Chapter 33
MARTA
Marta hadn’t had a choice. She needed to believe that.
The lure of banding together with Imogen and Bernie had pulled at her in unbearable tension with the knowledge that one of them had killed Celeste.
Marta told herself that she hadn’t wanted to go along with the plan, but when they’d ganged up on her, she’d caved almost immediately.
They could set her up—my prints are on that rope—and sell her out, and they could go even further and tell the cops they thought she had something to do with Derrick’s disappearance as well.
They could make her life hell. Worse than any of their threats to point the finger at her, Marta feared that she was in danger of ending up like Celeste.
The cozy cottage atmosphere was now oppressively heavy, and Marta found that every room held a reminder of Celeste: her shoes by the door, her gua sha tool in the washroom, her liquid collagen supplements in the fridge.
After the planning session with Bernie and Imogen, Marta remained at the table and stared at the maps.
The dark-blue circles demarcating the deepest parts of Venom Lake stared back at Marta from the dining room wall, accusing her with their inky glare.
Marta avoided the other women for the rest of the afternoon, loitering first in the dining room, then in the kitchen, gazing vacantly at the dreary slate sky.
The lake was now an ominous gunmetal grey; it held not a trace of yesterday morning’s sparkly blue joy.
Eventually, Marta decided to start making dinner, if only to keep her hands busy.
Bernie and Imogen soon joined her in the kitchen—lured by the smell of sautéed garlic—and they began discussing how to word the text to Milly.
Marta tried to tune them out, concentrating on rinsing each cherry tomato individually, drawing out the task.
Before pressing Send on the message from Celeste’s cellphone, Bernie passed it around so that both Imogen and Marta could read it.
Hi Milly! Hope you’re having a good time with Auntie Paige. I wish you could come out with me for a paddle, you’d love this lake. If I see a baby goose I’ll think of you! Xoxo
Marta nodded her approval, unable to speak. The cover-up was in motion.
As she had the first night, Marta took charge of the fire.
Rick had left a stack of logs for their use, but they needed more kindling.
As she walked away from the cottage toward the trees, Marta cast quick glances over her shoulder.
She didn’t like being alone like this, exposed.
Previously, she’d appreciated the island’s secluded beauty, but today it felt claustrophobic despite the wide open sky and vast expanse of water.
Marta looked back at the cottage again and started when she saw a figure in the window, gazing out at her.
Imogen. After a beat, Marta raised her hand in a tentative wave.
Another beat, and Imogen mirrored her. The hairs on Marta’s arms stood up.
She quickly gathered up an armload of twigs and branches, scratching herself in her haste, and raising faint red lines along her wrists and the backs of her hands.
She carried her load to the firepit, dumped it in a heap, then began arranging a square base of sticks around a pile of smaller twigs in the centre.
After lighting the kindling, Marta fed the photographs of Derrick and Imogen to the hungry flames.
It took her about ten minutes to build a roaring blaze, by which time Imogen and Bernie had joined her outside.
They sat wordlessly around the fire, woodsmoke stinging their eyes, stray embers dancing in the air.
For a brief moment, Marta fantasized that she really was trying to light Celeste’s way home through the dark.
“I brought the rope,” Bernie said, shattering Marta’s alternate reality. “The fire looks hot enough to take it now.”
“Wait,” Marta blurted. “Are we really doing this?” Her heart pounded as she looked across the fire at Bernie and Imogen. Flickering shadows danced across their faces, making their eyes appear like dark pits in their skulls.
At first, no one spoke. Then Imogen, in a soft voice, said, “Marty. It’s the only way now. Our lives are over if the police get involved.”
Our lives are over if we do this—we’ll never be the same. Marta shook her head, but didn’t say anything else.
Bernie used a plastic garbage bag over her hand to pinch the edge of the bloodstained coil and toss it onto the flames.
Marta watched as the rope burned away to nothing, heat and ash sealing their terrible pact.
Now that they’d destroyed evidence, there was no going back, not ever. I’m an accessory to murder.
After a couple of hours, the fire finally died, its embers thrumming with an orangey glow that faded slowly to black. Marta sat motionless, the smell of smoke in her hair and a chill stealing into her bones. If she moved, then she would be flung forward into what was coming next.
