Something Fishy (12 page)

She'd stopped breathing.

She had laughed herself to death.

What had been so funny?

A vase that had been shuddering on the tabletop was the next thing to go. It planted itself on Viola's chest, and then fell over onto her. The first of the funeral flowers.

The mayor of Winterside did not survive the aftermath of the dinner. He'd kept asking for more rice, picking the kidney beans out and eating them.

The mayor's wife said he'd loved them, but couldn't stomach them.

This had been the reaction to end all reactions.

Chapter Fourteen

Anton looked puzzled.

“So it was the beans?”

“The mayor died of a heart attack, brought on by overstraining. Dr. Dunn says it's quite common. Happened to an elderly fellow here recently.” Jamieson still wondered about what had happened to Elmer Whitehead. Hy had told her about red- kidney- bean poisoning. But any death seemed to put her instinctual antennae up these days. She had to stop seeing murder around every corner. Old people died. And this place had more than its fair share.

“Yes, you could say it was the beans. In his case.”

Paradis groaned. “The pufferfish, that I could bear, but beans?!”

“It wasn't the pufferfish, that we know. Those symptoms are too severe to go unnoticed. None of your
guests
…showed any of those symptoms. They all had a good laugh, but that's about it. As for Miss…” Jamieson chose not to attempt the last name, in spite of her usual formality.

“As for Viola…heart attack. Asphyxiation. It appears to be natural causes. That's what the doctor said.”

Jamieson wondered if Doctor Dunn knew what he was talking about anymore. He was very old and hadn't been able to find the door out of the cottage when he was standing right in front of it.

Jamieson's brow furrowed. Viola had been old. Frail.

And rich.

“Something tells me that it's not that simple.” It was that gut feeling she tried to ignore, but couldn't. It was like worms squirming around in her stomach that wouldn't settle until things felt right, fell into place.

Why had they all been laughing? She had no answer for that.

“Do you have any idea what triggered the laughter?”

“I can't imagine.”

Jamieson shook her head. “Neither can I.”

“No, neither can I,” she repeated, shaking her head. She had to stick to the facts.

Here she was again. Accident or murder? Where was the motive that might lead to murder?

What was Anton's relationship with the deceased? What were his expectations? The will would be illuminating. The Japanese chef – long gone but an unlikely suspect. No, it looked like Anton was the only possibility, if Viola had been murdered.

The mayor of Winterside? Collateral damage.

A stream of village women, remembering the bouquets, turned up at Anton's door with every kind of casserole imaginable – from the standard tuna to the more exotic turkey and pineapple bake.

No one brought beans.

There were muffins and rolls and cakes, cookies and jams and jellies. It had a peculiar effect on Anton. A month ago, he would have dismissed such offerings as being beneath his dignity, both as culinary possibilities and as charity.

It was the way the village responded to a death, providing the means to ease people through that terrible time.

The embarrassing truth was that Anton needed the food. That's how desperate his financial situation was. He had very little cash and had used all his credit. There were a few thousand he could access in a week's time, but that was the end of his gravy train.

He was pinning all his hopes on Viola's will.

Fiona was either kindhearted, guilt-ridden, or wanted to cover up her animosity towards Viola, because she headed for Winterside as the sun rose the next day. She'd cooked up the idea the night before, and had a fitful sleep in her excitement to realize her inspiration.

She arrived just as The Loonie Bin opened its doors for the day, grabbed a cart and began to scour the flower section, tossing in a variety of fake fabric roses and tulips and poppies – they were for remembrance, weren't they?

What she'd come for was the latest retail item, the memorial wreath. The wreaths came in ghoulish purple, vomit green, and black. She threw a dozen of them into her cart, and, since it caught her eye going by, tossed a pink teddy bear on top.

She didn't waste any time window shopping or popping into the Big Girl's store.

She did, however, stop “home,” her uncle Jim's neat bungalow, that she now called her “townhouse.” She liked the sound of it.

She unearthed a dress, suitable for the occasion, and a hat. She changed into them and emerged in a lacy black dress that ballooned around her, differing not at all in shape from her daily wear, but with sequins dotting the yoke and the hemline. Her hat was also black, broad-brimmed, with a gauze veil covering her face. She had to push it aside to drive back to The Shores.

