Revenge of the Lobster Page 5

  The sand was tramped down around the old building and there were deep ruts in the clay lane leading up to it—made by all those trucks going in and out over the past few weeks. Everyone had seen them, but what had they been doing? The cookhouse looked the same as always. What was Jared up to? Where had the money come from? Parker? She smiled. Hardly likely.

  It was only when she got home that Hy took a proper look at the card in her pocket.

  Hawthorne Parker

  Aesthete

  That was it. No phone number, no cell phone number, no address, no email, no fax.

  What kind of business card is this?

  Chapter Ten

  “They’ve come.” Ian burst through Hy’s front door, an open box in his hands.

  She looked up with a scowl. She’d finally sat down to write the Super Saver newsletter and was already stuck.

  If you’re delicious, it doesn’t matter how ugly you are. The lobster may not be long on looks, but the beauty of this beast is that he is nearly fat-free. Twenty percent less saturated fat than beef. Thirteen percent less than chicken—until you dip it in clarified butter. You could dip a cockroach in clarified butter and it would taste good.

  That’s where she’d stopped. Where did that last sentence come from? That blog is getting to me. It was popping up more frequently, unbidden. She couldn’t access the site. There was no Contact Us link. She’d done a web search with no luck. She couldn’t figure out how it had invaded her computer and now, her head.

  She deleted the sentence about the cockroach and clicked Save. In spite of the frown, she was glad to see Ian. He hadn’t been around for days.

  “Where have you been hiding?”

  He sat down on the captain’s chair he always chose. “I got my new iMac the other day, so that’s where I’ve been.”

  Of course. She’d known that, but forgotten. Instead, she’d nursed a small hurt that he hadn’t called and stubbornly hadn’t called him.

  He thrust the box forward. “Now this. It arrived this morning.”

  She looked inside. “And this is…?”

  “My geo-positioning receivers. This—” he pulled one out—“is the base unit. This—” he groped in the box again “—is the rover.”

  They looked exactly the same to Hy, but his eyes were bright with excitement.

  “I’m hoping that Hawthorne will let me set up a monitoring station on either side of his property. When he realizes the potential, I expect he’ll agree.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure about that.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ve met him.”

  “What…” Ian’s eyes shifted from the electronics to her with keen interest and then a slight clouding. So Hy had gotten to him first.

  “Yup.” Big smile. “I went up there and bearded the lion in his den.”

  “And?”

  “He’s weird. Small. Fussy. Pretentious. Here—” Parker’s card was pinned to her bulletin board. She pulled it off and handed it to him.

  Ian read it, smiled and shook his head. “Aesthete. Good God.”

  “God’s gift, I bet he thinks. He looked at me like I was some kind of slimy bug.”

  “And?”

  “He’s very pompous—the way some small men are. Shorter than me. Slim. Thin mustache. A sneer. And he does this odd thing. His eyes close and get stuck there. I don’t know if it’s just a twitch or what.”

  “I don’t have to ask why you went up there. You were snooping, of course.”

  “Of course,” she said, beaming. She got up from the table and slumped down in a fat old armchair, faded pink and green chintz. “But I had an excuse. I was delivering invitations to the lobster supper.”

  “Of course. Well, you scooped the rest of us.”

  “Barely.” She pointed at the GPS units. “I see you were poised to attack.”

  “Purely in the interests of science.”

  “He asked me to be his cleaning lady.”

  Ian laughed. “Well, I think I’m going to head on over and make my proposal. Who knows?” He winked. “I might come back as his groundskeeper.”

  Hawthorne Parker was sitting in his 1960 Mercedes roadster in the parking area at the car ferry. The car was idling and people were staring at him. Not just because it was the first time he’d been seen in public. Nor was it entirely the car—although no one here had ever seen one like it except on TV, with Pierre Trudeau or his son Justin at the wheel—silver metallic exterior, red leather interior. No, it wasn’t the car or the peculiar man driving it. It was the idling. Since they now had to take the ferry to town for gas, most people tried to conserve it, walking where they could and definitely not idling. Parker didn’t care. The weather had been cold, windy and wet all month. A chill fog off the Gulf shrouded the day. Even with the car heater on he was still shivering. A convertible, even with the roof up, was a bad choice for this place most of the year.

