Away with the Fishes (11 page)

“They didn’t say.”

“Do they know for certain that Rena and the girl on the bike are one and the same?”

“They seemed pretty sure.”

“Do they know for certain that Rena or this other girl is dead?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Or that you killed either one?”

“They implied it.”

“How so?”

“May was asleep, so they think she can’t vouch for me.”

“Is that it?”

“That, and the ad.”

“Is there a body? Is there even
one
dead body, let alone two?”

“I don’t know.”

“I do,” Trevor announced. He stood and delivered his assessment, punctuating his words with fists on the bakery’s counter. “Of
course
there’s no body or you’d be sitting in jail
right now
. They want a
quick
solution and they’re stabbing in the dark. Until they find some
real evidence
, they
can’t
touch you.”

“What if some evidence turns up?” Randolph looked for holes in his father’s theory.

“Did you do it?” Trevor asked Madison sharply.

“No, I didn’t do it!”

“Even so,” Randolph said.

Trevor thought for a minute. “I see what you mean,” he agreed, looking at his son. “On Oh they solve the crimes first and then find the clues they need after. Heaven help you if they decide you’re guilty.”

Madison breathed a desperate sigh.

“Now, now.” Trevor patted his shoulders. “Finding clues is one thing; finding dead bodies is another.”

“What if that missing bike lady turns up dead?” Randolph asked.

Trevor counted his rebuttal on his fingers. “There’s no proof that the missing bike lady is even a lady. There’s no proof that she’s dead or gone. There’s no proof Rena is dead or gone. And there’s no proof Madison placed any ad.”

“True.” Randolph and Madison said in unison, not sounding entirely convinced.

“’Course, it would help if that silly girlfriend of yours turned up from her mysterious walk.”

Randolph and Madison looked at each other helplessly.

“Here’s what we do,” Trevor continued. “Madison, get yourself home now and have a good night’s rest. Tomorrow, you and your sister wrack those brains of yours. Try to figure out where Rena could be, and you go get her. Randolph, you keep your eyes and ears open when you’re out with the truck making deliveries. Somebody knows something. Look for clues and listen for talk.”

The boys nodded their consent.

“I’ll have a go at Bruce,” Trevor said. “I don’t believe him for a minute. He knows who placed that ad. We get him to say so and maybe that clears Madison, if the police are so sure the ad points to the killer.”

As if in agreement, the bakery fridge jolted to life just then, its noisy pulse filling the room. They all turned to look at it, as if they expected it to speak, to comment on their plan or to suggest another.

“Well?” Trevor said finally, his eyes back on the two young men. “What are you waiting for? Madison, go home. Randolph, give him a lift.” The boys nodded and moved toward the door.

“I’ll get Bruce over straightaway,” Trevor continued. “Go on, off you go.”

Heading home in the bakery van, Madison felt more and more like himself. Trevor had made good sense. His advice, and Randolph’s help, dissipated the loneliness of his walk earlier that evening. Madison felt hopeful. Cheerful, almost, as they rode under the stars that waved and winked at him. The night was loud now, the frogs awake, the crickets in song, the leaves rustling in chorus. The moon shone brightly still, though its light washed away the despair it had previously revealed. Perhaps May was right. Perhaps in the morning, in the light of the rested sun, Madison’s future would look brighter and clear.

Back at the bakery, Trevor, too, hoped this would be the case. Reluctant, however to rely on the sun’s good graces alone, he contrived to employ the island paper. He rang up Bruce, apologized for involving him at such a late hour, summoned him to the bakery, and promised him a front-page scoop. Bruce, home in his favorite chair, feet propped, watching two moths dance on the rim of a light fixture, hid his excitement poorly as he vowed to rush over right then.

Next, Trevor phoned his wife, Patience, to tell her he would be late. Then he leaned on the bakery counter, his forearms pressed to the glass, and waited for Bruce to show.

On the other side of Port-St. Luke, while Bruce made his way to the bakery by light of the moon, Officers Tullsey and Smart were in conference. From Raoul’s house they had gone straight to the Police Station (stopping only for flying fish sandwiches and chips on the way), where they requested a meeting with Chief of Police Lucas Davenport. Chief Davenport was a commanding and (mostly) serious man, his temperament reflected in the shine of his uniform’s brass buttons, his moral fiber in the well-pressed cloth of his stark black uniform. His fingernails were as trim as his waist and filed as precisely as his case dossiers. He believed in (mostly) by-the-book law enforcement and showed no mercy once he had convinced himself of a criminal’s committed crime.

For this reason, when Arnold and Joshua presented their case, they emphasized Madison’s guilt and minimized their own less-than-by-the-book interrogation. It was a lucky strike indeed that May had kicked them out of her house. Heaven knows the trampled protocol, had she endured them longer than she did! Though neither officer would admit it, each was thinking just this as he sat opposite the imposing chief, whose disposition was as dark as his lapels. He looked from Joshua’s eyes to Arnold’s and back, speaking in a ferocious near-whisper.

