Stormy Cove (16 page)

“Take your time,” she said. “The others are already having coffee and carrot cake, but I’ll save a piece for you.”

Lori smiled in gratitude and dove into the c
hicken à l’orange. She was still a bit dopey from her nap.

“Would you like some wine with that?” a voice behind her asked.

Lloyd Weston put a bottle and briefcase on the table and took a seat across from her.

“But of course.” Lori held up a glass to him.

“Wonderful to see you here. How are you getting along in the northern wilds?”

“Famously. Some things need getting used to, but I suppose people have to get used to me as well. Nobody’s chased me away yet.”

She tried to strike a comic note, and Weston played along.

“Why should they? A photographer from Vancouver has enormous conversational value. How is the photography going?”

“Really well. I’ve already got many great pictures, and it can only get better when they start fishing.”

“I don’t doubt it. I love this area.”

She asked a cautious question.

“After all that’s happened? You weren’t exactly treated very well last time.”

“Yes, I love to come back here, though many people don’t see why. But look, I’m an archaeologist and I know that people sometimes do strange things to assuage their demons and their fears. Now just as in earlier eras—makes no difference. This innocent girl’s murder triggered a fear they had to keep in check by making accusations of guilt.”

He picked up his glass.

“As you see, I’m drawn back to this place again and again. We’re having the annual meeting of the Archaeological Society here, and I can’t think of a better place than this lodge. Let’s drink to the projects that have landed us in this wild part of the world.”

Their glasses clinked.

As Lori swished the wine back and forth in her mouth, she eyed him discreetly. He looked different somehow than she remembered. Of course: the beard! He was clean shaven and looked younger as a result, less professorial.

“Hope told me,” she said, to revive the conversation, “that you stayed at this lodge during the first dig. This must feel a bit like home to you.”

Weston laughed.

“Better than home, because they cook for me, and I don’t have to take out the garbage.”

“Hope’s father really saved us back then,” the archaeologist continued. “We were at another lodge at first, closer to the dig. But then it burned down.”

“Oh, how awful! Was anybody in the building?”

“No, thank goodness. It was just before we quit work. Most important of all, the artifacts we’d found and all our documents were in an office trailer. That was an enormous piece of luck.”

Lori patted her mouth with her napkin before asking: “Was that after . . . I mean . . .”

“After Jacinta disappeared? No, that happened about a week later. I know what you’re driving at. You’re thinking it might have been revenge.”

He shook his head. “No, on that day the world was still in order, if you will, and everybody was sympathetic and glad nobody had been hurt.”

“But some things were lost—clothes, personal ID, and items like that?”

“Of course. Many people lost some personal belongings, but you have to realize—archaeologists would much rather lose their own things than have their research destroyed. It would have been a loss for all of Canada.”

“And the lodge owner?”

“He was lucky as well because he was insured and started up a new business with the money. But I actually wanted to give you this.”

He set his glass down and opened his briefcase.

“These are pictures of our earlier digs, so that you can see how things work. This is the boulder layer after we took away the vegetation on top. Here’s the layer with the walrus tusk and the quartz knives. And here you can see how the skeleton was positioned in the grave.”

He pushed one picture after another across the table.

“Here’s the harpoon point and the whistle made from animal bone. And this is a pendant made of bone or antler, you see the hole at the top—”

“What’s that?” she interrupted him. One of the objects looked familiar.

“That’s a projectile tip, made of bone, but we don’t know from what animal. The prehistoric Indians hunted walrus and seals using this projectile.”

“A bird!” Lori exclaimed.

“It could be a bird bone, but we don’t know.”

“No, it looks like a bird, don’t you see? The wings on both sides, the pointed skull, the beak!”

Weston took a closer look at the photograph and said, cautiously, “Yes, you could look at it that way, a stylized bird. Very stylized. But it most probably is an arrowhead.”

“I found an arrowhead like that at my place in Stormy Cove. Same size, same shape.”

Weston studied her.

“Where did you find it?”

“Between the washer and the dryer. It looks exactly the same. Could be a copy.”

Weston’s face suggested skepticism.

“This arrowhead is the oldest of its kind that we know.”

He put his hands flat on the table and stretched out his arms as if he were holding the table down.

“It vanished the night of the fire. I can’t describe the exact circumstances because the police don’t want them made public—and to be honest, we don’t either because it’s too embarrassing. But I can tell you one thing: it reappeared eight months later.”

