Stormy Cove (3 page)

Was a killer on the loose in Stormy Cove? Lori was pondering whether that should upset her, when her thoughts were interrupted by voices in the hallway.

Lori got undressed and took a shower. She stood under the warm, relaxing water for a long time, moving back and forth. Then she dried her thick chestnut-brown hair, which was cut short at the neck. Lori didn’t give a damn about the golden mane of L
orelei, the femme fatale of German legend, who was her namesake. Her mother nagged her now and then to grow her hair long, but it just strengthened her resolve.

She had an elegant profile and perfect ears—the envy of her friends. Volker had told her once that her short hair emphasized her femininity. That was before the nightmare in Germany.

Lori was about to put on a sweatshirt when she heard strange noises coming through the thin wall. It didn’t take long to discern the voices of three people having sex. An erotic tryst with the two women and that stripling in the leather jacket they pretended was their nephew!

She felt a stabbing pain in her chest and struggled to breathe.

It was stronger than she was. It was always stronger than anything. She was no longer sitting in a room in Newfoundland.

She is sitting bolt upright in her marriage bed on a huge country estate in Germany. Sounds of intercourse come from the next room. She doesn’t go to the trouble of using earplugs anymore. People are everywhere. She simply can’t avoid them. Why won’t they leave her alone? All she wants is peace and quiet. Her fingers clutch the sheets. A man lies beside her. Her husband. She hates him for sleeping so serenely.

She’s out of bed in a single bound, grabs her wool jacket, bangs into the bureau, clicks on the lamp.

Her husband sits up.

“What’s the matter this time?” he asks.

“If I stay here any longer,” she pants, “I’m going to kill someone.”

Lori slipped on jeans and her down jacket, put on her red beret, and slammed the door before running out of the B and B. A light was on in the Walls’ living room, but she had no desire for human contact. She wandered aimlessly through streets with shabby stores and past houses with ugly vinyl siding. She toyed with the idea of spending the night in an airport motel. But when she returned an hour later, the house was quiet. She heard distant footsteps and murmuring during the night, but was too tired to worry about it.

Over a breakfast of bacon and eggs, Bobbie asked, “Did the people in the next room wake you up? They had to catch a four o’clock flight.”

“No, but they were plenty loud before that,” Lori replied. She was too grumpy to be diplomatic. “They made quite a threesome, if you take my meaning.”

Bobbie lowered a teapot onto the crocheted tablecloth.

“I thought something wasn’t quite right,” she said. “I saw the nephew’s bed all made up like nobody had slept in it!”

She sounded almost cheery, pleased to have found the answer to a riddle.

“The lady said the boy was her nephew, but I didn’t swallow that. And I told her I can see through people pretty quick! There you have it again.”

She refilled Lori’s cup. “You should have called me about the noise. You don’t have to put up with that.”

Lori picked up her fork. “Is this the first orgy at your place?”

Bobbie smiled. Turned out she was a tough cookie.

“I’d love to know who those people are. You know, Newfoundland is a large island but a small world. It isn’t easy to hide something. I’ll dig up the truth, believe me.”

Only after checking out did Lori realize she should have asked about the murdered girl in Stormy Cove.

CHAPTER 3

Isaac Richards, 46, fisherman, from Stormy Cove

What do you want to know? About the demons? Oh, so that’s it. I thought you were talking about the body on the Barrens. Everybody’s talking about it now. Absolutely crazy. Who’d have thought that? OK, right, so what do you want to know?

Yes, I was on the boat. Me and my brother John and my pal Seb and Wayne, my nephew. Four of us.

We all heard it. Woke us up in the night.

How long ago? Maybe four years.

Why do you ask, eh? Anything to do with the dead girl on the Barrens?

Well, OK. We’d been working all day. On my boat, yeah. It was the
Morning Mist
back then. We took her through the ice. It was May, good weather, no fog. Occasional sun. Don’t see that very often in May.

We caught about a dozen seals that day. Ice was cracking, so we couldn’t go out on it. We shot the seals and hooked them on board. After that, we anchored off Great Sacred Island. Yes, the Isle of the Demons.

That’s what you mean, eh?

