Читать книгу Amanda Doucette Mystery 3-Book Bundle - Barbara Fradkin - Страница 14

Driving back into St. Anthony the next morning, Chris and Amanda encountered a traffic jam leading to the main turnoff. A small knot of union protesters was stopping cars to hand out flyers. SAVE LOCAL JOBS and FAIR QUOTAS, their signs said.

Once they had cleared the protest, Amanda and Chris wove down the narrow harbour road to the main pier. The large trawler Sam had mentioned was still there, a long, battered shark festooned with nets and cables. Amanda estimated it was nearly two hundred feet long and loomed thirty feet above the water, dwarfing the smaller local shrimp boats at either end. It looked as if it was undergoing maintenance; crew scurried over the wharf and up onto the decks, checking equipment.

The name ACADIA SEAFOOD COMPANY was stencilled on its hull and a Canadian flag flew above the top deck. When Amanda tuned her ear to the crew’s conversations, she could hear nothing in a foreign tongue. Chris checked in with the harbourmaster and asked to be directed to the trawler’s captain. While they waited, he squinted out toward the sea. “I wonder if I’ll get further showing my badge, or not showing it.”

“If he’s got anything to hide, even if it’s got nothing to do with Phil, he’ll clam up at the sight of your badge.” She grinned. “A lesson I learned on my travels.”

He pulled a sad face. “And here I am, such a nice guy. I’d even rescue a fly from a spider’s web.”

Boots clomped purposefully along the concrete behind them, and they both turned to see a short, stubby man with sausage-like limbs and a barrel chest that strained the zipper of his jacket. He wore a grease-stained ball cap and mirrored sunglasses against the morning sun glancing off the bay. Behind the glasses, his face was inscrutable.

“Captain Boudrot is not here. I’m the chief mate, and I’m on a tight schedule,” he said, “so make it quick. Those fucking picketers have thrown everything off.”

He had addressed Chris, so Chris took the lead and explained that they were looking for a friend and his son, who had mixed up their rendezvous location.

“We were supposed to go out on a boat together and I understand he came to talk to your captain a couple of days ago.”

The man’s expression barely changed, but Amanda sensed a curtain falling, shutting them out. He shook his head. “This is a big harbour. Lots of boats come and go. But this is a shrimp trawler, not a pleasure boat. The boat tours run from over there.” He flicked a disdainful hand toward a wharf across the bay.

“Thank you,” Chris said, without even a glance in that direction. “But we were planning some deep-sea fishing, not a boat tour. I’m told he asked about that possibility.”

“I doubt it. The captain’s gone down the coast to pick up a new sonar.”

When Amanda dug out her phone to show him the photos of Tyler and Phil, he barely gave them a cursory glance. “We don’t do recreational fishing, either, even if it was in season, which it’s not. You charter those boats from over there too.”

“I understand that,” she said, “but did you see them at all, sir? We’re really at a loss here.”

He sighed and tilted his head at the photo thoughtfully. Chris kept quiet, perhaps recognizing that her pleading approach might net better results. “No, I didn’t see them. Well, maybe the kid, running down the wharf.”

“Where were they heading? Over to the boat tours?”

“Could be. I had better things to do than watch.”

The boat tour office was deserted, as was the wharf in front of it. A notice stuck to the window listed their hours as 8:30 to 9:00 a.m., when the boat tour departed, but also gave a phone number underneath for inquiries and reservations. Amanda phoned, but the woman who answered had no record of anyone named Phil Cousins having booked a tour. Just as Amanda was searching for her next question, a pickup truck pulled up outside the office, and a man climbed out. Handsome, confident, and in charge, he asked if he could help.

Amanda trotted out her usual explanation and showed him the photo. His eyes lit up. “I remember that kid. He really wanted a boat tour. We’re still offering a half-day whale-watching and coastal tour every morning if the weather is good and we get enough people. But the dad was having none of it. He was going to go talk to the captain of that trawler across the harbour there. Left the kid on the wharf feeding the seagulls. A few minutes later he stormed back over here and said they were leaving. This is crap, I remember him saying. People are crap. That shut the kid up in a hurry.”

