Bodies and Sole (18 page)

Chapter Thirty-Four

Jamieson had to conclude that, if the skull belonged to Roger
Murray, he'd been killed with his own gun. Then thrown overboard. Hard to say which had claimed him first – drowning or the gunshot wounds, but probably the latter. The two men had been alone in the boat together. Orwell had returned alive. Since neither was here to speak for himself, she had to conclude Orwell killed Roger.

And tossed the gun into the brink after the body.

Case closed.

Or was it?

Moira's ad, “teepee” and all, turned out to be wildly successful. The bookings were flooding in for August, heritage month, and had an overcapacity for the last week of the celebrations. She gave up the double bedroom she and Frank shared, made up a cot for herself in the front room and a cot for Frank in the kitchen.

She thought, as she tucked in the sheets, that at least she would be spared his presence in bed.

It made for a happier, brighter Moira, who now actually glowed like a new bride.

Most people assumed that they'd finally “done it.”

They hadn't. Not until Frank cooked up his grand plan.

“It's a great idea, Moira. You'll have more guests than you can handle. And neither of us will have to sleep in the kitchen.”

But he wouldn't tell her what his idea was, and she shrugged it off as “fine talk.”

Frank went online, and then to town, coming home with parcels, not for others, but for his idea.

He was seen pacing the lot next to the house, a piece of land that, oddly, no one had claimed, but that was unofficially considered to belong to the Toombs. They mowed it. That alone was a claim to ownership.

A knock on the door was unusual, especially as it was the screen door.

Jared MacPherson was on the stoop.

Holding a gun.

Hy opened the door. It gave out the classic screen door squeak of reluctant compliance.

Gun in his fist pointing the way, Jared stomped inside, leaving cakes of clay in the shape of his boot tread on the kitchen tiles.

The door slammed behind him.

Hy was stunned. Not quite afraid, but almost.

Jared grabbed the gun in both hands.

Hy stepped back. Okay. Afraid.

He poked the gun at her.

“What do you suppose I could get for this?”

She opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. Closed it. Unable to speak.

“Well, that Mountie. She was interested. How interested, d'you think? You know her. She's in and out of here all the time.”

Still Hy said nothing. She wished Jamieson had prepared her for this, because she had no idea what was going on.

If only Finn were here. But he was out scouring the shore, trying to find more clues to an ancient death.

“Something's been stirred up on the ocean floor,” he'd said. “It may wash up more of this mystery.” He'd tossed shovels and rakes and buckets into the back of her truck and sped off to the shore.

“This here's the gun kilt Roger Murray.”

Jared grinned, revealing teeth stained with nicotine and decay.

Roger has better teeth than he does, she thought.

But she was instantly alert, her interest heightened.
The gun that killed Roger Murray?

“How do you know?”

“They was all s'posed to be mine. All of Roger's guns. He was my uncle. Mother's brother. Left me twelve guns. They sold the rifles – eleven of them. But this one handgun, they kep' this one because they knew it come back on the boat with Orwell. Without Roger Murray. They was suspicious, I guess. I don't know, but they kep' it and always said it was the gun kilt Roger Murray. That Orwell had slipped it back with the others after the boat ride.”

The gun was at Jared's side. He lifted it again and pointed it directly at Hy.

“So whaddya say? What's it worth?”

“What's it worth, to who?”

“You, mebbe. That copper?”

The screen door squeaked. Ian popped his head into the room. He'd come to square things with Hy over Jamieson. Surprise passed across his features at the sight of someone else in the room. Double surprise, laced with shock, when he saw Jared there. A step back when he saw the gun Jared had just pointed at him.

He held up his hands.

“Whoa now, what's all this about?”

“The gun that killed Roger Murray.” Hy was relieved that Ian had showed up.

“Really?”

Ian eyed the weapon with interest.

“So he says.”

“Can I see?” Ian put a hand forward. Jared pulled back.

“I think I can tell you something about it.”

Jared hesitated and then gave up the gun.

Ian turned it over in his hands, stroked the long wood of the handle. Unmistakable.

“If I'm not mistaken, it's an Astral 600. Made by the Spanish for the Germans in World War Two. They did a good job, because they were making them for the Germans. Produced about fifty thousand but only delivered around ten thousand. Sold some more to German police in the 1950s, and a number must have got into civilian hands.”

