Still Water (16 page)

“Well, anytime.”

“I really appreciate it.”

On the way to the bank Ella paused at the corner of the square. Matt’s office was close by and she wavered uncertainly. Just a few weeks earlier she had felt that her life had begun to take a new course, one she welcomed, albeit cautiously. It had been a long time since she had felt anything for a man. After her marriage had ended she had dated a few people, but none of the men she’d been out with had stirred anything within her. She’d gone through the motions, not wanting to be thought of as unapproachable, but though she’d waited to feel something, some spark that went beyond merely friendship, it hadn’t happened. St. George was a small place, and as time passed there were fewer eligible men. She began to wonder if she would be alone for ever, which was partly why she’d started seeing somebody who lived on a nearby island. He was a widower, and had two young children, and their affair had lasted for several months until he had asked her to marry him. She’d known immediately that she couldn’t, that she didn’t love him enough, and he had seen it in her eyes and had never asked her again. In a way it had hurt her almost as much to think that she might never be in love, as it had hurt him to realize she couldn’t share his feelings. Shortly afterwards she had stopped seeing him, and there had been nobody since then.

Meeting Matt again had made her see that perhaps she had not yet used up all her chances. At first she hadn’t known if her quickening pulse when they were together was just an echo of a young girl’s crush. But as they got to know each other she found that in his company time passed quickly, and that she had a good time. They seemed to have that connection which so rarely happens, when conversation flows easily. Afterwards she would try to remember what they had discussed and it would seem as if they’d talked about everything and nothing; snippets of the past both general and personal, of observation and opinion, exchanging anecdotes that often made them smile, but sometimes were sad too. And all the time, over coffee, or as they walked together after a chance meeting, or when Matt turned up at the dock, a slow realization of possibility had begun to awaken within her. It was the knowledge that she could fall in love, that her future didn’t have to comprise a cold bed at night and an empty wishful longing that left her feeling that one day, when her mother had gone, she would be all alone in the world.

But events had dashed her hopes like the callous sea would a storm-tossed wreck. Rifts between them had been exposed, differences that couldn’t be explained, and once again she faced at best a lonely future.

And now even the rest of her life was threatened too, everything she cherished, that she had never imagined would change. No matter what happened in her personal life she would always love the sea and the island. The landscape was her refuge, the solitude of the woods and the bays and coves that dotted the coastline, the ocean that gave her a living and wore a thousand different costumes, changing colour with the seasons, with the days, the passing of a cloud even. She respected the ocean, the cycle of life both in it and around it, and she had always known that if she treated it well, if she took only what it could afford to lose, it would protect her.

She had never been tempted to leave St. George. For all its faults, the insularity of small communities where families all knew each other and all about each other, the good things outweighed the bad. Nobody ever went hungry on the island. If a man lost his job and couldn’t find another, his neighbours would help him out. There might be disputes over fishing rights, and sometimes these turned into petty feuds, but if a man lost his boat in a storm, if he couldn’t make his living and there was no money to buy another, then people would help him build one and the debt would be paid off over as many years as it took.

Howard Larson wanted to bring change to the island. His marina and the houses and developments that would follow would bring the world to St. George. No matter how he tried to sell it, money was at the root of it. And with money came greed and envy, and close behind that came crime and drugs and all the other ills of modern society where people cared about themselves and nothing else. The meadows would be dug up for roads and housing, the woods cut down to build mansions, the coastal waters clogged with pleasure craft and the pollution of wet bikes. Ella had thought she could stop Howard and his supporters like the Rodericks. People who took and never replenished. It was ironic, she thought now, that when he was alive Bryan had tried to wreck her chances of winning the election, and had failed, but in death he might succeed.

