Stormy Cove (29 page)

Lori got out her diary and filled several pages.

She finally conceded she was hungry; she’d eaten nothing since breakfast.

It was getting on toward evening when she was in the laundry room and heard a car drive up fast. Then somebody at the side door.

She hurried to the stairs and found Noah standing there. She was startled by the exhausted look on his face. He simply stared at her, saying not a word. She went over and took his calloused, freezing cold hand.

“Come in,” she said.

She filled the kettle, but Noah waved her off.

“I’ve got to get back right away. We’re going out again to keep up the search.”

She turned around.

“Noah, what
exactly
happened? I’ve got to know.”

He rubbed his forehead as if to collect his thoughts.

“She came to the landing stage while I was cleaning up. Asked if I could take her over to Frenchman’s Hill. Wanted to see the cemetery for a story.”

“And what time was that?”

“Seven or half past. She said John Glaskey would bring her back. John sometimes checks on his sheep on the island. So I dropped her off there and came back. Then I heard the next day that Will Spence was looking for her. And for me, too, because somebody saw me in the boat with her. Told him to go ask John Glaskey, that he picked her up. But John said she never asked him. He’d never talked to her.”

She watched Noah as calmly as she could.

“Would John have lied?”

Noah shook his head.

“John’s an honest man. Known him a long time. No, I really don’t think so.”

“Why did Reanna ask you? I mean, of all the fishermen?”

He looked at her in bewilderment.

“I . . . I was the only one down there. Nobody else.”

“And why did you agree so fast? Why did you go along with it?”

Noah frowned. He avoided her gaze, looked out the window.

Lori suspected it was his way of keeping his emotions in check.

“It’s not what you think. That . . . no . . . it’s not that.” He stopped, groping for the right words. “But there
is
something . . . I had a suspicion. You should know that Reanna . . . she’s a dead ringer for Glowena.”

“Glowena Parsons.”

“Yes.” He still stared out the window.

She didn’t recognize her own voice when she asked, “And that’s why you want to be with Reanna?”

“I thought . . . I wanted to find out if she was my daughter.”

His words exploded in the quiet room.

“Your daughter? You and Glowena had a daughter?”

Noah’s face puckered up, as if a branding iron had been planted on his skin.

“When Glowena left, there . . . it was rumored she was pregnant.”

“By you?”

“Yes.”

“And? Did she ever come back to see you about it?”

No . . . and I never heard anything about her for the longest time. It’s possible that . . . her parents would have done everything in their power to see that we’d never get in touch. Six years ago she came back for her great-aunt’s funeral, and we talked just for a bit.”

Lori stared at him. Then she laid her hand on his arm.

“Noah, I think that if she had a child by you, the Parsons would have come to see you. They’d have made you pay child support. They wouldn’t have let you get away with it. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

He muttered some incomprehensible words while gazing at the floor. He seemed overwhelmed by the events washing over him.

She increased the pressure on his arm.

“Noah, Reanna is not your daughter. She’s not Glowena’s either. I know that for a fact.”

“What . . . why do you think . . .”

She took her hand away and stepped back a little.

“Somebody made some inquiries about her. It . . . I thought it very peculiar that she knew all kinds of personal things about me, and that she showed up here and challenged me about them. I wondered why she was so weirdly interested in me and my family.”

She folded her arms.

“A friend of mine knows everybody who’s anybody in the media, and she found out that Reanna Sholler was a gossip reporter for a Vancouver tabloid. But she got caught using other people’s work—plagiarizing. She was kicked off the paper, but her father had connections with the publisher of the
Cape Lone Courier
in Halifax and got her the job here.”

Noah looked at her with raised eyebrows.

“Her
biological
father,” Lori emphasized, “and her biological mother is an interior decorator with wealthy clients on the North Shore in Vancouver. Reanna was born in Montreal. Her real name’s Annabelle.”

“She’s not from Ontario?”

“No, and not from Timmins and not from Trifton. Reanna most certainly didn’t want anybody here to find out who she was and why she’d lost her job in Vancouver.”

