Something Fishy (14 page)

Frank sliced up the hot dogs and ate them, saying, with a full mouth, “Mmmm. No one can cook dogs like you can, Moira.” She smiled. He hadn't said anything about her new hairstyle. Soft and fluffy with loose curls. It was better than her old stiff hairdo, but looked worse on her. It didn't go. Moira wasn't soft and fluffy.

Frank pushed the beans around his plate. He didn't dare eat them on such an important night. What if when he bent down –

“You're not hungry?”

“No, Moy Moy.” His pet name for her. She hadn't decided whether she liked it or not.

“Wait a minute.” He got up from the table and went into the hall, where she could hear him rustling around in his overnight bag. She had agreed to his request to stay the night, as his early deliveries were this end of the island. He was secretly hoping that his proposal would launch him into Moira's bed. Moira had no idea of Frank's plan, and also no intention of letting him into her bed, with or without a proposal, but she did want Ian to see Frank's truck parked outside her house all night.

Frank returned with a bottle of champagne and two glasses. He set them on the table.

Moira stood up and began clearing the dishes, clattering them in the sink in disapproval.

She felt his hand on her shoulder. Surely he didn't want to kiss and tickle now, with supper not yet finished. There was the rice pudding still.

He went down on his knee. The wet crocheted dishcloth went up to her face.

It dripped dishwater onto his head.

“No, no.” Moira couldn't believe what appeared to be happening.

“Yes. Yes. I'm hoping you'll say ‘yes,' Moy Moy. Will you marry me?” He thrust the ring up at her. She gave a sharp intake of breath and reached down to grab it, dropping the dishcloth on Frank's head.

A baptism for married life with Moira.

“It's beautiful.” Moira's tone contrasted with her words. Both could see it was small, mean, and ugly. Frank knew the history that made it even smaller and meaner. Moira must never know.

“It was my mother's,” he lied, praying that she would forgive him. Moira's expression transformed to reverence. She stroked it, changed her opinion, finding it now tiny and tasteful. Quite tiny. She tried to slip it on her finger. She had thin hands and slim fingers, but her knuckles were large and reddened. She was pushing the ring like the ugly sisters trying to force their feet into Cinderella's slipper.

Frank yanked the dishcloth off his head and hauled himself up from the floor, rubbing the knee that was stiff and sore.

“Let me,” he said, as Moira stared at him with devotion. Ian was still the man she wanted, but she loved Frank for asking her to marry him, the only man who ever had or would.

“Let me.” He pressed up against her when the ring was on.

But she wouldn't let him do a thing. Not tonight. Not any night. Not until they were married. Even then…

Chapter Sixteen

Jamieson found Fiona mixing up a batch of fudge. There were
several slabs of butter laid out on the counter, huge bowls of sugar, white and brown, and a litre jug of generic vanilla. On the stove, a lobster pot was bubbling with butterscotch. The smell alone was enough to give a person a sugar high.

Jamieson was not big on sweets, and the close atmosphere, sugar clinging to her and everything in the trailer, made her feel sick.

Fiona shoved a plastic spoon, dripping with melted sugar and butter, at Jamieson.

“Like a taste?”

Jamieson screwed up her face and backed away.

“Don't be shy. It won't eat you.” Fiona's body jiggled with laughter, before a sound came out of her mouth. She shoved the spoon at Jamieson again. Jamieson backed up and almost fell out the open door of the trailer. She turned and yanked it shut.

A large dollop of fudge-in-the-making fell on the floor. Fiona stuck the spoon in her mouth and siphoned off the sugary substance. Then she popped the spoon back in the pot.

“Not ready yet,” she said, looking at the lump on the floor. It remained liquid, not forming into a hard ball.

“Nothing worse than runny fudge.” Fiona swiped a hand across her mouth and smiled. “Except when you suck it off the spoon.”

Waves of nausea churned in Jamieson's stomach, from the oppressive heat, the clinging smell, the oversweet vapours sticking to her skin and clothes.

“I would like you to tell me everything that happened at Anton's Paradise the night of the dinner.”

“Everything?”

It wasn't often Fiona got a chance to speak to anyone. About anything. Jamieson was soon to regret her choice of words.

Fiona began – and went on and on and on.

“…and so I hadn't seen Newton all day. We're…” she paused and looked coy.

“Well, we're…involved.”

Jamieson had to hold back her reaction – somewhere between disbelief and laughter. He must be feeding off her, she thought, as she noted the detail of their relationship in her book.

“I see,” she said. Fiona grinned inwardly that Jamieson was making note of it. It made their relationship…well, official somehow.

“He was upset about that Viola woman. Attacking his turbine. Anyways, that's what he told me later. He burst into the kitchen. I was trying to figure out which pot…”

“We don't need to know that.” Impatient.