Even his intimidation hadn’t swayed her from her resolve. A month ago, she’d been walking home in the dark, when she heard footsteps behind her. It wasn’t the first time it had happened, but that night she was taking a shortcut past the church, down an alley with a wall on one side, and the overhanging branches of dripping trees on the other. It had rained earlier, and plumes of vapour rose like gas from the ground in the yellow pool of a streetlight. She hurried on through the darkness and the footsteps hurried with her and as she rounded a corner and stopped, instead of stopping too they kept coming. Her heart beat like a drum, and she turned to run but before she could a hand was clasped around her mouth and she felt herself dragged backwards.

She’d struggled, but an arm encircled her body, pinning her arms. He didn’t say anything, but he hadn’t needed to. She could smell him. She knew it was Bryan. He increased the pressure until she thought he would crack her ribs and suddenly she understood and she stopped struggling. He relaxed his hold, just a little, but still she was pinned to him. She could feel the length of his body pressed into her back, his arm against her breasts and she felt helpless. His male smell, his size and strength overpowered her, and she knew that was the point. He was warning her. She felt an urgent hardness. A wave of fear and revulsion swept over her.

Then abruptly he pushed her away and as she stumbled to her knees he turned and vanished and by the time she was on her feet, trembling with the aftermath, he was gone. But she was sure it had been him.

The memory of that night made her shudder. Somebody brushed past her and apologized, and she wondered how long she’d been standing on the corner. On the wall beside her was a poster she hadn’t noticed before, the remnant of one of her own campaign posters. Somebody had done a poor job tearing it down, but it was still possible to read some of the words scrawled in ink along the bottom “She’ll Kill You’. She reached out and ripped it down, then walked off in the direction of the bank.

After Ella had deposited her cheque she went back to the Santorini. When she returned, Gordon was finishing cleaning down the deck. She handed him the money she owed him, and he looked at the bills, then took half and offered the rest back to her.

“What’s this?”

“I don’t need it right now.”

“You take it. It’s yours.” She closed his fist around it, and when he looked as if he would protest she held his hand tight around the money. “I appreciate what you’re doing. Really I do. But there’s no need. Take the money.”

He glanced towards the empty berth where the Seawind was normally tied up. The day before, as a precaution, Ella and Gordon had moved some of their traps further out on the shelf than normal for this time of year.

“Don’t worry,” she said, guessing what was on his mind. “Listen, why don’t you get going. I’ll finish up here and I’ll see you in the morning.”

He started to object, but then focused on something behind her and he started to get up in a hurry. “Okay. I was about finished here anyway.”

Ella looked back along the dock, and saw Gordon’s father approaching, on his way home from a shift at the processing plant where he’d worked since selling his boat a few years ago. She and Alan Neelon had always been on reasonable terms, though since he’d given up fishing to work at the plant for a regular wage, he’d changed. He seemed embittered by life, and she wondered if he resented the fact that she had managed to keep going where he had failed. Perhaps doubly so since Gordon had come to work for her.

“I’d better go.” Gordon clambered ashore and went to meet his father.

Ella called out and raised her hand. “Hello Alan.”

The older man barely nodded to her, then abruptly jerked his head at Gordon. “Come on. Your mother will have supper waiting.”

Gordon glanced back at her, his embarrassment clear.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” she called, as if she hadn’t noticed anything amiss.

Alan Neelon glared at her, then came back towards her. “I won’t have Gordon working for nothing, Ella. You still owe him for last week.”

“I just paid him everything I owe him,” Ella said.

“That’s right Dad.” Gordon showed him the wad of bills.

Rather than satisfy Neelon the sight of the money seemed to antagonize him. “You paid him this week. What about next week, and the one after that?”

“I’ve never let anyone down that I owed money to in my life.”

“I could get him work at the plant. It’s regular money. Maybe you won’t be able to keep him on with you for ever.”

“I’ll admit things haven’t been easy,” Ella said, ‘but we’ll get by. But it’s up to Gordon. If he wants to leave I won’t stop him.”

“I’m staying,” Gordon said without hesitation.

