Something Fishy (4 page)

Chapter Five

“Dangerous dining? What do you mean by that?”

Anton was getting used to the question.

Hy had waited until the rest of the media had stopped hounding Paradis before she went down and knocked on his door. She had an idea that she could shill this story to a number of media outlets. It intrigued her. As someone who couldn't cook, she was always interested in how others did it.

“Just as I say.” Anton shook his head. In Europe, people, police, and the media would know exactly what he was talking about.

“Dangerous food, carefully prepared, amuses the experienced palate. Adds a thrill to the menu, to the dining experience. Green turtle, monkey brains, blowfish, a variety of mushrooms, of course.”

Hy screwed up her nose.

“Do they taste good?”

He shrugged. “Not always. The allure is the flirtation with death.”

“Man, that's jaded.”

He shrugged again.

“I couldn't possibly compete with other restaurants that attract the level of clientele I desire. The only way is to have a unique brand. Mine is the dangerous dinner. It's why I chose this location. So many deaths, in such a short period of time, in such a small place. The perfect ambience.”

Hy looked at the dining area that joined the two wings of the house. It was long, and barely wide enough to accommodate a table and chairs for ten. Once people were seated, it was impossible for serving staff to move behind them.

Following her glance, Paradis pulled out the chair nearest him.

“Yes, only room for the diners. That means they must serve themselves. The restricted number makes it more desirable. The exclusive schedule – no more than twelve dinners a year – whets their appetite. I have watched the rich at close quarters. I know what attracts their imagination, their constant desire for new experiences, the next thing their money can buy.”

“How much do you charge? It must be prohibitive if you're to make any money.”

“As they say, if you have to ask, you can't afford it.”

Paradis didn't know anything about what Hy called her nest egg, grown to a substantial sum in royalties from her mother's seminal back-to-the-woods best seller,
A Life in the Woods.
The book was hewn out of her hippie experience, written in homemade ink, illustrated with charcoal from the woodstove, made public at the cost of her life and very nearly Hy's. Hy had money because she was careful with it. She'd never blow it on a dangerous dinner. She was such a bad cook, she could flirt with danger any day of the week in the comfort of her own home.

“How much? Let us say…a lot,” he said finally.

“Hundreds?” Hy felt foolish even as she asked. It was bound to be more. Paradis smiled.

“Thousands,” she ventured, not questioning. Maybe thousands. He inclined his head, but the gesture, like the sum, seemed incomplete.

“Not tens of thousands?”

The eloquent shrug. Anton knew how to work the media.

“It depends what they eat. How hard it is to get. Our peppers, bananas, spices, all come from the rainforest. They are not farmed. People must go there to gather them. There are many dangers in the rainforest – insects, snakes – all this is taken into consideration in pricing. If we lose someone –”

“Lose?”

“If someone dies in pursuit of an item on the menu, of course there's an extra charge, including costs for printing a memorial biography for the deceased worker. Our patrons will appreciate this fine touch.”

Crazy. Crazy. Crazy.

“So what are you serving on opening night?”

“Pufferfish.”

“Puffish?” Was it some kind of pastry?

“Puffer…fish.”

“A fish? Doesn't sound very dangerous.”

“Oh, but it is. This is beyond my powers as a chef. I have to fly in an expert from Japan to cut out the poison. Were you even to touch it, a small drop of it, you would die an agonizing death.”

“Then how do people eat it?”

“That is why I have the Japanese chef – trained to extract all but the most infinitesimal trace of the poison. It causes numbness, a numbness that titillates because of its closeness to death.”

“Anything else dangerous on the menu?”

“Oh, one or two little risky items. Nothing too serious.”

“The first dinner is when?”

“I had planned for July first. Canada Day. This is a world first, and Canada – Red Island – will be able to lay claim to it. Sadly, we can't have it then.”

“Why not?”

“It's a Monday. Much too pedestrian.”

“So, Sunday.”

“Yes, I would prefer Saturday, but there are local celebrations.”

He was trying to sound as if he were being community-minded, but he didn't want village children swarming all over the cape, shouting and laughing and disturbing his diners on his big opening.

“Any Canadian clientele signed up yet?”

“All our guests for the inaugural dinner are Canadian, of course.” He spread his arms, hands open, palms up. Guests, not clientele.

Generous. The Japanese chef. The food flown in. Giving it all away. Where does his money come from?
Hy wanted to ask, but this was only a newsletter. In the end, she couldn't contain her curiosity.

“Where does the money come from? Do you have backers?”

Anton winced at the crudity of the word.