Hy's jaw had dropped.

“How do you know all this? I didn't think you were that interested in firearms.”

Jared was eyeing Ian with respect.

“I'm not. But I am interested in World War Two history. You come across a lot of trivial information. And…” Ian's finger stabbed at his head a few times. “It sticks.”

“So what's it worth?”

“I don't know. A bit maybe. I'd have to Google it.” He sat down at Hy's laptop and, impatient at the slowness of her connection, finally got on the internet. He soon had the answer.

“About six or seven hundred dollars, if you have the holster and the magazines.”

“I don't read magazines.”

“No, the magazine that holds the cartridges for the gun.”

Jared shook his head. “Don't think so.”

“Well then, maybe five hundred.”

“Not bad.”

“Except,” Hy drew the word out. “That may be evidence in a crime. A murder.”

“Who cares about that anymore?” Jared looked sullen.

“Jamieson, for one.”

“I'll help you sell it online if you want.” Ian was seeking out potential sites on the laptop.

Greed lit up Jared's eyes.

“But only once you've cleared it with Jamieson,” Hy warned.

“Jeez! Why should I clear it with her? She weren't around.”

“You've got to clear it with her – and give it to her. I'll have it back to you within an hour,” she lied.

Jared stood stubbornly silent, looking at the gun on the table from the sides of his eyes.

His hand came down on it.

“Don't even think of it. If you grab it and run, I'll just tell Jamieson.”

Somewhat reluctantly, he handed the gun over to Hy.

He hauled open the squeaky screen door and left. Ian followed, having lost the opportunity to say what he meant to about Jamieson. She was attractive, yes, but she wasn't Hy. Surely Hy knew that.

Shortly after Ian left, Finn came in.

“So did you find anything more down there?”

Finn shook his head.

“No. Nothing. Looked everywhere in the site where we found the skull. Things like this will often come up in multiples – but no. Nothing,” he repeated.

All Finn had come back with was a bucket of shells he'd found fascinating.

Just what I need
. Hy eyed the bowls filled with shells around the room. Any receptacle soon filled with shells and rocks and driftwood. And now here was Finn adding to the collection.

“Nothing,” he said again, shrugged his shoulders and put a kettle on to boil. “So what's the story on that?” Finn was pointing at the gun lying on the harvest table.

“The gun that killed Roger Murray.”

“Really?”

Hy smiled, victorious. She picked up the gun.

“Could be. Belonged to Roger. Some people say Orwell shot him with it.”

“Where'd you get it?”

“Jared Macpherson.” Hy gestured in the general direction of Jared's house. “Local scumbag. Inherited it. Roger Murray was his uncle. Left him twelve guns, including this one.”

Hy told him about the bargain she'd struck with Jared.

Finn looked at the clock.

“When was this?”

Hy smiled. “Oh, about half an hour ago.”

“Hadn't you better get it back?”

“Jared can't tell time.”

Hy's smile grew broader. “Besides, it's not going back to him. Jamieson is bound to keep it for a while. Have a look at it, Finn. Could it actually be the gun that killed Roger Murray?”

Finn sat down and examined the gun.

“Firearms never were my specialty, but I know enough to say this gun is of the right vintage. Other than that, there are too many variables, including the age of the skull, to say anything definitive. Could a gun like this make a hole like that in the skull? Could it have driven the tooth to lodge in the cranium? The answer is yes, to both questions.”

Hy looked triumphant.

Finn caught the look. “To say it could have doesn't mean it did. We'd have to have much more specific evidence than we have that it was this gun, and not some other gun similar to it, that caused the wound. We're a long way from having anything conclusive – ever, I'm afraid.”

Hy frowned. “What's the point of being a forensic anthropologist if you can't say things conclusively?”

Finn smiled, a small smile. “Exactly my point. I got fed up with the lack of certainty.”

Hy hadn't given Cyril much thought. She felt guilty, but what could she do until the forensic evidence came in? And with so much going on? She took the gun up to the police house later and told Jamieson everything she knew about it – what Jared had said, what Finn had said. In turn, Jamieson told Hy about her search of Orwell's things in Wally Fraser's shed.

