Amanda Doucette Mystery 3-Book Bundle. Barbara Fradkin

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.”

      Chapter Eleven

      After another bone-jarring rollercoaster ride, they retrieved Chris’s truck and drove on to Roddickton to talk to the detachment commander. Roddickton had only three RCMP officers who were responsible for a vast swath of remote wilderness, and one was on a training course, but the commander, Corporal Willington, seemed thrilled at the possibility of genuine intrigue. He was a chubby, jovial man with a loud, infectious laugh who plied them with tea and filled every spare moment with chatter while they awaited instructions from the investigator in St. Anthony about the seizure of the boat. It was nearly an hour before the order came for Chris to return to protect the scene until reinforcements arrived the next day to remove it.

      “If Sergeant Poker-Ass thinks I’m camping out on those sharp rocks with the bugs and the bears, he can dream on,” Chris muttered once they were safely out of the station. “We’ll set up camp on the village heath; that’s close enough.”

      By the time they returned to Grandois, the long shadows of the mountains had stolen over the village, and the salt air had chilled. They set up their tents in the meadow and were just about to cook dinner when Bobby arrived with an invitation to dinner from his parents.

      Grabbing a bottle of wine, Chris and Amanda headed gratefully to the white bungalow perched on the slope above the cove. The kitchen was clearly the centre of their house. It was large, welcoming, and redolent with the smells of frying fish and cabbage. The wooden table, which bore the scars and burns of decades, easily fit ten people. Bobby’s mother, a stout woman of boundless energy and talk, whirled around the kitchen tending the stove, fixing tea, and piling up platters of fish, potatoes, cabbage, and fried salt pork.

      “This looks fabulous,” Amanda said as she helped to set out plates. “Thank you so much.”

      “A real Newfoundland meal,” the woman said. “Nudding fancy, mind, but it’ll fill you up.”

      As they ate, it seemed as if the entire village drifted in, carrying cakes, berry pies, and bottles of blueberry wine, so that by the time the meal was finished, the room was packed. People laughed and traded quips so rapidly that Amanda struggled to understand every third word. She could tell from Chris’s expression that he was equally befuddled.

      Then someone produced a harmonica and a bottle of screech, Bobby’s father dug out a guitar, and soon the whole house vibrated to the beat of Celtic rock. Kitchen spoons and pot lids became percussion instruments while the wood floor shook with the beat of dancing feet.

      “It’s a kitchen time!” Bobby’s father shouted. “In the old days, before all this TV and Internet, there was nudding to do on the long, cold nights but play songs and tell stories.”

      Amanda’s first shot of screech nearly tore her throat out, but by the third, she was tossing it back like a native. Chris was keeping up too. As one song finally came to an end, he reached over and took the guitar. Tucking it into the crook of his arm, he ran his long fingers across the strings in a rich, warm chord. Once, twice, and then with a grin, he broke into a rollicking rhythm and began to sing. Amanda recognized the melodies of Slavic folk music. The villagers hooted and began to stomp their feet. Before long they were joining in the chorus even though they didn’t understand a word.

      Amanda’s mind flashed back to similar experiences in Africa, where the village gathered in the common, and drums and flutes were magically produced. Music is a universal language of joy and community, she thought. The melodies and instruments varied, but they all mimicked the beat of the heart.

      It was past midnight by the time she and Chris staggered out of Bobby’s kitchen. Their voices were hoarse and their heads spun. She stumbled in the darkness and linked her arm through his to keep her balance.

      “You’re quite the balladeer, you,” she murmured.

      “Country folk have to do something on those cold Saskatchewan winters,” he laughed. “But I haven’t sung those songs in a long time.”

      Swaying slightly, she gazed out across the rolling meadow, where pinpoints of light still glowed in some of the houses. A thousand replies sprang to her mind, but they were all too intimate. I’m drunk, she thought. Really drunk. And in danger of doing something stupid.

      Instead, she hugged his arm briefly before drawing away. “Well, if you’re ever fired from the RCMP, there’s a job waiting for you on stage,” she muttered before marching resolutely on ahead to her tent.

      The police reinforcements weren’t due until late the next morning, but even so, Amanda and Chris were barely coherent when a police cruiser towing a trailer pulled into the meadow. A single constable climbed out and greeted Chris with a curt nod.

      “Protesters are still up on the highway at St. Anthony,” he said by way of explanation for his lateness. “Tempers are getting ugly because it’s slowing down the shrimp trucks. The sergeant said he’d send out more help if I asked for it. Plus HQ in St. John’s is interested in having a look.”

      As it turned out, more help wasn’t needed. The constable interviewed the boys and took more photographs of the boat and the footprints before wrapping the boat into a huge plastic tarp with Chris and Amanda’s help and dragging it by ATV back to his trailer. He was gone by mid-afternoon. He’d shared barely an extraneous word with either Chris or Amanda, except to thank Chris for his help and to tell him he was free to continue his holiday.

      “Talkative guy, isn’t he?” Amanda said as they watched the plume of dust from his cruiser trail up the hill. Even with her sunglasses and her hat pulled low over her eyes, the sun seemed too bright.

      “Under orders from Poker-Ass, I’m sure,” said Chris. “But this news will be all up and down the coast by nightfall, if it isn’t already. A boatload of fugitives in this little village? That’ll be a legend told for years. It’ll be a whole ship and a heroic rescue by the time those boys are grown, with songs written about it too.”

      Amanda chuckled, the beat of the kitchen party still thrumming through her body. “I wonder what will happen to them,” she said. “Especially if they’re fugitives from one of those foreign boats. People in most parts of the world don’t realize how vast and desolate the Canadian wilderness can be. There are no roads or villages for miles, no shelter or food unless you make your own.”

      “We know they didn’t show up at Croque, but there are two more villages farther down the coast,” Chris said, spreading the map out on the hood of his truck. “Two more places they might have passed through, if they stick to the coast. I think we should check with the locals at both places. Not just for the fugitives, but also for Phil. If it wasn’t his boat we found, then he might still be looking for one.”

      And getting more and more bitter with every failure, she thought. She leaned over Chris’s shoulder to pinpoint the next village down the coast. Conche. No road connected it directly to the one they were in, so they’d be forced to retrace their route inland to the main highway. More miles on that bone-jarring dirt road.

      “Do you think we can make it to Conche this afternoon?” she asked. “We’ve lost a day with this lifeboat business, and we’re falling farther behind him.”

      He folded the map and glanced at his watch. “Days are still pretty long, so yeah, I think so. Unless the road is even worse than this one.”

      The road was rough, the terrain even more rugged, and the hills steeper, but at the end of the trip, they were rewarded with a spectacular jewel of a village nestled in a bay between towering green mountains. The village of Conche was larger and more settled than Grandois, with a grocery store