“A patroness. I have a patroness.” He sighed. He supposed he'd have to name her. He hated it, every time he had to do it. He preferred to spell it out, avoid needless confusion and explanations. He motioned for her notebook and wrote for what seemed a very long time. Was it a double- or triple-barreled name?

He returned the notebook to her. On it was written Viola Featherstonehaugh.

“Viola…” She screwed up her face. “Feather…stone…haw?”

“She's happy to be called…”

“Huff…hog…”

Anton gave a shrug of despair and Hy gave up the guessing game.

“Viola,” she said.

“Viola,” he repeated. Another one tangled and tamed.

“This Viola – who is she? What does she do?”

“
Do
?” He looked at Hy with distaste. “
Do
?” he said again. “She does not
do
anything. She does not have to
do
anything.”

“She has money,” said Hy.

He half-closed his eyes and nodded his head. “A great deal.”

“And she's invested in you, because –” Hy left the sentence purposely hanging.

“Because she believes in me, of course, and in what I do.”

“
Do
?” Hy couldn't resist.

Anton ignored the dig.

“Will she be here for the inaugural dinner?”

“Of course. She is on the leading edge of the dangerous food movement. This will not be her first taste of pufferfish.”

“Let's hope it won't be her last.” Hy grinned. He stared at her blankly, unwilling to encourage her amusement. There had been too much of that. He preferred a serious consideration of his life's work.

There was an awkward silence.

“We were talking about Canadian clientele,” Hy prompted.

“Apart from our inaugural evening, none so far. The men and women with money and connections here aren't jaded yet. They still get excited about eating seal and bison. Not dangerous.”

“No.” A smile lit her eyes. “Except when they're alive. The seal to the cod. The bison…well…to anyone who gets in the way.”

He smiled, put a hand out and caressed her shoulder. She was surprised that she didn't shake him off right away. She was momentarily paralyzed. Did he have the power of a puffer fish – poison burning in his eyes? Was it passion – for her? Probably for the food, she thought, her cheeks flushed with discomfort.

She backed away, the image of Anton as a bison with a human face bearing down on her.

He shrugged and watched her golden red curls catch on the breeze and light up with a shaft of sunlight as she opened the door to leave.

He stroked the fat gold chain around his neck, contemplating. Not his type, but magnificent hair. A woman with hair like that must be an amusing bedmate. He'd have her first. Then the policewoman. After Viola had come and gone.

The possibility that Hy or Jamieson might turn him down never occurred to him.

With Viola, there was no possibility at all. He would have done it, had it been required, but she wasn't interested in that anymore. So all he had to do was be gallant, solicitous, look at her with loving eyes, masking the contempt underneath. Not lovers, but she liked it to be perceived that way and she was just as possessive and jealous.

Anton was furious about Jared's rip-off business on the shore. It could barely be called a business. He'd only had one customer, who'd mistaken it for a fish-and-chip shop, paid the ten dollars, and been surprised to find a frozen herring in a plastic bag shoved in his hand. He had left, bewildered.

Anton was determined to get rid of the eyesore before his own customers came. He knew enough about Jared that money would talk.

He waited for Jared to open up one day, as usual around noon. Patting the pocket where he'd put the cash, Anton strolled down the lane. He didn't want to appear too hurried or anxious, as if he cared. Jared, though not very bright, wasn't stupid about opportunity when it came knocking.

He was leaning up against the cookhouse, smoking a cigarette, watching Anton come down the lane, and wondering what he wanted. When he heard, he put on a show of outrage, but his mind whirred.

“Buy my business? The ancestral cookhouse?” That's how Jared often referred to the place. It was sarcasm, not pride nor fondness. The cookhouse was the only inheritance from his ancestors, along with a falling-down house. His mother and father had sold the beachfront and ocean- view lots, and had promptly smoked and drunk the money away. If they hadn't done it, he would have. The only reason he still had the cookhouse and the shore property was that it was on a dune. Building on a dune was now against the law, though he'd tried selling it anyway.

“No way.” Jared had been talking with the cigarette in his mouth. Now he spat it out.

“Not the cookhouse. The business. I don't need the physical plant.”

Jared looked around him in every direction.
Plant? What did he know about plants?
At one time, Jared had operated a hydroponic grow-op out of the cookhouse, but all evidence of that had been cleared away by the police.

“Whatever you've got inside. The museum.”

Jared looked down at his boots. Kicked at the sand.

“Dint get around to the museum yet.”

“Oh well. Oh well, then.” Anton thought that perhaps he could knock down the price. “What do you have?”

