Read Online Murder at Lost Dog Lake by Vicki Delany - Free Book Online Page A

worthwhile for them to eat. With a
series of loud squawks and much flapping of wings, their mother
herded them back into the water, and they took their
leave.
    Craig
chuckled, “They always remind me of my nieces. Constantly looking
for a freebie while my sister tries without much success to pull
them back into line.”
    I smiled
at the thought of my own boys.
    Craig
read my thoughts. “Do you have children, Leanne?” he
asked.
    “ Two boys, Brian and Thomas.” The sun slipped behind a cloud
and I shivered, whether from the drop in temperature or the
expectation of where this conversation would lead, I did not know.
I’m not at all keen for people to find out that I don’t have
custody of my children. They may not do it consciously, but almost
everyone automatically assumes that I must be a bad mother indeed.
Why else would I have lost my children?
    “ How long have you been guiding up here?” I changed the
subject.
    If Craig
noticed, he was much too polite to let it show. “Every summer for
six years.”
    “ It must be great,” I said with feeling.
    “ It is. I love it. But I don’t know how much longer I can keep
working at this. It sure doesn’t pay well.”
    “ What do you do the rest of the year?”
    “ I’m still in University,” he said. Then he laughed, a deep,
hearty chuckle. “I know what you’re thinking. I’m a bit old to
still be a student. But my mom and dad are both dead, and I don’t
have much money. I don’t want to graduate with a huge debt, so I
quit once in a while and work until I earn enough to go back to
school.” He gathered up a handful of sand and let it dribble
through a hole in the bottom of his fist. His hands were clenched
tightly and the muscles in his arm bulged with tension.
    “ What are you taking?”
    “ Environmental sciences.”
    “ A great subject, I would imagine.”
    Craig
gathered up more sand. “The most important subject in the world
right now. Not that it will give me many career
opportunities.”
    “ Kind of like child care. The more important the job, the less
the reward, it seems to me sometimes.”
    He
opened his hand and the grains of sand fell back where they
belonged. He looked directly at me. I was taken aback by the
intensity of his expression.
    “ You got that right,” he said.
    We
stopped talking to watch Rachel as she crept up to the edge of the
beach and dropped to her knees at the water line. She produced
something from a plastic bag at her side and bent over the
lake.
    “ Stop that!” Craig leapt to his feet and ran down the beach to
the kneeling woman. He grabbed her arm and roughly jerked her back.
Her hands held her day’s shirt and a bar of soap.
    “ You don’t wash in the lake. Never.” Craig was almost
yelling.
    Rachel
burst into tears. “I have to wash my clothes,” she sobbed. “I have
to wash my clothes.”
    “ Well too bad. You don’t wash in the lake.”
    The
force of Craig’s anger took me so completely by surprise that it
was a moment before I gathered my wits, put down my book and joined
them. “It’s alright, Craig.” I touched him lightly on the arm. “No
harm done.”
    I guided
Rachel to her feet. “Let me show you how to wash your shirt. We
don’t want soap in the lake, that’s all, it’s poisonous for the
environment.” Underneath my bright sympathetic smile, I was
cursing. The sun was fading, my beloved fictional London was
calling and I here I was trying to show this poor, lost woman how
to wash her T-shirt while camping, a skill that is actually rather
beyond me.
    Craig’s
outburst disturbed me. If the guy couldn’t handle raw-newcomers to
the wilderness, he was definitely in the wrong business. They must
have clients far worse than pretty, harmless Rachel. People who
demand to be taken back, right now! Fighters, complainers, rowdy
drunks, fussy eaters, nature-disrespecters and
general-pain-in-the-asses. Craig had been guiding for years, he
must to have seen, and endured, them all. Something