Eventually, Imogen broke the spell. “I’m fucking freezing. Let’s go inside and get ready.”
A sliver of moon lacerated the cloud cover, spearing the water’s surface and casting an eerie light over the lake.
Frigid waves slapped against Marta’s shins as she struggled to pull the kayak and paddleboat into the water.
She’d rolled her sweats above her knees, but she could feel the edges dampening, creating a cold heaviness, and she resigned herself to being fully wet when she felt the first raindrops hit the top of her head.
It felt like a punishment, a punishment they all deserved.
When the watercraft were positioned against the dock, she put her shoes back on and walked up the short incline to the rocks where Bernie and Imogen were kneeling by Celeste’s body.
It was raining steadily now, a sound that would have been relaxing if the four of them had been inside with hot toddies and a plate of cookies.
As it was, the sound of drops hitting the lake made Marta’s mind patter wildly—what if they were hit by lightning out on the water, what if they ran into another boat, what if they weren’t strong enough, what if they weren’t fast enough, whatifwhatifwhatif.
She wished she could windshield-wipe the frantic thoughts from her brain.
Imogen and Bernie had already removed the tarp, and Imogen was swearing softly under her breath.
“Shit. My ring.” The large rectangular emerald looked out of place on Celeste’s mud-flecked hand.
“Should I . . . is it wrong if . . . ?” Imogen wondered out loud.
Neither Marta nor Bernie answered. Marta thought it didn’t really matter one way or the other—Celeste wasn’t going to get any more dead—but if she were in Imogen’s shoes, she’d never want to see that ring again.
Every time she wore it, she’d picture how it looked against Celeste’s dead flesh.
“Okay, I’m going to try . . .” Imogen spoke softly as she grabbed hold of Celeste’s index finger.
Marta watched, horrified, as Imogen tugged hard, then tugged again.
Celeste’s hand was stiff and swollen in death and refused to release the ring.
When Imogen yanked on Celeste’s finger a third time, jerking her arm in a gruesome parody of life, Marta couldn’t take it anymore.
“Leave it,” she rasped. “Just leave her alone, please. You don’t need it.
” Imogen looked up at her with glazed eyes, gave her head a little shake, then let go of Celeste’s hand and got to her feet.
“You’re right, it’s stuck. I . . . I don’t know what came over me,” said Imogen. “She should have it—she loved it. It’s the least I can offer her. Sorry. Let’s do it.”
They’d made a visit to the boathouse earlier in the evening to see what they could find to wrap Celeste’s body in.
Bernie found a dusty fishing net on a high shelf and Marta unearthed a long coil of rope.
Nobody said anything about the fact that the rope was the same kind that they’d found under Imogen’s bed.
Now they planned to use these materials to secure Celeste’s body in a netted cocoon, including several heavy rocks they’d retrieved from the shoreline.
But before they could begin wrapping her, Bernie shot to her feet and commanded them to wait.
She took off at a trot for the cottage, leaving Marta and Imogen alone with the corpse.
Marta found that she couldn’t look away.
The death mark was lurid against Celeste’s white neck, crusted with blood in the spots where the rope had abraded her skin.
Marta knew that this visual would be joining the carousel of images that kept her up at night.
“Okay, ladies.” Bernie had returned, and she was holding a chef’s knife. “This is obviously going to be extremely unpleasant, but we need to puncture her abdomen.”
“What?” Imogen said, and at the same time Marta said, “Oh my god, you’re right.”
Weighing the body down with rocks was all well and good, but even concrete blocks and chains wouldn’t be able to compete with the decomposition gases her body would produce.
Marta remembered listening to a Wicked Words podcast episode that described a situation where a woman’s body had floated to the surface like a grisly balloon in a matter of days, despite having been thoroughly weighted down.
Bernie nodded at Marta. “Of course I’m right.
The depth of the lake is in our favour, because that means increased water pressure holding the body under the surface.
Even more importantly, the temperature in the depths is quite low.
Bodies decompose more slowly in cold water .
. . Actually, if it’s cold enough, then the type of bacteria that causes those decomposition gases doesn’t grow.
Like in Lake Superior—there’s a saying that she doesn’t give up her dead.
But I don’t know if our lake is deep enough or cold enough, so we can’t be too careful. ”