There was a stove on board. It was a bit warm on the boat. A moose roast in the oven. I remember. Wayne’d shot a huge bull moose the fall before, a t
wenty-four pointer. Giant. We got the roast from him. We had it with potatoes and bread and tea. Like always. No alcohol on my boat, in case you’re interested.

We went to bed about ten, after cards.

We talked to them on the other boat. Did I mention the other boat there? Gary’s. He had Phil and Ralph with him, all from Fairy Bay.

What we talked about? We radioed Gary about the ice and if it was hard getting through.

Then, like I said, we went for our bunks. I had a sleeping bag.

I probably dropped off right away. At least, I don’t remember if John’s snoring kept me awake. I was exhausted, been on my feet since five.

I woke up all of a sudden. Heard something. Hard to describe. A hollow moaning . . . or whistling.

It woke everybody up.

We thought at first it was the teakettle. At any rate, we all lay down to go back to sleep. But when it got quiet, we heard the moaning again. Not loud but . . . horrible.

Was it
scary
? I’ll tell you, maid, you don’t want to live through that. It goes right through you. Worse than a hurricane. Much worse.

Somebody said, probably Wayne, “It must be the motor cooling off.”

It was his little joke. Wasn’t the motor, everybody knew it.

We tried to figure out what it was. Wayne went outside to piss, but he couldn’t see anything.

Sure we thought of the demons. That’s why the name. And believe me, fishermen before us have heard strange sounds out there, sounds you can’t explain.

All of us were up on deck the next morning. We saw Gary on his boat. First thing he said was, “Did you hear those weird noises last night?”

They didn’t know what they were either. First they thought our boats were scraping together. They got up and scouted around the boat just like we did!

We told everybody about it once we were home.

A lot of people here say they’re screams for help from people marooned on the island. Some others think they’re people who died in shipwrecks.

Whatever it is, I’m telling you I do not want to hear those sounds ever again. It’s like somebody getting his bones sawed through.

And now we’ve got one more ghost out there. But that’s a ghost I specially don’t want to meet.

Not after all what’s happened.

CHAPTER 4

Lori sensed something strange in the air. First, she’d driven through the mountain range in Gros Morne National Park, where, unsurprisingly, there was still a lot of snow. Friends had warned her she’d be catapulted from the Vancouver spring back into winter. She quickly grasped that it can snow eight out of twelve months a year in Newfoundland. It was March, the sky slate gray, and a strong wind blew in off the North Atlantic. Bobbie Wall had warned her to be cautious, describing loaded trucks getting blown off the road. The highway along the coast was partly bare and relatively dry. The winter tires on Lori’s secondhand Corolla—picked up in C
orner Brook for six thousand dollars—hummed along with the country music on the car radio.

She rarely met an oncoming vehicle on this lonely stretch, but Bobbie had assured her she needn’t be afraid of a breakdown. Nobody was more helpful on the road than a Newfoundlander.

Lori stopped occasionally to consult her map and travel guide about what lay in front of her. But after leaving the Long Range Mountains on the horizon behind her—outliers of the Appalachians—she yielded to the powerful, overawing landscape. She turned off the radio. She felt as though she’d crossed into another era, traveled far back in history. The mountains seemed like primordial beasts hewn from the rock of the earth.

She didn’t know why, but her heart suddenly felt very light.

The houses in the little villages along the way no longer seemed bleak and vulnerable, exposed as they were to the ocean and without the shelter of a forest or hill at their back. Lori now saw steadfastness and defiance in them, qualities she liked to attribute to herself.

It’s not nice and cozy here,
she thought as her car glided by austere, treeless settlements that sprung up out of nowhere.
Everything’s reduced to the bare essentials.
And somehow she liked that.

Just when she decided to snap some pictures—though she wasn’t enthralled by the idea of getting out in the icy wind—Lori came upon something that attracted her attention: small groups of people stood along the shore, looking out onto the pack ice. Others were driving snowmobiles back and forth and shouting to one another. Lori pulled over and took out her camera. Her boots sank deep into the snow as she plodded up a little rise, where two men and some teenagers were having a heated discussion. They glanced at Lori, then back at the ice. Lori heard animal cries and a heartrending squeal, mixed with deep, sheeplike bleats. What was going on?