Noah shook his head in disbelief.

“But she’s a dead ringer for Glowena.”

“But not you,” Lori remarked drily. “You should see my mom—no resemblance whatsoever. At least not outwardly.”

She withheld the fact that her friend Danielle had also tracked Glowena Parsons to Alberta and sent Lori a photograph of her. Noah’s ex might have been pretty as a picture once, but the woman in that photo looked haggard. Lori felt sorry for her. Maybe Glowena had given up somehow, after her younger sister’s death.

Lori had something else on the tip of her tongue.

“Noah, was Reanna wearing a life jacket when she was with you?”

He pondered for a moment.

“Yes.”

“What color?”

“Yellow. All ours are yellow. Why?”

“Noah, it would be smart if you went to the police and told them that right now. Don’t wait for them to come to you.”

His face shut down immediately, and Lori saw she was up against a brick wall.

“I haven’t done anything. Why should I talk to them? If they want something from me, they can come and get it.”

“The police need your help. Every detail’s important.”

Noah clammed up.

He can be so damn stubborn,
she thought.
That must have got him into trouble the last time.

“Gotta go. The guys are waiting,” he said abruptly, making for the stairs. Then he turned around.

“She didn’t give it back to me, the life jacket. I didn’t even notice.”

When the door shut, Lori was too exhausted to feel anything.

She ran a bath and let the tension flow away in the hot water.

Soap bubbles ran through her fingers.

But the baroness’s voice echoed in her mind as she toweled off and wrapped herself in her bright blue bathrobe later.

One should not associate with certain people.

Why did Reanna have to pick Noah for whatever she wanted to do? As if there weren’t other fishermen she could have asked.

Lori was about to turn off the lamp on her nightstand when an image rose in her mind. An image of Reanna. She was with someone, but it wasn’t Noah. Where had she seen that image before?

Tomorrow. She’d figure it out tomorrow, Lori resolved, and fell asleep immediately.

CHAPTER 34

Selina Gould stood in her doorway, knitting in one hand, the money Lori gave her in the other. The old woman was incapable of dealing with checks, so she wanted the rent in cash.

“Now they’re looking for a neon-pink jacket,” she said, weighing which to put down first, the wool socks she’d started on or the money. She decided on the money.

Lori followed her into the parlor and sat down.

“A neon-pink jacket? Who’d you hear that from?”

“Mavis. The police want us to be on the lookout for anything pink. The poor girl. They won’t find her. They didn’t find Una.”

“I thought Una ran away.”

“Why should she? Cletus always treated her well. She had a house, and Cletus bought her a car: a Corvette. The sporty model. She had it good.” Selina sounded resentful.

“What happened to the car?”

“I sold it to one of Fred Charn’s sons in Saleau Cove.”

“You sold Cletus’s snowmobile too, didn’t you?”

“Yes, to Noah. He had more use for it. I couldn’t steer the thing—far too heavy for me.”

“Selina, I’ve been wanting to ask you something. I found something in the laundry room. It looks like the arrowhead they found in that ancient Indian grave. During the excavations, you know?”

Selina put the bills on her little parlor table loaded with porcelain figurines.

“What did they find?”

Lori explained it in more detail.

“I put that arrowhead on my kitchen table. In Cletus’s house. It wasn’t there afterward. Is it possible you took it? I mean, because you thought it belonged to Cletus?”

Lori wouldn’t have been surprised if Selina had taken offense, but the old woman still seemed not to comprehend what she was trying to say.

“An arrowhead from the excavations? No, Cletus certainly didn’t have anything like that. He never worked there. They didn’t want him. They gave everybody a job except Cletus. And do you know why? Because he wasn’t in the program.”

“Program?”

“The government make-work program. He never tried to get in. But they could have given him a job nevertheless. Why should some people profit from it when others don’t, eh? It’s just not fair.”

“Was Cletus unemployed? Didn’t he fish?”

“But he didn’t have a license. He’d work on other boats sometimes, but there wasn’t always work to be had. But, you know, he always brought me fish. He was always watching out in case anybody saw him. He also brought me meat. You just have to keep a sharp eye out.”

