Bodies and Sole (14 page)

Chapter Twenty-Six

Moira had never sought Hy's advice, but she was desperate. So desperate that she called out to Hy on her way down Shipwreck Lane.
Moira.
Hy didn't want to be bothered with Moira. She wanted to think about what she would now say to Jamieson, to get her to take seriously what Vera had in her house. Except that it had been a break and enter. She didn't know how she was going to get around that.

With no immediate answer, Hy strolled over to Moira. The marching marigolds on either side of her stoop were drenched from the unending summer rains.

“Do you think…”

Hy looked up sharply. Moira, asking her opinion?

“It's just that this nausea, it won't let up. It's not like anything I've experienced. I'm wondering if…if…it might be…poison.”

“Poison?”

Moira nodded.

“From where? From what?”

“Lime Jello.”

“Lime Jello?” It seemed an unusual food for Moira.

“Yes. At the house.” Moira jerked her head in the direction of
Shipwreck Hill. “I make it for him. And I've been making it for myself, too.”

“Him?”

“Her husband.”

“And is it the only new food in your diet?”

Moira nodded.

“And how's he…?”

“Not good. But he's old and dying.”

“Dying anyway, or because of the Jello?”

Moira slumped down on a chair. Her voice, when it came, was thin and weak.

“I don't know.”

“Well there's one way to find out.”

Moira looked up, hope in her eyes. “There is?”

“Get a sample of that Jello.”

“That won't be easy.” Moira was imagining herself shoving some jiggling jelly into a pocket.

“Look. You're not well enough to work. If she's poisoning you, then it won't surprise her. I'll go in your place. Give me a letter confirming I work for you, and I'll get some Jello out.”

Moira hesitated. It went against her principles. She was a snoop, but she wasn't a liar. A wave of nausea gripped her stomach and stabbed like small knives cutting through her bowels.

“Okay.” It would be a chance to use her new letterhead.
Nice As You Please.
It looked so pretty with the sloping periwinkle blue cursive at the top of the pale blue sheets.

“This is to introduce Hyacinth McAllister, a trusted and bonded member of the
Nice As You Please
staff. Arrangements as usual.”

“Bonded? I'm not bonded. It's not like you to lie, Moira.”

“If the way I feel right now has anything to do with her, then it's the least I'm entitled to.”

Moira, showing a bit of mettle against authority. Nice for a change.

“And what does ‘arrangements as usual' mean?”

“That's a mannerly way of saying she pays me as usual. But I'll give you what you're owed.”

Hy laughed. “As for that…paid for snooping? I should be paying you.” Hy folded the paper. “Now I'll have to figure out how to get a sample of that lime Jello.”

“What will you do with it?”

“Something,” said Hy. “Something.” She was suddenly thinking of that hair sample. Still in her jacket pocket? Would Finn be able to do something? Analyze them? Get someone to do it for him?

She patted her pocket and realized she did not have her cellphone. She had left it on the counter at the Sullivan house.

“You'll do the usual.”

Hy lifted an eyebrow, questioning.

“Make the Jello.” Vera's tone was irritable. Hadn't Moira told this woman anything?

“It's here.” Vera opened the cupboard stuffed with boxes of lime Jello. “Then do the chores. When you're finished, the Jello should be ready and Cyril can have some. So can you, if you wish. Never touch it myself.”

I bet you don't, thought Hy.

“I'm going to have my nap now. Upstairs. You've no need of going there, so you won't disturb me.”

No need.

There was no need. Hy had seen it all, and it had repelled her. She was here for the Jello. Just the Jello.

She grabbed a box. Inspected it closely. Factory sealed. No doubt. Both the exterior cardboard and the wax paper lining inside that held the powder Jello were secure. Hy took the water straight from the tap, boiled it in the kettle, mixed the Jello in the bowl, covered it and put it in the fridge to set.

She began a cursory cleaning of the kitchen. She moved out into the dining room, so clean it didn't even need a dusting.

Then she heard the rasping, the laboured breathing from the front room.
Cyril
. She eased open the dividing doors. If it weren't for the pained sounds he was making, there was little evidence that a human was lying in the hospital bed. The blankets simply appeared messy, his body under them sunken, shapeless.

“Cyril?” Hy whispered. There was no response from the bed.

She crept closer. She could see his eyes now, just above the sheet. Closed.

She came right up to the bed and his eyes popped open. She jumped back, startled.

His eyes were fixed on her. Whatever was in them held her. What was it? An appeal? Yes, an appeal.

He eased the rest of his face out from under the sheet. Drool slid down from the right side of his mouth, carrying a small, strangled sound.

“V…v…”

“Vera?” Hy guessed.

He closed and opened his eyes.

“Yes?” She nodded her head. He repeated the motion, and began to try to speak again.

“K…k…kl…kl…klng.”

“Killing you?”

He shut and opened his eyes.

“With lime Jello?”

Before Cyril could answer, Vera stormed into the room.

“What are you doing here? Is he asking for his lime Jello?”

Fear struck through Cyril's eyes.

“No. But he sounded restless, so I came in.”

