Bodies and Sole (17 page)

Chapter Thirty-Two

Moira did not look the picture of a happy bride on her wedding day. She'd tried to avoid the lime Jello at Vera's the previous day, but Vera had been suspicious, and so she'd been forced to eat some. And forced to feed some to Cyril as well.

Pathetic, that was. Every time it was the same. His eyes moistening up in what she assumed were tears of frustration. Gripping his mouth closed as she tried to slip the spoon in. Vera's eyes on them both the whole time.

Lime green drool running from the corners of his mouth.

The Jello dropping in blobs onto his chin, sliding into the creases of his jowls and onto the napkin tucked under his chin.

She didn't like feeding him. She felt it made her a poisoner, a murderer, and that made the adrenalin course through her at the thought of her elderly neighbour, the late Elmer Whitehead. She had often given him her leftovers. Last year she'd unloaded red kidney beans that hadn't been boiled long enough, and he'd died. She couldn't be guilty of that again.

But Vera watched her like a hawk.

When Moira brought in Cyril's lunch tray, sans Jello, Vera barked out a command that she bring it.

She fetched it, and when he showed no interest in it, Vera barked again:

“Feed him.”

“Feed him?”

“The Jello.”

Reluctantly, Moira picked up the spoon. She held it to his closed lips. He refused to open them. His eyes stared into hers. They were saying something.

“Stupid woman.” Vera grabbed the spoon from Moira, and forced the Jello into him. He let it spill out of the corners of his mouth and down his chin. Vera forced another spoonful in. And on it went, the lime Jello landing on his chest as often as in his mouth.

Moira retreated to the kitchen, and Vera followed her there.

“Aren't you going to have some?”

“Well, I thought, no…”

Vera whipped open the fridge, hauled out the bowl of Jello and spooned some into a dish for Moira. She shoved it at her.

“Here. Take some.”

Reluctantly, Moira did, but refused to finish the bowl.

And now here it was, her wedding day – her third wedding day – and she felt so sick she'd be lucky if she could make it down the aisle, from the back of the hall up onto the stage.

But she was determined, determined that nothing would stop her from exchanging her self-written vows with Frank and becoming his wife, a respectable married woman, someone who was wanted by a man.

It was those thoughts that propelled her down the aisle on the arm of Billy Pride, her sister Madeline's boyfriend. She'd given up on Ian as being bad luck. She'd decided her impure thoughts about him had jinxed her.

Moira was wearing black, an outfit she kept for funerals. The latest
Cosmo
had said black was the chic colour for weddings. It hadn't meant for the bride, but Moira misunderstood. Besides, black was safe. If she threw up, it wouldn't ruin the garment. And she was very close to doing that, every inch of the way.

It was not a very long distance, but it took time. Moira had to stop frequently as waves of nausea gripped her.

Frank, up on the stage, looking down on his bride, wondered if she was going to bolt on him. That's what it looked like every time she stopped, her eyes darting desperately in the direction of the bathroom that was also the direction of the door.

But she made it with Hy and Madeline, her bridesmaids, leading the way.

The Justice of the Peace said a few words and then it was the turn of the bride and groom to pledge their troth. There was a hush. The whole village had been waiting to see what Frank and Moira had written.

“I take you to be my husband till death us do part.”

“I take you to be my wife till death us do part.”

That was it? That's what the glances around the room said. There was some grumbling before the justice pronounced the two married, and then half-hearted applause.

Moira made a beeline for the toilet.

She didn't come out until the guests were gone.

They'd consumed their tea and cake, and, despairing of the bride appearing, or of someone popping open a bottle of bubbly, they all left, more disappointed than any of them had ever been in a wedding.

The groom, who had waited so long to taste Moira's charms, was going to be the most disappointed of all.

By the time Moira got over feeling nauseous, they would be almost an old married couple. And Frank would be considering taking up again with his lady customers.

But the marriage had been a good trade-off. The muffins were great, and he was now master of a sweet little property at The Shores, fast becoming the most popular tourist destination on Red Island. The sweetest property. And the sourest wife.

There was no traditional wedding night.

Hy's FB Status: A woman in England sent her husband winging off into the next world. She had his ashes packed in gun cartridges. Then she and friends went on a shooting party at an estate in Scotland. Her late mate bagged over 100 birds before he was well and truly done.
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Comments: She should be shot.

Jamieson headed to Frasers' for an informal investigation.