“Them fish. I got them fish.”

“What fish?”

Jared combed his fingers through his hair, surprised at how short it was. Chrystal had convinced him to cut it. He still wouldn't cut the back.

“Them flyin' fish.”

“Flying fish? You mean the ones that came from the sky? That's all been explained. In the papers.”

“I don't read the papers.”

“It was a stunt, to advertise my restaurant. They were dropped from a plane.”

Jared shook his head, his expression doubtful.

“There's not everyone will believe that.”

“Just in case, I'm willing to buy your stock.”

“I could have a fortune in that freezer. I'm including a certificate of authen…authen…”

“I assume you mean authenticity.”

“Ya, right. Authen…whatever.”

“I'm sure the only thing you can authenticate is that they are fish.”

“Fish that mebbe come from outer space. Froze on the way down.”

“How much?”

“How much?”

“For the fish.”

“All of them?”

“All of them.”

Jared didn't know how many there were, and if he had, couldn't have done the math. He put a hand to his chin and stroked it.

“It's not just the fish. There's the museum part of it.”

“I'll buy that, too.”

“Like I said, it's not started up yet. But the money prospects – there could be provincial and federal grants…”

“Five hundred.” Anton pulled an envelope from his inside pocket.

Jared was so surprised, he took it.

“Keep the fish. Take down the sign.”

“Now, say I was to run the business out of my house…”

“Do whatever you want at your house. Much better location. Lots of drive-by traffic.”

Anton waited while Jared took the signs down and tossed them in the back of his pick-up. The fish could wait, until he got started up again at home.

He never did.

Within days, Jared stopped fueling the generator, and the freezer full of red herrings rotted away.

Chapter Six

The villagers watched from the cape, from pulled-up blinds
and half-open curtains in back windows, as Fiona installed her trailer.

Eyes like slits, Anton Paradis watched her drag the trailer onto the spot where Jim's house had been. Right in his view. Too close to his planned helipad, but he knew she was within
her rights, within her property lines. It was he who was
encroaching.

Gus watched from her back window as the truck eased the new shorefront home into place, over the rectangular scar of red clay left by the removal of Jim's house. Gus had approved of the house. It was of fairly recent vintage, well-maintained and a neutral beige colour, although white might have been better – brighter, like her own. It was hard work for Abel, she knew, keeping the house painted a sparkling white, with red dust and clay constantly blowing on it. It kept him out of the house a lot.

But the trailer – it was old. As old as she was. Joints aching, she sat down. Maybe not as old, but a good fifty years anyway, which was a lot for a trailer.

Small. Misshapen. Banged-up. Colour faded to a flat sea green.

Happy with her positioning, Fiona had jumped out of her SUV, newly bought with the proceeds of Jim's savings account, and, without bothering to unhitch the trailer, she opened the door, pulled down and mounted the steps, and minutes later came out with arms full of giant tulips.

She began poking them in the red clay along the front of the trailer.

Gus stood up.

Plastic tulips. Plastic tulips in bright reds and yellows and greens with faces – bug eyes and wide white smiles. When Fiona had finished planting the tulip people in one long line across the front, she jiggled back to the trailer, wind blowing her flowered dress into a balloon around her. Fiona always wore light, billowing dresses. They were meant to hide the folds of fat. It settled on them instead. Only her hands and feet were small – arms and legs tapered almost to a point, and Fiona's tiny feet looked unable to support her.

She emerged again with more plastic flowers – pansies this time, with big eyes, velvet eyelashes, and Botox lips. She planted them in front of the tulips.

“At least she's got her seasons and her placement right.”

Gus turned sharply at the disembodied voice.

Hy peeked around the door, a big grin on her face.

“If she wants a garden, she may have a point. You know nothing grows on the cape.”

“Wild strawberries do.”

“Yeah, but you can hardly see those even when you're looking for them. These you can't miss.”

“You can say that again.”

“These you can't miss.”

“Well, I will, because I won't be looking out at them.”

“Gus, you wouldn't last a day without checking out the shore.”

Gus smiled. “S'pose you're right.” She couldn't resist one more peek.

Sticking the last daisy in the ground, Fiona eyed her instant garden. Pansies in front, tulips in the middle and, in back, a neat row of tall daisies, with tiny yellow faces glowing. As she looked down the line of them, she frowned, walked between the rows, straightening here and there, until there wasn't a flower where it didn't belong. She turned back again to look at the total effect.

She smiled. Perfect. She gripped her tiny pudgy hands together
and made a squeak of excitement. She was going into business.

