Seven Days Dead (22 page)

“About what?”

She reflects on the question a moment. His tone demands more than a simple answer, that she go to the grit of the matter.

“Not just about why he was such a bastard. I was secretly hoping he’d beg me. You know. For forgiveness. That was a fantasy. I warned myself to put no stock in it, but I’m human. Realistically, I wanted him to say something about my mother. He never told me much. Almost nothing. I always felt that there was something he’d held back from me. I wanted to know what.”

“What happened to her?”

“She was thrown off a cliff.”

“Really. When?”

“When I was a child. She was thrown off Seven Days Work onto the rocks below. The man who found Reverend Simon Lescavage’s body, his name is Aaron Roadcap, his father threw my mother off Seven Days Work.”

“Why?”

Maddy lifts her shoulders and shakes her head at the same time. She holds the pose, as though this is the mystery of her life. “That’s what I wanted to talk to my dad about.”

“What can you tell me about Mr. Roadcap, the younger? What does he do?”

“Do? He lives in a tar-paper hut over in Dark Harbour. He cuts dulse.”

“Dulse,” Cinq-Mars says, although he knows what it is.

“Yeah, the seaweed we harvest around here. The Bay of Fundy brings in nutrients from the sea with our huge tides and takes all the dirt back out to the Atlantic, day in, day out. That’s why the whales are here and the fish and that’s why the seaweed is so rich in nutrients. We cut and ship the dulse as chips. Also, my dad owned a small plant that pulverizes dulse. He shipped the powder to health-food nuts around the world, but mostly to California and Scandinavia. He’s pretty much cornered a monopoly on that. Anyway, Aaron Roadcap cuts dulse and lives in squalor, as near as I can tell.”

“Is there anything else you can say about him? Did he have a quarrel with Lescavage, for instance?”

“I wouldn’t know. Down through the years, we’ve met from time to time. Awkward. The thing about him is…” She stops a moment, as though to reconfigure this insight, then forges on. “A couple of things, really, apart from living in squalor, are strange.”

“What’s that?” Émile asks.

Maddy looks at him, then glances over at Sandra, almost as though to suggest that she is more likely to understand this part. “I hate to say it, but he’s as handsome as a god. Seriously. Literally. And the other thing is, he’s no dummy. He’s smart, and he talks well. He doesn’t talk like some dulse-cutting drug user.”

“Do dulse cutters use drugs?”

She shrugs. “The fishermen do. A lot of fishermen do, so why not those at the bottom of the totem pole? Only makes sense, really. Who wouldn’t, if what you do all day is walk in tidal pools and harvest seaweed? Pretty boring.”

“A simple enough life,” Émile remarks, which the three of them understand is not the same evaluation.

“The policeman,” Maddy notes, “implied that my arrest is a distinct possibility. Maybe imminent. I’m feeling a bit desperate. I have to bury my father, defend myself, and deal with the judicial system and with the fallout on this island. I hope you can help, sir. I really have no one else I can turn to. My dad is dead and my only friend here, really, was Simon Lescavage.”

Émile’s been noncommittal, but he’s forthcoming now. “You won’t be arrested. It might take one call, it might take two, but that’s not going to happen.” The evidence is circumstantial, at best, but a local cop might grasp a straw and run with it. Émile is connected to everyone up the ladder, and if the investigating officer doesn’t see that it’s in his best interest to tread slowly, superiors the cop has never met will educate him otherwise. Émile is confident of that. His connections will be powerful in this instance.

“You can do that?” Maddy asks, already impressed but, as a woman of the world, suitably skeptical.

“He can,” Sandra assures her. “He will. If you’re innocent, you can’t have a better person in your corner.”

What Maddy says next impresses them both, especially the wary detective.

“Innocence, as you must know, is in short supply on this planet. I’m not painting myself as lily-white or squeaky clean. But I did not kill my father, nor did I have the opportunity, nor would I have had the will even if I’d had the opportunity. Nor did I have the inclination to do so—
it never occurred to me!
It occurred to someone, apparently. And cut up the one adult I ever admired? Do that to him? Me? I’m sorry, but that’s preposterous. That’s strictly maniacal. I might be screwed-up, I know that much about myself, but I am not a homicidal maniac. The problem is, I was home alone, which isn’t much of a defense.”

