Something Fishy (7 page)

Those appetites drew him to her, and repelled him.

She was squeezed up against him, and he could feel her life force, so much stronger than his own. As he fed on the fudge, he fed on her. She made him feel alive, more alive than he had ever been.

But he couldn't stand the way she talked. “Yous” drove him nuts. “Irregardless” made him stop breathing. And yet every night, he yielded to his desire for her.

He'd been sleeping with the woman and she was practically illiterate.

It made him think of killing her. It did. It was extreme, but he was an extreme grammarian. English might be a vital, living language, subject to constant infusions and change, but there were some points on which Newton was a stickler, like a literary King Cnut trying to hold back the influence of the world on the world language.

Newton's desiccated body held a desiccated mind. There was right and there was wrong in speech and writing. His way was right, and everyone else, unless they agreed, was wrong.

And here he'd gotten involved with a woman who wouldn't know a part of speech from a body part.

“All big words to me,” she'd laughed it off when he first brought it up between them – that she might enjoy a few grammar pointers to help with customer relations in her business. Her apostrophes had been driving him crazy.

She'd slapped his thigh. It had sent a tingle of desire through him. She was a rough woman in bed and that aroused him.

“Alls I know…” She slapped his thigh again.

He winced – not at the slap, but at her words.

“Alls I know – ”

Did she have to repeat it?

“…is they keep comin' back for the fudge. Like you. Like bees to the honey.”

She buried his face in her breasts, and that was the end of the discussion.

Chapter Nine

Moira was counting her money. She kept it in a box under the bed, as her father had. She was well pleased with herself, and with good reason. She'd sold a slow cooker to everyone in the village, except Gus. She'd even sold one to Fiona, who'd seemed especially pleased to receive it.

“Oh, just the thing,” she had said. “This will do the trick.”

After the first flush wore off, the slow cookers were in danger of being shoved away in some back cupboard, and there were grumbles about the price of them.

Moira decided that what was needed was a big splash. A slow cooker chili cook-off, as part of the run-up to the Canada Day celebrations. She proposed it at the next meeting of the Women's Institute. There were the usual murmurs and grumbles, the objections that must be made to every new plan, and then grudging acceptance.

It's not only me, thought Hy, they're like that with everyone. Hy had to admit she'd had her share of disasters booking speakers for the W.I. meetings. The menstrual rights feminist who'd told the women they were goddesses. The lobster lover who called them murderers, and…well…there was quite a long list.

She planned to keep out of this one.

“Hyacinth.” Moira's voice cracked through her thought. “Perhaps you can give some publicity to the event in your…uh…your…whatever that thing is you do on the Internet.”

“It's a newsletter, Moira. Just a newsletter.”

“Oh, well…that, then.” Moira was actually quite savvy about the Internet. She'd bought a computer to try to gain Ian's interest – and to spy on him while she was cleaning his house when he was out. She'd guessed his password. Jasmine.

“Moira, I don't know. The Super Saver pays me to advertise for them in the form of a newsletter. I'm not meant to promote anyone else.”

“But this is for a community event.”

“What community?”

“The Shores, of course.” Moira stood ramrod straight when she said it, and the women all sat upright in their seats. The tide was moving in Moira's direction. The undecided and Hy's supporters included April Dewey and doe-eyed Madeline Toombs, who usually didn't dare defy her sister, but looked as if she might this time.

Moira put her hands on her hips. “I've seen you promote community events before.”

“Yes. Relay for Cancer. Run for Sick Children. Real community events.”

“Ours is real, too.”

“And the proceeds go to?”

“There are no proceeds.” A smug smile spread across Moira's sallow face.

“Free chili for everyone. Doesn't that make it a charity?”

More than half the women nodded their heads in rhythm. Hy let out a sigh. Resignation. But not defeat.

“Okay, I'll see what I can do.”

Hy didn't intend to do anything. She just wanted to end the conversation.

