Mind Over Mussels Read online

  She grabbed him, pushed him down, and straddled him.

  “But he can’t – and you can.”

  Ian found that he could.

  Later, when he woke up, the bed was empty.

  She was gone. Had it been just a dream, after all?

  He heard the toilet flush and brightened. Suki emerged from the bathroom, wearing his short terry robe, her long legs glistening.

  The phone rang.

  Suki slipped off the robe and let it drop.

  He picked up the receiver.

  “Ian!”

  Hy.

  Suki slid into the bed beside him.

  He let go of the receiver.

  Hy knew she sounded hysterical the minute she started to speak. It all came tumbling out. She was talking so fast she didn’t realize at first that no one was listening, until Ian’s absence seeped into her rattled brain. There was no one on the other end of the line – but there were sounds.

  Squeaking. A bed squeaking.

  A moan. Female.

  A grunt. Male.

  Ian was having sex.

  At a time like this.

  Hy rang off.

  Chapter Two

  Billy Pride was finishing the detail work on the inside of the RCMP community cruiser when the call came from the dispatcher.

  “M-me? Okay. Yup. Secure the scene. Right away.” He tossed the cloth onto the passenger seat, adjusted his position behind the steering wheel and started the car, excitement sizzling through him. This was his chance to show that he was more than an errand boy, the fetcher of vehicles, packages, dry cleaning. He wasn’t a real Mountie, just an auxiliary officer, the province’s idea of police presence in a remote community. Billy hadn’t faced stiff competition to land the assignment. He’d been the only volunteer.

  Billy had been closest to the scene, so they’d called him. Other, more senior officers would follow, but he would be there first. His first real case. He turned on the siren and went streaking down the Island Way toward The Shores, his size thirteen foot pressed hard on the accelerator. The computer screen and keyboard he’d removed for cleaning toppled off the roof of the car and smashed on the road behind him.

  Jasmine got Ian out of bed. She was squawking for her breakfast with a medley of annoying sounds – gulls shrieking, crows cawing, foxes barking, and Britney Spears and Mick Jagger singing a duet of “Satisfaction.”

  Ian almost missed the phone ringing.

  It was Hy again. She blurted it out.

  “Lord’s dead.”

  “Who?”

  “Lance Lord.”

  “Dead?”

  “Yup.”

  “God Almighty.”

  “Well he thought so…”

  She started to laugh, the horror washing over her.

  Ian hung on to the phone, listening to Hy and thinking about Suki. Lord’s wife. Jesus. He’d have to tell her.

  Hy used the bathroom again. When she came out, Toby had his feet on the kitchen table, licking the remains of a dinner for two.

  “Tob-eee.” Hy dashed over and yanked his collar. He didn’t budge. She kept pulling and he gave way, and then lunged at the table again. She dragged him outside.

  She didn’t want to look at the body on the sand, but she did anyway. She tried to feel something, but couldn’t. She was surprised. Another human being had been brutally killed and she felt nothing.

  She’d fought Lord over the right of way, afraid the locals would cave in and lose it. Each time she’d gone to the beach she’d march across it, head up, eyes forward, stride confident. Lord would stand outside his cottage, watching and scowling.

  She looked away, down the shore to the sea rock. Some people called it an island, but it was just a chunk worn off the cape by the wind and the waves. It was home, and a toilet, to a couple of dozen cormorants. Its top was white with their poop.

  Hy turned and stared in the opposite direction, beyond Vanishing Point, at the dome. There was Big Ed, a big man with peculiar hair – a buzz cut, black, with a strip of white down the back, where he’d been wounded. He was standing like the Colossus of Rhodes, legs apart, straddling not a Mediterranean harbour, but a hairline fracture in the cape. Where it widened, it had been formed into a staircase by beachgoers. Recently, a large chunk had come loose and made the path dangerous. People could no longer clamber past Big Ed’s dome. They liked to go to the beach that way to avoid Lord, and because they were curious about Big Ed. His name was legendary in the world of physical fitness, and his personal story was extraordinary.