“Did you notice where they went?” Chris asked. “Or did they mention it?”

“No, just away from here. Away from people, he said. He was in some black mood, that’s certain.”

Chris and Amanda walked back to their vehicles in silence. From his puckered expression, Amanda suspected he shared her worry. They now had more questions than ever.

Had the chief mate lied about the captain speaking to Phil, or had Phil in fact talked to someone else in the crew? What had put him into such a foul mood? Was he merely angry about being turned down or was there some deeper reason? After years in developing countries, Phil had learned to laugh at minor disappointments, but these days, who could predict what triggers would plunge him into despair?

And the most pressing question of all, where to now? “Away from people,” Phil had said. That was their only clue.

The protest had heated up by the time they reached the main intersection again. The Fish, Food & Allied Workers union had formed a blockade across the road and were allowing traffic through only once they’d delivered their pamphlet and speech. Amanda glanced at the pamphlet before stuffing it into her pocket. LOCAL COMPANIES MEAN LOCAL JOBS, the headline proclaimed, with a photo of one of the stubby little shrimp boats she’d seen at wharves all along the coast.

The three officers from the local RCMP detachment, barely recovered from last night’s discovery of the body, were struggling to calm the angry nerves of union members and local residents alike, as well as tourists caught in the middle.

Chris angled his cap low and slouched in his seat as they inched by. Afterwards he shot her a sheepish grin. “I’m damned if I’m going to give up more of my time off to police that hornet’s nest. Time to get out of Dodge. Which way? North toward Cape Bauld, or south toward Roddickton?”

Amanda had been in charge of studying the map that morning while Chris, who was proving a much more adept campfire cook than her, served up their delicious breakfast of fried eggs and sausage. To the south, except for a few scattered fishing villages, vast swaths of coastline lay empty and untouched, even by road.

If Phil was trying to escape the toxic company of people, he might look no further. “South,” she said.

Chris clambered down from his truck to stretch the kinks from his long legs and study the gravel side road that led to the remote coastal village of Croque. They could see the potholes on the road from here.

“How many kilometres of that?”

She snorted. “That’s a fabulous road! You should see some of the roads in Africa. They take your tires out at least once a month.”

Chris patted the hood of his truck ruefully. “Sorry, baby. I promise you a nice new wheel alignment when we get back home.”

Amanda climbed down to join him, taking off her straw hat to shake her long hair loose. The sky was blue, the sun was deliciously warm, and the green hills beckoned. Perfect for an open-air ride.

“Let’s leave it here and ride on the back of the Rocket! It’s only twenty-five kilometres to Croque, and it might prove to be a complete waste of time and gas.”

“No helmet.”

“Live dangerously.”

“Temptress.” His eyes twinkled as he eyed her bike, but she could see the doubt and hesitation in his expression. “I just bought it,” he mumbled sheepishly. “I haven’t even paid for the logo on the hood. But there’s not much room on the back there.”

“Nonsense. Overseas, we rode two to a bike all the time. You should see what the locals fit on their bikes. Whole families and all their furniture! I won’t even notice you.”

As her words hung in the air, she felt her face grow warm. Embarrassed, she looked away. After a brief deliberation, he moved his truck onto a gravel patch off the road, parked it in the shade, and together they wrestled her motorcycle and trailer down the ramp. After a few final tender swipes at the dust on the truck’s fender, he climbed aboard behind her. It was a snug fit. She felt the warmth of his body against hers, and the grip of his thighs. Heat rose within her and she was grateful that her helmet and sunglasses hid her blushing face. As she revved the engine, Chris hung his large hands awkwardly at his sides, but at the first pothole, he instinctively clutched her waist before jerking back.

She laughed. “It’s safer to hang on,” she yelled into the wind. “I promise to respect your virtue.”

