Stormy Cove (27 page)

And Glowena was apparently very pretty,
Lori thought to herself,
and what a challenge to win her heart against Scott Parsons’s will
.

“Back to your question,” Noah said, suddenly looking tired. “We didn’t believe a word Jacinta said. She was easily manipulated and gossiped about everything. On top of that, she was always hanging around with Una, and Una had a loose tongue.”

“But now, looking back . . . could there have been some truth in it?”

Noah shrugged. “So what would that mean? That one of the women archaeologists killed Jacinta and buried her in a strange grave because she was a gossip? You really think that?”

Lori laid her hands in her lap. Now that Noah had said it out loud, her little theory sounded crazy. Absurd.

“Did the police ever follow up on it?”

“They probably followed the wrong clues, or they’d have caught the killer.”

Lori thought it was time to drop it. She wanted to enjoy the rest of the meal at least. But Noah asked, “What was the thing they found in Jacinta’s grave like?”

“It looked like a fish or a bird, depending on how you looked at it. It was in the first burial mound, but it’s really a projectile, an arrowhead. Somebody put it in Jacinta’s grave.”

She mashed a potato before going on.

“I also found a duplicate of it in this house, between the washing machine and the dryer. And another one under the seat of your snowmobile.”

He gave a start, then seemed to remember. He blinked, and his eyes looked off into the distance in search of an answer.

“I bought that snowmobile from Selina Gould. She wanted to get rid of it after Cletus died. Found some small tools in it.”

They both reflected on that as they finished their food. Lori cleared the plates.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to bring up that business,” she said. “It was supposed to be a fun evening, and instead I’ve upset you.”

Now Noah got up as well, took the plates out of her hand, and put them on the counter.

“Don’t give it another thought. It’s important for me that we can talk about these things. I want you to tell me everything. Any chocolate ice cream in the fridge?”

“It’s vanilla, but with chocolate chips. I . . .”

Noah put his hand on her arm and gave her an imploring look. She responded without moving, and he pulled her toward him. She felt his arms around her back, pressing her against him. She let it happen, didn’t resist when he laid his rough cheek on her neck, his face very near hers. She melted in the warmth of their two bodies. This was the point of no return, she thought.

They stayed like that for a while, without speaking, overcome by their emotions.

She heard her name called from far away. But it wasn’t Noah. They separated, flustered.

Molly’s voice reached them as if from another world.

She stood on the landing, holding up a seashell.

“I painted it for you,” she shouted.

Lori saw it was a conch, pink, speckled with white.

From outside, Patience called for Molly, who turned around in a snit but wasn’t about to leave.

“Thank you, Molly! I’ll find a perfect place for it,” Lori said. “But your mom’s calling, you ought to . . .”

Patience appeared in the doorway, her face all red.

“I told her she should wait, but she just ran off.”

She took Molly’s hand firmly and smiled apologetically.

“I saw you’ve got visitors, so I didn’t want to bother you . . .”

“No problem, Patience. By the way, Molly said a woman came here to see me the other day. Do you know who it was?”

“A woman?” She thought for a minute. “Must have been Selina Gould. I saw her go by.”

“Oh! I have to pay the rent. Totally forgot.”

Molly tugged at her mother’s hand.

“I smell good, Lori. Want a sniff?”

“Later, Molly. I’ll come over soon. Thanks for the pretty shell.”

Patience shoved her daughter out the door.

The phone rang. Noah was at the kitchen window. He turned toward her with a grin.

She sighed and shook her head. “A little more privacy wouldn’t hurt.”

“People here can smell when something’s up, and they don’t want to be left out. Don’t you want to pick it up?”

Before she could think of a rejoinder, the answering machine clicked on.

“Hi, Mom, Andrew here. Give me a call. I’ve got something to tell you.”

Her mood changed instantly. She looked at the time. Midnight in Germany. Andrew had never called her here; it was always she who reached for the receiver first. He texted if he wanted something.

“It’s my son. He’s with his dad in Germany. I wonder why he called.”

She knew she looked worried.

Noah understood immediately.

He shyly reached out his big, worn-out fingers for her hands.