A girl shouted to her, “She’s very close to shore, with a baby.”

Lori looked out onto the ice, and what she saw took her breath away: seals, as far as the eye could see. Black dots everywhere in an infinite whiteness.

“Oh my God,” she blurted out. “This is incredible!”

One of the young men, maybe he was sixteen, smiled at her. He had on a black wool t
uque, but his neck was bare despite the cold.

“Really something, ain’t it? Never seen anything like it for as long as I’ve lived.”

Ten feet away was a seal on an ice floe, baby beside it, as white as its surroundings. Lori got her camera clicking, her adrenaline pumping. She heard the man beside her talking.

“You’re not from here? Well, this is a once-in-a-century event. You don’t normally see this.”

Lori tried to understand his accent.

“Why not?”

“Because the bay’s always frozen over at this time of year. The seals and the pack ice stay way out. Several miles off.”

“Yeah, near Labrador,” another man added.

“But the bay didn’t freeze this winter. Nobody knows why. It was just too warm, so the wind drove the ice and the seals toward shore. We’ve never seen them this close.”

“Not in my lifetime at least,” the other man acknowledged.

Through the lens, Lori watched the mother feeding her baby.

“How old are the babies?”

“Maybe two days,” the older man answered. “After a week they’re not babies anymore. Their pelts turn gray and their mothers abandon them.”

“That soon?”

Lori watched as a baby seal slid back and forth on the floe, bleating, while its mother poked her head out of the water every so often to check on it.

The men laughed.

“Yes, by then they’ve put on a lot of fat and are round as a ball. They can already swim and hunt for themselves.”

Lori put her camera down.

“Why’s the baby seal over there crying like that?”

The man scratched his head through his tuque.

“I think its mother hasn’t come back. She’s probably dead.”

“What? Is the seal hunt on now?”

“No, it’s not open season yet. And the w
hite baby seals haven’t been hunted for a long time. Twenty years or so?”

The other man stamped his boots in the snow.

“Since 1987, I think. The mother was probably crushed between some ice floes in yesterday’s storm. Often happens.”

He looked at her with curiosity.

“Where’re you from?”

“Vancouver.”

“Visiting?”

“Yes.”

“Here, in Rocky Cove?”

“No, Stormy Cove. What’s going to happen to the orphan seal?”

“It’ll probably die.”

“That’s awful.” Lori’s heart contracted.

“Yeah, life and death lie hard together on The Rock.”

“Not just here,” Lori objected.

“Oh, no, they’re extra close here,” the man insisted.

“Yep,” the other man said, “that’s how it is.”

Lori was forced to think some more about the proximity of life and death when she began to pass “Moose Crossing” signs. But Bobbie had assured her that the moose would keep to the woods for cover because they can’t escape fast enough in the snow. Lori thought “woods” too big a word for the birch and low coniferous trees. Compared to West Coast trees that she couldn’t even get her arms around, these thickets by the side of the road seemed puny.

She couldn’t see the ocean anymore, just an occasional highway sign indicating that villages were hiding somewhere nearby. The sky clouded over, and a dull feeling filled her stomach.

She thought it best to stay overnight at a hunting lodge two hours away from her destination so she could mentally prepare for her adventure.

Just don’t rush things. Approach them slowly. The first impression is critical.
She turned off the highway and soon found the driveway of Birch Tree Lodge, a log-cabin-style hotel. The huge logs could only have come from British Columbia. A long way for construction material to travel, more than five thousand miles across the continent. Even the telephone poles in Newfoundland were from British Columbia, Bobbie said.

The lodge’s office was a combined reception desk and souvenir shop.

Waiting for the clerk, Lori studied the bottles of iceberg water and the parrots embroidered on the wall hangings. After a while, she followed a sign and found herself in a wide dining room with exposed ceiling beams. Inuit carvings graced the mantel, and a chandelier made from antlers hung from a beam. One of three long tables was set. Lori looked up and saw a polar bear pelt hanging beneath the gable.

“I had it hung extra high so nobody could steal it,” said a voice behind her.

Lori turned around to find a short-haired young woman carrying a package of frozen meat. She couldn’t have been more than thirty.

“I’ll put this in the kitchen and be right back.”

