Murder at Lost Dog Lake (14 page)

The boy
nodded his thanks, but the man bustled up, overflowing with his own
importance. “No time, no time. We have to get on our
way.”

The boy
grinned at us, shifted his pack and lumbered off down the trail. I
had a feeling they would be stopping at the waterfall.

“
Fool,” Craig muttered, watching them go. “If you want to keep
to a schedule, you might as well stay in the city.”

Once
again we all stooped to pick up packs or canoes. Rachel cast about
looking for something light and compact. She gathered up an armful
of life jackets and stood to one side, smiling while she watched
the rest of us load up like pack mules.

“
You can manage this, Rachel.” Craig stood in front of her, a
heavy orange pack in his hands. He gestured to her to turn around
and held the pack out, ready to place it over her
shoulders.

“
I have something.” She displayed the lifejackets.

“
Those can be carried by anybody. They’re nice padding against
the weight of the canoes.” Smiling, he stood in place, heavy pack
extended like an offering.

Joe was
already gone, weighed down by a canoe. No one would be leaping to
Rachel’s rescue.

She
looked at each of us in turn, some watching with open faced
interest, others, like myself, at least trying to pretend that we
weren’t paying any attention at all.

“
That’s too heavy for me.”

“
No, it’s not. Barb can manage. Leanne can manage. You can
too.” Still smiling he continued to offer the pack.

Rachel
looked around for help. None was forthcoming.

“
I don’t think so,” she said finally. “This is supposed to be
a holiday.” And she shifted the lifejackets, turned on her heels
and sauntered up the path.

Smile
frozen into place, Craig lowered the pack.

I
shrugged and forced a grin at him. “Keep saying to yourself, ‘the
customer is always right.’”

A touch
of genuine warmth crept back into his face. “Thank you for
reminding me, Leanne. I was about to lose it there.
Again.”

“
Her loss really.” I bent over and bounced on my toes to shift
the pack a bit higher up my shoulders. “Sometimes you have to test
yourself. Poor Rachel is failing.”

We
walked up the path together, chatting lightly, comfortable
together.

“
Give Rachel a bit of slack, Craig.” I said while the other
side of my brain calculated how much further we had to go. Too far
for my aching shoulders. I shifted my burden once again. “She
didn’t even know this was a camping trip, you know. Joe apparently
was afraid that she wouldn’t agree to come, so he let her believe
they were going to a fishing lodge sort of place.”

Craig
snorted. “Damn fool thing to do. Did he think she might possibly
never notice?”

I
shrugged, which wasn’t really a good idea considering the weight on
my shoulders. “He’s trying so hard to impress Dianne and Richard
that maybe he didn’t think at all.”

“
Dianne seems like an okay sort of person. At least she knows
one end of a canoe from another. But that husband of hers is a
total write off.”

The edge
of acid in his voice came out of nowhere. “Why do you say
that?”

“
Spoiled rich dude. Scum of the earth. I hate them
all.”

With
that, Craig fell into a sullen silence, and we finished the portage
without another word.

Chapter 11

Day 7: Late afternoon.

After
helping us put the canoes into the water and load them up, Craig
pulled out the map and showed those of us who were interested what
would be the next leg of our trip. A tiny, little lake, more like a
giant puddle, led to a long, thin, winding river. The end of this
river broke into a huge open body of water where, Craig informed
us, we would have our choice of superlative campsites before one
more portage tomorrow, which would lake us to his favorite spot in
this section of Algonquin Park: Lost Dog Lake. We’d spend the night
at Lost Dog and then a long day back to the lodge and the end of
the trip.

This
time I traveled with Craig and settled myself comfortably in the
front. Late in the afternoon, the sun sat low on the horizon,
stretching long, thin shadows out before us. But hot, still very
hot.

The
river was narrow and the navigation channel closely hemmed in by
thick watery growth above and below the water line. The banks of
the river were covered by masses of water-loving plants, fields of
tall purple flowers stretching through the water to the shore, the
occasional small yellow wild daisy or one of an infinite variety of
wildflowers, for which I did not know the name. The edges of the
river itself were thickly matted with water lilies, whose lovely
flowers, pure white, open to reveal a heart of the deepest yellow.
They look like a hard-boiled egg, the top chopped artfully off by
Martha Stewart herself, ready for the spoon.

I
reached out to grasp the flower of one tall plant, standing high
over the water and lesser vegetation, it’s foliage ripe and lush.
The plant was tough and resisted my determined tug.

“
Pitcher plant,” Craig said. “Pretty, eh?”

“
Um,” I mumbled.

“
Deadly too. If you’re an insect anyway. The pitcher plant’s a
meat eater. Bugs land on the flowers and are sucked down that long
stem never to see the light of day again.”

“
Ug.”

“
Nature’s cruel,” he reminded me. “We may be a bit higher on
the food chain than the bugs, but out here we’re still part of that
food chain, and we’re fools if we forget it.”

The sun
disappeared behind a cloud, and I shivered. Several more of the
attractive plants drifted by, but I made no further attempt to pick
one.

“
You can stop paddling while we’re on the river if you like,
Leanne,” Craig said from the back of the canoe. “I can manage by
myself along here.”

Needing
no encouragement, I wiggled my bottom comfortably into place and
lay back to stretch luxuriously out across the packs between the
canoe seats. The sun was low in the west but still strong enough to
heat my body through and through. I felt her gentle, warm kiss on
my face and dangled my arm over the sides of the canoe. My fingers
itched to trace gentle patterns in the cool water, but they fell
disappointingly short.

“
Ten o’clock, do you see it?” Craig said.