“I’d better leave. Got to go to the boat anyway, a few things to take care of. Coming fishing tomorrow? Just you this time.”

Once again, that mischievous look she liked so much.

“Sure, love to, when?”

“Six o’clock. We can phone about the weather.”

“Fine.”

He hugged her, and she felt his surprisingly soft lips on her neck for a second.

Her eyes were glued to him as he walked across the kitchen with that firm fisherman’s step and disappeared from sight. She didn’t snap out of her daze until she heard his truck’s motor.

Then she called Andrew’s cell phone. He sounded wide awake despite the late hour.

“Hi, Mom, how’s it goin’?”

“Andrew, did something happen?”

“Nope, why?”

“Because you called me at midnight, my dearest boy.”

“Midnight? . . . Oh, I didn’t realize it was that late. We don’t have school tomorrow—some holiday, whatever. Can finally sleep in!”

“How did you do on your last exams? I haven’t heard a thing. No news is good news?”

“Oh, yeah. They were OK. Near the top of the class in math. Though I’m not that into it. I like biology better—dissecting mice and all that.”

“What? You dissect mice? Isn’t that cruelty to animals?”

“Mom, they’re dead when we cut them up. And when dead dolphins wash up on shore, they get dissected too. How else you gonna know what killed them?”

He was right, of course, but she had to get used to imagining her son at a dissecting table.

“How’s it goin’ out there in the sticks?”

“Did you see the pictures of the whales and the tortoise? And the shark?”

“Yeah, cool. The shark especially. Can you take a shark jaw back home for me?”

Back home! So Andrew was thinking about coming back to Vancouver, but she knew better than to press him on it.

“I’ll try—assuming it’s even legal. I’ll ask one of the fishermen.”

“You don’t have to kill one to get it. They probably got something like it stored in a shed.”

“So nice you’re for protecting sharks, sweetie. They’re having a rough time of it these days.”

“Some people came here the other day,” Andrew suddenly changed the subject. “Wanted to know where you were.”

“Who were they?”

“Dunno. I thought maybe people who knew Rosemarie and Franz. A man and a woman.”

“Does Volker know them?”

“Dad wasn’t home. But they asked me . . . I didn’t have a clue, but they just kept asking stuff. I was outside with Rainer on my skateboard, and they were talking to us and wanted to know about Canada. Like where I lived, in the East or West—they were just asking, so I said Newfoundland in the East and Vancouver in the West, and they asked if you could go whale watching in Vancouver, and I said yeah, in the East too, and my mom’s in Newfoundland right now and there’s twenty species of whales there.”

Right after this torrent of words, the line went quiet.

“Mom, you still there?”

“Yes, I’m here . . . I’m just trying to make sense of it. Were they young or old?”

“Hmm, older. Rainer just
had
to blab about it at supper. He can’t keep his trap shut. Dad wanted to know what they asked about and said if I’d told complete strangers what town you’re in, then I had to let you know right away. I told him I’d said Stormy Cove. No clue why they kept asking dumb questions. I forgot about it for a few days until Dad reminded me to call you and tell you about it.”

“What else did they say to you?”

“That some friends were traveling in Newfoundland and might come by to see you.”

“Did Franz or Rosemarie say . . . Did you ask them who the people might be?”

“Dad asked, but they didn’t know.”

“Is Dad still up?”

“Nope, why? Can he call you?”

She heard the hope in his voice that he could wiggle off the hook and out of an obviously embarrassing position.

“Maybe I’ll call him tomorrow. Andrew, sweetie, don’t worry about it. How could you know what they were after? But I’ve told you before not to give any personal information to strangers . . .”

“Yeah, on the Internet, but this wasn’t the Internet.”

“I know, but you’ll be more careful from now on, right?”

“Mom, why’s Dad making such a big deal about this?”

“Because . . . because he probably wants to teach you a lesson. But you’ve learned now, right? I don’t even tell my old friends personal things about you either.”

“Sorry, Mom, it won’t happen again.”

Do you miss me?
she wanted to ask.

“I miss you, my dearest boy. And I’m proud that you’re getting so good at German.”

