Read Online Never Hug a Mugger on Quadra Island by Sandy Frances Duncan, George Szanto - Free Book Online

it, and their success would reflect with burnished grandeur Harold’s own place in Skate Canada.
    He held out a great deal of promise for several of them, Miranda Steele and Tak Lee in Calgary, Dan MacAdoo and Graham Pauley in Toronto, Danielle Dubois on Montreal’s West Island, and especially Shane Cooper from Vancouver, an extraordinary performer. As well he might be, considering Carl Certane had selected the boy, as much for his natural abilities as for his imagination. That faun sequence he’d performed had been remarkable. And with each competition his routines became increasingly polished—in fact, they sparkled.
    Today Arensen would watch Shane skate. His preferred manner of observing was from a distance, without announcing his presence. So this morning found Harold driving his vintage Lincoln Continental onto the ferry from the Swartz Bay terminal at the tip of the Saanich Peninsula, heading across Georgia Strait. Ferry time was, he had discovered, a good time to be out of time. An hour and a half of giving himself, like his couple of thousand fellow passengers, over to the good guidance of the ship’s captain. He always tried to get a place at the very front of the boat. There he could look up from his book to follow the ship’s passage. Now they were passing between Portland Island and Salt Spring, the so-called Satellite Channel. Massive dark-green Douglas firs rose on the Salt Spring side. A sunny summer day and the sea sparkling brilliant blue, wind-blown breakers snow-white as they smashed against the shore on both sides.
    Excitement took him as he wondered how much Shane had progressed since his last competition—a fine performance until his dreadful fall. What could have distracted him? Shane had no answer. A bad placement? Possibly, but why? His mind wandering? Shane hadn’t thought so. A bad night’s sleep? Shane thought he’d slept okay. “Well, don’t worry about it,” Harold had told him. And added with a smile, “Just make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
    Approaching Harold Arensen’s favorite part of the trip across, a narrow boomerang-shaped passage between the southern tip of Galiano and northwest Mayne Islands, called Active Pass. Active it was as the sea roiled between the land masses, smashing against shale shoreline. Past Bellhouse Park, and the ferry was in the open Strait, the last leg before the flat drive from the terminal into the city.
    He and four-hundred and fifty other cars and trucks drove off, along a reinforced spit of land, past the Tsawwassen Band reserve, under the Fraser River, through Richmond and into the city. Along to Kerrisdale, home of the Cyclone Taylor Arena. Arensen had pushed Certane hard—get Shane ice time at one of the Olympic venues. But Certane had rejected the suggestion: Stop breaking your head over it, Harold. Wasn’t breaking his head, just making a logical suggestion. It took a couple of months arguing with Carl that Harold had learned Carl really was doing the best for Shane—ice time at an Olympic site, when it could be had, was strictly limited from 11:00 PM to 7:00 AM —the rest of day needed to prepare the rink for the Olympic events. Instead, Carl, who was a consultant to Cyclone Taylor Figure Skating Inc., purveyors of skates and costumes to champions, requested and was given prime time daily at the Kerrisdale Arena.
    Well, why the hell didn’t Carl say so in the first place? Dumb ass.
    But that was in the past. Long forgiven. Today Arensen pulled into a space reserved for the arena’s brass and parked. He strode through a side doorway. At the information desk he noted a woman in her forties with a strong chin and a mass of blonde hair. “Tell me when Shane Cooper is skating.”
    The woman checked her schedule. “Don’t see his name on for today.”
    She glanced backward in her schedule. “Don’t see his name for anywhere the last couple