I opened
my eyes. A huge bird soared high above. Coasting lazily on the
thermals, it eyed us carefully. Wondering, no doubt if it could
make a lightening raid and catch me unawares. As tasty as I might
have looked, he decided that I am a bit too big, and with two flaps
of the massive wings the bird disappeared into the sun.

“
Hawk?” I asked.

“
Bigger, an osprey.”

“
Lovely.” I closed my eyes and drifted back into the sun’s
caress.

“
Lovely, indeed,” said the voice behind me.

The
craft creaked slightly as Craig shifted his weight. A shadow fell
across my face and my eyes flew open. Craig smiled above me. He
reached out one hand and stroked my cheek.

I leapt
upright so fast I was momentarily afraid that the canoe would tip.
But it rocked gently and then returned to its gentle
rhythm.

Craig
sat back on his haunches and smiled even more broadly. “You’re
quite lovely, Leanne. If I may say so.”

“
Jesus, Craig, you scared me. Thanks for the compliment, but
shouldn’t we be joining the others?”

“
Oh, they’ll be a long time coming. It’s tough to navigate
this river, because of all the bends, and I put on a bit of
speed.”

He held
out one of the giant white water lilies that I’d admired earlier.
Heart pounding, I accepted it and sniffed deeply. The scent was
rich and earthy, full of the fragrance of the blooms and of the
river water in which it grew.

“
The Ojibway say that this flower is the embodiment of a star
maiden who chose to come down to earth, to stay here and live
amongst the people.”

“
I can almost believe it.”

“
I was hoping we could get together after the trip,” Craig
said. “Maybe you could stay up north for a few days before going
home?”

“
Uh, no. I have to be back at work. But um, Craig, are you
like, asking me out?”

“
Yes, I guess I am.”

“
You don’t think that I am a bit, well, old for
you?”

He
laughed, showing perfect, white teeth. The sun was behind him now;
it filtered through his thick, curly hair and cast a bright halo
around his head. I gulped.

“
Well, if you want to look at it like that, Rachel is more my
age. And she’s as useless as tits on a bull, as they
say.”

“
Barb seems rather impressed by you.” I wondered why I was
trying to talk him out of liking me. Fear, I guess, plain
fear.

“
Barb likes anything that will pay her a bit of attention.
Besides I really don’t want Jeremy following us around everywhere,
peeking out from behind menus and scurrying down alleyways. Can you
blame me?”

I
laughed and buried my nose in my flower. “Not really.”

“
So, what about it?”

I
considered the question. What about it, indeed? He was attractive,
no doubt about that, and fun to be with. The temper could be a bit
much at times, but I wasn’t thinking of getting into anything
serious. Nothing wrong with having fun, I reminded myself. And I
hadn’t had a lot of fun since my divorce. The horrors of the bitter
custody battle and the devastation of losing my sons, then leaving
the Police Force and trying to start up in business with Wayne had
left me with a pretty narrow social life over the last few years.
Maybe it was time to move back into the dating game. Nothing
serious, just a bit of fun.

I
grinned. “Sounds good to me.”

He
smiled back.

“
There they are,” Dianne hooted from the lead canoe as the
little convoy rounded the last bend. “We thought we’d lost
you.”

“
No such luck.” Craig said softly as he offered me one more
beautiful grin before returning to his seat and picking up his
paddle. “Almost at the lake,” he shouted over his shoulder, digging
into his stroke once again.

“
You lie back and relax a bit more, Leanne. The wind is
picking up, and I’ll need your help when we get out in the
open.”

We broke
out of the long grasses that enveloped the river, to emerge into a
wide, dark lake. The surface shimmered brightly in the low
sun.

There
were no other canoes as far as I could see.

We were
deep into the park now.

I set to
with my paddle and we ploughed straight across the lake. My
shoulders still ached from the last portage and I was tiring
rapidly. And I had had a rest. The others probably weren’t up to
doing much more.

Fortunately Craig had his eye on a spot straight ahead. The
wind was building steadily and little white caps were popping up
across the water. But the wind was at our back and we crossed the
lake as if powered by sails.

“
Don’t like the look of that sky much,” Craig mumbled behind
me.

Eyes
locked on our destination, a beautiful campsite facing the
soon-to-be-setting sun, surrounded by tall, splendid trees and a
bit of sandy beach, I barely heard him.

“
What does it look like?” I finally clued into the words and
twisted in my seat, but could see nothing but a slightly darker
smudge on the horizon.

“
Like a storm coming. Nothing to worry about, I’m sure. But we
might get a bit of rain tomorrow.”

I
laughed as we coasted onto the strip of sand. “Might cool things
down a bit. Besides I’ve been dying to wear my fashionable new
raincoat.” The canoe scraped the lake bottom and I leapt out to
drag it up onto the shallows.

Chapter 12

Day 8: Early afternoon.

It is
easy, in the bustle and noise of the big city, or the constant
rattle of the over-populated suburbs, to forget how primal, how
terrifying, a storm at its worst can actually be. The first dim
flash of lightening, the first distant rumble of thunder, and we
rush for shelter. We sit in warm comfort at our living room
windows, or at the sealed and climate controlled windows of our
office towers, and watch the storm. We are overawed by the
brilliance of the light, the crash of the thunder, and we fool
ourselves that we are experiencing nature in all of her terrifying
glory. But we forget that we are protected by electricity and
heating and air-conditioning, by steel and by glass. Outside of our
little circle of civilization a storm has more danger and more
anger and more ferocity than we can imagine. Dangerous and loud and
bright and primal. We are rarely equipped to face it.