Moira wanted to justify the slow cookers she'd made everybody buy, and was thinking of expanding her territory – there were hundreds of isolated homes between The Shores and Winterside where she might do some good business. She needed a PR event and was hoping she could pull it off in the guise of a Women's Institute meeting.

“The Slow Chili Cook-Off,” she pronounced it and set it for the Friday of the Canada Day weekend, before Anton Paradis' opening dinner.

“I don't wish to interfere with his event.” She was also hoping to rope him in as a judge.

“Fat chance,” Hy mumbled.

“Excuse me?”

“This is hardly on the same scale…”

Moira cast a glance around the table, meeting all the women's eyes, one at a time.

“I would like to think that we have our own special scale.” A few of the women nodded agreement. “I think that scale involves feeding our loved ones edible, nutritious food, not food designed to kill.” Almost all the women – Gladys, and Olive, Rose, the minister's wife, joined in. Only April and Madeline held back. They weren't sure how safe a slow cooker was.

“Have it your way.”

“I think we're agreed on that.” Moira's gaze circled the table again and she smiled smugly as the women murmured agreement, including Madeline and April. Madeline wasn't used to crossing Moira, and April didn't care enough to bother.

“Beans.”

The shock Anton felt rose on his voice, so that it came out almost like a squeak.

“Not exactly.” Moira's stance was even stiffer than normal. She'd asked him to judge the Chili Cook-Off. She frowned. The man should be flattered to be included in a community event.

“Chili then, chili, that is beans, no?”

“Yes, I suppose.”

“I cannot be the judge of beans.”

“No?”

“No. No. Not beans.”

“Very well.”

She had never even managed to get inside the door. She turned and stalked up the Shore Lane, burning with resentment. She had been thinking of offering her cleaning services to the man. At a price. Not now, not for any money. He'd have to look elsewhere.

Nathan Mack's girlfriend, Lili, the quirky but lovely local yogi, had opened her flower farm this year, and the two acres around their tiny home on the backside of Shipwreck Hill were bursting with neat rows of blossoms and colour, with a scent that went straight to the head. Lili had spent a long fall and winter preparing and it was finally paying off. All the villagers had flowers in their own gardens, but most were reluctant to cut them, thinking they'd be missed. Husbands who'd lost money at the racetrack in Winterside or come home smelling of liquor were Lili's best customers.

Anton had walked through the door, flashing white teeth and bright eyes, always sniffing out perospective mates. He gave Lili a broad, genuine smile. She was too tiny and sensitive for his tastes, but a diamond nonetheless. Dark hair, pale skin, and a Charlottetown bob.

She'd ignored his overtures and advised restraint when he ordered massive bouquets.

“For one thing,” she laughed, “I won't have any flowers left for the season. For another, a little can go a long way.”

He saw that it could, in her capable and artistic hands. A lily, at least one, went in every bouquet – that was her signature. An assortment of wild and domestic flowers, no bouquet the same. She showed him a variety of possibilities, her tiny hands weaving together beautiful bouquets.

Anton was enchanted.

He was buttering up all the women in the village. Lili knew everyone the bouquets should go to, and he left it in her hands. Anton didn't know a woman who didn't like flowers and he was sure that included the cop. He believed that if a man wanted to worm his way into the bosom of a community, he should go for the women.

Jamieson was out when the flowers arrived, and found them on her doorstep. She took them in, but when she read the card, knew she'd have to return them. In the meantime, she couldn't let them die, so she stuck them in a tall glass, splashed water in, and left them on the kitchen counter, where she promptly forgot all about them.

Gus could not be convinced that the flowers came from “that An-tone.” She blamed Abel, always tracking dirt in the house, and now this. She went rooting for a crystal vase they'd received for their wedding, and set them on the table in “the room.” The room was only used for company, but Gus popped in a few times a day for the next several days to admire the blossoms Abel denied he'd sent her.

Moira, feeling much better about Anton and whether she'd make him a client, put hers in a special place, too – the dining room, which she considered sacred. Now she went in twice a day to change their water and admire them.