  Hy had been up there once, when Ed had first arrived, curiosity propelling her to the dome. She’d gone on the pretext of writing an article for the Heart and Stroke website. She’d been disappointed that it hadn’t been Ed, but Ed’s companion, Leone, who came to the door. He wasn’t handsome, but he was strangely attractive, uncomfortably so.

  He hadn’t invited her in. Instead, he had come outside, pulling the door nearly closed behind him, as if there were something to hide. He’d brushed against her, and she’d felt the warmth of his flesh and a spark between them. It had surprised her. He wasn’t her type. She’d pulled away from him abruptly, disturbed by the intimacy.

  So disturbed that she hadn’t gone through with the sham of writing an article.

  She’d left after trading a few remarks about the weather with Leone, thinking he must want to keep people away as badly as Lance Lord did.

  She never had seen Ed, not up close. Only as she saw him now, from a distance during his morning routine on the cape.

  The wind had picked up. So had the surf. The sky was so black it was now more like midnight than mid-morning. It didn’t seem to bother Ed. He stuck to his morning routine and began the walk. The march, Leone thought as he watched Ed from the top of the dome – a fanciful widow’s walk, made of intricate wrought iron, capped by a peaked roof that looked like the turret of a Bavarian castle. Leone, Ed’s devoted factotum, the man who had nursed him back to life, was now watching him disintegrate.

  Leone could see other things, too, in the hazy viewfinder of his poor vision. The Shores was, fortunately, a compact world. From here, he could see the body splayed out on the sand. He could see Lord’s cottage. And the big house where she was staying. He could see the village centre and Shipwreck Hill, and the house where he believed the other one was.

  Big Ed went back and forth, back and forth along the edge of the cape – from one end of his property to the other, enjoying the power in his limbs and the freedom of movement the morning provided him, feeling his strength – not the strength he had once had as a football hero in a small Pennsylvania high school, scouted and destined for Notre Dame University – but still strength. The strength of the mind over mere matter. Mind Over Muscle. The name of his fitness empire. There was a reason for the acronym MOM. She was always on his mind.

  Just outside the village, Billy turned on the siren. It was a rude awakening for those villagers who weren’t already up, and the phones began to ring as one phoned another, phoned another, to find out what was going on and where. No one knew, but speculation raged as, phones to their ears, hands parting blinds and curtains, they formed an information relay about where the police car was headed. Billy went racing down the Island Way, the sound of the siren sending a thrill through him. He was on real police business.

  The woman peeked through the curtains of the big Victorian house on the Shore Lane as the police cruiser threaded its way to Lord’s cottage, and then her hand, hidden inside a white lace glove, released the curtain. She smiled. There was no joy in it.

  Her suitcases were still in the closet. She hadn’t even begun to pack, though check-out time was ten o’clock tomorrow and she was not an early riser. She knew she wouldn’t be leaving. Neither would Ed nor Leone. And Lance certainly wouldn’t be going anywhere.

  Or would he
?

  The sky was dark and angry, the wind raging, the waves thundering, the tide menacing Lord’s body. Hy, her nose red, teeth chattering, arms wrapped around herself against the gusting wind and rain, was leaning against Toby, who would also have preferred indoor comforts and kept looking quizzically at his beach buddy. It was not in Toby’s experience as a beach dog that a human would stand around on the sand in such awful weather. The smell was pleasant when he sniffed, though. Wet dog and puke – and something else.

  Hy couldn’t stay outside any longer. Let Toby eat the evidence on the table. It wasn’t her job to worry about it. The dog sped ahead to the cottage, jumped at the door and pushed his way in. Hy had just stepped inside when the police siren cut through the air. She yanked up a blind and the car’s lights slashed through the dark cottage.

  That’s when Hy saw him, standing in a corner of the room.

  Every Saturday, in The Shores and everywhere across Red Island, the week’s tourists left early in the morning and a fresh set arrived. But this was Labour Day weekend, and the tourists should have been leaving tomorrow morning, no fresh ones arriving. Only tomorrow the tourists wouldn’t be able to get out – and Ben and Annabelle Mack wouldn’t return to the rambling Shore Lane house they’d rented out all summer.