She told Wally she needed to look through Orwell Crane's things. She didn't say why – just that it was part of a police investigation. If she had to, she'd get a warrant. She didn't have to. Wally didn't mind letting Jamieson into his shed. He was proud of it. A place for everything and everything in its place. His John Deere mower had pride of place – smack in the centre of the shed. It was polished to a showroom shine, looking as if it had never come near a blade of grass. Sadly – and it made Wally frown to think of it – it had been used very little this rainy summer.

Taking her cue from Wally, Jamieson hugged the wall
around the tractor, careful not to brush it with the fabric of her uniform.

The back of the shed was lined with shelves. Deepest in, as one would expect of artifacts a good fifty years old, were Orwell Crane's things. A large antique trunk and a shelf of boxes. Precious little to show for a whole life.

Precious? Was there something precious in there?

“Don't know why I kep' 'em really. Not just Orwell's. Quite a few relations in here. Aunts and uncles, spinsters and bachelors. Seemed a shame to throw anything out. They do take up a bit of space. But being kin 'n all, I thought I better. Someone might pop up who was closer kin, and what could I say – I'd recycled it all?”

Jamieson murmured agreement. They stood, looking at Orwell's things, Jamieson hesitant to dive in.

“Go ahead,” said Wally. “I'll leave you to it. Just be careful of Johnny on your way out.”

Johnny?

Wally grinned, patted the ride-on and winked at Jamieson.

Fonder of the tractor than his wife, I bet. It was certainly better-looking. But not as tough. Gladys was a bulldog of a woman.

Jamieson started with the trunk. She didn't really know what she was looking for. A gold tooth? Not likely. Besides, they hadn't even identified the skull as Roger Murray, although Jamieson wouldn't be surprised if Gus were right.

The trunk was full of clothing, mostly in need of a good wash. There were boots, shoes, outerwear, but nothing of any interest. At least not to her.

Whitey had come up from Macks', and was now sniffing and rolling about in the clothing on the floor.

Jamieson looked in the boxes next. In the first one, she found a series of threatening, misspelled notes from Roger Murray to Orwell. They weren't dated, but, by the nature of the threats, appeared to be in chronological order, with the last a taunt to go out on a boat in a storm together, and find out who was “the better man.”

If Gus was right about the identity of the skull, they had done just that.

She set the notes aside. They could be evidence if this case were ever opened.

Another box revealed a set of mismatched dishes. There was one full of papers that Jamieson rustled through carelessly. Bills. Unpaid or disputed. A high school diploma. A few ragged, creased photographs of men and their boats.
The family album?
There was a box of ancient tools and fishing tackle, and not much else.

Firearms?

“No, Orwell never had a gun, not a hunting rifle, nothing.” Wally had come back to see how she was doing and was closing up the shed on his beloved “Johnny.”

“Not a man for killing, in spite of what they said.”

“And they said?”

“Well, that he had killed Roger Murray out there.” Wally looked toward the shore. “Never believed it myself. Orwell said Roger fell over the side. Drunk, probably. Orwell sure was when he got back. Actin' awful funny. Course, you couldn't blame him. He was near drowned.”

“And Roger?”

“Roger?”

“Did he have a gun?”

“Did he? Whole collection of guns. Left to his nephew.”

“Who's his nephew?”

“Jared MacPherson. Thought everyone knew that. Course, he wasn't his nephew then. Wasn't born yet. But he got the guns.”

Jamieson groaned inwardly. Jared MacPherson. The local scumbag. Jared MacPherson, who seemed always to be involved in some way with whatever dirty business was going on in The Shores. And now this. On the sidelines of a heritage killing.

Jamieson thanked Wally and got his permission to take the threatening notes. Whitey had jumped into a box and was clawing the contents, shredding the paper bills of a half-century ago. Jamieson pried her out and headed down The Island Way to Jared's house. He'd recently scored some cedar shingles in some shifty deal, and had just finished shingling half of the house. The bottom half. Then he'd run out – of supplies and energy. The plan had been to open the house as the only square house with a mansard roof in all of The Shores. Charge admission. Rake it in.

Killer, Jamieson thought when Jared opened the door to her knock. She thought he was responsible or implicated in a couple of deaths in the village, only she couldn't prove it.

There was a cigarette hanging out of his frown at seeing her. He held the door open just a crack and grunted for his “hello.”

“I understand you inherited Roger Murray's gun collection.”

His eyes narrowed, wondering what she was after. He took a haul on the cigarette, removed it from his mouth, and threw it at her feet.

She stepped on it and ground it out. It was meant as an aggressive gesture. A warning.

“And if I did?” A challenge.

