Away with the Fishes (4 page)

“If we knew that we wouldn’t be here puzzling over a mashed-up bike in flour dust at midnight, would we?” Trevor told him.

As a matter of fact, it was hardly eleven-thirty, but they were indeed standing in front of Trevor’s Bakery, gazing perplexed into
the back of the bakery truck at the bicycle the boys had carried home. Randolph wanted to get it out, but Raoul thought it best to photograph the bike as it was, just once-removed from the scene of the crime, not twice.

“What crime?” Branson asked. “The boys said they looked for clues and there weren’t any.”

“Since when does no clue mean no crime?” Raoul asked, though it was more an observation than a question.

“Don’t the police have cameras? Maybe we should just call the police,” Branson suggested. In response, Trevor looked knowingly at Raoul and did something of a cough and a snort combined. It was the sound he made whenever he wished to remind Branson that his years off Oh had rubbed away a few layers of islander varnish.

“The police? They’ll fill out a dozen forms, cite me for covering the evidence in flour, and call in experts from Killig who’ll file a report.” (Killig is Oh’s island neighbor, known for its rum and for robbing Oh of a lucrative pineapple trade.) Though Raoul counted himself among Oh’s government ranks and almost took offense at Trevor’s characterization, over the years he had witnessed more than one pickle at the hands of the Island Police, and so he held his tongue.

Trevor cough-snorted again and went on. “Then
our
police will file a report about
their
report and before you know it, the trail’s gone cold.”

“What trail?” Branson asked.

“The trail from the bike to its rider,” Trevor said with a bit too much glee.

Though Branson listened to his best friend sort out the islanders’ troubles every evening at the bakery, he forgot how much
Trevor fancied a really good riddle. Which is what the mystery of the mangled bicycle was becoming.

“Have it your way,” Branson said and let his hands fall to his legs with a loud slap. It was the sound
he
made whenever he wished to
acknowledge
his thin islander veneer (a Bowles hallmark, alas, this thinness). Which was not so thin, mind you, that he didn’t guess Trevor’s ulterior motive for involving the
Morning Crier
.

Trevor wanted to stir up talk, a foolproof island remedy for any island problem. In this, too, Raoul agreed with him. Though Raoul himself was a man of few words, and much preferred the permanency of those printed in his library books, he had long since discovered the power of some old-fashioned island gossip.

Bruce arrived shortly after (he only lived a few minutes away on foot) and began to assemble his reportage of dog-eared notepad pages on which he scribbled Randolph’s and Jarvis’s account, and snapshots of the bike from every angle. Raoul and Trevor finally allowed the removal of the bike remains from the truck, and Bruce photographed them upright, too, or as close to upright as the boys could hold them.

“If you don’t mind, Trevor, I’ll get a start on the story here, while it’s all fresh.” Bruce tapped his temple with his index finger and cleared some space on the counter. “I might need to ask the boys for more details as I go along.”

“Suit yourself,” Trevor said. “We have to wait for Ernest anyway.”

Wait they did, Trevor, his son Randolph, Jarvis the bus conductor, Branson, and Raoul, in silence, seated on the low concrete
step outside the bakery. Randolph and Jarvis, still shaken by their discovery, drank beer from sweaty brown bottles with slippery labels. Trevor drew with his fingers in the dirt between his feet, and Branson stared at the moon, fuller-faced than any he could remember for quite some time. He half-noticed that the tree-frogs and crickets, too, chirped louder than they had in weeks.

Only Raoul’s mind was racing. He was troubled, he was. By the hot-pink message that had sent him scrambling to the bakery, by the news of Bruce’s anonymous ad, by the bent and twisted bicycle the baker’s son had found in the road. It seemed a terrific coincidence that bikes were turning up in newspapers and on shortcuts alike, or that Bruce and Raoul should both receive unsigned letters in the space of two days. As much as Raoul hated to admit it, it seemed that Trevor had got it right. Oh was wide awake, and the rainy moon was just the beginning. Unless—and Raoul thought this the better guess by far—the rain was the only
real
coincidence and he could find some connection between the BAKER, the bicycle, and the bashful bachelor hungry for a wife.

While Raoul wondered how to go about such a strange and formidable undertaking, his head a-buzz with more questions than answers, Ernest Peachtree pulled up to the bakery. His noisy exhaust pipe battled the reggae tune that poured from his truck’s radio, the cacophony accentuated by hoots of his horn.