“Am I to understand that you as much as accused this suspect without a shred of physical evidence? Without so much as a footprint to put him at the scene of the crime?”

“May I point out the fishing boat, Your Honor. I mean, sir,” Joshua corrected.

“What of it?”

“The man who placed the ad in the
Morning Crier
owns a fishing boat,” Arnold said.

“So do half the men on Oh, if I’m not mistaken.”

“Yes, sir, but half the men on Oh have not just lost a girlfriend under mysterious circumstances,” Joshua said.

“Mysterious circumstances?”

Joshua continued. “Yes, sir. The suspect’s known girlfriend, Rena Baker, is gone. Her whereabouts are, therefore, a mystery.” (He paused after “therefore” for dramatic effect.)

The police chief was confused. “I thought we were discussing the case of the missing lady cyclist and the hit-and-run. Who is Rena Baker?”

“Sir,” Arnold explained, “we believe that Rena Baker is the cyclist, done away with by her boyfriend, Madison Fuller, who then placed an ad in the newspaper for Rena’s replacement.”

Chief Davenport rubbed his chin. “It’s an intriguing theory, I admit.” He thought for a moment then went on. “Have we found the girl’s body?”

“No, sir.”

“Any witnesses?”

“No, sir.”

“A single clue?”

“No, sir.”

“Then it seems to me like you gentlemen are playing a parlor game, not conducting an investigation.”

Joshua opened his mouth to speak but the Chief silenced him with a raised hand and went on. “What’s more, a guilty man may walk free because of your clumsiness.”

“Sir?” Joshua said, offended. “Clumsiness?”

“Clumsiness,” the Chief repeated. “Thanks to you, our prime suspect has been tipped off. He knows now to get rid of the evidence. And, thanks to you, he has all the time in the world to do it. While we sit here chatting, he’s probably burning her clothes and tossing her body into the sea.”

“What do you suggest—?”

Before Arnold could finish his thought, Chief Davenport had ordered the officers to write up a full report and to complete the forms for a search warrant. He wanted them back at the Fuller house by sunrise.

15

I
did say that Raoul Orlean was known for his eccentricities. The night Officers Tullsey and Smart pleaded their case to Police Chief Davenport was a case in perfect point. Although Raoul, for years, had refused to entertain the notion of island magic, he was starting to re-think his position on island luck; it struck him, as he connected the missing Rena Baker to the R. Baker on his wall who needed finding, that had the police shown up at his house any earlier than they did, there may well have been enough daylight for them to catch sight of the incriminating message on his two-hued cottage wall. If such a thing as island luck did exist, then, Raoul didn’t want to push
his
. Wasting not a minute, he abandoned his dinner plate, changed his shirt, and strapped a bright light onto his head.

Were Raoul married to anyone but Ms. Lila, this sort of behavior would have triggered no end of marital discord and culminated, no doubt, in a trip to the psychiatric hospital at the edge of Port-St. Luke. Ms. Lila knew better, and when she saw Raoul emerge from their bedroom like a miner from a hole, all she said was, “I’ll feed your pigeon to Fragile.”

Fragile was Ms. Lila’s dog, the third one to be named so over the course of nearly two decades of married life. Like her predecessors, Number Three (as Raoul liked to call her) was small and fearful and rarely made a peep (let alone a bark) or left Ms. Lila’s side. Most days Fragile accompanied Ms. Lila to work, where she (the dog) watched her (Ms. Lila) from the vantage point of a low Medieval European History shelf (which, as a rule, the islanders rarely consulted), and where Ms. Lila had placed a satin pillowcase stuffed with feather down and stitched tightly shut.

While Ms. Lila used her fingers to separate the meat from the tiny bird-bones and Fragile panted anxiously at her feet, Raoul collected his paint and brushes and went outside to cover the anonymous message painted on the house. He decided that, if it were indeed evidence, he was better off to cover it up than to let the police get the faintest wind of it. They would turn his house into People’s Exhibit heaven-knew-what and make a terrible mess of his yard, all the while failing to decipher the message’s true intent. Not only that, they might somehow twist things around and turn him into a suspect. He could never find Rena Baker if he landed himself behind bars.

Raoul couldn’t help but wonder if just on Oh, or if everywhere, innocent men were forced to take up paintbrushes in the night to protect their innocence. Surely somewhere, on Killig maybe, they were more civilized than this! As he painted by the light of the moon and the lamp on his head, Raoul thought again about Rena and Madison and, especially, about the police. Raoul knew he wouldn’t get to sleep unless he got some answers first, and there were only two places on Oh to find those: the bakery or the Belly. Tonight, though, the answers Raoul was looking for had “BAKER” written all over them.

As Raoul cleaned himself up to go to sniffing for clues at Trevor’s, and Chief Davenport finished up with Arnold and Joshua and their witless policing, Trevor found himself in a battle of wits with Bruce. He told Bruce what he had learned from Madison about the officers’ bogus investigation, based on which they had decided Rena Baker was the missing girl from the bike.

“Rena Baker? Who’s she?” Bruce looked up from the notepad where he was jotting down Trevor’s every word.