“One of his guns may be a murder weapon.”

“Nothing to do with me.” Jared was always fast on the defensive.

“I know. You weren't even alive then.”

“Left them to his sister's first-born son.” He straightened up a bit. Pride at being first at something. “First born. Me. But I never got them. Parents sold them before I was old enough to 'herit them. Said it was for my education. But it was for booze.”

The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

“How many guns were there?”

“Twelve.”

“That's it?” Jamieson got the feeling that Jared was lying about something. He was fidgeting, his hands gripping at the sides of his trousers.

“That's it.” He pulled a pouch of tobacco out of his shirt pocket and began rolling another cigarette.

Jamieson stood for a moment, watching his hands shake. Then she thanked him and left. The sweet smell of marijuana followed her down the front walk.

I should bust him, she thought. But she wasn't going to. She could spend all her time – valuable police time – busting Jared. As far as she knew – and she did keep an eye on it – Jared had only personal stash right now. He wasn't dealing. Besides, she had a hunch Jared knew something she wanted to know, so she wasn't going to get too fussy about a joint.

Chapter Thirty-Three

Moira was just glad to be married.

It hadn't been a dream wedding out of
Cosmo,
but at least there had been a wedding this time.

She and Frank were well and truly married. Almost. The marriage had not been consummated. The first night, it was nausea. The second night, lingering nausea. The third night to the eighth night she had her “monthly visitor.” And then he stopped asking. They rolled onto their own sides of the bed, backs to each other.

Everyone knew. Moira would have been mortified to know that everyone knew that she and Frank had not consummated their marriage. Frank had made no secret of it. He'd complained to anyone who'd listen.

“Perhaps someone should tell her it could render the marriage invalid.” Ian suggested to Hy one morning when she dropped by, minutes after Jamieson left. That had been happening a lot lately. Had it been the kiss? Kisses? Hy hadn't said anything. It was as if she didn't care.

She did, but she didn't care to show her feelings.

“Would you be the one to tell her?”

Ian's eyes opened wide with horror.

“No. Never. Not me.”

“Well, don't think I'm going to.”

“How about April?”

Hy had just taken a sip of coffee. It came spitting back out of her mouth.

April Dewey had been married to a philandering husband. Though they had six kids, he'd managed to get their marriage annulled. April had broken faith with the church as a result.

Wiping the coffee off her sweater, Hy grinned at Ian.

“No. Not April, either.”

“Jamieson?”

For a moment, Hy considered it. “Well, it is a legal matter.” She shook her head.

“No. Jamieson could never do it. She certainly wouldn't consider it police business.”

“Let it go, then.”

“Let it go.”

There was a line-up into Gus's kitchen. Word about the skull had spread around the village.

Gladys Fraser had seen Finn take it into the house. When Wally told her Jamieson had been into the shed to look at Orwell Crane's things, she put two and two together. She made a quick call to Olive MacLean to tell her to meet her on the way to Macks'. They bumped into Gus's neighbour, Estelle Joudry, who was heading over, too. She was always on the alert for anything interesting going on at her neighbours' and had also seen the skull go in.

A hired hand on Ben Mack's farm and friend of Jared MacPherson had overheard Annabelle on the phone talking with Hy about the skull. When he went down to Jared's after work for a joint, he told him about the skull and that it was Roger Murray. If there were a gold tooth in it, that rightly belonged to him, Jared figured, and he, too, made his way up to Gus's.

Finn let them in, but he wouldn't let anyone touch the skull.

“Police evidence,” he said, although he wasn't sure that it was.

The villagers, singly and in pairs, peered at the skull and debated as to whether it was Roger Murray. The general consensus was that it was. Each remembered a particular feature that marked the skull as belonging to Roger. None of it was scientific, but Finn began to have an image of the man. Finn was a talented amateur artist, and, when everyone had left, sketched out a picture of a man based on the structure
of the skull and people's descriptions.

“To the life,” Gus judged it. “To the very life. Only thing's missin' is the tooth.”

But it wasn't. Not for much longer.

Finn and Hy took the skull home. They weren't sure if they were supposed to move it – Jamieson hadn't issued any specific instructions – but so many people had been to see it at Gus's, they didn't want to leave it there. Besides, Finn would have more time to examine it at Hy's.

They stuck it on the table near Hy's laptop when they got home, and opened a bottle of wine. Without meaning to, they polished off that bottle and another.

“Aren't you supposed to be examining the skull?”

“Time enough,” said Finn.

“You're picking up the local dialect.”

Finn grinned.