Gladys Fraser was outraged and plenty of others were unhappy about the trailer. As Gus had estimated, it was every bit of fifty years old, its paint scoured flat, with unsightly rust spots, scratches, and a buckled roof. Most of the cottagers were annoyed at this barnacle on the shore, until Fiona began making fudge.

She stuck out a sign on the Island Way and one on the Shore Lane, declaring:

“Fiona's's' Fantas'tic Fudge. By the pound.
” Fiona had long ago given up trying to figure out apostrophes. Whenever she saw an “s,” she put an apostrophe. That way she was covered.

“That damn sign.” Gus didn't usually swear, but the sign was obliterating her view of Fiona's door, so she was unable to see the woman's comings and goings from any of her windows. All she could see was the sign.

It was flawed, but it was absolutely true – Fiona's fudge was fantastic.

“She should be ashamed of herself.”

She was complaining to Hy who had just come in from her morning run. “What for? The sign? She certainly should. Overload of apostrophes.”

Gus shook her head. “I have problems with those pesky things, too. The stores don't make it easier. They never seem to get it right. No, the shame is I think she puts flour in the fudge, to stretch it out.”

“What makes you think that?” Hy had a hidden package of fudge in her jacket pocket. She'd gone the back way, up the cape, to Fiona's trailer to buy it. She didn't want Gus – or Moira – to see her.

“I seen her take a big sack of flour into that caravan. The trailer tilted with the weight of it.”

“More like with the weight of her. Anyway, you buy big bags of flour.”

“I bake.” Gus said in her end-of-conversation tone.

Villagers and cottagers who'd first objected to Fiona's downscale presence on the cape were soon sweetened up by her fudge – buying and putting on the pounds.

“You'd think she'd have made enough money to fix the place up,” one disgruntled tourist spoke for the others – all of whom had purchased more than their share of fudge.

The locals wasted no time in shaking their heads and tut-tutting about the loss of the tidy beige bungalow on the cape. It had been there since many of them were born. They liked Fiona's fudge, but they didn't like change.

“She dragged that trailer up there and plunked her fat ass down.” That was how Jared put it, sucking on a delicious creamy piece of chocolate.

Fiona did have a fat ass. Fat arms. Fat face. Fat thighs.

She'd been a pudgy baby, and never lost the baby fat – just kept adding more. When the family would visit her Uncle Jim on the shore, she'd looked like a beachball in her red bathing suit with white-and-yellow stripes across the middle. It was made out of a material designed for quick drying, a material that looked like bubble wrap. That's what she looked like. A bubble, wrapped. Kids used to taunt her: “Bubble bottom! Bubble bottom!”

Her parents didn't seem to notice. They thought it was nice she'd found friends.

She never did. Not on the beach. Not in school. Not in church. Only in the general store, where old “Mac” MacCormack got a glint in his eye when she bounced through the door Saturday mornings, a dollar clutched in her hand. He'd relieve her of it, always tossing in a few extra of the penny candy she loved most – jujubes – to keep her coming back for more.

She got fatter. And fatter. And fatter.

Then she discovered fudge. She found out that it was easy and cheap to make and stretched her pocket money a long way. Its sickening sugar content satisfied a deep yearning in her.

Fiona became a cook. Casserole dishes and stews, anything she could make in servings for four or more she'd eat all in one sitting.

Anton Paradis was the most infuriated with Fiona's ugly trailer. It was directly in his line of vision. He would never get permission to install the helipad now. He'd been elated at the removal of the cottage, because he could move ahead with his plans. Now he'd been thwarted.

He had spent a good part of the morning looking at the eyesore, frustrated that his guests would not be able to contemplate the beauty of the cape without having to stomach the unpalatable “Fudge Palace,” newly named on a sign Fiona had planted that morning.

Anton's lips curled in distaste, as he tortured himself, silently repeating the words: Fudge Palace. Spitting it out, pacing about, working himself up to a blistering anger. It was, perhaps, his natural state. He was able to call up past events, slights, assumed and real, and produce a frenzy of feeling as strong as when they had happened. Two veins on either side of his forehead popped out, engorged with hot fury, the blood pulsing in rhythm to his anger.

Anton was not a man to cross. Though he gave every appearance of being a refined, diplomatic individual, a cold fury blazed inside him.

Fury at his insignificant birth, at having to claw his way up from the bottom in Shediac, New Brunswick, in crummy jobs where he boiled lobster non-stop for tourists, made potato salad and coleslaw. Coleslaw! His inner chef rebelled, longed for more.

