Seven Days Dead (11 page)

“Good save,” Sandra compliments him. “Okay, Émile, you did your good deed for the day and police work all in one fell swoop. You should be done for the next two weeks, minimum. Let’s get on with this vacation thing. Figure out how it’s supposed to go.”

He kisses her then, right on the highway, and a different pickup coming down the road rewards them with an exuberant honk. That breaks them up and, smiling, they tramp back to the Jeep and carry on up the road to find their cabin.

TEN

Despite the hiccup of encountering a road accident along the way, their holiday could not be getting off to a better start for Sandra and Émile Cinq-Mars. Having booked a cabin built in the 1920s that’s described by its proprietor as rustic, they were never certain if the charm depicted in online photographs might be duplicated upon close inspection. The claim to be
charming
could cover a plethora of sins, such as musty, damp, drafty, mouse-ridden, and leaky, with lousy plumbing, a filthy kitchen, a plugged toilet, a smoky fireplace, and dismal views of a parking lot or a construction site.
Rustic
could be deployed to dignify a dump. The ocean view depicted on the Internet might have been superseded by a condominium development a week earlier, or years ago. One never knows.

All such fears are summarily allayed.

Their home for the next two weeks is not only rustic and cozy, it’s tidy, clean, and as charming as a fawn nuzzling a doe in a spring meadow. They can’t get over the loveliness of the setting, the waving tall grasses down to the rocky shoreline, the hilly, picturesque inlet highlighted by small wooden fishing boats in a multitude of colors, which benefit from an old-fashioned winching system to haul them up an impossibly long ramp to cope with the stunning disparity between high and low tides. Émile’s statement, “Charm out the wazoo,” doesn’t duplicate Sandra’s choice of words, but she takes his meaning. They’ve landed not only on their feet but, as near as she can tell, smack-dab in the heart of a summer paradise.

She would not care to survive a winter here, but for the next two weeks, if she’s not quite in heaven, she’s exactly where she wants to be.

“Like living in a Wyeth painting fifty years ago” is how she puts it.

Sandra has brought basic supplies from home: sugar and tea, coffee, a variety of spices, even a large jar of flour in the event that she succumbs to an urge to bake, which she might. The scent of cookies in this old house should be especially tantalizing. Bulk items that she’s not likely to repurchase have been brought along, and she wants to set up her kitchen right away and have that done. Émile prefers to explore, shop later. Their compromise is to stroll on a beaten path through the tall grasses to the shore of Whale Cove, breathe the salt air, relax, then get to work. Exploration of the island will come later.

The trip back into town is also peaceful. The pickup remains in the ditch, and just as they are entering North Head, a police car at full speed swishes past them, cherries flashing. Émile can’t help following the vehicle in his rearview mirror.

“Émile,” Sandra gently warns him.

He tries his best to keep his eyes on the road.

They don’t know where to shop, and while the first store they drop into has a disappointing inventory and high prices, it makes up for that with a convivial air. Lots of laughter and chat among customers and employees. They feel themselves in a different place. After the groceries, Émile stops at the liquor store. He can hardly believe the stockpile of beer, and buys a case, even though he entered for vodka and whiskey. Sandra remarks on his loot as he comes back out.

“Do I put in a call to AA now or when we get home?”

They duck into a bakery, and while Sandra purchases bread, the place triggers a few of Émile’s fonder vices. He comes away with a cake, a pie, and a variety of doughnuts. Sandra thinks that perhaps she’ll put her summer baking plans on hold, or her husband might return from Whale Cove the size of one.

“Did you overhear what they were talking about?” Émile asks.

“Was I eavesdropping on other people’s conversations? Categorically, no,” she teases. But she’s curious. “What was it?”

“Grocery store, liquor store, bakery, people are laughing. They seem happy. And yet, somewhere in the conversation, a dead man gets mentioned.”

“Really?”

“In each place.”

“Did he fall out of a tree?”

After lunch, they set out to explore the island. At Whistle Road Émile wants to turn right. Sandra insists they go left. “I know which way the cop cars went, Émile. We’ll explore the opposite direction.”

He laughs. He’s less keen to investigate the unknown fuss than she thinks. He’s really more curious about the island, and off they go. Some twenty years ago, a young journalist helped Émile with a case. The island was the writer’s ancestral home. When later the detective needed to sequester a young woman from the bad guys, he arranged with the journalist to hide her away on Grand Manan. A ploy that worked. Ever since, he’s been interested in visiting the place, a time that’s come.