“Happen I am.”

Hy threw a pillow at him.

It wasn't long before both fell asleep – Finn in the armchair; Hy on the couch.

Sometime in the middle of the night, Hy woke.

There were two eerie green eyes pulsing at her from across the room. For a moment, she was frozen.

Pulse. Green. Pulse. Green. Eyes alive with malevolence. Whacky? No. Whacky was at her feet. She could feel the warm purr of her.

Then who? What?

She pushed herself into a sitting position.

The pulsing green light had shifted. A grinning mouth.

The skull. Her laptop light pulsing into it and animating it.

Hy got up and blundered in the dark to the table to shift the skull. She knocked it over.

From deep in the arch of the skull came a glint. Hy stood without moving, staring at the spot. The light pulsed again. Again, the glint. She was afraid to move and lose sight of what she thought might be…

It wouldn't be going anywhere. She switched on the overhead light and Finn groaned. She grabbed the skull and peered in through the gap in the mouth.

Nothing.

Finn groaned again and stretched his arms. Hy grabbed a flashlight from beside the front door.

“What's up?” Finn called over, voice thick with sleep. He rubbed his eyes against the harsh overhead light. Hy trained the flashlight inside the skull and stuck her eye in the hole in the mouth.

A glint. A gold glint. Roger Murray – if it were he – may well have hung on to his tooth.

“I think it's the tooth.”

“What?” Finn jumped up, wide awake. Hy handed him the skull and the flashlight.

“Look in. Look deep. Stick the flashlight in the right eyehole and twist it upwards. There's something there. Something gold.”

“You're right. I think you're right. Lodged in the cranium.”

It was late – almost midnight – but they decided to phone Jamieson. There was no answer on her landline, but there was on her cell phone.

“We've found the tooth.” That's all he said. And she knew right away.

“The gold tooth?
The
gold tooth?”

“The same.” Confidence suffused Finn's soft voice, with its drawling Boston inflection.

While Finn talked, Hy looked out the window to Ian's light on Shipwreck Hill. Flickering light in the living room. Computer light? TV? Candlelight?
Was Jamieson with Ian? This late at night?

She was. And the candlelight had been flickering before she arrived. It had attracted her. She thought maybe he was giving her a signal. But he wasn't. Not to her. She was disappointed when he opened the door to her. He looked disappointed, too. She was just trying to bury her embarrassment and leave when Finn called.

“I'll be right there.”

“I'm coming, too.” Ian wanted in on this. He still felt sulky that Hy hadn't told him about the skull. He wanted to show her that his being with Jamieson at this time of night meant nothing. Nothing. She had just showed up. He wouldn't have done anything. He regretted those kisses the other night. Yes, he'd been interested, but not serious.

Jamieson seemed to get the message. She was all business as they jumped into the police cruiser. They were at Hy's in minutes.

“Show me.” She burst through the door, surprising Hy. Jamieson was always tentative about the local custom of entering a house without knocking.

Ian entered in her wake.

So she had been with him.

Finn beckoned Jamieson over. He tilted the skull and shone a small flashlight into the main cavity. There was a glint. He directed the light more carefully and held it where it shone brightest on the gold.

A gold tooth. Lodged in the skull. So placed that only chance, not intent, could find it.

“How – ?” Hy, Jamieson and Ian spoke in unison.

“Good question.” Finn put the skull right side up and trained a pocket magnifying glass on the tooth.

“With a magnifying glass, you can see that the tooth has taken an impact. Something drove it through the brain and lodged it in the skull. Perhaps you can see if you look closely.” He held the skull out to Jamieson. She took hold of it and peered into it.

“A bullet?” Hy suggested.

“That's what I think,” said Finn.

“So there were two bullets. One through the temple and…?”

“From the angle, I'd say through the mouth.”

“What could that mean?” Jamieson handed the skull and flashlight over to Hy.

“Well, the one that hit the tooth presumably came from a shot in the mouth. Suicide maybe. Or someone trying to make it look like suicide.”

“Someone shot him in the mouth, and when that didn't work – maybe the tooth saved him somehow – shot him in the head.” Finn stuck a finger into one hole in the skull and then into the other one, and swung it back and forth.

“Or he killed him with the first shot, and shot again for the hell of it.”

Jamieson found it disconcerting. Hy found it funny when she told Gus the next day. Gus was not surprised.

“That Orwell allus was a nasty bit of business.” Gus looked with satisfaction at the square of the crazy quilt she'd just completed. Her first one, done right.

Worth its weight in gold, she thought.