“Yeah, German’s real cool. I’ll blow away the guys in Vancouver.”

She laughed in delight.
He said Vancouver!

“I’ll look into the shark jaw situation—that’s a promise. Sleep well,
Andreas
.”

“Mom, you can forget about
Andreas.
It’s all English names over here, Kevin and Brian and . . . like, Patrick. They think it’s awesome.”

“Here the popular names are biblical things like Noah and Ezz, for Ezekiel, and Nimrod.”

“Nimrod—whoa! Hot! I’ve got to tell the guys about that one. Talk to you later, Mom.”

Lori thought about the phone call while doing the dishes. Well, that and Noah. She was filled with an intoxicating feeling somewhere between ecstasy and fear.

She recalled every gesture, every glance, and replayed their conversation sentence by sentence.

We’ve got to be able to talk about everything
, he’d declared.

Why in the world had she mistrusted him for so long?

Falling asleep, she suddenly realized who had stolen the arrowhead from her home.

CHAPTER 32

Later, when events came thick and fast, a shadow fell on that day when she’d gone out to sea with Noah. But she made a solemn vow to preserve forever the beauty and magic of everything from those hours—to enshrine them. She printed out the photographs and stuck them in an album; the happiness in those pictures suppressed the memory, bit by bit, of the dark hours that were to follow.

The smell of the ocean was thrilling that morning—fresh and slightly fishy. She heard the gulls screaming and the waves gurgling against the waiting boats; saw the houses on the cove in the clear morning light, and felt the promise of a new day that would be utterly unlike any other. Noah—he stopped puttering around and watched her walking down to the wharf. She could read the pride and desire in his eyes, and relief too, that she hadn’t changed her mind.

He simply smiled at her without revealing anything to the other fishermen who were busily loading colored plastic crates on board.

“Sleep well?” was his light-hearted greeting, while not taking his eyes off her. His curiosity trumped his shyness.

“I was a little keyed up, kept waking up,” she confessed, flashing him a knowing smile.

He grinned in return.

“Ocean makes you nervous?”

“Not the ocean.” Her smile broadened.

Ah, but the ocean exerted its pull on her with all its might as Nate steered for open water. The waves glittered like a kaleidoscope, silver and green and white and blue. She let her hair blow in the wind and tried to imagine the marine animals that dwelt in the depths of the sea. She’d grown up by the Pacific, but she’d never experienced the ocean the way she did in Stormy Cove. Here it seemed more majestic and mysterious.

She watched Noah free the massive cods from the netting, cutting off heads and cleaning guts out from bellies amid the cries of the gulls.

He moved with lithe assurance, almost with dignity, and enjoyed feeling her eyes upon him.

He sometimes raised his head, and the longing that shone in his dark eyes made Lori’s blood course hot through her body.

You must never let this man down
, she promised herself.

They leaned against the rail together as they wolfed down their sandwiches. The engine puttered softly.

He asked, with his mouth full, “Gosh, what’s a beautiful woman like you doing with two stinking old fishermen on a boat?”

“Eating a sandwich,” she shot back. And a minute later, “I’m sure I smell like fish now.”

“Because you’re a mermaid.”

She pointed to her windbreaker.

“Look. Scales everywhere.”

He laughed.

“Look good on you.”

“Do you know the fairy tale about the fisherman and his wife?”

“Fairy tale?”

“A German one. We grew up with it, but maybe nobody here knows it.”

She looked out on the water over to the shore while she tried to recollect the details.

“It goes something like this: A fisherman catches a turbot or a halibut but in reality it’s an enchanted prince who asks the fisherman to let him go. The fisherman takes pity on him and sets him free. He tells his wife what happened, and she says he should have asked for something in return. So he goes back and calls for the fish to reappear, and so he does, and the fisherman asks him for a house more beautiful than the old hut they were living in.”

Nate, listening from the open wheelhouse, interrupted her.

“Yeah, wives always want a prettier house and prettier furniture and a new TV.”

“And you buy Emma everything,” Noah commented.