Now he had it, or almost had it. It was so close he could touch it – success. The inheritance he fully expected and had worked so hard for and this dining experience he had created, bound to catapult him to the top ranks, with a Michelin star shining in his future.

His greatest achievement had been to become the darling of the wealthy set in Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard, but he wanted more, and he wouldn't stop grasping until he got it.

He would call on those connections for his new business. He hoped for more from one in particular, the opening dinner being held in her honour. Viola. A nasty old bitch, but he'd courted her, enslaved himself to her; in truth, she owned him. He was her make-believe lover, husband, friend, and son. Since she had none of these, he was hoping – and fully expecting – to inherit her millions. Or some of them. She'd hinted as much to him.

A nagging tickle inside him worried that she was trying to keep him sweet, but some of it, surely, was within his grasp. She had so much, and he'd done so much for her.

He'd already blown most of the whack of money she'd given him.

If he couldn't stave off his creditors long enough to launch this restaurant, he'd find himself sailing from Red Island to a desert island. It was a warm day, but the thought sent the shiver of a chill through him.

Fiona and her fudge and her tacky trailer stood smack in the middle of his guests' view of the sunset. She would have to go. Money, he was sure, would get rid of her.

He stalked out of the kitchen and marched up to Fiona's trailer. Fiona knew a bully when she saw one. It was obvious he was coming for her.

“Go back where you came from,” she screamed at him as he approached.

He pasted on a smile, and waved.

“I wanted to discuss a purchase of your land.” Money talked. Money talked for Anton in every encounter he had. Including those with women.

“Not if you offered me a million dollars!”

Anton couldn't even produce what he was about to offer, but he'd worry about that later.

“This is my land, my uncle's land, my grandfather's land, all the way back more than two hundred years. That land you're on was my family land, too.”

“And that's been for sale, time after time, so this piece must have a price on it, too.”

“The price is zero,” she crossed her chubby arms over her bosom, as a flicker of hope showed in his eyes. “There is no price.”

What was she saying? Was this an offer, a tease? He would court her if he had to.

“Nothing could make me sell this place.”

His hopes shriveled. He swallowed his disgust at what he had been prepared to do. Had done before.

“Not a hundred thousand dollars?”

She jutted out her chin and settled her arms more firmly into place.

“Two hundred thousand?”

She said nothing. Neither did he. He was not willing to offer more. He didn't even have a hundred thousand dollars left and there were demands on it. He thought there must be a way to make her cave in. He'd been acting rashly. He'd have to give it some thought. There must be a way to get rid of her.

Of course. She was fat and single; she must be needy. He just had to butter her up. It came to him with a smile and an image he quickly cleared from his mind.

Jamieson shoved her chair away from the table and looked down at the pile of blank white paper beside the printer. She very nearly smiled.

The top paper was her weekly report to headquarters. It included the fish, of course, and a few incidentals. The next page and all the rest were blank. She picked them up and shoved them in a large brown envelope, already addressed. She hesitated a moment before she licked it and sealed it. The slight smile returned. She put it back down on the desk.

It was the latest test.

At first she had written longer and longer reports, to put her superiors off reading them. In her last she had inserted community gossip at the end to see if anyone was reading them at all.

Everyone thought Gladys Fraser had gone missing, and I was called in, only to find her husband Wally had locked her in the shed. He swears he did so unintentionally, but I will be keeping an eye on him in the future.

Jamieson thought if she were Wally Fraser, that's exactly what she'd do with Gladys. She wasn't the only one in the village who felt that way.

Still have my eye on Jared MacPherson, although he seems to be keeping out of trouble these days. He found a girl in Winterside who's moved in with him. She cut his hair. Made him brush his teeth. He looks half-human.

Jamieson could hardly believe herself when she wrote these things. She should have her eye on Jared. He'd killed once – ruled an accident – and maybe twice, but she couldn't prove it.

No one in Charlottetown seemed to care what went on at The Shores. They never responded to her reports, and she began to slip in more and more outrageous comments.

They'd forgotten The Shores. Forgotten her. At one time, she would have cared. Now she didn't.

She picked up the envelope, opened it, took up more sheets of paper, and shoved the whole lot in. All blank.

Let's see what they think about that.

Jamieson had the feeling that they didn't even open the envelopes. This would be the real test.

Two years before, Jamieson had been a by-the-book cop. Now, she was a maverick. The Shores had taken possession of her. She knew how policing had to be done here. It had to make sense. There was a justice outside the law, the courtroom, the prison. Last winter she'd invoked that style of justice – ruling a possible murder an accident.