Bodies and Sole (4 page)

Chapter Five

Frank Webster was driving across the causeway behind a
moving truck. Frank himself had just a modest van, with which he made deliveries around this end of the island. He wondered where the truck was headed. It had to be The Shores – there was no other community around. But a moving truck? There wasn't much cause for those here – unless it was some wealthy new tourist on the capes. He went through a mental list, but couldn't come up with anyone who'd need a truck that big.

That woman at the Sullivan house? But all her stuff had been delivered a month ago, hadn't it? There had been two huge moving trucks. Surely enough to fill that big old place.

When he got to the village, he didn't stop at his fiancée Moira's house, but continued following the truck, taking the turn at Shipwreck Hill, up and over the rise, and down toward the Sullivan house.

The truck turned into the driveway ahead of him. He pulled over to the side of the road, jumped out of his vehicle, and flipped open the hood, pretending to be occupied with some trouble, positioned so that he could see what was going on.

She came out of the house to inspect the contents when the driver opened the back of the truck. Frank knew who he was. Bernie Stubbs. Not just the driver. Son-in-law of the company owner. Frank thought of the woman as that “hard old bitch” Vera Gloom, though he'd had little to do with her. A few small parcel deliveries. No tips.

Bernie released the ramp and jumped into the truck. He came out with a square box on a trolley. Big box. The double front doors of the house had to be opened to get it in.

Not too heavy in spite of its size, Frank thought. He had experience with that sort of thing, would have noticed the degree of pressure on the ramp.

Vera and the driver emerged from the house, she still talking and gesturing in every direction. Bernie, head down, plowed forward, every bit of his body language concentrated on silencing her sounds and movements.

He just wanted to get the job done and get gone.

Frank continued tinkering under the hood of his vehicle, keeping a sly eye on the proceedings.

The next box to emerge was oblong. It had to be tilted on the trolley to clear the roof of the van. About seven feet long, Frank estimated. Maybe three feet on all sides. If he could only touch it, he'd be able to guess its weight within a few pounds. A skill he'd picked up in the business. He could do it with women, too. Estimate the weight of them from just a touch. They didn't like it when he'd say, “130. 140. 150…,” even though he made sure to round it down.

His fiancée had only noticed this annoying habit after they were engaged. Like most brides, she'd lost weight before her wedding, even though she was thin as a dried spaghetti noodle to begin with. With a second wedding attempt in the wings, Moira was hardly eating and when Frank touched her, he was constantly making downward estimates. “140… 135… 130… now, Moira, that's way too thin.”

Moira had smiled at that. Too thin? Not possible according to what the secret stash of
Cosmo
magazines under her bed told her.

Again the panicked gesturing from the woman as Bernie rolled the second package down the ramp, the word FRAGILE in bold black down the full length of it.

She followed him into the house. Just the hallway, Frank guessed, because out they came again quite quickly. Bernie into the truck. Vera Gloom and her unpleasant face remaining at the bottom of the ramp.

Suddenly, she let out a squawk. Bernie halted at the top of the ramp, another oblong box, but this one shorter and fatter, perched on the wheels of the trolley.

She was gesturing wildly. It seemed to Frank that she wanted the box upended. It also seemed to Frank that Bernie had no idea what she wanted.

“The other way. The other way,” she screamed.

Horizontal?

“My creations!”

Maybe he should offer to help?

Frank slammed the hood shut, and went to investigate.

Relief washed over her face when he strode over.

“Thank God. The two of you can do this properly.” She turned to Bernie. “Forget the trolley. You can pick it up together. And be careful. This is art. These are works of art.”

Bernie looked dubious. Picking up was in the contract. Picking up and carrying was not. That's what the trolley was for. Still, he was anxious to get the job over with.

He and Frank hoisted it together. Hoisted it too high at first. It was much lighter than its size would suggest. About twenty or thirty pounds, Frank would guess.

It was deceptively light, but awkwardly shaped. They carried the box into the front entrance, now crowded with the three boxes.

“Anywhere we can take these for you? Clear the road, like?”

Bernie frowned at Frank. The job was done, as far as he was concerned. He wanted his dinner.

