arm toward the French doors where Ian had come in.

“The delivery wasn't correct. I have to make some calls.”

Hy and Ian both were happy to leave, Hy anxious to get a proper look at the book. How she'd return it, she didn't know. The suitcase was very poorly packed. Maybe he wouldn't even miss the journal.

He didn't miss it, because he knew exactly where it had gone. As Ian drove Hy up the Shore Lane, Anton was upstairs, staring with something like a smile at the suitcase. The journal had begun its travels and, with luck, would cast suspicion in the right direction.

The journal's contents had come as quite a surprise to him. He'd thought it should get into someone else's hands – Jamieson's preferably – but he knew he couldn't be the one to put it there. Not as long as he was a suspect. It would be crude.

This was perfect. That McAllister woman wouldn't be able to keep what she read to herself, and what she would read should shift the blame. If anyone was guilty of murder, it was Newton, not him. That certainly was the way it would look to anyone who read the diary. He'd found it pretty convincing himself.

He hadn't planned it this way, but it had worked out well.

He went to the kitchen in search of the turkey pineapple casserole. Of all the village women's offerings, it was – to his surprise – the most palatable.

Chapter Eighteen

Newton looked almost happy as he circled the tower, with the turbine blades sailing around above him. That old bat hadn't managed to do a thing about it. Now she was gone, and it was still here, powering energy into his home, storing energy to sell to the Province.

Whoosh, thwarp. Whoosh, thwarp. Whoosh, thwarp.

The sound of the turbine was the sound of more than money to Newton. Some people claimed these machines caused headaches, and worse, cancer, but he didn't believe it. Just a bunch of NIMBY whiners. He put a hand on the cold metal of the tower and felt a rush of warmth, a heady feeling, like being in love. Newton had only experienced a strangled version of that with his ex-wife Mary, but this, this feeling, electrified him. He stroked the cold metal and stared up at the blades.

It was as if the turbine had turned on him. This wasn't the feeling he was used to, the union of man and machine.

He became dizzy, clinging to the tower as if it were a life preserver, and he at sea on a rough ocean.

He could not pull his eyes away, and as long as he could not, he would not be free of this dizzy feeling. It was pulling him in and thrusting him out at the same time, as the blades carved their relentless path.

Whoosh, thwarp. Whoosh, thwarp. Whoosh, thwarp.

He felt as if he might be sucked up from the ground to the top of the turbine, sucked up, spun around, and discarded.

He tore himself free, his usually cold body in a sweat of heat, his head spinning… He stumbled to the dome.

Behind him stood Fiona, watching and wondering if she should follow.

“I something him like…I something him like…” Hy was looking at the journal as she kept repeating the phrase. “And he something death.”

“You're not getting anywhere that way, except to drill what you're saying into your brain and close it to new possibilities.”

“You try. Look at this.” She held the book out to him. He put both hands up, palms forward, rejecting the offer.

“Bad enough you stole it. I'm not getting my fingerprints on it.”

“You're a real pal.”

“I am, and if I'd known you took it, I would have made you put it back.”

“Oh, yeah. Oops, Anton, I seem to have picked this up by accident. Must have stuck to the toilet paper.”

“You will have to explain it.”

“First I have to decipher it.” She jumped up. “Magnifying glass. Of course.”

Ian kept one in a pencil holder on his computer desk. Hy grabbed it and placed it over the page, moving it up and down until she got the best focus.

“I think the two ‘something' words are the same word, more or less.”

Ian came and stood beside her.

“Looks like a ‘g.''.”

“Then an ‘i.' See the dot. I gi' him like. I gi' him like. He gi' death.”

“This is like a word game.”

“Give, give, give, that's what it is. ‘I give him like. He gives me death.'”

“Life. Not like. Life. ‘I give him life. He gives me death.'”

“So now that we've figured it out, what does it mean?”

“For starters, who is he? Look, Hy, don't you think we better give this to Jamieson?”

“Why?”

“For the same reason you're interested in it. It may mean something.”

