Seven Days Dead Part 31

"Who by?"

"Mrs. Matheson, for one. The fliers, for another. You see, Matheson was using the cult and their American connections, including Professor DeWitt, to set up a distribution network in the States for island dulse. Control the distribution, you control the trade. They were working to set up their own shadow network and take the business away from your father and Roadcap. Aaron worked for your dad. Your former dad. Orrock arranged for him to be raised in Dark Harbour after his father went to prison and later his mother died. Saw to his education. Gave him work and increasing responsibility. Roadcap didn't think your father was such a terrible guy. What he'll think now that the truth is out is another story. He's in for a shock. I'm pretty sure he doesn't know that Orrock was his biological father. Or what he did."

"I guess you'll have to tell him," Maddy says.

emile continues to look at her without responding, until finally she wonders why and looks back.

"Or you could," he suggests.

She snorts a little, but her condition causes a release of mucus, and she has to clean up with Kleenex again.

When Cinq-Mars continues to study her, she protests. "He hates my guts. I've always hated his. Now? After this? I just took his fortune away from him. Now he has several million more reasons to despise me."

"He thinks you're a tide," emile says.

"What?"

"He refers to you as a tide. You flow in every few years, then flow back out again. At least in his mind."

"A tide? He thinks I'm a tide?"

"A tide."

She gets his point, that he wants her to think about that, and she does.

"Okay. All right. Why not? I'll tell him. I'll tell him that his father didn't kill my mother. That my father did. But really it was his father who killed her, just not the father he thinks it was and not the one who went to jail. I'll tell him-" Her voice breaks. "I'll tell him that my mother and the man he loved as his father, that those two loved each other. The man and woman who loved us both loved each other." She falters a trifle. "I'll tell him that."

She says it with a dollop of sarcasm in her voice, but emile suggests an alternative slant. "Actually, if I were you, that's exactly where I'd begin. The man he loved as his father was yours, and that man loved your mother so much, he was willing to live out his life in prison, in silence, rather than risk any further damage inflicted upon her child."

Maddy looks up at him.

"I'm just saying," he adds, "it might be a starting point."

Sandra and emile come together again. Sandra makes a motion to suggest that perhaps it's time to leave. Maddy, though, is agitated by yet another question.

"Why ... why was Aaron Roadcap on the ridge that night?"

emile shrugs. "He keeps visiting the scene. Where your mother died. Where the man he thought was his father was wrongfully destroyed. But you're right. That's not the only reason. He was also there to spy on the cult. He perceived that they were helping his unknown rival in the dulse trade, and he wanted to understand them, perhaps to undermine them, or to discover who they were working with. That's one thing. He uncovered that Professor DeWitt was part of that bunch. That alone put pressure on DeWitt, and may have contributed to his fall. What also might have contributed to his fall was the little charade he pulled off with Grace Matheson, pretending he didn't know her when she faked her accident. They put on a real song and dance for whoever might come along. It happened to be me. I'm guessing that he started figuring out why she'd hooked him into that. He went along with it because she told him she was drunk and rammed a parked car, and now needed to account for the damage on her truck. One more drunk-driving charge and she'd lose her license. They didn't know I was a cop. They just wanted a witness, a dupe. I happened to drive by. Anyway, that's what Roadcap was doing. Finding out about the components of the group. Just like Lescavage was doing, I suppose."

Sandra has her own questions. "Who burned our car? Yes, I've learned about the Jeep. Who kidnapped me?"

"Grace Matheson. She arranged it all. She doesn't control people who would go out and kill for her. It's not that kind of gang. She was the only one around willing to commit murder. But she panicked. In a way, just like the reverend panicked in going to her. His downfall was her. She has people she can ask to do things, and she asked a few nefarious Dark Harbour folk to do her bidding for a price. To scare me. To scare you. Run us off the island in the island way. Little chance of that."

"Speak for yourself. I think I've developed vertigo."

emile smiles. "You didn't budge. She fired you up. Anyway, Louwagie will round the others up. That won't be difficult."

"So, emile," his wife teases him, "you solved two murders today and a suicide. That didn't take long."