A poacher,
Lori thought to herself,
with a preference for hard-core pornography.

“So if he didn’t work that summer,” Lori said, “what did he do all day?”

“I don’t really know now. Probably hung around with his girlfriend.”

“And who was that?”

“You don’t know? Greta Whalen. But that fell apart the same summer.”

She didn’t seem comfortable talking about it, because she came back to Reanna.

“They’ll never find that reporter, I know it. Or they’d have found Una too.”

Selina Gould was wrong.

They found Reanna Sholler that same day.

A speck of color caught Gideon Moore’s eye as he was flying over the edge of the Barrens where the ocean peters out into a sheltered bay.

He brought the helicopter down and reported to the police that he’d found a neon-pink jacket. Just a jacket.

About thirty volunteers—almost all of them coming by boat—and four policemen arriving by helicopter scoured the area. Noah joined them. Barely an hour later, John Glaskey’s party stumbled across Reanna’s body. She was naked from the waist down.

The police found an object on the corpse that they immediately sealed in a plastic bag.

It didn’t take long for it to circulate all over Stormy Cove that the reporter had been strangled with her own panties.

Noah Whalen and John Glaskey were taken to the police station in Saleau Cove for questioning. Lori heard from Patience that the police were starting to pay close attention to the villagers. She figured it was only a matter of time before they’d show up at her place, so she took Rusty out early. But the police didn’t come that day. She found out from Nate’s wife, Emma, that Noah and John were still being detained in Saleau Cove.

She drove to the store and parked on the shoulder because all the spaces in front of the supermarket were taken. When she opened the door, the conversation died, and all eyes were riveted on her.

She recognized Rusty’s owner, Vera Quinton, and her husband, Tom; right behind them was Ginette Hearne, her face radiating schadenfreude; beside her was Selina Gould; even old Elsie Smith was there with her sons and some people whose names she couldn’t recall. She wished Aurelia or one of her nice friends were there for support, but she had to handle the situation all by herself.

She said hello in the direction of the counter and went to get a chicken out of the freezer. Armed with the bird, she walked to the cash register, and the group soundlessly made way for her. The chicken slipped out of her hand and banged on the counter.

Mavis typed in the amount without saying a word, the frills on her raspberry-colored blouse rustling. She cast significant glances at those standing around.

But Ginette couldn’t contain herself.

“Is Noah back from Saleau Cove yet?” she asked.

Lori knew all ears had pricked up expectantly.

“I don’t know,” she muttered, digging a twenty-dollar bill out of her pocket. Then she threw politeness to the wind and whirled around.

“You can think what you want, but Noah is innocent. If I were in your shoes I’d be prepared, because one thing’s for sure—the murderer is among us. But you can bet your life it’s not Noah.”

She picked up the ice-cold chicken and ignored the plastic bag Mavis held out for her. Before closing the door, and just as Ginette opened her mouth to speak, she shouted, “If everybody spoke the truth around here, then not one innocent person would be under suspicion.”

At that moment, she recognized a cousin of Noah’s in the group, staring at Lori as if she were a zombie.

Not even his relatives will go to bat for him,
she thought as she ran down the wooden stairs to her car.

When the police came to her home, she was ready for them.

There were two of them: an older man and the young policeman who’d warned her at the Birch Tree Lodge about polar bears.
As if that was all people had to look out for here.

It was one of those days when the sunshine made everything sparkle, even weathered house facades and the colorful bellies of rotting wooden boats. A steady wind would often stream across the bay on those days. Lori and Rusty had gone to explore new paths along the coast, and gusts threatened to blow them over the cliffs. Grass from the previous year was withered and exhausted, forming a soft blanket over the bright green blades that protruded upward, hard and straight, like spear tips.

When she got back home, Lori lay down, tired from the brisk walk and from a night of worried thoughts that kept her awake. She heard the house groaning and shuddering with the blasts of wind. Noah couldn’t have gone out to fish in such strong winds anyway; that must have provided some small consolation, given the nightmare he was living.