His arms slid around her again as cautiously as if he were grasping a gossamer web. They bounced and jolted down the road, leaning into the rollercoaster of twists and turns. A ridge of rounded coastal mountains loomed ahead, dense with spruce and fir. The road picked a path through it, climbing and twisting. After an apparent eternity, they began to spot small fenced gardens and stacks of firewood along the roadside, sure signs that they were approaching a village. A picturesque cemetery appeared on their right, well kept and surrounded by a low picket fence. Farther on, the first modest village houses were tucked into the hills.

Amanda had read up on Croque that morning while Chris made breakfast. She knew that it had begun as a French naval station in the mid-seventeenth century to supply and protect the French fishing vessels that fished the coastal waters of western Newfoundland. Three centuries later, the government of France still maintained the small cemetery where its officers had been buried.

The village itself was small, less than two dozen houses scattered like faded children’s blocks over the hills. Despite the handful of trucks and cars parked outside, some of them and the washing hung on the lines, it had an abandoned air. As they rumbled through the village, Amanda’s heart sank. The hills were gentle, and the ocean, when they finally caught a glimpse of it through the buildings, was a small inland fjord barely wider than a river. A few small fishing boats were tied up to a weather-beaten wharf. There were no wild and rugged cliffs here, no roaring surf.

And no sign of Phil’s truck anywhere.

She parked the bike by a sign commemorating the French station, let Kaylee out, and they all waded down through the overgrown grass to the old wharf. All that was left of the grand French presence was a group of ageing wooden stages propping each other up like a row of drunken sailors. The little fjord sparkled serenely in the sun.

“Okay, that was a waste of time,” Chris muttered, surreptitiously massaging his rear. “Hard to imagine this little place was once a bustling naval station.”

She had to admit he was right. Driving in, she had seen a community centre of sorts, but no other sign of commerce or prosperity. But she heard the sound of hammering nearby and climbed the slope to find an old man repairing the front steps of his home. Quizzically, he watched her approach, as if strangers rarely ventured to this remote little relic of history.

Kaylee raced up to him and dropped a piece of old driftwood at his feet, breaking the awkward moment. The old man laughed as he threw it for her, and she was off, a flash of red through the tall fronds of grass.

“We’re looking for our friend,” Amanda said, producing her cellphone photos and repeating her story about the mix-up in meeting place. As she spoke, another old man emerged from his house and the two of them had a brief exchange. She couldn’t understand a word of it, but could hear the doubt in their voices.

“Yeah, they come by,” one of them said finally, “but there’s not much here. No place for them to stay, no boats for rent, neither. Only fifteen families here now, and most of them old-timers. The young ones are gone away to work. We told your friend to try Grandois just up the coast.”

Another gravel road, as it turned out, that branched off at Croque and led to the open ocean farther north. On the map, Grandois looked even smaller than Croque, so Amanda was delighted when they topped the hill by a little white church and saw a postcard-perfect fishing village spread out below them. Boats of all shapes and sizes lay on the pebble shore or bobbed against the wharf, and gaily painted houses were sprinkled in the meadow that curved around the cove. A few vehicles were parked in front of the houses, a woman was hanging out her laundry, and another played with her baby. Amanda spotted a man working on a fishing net on the wharf and headed down the hill toward him. This time Kaylee bounded gleefully after the sandpipers on the shore.

Chris repeated their story about searching for a friend. As he spoke, other men emerged from yards and houses. Soon a small crowd of men in blue jeans and windbreakers had gathered. Their faces were tanned and creviced by years on the open sea.

“Yes, we seen him,” said one. “The man with the young fella. He wanted a boat for a few days to go out to the Grey Islands, but we didn’t have none to spare.”

“Well now, that’s not quite right, Tom,” said another, this one older and greyer. “He didn’t seem like he knew how to skipper a boat and he had no gear, so no one wanted to rent him theirs.”

“I offered to take them out in my boat,” said a third. “Show them around the islands. Still a few whales in the bay, and lots of migrating birds. Gannets, terns, puffins. But he weren’t interested in that.”

“He has some temper on him, your friend,” Tom said. “The young fella was tugging on his arm saying it’s okay, Dad, we can go back to St. Anthony and take that boat tour. But the dad said he had something much more exciting in mind.”