  Parker looked in the rear-view mirror at his thin face with its pencil line mustache. He didn’t like what he saw—mid-facial degradation creeping back again, hollows in his cheeks. If he’d let himself gain a little weight, but no; he passed a hand across his stomach to verify that it was still flat. He’d just have to visit the surgeon in Boston again and get plumped up. With a hand on either side of his face, he pulled it taut. Yes. Another visit and he’d be perfect again. He pinched his cheeks and adjusted the collar of his Burberry trench coat.

  The ferry was just starting across the bay. It would be a bit of a wait yet. He turned on the radio.

  “…province says as long as the weather cooperates, the Campbell Causeway to The Shores should be up and running by early June. That will be a relief to tourism operators in the area, who’ve been concerned they might lose their season.

  “In a related story, the train tunnel will be fifteen years old this July. A new study claims that because of climate change, the train tunnel was the best choice for the Fixed Link after all. Not all experts agree. We’ll have full details of that story on the news at nine.”

  Parker punched off the radio and selected a CD. The sweet powerful voice of Luciano Pavarotti, his favourite artist, filled the car. “Ave Maria…Ave Mari-i-a…” He turned it up, and Luciano’s voice rose undistorted at top volume through the car speakers. He had met Pavarotti once—a giant of a man, most attractive.

  Now more people were staring at Parker as the operatic tenor’s voice swelled over the scrubby little parking area that served the ferry. They didn’t seem to find the loud music unpleasant—just strange. They were used to country or Celtic rock blasting out of open truck windows and rattling their own.

  The ferry docked. No one hurried. Drivers coming off the boat stopped to chat with drivers getting on. Others, there to pick someone up, got out of their cars and stood in the bleak fog-bound day, craning their necks to see the pedestrians walking off through the smoky exhaust of the cars, thicker even than the fog. Parker remained where he was. He could see Guillaume. There was no mistaking that shape—like a pear, womanly, broad in the beam. Not the shape Parker had fallen in love with, but he’d become accustomed to it.

  Guillaume was at the front of the line of pedestrians, pushing his way forward, the only one in a hurry to get off the boat. His face was screwed up as if there were a bad smell under his nose. He was darting quick looks around him in every direction, searching for Parker’s familiar face, a look of fright on his own. He had bushy black hair and eyebrows that stuck out from his forehead in profile. In one hand he was carrying a tan leather bag. In the other a birdcage, covered with insulating material and zipped-up against the cold. From under the cover a bird squawked, “All aboard?” That drew everyone’s attention solidly away from Pavarotti, whose voice was fading into the last lingering notes of the hymn.

  Guillaume got off the boat, still looking around nervously. Parker waited. He needed a
moment to prepare for the encounter. Guillaume was just out of rehab after what Parker referred to as his “nervous collapse.” The doctors had used more frightening words: “drug-induced psychosis.” Parker scanned Guillaume’s face for signs of drug use. His nose was bright red and dripping, but that was from the cold.

  Guillaume suddenly announced in a loud, desperate voice:

  “I am seeking for Mr. Park-air,” his French accent very pronounced from the stress of arriving at an unknown place.

  “I am zee chef.”

  “All aboard?” the parrot screamed from under its cover. The drivers boarding the ferry shot quick glances at Guillaume, but no one spoke. Ben Mack had been on the boat and had parked his truck at the canteen to have a few words with Nathan. He walked over to Guillaume and pointed to the Mercedes. It was the least he could do. He was the one who, on the way over, fascinated by the parrot, had taught her to say: “All aboard?” with that annoying upward inflection.

