Murder at Lost Dog Lake

by Vicki Delany

  “I’d rather not.” She smiled up at me hesitantly. “But thanks anyway.”

  I was stretched out on a rock, drying off and reading, when Joe returned from his swim. Rachel got up to greet him and kissed and hugged him enthusiastically, seemingly forgetting how wet he was.

  “Where are the washrooms?” she whispered, breaking off the embrace.

  He colored and looked down at his bare feet. I buried my nose deeper into my book and tried to pretend I wasn’t listening. I couldn’t believe he hadn’t told her that there were no ‘washrooms’.

  “Take the path past our tent,” he said. “Craig hung a silver bag on a tree, that’s the solar shower. The toilet paper is on a rock by the tree, unless someone is using it. Then keep on up the path to the, uh, outhouse.”

  She stared at him. Unexpectedly, my heart ached for her. Talk about a fish out of water.

  Without a word she turned and walked away. I collected my towel and book and followed her into the camp. The sun lay low in the sky and soon it would be too cool to sit around in a damp bathing suit.

  I surveyed the dinner preparations, hoping for a hint of what was to come, when a single high-pitched scream echoed through the camp. Rachel rushed down the path in a red flurry.

  “You don’t expect me to use that!” I couldn’t tell if she was sobbing or gasping for breath in her rage. “There’s no sink, there’s no shower, there’s just that horrible little… hole.”

  Joe rushed forward and tried to catch her in his arms. “It’s okay, honey. That’s why it’s called a wilderness adventure. We’re going to do without all the amenities of civilization. You know, get back to nature.” He was babbling. It was hideously embarrassing, but we all stopped whatever we were doing to watch.

  Rachel swiped feebly at Joe’s chest. “Well I don’t want to get back to nature. There must be someplace where I can have a shower and some privacy. Take me there.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Richard bellowed. “That’s enough.” In two large strides he crossed camp. Red faced, fists clenched, he towered over the smaller Joe. “Can’t you shut her up? What kind of a man are you? She’s done nothing but complain the whole trip and we’ve only been out one day. And all you do is carry her bags and whine, ‘Yes, dear. No dear.’ If you can’t manage your woman, I wonder if you can manage my company.”

  Craig came between them in an instant. Putting both arms out he separated the two men. “Hold on now. I don’t think there’s any cause to get personal.” He glared down at Richard from his impressive height. “Is there, now?”

  Richard threw a venomous look at Joe and Craig shoved him backwards. Richard’s head jerked and the silly ranger hat he always wore fell off. A vein throbbed in Craig’s forehead, and his face was set into angry lines.

  “Back off, Richard,” Craig said. “Don’t be throwing your weight around. I’m in charge here and don’t you forget it.”

  Richard stepped back, scooped up his hat, and without another word he disappeared into the woods. Dianne followed him. The rest of us exhaled in relief.

  Craig turned to me. “Leanne, why don’t you take Rachel and show her how to use the solar shower and explain the importance of not washing near the lake?”

  I rushed to comply and took her by the arm.

  “I don’t mean to cause trouble,” she whispered to me, her voice shaking.

  “I’m sure you don’t.” I slipped into my mother-of-a-toddler-voice. ”Most of us have been on one of these trips before, or at least read up on it, and we know what to expect. All you remember that everything we do here is trying to protect the environment.”

  I’ve never before had the misfortune to be in the company of such a bunch of short-tempered people. And this was supposed to be a nice, relaxing vacation. I didn’t want to be around to find out what they acted like in their ‘real’ lives.

  As I led Rachel towards the path, I could hear Barb’s deep voice as she smiled up at Craig. “I was really scared that they were going to fight. You handled that so well. You were so brave.”

  Chapter 5

  Day 3: Morning.

  It rained in the night, but not much, only enough to make the thirsty plants beg for more. I slept at the east end of our tent and awoke as the first soft rays of dawn poked playfully through the fabric onto my eyelids. I slipped my shoes on and crept out of the tent. The campsite was still asleep. Barb snored heartily and Richard grunted, but all else was quiet. I walked softly down to the water’s edge and sat on a rock to greet the day. It should be a beautiful sunrise.