“Even tried to buy my old boat over there,” said the older man, pointing to a small skiff lying in the grass. “I said she hadn’t been in the water for five years and she’d sink like a stone before she got half a mile off shore.”

Amanda shielded her eyes from the glare of the water and stared out to sea. The coastline curved and looped into points and peninsulas, with several small islands within easy view.

“Are those the islands he wanted to visit?” she asked.

“Oh no, m’ dear. Some much bigger ones way out in the ocean. You can’t see them from here.”

She followed his finger but could see nothing but shimmering silver. “How far are they?”

“Oh … a good fifteen, twenty kilometres?”

She shivered. That was a long way to travel in a sinking boat. She fetched her binoculars from her side bag and trained them on the ocean. Even with the powerful magnification, she could see nothing beyond the low-lying points and islands that cluttered the waters in between.

“Nothing but birds there now. Used to be villages on them islands,” said Tom. “Until the government shut them all down and moved everybody to the mainland back in the fifties. My father was born out there, so was Ted here. That was some rugged life, b’y.”

Kaylee had been frolicking along the water’s edge, trying to engage the sandpipers in play. One of the men hurled a stick of driftwood out into the water and she splashed out after it, diving headfirst into the surf and emerging with the stick clamped between her teeth. She raced back to the fisherman and flung it at his feet.

“Oh, now you’re done for!” Chris laughed. “How many hours do you have to spare?”

Another stick, another gleeful dive. Amanda shifted her binoculars to the nearby islands and shoreline beyond the village, searching for signs of habitation. For Phil’s truck. For any clue. The land stood empty and untouched as far as she could see. Nothing but scoured rock, grassy heath, and tangles of spruce, battered and misshapen by relentless time.

A twitch of movement shot across the lens. A moose browsing the shore? A bear? She focused harder. Rocks and scrub hid her view, but then the figure emerged again. Two, three, maybe four separate figures, leaping nimbly across the open rock before disappearing behind spruce again.

Human. Running full tilt toward the village. She waited with her binoculars trained until they came into view again. Closer now. A faint shout drifted in on the wind.

Kaylee perked up her ears and turned in the direction of the sound. Spotting the figures, she grabbed her stick and raced toward them. The fishermen turned to watch the figures approach. Running, leaping, flailing over the rocky shore.

“What in the love of …? What have those boys got on their tail?”

Amanda could see now that they were children, gangly-

limbed and fearless on the treacherous rocks. She thought they looked more excited than afraid, but the fishermen were frowning in apprehension. When the boys finally splashed through a shallow tidal pool and came within earshot, Tom held up his hand.

“Where you to, Bobby?”

The lead boy reached them and bent over, panting to catch his breath. Before he could speak, a second one arrived and managed to blurt out, “’Dere be a boat!”

“A boat? Yes, b’y. Das an ocean out there.”

“No!” exclaimed the first boy. “On the shore, washed up in the bush.”

“Lots of stuff washes up on the shore over the years, son.”

“No, Dad! This weren’t there last week when we went clam-digging. And it’s not a fishing boat. More like a lifeboat, with a big hole punched in its side.”

Chris was instantly alert. “What kind of lifeboat?”

The boy shrugged. “Can’t tell, but maybe it’s that boat the cops are looking for.”

Chris was already on the move. “Show me.”

The boat was upside down under an old spruce whose spreading branches shielded it from view until the group was almost upon it. Chris tramped around it, fighting the spiky spruce branches as he looked for a registration number. Amanda could see that a section of the siding had been smashed and broken off where she figured the number should be. Deliberately or victim of the ruthless sea, she wondered?

Beneath her curiosity, dread needled into her gut. What if Phil, in his single-mindedness, had taken this boat, and foundered on the rocks? She wasn’t even sure he had lifejackets, let alone other survival gear. Were he and Tyler lying on the bottom of the sea, or washed up on the shore somewhere farther down?