“Yup, and I want to be the one to figure it out.”

“It's stolen property.”

“How can you steal from a dead person?”

“Lots of ways.”

“I borrowed it.”

“If Jamieson decides there has been a murder here, that will be stolen, withheld evidence.”

“I'll cross that causeway when I get to it.”

“Hy…”

“Ian…” She grinned. He grinned back, shaking his head.

Impossible. She was impossible. Another reason he liked her.

The California redwood table was polished to a mirror shine, not a smudge on it. The setting sun was shining across it and the glow lit up the silverware, simple and elegant. Anton let the environment do the work of establishing the setting. One row of guests looked out on the shore, the midnight-blue water, puffs of foam slipping over the golden sand, tinged with pink. Magnificent. The sun, spilling down over the cape, tipping the steel roofs of the cottages behind, where the other row of guests looked out. Giant hay bales smacked with a kiss of orange sunlight.

Perfect. Except for Fiona's trailer.

Anton patted the napkins – pure white linen, fanning out of the generous wine goblets.

The guests arrived, together, in two limousines—a party Anton had not mentioned, because they had requested strict privacy. Anton was able to provide it only so far. Stretch limousines had never been seen before in The Shores. Not even one, certainly not two in tandem. Everyone would notice.

“Did you ever?” Gus was on the phone to Estelle, who had missed the cars going by. Gus was disappointed. She'd wanted to chat about them. She invited Estelle over to look at the limousines through her big picture window.

Estelle arrived in time to see the women getting out of the cars.

“High heels.” Estelle took a long breath. “Long dresses and high heels. Imagine.”

“You don't have to imagine. It's right there in front of you.”

Between holding their dresses out of the sand, and negotiating the soft surface in heels, the women were having a hard time of it.

Anton, watching from inside, became tense and tight, infuriated all over again by Fiona. If he'd been able to use a helicopter this could have been avoided.

He charged outside.

“Excuse me,” he said to the first woman, a blonde in her forties. He scooped her up and carried her inside, while she giggled and became quite breathless. He deposited her in the lounge, and went to get the next one, a redhead in her fifties, who responded in the same manner. Fortunately there were only three. The last, another blonde in her twenties, giggled in an even higher register than the previous two.

The three ladies were delighted. The men followed, put out that they hadn't provided the same service. They were all considerably older than Anton, and not nearly as fit. They were also all married, but not to the women they were with. That was the reason for the secrecy.

Cocktails and the
amuse-bouches
course went smoothly. The air outside was chilling, but the setting sun glowed into the room and warmed it.

One of the guests dropped her drink at a banging and rattling of the French doors. There was Fiona, holding a placard. It was a big white cardboard sign, attached to a piece of driftwood. On one side, it read:

“Anton Does'nt Pay His' Wage's”

On the other:

“Anton's's Worker's Cheated”

She was marching in front of the glass doors, displaying first one side of the sign and then the other. The six guests and Anton stood inside, unmoving, their mouths open. Anton sprang for the French doors, and not giving a thought to appearances, snatched the sign and attempted to rip it apart. It resisted. So did Fiona, grabbing at the sign, trying to get it back. Anton crushed it, pulled off the driftwood handle, threw it all to the ground and stomped on it, while Fiona clutched him, trying to stop him.

“Get out,” he yelled, pointing up the cape. “Get the hell off my property or I'll call the police.”

“Good. Then we can talk to them about my wages. Until then, I'll sit here with my sign.”

Anton felt like he was about to explode. Inside, his guests had been watching the scene. He had better return and try to salvage the evening. He locked the French doors behind him, and tossed the key into a fake fern pot.

With apologies, “a little misunderstanding,” he refreshed their drinks and ushered them into the dining area.

There were “oohs” and “aahs” over the redwood table and over the views. The men gallantly gave the sea view to the ladies, and took the hay bales for themselves.

