Bodies and Sole by Hilary MacLeod Page A

was Moira Toombs. Hy figured Moira must have set it up.
    The knowledge that Ian was a Facebook innocent added to Hy’s guilt about Finn, but didn’t change her intention to welcome him to The Shores.
    www.theshores200.com
    The newspapers of the day say the fire that killed one of the Sullivan brothers was “an accident.” The villagers say it was murder. They say one started the fire to deliberately kill the other, because he wanted the house. It had happened before in that family, brothers squabbling over ownership, ending in fratricide. They say the Sullivan house is built on blood.
    On the morning of Moira’s wedding, in the front room of the Toombs residence, Hy transformed her into an exotic creature, in the silky sole blouse, shimmering salmon skirt and beautiful blue beaded necklace. Hy had enjoyed the makeover, but the big reward came when Moira opened the china cabinet and the banged-up cigarette case and gave the ancestral letter to Hy.
    â€œFor the book,” she said.
    Moira stood, for fear of damaging her outfit, the whole time while Hy slipped into her bridesmaid’s dress.
    The bride’s outfit had changed, but Hy was wearing the same dress as the year before, when the marriage ceremony on the beach had been interrupted. She’d had time to make it more flattering, but it’s hard for a redhead to work with purple. She was wearing the dress with gumboots. That was even less flattering. She would put on the requisite heels for the wedding, but the wharf was slippery with fish oil and water and she didn’t want to fall and ruin her dress.
    It was a typical Big Bay morning, with a Scotch mist seeping across the wharf, that fine mist Red Island reserved for special outdoor occasions.
    The setting wasn’t anywhere near what Moira had imagined from the pages of Cosmo . Thanks to Marlene, a half-dozen of the fish shacks were freshly painted, although the colours chosen looked more garish than picturesque. The Scotch mist had moistened the wooden decking, which was slick with seagull scat as well. At the head of the pier, the fishermen had erected a canopy for the ceremony, a green army tarp that was flapping in the wind and refusing to allow flowers to be attached to it. They lay where the wind had thrown them, in sad-looking bunches on the dock.
    The dock was lined on either side with window boxes, whose flowers had suffered an overnight beating from the wind and rain. They drooped miserably – purple and pink petunias ragged and splotched with fading colour; lobelia dragging across the wood planks, beaten into the boards and unable to rise to the day. Only the marigolds stood up bravely, splotches of chirpy orange soldiering on through the weather.
    The guests – the entire village had been invited – hadn’t ventured onto the wharf. They stood gathered around in the gravel parking lot, some with arms aloft, holding onto umbrellas that kept flipping inside out. Others were sitting on their tailgates. The villagers knew they wouldn’t be able to hear much, but they could see, and that was just fine. They’d all been to so many weddings they could have officiated as well as the Reverend Rose. The reverend and Frank were already standing, shivering, at the end of the pier, where the ceremony was to take place in a few moments.
    Hy was glad of her boots, because she was barely onto the wharf when she stepped onto a pile of gull poo.
    â€œYech, gross.” She hopped about on one foot, grabbing at the soiled boot and looking at the bottom. “Gross.” She put the foot down and walked gingerly to Cat’s, to clean it off. She left gumboot prints all the way along the dock.
    Moira arrived, driven by Ian in his truck. She was smirking, delighted at the opportunity to spend time with Ian, to be escorted by him, even though she was getting married within minutes to Frank.
    She was also fully convinced of herself as an Indian princess, and alighted