Impressed, Cinq-Mars sits back in his chair. He’s on the case. His wife doesn’t mind, has even insisted on it, so he’s in the clear on that account. The case is more complex and intriguing the more he learns. The day has been grand, but the days ahead show a different promise, and he’s rising to that challenge, and perhaps, to that pleasure.

“Émile will help you sort out what happened to your father and to the Reverend Lescavage,” Sandra promises. “I’ll help you with the funeral arrangements. I’ll be happy to have something to do while he’s occupied. I won’t say it’ll be fun, but we can keep each other company.”

Maddy Orrock seems to want to decline the offer, but she really can’t bring herself to do so, and nods both consent and thanks. Sandra wears a smile right through the censor of her husband’s glance. She guesses that he wants her to tread cautiously. On that, she doesn’t give a hoot.

“Our conversation has kept you from your drink, Maddy,” Émile points out, “and me from mine. Let’s drink up slowly—while we do, tell me about yourself. This will mark the beginning of my inquiry. I need to learn a lot quickly. I won’t grill you, but please say whatever comes to mind. What I need to acquire right now is what I do not have, and that’s local knowledge. Talk. Free-flowing. Never think that anything is too incidental. It’ll all help.”

That conversation is proceeding and their drinks are finished and renewed when they hear the dull buzz of a cell phone vibrating on a wood surface inside the cottage. Sandra hunts it down so that Émile can continue his fact-finding mission, and brings it out to him. She’s already answered and exchanged a few words, and the look on her face is one of apprehension. He reads the caller’s ID off the smartphone, excuses himself, and walks off the porch and across the back lawn. Where the tall grasses take over, he converses for some time before returning to the porch. He finds the women sharing a peek at Sandra’s book on numerology. She’s written down her guest’s birth date and full name, with which she intends to experiment with her new hobby. The two women look up as he arrives back, and each sees that his visage demonstrates some evident disquiet.

“Maddy, you’re a prof at Harvard,” Émile says.

“Sociology. Born and raised on this island, yet my specialty is the sustainable development of big metropolitan centers. Go figure, hey?”

“Up the road from where you live, another Harvard professor resides.”

“Oh, a few Ivy Leaguers are on the island. Summer people. Harvard’s well represented, oddly enough.”

“But one professor in particular. His name is Jason DeWitt.”

“I know him.”

“We met him ourselves yesterday. Again this morning. In fact, he invited Sandra and me up for drinks. Are you close friends?”

“Casual acquaintances, let’s say. If we pass in the street or a corridor, we nod. Unless he corners me.”

“Corners you?”

“I find him overly affable. He seems to think that everyone he meets is a bosom buddy. In Boston, he introduced me one time to a friend of his
as if I was also
a friend of his, and as if the other friend and me were now inseparable for life. If you’ve met him, then you know that Professor DeWitt makes himself difficult to ignore. We’re neighbors here, although I’m not around much. Academically, we’re in different fields. Why?”

“I’m sorry to tell you this, as it may invoke a certain bad memory, but this afternoon, our Professor DeWitt went over the side of Seven Days Work.”

Sandra is dumbfounded, but clearly Maddy Orrock is stunned and in some dismay. “That’s impossible. I just saw him. When did this happen? Just now? Oh my God, what’s going on? What happened? I mean, did he trip and fall? Was he pushed? Did he jump?”

Émile responds initially with a soft utterance under his breath. Then reports, as though to himself, “Apparently, on this island there’s a fourth option.” He speaks up, explaining himself and dismissing his comment at the same time. “Around here, some people hope to fly. Exactly what happened remains to be determined. Apparently, a fisherman out on the water saw someone drop off the cliff and called it in. The professor’s body was recovered on the rocks below.”

“I don’t believe this.”

“What is it?” Sandra asks.

Maddy’s voice falls to a frail whisper. “I went to see him this afternoon. A courtesy call. I guess I was looking for support. That means I was probably one of the last people to see him alive. Maybe the very last, unless someone killed him.” She looks up at Cinq-Mars, staring into his eyes, imploring him. “Honest to God, it wasn’t me,” she insists.

Cinq-Mars nods and touches her hand in sympathy. He knows what everyone does, not just cops, that that’s what people say, particularly the guilty, when accused of a terrible crime. He’s sympathetic, yet in no position to take her at her word.