When Lili brought her a bouquet, Hy couldn't imagine who had sent them. Certainly not Ian. She took the flowers and looked at the card. It read:
Anton.
It was in a beautiful cursive with a flourish at the end.

“What's all this about?”

Lili shrugged. “Not sure. He's giving them to every woman in the village, except Fiona.”

“The trailer…”

“I think so. Anyway, not to Fiona or Mabel or Irma, or Constance.”

“The old ladies. Why not?” Again Lili shrugged, unable to see mean motives in others.

Hy pushed the bouquet back at Lili. “You give these to Fiona, and I'll buy three more bouquets for the gang down the way.” The three old ladies, who were some kind of cousins, lived in what looked like an abandoned house between Hy's and Jared MacPherson's. The grass was never mowed, the paint always flaking, the shingles falling off.

The old women would be of no use to Anton, that's what Hy thought. He didn't need them to gain the good will of the community, but he'd just lost hers.

It was only then that Hy noticed Lili was driving Billy Pride's Smart car.

“Hey, I thought that was totaled.”

“It was, sort of. Nathan fixed it.”

“What about Billy?”

“Oh, Nathan fixed it to give it back to him, but Billy said he didn't want it anymore.”

“Prefers his lawn tractor?”

“Guess so. Better fit.”

Lili jumped into the little car. It was the perfect size for her.

On the side, funky lettering advertised
Lili's Flower Farm
.
Nature's Gift.

It was Annabelle's paint job. She was The Shores' artist laureate.

As the flowers arrived at one door after another, many of the village women found their opinion of Anton Paradis changing for the better. He couldn't be all bad, in spite of his ridiculous obsession with foods that kill.

That's exactly what he wanted them to think.

Many of the women took their bouquets to the cemetery and placed them on the graves of mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, and children.

It was a very large roadside shrine that put Anton smack in the heart of the community. Good advertising.

Newton Fanshaw was thin, and bloodless, but not without emotion. He'd never been able to accept love, to understand exactly what the passion meant, to know how to make a woman happy. He did know desire, or at least wanting. He had been wanting all his life.

He still wanted Mary. His wife, Mary Christian. He had very nearly changed his last name to hers. It had seemed somehow appropriate. But he fancied himself too well known in his slim scientific circle to risk a name change. He was glad of that when she left him.

He still wanted her precisely because she had left him. Just as his mother had. It seemed his fate to be left by all the women who inspired what little love he had to give.

He did not want Fiona. He knew that, too. He was repelled, mentally and physically, by her. She was so full of life, the juice of it visible on her, her plump flesh perspiring in the summer sun, her full lips, moist with the pleasure of eating, breathing, laughing – kissing, if she could.

She was too alive for Newton. Fiona was as generous as her fudge, creamy and sweet. Newton was shriveled into himself and his derivative scientific experiments.

“This fudge is delicious.” He took another square. “You can cook. You should do something with it.”

Her smile turned to a pout.

“I do. I make fudge.”

“I mean something more.”

“What more? I got a nice little business going here.”

“Selling fudge out of a trailer? That's only one up from a lemonade stand.”

His words stabbed her. Newton was so cruel.

“I have the flea market in Charlottetown in winter. I do good business there, especially at Christmas.”

“Haven't you ever thought of branching out?”

“Like how?”

“I don't know, but a rung up on the food scale.”

“Like Mr. Dangerous Dinner?”

“Perhaps not reaching that far.”

“Why not? I'm a good cook.”

“I think you need a degree for that sort of thing.”

“Cooking's not on a piece of paper, it's in the hands.”

She wanted to stop the disagreeable conversation. She cleaned off her hands and put them where he liked her to put them – on her breasts.

She faced him and moved forward, thrusting herself at him.

“Have some of this.” She freed them from her dress, pushed them at his mouth.

He wanted to push back, to say no, but he couldn't.

He loved to suckle them.

Newton, in his own way, was working himself into the bosom of the community.