The wind had picked up by the time she rolled down the Shore Lane to Anton's Paradise. She emerged, with difficulty, from the vehicle, squishing her belly past the steering wheel.

The hat went flying off her head. Rather than chase it, which she couldn't have done anyway, she watched it tumble along one side of the building, hoping it would stop before she lost it.

It did. It got stuck on one of the posts that held up the sign that, in an elegant cursive, read:
Anton's Paradise
.

Perfect. That is where she would build her memorial.

She hauled the plastic bags out of the car. Thin and cheap, they rustled in the breeze and threatened, like the hat, to get away from her. She dropped a red sandstone rock on each of them, to keep them in place.

Then, battling the wind, she began to arrange the flowers and wreaths around the signposts. She had to anchor each flower, each bouquet, and each wreath, with a rock. The effect wasn't what she'd hoped.

She hadn't had time to create a fudge heart, but at the bottom centre placed a large chocolate fudge “V.” She picked up the crowning touch, the pink teddy bear – that Viola would have hated – with its pop-open eyes, surrounded by long, lush, dark eyelashes. She had just planted it at the top of the pile and begun to take photos with her cell phone when Anton came blistering out of the building.

“What the fuck do you think you're doing?” It was a word he didn't normally use; it was out of keeping with his image of himself. But there was no other way to say it. When she didn't respond – he had no idea his words were tossed away on the wind – he said it again.

This time, she heard, and snapped upright from her bent-over position, dropping a rock on the pink teddy's toe and dislodging it from its perch atop the hill of remembrance.

There was no history of heart trouble in Anton's family – a good thing since he was ripe for it – his age, his rich diet, and the state he was in – apoplexy. Not the kind that delivers a stroke, but not healthy. His colour – bright red – didn't look very healthy either. He came thundering over. Fiona stood even straighter.

“I have made a memorial for Miss Viola.”

“It looks like she died by the side of the road – or under my sign.”

“She almost did.”

“Christ!” Viola would have hated this monument to maudlin mourning as much as he did. He lunged at it and ripped flowers and wreaths, sending them scattering. Bits of ribbon and plastic and petals were caught on the wind and began to somersault over the cape, dancing around Anton's Paradise. The building. The sign. Anton himself.

Fiona looked hurt – and puzzled.

“You'd think it would be good advertising for dangerous dining.”

“Not this kind. Not this tacky, tasteless…”

“It was good enough for Princess Diana.”

He snorted. “She was dead. She was spared the sight of it.”

Fiona was shocked.

“The Queen liked it.”

“I doubt it.”

“So it's taste, then, not someone's dying that bothers you.”

“Yes. Of course.”

“I'll have my wages, because I won't be doing any more work for you.”

“That suits me. Clear this stuff away and then we'll talk about wages.”

“What about the cost of it?” She'd keep the teddy bear, she knew, and charge him for it anyway.

A white Mercedes streaked with Red Island dust purred down the Shore Lane. Here he was in a shrieking match with a fat fishwife in front of a common roadside shrine, an inexcusable lack in taste, and a valued client was about to arrive.

He had to get rid of her.

“All right, but clear it up immediately. Mail me an invoice.”

“Mail it? I could send it by a paper airplane.” She snickered at her own joke, gesturing to her trailer home. “We're that close.”

Anton did not need to be reminded. “Get it to me. An invoice.”

“A invoice? What's that?”

He sighed.

“Move this stuff. Now. Bill me later. When my guest is gone. Or tomorrow.”

As he turned his back to her, his expression transformed from wrath to a smooth, welcoming smile for someone he hoped was going to spend a lot of money with him. He'd have to ask for a deposit, although it offended him. He wouldn't have the money otherwise for the expensive ingredients to feed his clients. He felt like the Mother Hubbard of the culinary high end. Not a feeling he liked.

He took one backward glance to make sure Fiona was clearing her shrine away. Not as fast as he'd like, but…

She was getting to be a real liability.