“Anything interesting?”

“Nothing. Clothes. Dishes. Fishing tackle. Oh, yes, some threatening notes from Roger Murray.” Jamieson pointed to some crumpled papers on her desk. Whitey was worrying them with her claws. Jamieson shooed her off the desk. A few of the papers went fluttering down with her.

“Other than that, a box of papers, bills, a few photos. The contents of a junk drawer, really.”

She should have known better than to tell Hy anything at all about her visit to the shed. Hy left the police house itching to have a look at Orwell's stuff herself. Maybe she could find what Jamieson might have missed.

All the way down from Shipwreck Hill and onto The Island Way, Hy was scheming as to how she might get Wally to let her in his shed. Padding along behind her was Whacky, a catnip mouse in her mouth. She was trying to give Hy the idea that you feed those you care for. So far, Hy had been annoyingly stubborn about refusing to feed her. The woman seemed to think that because she had two homes already, she didn't need a third.

Chapter Thirty-Five

www.theshores200.com

There have been some strange habitations built at The Shores over the years. One of the strangest – now just a circle of scorched ground on the cape – was a dome that went up overnight – quite a shock to the villagers when they looked out their windows one morning. They didn't like it, not one bit. Until they found out it was one of a very few in North America. It was supposed to last five hundred years. It didn't make five.

Frank had outlined six large circles, with generous amounts of space between them. One after another, around the perimeter of each circle, he erected metal poles, leaning inward.

He ripped open boxes of parachute silk to drape over his structures.

Hy had stopped on her way to Frasers', trying to come up with a way to poke about their shed, but fascinated by whatever it was that Frank was up to. She'd slipped into Gus's, and was watching from the window that had a perfect view of Moira's house and adjacent property. Finn and Dot and Gus were all watching Frank at work, too.

They'd been watching for nearly an hour, wondering what he was doing. Now it was clear.

“Wigwams,” said Dot, suddenly realizing.

“Wigwams,” Hy repeated the word, realization dawning for her, too, as she said it.

Gus had the same thought at the same time. “Wigwams,” she whispered, and, so impressed was she by how unusual this was, she actually stood up and went over to the window to have a closer look.

She was just in time to see the main event – Frank becoming wrapped like a cocoon in the fabric by the breeze blowing across the cape. He struggled, fell, rolled over, and was rescued by big Billy Pride, come to see Madeline. Frank flailed about as Billy struggled to find the end of the fabric, and finally managed to unroll him. Frank bunched up the cloth in disgust, stuffed it in the box, and stood gazing at his wigwam skeletons and the metal rattling in the wind. He scratched his head, jumped in his van, and drove to town.

Hy left shortly after, still intent on getting a look at Orwell's belongings. Whacky and her catnip mouse linked up with her, still intent on teaching her the bring-a-friend-a-mouse philosophy.

Hy was in luck. Wally was standing at the side of his shed, the shed hiding him from the house. He was having a cigarette. When he saw Hy, he looked guilty, furtive, and as if he were about to toss it away. She gave him a gesture not to worry, and he gratefully took another haul.

She knew then that she had him in her power.

“Jamieson asked me to have a look at Orwell's stuff. In case she missed something. Second pair of eyes.”

Wally's eyes narrowed. Did he believe her? He looked down at his cigarette. Back at her.

“Sure,” he said. “Long as you don't tell the missus.”

He meant about the cigarette, not the shed visit. They both knew that.

Wally pulled a set of keys out of his pocket, and unlocked the shed. He motioned her in, and Whacky skittered in ahead of her. Wally followed, suddenly taking a fit of hacking, the sound of phlegm harsh in his cough. A big gob of snot-filled spit narrowly missed Hy's foot. She shivered in disgust. It made Whacky jump up onto a shelf and hunker down, a suspicious cast to her eyes.

“Orwell's things,” said Wally, gesturing at the trunk and boxes.

“Don't know why I kep' 'em, but…family, you know. There's Annie Crane's stuff – his mother.” He pointed at a shelf above. “And Mary and Henry Fraser, up there. And I got… I got…” He looked around a bit bewildered at the possessions that had accumulated of deceased family members. The only thing that seemed to be his was the ride-on.

The heritage shed.

