Something Fishy (3 page)

Why shouldn't Paradis pay for the lot?

“All of it. Yes, clear all of it. Mr. Paradis will pay.”

As she left, Jamieson heard one of the girls complaining that the salty fish could ruin the wild strawberry crop. There'd be none of the cape jam this year.

“We wouldn't be allowed to pick anyway,” said another.

Too right, thought Jamieson. Too bad. She loved strawberry jam. She'd never had it wild. She bet it would have been good.

Chapter Three

The shoreline was crowded with the new cottages built over the winter, even though MacAdam's had been removed, leaving a red scar on the cape.

The whole village had turned out in mid-June to see it hauled off. He'd brought in a bungalow from town fifty years before, one of those wide-loads that travel maritime roads in spring, summer, and fall. Now it was going back to town. With Jim's death – a grisly murder the previous year – the land and the bungalow belonged to his niece, Fiona Winterbottom. She'd sliced the unfortunate name in two and tried to get people to call her Winter, but it didn't take.

No one knew why Jim MacAdam had favoured this particular niece. Jim had a sweet tooth. He also had diabetes. Fiona would visit Jim on Sundays when his wife was at church and bring him a box of fudge. If an axe in the head hadn't done him in, the fudge would have eventually.

In return for her dubious generosity, Fiona had ended up with a prize piece of shorefront property. And a house. She lived in a trailer in town. Switching the two made perfect sense to her. She'd move the trailer out here as soon as she got the house into town.

She had the bungalow lifted, with everything in it, including Jim's last mug of tea, now green fuzz, still sitting on the kitchen table.

“Dishes still on the table!” the mover boasted. Village housewives didn't think that was anything to boast about.

He was less confident as the house bumped across the sandy land and down onto the potholed clay lane. The villagers had first stood watching, then followed until the truck and the house hit the puddle at the end of the lane, and bounced up onto the Island Way.

“Time was,” said Wally Fraser, husband of Gladys, President of the Women's Institute, “you'd've had a hundred men, all the able bodies in the village and the next, hauling that house.”

“Heyup,” said carpenter Harold MacLean, with a deep intake of breath and a sigh. “Then there was horses and sleds…”

“There was an art to it,” said Wally. “You didn't just pull the thing. You worked the weight of the house to shift itself around.” He nodded, and Harold nodded in harmony with him, both men's eyes glazed over, thinking of other, better times.

Gladys Fraser was lost in the past, too. Tears shone in eyes known for their cool, dry view of the world, as she said good-bye to the house where she and Jim MacAdam had shared happy moments in the last year of his life. She'd nursed a lifelong passion for him, ever since their early years in the village one-room schoolhouse, a passion that had flowered again when Jim's wife had died. Gladys began daily visits, bringing him food, making him tea, cleaning up after him. Her husband Wally hadn't cared, so long as she'd fed him, too.

Then Jim had been murdered a year ago Labour Day weekend. Watching his house leave The Shores was like having him die all over again.

Whoosh thwarp. Whoosh thwarp. Whoosh thwarp.

The blades of the wind turbine sounded as they spun around at high speed, the wind powering them into a slow blur in the sky. Ian felt intimidated. He knew it was highly unlikely, but he felt as if a blade might slip off and slice through him.

He knocked on the door. Waited.

It had surprised everyone when the dome had sold. It had only been on the market since April, when all the legal matters concerning its previous owners, both dead, had been settled. The tragic history and odd interior set-up – a narrow curved space around the perimeter with portholes, and what realtors liked to call “open concept” in the centre – should have put most buyers off, and did. Except that it takes only one person to buy a house. In this case, a strange person who'd shown up within just a few weeks of the “For Sale” sign going up.

“Perfect,” Newton Fanshaw had said the first time he saw it. Billy Pride was trying his hand at real estate, in the hopes of affording a home of his own, moving away from his mother, and marrying tiny Madeline Toombs, Moira's sister. It was Billy who'd made the sale, to everyone's surprise. It had been his first, and made him a tidy commission.

The buzz began almost immediately. Long before he'd arrived in June, Newton Fanshaw's personal history, career path, likes and dislikes, hobbies, interests, and romantic life had been discussed and analyzed down to the last detail. All based on the only facts anyone had known: none.

