Seven Days Dead (13 page)

Sandra chooses that moment to poke her head out from the massive carnival that is the general store. She’s only checking on his whereabouts, and pops back inside again.

“Lord God Almighty!” Margaret suddenly exclaims. “Can you believe this day?”

“Ah,” Cinq-Mars says, “ah, how so?”

“First Orrock dies!”

“Who’s Orrock?” he asks.

“Only the boss and owner of everything! He owns the fish plant, a lot of the boats. He owns the lobster pounds, the salmon-fishing farms, most of the property. I’m told the only thing he doesn’t own on the island are the banks, but he owns most of the money in them, so there you go. What difference does that make?”

“I see. But I thought this province was owned by the Irving family.”

“Sure it is. But what they don’t own around here, Orrock has a hand in.”

“And he’s passed away?”

“In his sleep. He didn’t deserve that.”

“Too young a man, was he?”

“Old enough. But he didn’t deserve to die in his sleep. He should’ve been drawn and quartered. He should’ve been cut up in slices and tossed over the side as fish bait.”

“I take your meaning. Not well liked.”

“Despised, pretty much. He wasn’t sliced up though. Reverend Lescavage, he’s like a shiny penny, a lucky one, the sweetest little guy, littler than me anyway, but he’s the one who gets sliced. Not in his sleep either, poor guy. At least I don’t think so. He didn’t get fed to the fishes, but apparently,
apparently,
it was gruesome what happened. The birds ate some of him. What a terrible way for a sweet man to die. Don’t you think so? And on our island! A murder!”

Émile Cinq-Mars is grateful that Sandra has stayed inside and is not hearing this, or she might pack them both up and leave. For his part, he has to acknowledge that as much as he is happy to be on the island, and his first impressions are positive, matters are starting to get interesting.

“Now you show up!” Margaret exclaims.

He’s momentarily confused. How could she possibly know who he is?

“With a dead dog!”

“Oh … right. Right. It’s been quite a day around here.”

“That’s three dyings all in the same little while!”

“Yes, I see,” Émile says, and is more glad than ever that his wife is not within earshot to glean that the dead appear to be falling out of the trees on Grand Manan. Then he has an idea. He’s amazed that he has solved the identity and the mystery of the dead dog by talking to the right person. This may be a place where any investigation into anything can be supported by local knowledge, rather than with what he’s put up with throughout his long career—namely, witness silence. So he says to Margaret, “Listen, I was just down to the old City Hall. To inquire about the dog and what to do. It seems to be occupied by an unusual group.”

“Oh them,” she says.

“Yeah, them,” he says, hopeful. “Do you know what they’re doing in there?”

“Well,” she says, and for the first time her voice falls to a whisper, as if a secret is about to be conveyed, “they think that we don’t know.”

“We,” Cinq-Mars repeats.

“Us. The people. The town. The whole island, for that matter.”

“But you do. Know.”

“Of course we do. We even have video.”

“Really.”

“Yup.”

“So what is it? What are they up to?”

“They’re learning how to fly. I kid you not. I do not yank your chain. Hey, let’s go back in. I’m supposed to be working.”

He walks with her across the parking lot.

“Margaret, ah, what do you mean, fly?”

“Not in airplanes,” she whispers with that conspiratorial inflection again, and adds once more, “We have video.”

“Who does?”

She shrugs. “Oh, I don’t know. Somebody. It’s been shared, so maybe everybody by now. They sit on the floor and cross their legs and do their meditations and go “Ooommmm,” and nobody minds that so much. Each to their own, right? Then they go bouncing around on the floor, banging their thighs and knees on the floor trying to bounce up into the air. So they can learn to fly. They’re a bunch of loonies. They believe—we saw a group like them on the Internet—they think they’ll fly someday. You know, levitate and like that?”

“How do you think they’re doing?” His question is intended less to find out about a group of initiates, most likely spawned by an East Indian cult, than to discover how seriously the locals take them.

Margaret flashes a smile. “Let’s just say that nobody’s seen anybody hovering above the treetops just yet.”