On this opening foray, they’re keen on getting to know the lay of the land. Amazing, to drive down to the lower, southern portion of the island and encounter fog, while the sky is as clear as a bell at North Head. South is less hilly and less high. There’s a park with a sand beach and fishing villages to which no picture postcard can do justice. They visit a general store in the town of Castalia that’s a throwback to another century, and except for the familiarity of the canned goods and other supplies, they’ve tumbled not only into another world but into another time. The storefront and the first section fail to indicate the size of the place, but once through there they enter into an expansive space. Here they can purchase steaks or the freezer to put them in, a bolt of cloth or electrical wire, penny candies on one side of the aisle, socks on the other, and beyond that shirts, pants, party dresses, and bicycles. A workingman’s steel-toed boots over here, toys over there, and, in between, computers and cereal. This is where they will shop in the future, Sandra determines, falling in love with the ambience while appreciating the prices, too. She listens for talk of a dead man, but here the employees are stationed too far apart from one another for idle banter to flourish.

Back on the road, she reads out the names of places they will investigate later: the Castalia Marsh, Woodwards Cove, the Thoroughfare, which is a crossing to Ross Island, underwater at high tide, the villages of Anchorage in Long Pond Bay, and Seal Cove, and Jack Tar’s Cove, Deep Cove, and Flock of Sheep. Just south of Flock of Sheep Sandra’s eye catches what appears to be the tip of a staircase on a cliff. Nothing looks private, there are no signs, there’s room to park, so she suggests an excursion. Émile turns around, and soon they are descending a steep stairway to what looks like a secret, small, and remarkably pretty beach in a wee cove below.

They spy sand on the shore sheltered by rock face on three sides. If this is a public spot where they are free to picnic and swim, nap or read a book, then they have truly landed in paradise.

The little cove is exactly that. A special place that could never be accessed without a stairway. Big boulders shelter the sand from the sea, the waves bursting on them first, then running gently up and minding their manners ashore. The couple is about to make the steep ascent back to the car, determined to return in their swimsuits one day with a stocked hamper and wine, when Émile steps past a boulder and is saddened by what lies at his feet. A dog, a magnificent black Lab, dead on the sand. Flies have alighted, but not many, nor have they been intrusive, so the body washed up in a recent hour, the dog, in all probability, having drowned.

Seeing him bent over, Sandra comes up behind her husband.

“Oh dear,” she says.

“Oh dear,” he repeats, and straightens.

“What should we do with him?”

“She’s a female. Maybe not full-grown, but still about fifty pounds.”

“No, Émile, you can’t carry it. More like sixty pounds. Your back.”

“We can’t leave it here. I’m not going to bury it in the sand. It’ll be unearthed in the next storm.”

They stare at the poor animal awhile. No collar.

“We can alert the authorities,” she suggests.

“I bet they have better things to do. In any case, if we leave her for even a little while, the flies and rodents, not to mention the birds, will have at her.”

They share a glance, then gaze at the dog again.

“Okay,” Sandra says. “I can help. Take it slowly. We’ll rest on the way up.”

“I was planning on doing that even without carrying a dog.”

He has to dig in the sand to get his forearms under the Lab, but soon enough he makes it to his feet, adjusts the dog’s weight, and proceeds. Sandra tries to take some of the weight off by putting her hand under the body where it sags between Émile’s arms, but in the end he’s on his own, and they commence their climb. He doesn’t let on that for all his inherent strength, somewhat diminished by his sixty-six years and lower-back issues, the task will probably kill him.

He keeps that prospect to himself as he staggers up the stairs.

*   *   *

The Mounties arriving by aircraft brought in a dog, a German shepherd. A forensics team, also from the mainland, detailed and scrupulously photographed the site, and the detective from Saint John asked Aaron Roadcap to drop by the local station for questioning. Roadcap politely declined, saying not unless he was fed first. Not having the budget to offer the man breakfast, they drove him home to feed himself and arranged to pick him up later in the afternoon for a talk. The detective agrees with Corporal Wade Louwagie that Roadcap is a curious fellow, although he does not seem to be behaving with criminal intent, guilt, or apprehension. He strikes them both as a peculiar person who is more or less an upright citizen.