She assumed her only smile. It was much more of a go hence than a come hither.

And so the two men muscled the boxes upstairs. They weren't heavy, as Frank had observed, but they were unwieldy and had to be carried above the level of the banister. That made it heart attack work.

One by one, they got them to the upstairs hallway.

“Perfect,” she said.

“Any help with the unpacking?” Frank dusted off his hands after they shoved the last box into place beside the others.

This time, her standard, unsatisfactory smile turned almost soft.

“No, no.” She combed her diamond-encrusted fingers lightly through her hair and fluffed it up.

“No,” she repeated. “I'll do that myself. At leisure.”

Bernie was ready to join his cronies for dinner at their watering hole in Winterside, and, making a hand available for a potential tip, started down the stairs.

He left empty-handed.

So did Frank, who didn't expect one. Often, his lady customers were generous in other ways, and he accepted, even though he was engaged to be married to Moira Toombs. The wedding had been put off too long. And Moira wasn't generous with what little she had to give a man.

No, in spite of his premarital starvation diet, Frank didn't want a tip from Vera Gloom – of any kind.

He wanted to be in her good graces though. She was a rich woman. And it never hurts to court their favour, if not their charms. She'd be buying all sorts online, he could tell the type. And UPS wouldn't deliver out here, not with the unreliability of the causeway. So they threw all their work his way, and would keep on doing it as long as the customers were happy.

No one had any idea of who Vera Gloom was, so they made it up.

She was the main topic of conversation at the annual lobster feed at the hall the next Saturday night.

“I heard she was a realtor, going to fix that house and flip it,” said Ben Mack, Abel's much younger brother.

“Not with two van loads of furniture moved in there, she isn't.” Frank was talking and eating at the same time. Moira was frowning at him from across the table.

He swallowed and wiped a sleeve across his mouth. “And all that art.”

“Three husbands, I heard.” Gladys Fraser put a final plate on the table and sat her bulldog body down beside Wally. “All of them livin' and all of them here.”

“When did they come?” Ben had just stolen one of Annabelle's lobster claws and cracked it open. She snatched it back.

“Swear I saw a car drive up there the other night, three gents in it.” Wally Fraser fished a napkin off the table and tucked it into his shirt. “You saw it, Germaine.”

“Three gents and a driver.” Germaine Joudry looked disappointedly as his wife, Estelle, removed a pat of butter from his plate. He'd had heart surgery the year previous.

“Looked like a limo to me.” A fat piece of lobster fell off Wally's fork, poised to make his point. “Idled a while outside Sullivan house, then came back.”

“Empty,” said Germaine. “Lights on up there for a while after that. Past the usual time she goes to bed.”

Germaine and Wally knew exactly when Vera retired because they spent most nights outside Wally's shed, drinking and smoking and hiding from their wives. Some nights they drank more than others, their imaginations and tongues running wild.

Ben nudged Annabelle and winked. “Truth or fiction?”

“That art, Frank. Did you see it?” Ian's place was just up the hill from the Sullivan house. He'd seen the truck pass by the day that Frank helped take the boxes in.

Frank chewed on his food for a moment.

“I been up close,” he said.

Frank had eaten and imbibed several times already on his brush with Vera and the information that she was an artist, with huge but lightweight sculptural creations, most likely made out of balsawood, or something very, very light.

Had he seen the art? No, but he began to imagine that he had, and, a few glasses in, would begin to describe alien insects, oversized cockroaches and grasshoppers that had mated with dinosaurs.

“Yeah, I seen it.”

Moira kicked his leg under the table.

“As good as,” he whispered to her. He'd touched those boxes. He knew what they weighed. She'd said: “My creations.” If it was art, it had to be balsawood, or maybe plastic.

“Insects, you said?” Ian wasn't looking at Frank. He was hoping for a glance from Hy. None came.

“Insecks or airplanes. Hard to tell.” There, thought Frank, that should satisfy Moira. Hard to tell. Wasn't that the truth?

“Luftwaffe mebbe. I hear she was a tabletop dancer in Poland before the war.” Jared MacPherson had slipped into the dinner and was somehow eating lobster without paying.