They arrive at the store’s front steps at the same moment that Sandra is coming out. She’s accumulated more shopping bags and wears a rather sheepish grin. Émile laughs. “No matter,” he consoles her. “We’re on vacation. This helpful young lady is giving me directions to the home of the dog’s owner, then we’re off.”

ELEVEN

Madeleine Orrock slept during the day.

She made up the king-size bed in the guest room, a place she’s never slept in previously and rarely visited except as a child, and then only if she was looking for a place to hide. The moment her head hit the pillow she expected to be down for a fortnight. So much rolled back over her. Her father’s death, his inert body, their lives together, all that ancient history, as well as the sea she was tossed upon to arrive here, that bucking boat, a thrashing rain, and as she fell helplessly into slumber—one part mental fatigue to three parts physical exhaustion—a darkness befell her even as the sun rose higher in the sky outside her window. Too tired to get up and pull down the shade.

Whether it’s bad dreams or a festering hunger or sunlight that wakes her she doesn’t know, but her deep sleep lasts only three hours. Awakening, she considers staying right where she is, at least until dark, though she soon realizes she’s utterly famished. She recalls her miserable seasickness on the crossing. She’s been running on empty, or at least sleeping on empty.

She thinks about making herself lunch, but once up she’s too light-headed, perhaps too lazy. She locks up and strolls into town to hunt for a café. Invigorated by the sea air. Maddy was born on this rock, and the taste and smell of the air is every bit a part of her DNA she believes as is her gender, her height, her skin and bones. Assuming that her arrival is late enough, that the tourists won’t be jammed chockablock into the Compass Rose—she’s right on that score—Maddy settles into the cozy waterfront restaurant. She’s spacey after her half nap and from her lack of nourishment, so it takes a while to detect that others have noticed her presence.

While she might come across as just another tourist to the younger set, older folks among the staff and local customers have recognized her, her name whispered among them. Oh yes. This is part of living here. Being an Orrock, wearing what her father called a mantle but what she knows to be a yoke.

Yes, she wants to call out, not too loudly but quite firmly, I am an Orrock. My father’s daughter. Live with it. God knows, I do.

Here anyway, on Grand Manan, she lives with it. Years away, she can forget what that’s like, but returning home it comes back upon her like an enemy’s sweet revenge.

She’s been enjoying her lunch. Now she can’t get out of there fast enough.

Spooked on the way home, as well. This time, eyes observe and access her, appraise her, dismiss her, evaluate, condemn, and despise her. Or simply remember her, even though she is incapable of remembering the people who do. That was always a problem for which she found no sympathy. Everybody on the island could identify her by name while she was acquainted with only a smattering of people. She always felt at a disadvantage and exposed, especially during times that are best enjoyed privately. Slipped on the ice? Everybody knew. Kissed a boy? The gossip might as well have been on television. Flew off the handle in a rage for no reason? Every person on the island psychoanalyzed her and most pegged her as either crazy or dim. No matter what she did or which way she turned or where she hid or how she conducted herself, well or badly, she was always on display, and here it is happening again. The added aspect now is that her family is dramatically the subject of conversation today: her father is dead.

Maddy enters the house and immediately recalls, with apprehension, what she has done so many times before, fleeing home even though it was the last place on earth she wanted to be.
What a silly girl I am!
Some things are so hard to outgrow.

Still. She feels sheltered behind that closed door. And recognizes an ancient reprobate of a feeling. On the one hand, she’s sheltered and safe. On the other, she’s trapped.

Like I’m my own endangered species.

She’s surprised, alarmed even, when someone rings the doorbell.

She hopes Simon Lescavage has come over at last, and if not she reminds herself to pay him a visit. He should be able to advise on what to do next with respect to the funeral arrangements. But it isn’t him. Plainclothes Mounties are on her doorstep. The two men show their badges.

She didn’t know that Mounties ever went anywhere in plain clothes.

“We’re from Saint John,” the one called Detective Isler explains, as if what difference that makes should be both obvious and respected.

“Do you mind if we step in?” the one called Detective Hopple asks.

“This is about my dad?”

“You have our sympathies, ma’am.”