Lori looked at his slim fingers, now raised like claws. Weston did not continue. She pieced the puzzle together.

“Was the arrowhead found in Jacinta’s grave?”

Weston continued to look at her without a word.

“Maybe I was wrong,” she stuttered. “I . . . um . . . a lot of objects could look alike. I thought it was more like an amulet really, a pendant. Or a fish with fins above and below. Certainly not . . . not a spear tip or an arrowhead . . . not a projectile.”

To her surprise, Weston seemed satisfied with this explanation. His eyes stared past her. The voices from the lounge grew louder, and some footsteps approaching the dining room distracted him. He muttered, “I agree—there must be some mistake, but you can send me the arrowhead when you get home. You’ve got my address.”

He smiled.

“Have you tried the carrot cake yet? Divine, I tell you.”

Lori stood up when he did and was glad that he turned to two men and a woman standing in the dining room.

She thought of the arrowhead under the seat of Noah’s snowmobile, just like the one from her laundry room, and her temperature rose. She might be mistaken about one, but not two.

CHAPTER 20

Lori managed to shake off her dark thoughts. All evening she played poker with Weston and two of his female colleagues, who would occasionally share hair-raising stories about their digs in exotic countries. Lori soon realized that she was sitting across from experts who forgave her not only for knowing next to nothing about archaeology but also for being a mediocre poker player.

“We refined our poker skills sitting out in the Pampas, miles from anywhere. We had to kill time for hours on end,” the women explained graciously.

The next day, they took Lori on a snowmobile tour—she was given her own machine—that started on the trail she’d hiked the previous day. She saw now how she had taken the wrong path back. What in the world would have happened if Hope hadn’t come looking for her? The sun was shining now, and the snowscape looked almost colorful beneath the deep blue sky. Lori found the snowmobile easier to steer than she’d expected. She accelerated on flat stretches and savored the weightless feeling. She learned how to shift her weight around a curve and to avoid tree branches and boulders. When their party glided from the woods onto a broad plain, a vast, stunning horizon opened out around them. The expanse and boundlessness made Lori feel she was swimming over huge white waves. All of a sudden, she wished Noah were with her. But she suppressed the desire at once and concentrated on the snowmobiles ahead.

Weston didn’t bring up the subject of the dig planned for that summer, though he sat next to her and chatted all through dinner. She was grateful that he wasn’t pushy in any way. An archaeologist probably learned to be patient, like a wildlife photographer. Or a female photographer in a Newfoundland village.

When the other guests left the next day, melancholy settled in. The rooms felt empty and the sudden quiet disconcerting. Lori no longer felt the need for quiet contemplation or withdrawal. It was time for her to leave too.

She found Hope in her office with the cook, shopping list in hand.

Before Lori could open her mouth, she exclaimed, “You’re leaving us again so soon?”

Lori laughed.

“How’d you guess?”

“Oh, that look in your eye says homesick, eh, Sally? Doesn’t it, eh?”

The cook shrugged, smiled, and left the room.

Lori made a face. “Do you mean homesick for Vancouver?”

“No, no, I don’t mean that. No fishermen waiting for you there.”

“Noah Whalen and I are not an item, if that’s what you mean. He’s just a very nice man.”

“Yeah, of course he is, my dear.”

Hope scribbled something on the list while Lori kept talking.

“Hope, it seemed like you were suggesting that one of the Whalens was suspected of murdering Jacinta. Why did you tell me that rumor? It doesn’t really seem like you.”

Hope looked up. In the harsh office light, Lori could see dark rings under her eyes.

“You’ve got to learn to live with rumors like that if you want to be with Noah. It’s not about to go away.”

“But I told you! Noah and I—”

“I had to learn to live with rumors myself. When Gideon’s lodge burned down, people whispered that my father set it on fire so
he
would get more customers.”

“But the police ruled that out, right?”

“People trim their truth the way they want it, my love. Word is, you slashed Ginette’s tires out of jealousy.”

Lori froze.

“What? You heard
that
?”

Hope put her hand on her shoulder.

“Don’t get upset. People don’t really believe it. It’s just a good story, fun to pass on, spices up your daily routine. Truth be told, nobody trusts you to handle a knife properly.”

“So why would they say that?”

