Murder at Lost Dog Lake (21 page)

We all
nodded again.

“
Then let’s go.”

They
moved out with a chorus of “Joe, Joe!”

I looked
at Rachel as she scraped the last few lentils off the sides of her
bowl. “Do you think anyone wants that?” She gestured towards an
untouched plate, untouched and unwanted.

“
No, I guess you can have it. Uh, Rachel, can I borrow your
rain coat?”

“
Then what would I use?”

“
Well, it doesn’t look as if you’re going on the search, does
it? And it’s reasonably dry here under the tarp. And I don’t have
one right now, so can I please borrow your rain coat?”

She
shrugged again but pulled the yellow mac over her head. I accepted
it gratefully and left her helping herself to the remains of my
dinner.

I walked
away contemplating the strange nature of human
relationships.

Chapter 17

Day 9: Early Evening.

As bad
as yesterday’s search for Richard had been this one could only be
worse, in more ways than one. It continued to rain - steady,
relentless torrents falling from the night-dark sky, the flashes of
lightening directly overhead accompanied by an immediate bark of
thunder. The forest floor was a sea of mud. Every little crevice
had turned into a raging torrent, eagerly rushing downhill to go
for a swim in the greedy, churning lake. Moss and stones were slick
traps offering dangerous footing for every inattentive
step.

Yesterday I called for Richard, today for Joe and the irony
of it didn’t escape me: we found Richard, soon enough, but he was
quite dead. I watched my feet as I walked and cast around for the
slightest clue while considering the implications of Joe’s
disappearance.

There
was a murderer in our little number, and only that person, Craig
and I knew so. It wasn’t much of a stretch to consider that the
killer might have struck again. Was Richard killed in mistake? Was
Joe, not Richard, the intended target all along and did the killer
now take the opportunity to correct his (or her) error?

Where
had I last seen Joe? During the card game. When it broke up, he
walked towards the tents and I didn’t pay any more
attention.

Who
would want Joe out of the way? Dianne had no love for the guy, but
no need to get rid of him either. Her money would do that very
nicely, thank you. His marriage to Rachel was not a good one, to
put it mildly. He was verbally abusive and threatening, there was
therefore good reason to believe that when not in the company of
business associates and total strangers he would try more physical
means of attempting to control her.

I
believe in the battered wife defense, totally. I had seen women
beaten and frightened into submission who finally found the
strength, somewhere, to take steps to protect themselves or their
children. But I couldn’t see Rachel in that mode. The battered
woman only struck out in a last ditch attempt when she had reason
to fear for her life or the lives of her children. If violence was
a characteristic of Rachel and Joe’s marriage, she would have known
that she was much safer here amongst all of us than at home
alone.

Other
motives then? Money? If Dianne pulled her financial support out of
their company, Joe would lose it all. Perhaps Rachel knew that. So
she took the opportunity to at least get some insurance money out
of the deal. The idea had possibilities and I filed it away in the
back of my mind. Jeremy, Barb and Craig didn’t seem to have any
reason to harm Joe. They’d never met before, as far as I
knew.

At least
my suspect list was whittled down by one. Richard didn’t do away
with Joe.

I
stopped in my tracks. Or did he? Not today, of course, but maybe
yesterday. Is it possible that Richard was killed by someone acting
in self-defense, that Richard was the aggressor? Maybe Richard
argued with Joe, egged on by Dianne’s threat to withdraw her money
from their business venture. The men fought and Joe swung at
Richard with his canoe paddle.

I called
the scene back to the forefront of my mind. There was only one
visible injury to the side of Richard’s head, no sign of defensive
wounds, his knuckles were unscraped; therefore it was unlikely that
he’d been in a physical fight. And Joe didn’t have a mark on him.
Again, there was no indication of a struggle.

Pushing
that theory to the back of my mind to join all the others, I
concentrated on the search.

I hiked
the length of the portage, huddled into Rachel’s raincoat, which
was straining mightily to stay zipped across my hips. My eyes
stayed downcast, my head swung rhythmically from side to side. And
then, reaching the other lake, I turned and re-traced my
path.

Nothing.

But I
did take the opportunity to slip off the trail and recover my
daypack from where I had been forgotten it in the confusions around
the recovery of Richard’s body.

Only
Craig was still out searching when I got back to camp. The look on
the assembled faces let me know that Joe had not been
found.

I took
advantage of the borrowed raincoat to sneak up on the rocks and
inspect the tent and the wrapped paddle. The tent appeared secure,
everything tied down nice and tight. No need to venture
inside.

A touch
of ice reached down my spine as I looked around and realized that
something was amiss with my carefully saved evidence. The yellow
rain coat was stuffed into the crevice between the rocks where it
had been left. But it was far too flat and rumpled to contain
anything as substantial as a canoe paddle.

I
stumbled recklessly over the rocks, risking a twisted ankle, or
worse, on the wet, slippery, slimy surface, to retrieve my rain
gear. My heart sank into my wet, cold toes as I shook out the
yellow coat. Not so much as a splinter remained wrapped up in it.
To add insult to injury the coat had been thrown down turned inside
out. So it was thoroughly soaked and wouldn’t even serve its
original purpose.

I cursed
mightily and loudly. My mistake, through and through. I hadn’t
given a second’s thought to guarding the evidence. Anyone of them
could have seen me carrying the paddle out of the woods and hiding
it in the rocks, and it wouldn’t be much of a stretch to guess what
the little bundle contained.

Then,
obligingly, we had split up and gone off helter-skelter in the
search for Joe. Easy enough for one person to slip back unnoticed
and retrieve the incriminating paddle.