Neelon glanced at his son, then looked back at Ella. He seemed to be struggling with something he wanted to say. In the end he let it go and turned wordlessly away. Gordon threw her an apologetic look. He caught up with his dad and as she watched them Ella saw Gordon say something that made the older man pause. They started arguing, and Alan Neelon looked angrily back in her direction. She watched until they were out of sight. She could guess what they were arguing about. Alan Neelon didn’t want his son working for somebody who might have killed a man.

Later, she locked up the Santorini and walked into town. She picked up some groceries in the store on the way home. At the checkout in the market, Jenny Pope smiled and took her money.

“How are you Ella?”

She looked up and caught sight of her reflection in the window. Her expression was deeply lined with worry. “I guess I’ve had better days.”

Jenny handed back her change, and for a fraction of a second Ella felt a subtle pressure on her hand.

“Don’t let the bastards get you down,” Jenny said in a low conspiratorial whisper, and she winked.

“I won’t,” Ella said, buoyed by a small gesture which nevertheless meant a lot. “Thanks.”

Outside, she crossed the street and went to the post office across the square. At the bottom of the steps she paused for a moment, looking in her bag for the letter she wanted to mail. When she found it she looked up, and almost collided with somebody coming down the steps.

Ella started to apologize, but the words died on her lips as she found herself face to face with Kate Little. For perhaps a second or two they stared at each other, surprise being overtaken by other.” more confusing emotions. For an instant Ella was back in the woods beside the cove where she’d glimpsed Kate in the darkness. A jumble of words collided and refused to form a coherent phrase in Ella’s mind.

Kate recovered first. “Excuse me,” she said quietly, then passed by.

Ella stared after her for a moment, her heart beating wildly while the blood drained from her face. At last she turned and went up the steps and vanished inside the cool dark space of the building.

Across the street, Matt sat in his car. He was struck by the tableau he was witnessing, the expressions on the faces of both women. It was unexpected, and somehow jarring, as if for an instant everything stopped still. Then it was past, and the two women parted and went their separate ways. Ben Harper sat in the seat next to him and peered intently through the windshield.

“Is that the woman you saw in the cove?” Matt asked.

Ben nodded. “That’s her.”

“You’re sure?”

“Positive.”

Matt told himself that it didn’t prove anything one way or the other, but he couldn’t quell the rush of doubts and the sinking feeling that overtook him. Just the fact that Ella had been in the cove the morning after Carl Johnson had seen her raised questions. He recalled what Baxter had said about Bryan’s house, the lack of prints, how it seemed as if somebody had cleaned up recently. Is that what Ella had been doing?

Ella had gone, and the other woman was getting into a Mercedes wagon. From the way she looked Matt guessed she was a summer resident. She seemed out of place, in her faded jeans and designer shirt, her swept back, raven coloured hair. He noticed Ben was watching her too.

“You know her?” Matt asked.

Ben shrugged. “I just saw her that one time.”

It took Matt a moment or two to realize what he meant. He looked back as the woman in the Mercedes drove away. “That was the woman you saw in the cove?”

“Sure,” Ben said. “Who did you think I meant?”

Matt took the turn off the main road that led out along the point. He slowed as he passed the house his parents had once owned. It was set back among the trees, and there was a car out front and a child’s bike lying on the grass. He drove on, following the road as it ran close to the top of the ridge, dipping and curving with the contours of the land, edged with woods of maple and cedar that sometimes grew in close and cast the road in perpetual shadow. But now and then the woods fell back to make clearings where sunlight filled the open spaces with drowsy midday heat. At one such clearing Matt pulled over and walked to a knoll where a wooden bench faced the view. The ground fell away steeply to woods below, and then to Stillwater Cove. The water in the bay reflected the myriad greens of the trees all around, ruffled by an offshore breeze. It looked like a water-colour, splotches of paint on a canvas. The cove was deserted, devoid of any evidence of human life. On the far side of the bay it was possible to just about make out the dark shape that was the beached orca, and specks of fluttering birds greedily mobbing the carcass, but there was no sign of Ben Harper’s boat.