  I was not disappointed. The sky was as clear as it had been last night and there was nothing to impede the welcome orange ball as it rose higher and higher over the trees on the far side of the lake. This is indeed the way we should start every morning. Gentle communion with the new sun and pleasure in the solitude of nature. I laughed at my fantasy. My usual morning was more like 20 minutes to shower, dress, dry hair, slap on a touch of powder and blush and dash out the door, grab breakfast from the Tim Horton’s drive-through on the way to the usual traffic tie-ups on the main road. Oh, well, I could dream, couldn’t I?

  Smiling and content, I gathered kindling and logs for the fire and tried to make myself useful.

  Dianne got up next. She immediately pronounced my wood-gathering efforts to be “inadequate” and marched off into the forest for more. Soon she had an enormous blaze going and water on to boil for coffee. I was unsure whether to be happy that she took on more than her share of the work, or annoyed at her take-charge attitude.

  Aroused by the steady chopping of Dianne’s axe, the crackle of the fire and most of all by the scent of coffee, one by one my fellow campers struggled out of their tents. Except for Rachel, we were all wearing the same clothes as yesterday. You can’t get much in the way of a regular change of apparel into one stuff sack. Barb had tied her T-shirt in a knot in the front, and arranged it to display her fetching little belly button. Rachel looked worn and tired, despite her best attempts to style her hair and apply a good layer of make-up. I suspected that she didn’t get a lot of sleep on the hard forest floor. The little sleeping mats Canadian Backcountry Expeditions supplied didn’t provide much in the way of comfort. But she accepted a mug of coffee from me with a wan smile. Her nails remained perfect. I’d lost my bet.

  Breakfast consisted of a fabulous bowl of oatmeal, mixed with dried fruit, drenched in maple syrup and liberally sprinkled with brown sugar. I normally can’t abide oatmeal, but as they say, there is something about food cooked over a campfire.

  We all dug in with great gusto, and even Rachel managed a few bites before passing her bowl to Joe. We’d decided the night before that each person would take one day to be responsible for the washing up. Dianne had been the first to volunteer; she heated water and stacked plates while the rest of us packed up our bags and took down the tents.

  I was making my way up the hill to the “facilities”, roll of toilet paper in hand, when whispered voices from Joe and Rachel’s tent caused me to slow down. Okay, maybe I stopped and leaned a bit to the left to get my ear a mite closer. I’m a snoop by nature. Five years on a big city police force followed by one year on my own as a P.I. and my natural inclination to spy has been sharpened and refined to a glistening point.

  “I really need you to do this for me, babe.” Joe’s voice was soft and pleading.

  “Yes, I know,” Rachel sighed heavily. “But I hate it, honey. I absolutely hate it. You never told me that we would have to use an outhouse and carry canoes and that other people would be so close and all that. You should have told me, Joe.”

  “I know, babe, but I was afraid that if I told you, then you wouldn’t come.”

  “Well you’re right about that, I wouldn’t have come on this horrible trip. Why couldn’t we have gone to Barbados, like we planned?”

  Joe’s voice tightened. He was finished wheedling. “Because Richard’s bitch of a wife wanted to come on a wilderness canoe trip, that’s why. And Richard though
t it would be a great opportunity to get to know each other better and see how well we work together and all that New Age shit. And you’re here now so tough luck. I need this deal to work, or I’m finished. Do you understand that? I’ve put everything we own into this deal with Richard. If it falls through I’m broke. How do you think you’re going to like that? We won’t miss Barbados just this year, but every year.”

  “Well, I don’t see why you got into that stupid deal with Richard anyway. I don’t see him worrying about losing all his money.”

  “Richard’s pockets are deep, real deep. Okay? And don’t you question me again. All you have to do is stop whining and try not to act like you’re going to die if you miss your hairdresser appointment tomorrow.”