“The wife actually does get a nicer house, but then she wants a castle, and the fisherman has to again ask the turbot for one, and she gets it. And then she wants—”

“A trip to Hawaii,” Nate shouted.

“No she wants to be a queen, and then the pope, and then God.”

“Always knew God’s a woman,” Noah joked. “So nice at first, then comes the punishment.”

“Maybe God is a woman, but not the fisherman’s wife,” Lori corrected him, “because the enchanted prince sends her back to her old hut.”

“Hey, we fellows don’t live in old cottages,” Noah said.

“It’s only a fairy tale, my dear, and a German one to boot.”

Nate emitted a grunt of amusement.

“I’d have grabbed the turbot and not let it go. It would have brought in a heap of money.”

“No, no, the fairy tale’s got it wrong!” Noah shouted. “The fisherman is the enchanted prince, not the turbot. That’s obvious!”

Lori laughed. “So the wife can ask him for anything?”

He looked at her sideways. “Well, what does she wish for?”

She was spared having to answer because a loud swooshing sound made all three of them whip around.

They could just make out a round dance of black and white plunging into the waves.

“Orcas!”

Lori aimed her camera at the spot where the whales had vanished.

“I didn’t know there were killer whales in Newfoundland!”

“We ordered them specially for you, my dear. They know we got a photographer on board.”

Again Lori couldn’t answer because the whales breached a second time, but now she was ready. She even managed to keep her balance, though the boat was rocking hard in their wake. They breached twice more, entrancingly elegant despite their weight, until they disappeared into the infinite ocean vastness.

“Fantastic!” Lori yelled. “How fantastic was that!”

Noah raised his eyebrows in amusement.

“So, am I an enchanted prince or not?”

“Then you gotta take her dancing tonight,” Nate butted in. “The Glorious Jiggers are on.”

“Can’t dance,” Noah muttered as he went back to pulling in the nets.

“Gotta see the Glorious Jiggers,” Nate shouted to Lori. “They’re really good, and all of Stormy Cove will be at the Hardy Sailor.”

He disappeared into the wheelhouse, and the boat’s engine drowned out Noah’s mumbled protests.

The Glorious Jiggers’ loudspeakers beat the most thunderous boat engine by a country mile. In Vancouver, Lori always brought earplugs to rock concerts, but now she was hopelessly at the mercy of the cacophony. But that wasn’t the only irritation that spoiled her listening pleasure; she couldn’t find Noah in the mob of people. He’d promised to meet her in the pub as soon as he was back from the fish plant in Saleau Cove, where he was delivering the cod that evening. She’d gone for a quick walk with Rusty around the bay before washing and drying her hair and putting on her tightest pants and the only sparkly blouse she’d brought from Vancouver. She felt so pretty that she took a selfie. It might turn out to be her author photo for the book.

But no matter how she combed through the crowd in the Hardy Sailor, she found no trace of Noah. Maybe he’d chickened out about dancing in front of so many people, introvert that he was. Or was he afraid everybody would see that he was courting Lori? She felt a thousand eyes on her, but maybe it was just her camera attracting attention as always.

She didn’t rule out the possibility that Noah
was
there, and she simply couldn’t find him. It was like the Tokyo subway in the bar. There were certainly more bodies present than in all of Stormy Cove; as Nate had predicted, they came from the surrounding villages as well. The Glorious Jiggers were touted as the cultural highlight of the year.

Then it occurred to her she hadn’t seen Nate anywhere either. Same for Archie and Ezz and whatever all those Whalens’ names were.

But she did spot Noah’s sister Greta, who had poured herself into a red T-shirt with gold sequins. Lori waved madly in her direction, but Greta didn’t respond. Lori had no choice but to push through the wall of people, targeting the place where she hoped Greta was. All of a sudden, she was face-to-face with the T-shirt.

“Let’s talk outside!” Lori bellowed as loudly as she could.

Greta indicated the way with a nod and cleared a path faster than Lori could have.

The humidity and heat of the room dissipated immediately in the cool evening air. Lori could breathe again.

“Wow, that feels good!” Greta exclaimed, flapping the hem of her top and setting the sequins dancing.