“It gets their mind off things, that’s all. Simple as that.”

She opened the door to the adjoining room.

“I’ll make up your bill. When are you heading out?”

“After lunch, if that works for you.”

Hope nodded and went back to studying her list.

She brought the bill when Lori was having soup and a sandwich in the dining room by herself.

“Do you remember that German baron from last time you were here? He asked for your name and e-mail address.”

Lori lowered her spoon.

“Why?”

“He wanted to send you something about submarines. In any case, I passed them on. Maybe you’ll hear from him.”

Lori was confused. What made the baron think that she of all people was interested in submarines? She hadn’t said a word about them. But Hope snapped her out of her ruminations; she was going shopping in Corner Brook.

“I’m sure I’ll see you back here soon enough,” she called in a cheery voice before dashing out of the lodge.

Lori looked out on the snow and noticed that the cracks in the ice had grown wider. Drops of water fell from the fir branches even though it wasn’t raining. As she carried her suitcase to the car, she tried to put her finger on a change in the air. Her cell phone rang.

The voice she heard made her heart skip a beat.

“Lori, where are you? Why don’t you ever call me?”

“Danielle! I can’t believe it’s you! Give me just a second and I’ll be all yours.”

She threw her bag into the car and got in.

“Lorelei Finning, I haven’t heard a word from you! I was beginning to worry.”

Lori felt warmth spreading through her abdomen.

“I figured you were up to your ears in baby stuff and didn’t want to bother you.”

The last two times Lori was in Danielle’s apartment, it was chaos: screaming children, diaper changes, and relatives scurrying around and constantly interrupting them with questions and advice. Danielle had looked so exhausted that Lori would have loved to whisk her away to a beach in the South Seas—she looked worse than she ever had when she was running a busy photography agency. But at the moment, she sounded more feisty, a bit pugnacious even. This was the old Danielle Lori knew from the days when the two of them fought side by side to get better contracts for freelance photographers.

“OK, so I’ve got twins, but that doesn’t make me a leper! I sometimes feel like I’ve fallen off the face of the earth. People look at me kind of funny.”

Lori heaved a sigh.

“Oh, I know exactly how you feel, Danielle.”

Her answer released mutual heartfelt gushing that lasted until they were all caught up on each other’s life and could find space for some critical feedback beyond the much-needed declarations of empathy.

“Keeping your distance? Now listen up!” Danielle exclaimed. “You can’t fence yourself off from village life, Lori. That’s just not possible if you’re going to spend a whole year there. You’re a human being, not a traffic light that only turns red or green.”

“But I want to be a neutral observer. That’s always been my strong suit.”

“Sounds good in theory, but in reality—bottom drawer, no, the left one, yes, that’s it—sorry, my sister’s looking for some onesies—as I was saying, in the real world you’ve got to get in there with people. We’ve talked about this a lot.”

“Yes, but—”

“I know what you’re going to say, but you know what? I think you’re still schlepping Germany around behind you. Somehow, you’re still convinced that . . . that, if you just get a teensy-weensy bit assimilated, the world will come crashing down on your head.”

I’ve never told her about Katja,
Lori mused. If Danielle knew about her, and how she died, she wouldn’t talk that way. But it had been so long now. And Lori didn’t want to dredge up that nightmare again.

She gave Danielle a brief version of the situation with Noah, but it was somewhat censored because she hadn’t gotten everything straightened out in her own mind. Then she got going on the scene in the Hardy Sailor.

“Now they think
I
slashed her tires out of jealousy!”

Danielle laughed.

“What a coup! Think about your future memoirs! There are intrigues in every village—I mean, those people live on top of each other. They’re no saints any more than we are in the big city.”

“I never expected
saints
; I’m not that naïve.”

“I think you want to be an observer without being observed yourself—no, without being affected—inwardly, I mean. Does that sound about right?”

Lori was getting uncomfortable in the cold car. Her friend could read her like a book. But why did she always have to express everything in psychobabble?

“Oh, come on. Could you please just cheer me up a little?”

“OK. I’m terrific at that! Lori, you can sleep at night, you’re free as a bird, you have no money worries, you go on many adventures and you’ll probably have some thrilling sex soon—while, in my case, passion has hit rock bottom. The kids are all-consuming for the moment. Ralph must really feel abandoned.”

