In Too Deep

by Andreas Oertel

  When I got to the surface again, I gasped. It was almost daylight! I had been so focused on my task that I had forgotten all about the time. The sun was rising fast, and slivers of gold were poking out on the horizon. I also noticed Eric, who was impatiently pacing on the grass in the distance.

  Like a vampire terrified of being caught in the sun, I raced for the shore. My legs were rubber by the time I reached the muddy bank. Exhausted, I crawled back up on the grassy fairway and collapsed onto my stomach. When I caught my breath again, I sat up and took off my flippers.

  Eric dropped to his knees beside me. “Did you get it, Cody?” His eyes surveyed my hands.

  I lifted my arm, holding up the dive light. “Yeah . . .” I gasped. “I got it. And I have good news. No one’s dead.”

  Eric froze. “For sure?”

  “Guaranteed,” I said. “I’ll tell you more when we’re out of here.”

  Eric nodded, grabbed my wrist, and pulled me from the wet grass. He took the dive lights and headed for the fence. With a flipper in each hand, I slogged behind him across the grass. I felt like I had just swum the English Channel.

  Eric jumped the fence and turned around. “I think you can take the mask off now,” he said, gesturing at my face.

  I smiled weakly, peeled the mask from my head, and passed it over. “Give me a hand with the fence,” I said.

  Eric put a foot on the middle strand of wire and pulled up on the top wire, and I slipped through the gap. I felt safer—like less of a criminal—just being off the golf course property.

  Eric already had his gear and all the golf balls stashed in the wagon, so it didn’t take long for us to tuck my equipment away. I grabbed the handlebars of my bicycle and began manoeuvring the wagon for our getaway.

  “Oh, no!” Eric said suddenly. “Look!”

  I spun around and scanned the area he was pointing at. Instantly, I understood Eric’s alarm. “Holy cadoodles!” I cried.

  “Double cadoodles,” Eric said.

  We were staring at a well-beaten path between Smoke Lake and the fence. We had chosen the shortest route to the water to make it easier to lug our equipment. But those trips from the wagon to the lake had left a clear trail on the dewy grass. It looked like an army had marched across the golf course and disappeared into the lake.

  “It may fluff up in a couple of hours,” I said. “You know, when it warms up and dries.”

  “I hope that if a golfer sees that,” Eric said, “they don’t get suspicious and tell Scolletti.” Eric mounted his bike and led the way back to the highway.

  Eric was right. Scolletti wasn’t stupid. If someone reported an unusual trail heading to the lake, he’d figure out pretty quick that we were responsible. Plus, I was sure we had left a mess of footprints in the wet clay at the edge of the water.

  I followed Eric to the highway, then across the black-top and onto the trail that ran a parallel path through the bush and all the way to Sultana. The bush trail took longer and required more effort, but it kept us off the highway and out of sight. When we were sure we couldn’t be seen by any vehicles, we stopped our bikes. We still had our wetsuits on, and we were both sweating like crazy under the neoprene.

  “So, what was down there?” Eric asked.

  “Buy me a pop and I’ll tell you.” Snorkelling always made us thirsty. There was something about sucking air through a tube that really dried out your throat. I figured Eric would be thirsty too.

  He nodded and grinned.

  We quickly peeled off the clammy neoprene and changed into our shorts and T-shirts. Much better.

  We continued our journey toward Sultana, sticking to the trails. The highway would have been deserted at this hour, but why take a chance? We approached the River-crest Inn from the rear and tucked our bikes next to the giant garbage bin. Except for an old half-ton truck, the parking spots all around the building were empty. Too early for normal people, I guess.

  Eric headed for the side of the building, where a drink machine sat on a concrete sidewalk that hugged the building on three sides. “The usual?” he said over his shoulder.

  I nodded. My beverage of choice was Barq’s Root Beer, and Eric’s was Sprite.

  I walked across the parking lot to the adjacent picnic area. I wanted to keep an eye on our equipment, but I didn’t feel like sitting next to a stinky garbage bin. I sat down under a tree and watched Eric feed coins into the vending machine.