“Have you seen Noah anywhere in there?” Lori asked. “We were supposed to meet.”

“He’s not here,” Greta answered drily.

“Are you sure? Hard to find anybody in there.”

“Yes, guaranteed. Noah’s out on his boat with the others looking for somebody.”

“Looking for somebody? In the water?”

“Nope, on Frenchman’s Hill.”

“Why? Who is it?”

“You haven’t heard?”

“Heard what?”

Greta was really stingy with her information.

“The reporter.”

“Who?” Lori asked, knowing the answer full well.

“Reanna Sholler. She didn’t show up for work today, and nobody can find her.”

Greta lit a cigarette. Lori had never seen her smoking until now.

“Why—why are they going out there?”

Greta blew smoke to the side to spare Lori. She took her time responding.

“Because Noah took her.”

“He took Reanna out there?”

“Yes.”

The cool air suddenly hit her like an icy wave, and Lori felt like a person drowning.

“But when? I—I was with Noah today and . . . and yesterday evening. He was at my place yesterday evening.”

“Until what time? Days are longer now. He must’ve taken her on his boat after he left yesterday. She wanted to go real bad, so she begged him to take her when he was finished working on his boat. She wanted to look at the cemetery on Frenchman’s Hill, take pictures of a couple of tombstones in the evening light. She told Noah that John Glaskey would pick her up. But John says he’s never heard of her, they never set anything up.”

“So Noah came back all by himself? He simply left her behind in the cove near Frenchman’s Hill?”

Greta took a stiff drag that rapidly shortened her cigarette.

“Well, it isn’t dangerous over there. Just a cemetery and a flock of sheep. John Glaskey’s sheep. It’s the end of June, so she won’t freeze. And it’s light out till ten.”

“I didn’t know about the cemetery.”

“Folks wanted to keep their dead as far away as possible, apparently.”

Lori folded her arms. She was shivering. But beads of sweat appeared on Greta’s forehead.

“Who said Reanna was missing?”

“Will. Will Spence. She didn’t come to the office this morning, and he couldn’t find her at her place. She’d been out all night, evidently. She has a room in Effie Spence’s house—Will’s mother. Nobody knew where she was.”

“How . . . how did people know that . . . Noah . . .”

“They were seen together. Don’t you know? People see everything around here.”

Greta trod on her cigarette butt.

Lori stood there as if paralyzed.

Noah and Reanna were seen going away, then he was seen coming back alone.

“I told him he’d better keep his hands off.”

“Off what?” Lori knew she didn’t want to hear the reply.

“Reanna looks like Glowena. Glowena Parsons. Spittin’ image.”

She took a few short steps to the entrance and adjusted her neckline.

“Let’s go. We don’t want to miss the whole concert. No use mucking around in the past. That’ll get you nowhere.”

Carl Pelley, 54, detective, from Corner Brook

Of course crimes are committed here. Happens here, there, and everywhere. Why should people living here be superior? Just because they’re in small, isolated communities? When I read in the papers that this place is supposed to be safe, I feel like tossing the paper on the fire. Yes, I know, people here leave their homes unlocked. But only in rural areas. Definitely not in St. John’s anymore. Where there’s money, you’ll find crooks. And where there’s poverty, too.

I’ve always been convinced that the Jacinta Parsons case can be solved even after twenty years.

People in Stormy Cove hoard their secrets, of course. They don’t go to the police if they know something. Unless they’re the injured party. And sometimes not even then. They want nothing to do with cops. Their motto: I won’t hurt you, and you won’t hurt me. But a lot goes on under cover of darkness, that’s for sure. Fishermen steal one another’s tools or gasoline. Or the fish out of their nets. I’ve seen it all. I remember when some sheep disappeared in Stormy Cove, a long time ago. The owner didn’t have the least idea who did it. Until some years later when a guy got plastered and bragged about it. And do you know what? The thieves didn’t live far away. So-called friends. They stole the sheep from a family with a dozen kids. But I swear, if that family’s house had burned down, those same people—those thieves—would have built them a new house with their bare hands. They’re like that around here. Nothing’s black-and-white.