Seven Days Dead (30 page)

While he thought that he was asking a more straightforward and nonthreatening question, the man appears to have qualms.

“What is it?” Émile asks, encouraging him.

“I’m having trouble answering because it’s not clear-cut. Do I advertise that I have this predilection for storms? No. Is it anybody’s business? No. Is anybody likely to see me? Maybe once in a blue moon, but they’re not likely to think it’s a habit.”

“So that answers that, no?”

Roadcap shrugs. “Look. I’ve had girlfriends. Tourists, sometimes, summer people, and island girls, too. When I’m in a relationship, do I share stuff about myself? It happens. On this island, we understand something. That a secret doesn’t mean a secret for life, except—maybe—in the rarest of circumstances. A secret is something we hold for a good long time, that’s all, then we let it go. And once it’s let go, it finds its way around. It’s not a wildfire. We never know when or how long it will take. Eventually, on this island, what was a secret one year becomes common knowledge down the road.”

Cinq-Mars has a more pressing inquiry to get to, but he’s interrupted by shouting. He’s unable to decipher the loud, confused outcry from far off, a bit higher up the cliff, although the expression on Roadcap’s face is one of swift alarm.

*   *   *

When Sandra Cinq-Mars awoke that morning after her husband’s departure, she hurried through breakfast to be dressed and ready when Maddy Orrock arrived to pick her up. They had an early appointment with a pastor who’d agreed to do the funeral. The Reverend Robert Unger receives the pair into his humble vestry, and after a few minutes Sandra perceives that his distracted, somewhat batty persona conceals a perfectly competent man. He’s podgy in a way that lets her feel at ease—given her work around horses, she’s probably stronger than he is, despite his greater mass—and his hair, she decides after some careful evaluation, is best described as orange. The pastor’s schedule is a busy one, as he’s preparing to bury his best friend, the Reverend Simon Lescavage, and is acting also as a representative of Jason DeWitt’s family. “One tragedy piled upon another.” The professor’s remains are to be dispatched home to Boston.

The funeral is about flowers and protocol, seating arrangements, and a choice of hymns. “You understand,” the pastor assures her, “that my remarks will be kind. I will also acknowledge Mr. Orrock as a man of authority. His will was formidable, his reach extensive. He never tried to please everybody all the time.”

“Or anybody ever,” Maddy interjects. The pastor chooses not to hear.

The ground they must cover is quick and simple when presented by someone who goes through the ritual repeatedly, and afterward they agree to coffee, as their host already has a pot perking. Especially good coffee, they find.

“He was too brainy, our Simon,” the Reverend Unger attests, off in his own thoughts. “He refuted my opinion on that, but he was too brainy for a simple man. Too many high-and-mighty thoughts in his head and not much of an outlet for them. Except for his sermons, but his homilies passed people by, I think. But … it’s the savagery I cannot abide. Why must we be brutes? Simon asked me that question once. ‘Why must we be brutes?’ Safe to say, he was speaking of the human race in general. But it’s the specifics…” The reverend loses himself in a vision of his friend’s death, of that horror. He adds quietly, “Why must we be brutes?”

He seems to be addressing Sandra directly, but she’s at a loss and doesn’t wish to respond with only a faint notion. She lowers her head.

They wait there, in the quiet sadness of the room, before taking their leave.

*   *   *

Roadcap, in his thirties the more agile of the two, lights out from his house along a narrow ascending footpath, kicking up stones and thrashing through undergrowth. Cinq-Mars can’t keep up, then stops trying, recognizing that nothing good will come from turning an ankle or breaking his neck. He measures his pace and keeps a keen eye to the ground to secure his footing. The best that he can hope for is to keep Aaron Roadcap in sight, and in that mission he is successful.

They run in the direction of a commotion—outcry, shouts, a scream.

Some sort of chaos.

What’s ahead comes into focus through the trees. A fire. He sees it first, then smells the smoke. He assumes that a house is ablaze, but cutting through a thick stand of pines and skirting around an immense boulder, he recognizes his own vehicle on fire. The Jeep. His heart pounds. Carrying on for another twenty yards, he stops, as though he can’t trust his vision unless he does so and takes a good look. His breath is short, a bit painful. No doubt now. That’s his own Jeep Cherokee going up in flames and thick black smoke.

