Sébastien had picked up his own car from her driveway and gone back to the auberge to phone Maude and end their toxic relationship. Feeling both saddened and relieved, he had driven down to the fish market; it was about time he started those culinary experiments of his.
‘How about lobster for dinner?’
Érik Lefebvre was certainly on board with that idea. Joaquin watched his son carry the bags to the kitchen, then return with a bottle of tequila and three glasses. He put the glasses on the table, opened the bottle and poured three generous measures. Sébastien raised one of the glasses to his father, who had already raised his. Lefebvre followed suit, grabbing the third and clinking glasses with Moralès senior and junior.
‘Yuck! Call that a drink? It’s gross.’
The detective looked at his son, his eyes filled with emotion. ‘Why don’t you put some music on for us, chiquito?’
Sébastien nodded while Lefebvre rinsed his mouth out with beer.
Clément Cyr knew that Jimmy Roberts and the Babin brothers were poaching with Angel’s boat. He knew they’d be hanging around the wharf like a bad smell and their prints would be all over the lobster trawler. That was probably why the three of them had been so insistent to join the search efforts – otherwise, how else would they explain the marks of their presence aboard the Close Call II?
But Leeroy Roberts was the man the murderer wanted to cast under suspicion. He wanted to make sure the finger was pointed at his father-in-law, and the inheritance clause in the loan contract he had made Angel sign would do the job nicely. Clément knew that if he waited another week before putting his plan into action, he himself would naturally fall under suspicion, because he would have been accused of killing his wife to inherit her boat. So he had decided to strike as soon as Angel had finished paying off her loan, but before the contract technically expired. He had calculated everything, from the tides and currents to the note Angel had left for him a few weeks earlier, which he had tucked away somewhere and brought out to show the investigators when his wife was reported missing.
The men drank in silent contemplation.
‘Do you think she woke up – Angel – when she heard the splash of the old wooden trap hitting the water?’ Lefebvre asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Moralès replied.
Had she opened her eyes? Had she looked at the sea and the rope tied around her legs and known she was going to die?
‘Well I suppose if she had, she would have put up a fight, eh?’
Moralès cringed. Some couples went strange ways. They might seem like a solidly built house, but at their very foundation they were destroying one another, oblivious to the devastation unfolding before their eyes. Some were a train wreck happening in slow motion, never realising they could turn onto a different track before they went off the rails. Had Angel been one of those people who resigned themselves to their fate? Had she known her husband was both head over heels in love with her and obsessed by the idea of killing her?
The detective wanted to say no. But he had his doubts. Because Angel Roberts had chosen her destiny. She had chosen a life at sea, and she’d had the guts to dive to the frigid depths and retrieve her traps when her lines were cut. Because she loved her brother enough to turn a blind eye to him using her boat for poaching. He looked at his son, who had filled the air with music and brought the sea into the kitchen. Because she was loyal.
Outside, they heard the sound of a car door closing.
‘It’s Simone.’ Lefebvre got up, not so much to greet her as to get more drinks.
Moralès turned to the window again and gazed out to sea. The voice of Celia Cruz piped louder from the kitchen.
Perhaps that was why Angel had celebrated their wedding anniversaries with such gusto – to mark one more year of overcoming her husband’s delusions. And she had stayed with him, in spite of the ever-present threat, blinded by the mirage of her love, by those photos of their travels and camping trips she had clung to like fool’s silver.
Simone made her entrance, Érik brought more beers over and Sébastien emerged from the kitchen. For a fleeting moment, Joaquin’s thoughts flashed to Sarah.
Angel had known her husband was up to something. Moralès was sure of it. Because after a certain amount of time with someone, you come to sense what’s hidden in their silence. You can sense when love becomes nothing more than an illusion that scatters and dissolves like the shimmering sequins of the moon on the water. You can sense when your life partner isn’t going to come out and join you, not on the Gaspé Peninsula and not anywhere else. You know when there’s no sense in spinning yarns to one another anymore. You know when the condo isn’t just a pied-à-terre in the city. You know when the time has come to sign the divorce papers.
Moralès moved the case file to the window sill to make room for the others to gather around his table.
‘Hey, Simone. One of the guys at the wharf told me you’d got a transfer to the Magdalen Islands. Is it true?’ Lefebvre asked.
Moralès felt his jaw drop to the floor.
‘Yes. For the winter.’
‘Oh, are you going to join the seal hunt?’
She threw him a look of horror. ‘I hope not…’
‘Ah, but you’re not sure.’
Suddenly, a phone rang. Lefebvre gave a start, thinking it was his. ‘I thought it might be my doctor. I asked her for an urgent medical consultation. You can’t take any chances. What if the star pitcher for the Sainte-Thérèse Mariners suffered a serious injury in his act of daring heroism?’
He sulked while Sébastien went to pick up the cordless phone at the reception desk.
‘Mr Sébastien? Let me tell you, this is Renaud Boissonneau on the line.’ The waiter from the bistro in Caplan could barely contain his excitement.
‘Renaud? How did you know I was here?’
‘You told me yourself, you’d be at the Auberge Le Noroît. Now let me tell you, I’ve got big news for you.’
Sébastien took the phone into the kitchen to see if the water was close to boiling.
‘I’m all ears, Renaud.’
‘Well, Cyrille Bernard’s sister went to see the notary, and it looks like it’s Inspector Moralès who gets to inherit his boat!’
Sébastien was flabbergasted. He turned to look at his father through the porthole in the kitchen door. Joaquin saw him staring at him, saw the look on his face, and went into the kitchen to see what was going on.
‘Ah, and let me tell you, I’ve got an idea. If you like, the three of us could run it as a floating snack bar – the inspector at the helm, you in the kitchen, and me taking people’s orders. What do you think?’
‘But where would we find the customers, Renaud? Would we just pluck them out of the water?’
‘Ah, yes. I didn’t think about that.’
Sébastien heard the phone being muffled and Renaud’s voice addressing the people around him in the bistro. ‘Where would we find the customers?’ Laughter erupted in the background on the other end of the line.
‘Renaud, if it sets your mind at ease, I’ll come by the bistro next week to give you a dance class, all right?’
‘Ah, well let me tell you just one thing, now that’s a good idea.’