“Which war?” Ben challenged.

“Second, of course.”

“Do your math, Jared.”

Jared looked up, eyes blank. He couldn't do math.

“No, no, no.” Frank slurred his words a bit. He'd been nipping at a flask he kept in his pocket for what otherwise would be a dull occasion.

“She's an artist, like I been telling you all. Big balsa wood insects.”

There followed the usual mumbles and grumbles:

“She won't find balsa wood here.”

“Plenty of insecks, though.”

The most silent person in the hall was Marlene. She talked to no one and no one talked to her. She had, not for a moment, taken her eyes, mouth or concentration off the food in front of her. She ate every single bite the lobster could offer – chewing on its legs and the fan of its tail. When she'd finished, the last to do so, she looked around the dishes lining the table. She hadn't been lucky enough to get any tomalley or lobster caviar – the red roe of the female crustacean. Others had and they hadn't all eaten it. Marlene's eyes gleamed with envy and she began to plan an escape from the hall that would allow her to scoop up some on her way out. She slid a few napkins into her purse.

To the villagers' disappointment, neither Vera nor her three husbands showed up for the “feed.”

Chapter Six

www.theshores200.com

The Sullivan house was pieced together like a quilt. It was built over time and generations until Daniel Sullivan completed it. He later became a respected architect of upper-crust homes in Winterside. When he finished the work of his ancestors to perfect his Victorian “cottage,” he had no money. He had used fish crates instead of lath. He and his bride never lived in it. She died tragically before they could.

Hy had known some of the history of the Sullivan house before, but she was finding more for the website in the provincial archives. Her interest was personal as well as professional. A couple of years before, a family had lived in the house when it was almost uninhabitable. They'd pitched a tent in the kitchen in winter because the roof leaked. There had been many more rodents than humans in the place. There had been a murder, a miscarriage, the exposure of a hidden identity, all tied to a family secret.

This Vera Gloom was bound to be less interesting than that.

Hy wheeled her bicycle up Shipwreck Hill, deciding she would introduce herself on the pretext of wanting to write an article about her. About having restored this magnificent house to its former beauty.

Maybe also about her art.

Thanks to Frank, it was all around the village that Vera Gloom was an artist. Hy had Googled her, but came up blank. Must be just an amateur, with money to spend on materials.

A doorbell. It was the first thing Hy noticed. Probably the only one in the Shores, certainly of its kind. It was the closest up she'd been to such a thing. A Victorian doorbell. Mechanical twist. Solid brass.

Hy gave it a turn. It gave a strangled ring, like a bicycle bell, only bigger. She waited. Gave it another turn. Still nothing.

Perhaps it couldn't be heard, deeper into the house. The days of servants who might be close at hand to answer were long past.

She twisted one more time. Waited a minute or two. Backed away from the door. Looked up at the windows.

The house stood silent. Dark as a tomb. She shivered at the thought. The Sullivan house might have been restored, but it was still gloomy. She walked around to the side. Shoved her face at a downstairs window. The curtains shut suddenly, dragged on a pulley.

Had she been seen? Was she purposely being excluded?

She backed off. Looked at the upstairs windows.

There was a man in one of them.

Waving at her.

She waved back.

He kept on waving.

Feeling foolish, she waved again, and backed around the front of the house, still waving, because he was. Still backing up. Right into Vera Gloom.

“Ah, there you are.”

Hy turned and looked straight into the unwelcoming face of The Shores' newest resident.

“Oh, hi. I'm Hy…”

“Hello. I'm Vera Gloom. And you are?”

“Hy…”

“Yes, I know. We've said our hellos.”

“Hy…that is… Hyacinth McAllister.”

“That's more like it. What can I do for you?”

“I…uh… I'm a writer, and I'd be interested in writing about your restoration of the cottage.”

“You're certainly not alone.”

“I'm sure, but I'm the one with the most intimate knowledge of this house and its history.”

“I'm not sure I want it talked about.”

“Well, it's being talked about in the village, so you might as well set the record straight.”

“And what is the record?”