In the end, Moira hooked Frank the way some women – women Moira wouldn't have spoken to in church – always have. She gave him more. It went from innocent petting to not so innocent. Fully clothed to dishevelled. Never naked. Never. Mostly standing up, but when no declaration came, she began to sit down. Lie down. She called it reclining. She'd unearthed her Cosmo articles again, and blushed deep crimson at some of the things they suggested a woman do to hook a man. She wouldn't, couldn't, do most of those things, but she did find one or two that would work.

Finally, Frank got the message. She wasn't like his other female customers, who'd been happy with some harmless fooling around.

No, Moira – as he knew from the start – was a lady. That's how he explained away her reluctance to go any farther than they had, her lack of response. She wasn't frigid – he'd heard the moans held back – but it would take a ring to unlock her.

He was surprised she'd gone unclaimed for so long. Here she was sitting on a tidy bit of property. The house, inside and out, and the yard were well-maintained. The furnishings, modest, but nonetheless antique. He assumed there was money in the bank left by her thrifty garbage-collector father. She was a good cook and housekeeper. Passion? He was confident it would come to her, in his experienced hands.

It would please his mother. She was dead, but he felt her watching him. She'd begged him to settle down, begged him until the day she died. It was time.

If he didn't move soon, it wouldn't be long before someone else snapped her up.

An engagement ring would be the key. Frank knew it would impress her – most of the women at The Shores had only a simple gold band, their wedding ring. He knew Moira fancied herself a cut above.

The beauty of it was that he didn't have to buy the ring. It belonged to his sister Maggie, now divorced. She'd yanked it off and thrown it across the kitchen when she'd found out her husband was having an affair with his dental hygienist, a woman half his age.

Maggie thought no more about it until Frank came over one day to clear out her furnace vents. There he found it, greasy with dirt and dust, hiding in a corner, looking like a screw head. He reached to clean it off and it came loose. He picked it up, blew the dust off, cleared the greasy residue with his thumb, and saw the diamond.

Mean, dirty, and small. But a diamond.

He held it up to Maggie.

“Keep it. I don't want it,” she'd said.

He kept it for a long time, not willing to trade his liberty for it, nor be embroiled in an acrimonious split like his sister.

Then he met Moira. A lady. Willow thin. Hair too tight, but he'd been raking his fingers through that as one of the safe places he could go, and she was wearing it looser these days. Pale skin, but that, too, improved under his touch. She'd flush pink when his hands roamed to the few places that weren't off limits – her shoulders, her arms, the sides of her breasts, and, thank God, her ass. She was generous with that, but there wasn't much of it. Even so, without it, a man could starve, he thought.

He pulled the ring from his pocket, the diamond still regrettably small, but a diamond all the same. The jewel and the gold of the ring were polished and sparkling, a key to unlock Moira – maybe before the wedding. If so – perhaps a long engagement?

A hope that was soon dashed.

Jamieson knew she should have been discussing matters with Murdo, but didn't like to intrude on his cozy domesticity with April and the kids. It wasn't out of consideration; she found it suffocating. The wood range always on, even in summer, the toys and books scattered everywhere, the school art hiding the fridge.

She much preferred Ian's Spartan bachelor quarters, with his constantly collapsing furniture.

She'd told Ian about her conversation with Anton, and perhaps said rather more than she should have about the case. But she wasn't sure it was a case. Maybe just an unfortunate incident.

Besides, she told herself, she had to talk to people, yes, even confide in them, if she were going to find anything out. That's the way it worked in The Shores.

“So the laughing fit? Any ideas?”

Ian looked up at her, then returned his gaze to the screen.

“A few.”

That was another reason she was here with Ian – his Internet access.

“Fatal hilarity.”

“Dying from laughing?”

“I guess so. That was the medical term it was given in the fifties, but it's not clear what the actual condition is.”

“You mean that the laughing was not the cause of death, but led to the cause of death.”

“Something like that.” He printed up a page and handed it to her.

She scanned the page. “A guy died laughing at
A Fish Called Wanda
?”

Ian smiled. “Yup. Heartbeat went through the roof.”