Arriving back upon the rocky road, he finds that a brave brigade of men and women who want to fight the fire is being held back. Roadcap has taken charge. People are being pushed away in case the vehicle explodes. Smart.

“Gas or diesel?” Roadcap shouts out to him. Cinq-Mars delivers the bad news. Gas is far more likely to explode, making this a dangerous situation.

People know it’s his Jeep, so when he joins the fray to help push everyone farther back, he’s obeyed with less reluctance. Anyway, they all realize that it’s too late to save anything now.

The interior is gutted. The seats have been incinerated, the roof linings are in flames. The engine compartment has not been touched, but it’s a risk to fight the fire up close. Men are discussing it and weighing the odds, and Cinq-Mars steps up alongside them. They debate the wisdom of smashing windows out, which might fan the flames with more oxygen, and yet, as a result, the interior might burn itself out more quickly, sparing the engine and therefore the likelihood of an explosion. No one knows what will happen, but the consensus is to smash windows. Roadcap looks at Cinq-Mars, as though requesting permission.

“Go ahead. She’s toast anyway. Stay safe.”

Yet there is no way to stay safe except to run. The cliff dwellers are worried about the potential for a forest fire if the vehicle explodes. Such an eruption could destroy their homes and possibly the entire hamlet.

Four big rocks are located, and one person at a time races to the car and hurls his rock. The windows dent and splinter but don’t give way easily. A number of throws from close in are required, then there’s a surge of flame as the first window shatters and the rock goes right through onto the front seat. The men decide that that’s enough, no further risk need be taken. After this initial flurry, the fire does go hotter, but it also appears to be exhausting its fuel supply and petering out.

Roadcap, who took several runs at the Jeep, is breathing heavily. “Follow me,” he says.

Cinq-Mars is glad to discover that they’re not running this time, although his companion takes long strides through the woods, then quickens as he nears a home. He dashes up steps onto a porch and bursts through the front door. When Cinq-Mars falls in behind him, Roadcap is coming back out again.

“He’s not here. He’s gone.”

“Who?”

“Your arsonist. The guy who burnt your Jeep.”

“How do you know? Why’d he do it?”

“That’s what he does.” The younger man flexes his shoulders, not to suggest that he doesn’t have an answer; rather, that it’s obvious. “Somebody paid him to.” He seems ready to burst off again when he casts a glance at Émile’s face. Then he taps Émile’s elbow. “Sorry about your Jeep,” he says.

“Yeah. Thanks. So am I. But it’s replaceable.”

“You’re right, by the way. In your suspicions.”

“Meaning what?”

“There’s competition in the dulse business.”

“And what part do you play in that?”

“We have other problems right now. Do you have a cell phone on you?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“I think you should call the cops. The Mounties.”

Cinq-Mars endorses Aaron Roadcap’s suggestion with a nod.

*   *   *

Sandra just loves stepping into this old house. She lives in an old one herself, but this cottage gets boarded up for the harsh winters and accommodates only summer guests, so it secretes a persona of sea breezes as the curtains lazily breathe out and in, and exhibits a patina not only of time and summery days but of a tranquillity, earned and nurtured and made to hold amid the tumult of the modern world. She loves it here.

She imagines that Émile will be home for lunch, and although it’s officially his turn, she elects to prepare it. Noon is still a couple of hours off, but if she can have the salad ready to be tossed and the cold cuts lined up neatly, when he does arrive, it’ll be a speedy presentation. She might take a stroll down to the water or into town after that, wherever her mood takes her.

In the kitchen, she hears a sound, then another. Sandra smiles. She knows it’s not Émile. Being in the back of the house, she would have heard him drive up and probably seen the Jeep by now, so what she’s listening to are the grumbling conversations old wood gets into sometimes. A floorboard creaks. A crossing beam seems to groan under its breath. She detects a faint snap. As though these old seaside cottages breathe with the coming day, fueled by sunlight. Yet another sound does disturb her, seems a trifle loud. Too specific. Expecting only a quiet place to sit on a beautiful day, she pokes her head into the living room. Sandra utters a surprised murmur, mingled with a sharp intake of breath, before a man’s hand prevents her from screaming as she’s thrown down upon the old pine floorboards.