“Among other things, that you're an artist and you've been married three times.” Hy looked down at Vera's hands. Blue diamonds. Unusually blue. Vera clasped her hands, hiding some of the glitter.

“Some even say you plan to run a Bed and Breakfast here.”

Vera raised her eyes. “Spare me. The house is for my family.”

“Family?”

“My boys.”

“Sons?”

“Not exactly.” They were like little children, though. So helpless. So in need of her care.

Hy darted a quick look up.

The man in the window – one of the boys?

Hy didn't get her interview, and, disappointed, cycled down to Gus with the fresh gossip.

“Did you see the big insects?” Gus asked immediately.

Hy shook her head and sat down.

“I didn't see anything – except a man waving from an upstairs window.”

“One of the husbands?”

“I guess so.”

“Imagine.” Gus shook her head several times. “A woman of her age, living with all those husbands.”

“Ex-husbands, I think it is.” Hy wasn't sure what was true about Vera and what wasn't.

“Is it legal?”

“I think so.”

“It may be, but I've never heard anything so foolish. One husband is quite enough, thank you.”

Especially when you never see him
. Hy wondered if Abel Mack would show at the 200th anniversary celebrations.

Hy quickly scotched the rumours that Mrs. Gloom was going to run Sullivan house as a Bed and Breakfast, much to Moira's relief. Hers was the only B&B in the village, and she had only Marlene staying there.

Moira never had any visitors, in spite of her ads on the Internet. It may have been because of her ads on the Internet. They showed her rooms for what they were: grim, Spartan cells.

It was in one of these that Marlene Weeks was staying – with an eye to being economical with public money. The bed was hard, the linens well-used and starched, the house cold on a cool morning, no rug in the room and newspapers covering the floor everywhere else.

Marlene woke, satisfied with the way things had turned out over the flowerbed. Eagerly, she opened her laptop, before even getting out of bed, to see if there had been any effect on the Internet. She clicked first to The Shores website.

Ian Simmons had spent hours designing it, and Marlene was gratified to see he had used one of her photographs of the community garden as a cover photo for the page. Her selective memory had by now convinced her that she had not only taken the photograph, but also created the flowerbed. She silenced that niggling voice in her mind. She'd as good as done it. She'd inspired it with her marigolds.

She also considered herself the designer of the website. Or as good as. The technology types in the department of tourism had hooked her up with Ian. The tech community on Red Island was quite small and Ian was well-known. Before she even came to The Shores, Marlene had connected with him, and, to her delight, he had agreed to create a website for the big event. For free.

He was scanning old photos and old documents, changing the site every day. He wanted to get his hands on the mountain of material Gus had – from a lifetime of pack-ratting local history.

“You can't have it,” Gus had told him more than once. “It's going in a book, a proper book, not on that inter thing.”

“You like the Web well enough to speak to your daughter and granddaughter on Skype,” he'd replied more than once. He was annoyed because he'd given her a computer so she could do that. One of his old ones. An iMac, just two years old.

“That's one thing. You can't do that any other way…see them and hear them. This you can. In a book.” She hugged her fat folder to her, as if he might steal it. Sometimes he was tempted to.

“I would just borrow it. Bring it right back.”

“How do I know that scan thing wouldn't destroy the papers and photographs?”

“You have my word that it wouldn't.”

“Still, the answer's no.”

Ian found it frustrating. It seemed that Gus was the guardian of the village memory, that it resided nowhere else. Everyone had a few papers, a few photos, but Gus had the mother lode. And what would she ever do with it?

“Maybe nothing,” said Hy, after one of Ian's sessions with Gus. “She hasn't done anything with it that I can see in years. I think she's overwhelmed.”

“Well, maybe you could convince her.”

“Oh, no. You're not going to haul me into it. She won't let me help put a book together. I doubt I can get her to give in for that Internet thing, as she calls it.”

The truth was that Hy, as well as Gus, felt somewhat possessive about the material Gus had amassed. Hy still had hopes of putting together a book for the bicentennial, and didn't want it watered down by publication on the net. She was selecting her own material for the website to avoid that.