  My mind began to wander, thinking about how one thing leads to another, and how you never knew if the end result would be good or bad. The discovery of a submerged statue was certainly interesting, but could we mind our own business and leave that mystery alone? Or would we, as per usual, get drawn into yet another adventure, ending up in a heap of trouble? Based on everything that had happened this summer, I figured we were in for a rough ride.

  Eric found me beneath the pine tree and handed me a can. “Here’s your barf,” he said, making fun of my drink.

  I took the can, cracked the tab, and took a long swallow. “Thanks,” I said, then hiccupped.

  Eric sat down beside me and studied his watch. “Ten after five.”

  “We’re still good,” I said.

  Eric opened his drink and guzzled half the can. “As long as Rachel doesn’t blab.”

  “She won’t,” I said, assuring him of his sister’s loyalty.

  The plan that had allowed us to escape Sultana in the middle of the night and go snorkelling on private property was a simple flip-flop scheme. But for the scheme to succeed, Rachel had to cover for us if anyone came looking for Eric and me. Anyway, here’s how it worked: I had told my mom and dad that I was sleeping over at Eric’s house. And at the same time, Eric had told his mom that the two of us were going to sleep in the tent in his backyard. But after supper, Rachel had seen us loading the wagon with snorkelling gear and became suspicious.

  “What’s going on?” she had demanded.

  So we told her about our plan to sneak away in the middle of the night to recover golf balls from the country club.

  In the end, all she said was, “You guys better not get caught, or I’ll be in trouble too.”

  Eric’s mom left for work at 7:00, so we figured that as long as we were back in the tent by 6:30, we’d be okay.

  We sat in silence for several minutes, drinking our drinks and watching Creepy Calvin, the breakfast cook, stack empty milk cartons next to the back door. If calling him “creepy” sounds mean, let me explain. Imagine a movie where someone is about to turn into a zombie. Or picture a vampire with the ability to function during the daytime. Well, that’s what Calvin Frippley looked like. But even aside from his bald head, see-through skin, and generally undead appearance, he was rude and creepy—really, really creepy. Seriously.

  “So, it wasn’t a body?” Eric asked, repeatedly snapping the pull tab on his Sprite.

  “Well, yes and no,” I said, trying to sound like Sherlock Holmes. “The object you observed beneath the waters of Smoke Lake was indeed a body.” I watched Eric’s eyes get bigger. “However, it was not a human body.”

  “Stop messing around!” Eric said. “Just tell me.”

  “It’s a statue of someone.”

  “A statue?” Eric tried out the word. “What do you mean?”

  “You know—a statue, a memorial, a monument. I think it’s made of bronze.”

  I watched Eric flick the tab a few more times, trying hard to understand. “How do you know that?” he asked.

  “Well, it looked like it was a coppery colour,” I said, “but if it was made of gold, it would be worth millions. So I think it’s bronze. Isn’t that what statues are made of?”

  “Why would a statue be at the bottom of Smoke Lake?” Eric asked. He didn’t seem to want to talk about what it was made of anymore. “And who is it a statue of?”

  I finished my root beer and said, “Those are good questions.”

  “Do you think it’s worth anything?”

  A third voice abruptly i
nterrupted our discussion. “Is what worth anything?”

  We spun around and saw a police officer standing behind us.

  CHAPTER

  3

  “GOOD MORNING, CONSTABLE Murphy,” Eric and I chimed together, trying hard not to sound too sarcastic.

  Brad Murphy used to be married to Eric’s mom’s sister—making him an ex-uncle, I guess—and he was a cop. Well, he wasn’t really a cop—not yet, at least. Brad was a special constable with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. That didn’t mean he was physically disabled, or handicapped, or anything like that. It meant he was a trainee—sort of a junior cop. Anyway, we didn’t hear Constable Jerkface come up behind us.

  Or did he sneak up on us on purpose?