  It was from the front parlour window of this house that their latest guest had peeked out between the heavy velvet curtains. They’d been closed for the past week, ever since she’d arrived. Hardly anyone had seen her – only Gus. She’d borrowed some thread from Gus, had admired her quilts, and ended up ordering one, custom-made. Gus hadn’t told anyone. She’d been asked not to.

  Big Ed stood at the top of the cape, looking down on the shore. He’d seen the woman and the dog. He’d seen the bright neon body of Lance Lord. He’d heard the police cruiser slash through the dark morning. And now? Now he was seeing nothing. Staring out at the rising surf, but seeing – nothing.

  Ed Bullock’s mind was a blank. Utterly blank. It wasn’t meditation. It wasn’t something he tried to do. It just happened. And he wouldn’t stir. Couldn’t. There were no signals in his brain telling him to do anything. Anything but stand and stare.

  When he came to, the world would slowly come alive for him again. Sometimes it could be very disturbing, like this morning. Too many images to take in – the boiling sea, the waves assaulting the shore, the body lying on the sand.

  Lance Lord. It came to him afresh. He was seeing the body for the first time, all over again, reliving the fact that Lord was dead. If either of them had laid odds on who would go first, it would have been him, Ed. A pity, but it was an obstacle out of the way.

  Leone had seen the body, too, and knew who it was, but he didn’t bother to give it more than a glance. He kept his eyes on Ed as he always did through his morning walk up and down the cape, and the inevitable blank-out. Leone knew, though he was only looking at his back, when Ed “came to.” Knowing it would be moments only before he turned and came into the house, soaking wet and in need of help, his morning strength diminished. Ed was losing ground.

  Leone grabbed the wrought iron railing of the circular staircase and hauled himself down a step, balancing on the other long arm as he swung his feet down to it. And then again – a bit like a monkey, swinging his way down the steps more with the aid of his long arms than his legs.

  Even though, unlike Ed’s, they were perfectly good legs.

  Chapter Three

  Mountie Jane Jamieson was always on call, even this weekend during her sister’s wedding. She was afraid if she went off duty for an hour, that’s when her big chance would come – and go. It had just arrived, and she wasn’t prepared. She stood in these ridiculous clothes, waiting for her partner to pick her up.

  Even so, Jamieson was soaring with excitement, hoping the call really was a murder, a case to catapult her out of this backwater to somewhere bigger, better, like Toronto.

  She’d been glad not to be working Labour Day weekend, although she hadn’t admitted it to herself. Long holiday weekends were just three days of chasing down drunks on the road, answering complaints of loud music and noise, responding to domestic disputes – all the dirty, grubby, unexciting routine of police work. If something big was going to happen – really big – something big enough to propel her out of here to Halifax or Toronto or Vancouver, it was not going to happen on a three-day weekend. She didn’t know that police work in the big cities would be the same grubby tangle of drunks, loud parties, and domestic disputes, just more of them. She thought that’s where the real police work was going on, not on this nowhere island on the Labour Day weekend.

  She was about to be paid back for all the weekends she’d put her name in to be on call, and she was to learn to be careful what she wished for. She had been off duty when the call finally came, but she was very much on duty now. Except for what she was wearing.

  Murdo Black knew enough to keep his mouth shut when Jamieson came out the door of her sister’s oceanfront home east of Winterside. If he’d said anything about how she looked, she might have killed him – if she’d had a gun on her. He’d never seen her out of uniform. Never even imagined it.

  “Stop home first?” was the most he dared.

  “No time,” she said. “The clues are found in the first twenty-four hours – the best ones right away. We can’t chance disruption of the crime scene.” Or chance an actual detective being called to the case. She was lucky it was a long weekend and the Major Crime Investigation unit was in disarray. Lucky, too, it was The Shores, where no one wanted to go, especially on a holiday and in weather like this.

  Murdo shrugged and eased away from the curb.

  “Move it,” she ordered, and he picked up speed, punching on the car radio.