“Good night, all. Good night!” he shouted from the open window as he wildly swung the vehicle into the small lot in front of the bakery. He cut the motor and hopped out. Jarvis stood to greet him. “Thanks, man. Good of you to help,” he said.

“Doesn’t sound like Dodger, getting himself stuck in a ditch,” Ernest answered. “What happened?”

“He listened to the police, that’s what.”

“Police?” Ernest was confused.

“I’ll explain it on the way,” Jarvis said as he patted him on the back. “Let’s go rescue the bus.”

“Hold up!” Ernest said. “Trevor, you got a bun or something? I’m hungry.”

They all went inside and Trevor gave Ernest warm bread with some sausages from a tin.

“Bruce! What are you doing here?” Ernest asked cheerfully, when he saw Bruce at work over his notepad. It struck him, then, that the presence of Raoul Orlean there, at that hour, was unusual as well. “What’s going on?” Ernest asked, filled suddenly with more worry than cheer.

“Randolph and Jarvis found a bike in the road and Bruce is writing a story about it for the paper,” Trevor explained.

“You mean a lost and found kind of thing?” asked Ernest.

“Something like that,” Bruce said, with a strange smile on his lips. Strange enough that Trevor and Branson exchanged a puzzled look, and Raoul’s fly pitched in his head.

“Jarvis will tell you the whole story on the way. Go ahead and get Dodger now. I’ll wait up for you here,” Trevor said.

“Wait!” Bruce shouted, waving his tattered notepad in the air and following after Ernest. “Can you drop me at the
Crier
first? I want to get this in tomorrow’s edition.”

“Sure. Let’s roll.”

The rest of that night went uneventfully enough (what happened in the morning was far more intriguing). Ernest and Jarvis found Dodger asleep in his bus and pulled the bus from the ditch.
The vehicle was undamaged, so once freed, Dodger was up and running. He took Jarvis home and then went home to bed himself. Raoul went home, too, where he had some explaining to do to Ms. Lila, about his whereabouts that evening and his painting that day. Back at the bakery, Randolph, Trevor, and Branson played dominoes until Ernest returned. When he did, they re-examined the evening’s events all over again (the ad in the
Morning Crier
, the night’s rain, Dodger’s bus, the breadfruit, the bicycle, Bruce) in light of Ernest Peachtree’s new and fresh perspective.

Little did they know, an even fresher one was taking shape inside the grimy-windowed newspaper offices a few doors down the road.

Ah, Bruce! His journalistic integrity as in need of a dusting as was the floury bike!

If you’re wondering how he could have made such a mess of the facts, you needn’t. He would tell you it wasn’t a mess at all, but a calculated and pointedly crafted interpretation of the events. He too was a believer in the island philosophy that talk leads to truths—and to Bruce it didn’t matter if the talk was triggered by a few little black-and-white lies.

7

T
hough Raoul Orlean was not a big believer in luck, of the good kind or the bad, even
he
had to admit what a stroke of good fortune it was to find Ms. Lila softly snoring under the sheets as he tiptoed into the bedroom. Raoul had had an exhausting day. He had painted one whole side of the cottage, crept through the bush for clues, strained his brain on a rosy-pink riddle, and stayed at Trevor’s Bakery far later than he had planned, lending his official expertise to the evening’s ado. His head ached from the fly that taunted him, his hands itched from the solvent he had used to clean them, and the last thing he wanted to do was explain to his wife why he hadn’t managed to “get a first coat on all the way round,” or why one of the cottage walls was covered with letters. Heaving a sigh of relief, and thanking his lucky stars before he could stop himself (he was on principle against such superstitious practices), Raoul slid gently into bed alongside her and immediately fell asleep.

When he awoke, Ms. Lila’s side of the bed was empty. She was already up and at her morning’s ablutions and duties, and in the easy quiet of the bedroom, Raoul stretched and smiled, calm and rested. It wasn’t long, however, before the events of the previous
day came to mind—the graffiti, the bakery, the bike, the bachelor fisherman. When they did, Raoul was filled with a sluggish, heavy dread, his predilection for truths-plain-as-noses-on-faces prodding the fly in his head to a frenzy.

“Good morning,” his wife greeted him, as he dragged himself into the kitchen and slumped into a chair. “What’s the matter with you? Too much to drink last night?”