Now they knew a little more, but not much. He had erected a wind turbine and a solar panel. He was in his sixties – a pale, thin, and elusive creature.

The lack of any information fueled the villagers' imaginations, spinning conjectures they began to take as truth once they'd been repeated often enough. They were experts at it.

Ian knocked again. This time he heard, between the rhythmic beating of the turbine blades, the soft tread of someone coming to the door.

It creaked open. Not all the way. It was enough, though, to see all of Newton Fanshaw – a peaked face, a spare body. He had the stature of a fourteen- or fifteen-year-old boy, not yet thickened into manhood. His grey hair was cut, monk-like, in a bowl. His skin, especially on his face, was soft and white and smooth and unwrinkled, like a virtuous priest. His face was hairless, like an aging woman's. He had a beak of a nose and eyebrows whose grey hairs escaped in every direction.

His pale blue eyes had a glaze of age on them, though he wasn't that old. They were milky, diffuse, red-rimmed, the only spot of colour on an otherwise cadaverous face.

Newton said nothing, just stared through those rheumy eyes, his face without expression.

“I came about the fish.”

A bushy eyebrow rose. The lone wrinkle in his forehead deepened on one side.

“Fish?” His voice was strangely hollow, as if it came, not from his body, but from somewhere outside it.

“The fish that fell from the sky.”

Both eyebrows lifted.

“Fish. From the sky?”

“You didn't see them?”

Fanshaw shook his head slowly, moving the door slightly, as if about to close it.

Ian put his hand on the door, to keep it open.

“You missed them. Fish falling from the sky? Surely you've heard of that happening?”

“It happened here?” Was that a spark of interest?

“Yes, last night.”

“Then I missed it. Thank you for informing me. Now I must go.”

Ian dropped his hand and Fanshaw closed the door.

Ian left, shaking his head. He looked up at the turbine blades, but quickly drew his eyes away. As they passed across the sun, they created a flickering play of light and shadow that made him dizzy.

Chapter Four

To Ian's embarrassment, the fish were easily explained in front-page newspaper stories and all over the Internet the next day. Ian tortured himself, reading the online reports over and over again.

It was another scoop for Lester who'd received an anonymous tip that took him hurtling down the Shore Lane to a cottage that was often overlooked because it melted into the sea and sky. It was a grey, weathered cedar shingle, slanted in a saltbox design, with a grey steel roof that mirrored the shades of the sky and the sea so that some days, at certain angles, it would dissolve into them, leaving the horizon unbroken.

Ian was watching live-to-air Breakfast Television as Lester's camera captured Anton Paradis, owner of the ultramodern cottage, smiling – or was that smirking? – as he explained how the cooked herrings had descended on The Shores. They'd been dropped out of a plane as it flew, unheard in the storm, over its target. They marked the launch of his new venture.

Paradis had commissioned a pilot and plane to execute the trick on a stormy night. The rain and thunder had arrived on cue to drown out the sound of the plane as the herring was dumped down a chute into the sky over The Shores. Anton had gambled that fish falling from the clouds would puzzle and confound, and intrigue the news media both on- and off- island, and he'd succeeded. It was a publicity stunt for the new restaurant he was opening in the winged cottage.

A few at a time, he gave the media guided tours of the cottage-cum-restaurant. It had been designed with two wings, joined by a long dining hall. Kitchen on one side, lounge on the other, where
amuse-bouches
and before-and-after drinks would be served. The dining table, a massive piece of California redwood, cut in half lengthwise and polished to a mirror-like lustre, could accommodate ten people – in seats made out of tree stumps and branches.

“It's very small,” observed Lester, the first to tour the cottage.

When he spoke, Anton affected a slight French accent.

“Ten, only ten people.” He lifted both hands and spread his fingers. “For a private dinner.” He bowed his head and looked up with a coy smile when asked the price.

“Oh, I could not say. Could not say. It would depend upon the food, from where it came.”,

“How fresh it was?” Lester asked, invisible from behind the camera lens.

Paradis' head whipped up, his eyes bored into the lens. “Fresh? Fresh? It is always fresh. It is for that I have this.” He swept an arm in the direction of a circular slab of concrete to one side of the cottage. “The helipad. Everything will be flown in, first by charter, then by helicopter.” The helicopter would also be available to carry precious cargo. His diners.