  “Tank you.” Guillaume made a show of struggling up the slight incline and over to the car. Parker slid down the window. The parrot was covered and that should have shut her up, but it didn’t. “All aboard?” she kept shrieking. Parker winced. Jasmine had come from a good store. Her repertoire, in the beginning, had been extremely pleasant. She sang a creditable bar or two of Ave Maria in an uncanny tenor, was able to whistle a few phrases from Chopin and knew some lines of Shakespeare by heart. The problem was she was so intelligent, bored and curious that she picked up every new sound she heard and never let go. Parker expected to hear “All aboard?” ad nauseum for the next several days. Then it would be trotted out every now and then as an intentional irritant, a permanent part of her repertoire.

  “Hawtorn!” That was also an irritant. After all their years together, Guillaume could not manage to say his name properly. When coached, he could produce the “th,” but he always snapped back like an elastic band in everyday speech to a plain “t.”

  Parker smiled coolly. He got out to help Guillaume put his bag in the trunk. Guillaume squeezed into the passenger seat, the cage on his knees.

  “What kind of welcome eez this,” said Guillaume. “No kees?” He was being sarcastic. Parker’s lips closed tight in a thin line.

  “Not here, Guillaume.” He slid in, slammed the door, and backed up the car.

  “This is not New York or Montreal.” Even if it were, Parker did not like public displays of affection. Besides, his relationship with Guillaume was longstanding—the passion was gone. They were companions of habit. Sometimes Guillaume could still rouse Parker with his arsenal of tricks, which he used like dishes on a banquet table, available to all for tasting. It had been a frenzy of such behaviour—nights out with “dirty boys,” alcohol and drug abuse that had culminated in that final night—that had made it clear to Parker that Guillaume needed help—long-term, rehabilitative, incarcerated help—a rehab clinic. Guillaume was in no shape to protest. He was completely out of his mind.

  Parker examined Guillaume closely. Were his eyes too bright? Was his speech excessively exuberant? That didn’t mean he was high. These were the qualities that had first attracted him to Guillaume. Opposites attract.

  “All aboard?” squawked the parrot, as they pulled out of the parking area.

  If Parker’s attention had not been fixed on Guillaume, he might have noticed the odd vehicle that had come off the ferry, waited until he drove off, and then followed them. It was a jeep, painted in an unusual greenish-blue camouflage, with a red lobster-shaped air freshener dangling from the rear-view mirror.

  “Chef? His chef? No one ever had a chef here.”

  Gus shook her head several times in disbelief, as if the information were a personal affront. It must be true. Ben had seen and heard it for himself on the ride over on the ferry. It was such a juicy piece of news that he’d stopped by his brother’s house on his way home. He never did that. He was always eager to get back to his glamorous wife, Annabelle, who in spite of her well-groomed good looks, was a fisherman too.

  Abel’s house wasn’t the first place Ben had stopped. He’d been telling anyone who’d listen about the arrival of Hawthorne Parker’s chef—“a chef!”—on the ferry that morning—“with a parrot, no less. A parrot!”

  “Well, I never,” said Gus several times, to Ben’s satisfaction.

  He stopped at more houses on the way home. He drank tea at every one and a sherry at the last. He was so late getting home that Annabelle had begun to worry. When she offered him tea and he refused, she thought he must be sickening for something. She was the last one in The Shores to find out about Parker’s chef.

  After Ben left, Gus returned to her lobster quilt block. She had stuffed the appliqué with batting to raise it from the background, an effect she was experimenting with. She had just pulled through the final thread to secure the appliqué, when a rip appeared right down the middle of the lobster, the white batting poking out. Now, wasn’t that the way it always went? Gus had made over two hundred quilts. She wasn’t going to let one block get the better of her. She grabbed another piece of material and within minutes was attaching a new appliqué in place of the now discarded, ripped original. She pulled the thread through for the last stitch and cut it. The second lobster appliqué ripped down the middle, the white batting bulging out of the sun-faded pink material. It was old, too old.