A loud knocking made her jump.

She went to the kitchen window on tiptoe and peeked out. The media had already reported briefly on the dead reporter on the Barrens, and soon Lori would have to hide from reporters coming to Stormy Cove.

The police car said it all. She let the two men in and took them up to the kitchen. They all sat down at the table, where nobody from outside the house could see them. The older officer had a longish face topped by a thin wreath of wavy gray hair, with two vertical creases in his forehead that gave him a slightly troubled look. He identified himself as Detective Carl Pelley and offered her his card. He’d evidently been briefed by his younger partner.

“You’re a photographer, then,” he began. “What’s your book about?”

“About life in a Newfoundland fishing village.”

The young policeman, whose name she’d forgotten, wrote in his notebook. She couldn’t read anything because he was too far away.

“And why Stormy Cove?”

“I saw a picture of it once. It’s beautifully situated, with the bay and the harbor . . . and there aren’t many fishing villages left in Newfoundland with people who actually still fish.”

“And you think that’ll be of interest to folks in Vancouver?”

“Yes, it’s an unknown world, and maybe it won’t be around for very long.”

The words had become like a mantra.

“Did you know Reanna Sholler?”

“I met her a few times: on the beach, on the wharf. We went out to see the icebergs with Noah Whalen. She took pictures too. But otherwise, I really don’t know her.”

“And why did you go with him?”

She looked the detective straight in the eye.

“Because he offered to take me. I depend on fishermen to help me in my work.”

“What’s your relationship with Noah Whalen?”

The young policeman squirmed on his chair.

“I’m a friend of his; he’s helped me several times. For instance, he invited me to a family gathering where I could take photos. He’s a nice, obliging person.”

“How close is your friendship?”

She was astonished at how she kept her cool.

“We do
not
have an intimate relationship, if that’s what you mean. Even if people here might say something different.”

The detective appeared to accept this.

“And how is . . . how
was
the relationship between Reanna Sholler and Noah Whalen?”

She thought for a second before replying.

“I think she’d noticed how helpful he was and used him for her work.”

“And for Noah Whalen? What was Reanna to him?”

“You’ll have to ask him yourself.”

Pelley scratched his—poorly shaven—throat.

“I’d like to know what
you
think about it.”

“I think the locals are curious about every outsider who comes to town. There’s not much going on around here. Reanna Sholler was sure to attract attention because she’s . . . from another province and—and she was interested in what was happening in the village. That was probably flattering for Noah, and for everybody else.”

“And for you?”

Why does he keep coming back to me?

“It sounds . . . horribly petty now that something so awful has happened to her. But since you asked . . . it was a bit of a bother at times when she got in the way of my work.”

“How’s that?”

“If she walked in front of my camera or . . . wanted to photograph the same things.”

“For instance?”

“She wanted to photograph the excavations—you probably know about the burial mound on the Barrens. She desperately wanted to go up there, but Lloyd Weston hired me exclusively. He’s the lead archaeologist.”

“Yes, I know him.”

The two men exchanged glances. A sudden realization struck Lori, a logical, terrifying thought that she didn’t dare articulate.

Pelley reached into his coat pocket and laid something on the table.

A small object in a plastic bag.

The arrowhead.

The detective leaned so far over that his bald spot was easy to see.

“Does this object say anything to you?”

“May I?”

She brought the plastic bag closer.

“I found something like this . . . an arrowhead . . . I found one in this house, between the washing machine and the dryer. I told Lloyd Weston about it because I thought it might have something to do with his first dig, but he never did anything about it.”

“Where is it now?”

“I left it on this table, and the other day, when I got home, it was gone. I thought . . .” She stopped in midsentence, and for the first time, she did not feel in control of the situation. She’d said too much.

“Yes? What did you think?”

The detective was no greenhorn or hick cop—that was clear. He wouldn’t be fooled easily.
Better stick to the truth.

“I thought Selina Gould might have taken it because she was apparently in this house when I was out. She still thinks of it as her house—or her son’s, which I can understand in a certain way.”