Anton had just served the sea turtle soup. He gave the usual rundown: dangerous not only in itself, a salmonella carrier, but also full of pesticides and heavy metals. He then smugly assured his guests that these sea turtles came from a pesticide-free zone. No one questioned if there were such a place. The guests were lapping up the soup made from the jellyfish that ate the algae that ate lord knows what, when there came more battering and vibrating on the big French doors facing the shore.

Fiona again. Anton was in the kitchen and didn't know she was back.

She was back. In a big way.

When she had the diners' attention, she flipped up her dress, pulled down her panties, placed her generous bottom on the glass and farted.

It made the glass rattle.

Anton had returned in time to hear. He went red in the face with rage. He tore at the French doors. Locked. They were locked. The key. Where was it? He chased back into the lounge, but the damage had been done.

His diners had all stood up. No one had spoken a word, but they all agreed. They were leaving.

They hadn't really wanted monkey brain anyway. It didn't sound delicious enough to make up for its potential danger – mad cow disease or dementia. The women thought their older dates were headed that way already. The men wanted to display their wealth, and to Anton's relief, paid for the meal, even though they hadn't eaten it.

When his guests had left, his reputation in ruins, Anton went to find Fiona on the cape.

Fiona had gone to Newton, knocking on his door timidly. It was always he who sought her out, in her trailer, whose walls would squeeze them together as he attempted to become absorbed in her flesh. It wasn't sex exactly, more like cuddling puppies, but it relieved both of them of the tensions in their lives.

She knew it would make him angry if she approached him. It had in the past. She could still see his white face in a blaze of red, his fury distorting his features. She'd gone running from him.

There was no answer at the door.

She knocked again, a light tap that was drowned out by the turbine, the blades creaking in the near windless night.

One more knock, and she turned away.

She didn't see, didn't sense him behind her.

She was staring up at the blades of the windmill, the setting sun colouring them red, the reflection blink, blink, blinking as the blades scoured the sky.

Blink. Blink. Whoosh, thwarp. Blink. Blink. Blink. Whoosh, thwarp. Blink.

She stumbled toward it.

It was a soft night on the cape. Only a light wind. It was the time of year when mounds of seaweed called “eel grass” piled up on the high tide line. The scent of salt wafted up the cape on the breeze.

The Milky Way dusted the sky, lit with hundreds of thousands of stars, like fairy dust thrown into the atmosphere. A satellite blipped its way above The Shores and a half-dozen planes sailed the air currents on their long journey to Europe, their lights pulsing over the village.

Even the wind turbine failed to intrude on the feeling of peace rustling through the marram grass. Its whirr tonight was more like a purr.

That didn't make it a pussycat.

Fiona had been standing, staring alternately at the sky and at the turbine. She drifted gently on the slight breeze toward the edge of the cape

Was it the turbine? She thought she heard movement. In front or behind. She kept going, and stopped again, on the very edge of the cape, feeling dizzy, looking up, up, up at the softly purring wind turbine, the blades slicing shadows in the night, their rhythmic sound hypnotic. She was unsteady on her feet, reeling, stumbling toward the edge of the cape.

The purr turned to a shriek that pierced her ears and made her buckle in pain. He was there. They were talking, but she didn't remember words, only anger. Anger. The turbine shrieking. Loud words. An even louder sound coming from the sky, a jolt, knives in her ears, spinning, spinning off the cape.

Falling. Her frothy dress looked like a parachute, but it was too flimsy to cradle her softly down to the ground.

It was a hard landing, of hundreds of pounds of flesh on a granite rock. Newton was on the cape when it happened.

Newton. And one other.

It would have been merciful if the first rock had killed her. Instead, it took several more blows to extinguish the life in her, including the one that followed her down the cliff.

The tip of the point gave way and pursued her, bouncing behind her as her head struck rock after rock after rock. Then Fiona's head slammed onto the granite, smooth and curving like a Henry Moore sculpture. No one would ever look at it the same way again. Already unconscious, but what sealed Fiona's fate was the tip of the point that had cartwheeled clumsily down the cape, and flattened her when she hit the sand. Her pudgy hands and feet stuck out from under the sandstone.