"Three murders," he corrects her, "and a suicide. Going back in time, to the death of Maddy's mom."

As though out of respect for that woman, they share a quiet moment.

emile touches Maddy's forearm and speaks softly. "We'll go now."

"I'll drive you."

"It's a short walk. Don't bother."

She nods. Then says, "I disrupted your holiday. My dad-my non-dad, my used-to-be dad, whoever he is-he kept a Cadillac Escalade in the garage. Way too ostentatious for me. Take it. To replace the Jeep. That's not negotiable, but also, accept it as compensation. We'll get the paperwork done. It's all yours."

emile is about to decline. It's too much, too generous, and who accepts a luxury vehicle for solving a simple case? Sandra pokes him in the ribs, which Maddy sees, and suddenly emile agrees. The three laugh at that.

"I'll come by tomorrow for the keys. I don't want to trouble you now. We'll check in with you then."

emile and Sandra hug her and depart. They walk across the broad lawn to the road and head downhill. It's not a short walk around to Whale Cove, and along the way they stop for dinner in the gathering dark.

In a booth at the Compa.s.s Rose, Sandra is musing after they put in their orders. "One thing I don't get still. Pete Briscoe. How bad a man is he, to go fetch the b.l.o.o.d.y shovel and not tell a soul?"

"He's nave and gullible. A combination that Orrock and Grace Matheson took advantage of. I was curious about the story she told him. You see, Pete knew that the fliers cult was in cahoots with his boss, Grace Matheson. She invented some story about them finding the shovel and getting their fingerprints on it, then coming across the body afterward and panicking. Of course, it was her own fingerprints she wanted removed. The fliers threw the shovel away, she told him, when actually she did. They were innocent. If I may say so, our fisherman bought it, hook, line, and sinker."

emile is laughing to himself, and she thinks at first that this has to do with his remark. He leans across the table to whisper something else that's not intended for public dissemination, or even for polite company.

"Something else about Pete. I couldn't really figure out why he dug so many holes. I sent Wade Louwagie back to ask him. He was trying to get the blood and guts off the shovel, as I thought, but it turns out he was also trying to find the right hole to s.h.i.t in. Some holes. .h.i.t rock, too shallow. A few were deep enough but contained worms or other creepy crawly things. He's sensitive about where he takes a dump."

She laughs along with him then.

"Also what Wade learned. Pete wasn't looking to protect the spade when he came running up to us on Seven Days Work. He'd cleaned it by then, and never thought it was so important anyway. He was just protecting his friends from being wrongly accused, in his mind. That's why he only looked mischievous up there, rather than guilty."

"He was protecting," surmises Sandra, "his waste?"

"Precisely. We came along at an inopportune moment. He hadn't had time to backfill his business yet, and didn't want us to see what he'd done. So he ran over to us and made up a dog story. Turns out, that slightly embarra.s.sing moment is what did him in. More importantly, that moment helped do Grace Matheson in."

The old sea rhyme comes to mind, "Red sky at night, sailor's delight," for as boats bob in the harbor and the ferry comes in, as tourists disembark, the sky glows a brilliant crimson. A wine for the evening, a darker hue of red, is uncorked and poured. "Let the vacation begin," emile remarks with a grin.

"Finally," Sandra says, and the two clink gla.s.ses. "Let's give it a shot."

ALSO BY JOHN FARROW.

The Storm Murders.

River City.

Ice Lake.

City of Ice.

ALSO BY TREVOR FERGUSON.

The River Burns.

The Timekeeper.

The Fire Line.

The True Life Adventures of Sparrow Drinkwater.

The Kinkajou.

Onyx John.

High Water Chants.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR.

JOHN FARROW is the pen name of Trevor Ferguson, who has published twelve novels, both literary and crime, and had four plays produced. He has been named Canada's best novelist in both Books in Canada and the Toronto Star. The books in his emile Cinq-Mars crime series have been read around the world and have received extraordinary critical acclaim. John Farrow lives with his wife in the town of Hudson, Quebec. You can sign up for email updates here.

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