I had
hoped that the paddle would carry some trace of the killer’s
fingerprints. Of course, it would be covered with the prints of
everyone who had used it or carried it. But maybe that the holding
pattern of someone using the paddle to simply paddle would be
different from that of someone swinging it with enough force to
bash the side of a man’s head in.

Some
P.I. you are! Cursing myself for a fool and an incompetent fool at
that, I swung, full of anger and humiliation, at the rock with my
foot. The pain went a long way to help clear my head.

Perhaps
Rachel saw someone abandon the search and creep over the rocks.
Unfortunately she claimed to have gone to rest in her tent after
finishing her (read my) dinner and saw and heard nothing until the
searchers returned.

The
group gathered around the remains of the fire as Craig attempted to
stoke it back to life with a bit of damp wood and a lot of huffing
and puffing. All he managed to produce was a lot of smoke and a
tiny yellow flame.

We
watched each other with frightened eyes, no one saying a word.
Jeremy muttered under his breath, something about Ten Little
Indians. I hoped he wasn’t referring to the Agatha Christie classic
in which the guests gathered in the English country house are
methodically murdered one-by-one.

Craig
started up the propane stove and went about the task of making
coffee and hot chocolate. He found a few crushed cookies in the
bottom of the food pack and we sipped and chewed in
silence.

The dark
was total, but no one seemed inclined to go to bed. We pulled out
our flashlights and cast their dull glow up into the sky and
through the trees to make circles of light in a puny attempt to
keep the terrifying night at bay. And still the rain fell and the
wind blew and the lightening flashed and the thunder
roared.

We were
in a Provincial Park, in the heart of the most populous province in
Canada, yet the wilderness that had seemed so benign, so welcoming
and friendly only the day-before-yesterday, had turned into a place
of hostility and darkness. I contemplated the nature of
civilization and wondered how thin was its veneer, as I threw the
human-made light into cheerful figure eights above the canopy of
the trees.

Only I,
and one other person, knew we were up against a human killer, not a
natural one. But the thought didn’t do anything to calm my
supernatural fears, and I didn’t notice anyone else in the little
group looking any easier than the rest of us.

Jeremy
heard it first and cocked his ear to one side, “What was
that?”

“
What was what?” We screeched in unison, hearts pounding as we
could only imagine what terrors the forest would unleash upon us
next.

“
That noise, listen.” Jeremy hushed us and we all strained to
hear. Thin and distant and disguised by wind and rain a weak human
voice shouted against the elements.

We leapt
to our feet, jumped up and down and screamed for all we were worth.
Rachel crawled out of her tent, her face showing nothing but
annoyance.

Barb
screamed in delight. Arms held out in front of her, she fled in the
direction of the voice.

Craig
shouted in an attempt to stop her headlong rush into the darkness
but he made no effort to go after her.

Seconds
later, Barb returned, a gasping and sobbing Joe clutched in her
arms. Rachel poured herself a fresh cup of coffee.

We
gathered Joe around the fire. Barb tossed more logs onto into the
pit, generating far more smoke than flame. Dianne served coffee and
Jeremy scraped the remains of the uneaten lentil stew back into the
pot and placed it on the stove to re-heat.

We all
spoke at once, shouting and questioning and demanding answers and
berating Joe for scaring us. He finished the drink with a sign of
contentment and took a few steps toward Rachel.

She
stood up and slapped him soundly across the face.

“
You scared us so much, you bastard,” she screamed. “Where the
hell have you been? People were out looking for you for hours.” A
slight exaggeration. And with that she stepped past him and, head
held high, returned to her tent.

Joe
watched her go, and then shrugged as more important matters came to
mind. “That stew smells good. Can I have some?”

Jeremy
served up a heaping plateful (there was a lot left over) and Joe
dug in like a man back on land after weeks lost at sea.

We sat
on our heels and waited patiently until he came up for
air.

“
Where have you been?” Craig demanded. “We searched
everywhere. We thought… well, never mind what we thought. What
happened?”

Joe’s
face and hands were scratched as if he had gone nine rounds with a
pissed-off house cat. He had lost one shoe and the remaining sock
was torn almost to shreds. His raincoat flapped open. He was
drenched to the skin and probably well beyond. But it was his face
that told the story. His eyes were haunted, his skin pale, and his
cheeks shrunken and gaunt, when he burst back into our circle. As
he ate and drank and gobbled up our attention the color returned
and his eyes recovered the light and he came back to us.

“
I wanted to go for a little walk. To think about Richard and
what I’m going to do now.” He glanced at Dianne and continued. “I
guess I went too far. I couldn’t find the way back. I kept moving,
kept thinking that every second I would come up against the camp.”
He gulped hot coffee and shivered.

“
Let me tell you, it was spooky out there. Shadows and sounds
all around, and so dark, not even a speck of light in the sky to
see by. I thought I heard a wolf, like we did last night. But even
closer this time. Are there any wolves on this piece of
land?”

Craig
shrugged. “There might be. There are plenty of wolf packs in the
park.”

Barb
moaned. Joe continued his story. “Well, I guess I stumbled around
in circles, and I was about to give it up for a while and try to
find a bit of shelter to pass the night when I saw this light. It
was just a little light, but in this bloody storm any light means
humans, right?”

We all
nodded.

“
So I followed the dancing light and it was Leanne’s
flashlight and here I am. Any more of that stew?”

Jeremy
leapt to get more. We shouted questions in a cacophony of panic
relieved.

“
We’ve been searching for you everywhere.” Dianne’s powerful
voice broke above the babble. “Didn’t you hear us
calling?”

He shook
his head. “Even your voice can’t carry far over the wind and the
rain.”