  “Hurricane Angus is approaching Red Island, packing winds of up to one hundred and forty kilometres. We’re expecting him to hit later this morning. The storm will bring with it high winds and bands of rain, heavy at times. Thirty millimeters could fall within a few hours, and we could get a total of one hundred millimeters or more. The storm centre is over Nova Scotia, but its angle means it will smack us hard.”

  Murdo cast a worried eye at the sky. Grim. Black. So dark you’d think it was sunset not sunrise. He hoped they’d get to the causeway before the hurricane hit. Murdo knew his island weather, and thought the storm would come sooner than the forecaster said. The winds were getting wilder, buffeting the cruiser as it sped along the wet roads, through channels of water worn into the asphalt by farm trucks full of potatoes and agricultural vehicles with loads of hay and grain, but most of all potatoes. The cruiser drove by the Havesham Farms potato factory north of Winterside. It was pumping out steam as the spuds were sliced, diced, cooked, and packaged as frozen French fries, making the air that once was fragrant with wild roses smell like a diner.

  The worst of the storm would arrive, Murdo predicted, within the hour. He sped up in spite of the risk of hydroplaning. They had to get to the causeway soon, before it was flooded. The causeway attached The Shores to the rest of Red Island, not very securely. High tides could cut it off entirely – with no police response to what sounded like a murder.

  Jamieson leaned her head back, her eyes firmly closed.

  She’d been to a family wedding, Murdo knew. Had she been drinking? Drinking? Jamieson? It certainly looked like it. Her pale skin was even paler than usual.

  A whiter shade of pale, thought Murdo. He’d always wondered what that meant. He was looking at it now.

  The figure standing in the corner moved, as the beam of a car’s headlights sliced through the window. Hy’s heart leapt in her chest and pounded in her ears. Toby growled, a long, low growl.

  Another sweep of light. The shadow loomed against the wall, then disappeared as the room went dark again.

  Hy was frozen, listening for breathing besides her own, trying to still the arrhythmic thumping of her heart. Toby growled agai
n, deeper, more menacing.

  Two more flashes of light. The man did not move. Neither did Hy. Car door slamming. Toby barking. Heavy boots pounding across the deck. Loud knocking on the door, not just in her heart. She found courage, spun around, and switched on the room light.

  She saw him clearly now – propped against the wall.

  Very dead.

  She let out a cry and dissolved in hysterical laughter.

  That’s how Billy Pride found her.

  Jamieson and Murdo had not spoken for fifteen minutes. They were nearly halfway to The Shores, and the worst part of the trip lay ahead.

  “The causeway,” Jamieson murmured, head back, eyes half-closed.

  “Yup,” said Murdo. “The goddamn causeway.”

  It had been natural once, a slim kilometre of land joining The Shores to the rest of Red Island. A couple of winters back, a storm surge had ruptured it. Driven by a northeast gale, the sea ice had pushed onto the land and over the road. In thirteen minutes, it had crushed and buried five houses, killed nine people, shoved cars into the water, and pushed boats up onto the road.

  The Shores had been cut off by land, the Campbell causeway torn apart at one end. The province had considered evacuating The Shores permanently but, after a protest, agreed to rebuild it. They’d made a bad job of it, and it had been washed out so frequently that the province had provided an ancient river ferry as backup. Now it crossed the tiny inlet, back and forth, eight cars at a time, as part of the provincial road system. But in a hurricane, that beat-up little ferry wouldn’t be out on the water.

  Murdo sneaked a sideways glance at Jamieson. She was scowling. His brow furrowed. He’d thought she’d be happy to answer this call.

  She was. But she was tense with anticipation, glued to a strong need that the call would turn out to be a murder, that she’d be the only one on the case, that she’d solve it, and no longer would be sent on jobs like the last two. She and Murdo had just come off a couple of humiliating cases. A month ago they’d investigated the robbery of a truckload of seaweed. Somehow, some way, someone had made off with a one-ton truckload of Irish moss and no one had seen. Or no one was saying they’d seen.