No one has ever called her
ma’am
before. A sign that she’s getting older, she supposes. Or maybe Mounties learn to talk that way. “Sure. Come on in.”

Once inside, they issue kind words with respect to her father’s death, and since they are being considerate, she offers them tea. They both accept, which helps her to assume that this really is a courtesy call. She leaves them in the living room to their own devices while she puts the kettle on, and before it whistles she returns, sitting opposite the two of them. She spreads out her hands to ask, “What’s this about? How can I help you with anything?”

“Do you know Reverend Simon Lescavage?” Isler queries.

“Of course. Yes. I was thinking about looking him up. People were trying to find him this morning, but I’m afraid I fell asleep. Exhausted, I guess.”

“Understandable,” Isler says. Hopple doesn’t appear to share that point of view, but in any case, he says nothing. “I’m afraid I have bad news for you then.”

She can scarcely believe what they say, and remains staring at them once they finish their summary of the details. Maddy feels horrified in a way that she’s never experienced before and only the scream of the kettle’s whistle penetrates her mood. Reverend Lescavage has been murdered. That’s so hard to fathom. She bounds up to make the tea, and rushes back, her hands shaking.

“I don’t believe it,” she says finally. “I can’t believe it.”

“It is a shocker,” Isler commiserates. “A troubling case. Exceptionally violent. I think this island is going to have a hard time coming to grips with that. If a killer is loose … well, the island’s not that big, is it? I certainly don’t want to alarm anyone, but there’s no getting around it. We’re in a frightening situation here.”

“My God,” she says quietly. “I still can’t believe it.”

The three remain quiet awhile, as though allowing the news to settle. Then Detective Hopple intrudes on the stillness. “May I ask, ma’am, when was the last time you saw the minister?”

Maddy thinks about it. “Three, four, years ago. Something like that.”

The two men share a silent communication between themselves.

“What?” Maddy asks.

“You see, ma’am—”

“Please don’t call me
ma’am.
I don’t—” She pauses, feels that she must sound rude and senses in her voice her father’s curt dismissal of others. “I’m sorry, it doesn’t agree with me. It makes me sound
old,
or something.”

“Pardon me. Miss Orrock, then,” Isler says.

That sounds worse, but she’s done with putting her neuroses on display.

Hopple takes over. “What we understand is this. Miss Matheson was here last night, looking after your father. She was relieved of that duty by Reverend Lescavage. The next person to arrive at this house was you. As far as we know. So are you saying that you did not encounter the reverend last night?”

Maddy does not promptly catch on to their line of inquiry. “That’s what I’m saying, I guess.”

“You guess,” Isler says.

“Okay. I know. I came home. I found my father asleep in his bedroom. I was upset, actually, that he’d been left alone. Later, I realized that he wasn’t sleeping. He was already dead. I didn’t want to wake him, you see.”

“I see,” Isler murmurs.

“The point is, Simon Lescavage wasn’t here.”

The detective writes something in a little red notebook which he supports on his broad left thigh. “So you arrived home, found your father deceased, and you didn’t contact anyone about that?”

She feels threatened. “That’s right, Officer. Not at that time of night.”

“Detective is the proper nomenclature, not Officer, just so you know.”

“Who gives a shit?”

“Excuse me?”

“I’m sorry. What’s this about? Why are you asking me these questions?”

Isler pauses a moment. Then speaks to her in a slow, low voice. “As you know, we’re investigating the murder of Reverend Lescavage.”

“I’m saddened by his death. I liked him. He was always kind to me. Not many on this island were. I’m horrified, in fact, if you want to know the truth. I’m probably in shock or whatever, but why are you talking to me, asking me these questions?”

“Because you’re the last person to have seen him alive.”

“I saw him three or four years ago! Nobody’s seen him since?”

The detective puts his little book away. The tea is still steeping on the coffee table between them.

“There’s no need for sarcasm,” Isler warns her.

“I’m not—” Maddy stops herself. She wants to rampage, she knows. She’s not ready for anything like this. It’s crazy and she wants it to end immediately. She has the thought that her father would never put up with this, that he’d have had the man’s badge by now. Both their badges. “It’s not my intention to be sarcastic,” she says in an even tone.