“If you believe in the myth of the upright citizen. I don’t, personally. But just because his old man’s a convicted murderer doesn’t make him a killer, too,” the city detective quips.

His partner from the city whose name is Jack Hopple reminds him that “Bad apples don’t fall far from the rotted-out tree trunk.”

“That’s not how the saying goes,” the detective tries to correct him.

“No matter how you say it, still true.”

“You’re too class-conscious, Jack,” the superior admonishes the other detective, although playfully. “Clouds your view of the big picture.”

“We had a chat earlier,” Louwagie mentions. “Roadcap and me. When we were out here alone. He doesn’t believe his father was guilty of that murder.”

“Just convicted of it. Sounds guilty to me. Doesn’t it to you? Is he out yet?”

Detective Marshall Isler may have been thinking the same thought that Louwagie had entertained at the outset of all this.

“Sorry, sir. He’s dead. Died in prison,” Louwagie tells him. “Roadcap was a kid at the time.” He doesn’t know why, he just feels he should stick up for the guy.

A rotund man in his early fifties, with thin gray hair and a thick mustache, Isler jots down a note in a red book slim enough to slip in and out of his shirt pocket. “What can you tell me about our dearly departed reverend? What was he into, besides ‘Jesus loves me, this I know’?”

Louwagie’s knowledge is limited. He’s bumped into him at public events, and has heard nothing untoward about the man. “A bachelor.”

“That’s suspicious right there,” the city detective points out. A bachelor himself, Louwagie fails to agree. The man inscribes a notation in his red book, then inquires, “What else?”

Louwagie says that the pastor’s congregation, Presbyterian, seems to be one of the saner groups on the island. He does not mean to suggest that they’re all batty, only that a few come across as off-the-wall. Every congregation preaches against alcohol, and perhaps Lescavage did, too, despite being known to take a nip himself.

“Falling down drunk type thing?” Isler asks him and Louwagie says no.

“Let’s say that he could drink a lot at times but still hold it. I administered a Breathalyzer once. He barely passed, still, the physical tests he passed with flying colors. Walked a straight line like a train on rails.”

“Why did you test him? Random stop or did he give you cause?”

“Zigged when he should’ve zagged. Said he was reaching into his glove box for something.”

“For what exactly?”

The detective, in Louwagie’s opinion, is overreaching. He comes across as a man who asks questions to make people think he has an idea, when nothing at all is floating through his head.

“We’re going back a couple of years, sir. I’m not sure. Can’t remember. I think he said he was reaching in the glove box for his gloves.”

“Nobody does that,” the detective replies. “Puts gloves in a glove box.”

Louwagie doesn’t think that that’s as profound as the detective apparently believes, but he keeps his peace. He wanders off on his own to sit on a boulder while the detectives do whatever it is they’re so brilliant at. While awaiting their report, he reviews for himself what’s transpired.

Eventually, the forensic folks concede the obvious, that the open air after a vicious storm doesn’t leave much to go on. Much of the blood and ooze washed away. They don’t seem terribly anxious to stir the muck and body slime more than is necessary. They will pick up the pieces, and Louwagie is so relieved that this job doesn’t fall to him, he believes he can French-kiss each one of them and the snoop dog twice. He knows better than to say so and remains nonchalant about this terrific news. He might not recover if he’s required to bag the man’s gooey intestines or separate out his organs. The Mountie has already explained that the desiccated vomit on the cairn is his own, not the perpetrator’s or the victim’s. He’s grateful that the other cops seem to understand and not think badly of him.

Then comes the matter of getting the bagged body out. The undertakers nearly killed themselves coming in when one turned his ankle in a small crevice and came close to stumbling right over a ledge. All he was carrying at the time was a light stretcher. They’re nervous about trying their luck a second time while lugging the dead man along the edge of a cliff. They can also take routes through the forest, where they are liable to get lost. Lescavage was not a heavy man yet his remains make for an awkward weight. To take the longer path in the opposite direction from the way they came in is infinitely safer, and Louwagie makes that decision and hires two local men to spell them along the trail. Miles with a body between them will be cumbersome and tiring otherwise, and pulling it behind an ATV over rough terrain too damaging to the corpse. The undertaker’s van can meet them where they emerge from the trail close to North Head, so that Lescavage, discreetly packed into a body bag, his innards in another, will not be subject to a public viewing just yet.