“You said everything.” Fiona pouted.

“Not in quite such detail.” Jamieson hesitated. Maybe she did need all the detail. Size of dish. Amount of saffron.

“Okay. Yes. Everything. Go on.” She was slipping. Becoming too lax.

“As I was saying…he burst into the kitchen as I was trying to figure out which pot would be best to cook the beans in.”

“Beans?” Why did beans keep coming up?

“Yes. Red kidney beans to go with the rice in the side salad.”

“And the saffron also went in the side salad?”

“Yes.”

“How much?”

“Well, see, Newton had showed up and grabbed me. He was shaking. He burrowed into me like a right baby, and that's when I lost my balance and we tipped the jar of saffron.”

“And then?”

“We scooped it up and threw it in the rice bowl. Can't have too much of a good thing, can you?”

Jamieson didn't answer.

“Did anyone see you?”

“Anyone?”

“The chef, Newton, Paradis?”

“I think the chef was too busy taking poison outta the fish. Anton wasn't even in the room. 'Course, I had to tell him later. Newton, I guess Newton woulda had to see, cause he was helping me.”

“How much went in?”

“I'd say a lot, and not much.”

“How could it be both?”

“It wouldn't be much of anything else, but I guess it was a lot of saffron.”

“How much?”

In answer, Fiona cupped her hands and held them out. Looked down at them.

“Maybe more than that. I have small hands.” She spread them apart.

Hardly the precise measurement Jamieson was hoping for. How much would it take to make a woman laugh herself to death? A tiny woman, like a bird.

“How much experience do you have with saffron?”

“None. Only that. Never seen it in my life before.”

That was easy to believe. Jamieson doubted there had been saffron at all on the island before the burgeoning of fine-dining restaurants in the past decade or so. That it would ever have reached Fiona's trailer life seemed highly unlikely.

How would Fiona have such obscure knowledge of the crocus, and, besides, what motive would she have to kill Viola Featherstonehaugh? Some slight, real or imagined?

“I dint even know it come from a flower. Imagine that, eating a flower. Like them violets we was supposed to sprinkle on the ice-cream dessert, in honour of Miss Viola.” There was a change in tone when Fiona said Viola's name. Jamieson looked up sharply. Venom in Fiona's eyes.

“What didn't you like about the woman?”

Fiona frowned. The flesh closed in over her eyes until they could hardly be seen.

“She called me a lump of lard. No, tub. Tub of lard. That's right. Tub. Lump. Both as bad.” Fiona's eyes moistened.

Jamieson interrupted the flow of needless words.

“The occasion?”

“Wasn't no occasion. She came stomping across the cape after trying to bash down that windmill with a fish hook.”

“With a fish hook?”

“A big one. Not big enough. I'da landed her one after she bashed into me, if she didn't have that hook. It could do ugly damage.”

“But you didn't land her one.”

“Nope. I felt like it, though.”

“Did anyone see this?”

“He did, of course, he did, watching her like he was.”

“He?”

“Himself. Newton. They'd had words.”

“What words?”

“About the windmill. She'd been over before in the day, and they had a fight then, too. She carried a dead bird to his place and dropped it on the doorstep.”

“Do you know where the bird came from?”

Fiona smiled, a big smile. “The blades of the windmill bashed the bird and sent it right at her, a direct hit. I felt sorry for her then. That was before she insulted me.”

“So Newton had two meetings, two arguments with Viola that afternoon.”

“Yup. That's why he come running to me, all shaking and shivering.”

“And you knocked over the saffron.”

“Yes.”

Jamieson injected one of her famous silences to see if Fiona would run off at the mouth about anything else that might be useful.

“I dint like that woman, not after what she said to me, but I wouldn't wish her dead.”

A long pause. Jamieson waited.

“It was too bad they all missed that dessert.”

Fiona's eyes were shining.

“They was delicious, them violets with the homemade French vanilla ice cream.” Her hand rose up and covered her mouth, as if she'd said something she shouldn't have.

Jamieson finally spoke.

“You wouldn't have wanted it to go to waste.”

Fiona dropped her hand and smiled through the gap in her front teeth.

“Eggsackly.”

“Anything else?”

Fiona paused a moment, and shook her head slowly.

She forgot to mention the journal. When she thought about it later, she decided it wasn't important. When she thought about it some more, she thought it might be.

Where had it come from? Why was it in the kitchen? Had Anton given it back to Viola? She thought herself into such a muddle, she had to sample half a pound of butterscotch fudge to soothe herself, and stop worrying about withholding evidence, or being charged with murder.

That police officer had seen right through her, seen her hate for that old bitch.

That's what she should worry about, not a dumb book you couldn't even read.

Paradis. Motive.