  “Just like me,” mumbled Gus, sinking back in the purple chair. “What would I be doin’ buyin’ new stuff when I have all sorts back there?” The back porch was stuffed with boxes full of quilt patches and material she’d never get around to. Gus had no idea she had plenty of time left—she would live to be a healthy and active one hundred years old. She closed her eyes and drifted into a light snooze. The lobster square never did get finished that day as she had planned—or the day after that. It lay on the floor in a plastic bag for some time, until it caught her eye at just the right moment.

  Chapter Eleven

  “But what you are doing bringing me to thees backwater…?”

  “You know exactly what I’m doing.”

  “Well, yes, but this is the worse yet.” Guillaume looked around him in disgust.

  He can’t see the beauty, thought Parker. He can’t see past what it means to his lifestyle. Guillaume could not. He looked out the car window at the rolling green and yellow meadows, red earth and blue water, the colours faded and soft in the fog—and scowled. Guillaume liked the city, the smell of exhaust fumes, steel and glass buildings and dramatic modern architecture. He thought of green spaces as beauty marks, something to accent the bricks and mortar that were the heart and soul of the city, but one big green space like this?

  He shuddered. “It is ’orrible.”

  “Just wait ’til you see…”

  “See what? I tink I have seen enough.”

  They were not getting off to a good start. Parker was confident that would change when Guillaume saw his kitchen. Surely the best gift he had ever given him.

  “I think you’ll be happy with the present I have for you.”

  A spark of interest lit Guillaume’s eyes. Presents were always welcome.

  “A geeft? What?”

  “It wouldn’t be a gift if I told you.” Parker put a hand on Guillaume’s thigh and patted it. Guillaume used all his control not to pull away. First, see what this gift was…

  “Gift! Gift!” squawked the parrot in the back seat. It then began to make panting noises and orgasmic sounds. The word gift in her experience was often followed by the sound of passion.

  Parker frowned. Damn bird.

  Ian Simmons was down at the shore, at the base of Vanishing Point. He’d printed up some of the photographs the geologist Kevin Murray had sent him of bedding planes. It sure looked similar. With the cliff in front of him, he could see the inclined layers, the strata of the rock leaning toward the sea, the ice abrasions at the foot of the cape—a recipe f
or disaster. Nothing to confirm that it would happen, but it could. Nothing to say when either, but the ingredients were all there.

  He climbed up to the top of Vanishing Point, where the land was perfectly flat, as if nothing were wrong—except for that thin strip that connected the land to the rest of the cape, on which Parker’s house was precariously perched. It was only about two car widths. Parker is never going to be able to move that house back from the edge. How will they ever get the heavy equipment in?

  Ian passed by the house to the far side of the yawning “v” notch. Yes, this would be the perfect place to set up the base unit. Then he could use the rover to take measurements at various points. It was tempting not to tell Parker and just place the equipment where he wanted. Still, it wasn’t cheap. If he found it…

  He heard the sound of a car behind him and turned to see the Mercedes coming up the lane. He walked down toward it.

  “Mr. Parker!” He called with a false heartiness, a transparent gesture, waving and smiling as Parker eased out of the car and Guillaume pried himself out, handling the birdcage with difficulty.

  “Ian Simmons. Pleased to meet you.” He held up the geo-positioning units, an apology for not shaking hands.

  Parker inclined his head. He ran his forefinger along his mustache. It was an unwelcome interruption, with Guillaume just back, and no kind words between them—hardly any words at all. That damn parrot was doing all the talking on the way home—shifting back and forth between “All Aboard?” and an even more irritating imitation of seagulls squawking. The one small bird was able to sound like a whole flock.

  “Can you not get her to stop?” Parker had demanded through clenched teeth. “The sound of seagulls is only, if at all, pleasurable in the context of seaside ambiance.” In a small car, all three squeezed in the front, it had been hell on wheels.