“You have no need to be here. There's plenty for you to do elsewhere. Leave him be. You'll only upset him. I haven't been able to sleep. I've come down for a pill.”

She grabbed one of the several bottles cluttering Cyril's bedside table, shook out a couple of peach-coloured pills, tossed them in her mouth and swallowed them dry.

“There. That should do the trick.” She banged the bottle back down on the table, turned and marched out. The room was vibrating with Vera's anger, turned dark with her presence. It lightened when she left.

“See I am not disturbed,” she called back as the door slammed behind her.

Hy picked up the bottle of pills. The prescription was for Cyril, not Vera. She shrugged and put it down. She turned to Cyril. His eyes were closed.
Asleep? Dead?
Hy listened for his rattled breathing, and, satisfied that he was still alive, left the room.

As she busied herself with cleaning that didn't really need to be done, Hy rummaged in drawers and cabinets in the dim hope of finding her cell phone, with its images of the creatures upstairs. Preserved out of love? Surely not. Vera Gloom didn't seem capable of love. Preserved in spite of having been murdered? Poisoned? By lime Jello? Could traces of the poison still be found? In their hair, for instance?

Hy allowed a half-hour to pass, by which time she assumed Vera would be asleep and not yet ready to wake, not with those two pills in her system.

She slipped quietly up the stairs. In spite of her horror at what she had seen when she was last here, she couldn't stop herself, compelled by a desire for more clues. Hy had one hair sample but she wanted them from the other two.

She was vibrating with fear, shaking with the prospect of being found out by a woman she thought was a murderess. Hy liked the word. It made Vera seem so thoroughly wicked. Murderess. Husband killer.

Hy wished she'd brought scissors. What was she going to do – tug the hair out of a dead scalp and send a plastic cadaver pitching over onto the floor, breaking off a body part? The thought made her shudder.

But there, on his night table, was a pair of nail scissors. Hy grabbed them, and turned to Charlie, his hand uplifted as always.

How much hair would she need? How much would these tiny scissors cut? Hy selected a lock, smaller than she would have liked, but small enough for the scissors to handle. Barely. They were blunt, and Hy had to saw through the hair, tingling with disgust as bits of it gave way while others clung, until she finally had what she hoped was enough. She shoved the clump into her pocket and sped from the room.

She didn't get far.

“I thought I said you were not to come upstairs.”

Hy turned around to face the voice and the dark presence of Vera Gloom shadowing the hallway.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Finally, they saw it.

Maybe it was willing to be seen for the first time, to give up its final secrets, to make his archenemy, his killer, answer to his death. His secrets weren't his alone to tell. That thought may have put the smile in the skull's jaw. The smile that all skulls have, but this one was there for a reason. He had managed to cling to the prized possession his enemy would have taken from him.

And now everyone would know that he had not been drowned at sea, though he couldn't swim. Would perhaps look for the rest of him, most of which was there in that hole in the ocean floor. He might be reassembled, a curiosity in the hall. Who knew?

So he gave up his secret to them, the lovers strolling hand in hand down the shore, laughing and pushing at each other, playing tag, so that they would have missed him yet again if Dot had not seen a beautiful rock, stopped to pick it up, and then the two of them were stalking down the beach, eyes riveted to the sand, looking for treasures, not knowing they were about to come upon the greatest treasure of the summer.

Him.

They saw it at the same time, pointed, and ran. Then came to a complete stop and just stared down. Dot had no immediate desire to touch it, although she was curious. It was Finn, the forensic anthropologist, who picked it up, held it up, and grinned straight into the skeletal grin.

“Modern day,” he said, turning it around in his hands. “But old.”

“How old?”

“Been in that water a while. Before you were born, I bet.”

He winked and passed the skull to her. Finn was still living at Hy's and they had bonded seamlessly as brother and sister, but his heart was lodged down The Shore Lane with Dot.

Vera Gloom gave as close to a smile as she could give – a bitter, twisted sort of thing, almost a grimace.

“Well, you've seen them now, haven't you?” She paused, her distorted expression twisting a notch more. Hy swallowed, preparing to say something.
Yes? More than once?

“But you've seen them before, haven't you?” Vera slipped Hy's cellphone from the pocket of her dress, faced it towards Hy and clicked through the camera roll, displaying the photographs Hy had taken of the plastic corpses, and continuing to some selfies that made it clear whose camera it was.

“You might as well see them again. My boys. Let me explain.”

Explain? What explanation could there possibly be?

“We live, all three and I, in the greatest harmony.” Vera swept forward and extended an arm in a gesture for Hy to follow her.

The door to Blair's room was closed.

It creaked open. Already the old house was reclaiming
itself after the renovation, finding its former posture, its familiar creaks, structural habits and flaws, settling into its remembered self. Shiny sanded floors and patched-up plaster couldn't hide its essential soul. A dark soul. It had been no surprise, really, for Hy to find these bodies here. A shock, yes, but no surprise that darkness and madness were revisiting the Sullivan house. Darkness and madness had always resided here. Why would that change because the wainscoting had been freshened, the plaster shored up, the rats sequestered to the attic, where they belonged in a respectable home?