*   *   *

In Émile’s estimation, Aaron Roadcap is deliberately keeping his distance and protecting himself from further questioning by maintaining a protective buffer. It’s not as in the old days, when, if he wanted to question a material witness, he could exercise his authority to do so. Now, he remains at the mercy of such people and their whimsy. For the nonce, Roadcap has chosen to go mum.

He thinks about calling Sandra. That will be a difficult discussion. To reveal that the Jeep burned would be bad enough if they were home, but accompanying the report will be the observation that they’ve again been able, largely at Émile’s behest, to run their time away into the ground. Danger lurks once more, damage has been done, and rather than broach that conversation, Émile elects to procrastinate. He knows that he’s being a coward, but it’s better, he argues with his angels, to let Sandra enjoy her morning in peace before breaking the ugly news.

With any luck, he might discover that today’s misfortune is merely random.

Not that he believes it for a second.

They wait for Corporal Louwagie to show up and make an official report—Émile will need to make an insurance claim. Once again, he reminds himself that this isn’t like the old days, when he could have damaged a department issue and checked off a few boxes on a form and been done with it. This is all on his own dime now. The Jeep Cherokee, saved from any explosion, is nevertheless destroyed. A more noble soul might think to file down the passenger compartment, pry in new seats, lay fresh carpet, replace the roof and wall linings, and pretend that the smell of smoke and charred metal is dissipating. For his money, this is one for the junkyard, although it has served him well. Better for someone to pilfer the engine and the transmission. Heck, even the tires have survived, with the possible exception of the spare, which may have melted in its rear bunk. The metal is still too hot for him to check. The Jeep’s a stinkpot now in the literal sense.

Standoffish initially, the denizens of Dark Harbour are sympathetic as they peruse the sad remains. This is not normally how tourists are treated here. Like tourists anywhere, they may be privately scorned from time to time, but for the most part their business is appreciated and the natural friendliness of islanders surfaces first. Sometimes disputes are resolved by burning cars, but not a tourist’s car, and rarely even in the summer, because that’s just bad for the island’s reputation. Even when it comes to arson, a standard of etiquette is followed. You wrong me, I burn your dinghy. I wrong you, you burn my shed. Okay, we’re done, let’s move on. But this, in the wake of murder, is out of line, out of character, and this poor man deserves to be comforted, increasingly, by the minute.

Cinq-Mars is ready to make a break for it from under the welter of so much heartfelt commiseration and kindness when Louwagie finally shows up, saving him.

Roadcap breaks from the small crowd that he’s put around himself as a protective moat to greet the Mountie first. More polite, Cinq-Mars needs a little more time to extricate himself from his band of new friends. When he goes over, though, Louwagie separates from Roadcap and speaks to him privately.

More commiseration. “I’m really sorry about this Émile. Any ideas?”

“Ask him.”

“You think Roadcap did it.”

“He was with me. So no. Nor do I think he was involved, although that’s conjecture. I’m pretty sure he has something more than a good idea who did it.”

“All right. I’ll get to him. First, let me ask you a couple of questions.”

“Such as?” He’s surprised by the man’s initiative.

“Have you pissed anybody off in particular?”

“Not to my knowledge. At least not royally. I supposed I’ve pissed off half a dozen people by now. But I can’t point a finger, no.”

“Okay, then,” Louwagie says, and turns to examine the charred wreck again. Émile is guessing that the man is done, that he has nothing more to ask, only to be brought up short by his next volley. “Was anything in the car stolen? Or, if you don’t know that yet, was anything in the car worth stealing?”

Cinq-Mars just stares at him a moment.

“The fire could have been a cover,” the Mountie states, as if in his own defense.

Of course he’s right. Émile’s just surprised that he hadn’t thought of it, and that Louwagie has more potential to be a detective than he’d noticed.

“It could have burned,” Cinq-Mars tells him.

“What could’ve?”

“My notebook. My notes on this case.”

Louwagie checks out the Jeep again from their safe distance.

“Or somebody might have stolen your notes. And now knows what you know. Burned or stolen. We may never have an answer to that one,” he remarks.