Bodies and Sole (3 page)

That made it more appealing. Jamieson closed her mouth.

“We'd have to do it here. All the videos and everything…”

Ian had the only decent WiFi connection in the village.

Of course it would have to be here.

“Sure,” said Jamieson. “It would be good to brush up my skills.”

And necessary, they both thought. Forensic teams were frequently needed in The Shores, but never seemed to make it to the village.

Chapter Three

Hy and Annabelle were busy stuffing the marigolds into
the hall flowerbed. In a different kind of formation. Thick twists of the orange flowers now spelled out:
The Shores,
and underneath it:
200 years.

They stood up, backs aching from the effort, just as Marlene came out of Moira's house and in a throaty voice, demanded:

“Just what is going on here?”

In a seemingly choreographed motion, Hy and Annabelle stepped back and to the side to reveal their handiwork.

Marlene's eyes opened wide. So did her mouth. She couldn't speak. She didn't know what to say. The fact was, the planting here at the hall looked much better than the troops of marigolds descending on the village. But she didn't want to say so.

“I'd like to speak to the community liaison,” she said haughtily.

“You've only to ask. I thought you might have before now.” Hy pulled off a gardening glove and extended her hand to Marlene.

“Hy McAllister. Community liaison for the 200th.”

Marlene sighed. A redhead and a smart Alec. She held out her hand reluctantly.

“Marlene Weeks.”

They shook hands. Hy wiped hers off, before sticking it back in her glove. Marlene, always nervous, had clammy hands.

“You're a native?”

“Excuse me?”

“You were born here?”

Hy smiled and shook her curls. “No. I'm a come from away.”

“Then why are you the community liaison?”

“Because no one else wanted to be.”

“Hyacinth speaks for us.” Gladys Fraser had been tidying up some of the plantings, and stood up straight in her capacity as President of the Women's Institute to lend weight to her pronouncement.

Hy was surprised to receive such solid support from Gladys, who never had much good to say of anyone, and had never truly welcomed Hy as a member of the community.

Hy bet Marlene was from away, too, and that Gladys knew it.

“Thank you, Gladys.” There was a real thread of gratitude in Hy's voice.

“Well, you are from away. But she's from away, too. When it's our from-aways against their from-aways, well, we have to back ours, doncha see?”

“I actually think I do.”

It appeared that Marlene didn't, but Gladys was right about one thing. She was from away – Nova Scotia. Marlene screwed up her face. Opened her mouth a few more times like a fish. In the end, she said nothing – just turned and left. Hy and Annabelle were left to snicker behind her back, offering up a high-five for the victory.

Marlene sneaked back to the hall when she expected most villagers would be eating their supper. She took some photographs. Returning to Moira's, she wrote a report about her landscaping triumph, galvanizing the locals into a community effort. She patted herself on the back several times in the report, just in case her supervisor didn't.

www.theshores200.com

The Sullivan house, also known as Wild Rose Cottage, was built late in the 19th century. It was what the Victorians call a cottage but it was a big house in this village – 24 rooms. The house was in the Sullivan family until early in the 20th century. Since then, it has gone into disrepair, only to be raised up again by its latest owner.

Up and over Shipwreck Hill, the road that rose from the hall, past Ian Simmons's and the police house, was the Sullivan house. Once the grandest house in the village, then fallen into deep disrepair, it had risen like a phoenix from the ashes.

Inside and outside she was scrubbed, bandaged and knocked back into shape. New foundation, roof, gutters and downspouts. New windows and doors, a new splash of paint on the exterior – trim only, black and red and white against the authentic grey cedar shingles. The wild roses in the garden were cut back, and flowerbeds with local plants carved out of the red clay. Golden Glow, Siberian Iris, Lilies, Black-Eyed Susans, Dahlias. They would all have their day in the sun as spring and summer plunged along toward the heritage day celebrations.

Behind it all was a woman rumoured to have had three husbands. Vera Gloom. She'd bought the place in the fall, given her orders to the contractor, and returned to the revived house in the spring. With not a husband to be seen, except, perhaps, in the glint of blue diamonds on her fingers. The villagers were curious, about the diamonds and the house. They wanted information. The carpenter, Harold MacLean, was the only villager who'd been inside. He'd done the finishing work, so he'd seen the whole thing just before it was, well, finished.