This was not a respectable home. Never had been, though it was beautiful. The sad history of family strife and murder was built into the bones of the house. But what had been the seed that had created it, continued to create it to this day?

Did Gus even know? It was nowhere spelled out in her history of The Shores. Or was it – a clue hidden to even Gus? Hy determined to have another look at the manuscript.

For now, she followed Vera through the door. This was the third time Hy had seen Blair, but she was not inured to the sight. Revulsion shivered up her spine, the backs of her legs and arms tingled with distaste.

Vera marched over to the chair, and yanked the book from his hands.

“You must be finished this by now, Blair. It offends me that you take such interest in it.”

The book was called
The Nude Through the Ages.

“You should give it back to Charlie.” She straightened his collar. “It is his, after all, a Christmas present from me last year.”

Hy watched with fascination, as Vera brushed off Blair's sweater, skimming over the hole where his heart was. Where his heart was displayed. Displayed. That was the word. Meant to be seen.

But, for Vera, it was as if that display box of Blair's heart wasn't there. For Vera, it appeared as if Blair were alive, as she fussed over him and chatted with him.

“Messy boy.” Vera continued to brush his sweater. “Crumbs all over you.”

Hy couldn't see any crumbs. The woman was mad. And she herself was mad to be standing here with her. Even so, she dared to open a door to reality.

“I see nothing. No crumbs.”

Vera took one more long, slow swipe at Blair's sweater, catching her rings in the hem. She held her hand there momentarily. She caressed it, lost in the sparkle of the blue diamonds. Hy was transfixed, too, on the blue diamonds. Blue diamonds. Hadn't she come across something about them recently, something she'd meant to read?

Vera caught Hy looking at her hands, at the rings. She looked up at Hy, her expression, if possible, even more twisted. Madness, surely, gleaming in her eyes. She frowned. Her eyes shifted. Only her features moved. The rest of her body was rigid, hand still caught in place.

Then she smiled. No smile at all.

“You're right,” she said. “No crumbs. Of course not. He's dead. They're all dead.”

Vera's features distorted. She unhooked her rings from the sweater. A tear trickled down her cheek, taking a long route crisscross from wrinkle to wrinkle.

“Dead.” The word came on a sob. “All dead?” She looked at Hy in appeal. It was as if she were realizing it for the first time. And, in this moment, she was.
Blair dead. Charlie dead. Hank dead. Oh my God. And the blue boys. The blue boys, too.

Hy said nothing, eyes glued to Vera, her emotions visual, changing from instant to instant, now returning to reality. Vera caressed Blair's plastic heart.

“Did you see this?” The expression in her eyes became tender.

Hy shuddered. Touching his heart. Sure, plastic. But didn't that make it worse, not better?

“We showcased his heart.”

“We?”

“The creators and I.”

“Creators?”

“The people who performed the plastination. My decision, really, because Blair was all heart. Generous to a fault. With myself…” The twist came back into her smile. “…and with others. Especially with others.”

She turned to look at Blair again.

“Others, Blair. That's what stood between us. Others.”

Hy saw malevolence in Vera's eyes. So much for the love she professed.

“But…how could you do this? Is it…legal?”

“Perfectly legal. Ask your Mountie there…the one who's been snooping around.”

“Jamieson? Has she…?”

“Seen the boys? No. But I've seen her looking in this direction. She's passed by.”

Hy smiled. So she had managed to get through to Jamieson – at least to the point where she was showing curiosity.

“Come.” Vera's tone and gestures were abrupt, summoning Hy from the room to the one next door.

Charlie was standing, as always, back to the light, in front of his easel, arm poised, paint brush in hand, the collection of unfinished paintings propped against the easel legs at his feet.

The painting was of Sullivan house.

How had he painted it if he was dead when he got here?

“Do you paint?” she asked Vera.

“Me? No. Of course not. It's Charlie's. Such talent.”

This was the mad Vera, not the sane one. Believing that Charlie was alive and still her husband.

“Good. Oh very good.” Vera peered over his shoulder. “Come see.” She beckoned Hy, who moved closer to look at the painting.

“Not that,” Vera snapped. “This.”

She grabbed Hy and pulled her around so that she could see the side of Charlie's skull. Like Blair's heart, Charlie's brain had been plasticized and exposed.

“An attempt to understand what makes up the creative brain,” Vera explained. And then Hy knew. At any moment, Vera might be mad or sane, but even when she was sane, she was utterly mad.

And dangerous?

Hy felt as if she could throw up, but she knew she'd have to follow Vera into the next room.

The couch potato, that's how Hy thought of him. Reclining on the bed, remote control in hand, watching TV, a home and garden show.

Vera grabbed the remote and clicked the set off. She pulled the blanket from across Hank's knees. It hadn't been there yesterday. Hy didn't need reminding that each leg was slit – one along the thigh muscle, the other showing the calf.

“A study of what happens to muscles rarely used. I had to carry him over the threshold.” Again that cold Vera smile.

“But enough. Our treat is waiting for us downstairs.”

Lime Jello.