Amanda Doucette Mystery 3-Book Bundle. Barbara Fradkin
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He shielded his eyes. She could tell he was about to deliver one of his typical shrugs, so she held out the binoculars. “Please.”
His blue eyes rested on her thoughtfully, deeply set in his weathered face. They softened a little. He took the binoculars.
“Too small for a boat,” he said. “Could be part of a boat, but could be nudding. A fallen tree, a piece of old dock. Lots of debris washes up into that arm at high tide.”
“We should check it out.”
For the first time, he grinned at her, showing a classic Newfoundland sense of play. “In the morning, my dear. Time to go back before the bears start thinking about dinner.” As if to reinforce his words, he turned to retrace his steps along the path. Chris turned to follow. Amanda cursed her own impotence. That piece of debris beckoned, so close and yet utterly beyond reach. The sun was sinking deep behind the hills, and they would be in jeopardy themselves if they went out on the water.
Moreover, she acknowledged with a sick feeling, if that was a piece of that boat out there, it might be too late anyway.
“First light?” she called.
Casey waved his arm. “Before first light, my dear.”
True to his word, Casey was down at his wharf readying a little skiff when Amanda crawled out of her tent the next morning. He had already loaded a tool kit, a pile of PFDs, and a tank of gas, and was tinkering with the motor. Mist was slowly wisping off the bay, shimmering pink against the pre-dawn sky. The ocean lay at half tide, and water glistened in pools along the rocky shore. Gulls and gannets swooped overhead.
“You don’t need to do all this, Casey,” she said. “You have work to do, so why don’t we just rent your boat —”
“What, and miss the adventure? And the chance to get away from the wife for a bit?”
Amanda laughed. “Okay, but at least let me pay for the gas.”
Even that offer was met with argument until she put her foot down. Dawn was a faint smudge of peach over the ocean when Casey, Chris, Amanda, and Kaylee piled into the little skiff and headed around the tip of the peninsula into the ocean swell. Amanda sat in the bow, which rose and fell as the boat slammed the waves and sent arcs of spray along the gunnels. Kaylee huddled against her on the narrow seat, her ears flattened and her eyes wide.
The swells softened once they’d rounded the northern tip of the peninsula and passed through the narrows into the back harbour. Casey slowed so they could search the shoreline. The mist had swirled away and visibility was good. Amanda searched with a mixture of hope and dread. Nothing. Nothing but endless rock and brush and spindly spruce struggling up the slopes. An inlet here and there, where gap-toothed shacks and broken wharves lay half-reclaimed by bush. They passed the beach where the boat should have been, but it was still empty. Farther up the bay, the dark shape they had seen in the water yesterday had disappeared. Likely carried out on the tide, Casey said.
Finally Casey steered the boat into a little cove on the opposite shore, where a sagging shed bleached almost white and missing half its roof sat on the edge of the pebbled shore. A skinny wharf of equal vintage wobbled out over the water. Seagulls flapped in hopeful circles.
“Old Stink’s wharf and stage,” Casey shouted over the noise of the motor.
Amanda’s heart sank. There was no sign of the little boat, nor any other boat. Casey guided them into the cove, cut the engine, and let the boat drift toward the wharf.
“Stink’s boat’s gone. Must be out fishing.”
They had passed numerous craft out in the open ocean, and Casey had waved to most of them. “Was his one of the boats we saw?” Amanda asked.
Casey shook his head. “But Old Stink follows his own clock. Been known to go out in the middle of the night just so he don’t have to say hello. He can navigate by the echo of the cliffs, knows every trough and shoal by heart.”
The wharf was within reach, but Casey made no move to grab it. “Not sure there’s much point us going ashore. Nothing here. Maybe your friend planned on walking all the way to Croque.”
“How far is that?” Amanda asked.
“If you’re a crow, twenty kilometres or so. If you’re on foot, maybe two or three times that, through dense bush and bog.”
Kaylee’s growl stopped her mid-thought, seconds before the dog launched herself from the bow of the skiff onto the wharf and ran to shore. Calling to her proved useless. The dog stood on the shoreline, rigidly still and apparently deaf. Casey laughed.
“Don’t think she liked the boat ride.”
Amanda studied Kaylee carefully. The rigid stance and stiff tail suggested threat. “I don’t think it’s that. There’s something on shore.”
“Likely not something we want to meet, then. Let’s get her back in the boat.”
Casey secured the boat and they clambered onto the rickety wharf, which listed dangerously underfoot. Amanda took a deep breath and regretted it instantly. The stench of rot and old fish was suffocating. Casey grinned. “This ain’t nudding compared to his cabin.”
A thin path led from the shore up the slope. Kaylee stood at the entrance to it, her nose sifting the putrid air. Then her hair rose along her back and a low whine sounded in her throat. Before Amanda could reach her, she took off up the path and disappeared into the woods with her nose to the ground. Amanda yelled and scrambled over lichen-covered rocks to keep up.
“Don’t!” Casey shouted.
“But the dog has detected something!” she called back, still running.
“Could be a bear or a moose. You don’t want to go barging up there.”
His protests faded as she plunged up the narrow path. She shouted for Kaylee, as much to alert any bear as to bring the dog back. She was furious, whether at Kaylee’s disobedience or her own fear, she wasn’t sure. Kaylee was nowhere in sight by now. Spruce branches tore at her clothes, and the dew-slicked moss shifted underfoot, forcing her to keep her head down. She didn’t see the cabin until she was almost upon it.
She smelled it first, a fetid swamp of rotting fish and barnyard that wafted on the still air and choked her lungs. She slithered to a stop as the path opened into a clearing cluttered with human presence — an outhouse, a clothesline on which hung a single pair of work pants and a tattered towel, a chopping block surrounded by wood chips, and stacks of spindly firewood. Dominating the middle of the clearing was a hand-operated water pump of the sort she’d seen in developing countries and a wooden rack catching the best of the sun. A drying rack for fish? she wondered.
The cabin itself was little more than a shack that slumped to one side as if about to tumble over. Flakes of whitewash still clung to its bleached siding and its roof was a melange of broken slates and curling shingles. The single window was broken.
Kaylee was standing at the cabin door, her legs stiff and her hackles raised. She gave a low whine as Amanda approached and clipped on her leash. Amanda felt the clutch of familiar, formless dread. Her heart hammered as she stared at the doorknob, paralyzed.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Doucette,” she muttered. “This is a hermit’s cabin in rural Newfoundland. Nothing to fear here.” Nonetheless, her voice quavered when she called out. “Anyone here?”
Silence. An empty, dead silence. She tried the knob and pushed the door, which stuck and fought her as it creaked open a few inches. Kaylee shoved her nose through, whining.
Amanda peered through the gap. Saw the faded linoleum floor, a large table covered with peeling oilcloth, a woodstove, and an old rocking chair. The rocking chair was tipped on its side and it took her a moment to make sense of the mess on the floor — a thousand shards of glittering glass.
And in the middle of the glass, an axe with an old wooden handle and a filthy blade stained brownish