Paradis was betting that the sheer expense of the place would make the restaurant wildly popular, providing a new and intriguing means for his clients to demonstrate their wealth.

“He should be charged with public mischief.” Ian finally closed the video. He'd showed it to Jamieson when she stopped by. She did most mornings; he wasn't quite sure why.

Jamieson felt a frisson of fear. She didn't want to be the one to advance the idea, though the mischief, if that's what it was, had happened on her turf. The vanishing duck decoys and stolen seaweed were still weighing on her.

“Yes, perhaps,” she said, noncommittal.

Ian gave her a sharp look.
Perhaps?
He didn't say it, but he thought it. Somehow she still heard it.

“Of course,” she said. “But I'll speak with him first.”

“
Ah, la gendarmerie. Si belle
.” Paradis greeted Jamieson after she'd shoved her way through to him – standing, beaming, glowing in front of a scrum of journalists and photographers.

She had driven down the Shore Lane through a glut of vehicles, jammed along either side of the slim clay road, deep ruts in it from so much traffic after the big rain. There were squished herrings pressed deep into the tire ruts, glassy eyes looking up, surprised not to have landed on someone's dinner plate.

“
Enchanté
.” Paradis grabbed Jamieson's hand and pressed it to his lips. That was about the limit of his French. It was also about the limit of physical contact that Jamieson could bear. She shuddered and tried to pull away. She didn't like to be touched by anyone.

Paradis persisted. He held onto her hand, and stroked the skin with his thumb.

“Alabaster,” he purred. “So soft, so smooth, like a pearl.”

Jamieson's white cheeks flushed a dark pink. She managed to yank her hand away. She massaged the white thumbprint Paradis' grasp had left behind, trying to rub it off.

Most men didn't try to flirt with Jamieson. Her body language made it clear it was not welcome. It hadn't stopped Anton Paradis. He knew he was not classically handsome, but used his flashing eyes and dazzling teeth to make his conquests.

He may have had some slight effect on Jamieson. She hesitated and did not read Paradis the riot act, but something rather less.

“This is a small, quiet community. We can't have this kind of stunt going on.”

Paradis lifted his hands and shook his head. “No, of course, I fully understand. I have no other plans, or if I do, you will know about them.”

“Oh, yes, I will know about them.” Jamieson's lips set in a straight, determined line. It was a clear threat, and it excited Paradis. Her severity. He would have to wait if he wished to pursue her. Wait until Viola had come and gone.

“What do you call your operation?” Jamieson had whipped out her notebook.

“Anton's Paradise.”

“A restaurant?”

He inclined his head.

“Seafood?”

“Not exclusively. We provide high-end, dangerous dining.”

“What?”

“Danger – ”

“I heard you. But what does it mean?”

“We serve foods that, ill-prepared or in the wrong quantities, could kill you.”

Jamieson's alabaster skin turned whiter than white.

“Are you insane?”

Paradis smiled, a broad smile. “Of course not. This is the trend in upscale dining.”

Jaded people, thought Jamieson. Jaded appetites. Amusing themselves by eating death. If a diner died – would it be murder or suicide? She shook the thought away. Death. There'd been enough of that in The Shores. She didn't want any more.

“Are you licensed?”

“Fully licensed, Madame.”

“But not licensed to kill,” she warned. “We've had enough of that here.”

“So I understand. Tragic.”

Paradis bowed, and Jamieson spun around and marched off, jostling the crowd of reporters. When she emerged from the press of people, hot panic pursued her. A familiar foe.

Hy couldn't get the smell of fish out of her nostrils. She had hoped her morning run would do it, but the shore had been particularly pungent that day.

She had both a rake and a shovel, but both were unsatisfactory. The rake broke up the fish. The shovel squashed them more often than it lifted them.

Her friend Annabelle stopped by on her way to town.

“You could leave them there, you know,” she called out the car window. “Great compost.”

Hy took the excuse to take a break, and felt herself creak as she straightened, dropped the rake, and stretched. Not yet forty and creaking. She yanked off her rubber gloves with a snap.

“What do you suppose Moira Toombs would say to that?” Daughter of a former garbage collector, Moira was the local expert on composting and recycling regulations.