But Harold, everyone agreed, was worse than useless. They liked him, and he was a great carpenter, but he spoke, if at all, in one-word sentences.

“What's it like?” people would ask.

“Nice,” he'd say, and, if he were feeling chatty he'd add, on a long intake of breath, “Heyup. Nice.”

“Of course it's nice,” Hy had complained to Gus one afternoon shortly after Vera had moved in. “It's bound to be nice. We saw all the right trucks from all the right stores going in and out of there. High-end stores. Stuff from Halifax, Boston.”
That great New England touch.
“How could it not be nice?”

“Well, then, and it might not be.” Gus had surveyed with satisfaction her forty-year-old linoleum floor that extended from the pantry, through the kitchen, laundry room and mud room. Real, genuine, one hundred per cent linoleum. You couldn't get that anymore. This vinyl flooring was all very fine, but she wouldn't have it in her house. Wouldn't last a week, with all the comings and goings.

Hy followed her gaze. The linoleum was in great shape. It shone from weekly scrubbing and seasonal polishing. No need to replace it with what Hy agreed would be an inferior product.

“Tile. She'll have tile, no question.” Hy had gazed out the window, as if she could see all the way to the Sullivan house, on the other side of Shipwreck Hill. But all she could see was Ian's house, and she turned her eyes away. Ian, and his house, held less interest for her than usual. Their on-and-off relationship was off at the moment and Hy knew she was to blame. She'd become indifferent to Ian, other than as a friend, because she had a new interest. An interest she hadn't told anyone about. Truth was, she found it a bit embarrassing.

Vera Gloom was rattling around in the big old Sullivan house. Twenty-four rooms, and she was using only two or three, if you counted the bathroom. Three more when the boys came. She placed her teacup and saucer in the kitchen sink – a newly gleaming addition to the old house, double cast-iron, with a thick layer of white enamel, and porcelain handles on the old-fashioned-style faucets. It was an ultramodern nod to the past.

Vera touched the smooth enamel with hands encrusted with rings that appeared to be a series of engagement and wedding rings, collected on her ring finger and all the others, except for the pinkies. Gold and platinum settings, sparkling with white and blue diamonds. Unconsciously, she caressed the rings on hands otherwise unattractive, so thin and thin-skinned, the veins popping up in a purple-blue march across her knuckles.

She turned and left the room, admiring the new features in the old house, the gleaming wood floors – not replaced by laminate as had been suggested by the contractor. She slid slippered feet across the shiny surface. The original wide pine, sanded down and waxed up, showed the marks of its age and wore them well.

She drew a hand across the tongue-and-groove wainscoting that lined the hallway. Original, too – except for the parts that had had to be fixed, a job done so expertly by carpenter Harold MacLean that you couldn't tell what was old and what was new.

Strange man, Vera thought, as she looked up to the ceiling to admire the tongue-and-groove there, now painted a brilliant white. He was a carpenter, yet each of his fingers was different, as if each belonged to someone else. You wouldn't have imagined he'd have any dexterity. But he did. He did.

It was a pity that the chair lift had to be installed up the beautiful, generous staircase with its milled banister, but that was the price she had to pay for having the family here. Once they were settled in, they'd be up and down. She was fooling herself, of course. Vera sighed. Once in their rooms, that's where they seemed to want to stay. It was she who used the lift to bring their meals up and down.

The family. She smiled as she hauled herself up the stairs, needing the banister to be able to ascend herself. It hadn't been necessary a year ago.

She was getting old. Who would take care of her when her time came? As she had taken care of them? They certainly wouldn't do anything for her. The men.

The family. Soon they would be here. And the house was prepared for them. Each one of them. She opened the first bedroom door.

Blair would love the mahogany desk. She could see him now, sitting behind it, pen in hand. He wouldn't use a computer. Blair was strictly a pen and ink man. Fountain pen. It was one of the things she admired about him.

He hadn't written anything in a long time. To inspire him, she had left some pages on the desk, a long love poem he had once written for her. Perhaps it might inspire, not only a desire to write but a renewed desire for her. He would become her husband again, not just in name.

But that wasn't what she really wanted. She wanted someone new. A fresh face – and funding. She got these feelings sometimes, because their divorce had been such a success. They all had been. She prided herself on that.