  Joe’s voice had dropped steadily as he spoke, until it was low and menacing. Instinctively I took a step forward. Leaves rustled behind me and I whirled around. Caught with my hand in the cookie jar. I heaved a silent sigh of relief as a startled squirrel clambered up a huge white pine.

  Rachel whimpered, “I understand honey bunch, really I do. Now let go of my arm, please. You’re hurting me. Please?”

  Fortunately it can take a long time to unzip a tent flap, particularly when you’re angry. I was well on my way by the time Joe made it out of the tent.

  We packed up the camp leaving not a sign of our presence, save for a pile of ashes in the fire pit. All of the garbage that we accumulated over the trip would be carried out with us.

  I considered maneuvering myself into another canoe to avoid having to partner with Dianne again, but unfortunately I was the last person down to the lake. By the time I arrived, everyone had assumed his or her positions of yesterday and Dianne waited impatiently for me to join her. As before, Barb beamed from the front of Craig’s canoe, Rachel sat with Joe and the mismatched Richard and Jeremy shared a craft. But today Richard commandeered the stern.

  I tucked my life jacket over my seat and waited for Craig to make a comment. One of Barry’s hard and fast rules laid out at the lodge insisted that we always wear our life jackets on the water. But right now my bottom was of more concern to me than any potential threat to my life.

  Craig grinned and we were underway.

  It was another fabulous day, and the heat was already beating down on my exposed skin. I stretched my legs out to catch as much of the lovely, warm rays as possible. I had thickly lathered my skin with sunscreen and pulled my baseball cap far down over my eyes as it would go, before it plunged me into the dark. It was heavenly out on the lake. Once again Dianne and I were way out in front as Craig lingering behind to shepherd the other two canoes along.

  We gathered around the map after breakfast while Craig pointed out the day’s route. He expected to cover a lot of water, with two fairly heavy portages along the way. Rachel attempted to show a spark of interest; however, the effect was somewhat spoiled when she threw quick, pleading glances at Joe out of the corner of her eyes, obviously hoping to impress him with enthusiasm. But Craig seemed pleased by her interest in the route, and he took the time to make sure she could see the map.

  I stopped working for a moment and enjoyed the feeling of my wooden paddle resting across my knees. The lake stretched out before us. The colors were fantastic, pure blue sky, a line of dark green trees reaching jagged tops into the sky; a darker line, the mirror image of the shoreline reflected in the water, then the darker blue, verging on black, of the lake water below.

  It was baking hot already; the sun stood alone in a sapphire sky.

  I dipped my water bottle over the side and squeezed it gently to release all of the trapped air. Water rushed in to fill the vacuum and I took a good long drink.

  Beautiful.

  Some people are concerned about the drinking water in the lakes, and use tablets or filters to purify it. Particularly after the tainted-water scares experienced by some Ontario rural communities lately. But I have always enjoyed the taste of water straight out of a remote lake (although I wouldn’t touch it from a lake lined with cottages and overflowing with motorboats and jet skis). The trick is to take it well away from the shore, and reach down deep.

  “Good water, eh?” Dianne said.

  “And all free for the taking.”

  We paddled on in comfortable silence. Other groups of canoes and a few singles, passed by in the far distance but no one came close.

  “Off to the right, look,” Dianne cried.

  A small family of loons bobbed up and down on the tiny waves only a few yards away. Mom and Dad and two charming babies hitching a ride on their parents’ backs. Their black and white coloring and tiny maniacal red eyes stood clear and sharp against the deep blue of the lake. Sunlight turned the water all around them into a shimmering field of gold lame. We stopped paddling and sat for several minutes, simply enjoying the sight of them.

  They were polite enough to put up with our admiration for a short while but soon tired of us and one of the adults registered displeasure with loud shrieks of warning. We took the hint and moved along.

  “You appear to have done a bit of canoeing before,” I said to Dianne in a classical understatement.

  She laughed but her paddle never broke its powerful stroke. “Only every year of my entire life. I guess that’s about 30 years now.” She laughed heartily at her own joke and I smiled along. I am also an all too quickly aging woman, trying to keep the years at bay with jokes and laughter.