“I'll leave you to it.”

“No, wait, I'm just looking for one thing.”

Hy ignored the trunk, and opened box after box, until she found the one that was a junk drawer. If there were anything to be found, she was sure it would be there.

“Ah, yes. Here it is. The one Jamieson wants to look through. Mind if I take it to her?”

“Go ahead. Take it all, for all I care.” It had only just occurred to Wally that his shed was a mausoleum. That he was rapidly getting buried under his relatives' lost lives.

It made him want another cigarette, and he lit up, blowing puffs of smoke behind him for Hy to gulp down. They emerged from the shed, both coughing and wheezing, like high school kids who'd smoked a joint in back of the school.

Whacky followed at a distance, her mouse forgotten, her eyes on Hy and the box.

Gladys could see Wally now, and she watched with a grim face as he made his way to the back door. Smoking again. She didn't have to see it.

She could smell it on him.

Frank returned with a van full of wood and fence posts, and began erecting a wind barrier along the bottom edge of the lot.

He soon had help. Billy rolled up his sleeves. Finn, bored by Hy's perusal of a bunch of old bills, and propelled by the environmental possibilities of Frank's project, got into the action. Wally, looking down from his house, was shamed into shrugging on his work clothes – at least he looked the part – and lending his somewhat useless support. Murdo ambled up from April's house on The Shore Lane and put his shoulder to it. Nathan stopped by at the end of the day, along with his dad, big Ben Mack, and mother Annabelle.

By the time the sun set and darkness fell, the wind barrier was up. Because of the rise and tilt of the land and the direction of the prevailing wind, it didn't obscure the rolling hills and the shore. Each one of the wigwams would have a view.

“A womb with a view,” said Annabelle, envisioning what the wigwams would look like once complete.

“Worlds unto themselves,” said Finn.

And they were. The work crew, inspired by Frank's vision, showed up the next day to envelope the skeletons in fabric. More metal poles were applied to the exterior to hold the fabric down. There was a “smoke hole” in the top of each wigwam, traditionally the opening to let smoke from the fire funnel out. Now it was a peephole to the stars.

When all the fabric was up and secured in place, Frank opened his last box. Battery-operated candle lanterns to hang in each of the wigwams. The effect was magical. Six cones of light-filled fabric, glowing warmly at the core.

“They've got a soul now.” Lili had come to pick up Nathan to join his parents for dinner.

Perhaps only Lili could have said that without someone snickering. But no one did. The group stood in awe at what they – what Frank – had created.

Paper by painstaking paper, Hy scoured every bit of the box, her hands getting grubby from the grease of ages. Just as Jamieson and Finn had both thought. It was boring and useless.

She had emptied the box. She peered inside it. She turned it upside down.

She'd done her job. And there was nothing to show for it.

She was about to toss all the papers back in when Finn came through the door. He held out a hand.

“Come. You've got to see this. It is amazing.”

Hy put the box down, and grabbed Finn's hand. The squeaky screen door slammed behind them.

Whacky jumped into the box, and began worrying the bottom of it with her claws as if there were something important there.

There was. But Hy had missed it.

Whacky worked and worked and worked at it, until the tiny corner of a slip of paper was visible.

If the woman would only bother to look at it.

Moira, who had ignored the proceedings as a fool's business, now emerged from the house. Tears jumped into her eyes at the sight.

It was magical.

So much beauty. So easily made.

The workers drifted off, throwing glances behind them at the wigwams, at what they had created, at the beauty that existed where none had before.

Frank walked over to Moira, and took her hand. She wiped her eyes with her apron. Frank led her to the nearest wigwam.

He opened the flap and led her inside. She circled the wigwam
in wonder. He doused the lantern and directed her gaze upward.

The stars. Millions of stars, no exaggeration, dusted the sky.

Moira's eyes were fixed on the pinhole at the top of the wigwam.

“The Big Dipper,” she said. “I only ever know the Big Dipper.”

He doused the lantern.

“There's Orion's belt,” he pointed.

The next wigwam: “And Cassiopeia.”

Finn and Hy watched the trail of extinguishing lights, until there was only one wigwam that glowed with light – and life, it seemed like. Then they turned and left Moira and Frank to their very public privacy.