At that instant, something flashed through Lori’s mind: What if Cletus had something to do with Una’s disappearance? What did that insolent kid say at Elsie Smith’s house? With an ocean next door it’s easy to make bodies disappear. They’ll never find them if the current’s right.

She shivered.

“Don’t worry yourself about that, Danielle, it’ll come back. It’s nature’s way. I read that when men become dads, their testosterone level plummets and—”

“How are you getting along without Andrew?”

“I feel really crappy sometimes, but I have to learn to let him go.”

That sounded like more psychobabble, but at the same time, she knew she was right.

“Enjoy your time with the kids, sweetheart. It’s really special to be the center of their universe for a while.”

She heard Danielle sigh.

“Why do we always want precisely the thing we don’t have?”

Lori pondered this question on her leisurely drive back to Stormy Cove, having decided against stopping by Corner Brook after all.

Did she yearn for Noah because it was preposterous for a photographer from Vancouver to take up with a fisherman in the remotest corner of a remote region?

Snap out of it, Lori! The last thing you need is to get even more involved.

It was no accident that she hadn’t told her friend about Jacinta’s death and Una’s disappearance. Danielle would just have said that murders can happen anywhere, so why not in a fishing village? Just because there are fewer inhabitants? She’d probably have accused Lori of stirring things up out of sheer boredom.

The road in front of her car shone. No ice, just moisture. Gulls floated on easy wing beats through air that seemed more transparent than a few days ago. Rivulets emerged from the snow banks beside the road. Lori came to a sudden stop at the turnoff to Stormy Cove. She had to make a firm resolution that she could keep during the coming days. It materialized suddenly in her mind: she would stand up to them.

But then she realized that she didn’t know who “them” was supposed to be.

A truck was coming out of the turnoff.
They’re probably wondering what I’m doing, stopped here like this,
Lori thought. She recognized Archie Whalen behind the wheel; beside him was—could it be? . . . Patience. What was she doing in Archie’s truck? Maybe her car got stuck, and Archie had come to her rescue.

But when she made it home and pulled into her driveway, she saw Patience’s car but not Ches’s truck. She went for her bag in the trunk. The sound of a motor came nearer and stopped. Patience climbed down from Archie’s truck and waved to her.

Archie got out too, and they both came over.

“We were worried about you,” Patience exclaimed. “We wondered if something had happened.”

Lori immediately felt guilty. Of course people here would be worried—what did she expect?

“I was at the Birch Tree Lodge for a few days,” she replied. “Snowmobiling.”

“Oh,
that’s
where you went,” Patience said, looking at Archie, who was frowning. “We asked all over but never thought of that.”

She seemed a little miffed that Lori had failed to inform them.

“I’ll be sure to let you know next time,” Lori promised, but something held her back from saying she was sorry. Maybe the disapproval in Archie’s eyes. Besides, she
had
told Mavis, and the village store usually functioned like a radio station anyway.

Archie cleared his throat.

“Tomorrow is Sunday dinner at Nate’s, for the whole family. We’re expecting you too. With your camera.”

It sounded like an order; the message was crystal clear. The invitation said he was on her side, the outsider’s, the “tire-slasher lady’s” side. She was almost touched as she thanked him.

“Don’t bother to have breakfast; there’ll be lots to eat,” Patience chimed in. “And before I forget: You need the names of those people in the ice-fishing picture. I can drop by this evening.”

“What do you need names for?” Archie wanted to know.

“To archive them,” Lori replied. “Later generations will surely want to know who’s in the photo. It’s like a historical document.”

She remembered that she’d given Ches a different reason a couple of days ago. Archie and Patience exchanged looks.

“I’m getting the impression spring’s here,” she said, walking to the front door with her bag. “Am I wrong?”

“You’re right! The ice is breaking up,” Patience shouted back.

Lori heard Archie’s truck leave as she entered the house. She turned up the heat, filled the kettle, and took a look around her mini-empire. She felt like she’d been gone for an eternity.

The contact with the outside world had done her good. She felt on the same wavelength as people like Lloyd Weston. He too was a visitor from the outside world; he’d had some unpleasant experiences up here but nevertheless wasn’t intimidated.

As she sat at the table with her hot coffee, she replayed the conversations of the past few days.

Then put down her cup with a loud rattle.

Her eyes looked all over the table. Then under the table. Nothing.

The arrowhead was gone.