  “My parents bought a cottage on Lake Rosseau when I was a teenager, but even before that we did a canoe trip every summer. As long as I can remember, really. After we bought the cottage my dad still took at least one week a year away from work so that he and I could go on a wilderness trip together.”

  I looked over my shoulder to see her smiling at the memory as her paddle sliced rhythmically through the water. The years had dropped from her face. The memories were happy ones.

  “Just you and your dad?” I asked.

  She nodded. “My brothers weren’t interested, which made my dad so mad. They weren’t interested in much that he loved. Such as his business. My mom of course claimed to be too old for that camping nonsense. Sad, isn’t it, how women of that era had to pretend to be too frail or too timid or too old to do anything really fun? But at the time I was glad enough of it. I adored my dad and appreciated the time we spent alone together.”

  The sun stood high overhead, and it shone directly into her face illuminating every line and every wrinkle. I upped my estimation of her age by a decade or so. Dianne wanted to be everything her mother wasn’t, and I admired her for it. And her father for encouraging her.

  “Have you been on a trip with CBE before?”

  “Oh yes, I’ve been traveling with them for many years now. They’re a good reliable business. My dad passed away long ago; he left me control of his company and his canoe and camping equipment. But he couldn’t leave me anyone to travel with. So every year I come on a trip with CBE. Haven’t had Craig before, tho’. He seems good. Nice looking too.” She chuckled, a deep throaty sound. “That’s always a bonus.”

  “What about Richard? Doesn’t he come with you?” I asked.

  “He tries to be interested, but he isn’t really. Would you believe that this is actually the first time in almost ten years that he has come into the wilderness with me?” She laughed lightly.

  I could believe it, with no trouble at all, but I didn’t say so.

  “The first couple of years after my dad died I booked a guide for just myself. It was nice, I don’t mean it wasn’t, but I like people and I found it rather lonely, only the guide and me. No matter how good they were, they could never be a substitute for Dad. So now I tag along on a regular trip and I enjoy meeting the people.”

  She made it sound like Marie Antoinette playing at milkmaid in the Tuilleries. “What type of business did your father leave you?”

  She named the largest car parts manufacturer in all of Canada. I swallowed my shock and mumbled, “I’ve heard of them. It was rather progressive of y
our father to leave the company to you, don’t you think? What about your brothers?”

  “Oh, I make sure they’re taken care of.” She waved her hand lightly in the air. The diamond on her finger caught the full force of the noon sun and flashed like a sacrificial offering.

  “The others are rather far behind. We should wait up a bit.” Dianne stopped paddling and leant over the side to dip her plastic bottle into the water. I took the opportunity to apply more sun block and stretched out luxuriously, wiggling my ankles and toes to get some of the kinks out.

  Unasked she continued talking. “As I said, Richard came camping with me the year we were first married. He didn’t like it much at all. Maybe because it rained non stop and was one of the coldest years on record.” Despite the drenching warmth of the sun I shivered at the thought. “As I remember the insects were pretty fierce that year as well, they loved all that rain. He prefers to stay at the cottage and talk on the cell phone and make his business deals. But this is how I relax and I need it.

  “So here we are, the first time in years that we’re going on a trip together and he decides it would be nice to cement his new business deal with a nice little get-together in Algonquin Park.” She snorted. “And thus we have the prehistoric Joe and the totally insipid Rachel.”

  “I don’t think Rachel’s so bad.” I tried to bite back the words the minute I said them. Where did I get that idea?

  Dianne snorted again. “Well, in my humble opinion, she’s a total waste of space. And Joe is all the worse for marrying her. Richard must see something promising in the fool. But let me tell you, he’d better see something concrete pretty soon.”

  I was about to ask her what she meant by that when the others drew closer and Dianne waved and yoo-hooed with gusto.

  We met up on the leeward side of a small island. Craig brought out the map and once again he showed us the route for the rest of the day. Joe and Richard clambered awkwardly out of their canoes and disappeared into the dense bush. They returned with much slapping of backs and deep male laughter. Why do men consider peeing to be such a bonding ritual?