Chris raised his head to study the stony shore. It was low tide, but the wavering line of broken shells and seaweed clearly marked the high water mark, at least fifteen metres below the boat. His face was a mask of dispassion. “Could the waves wash it up here?”

Bobby’s father shook his head. “There been some big storm surges this summer, but none strong enough to toss the boat that far.”

“Looks like it’s been hidden, then.”

The boys were dancing around, excited now that Chris had identified himself as an RCMP officer, each eager to impress him with their detective skills.

“We never seen anybody,” Bobby said, “but there are footprints in the sand.”

Chris whirled around. “Where?”

“We’ll show you!” The boys raced off.

“Stop!”

The boys froze in place until Chris reached them. “Stay on the rocks and don’t go close. You point out where they are and I’ll check.” As if seeing their disappointment, he smiled. “We don’t want to destroy evidence, do we?”

Amanda called Kaylee over and leashed her so that she wouldn’t add excited dog prints to the scene as well. Together the small posse worked its way farther along the shore, careful to stay on the rocks. Chris bent his head to scrutinize each small patch of silt and mud in the crevices between the rocks. Amanda recognized bird tracks and small mammals, but no humans.

Farther along in a sheltered inlet, a swath of natural sand beach sparkled in the sunlight. Surf had washed seaweed, shells, and other ocean flotsam up to the high tide line. Below that line, the sand was washed smooth and clean, but above it footprints and other gouges were easy to make out. Some were the boot treads of small children, but at the far edge of the beach, larger prints had dug deep holes in the soft sand.

Amanda felt a rush of relief. Whoever this was, they had survived the wreck. Chris signalled for them all to stop while he walked cautiously forward, staying in the soft wet sand below high tide. Amanda watched with frustration and anxiety as he circled the patch of sand, clambered up on the nearby rocks, and took out his camera. He snapped a dozen shots, fiddling with the zoom and the angles, before disappearing over the ridge ahead. Kaylee strained at her leash, mirroring the impatience they all felt. Gulls wheeled overhead and sandpipers returned to capture the minute creatures the waves lapped up. The wind rippled through the low-lying bushes, where bright coral berries nestled among glossy leaves. Amanda idly wondered if they were Newfoundland’s famous partridge berries.

After an apparent eternity, Chris’s tousled head bobbed into view above the ridge and a moment later he came back along the edge of the rocks to the safety of the beach. He signalled Amanda with a slight shake of his head before skirting the footprints and returning to the group.

“No more sign of them. I have to report this boat, but there’s no signal here. The town of Roddickton has the closest RCMP detachment, so we’ll go there and give them these photos. Meanwhile I need to rope off this section of the shore until the police arrive. We have to protect the evidence. It could be our friend and his son, or it could be those potential fugitives.”

He sent two of the boys back to the village for a long length of rope. The other boys had a dozen questions. Will the police bring dogs? A helicopter? Trackers? Can Kaylee track? Chris teased them with bets that Kaylee could find every last ball in the village. Once they realized that he was not going to speculate further, the boys sensed the drama was over and began drifting away. Amanda and Chris were left to the silence of the surf and the gulls.

“What do you think?” she asked.

His brow furrowed unhappily. “I don’t like it. That boat’s not a regular fishing skiff. Possibly a lifeboat, although it’s pretty small to be out on the open sea.”

“Phil might have settled for any boat in the mood he was in.”

He nodded. “But the fugitives were also in what looked like a lifeboat. And they were spotted in the sea only about thirty kilometres north of here.”

“What about the footprints? Could you tell anything from them?”

He nodded. “Two people at least.”

Her eyes widened.

“Both adults, I’d say.”

“But Tyler is eleven. He might be at that age where his feet have outgrown the rest of him.”

“I know.” He gazed into the distance, chewing his lip.

“What? There’s something else, isn’t there.”

“Two things. They could mean anything, but I have a cop’s suspicious mind. First of all, the footprints were barefoot.”

“So? Maybe their shoes were wet.”

“I hope so, because those rocks will shred feet in no time.”

“And second?”

“The village is barely a kilometre to the north, yet they headed south. Away from help. Into the wilderness.”