Blair's only interest now was in his books. He would love that big chintz armchair. The wall-to-ceiling glassed-in cases filled with his library. New books were arriving every day as she ordered them.

She could see him already, sitting there, chewing on a pipe, his reading glasses perched on his nose, hardly noticing her come into the room.

The door to the next room was already open. She'd been in there earlier in the morning, setting things up. The easel placed just so in front of the window, to catch the morning light, when Charlie liked to paint. Propped on it, the watercolour he'd been working on most recently, taken from a photograph of Sullivan house, with a man who appeared to be waving from an upstairs window.

She made her way to the next room.

There was the new wine silk bathrobe she'd bought for Hank. It was draped artistically over the end of the bed, a beautiful four-poster, made up with crisp white linen sheets, a fat white wool blanket, and paisley bedcover – in wine and cream.

She walked over to the bed, smoothed the linens, plumped up a pillow, and stepped back.

Not that Hank would ever get under the sheets. He'd spend his days on it. That was just as well. Saved the making of it. A considerate man.

She left the door of the room slightly ajar. She expected Hank would be the first to arrive. He usually was, she wasn't sure why.

People seemed to find it odd that she housed her former husbands and her current one – and that they all seemed to get along.

Satisfied that all was ready for the family, Vera retreated downstairs. The boys would be comfortable. It was surprising how much each depended on her, how they put up with each other and got along so well. Never an argument. She was fond of all of them, but she wasn't a one-man woman. One at a time, yes.

Now it was time for another one.

The room off the kitchen that used to be the pantry was her office: iMac computer, printer and phone.

She sat down and got online. She began to scour through local nursing homes and recent obituaries. She bent intently over the keyboard, clicking and scrolling with her mouse, her search spanning numerous websites, until the Internet connection, inevitably, died on her.

None.

No. None today.

Widowers were a lot harder to come by than widows.

Too bad she wasn't a man. She'd seen many women that she bet would be ripe for the plucking.

She called what she was doing research, but it was really her own form of online dating.

Chapter Four

Am I computer dating?

Hy had begun asking herself that since she'd become involved in an online back-and-forth with an intriguing keyboard pal several weeks before. She'd tired of her work on the village website and had slipped onto Facebook.

Over the winter, she'd discovered Facebook in a dull moment when the weather had raged outside, the snow suggesting a glass of wine and a virtual tour of sunnier places where she might escape for a week or two.

Before she knew it, she'd clicked on Facebook, established a page, and become hooked. That is, she checked into the site first thing in the morning and once at night. She posted occasionally. Friends trickled in, including some very old pals she'd lost track of. And, since she knew the site could be good for business, she'd posted and shared a link to her late mother's back-to-the-woods bestseller,
A Life on the Land.
It was written in ink made from nature and the drawings sketched with charcoal from the woodstove. Life in the woods had cost Hy's mother, father and grandfather their lives. It had nearly killed the infant Hy when a bush plane her grandfather flew in to rescue his daughter and granddaughter crashed on a remote and frozen lake. Her mother's manuscript had been strapped to the infant Hy's life jacket.

The book hardly needed promoting. A coffee table edition some years back had brought on a resurgence of popularity and provided a steady flow of income to Hy's nest egg.

There was a steady flow of friend requests from people who knew, or wished they'd known, her mother. More came from others who'd put two and two together and identified Hy as the woman connected with the series of murders at The Shores, now world-famous, not for its beaches, but for its air of mystery.

Hy found it fairly easy to sort out the weirdos from the genuine friends.

But she wasn't quite sure how to categorize him.

He'd popped up after
A Life on the Land
had gone into another new edition.

“I'm a great admirer of your mother's book and work. If she had lived, I'm sure she would have been an inspiring advocate for the environment. I was only a few months old when she died – hardly in a position to form opinions about the woman and her work. What I know, I know from later, when I read her book and understood the depth of her experience.”

Though he was a bit cagey about his own background and current situation – his Facebook site didn't tell much – Hy considered him genuine enough and accepted his friend request. She now listed “Finn” Finnegan among her friends, one of about forty Americans. To her surprise, she and Finn had begun corresponding regularly, sending messages nearly every day.

One thing Hy did know about Finn. He was good-looking. A shock of thick black hair. Burning blue eyes. And he was single.

Or so it said in his stats.

Am I online dating?