PART 3

EIGHTEEN

Émile Cinq-Mars digs out Corporal Louwagie’s business card to buzz his mobile phone. The officer invites him over. His home isn’t far away, but is tucked into a wooded community off the beaten path in North Head. A challenge to locate. Cinq-Mars finds a modest, charm-free bungalow clad in the vinyl typical of New Brunswick dwellings, this one pale yellow with green trim, and a brown roof in urgent need of repair. Overall, the house and yard are due for a sprucing up. At the roofline, a crop of weeds thrives in the gutters.

He rings the bell and waits.

Neighbors have kids, yards that sport swings and basketball nets and a general mess of toys. Louwagie’s home shows only the accoutrements of chores: a lawn mower, a watering can, a stepladder pitched on its side. He’s almost feeling sorry for the man even before he answers wearing a long, forlorn face.

“Detective,” Louwagie says. “Good to see you. Come in.” His expression is far less cheery than his words, which are delivered in a lifeless monotone.

“Émile is fine. I am retired.”

“Are you? I’m hoping you’re back on the job.”

Cinq-Mars finds that his initial impression has merit, for when they sit in the living room, four bottles of liquor stand upright between them on the coffee table. A rum, a gin, and two vodkas, one Russian, one Finnish. None is open. He knows what this means.

“Did you just buy these?”

“Confiscated the lot. A year ago. Off kids. Kept them tucked away in the garage until now.”

A secret cache, just in case.

“So you’re contemplating a long leap off the wagon.”

“Or I’ll follow our professor off a cliff. Look, I can drink in moderation. One drink, maybe two on the weekend.”

“You mean glasses, not bottles.” He knew enough to take all contemplations of suicide seriously. “But I’m seeing the good news here. You haven’t started in. You’re fighting this. What’s going on?”

They’re talking, but Émile notices that the other man scarcely seems to notice his presence.

“The shrinks call it an episode.”

“What do you call it?”

“Fucking scary shit.”

The man’s as angry as he is frightened as he is depressed.

“You’ve been sober awhile?”

“Seems like forever sometimes. Or maybe it was only yesterday. I’m not that kind of an alcoholic.”

“There are kinds?”

“I’m into panic-button booze. I’m free to drink in moderation—seriously, I am—until a bender sideswipes my ass.”

“Okay. Let’s get this over with. Either take a long drink, in which case your career and most likely your life are over and done, or I’ll open the bottles and pour them out. We’ve got a murder case, looks like a multiple-murder case, to investigate. I can’t do that without your able assistance. Or I get somebody else in here. I can make that happen with a call. Don’t ask me to prove it, just decide. Either this stuff gets flushed or your life does. I’ve got enough to do. I’m not playing nursemaid here.”

Tough love. The way to go in some circumstances. Murderous in other situations. Not quite a roll of the dice, but not far off it either.

“Fuck you, too,” the cop says.

“Whatever. Your life. Your call.”

Louwagie appears to be thinking the matter over. When he nods, it’s the slightest gesture. Émile knows to jump at the chance, and takes all four bottles through to the kitchen, uncaps them, then lets the liquids gurgle away two at a time. He turns on the tap to disperse the scent, too, in case the poor guy sticks his nose down the drain later on to inhale the fumes. The waste of good booze bugs him, but he’s cheerful enough—he can afford his own. When he returns to the living room, Wade Louwagie hasn’t budged. A good sign.

Émile remains standing. “Tell me this doesn’t mean you’re over the side.”

“I’m hanging in. A tiny speck inside my brain wants to find out if this shit will pass.”

“Curiosity keeps you alive. Okay. As good a reason as any. Corporal, I know what the Mounties want from you. To stay on the job, get back in the saddle, ride that horse. It’s all bullshit, of course. They’re Neanderthals that way and because you work for them, you have my sympathies.”

At least Louwagie seems to cheer up a tad, hearing that.

“I won’t ask you to take a full load. We’ll keep you under wraps. We’ll travel together, you can guide me around. You can give me access here and there and I’ll give you the pleasure of my company. That’s what you need right now, company. I’m not saying you want it, only that you need it. But I won’t depend on you for much, so relax about it. Maybe we’ll tweak your curiosity. Bolster your life force that way. Stay upright, Wade, see what tomorrow brings. Before this, you were okay. You can get back to that again. Maybe more easily this time than last. We’ll see. Okay?”