She pointed to a large carafe.

“Get yourself some coffee in the meantime. And have a piece of cake. We aren’t fussy here. I’m Hope.”

Lori introduced herself and did as she was told. She had just started in on her cake when Hope reappeared. Lori now identified her as the owner of the lodge, a very young owner indeed.

“We don’t have many guests this time of the year,” she said. “How long are you staying?”

“I’m not sure. I’ll be in the area for a while, so I’m hoping to rent some rooms or a house somewhere.”

“So you’re the photographer from Calgary?”

Lori almost choked on her cake.

“How in the world did you know?”

“News gets around fast here, you’ll find out. Bobbie called today. We’ve known each other for years. She thought you’d show up here. It’s the only hotel around. Cake good?”

Lori nodded.

“I’m from Vancouver, not Calgary.”

“Don’t you work for somebody in Calgary?”

Lori hesitated. How would they know that? Then she recalled that she’d mentioned the Calgary publisher to the archaeologist.

“Yes, for a publisher. I’m working on a coffee table book.”

“You know many folks in Calgary?”

Lori felt like she was being cross-examined. But Hope might simply be a curious hotel owner who liked to chat with her guests.

“Not many. I know my way around Vancouver better.”

“I know some people in Calgary. What’s the book about?”

“Oh, rural Newfoundland, fishing villages, the local way of life.”

“Who’d ever be interested in such a thing?”

“Me, for example. It’s an unknown world for me, and it may not exist much longer if those little outports keep dying out.”

“Well, you’re right, there.”

Hope drummed her fingers on the tablecloth. She seemed to be in perpetual motion.

Outside the window, a boat landing led onto a flat white surface, and Lori realized that it must be a frozen lake. Summer guests must sit on the veranda and watch waterfowl. But to her, the winter countryside seemed forbidding and lifeless.

Turning to Hope, she asked, “Do you think people here will be open to being photographed?”

The answer came without hesitation.

“For sure. Why not? They feel the world has forgotten them. Nobody values small fishermen anymore. The government would rather support huge fleets; the companies make more money and the politicians do, too.”

She stood up. “Their first question will definitely be: Why did you come here, of all places?”

Lori didn’t say anything, though she’d practiced an answer to that question. Of course, Mona Blackwood’s name must never come up under any circumstances. Mona had said the project was to be a surprise for everybody.

“But maybe you could open some doors for me in Newfoundland,” Lori had objected.

Mona wouldn’t hear a word of it.

“You’ll have to open doors by yourself, considering that I’ve hired you.”

Hope went to the counter and then to the front door, where she looked back.

“Just don’t take any pictures of our baron from Germany. He’s here incognito.”

Lori didn’t understand until dinner that evening.

From the six people around the table, she picked out the baron by his accent. He was the only one who was wearing a dressy, form-fitting shirt over his bulky body and who hadn’t rolled up his sleeves. His bald head shone in the light of the table lamp as brightly as his glasses. Lori guessed he was in his late forties.

“Ah, here’s our new guest,” he called to Lori jovially, as if he owned the lodge. “Do sit down with us.”

Even before Lori had finished her soup, she’d learned from the baron and his wife—she was considerably taller and slimmer than her husband, but not any younger—that their family came from the former Pomerania and that the baron frequently stayed at the lodge to hunt, and had shot bear, caribou, and moose. Not a word about their title. None of the other diners, all male, introduced themselves. They must not be hunters, Lori thought, as it wasn’t yet the season.

The baron dominated the conversation.

“I brought my wife with me this time because we wanted to explore the country by dogsled. Maybe we’ll even see a polar bear if they come off the ice into the villages.”

Lori looked at him dumbfounded. Nobody had told her there were polar bears.

“Don’t be afraid,” a man at the end of the table said. “It doesn’t happen very often, only when visitors are here from Germany.”

Everybody laughed.

“Keep your camera pretty much under wraps,” the baron said conspiratorially. “We were having a beer with some people in the Isle View pub and said we were from Germany, and somebody asked if I was a German spy.”

He laughed so loudly that Lori almost dropped her spoon.

Hope brought a platter of meat for the whole table. “He was only kidding. People here have a peculiar sense of humor.”