Fanshaw. Motive? Fury at Viola for attacking his windmill? Killing in such a dispassionate manner seemed odd if that were the motive. He saw the saffron, helped pick it up. He was a scientific man. Did he know about saffron's powers?

Fiona? She had reason to hate Viola, but surely not the sophistication or knowledge to kill her using saffron. Still, she was a cook. How highly trained? Jamieson made a note to make a background check.

Jamieson took her questions to the dome, forcing herself to go there – not allowing her personal feelings to get in the way of the job. The dome gave her the creeps, and she shuddered as she stepped out of the cruiser, parked very far from the edge of the cliff. It was a night in the fall, two years before, when she had slipped – or been pushed – over the edge of the cliff, and hung there, her supports giving way on her one by one, until she was rescued. By sheer will, Ian and Hy had managed to get her up from the cliff, while the jagged rocks below sliced upwards, threatening to claim her.

She hadn't been in the dome since then, and still half-expected to see a couple of bodies inside waiting for her, as they had been then.

Instead, when she knocked, Newton Fanshaw opened the door.

“I've come to ask some questions about the event at Anton's Paradise.”

“The death of that old witch? I know nothing about it.” He began to close the door.

Jamieson put a hand up to prevent him from shutting it.

“Nonetheless, I must ask some questions.”

He didn't ask her in.

“You may think you know nothing, but small things can sometimes make a big difference.”

“I wasn't there.”

“Not at the dinner, but you were there before the meal.”

He said nothing.

“In the kitchen.”

Still nothing.

“With Fiona.”

Newton's mouth buckled in distaste.

That's what he was trying to hide, Jamieson realized – his relationship with Fiona.

He had hoped she was his secret. His shameful secret. Only the chef from Japan had seen that lapse, and he was out of the country. But Fiona – she must be blabbing it about.

“You better let me in. You don't want all your neighbours spying on you, wondering why you won't.” It did the trick. He opened the door and allowed her to squeeze in.

“Why did you go to see Fiona at Anton's Paradise?”

“Because I…because I…” The shaking began.

“Never mind that. You were there. Tell me what happened.”

He was silent.

“You embraced her,” she prompted.

Still nothing.

“The two of you tipped over a bowl of saffron. You know what that is?”

He stopped shaking, and straightened.

“Of course.”

“You know that it could have caused Viola's death?”

“No, I didn't know that.”

“You're a scientist?”

He nodded.

“What is your field?”

He gestured outside to the windmill and solar panel. He brought the gesture back into the room and indicated the batteries ringing the dome.

Was that an answer? Or an evasion?

“Your field?”

He smirked. “Certainly not flowers.”

“You still haven't told me your field.”

“It is the new energies.”

She had the feeling there was more, that he wasn't telling the truth, or at least not the whole truth. He'd been a scientist before the new energies were in vogue.

“Is that all?”

“All that I care to discuss. If you decide to investigate me, you'll likely find out everything that you need to know.”

Jamieson was putting him on the defensive. It wasn't a good way to get co-operation – especially in a case where the crime, if there was one, was so difficult to establish. Every small piece of information counted.

“You said you don't know what saffron can do?”

He seemed about to say something, but changed his mind. There was a pause as he mentally switched gears.

“What can it do?”

“In extreme cases, it can kill.”

“Can it?”

Who was doing the questioning?

“Did you use it to kill her?”

“Did I kill a woman with a chancy food weapon? Why? Why would I?”

“You tell me. What your relationship was with…Viola.”

“I had no relationship with her. I didn't know the woman.”

“I have someone who says you did. That you fought over the wind turbine. What was that about?”

“Fiona told you that. She's the only one who knew.”

“Never mind who. Did you argue with Viola over the turbine?”

“She didn't like it. Wanted me to take it down.”

Jamieson raised an eyebrow.

“And?”

“And I said no. End of story.”

“She dropped a dead bird on your doorstep.”

“Yes.”

“She attacked your turbine with a fish hook.”

His mouth curved in a crooked, contemptuous smile.

“Yes. And me. She tried to kill me.”

“How?”

“With that fish hook. She sliced my shirt open with it, sliced me down the chest.”

“And you did nothing about it?”

“Hours later, she was dead.”

“You must have been furious.”

“I was.”

“Did you plan a retaliation?”

“No.” He tried to sound reasonable. The rational scientist.

“You were going to put up with that, and not get your own back in some way?”

“I've told you. I had no such plans. Certainly not murder.” The smile had retreated, replaced by a thin line of contempt. He'd made a tiny opening.

“You were going to do something.”

He sighed, an eloquent sigh that said he was tiring of a ridiculous conversation.

“No.”

Jamieson didn't believe him.

“You were there at the funeral. Why?”

He smiled, an unconvincing smile, his lips wrapped around hate.