Annabelle laughed, and got out of the car.

“Ben has been using his golf clubs on our lawn.”

“There's an idea.”

Annabelle gave Hy a wry smile.

“Not really. He's bashing them to pieces. Now there's more to pick up.”

“Better compost.”

“I guess.” Annabelle sighed. “I get enough of the smell of fish this time of year.” Annabelle fished with her husband Ben Mack. It was always a surprise come May to see her tumbling blonde hair caught up in a ponytail, her manicured red fingernails without polish and clipped to the quick, her long legs in blue jeans, her high heels exchanged for rubber boots.

Annabelle and Ben had a close to perfect marriage. They shared large appetites, and never tired of each other or each other's company. Whenever Ben had business to do that took him away from home, the farm or the boat, he finished it as fast as he could and came straight home. Because her own romantic life was so happy, Annabelle wanted the same for everyone, especially Hy, her closest friend.

With a sly look in her eye, she asked the question she often asked when they were alone together, “So how's Ian?”

“Same.” Hy's face was a blank, unreadable. Frustrating. Annabelle knew – everyone knew – that the two had been together for a couple of weeks at Christmas. Then Ian had been summoned to the bedside of his dying brother, Redmond, from whom he'd been estranged for twenty years. Ian had been bitter that Redmond hadn't visited their dying mother, suffering from dementia. Redmond himself had contracted Alzheimer's several years ago, and hadn't recognized Ian when he finally got there.

Even so, Ian had stayed with his brother for a few weeks, until his death. Hy had told him he would regret waiting until it was so late and he did. She'd tried to keep from saying “I told you so,” but he thought he could read it in her eyes. Somehow, they hadn't been able to pick up where they had left off, so they'd slipped back into what was easiest.

“Friends. We're still just friends. No, not just. We're still friends, but not more, if that's what you're wondering.”

It was a pity, thought Annabelle. They were so well-suited, if they could only see it.

THE DISH ON FISH

Lester Joudry was the first to spot the sign that had, moments ago, gone up on Jared's cookhouse down on the shore.

“What's that?” He pointed at the sign. Another was going up to answer his question. All heads turned. They usually did when Lester spoke. He was always first to a story.

FISH MUSEUM

The crowd of journalists had gotten their story from Anton, and deserted him as if he were yesterday's news. Some hopped in their vehicles to get ahead of the others and became sunk in the deep soft sand at the bottom of the lane. Annabelle's son Nathan made a good dollar that day hauling them out.

The rest jogged down to the shore, Anton's eyes drilling into their backs, as they moved on to the next story. All the effort he had made to devise a cunning stunt to bring them here. And now dumped for Jared MacPherson. He'd paid the man a whack of money for the high-end kitchen appliances he'd bought from that cookhouse. He'd made the mistake of leaving the freezer behind, but Jared had found a use for it.

It was crammed full of fish. Fish that had fallen from the sky. Stoned out on primo hash when the fish fell, Jared had had one of his brilliant ideas. He was always looking for a get-rich-quick scheme, often illegal, but this one was like manna from heaven. Had he ever cracked open a Bible, he'd have known what that meant.

Jared had loaded his pick-up with herrings, hauled a generator out of his shed to get the freezer going in the cookhouse, painted a couple of signs, and he was in business.

His timing was spot-on. The media had come running, and Jared smiled at how well it had worked. The smile turned to a frown when Lester said:

“That's it? A freezer full of those fake fish?”

“Them's real fish.”

“Yes, but they didn't really fall from the sky.”

“Then you tell me how they got here.”

“Well, yes, but…”

Perhaps a sidebar, thought Lester, working on the subhead:
Villager cashes in on falling fish.

“What are you charging for entry, and what will you do with the fish?”
Two questions. Never ask more than one at a time.

“Ten bucks.”

“Ten bucks?” Lester looked around him. No sign of a museum. No artifacts. No pamphlets. No information signage. “For what?”

“For these here fish.” Jared opened the freezer. The herrings were tossed in, willy-nilly, some crushed, some in bits. “You get one for your entry fee. With a certificate of authenticity.”

“And what about the museum?”

“That's comin' along. We had to jump on this, you know. It'll take some time to pull it together.”

“I can see that.”