  We didn’t particularly like Brad, in case you haven’t noticed. Now, I can’t report one specific thing that we didn’t like about the guy—it’s just that he gave off an overall bad vibe. In fact, he was such a jerk that we couldn’t understand how he passed the interviews and got accepted as a police officer recruit. Don’t get me wrong, everyone has the right to act like a jerk, but Brad was really abusing that privilege.

  “What are you guys doing up at five in the morning?” Brad asked. He shoved his thumbs into his police-issue utility belt, giving us his favourite pose.

  “Nothing,” I said quickly—maybe too quickly.

  He looked over at our wagon in the distance. We had draped two giant beach towels over our gear. There was no way he could see the golf balls hidden beneath.

  Brad decided to demonstrate his sharp policing skills at this point. “Kind of early for a swim,” he said, poking Eric’s wet hair. “Isn’t it?”

  Eric looked like he was in shock. A bead of sweat raced down his forehead toward his ear. “We . . . we were just diving out at the trout pond,” Eric finally said. “This is the best time to feed them and swim with them.”

  Wow! I was impressed. That was a great lie. We had swum in the stocked trout ponds before. It had been fun swimming around with the fish and feeding them stale bread from the dumpster. But we’d never go at five in the morning.

  “Riiight,” Brad said slowly. “The trout ponds.” He looked at his wristwatch and then at our wagon next to the smelly garbage bin.

  I nodded vigorously, confirming that my friend’s lie was the truth.

  “You hauled your stuff there and back,” Brad asked suspiciously, “and still had time to dive with the fish?”

  “We forgot the bread,” I said, “so we came back.”

  “Then why are you guys still wet?”

  “Well,” I said, “we were hot, so we jumped in the trout pond anyway. . . to cool off.”

  “Yeah.” Now it was Eric’s turn to nod. “We’re not going to go all the way out there for nothing. That would be stupid.”

  The back door of the restaurant opened again, and Creepy Calvin stepped outside. He scowled in our direction—probably mad that we had parked our bikes next to his dumpster—and heaved a bag of garbage into the bin. A draft caught the corner of one of our towels and flipped it back. Calvin had been about to head back inside the building, but then he glanced down at the wagon again. He seemed to freeze and stiffen. I guess he wasn’t expecting to see hundreds of wet golf balls. But did Brad see them too?

  Calvin snapped out of it, shot Brad a weird look, and quickly disappeared behind the door.

  Just then, a car pulled off the highway and rolled to a stop in front of the restaurant. It was Brad’s carpool ride to the police station in Pine Falls.

  “I have to go to work,” Brad said, “but I think we better talk about this later.”

  “Talk about what?” Eric said. “Swimming?”

  Brad, being a super-cool almost-cop, didn’t immediately know what to say to that.

  We waited. After ten seconds went by, he took two fingers, pointed them at his eyes, and then aimed them down at us. And just in case we didn’t get what that meant, he helpfully added, “I’ll be watching you guys.”

  Ironically, we were the ones who watched him as he strutted to the minivan that would take him down the highway to Pine Falls.

  Eric wiped his face. “That was close.”

  “What do you mean ‘close’?” I said. “I think he saw the golf balls. And now he knows we weren’t at the trout ponds.”

  “He doesn’t care about the golf balls,” Eric said. “I was worried that he heard us talking about the body—I mean, the statue. Then we’d have some real explaining to do.”

  I wasn’t convinced by Eric’s reasoning, so I said, “Didn’t you see his face? He looked mad.”

  Eric laughed. “Of course he’s mad. He has to carpool with Ms. Cross to work every day. He hates not having a car, and he hates that after ten years on the job he’s still a special constable.”

  “He really is a grump, huh?”

  Eric nodded. “Yeah, he likes to act like he’s a real cop because they gave him a uniform, a flashlight, and some handcuffs. But the handcuffs aren’t even metal.”

  “No?”

  “No,” Eric said. “They’re those plastic cuffs that you put your hands into and tighten by pulling on one end.”

  “Huh,” I said.

  Eric snorted. “I bet he spends the day filing papers and mopping floors.”

  I wasn’t sure what else to say on that subject, so I said, “Serves him right.”

  Eric continued trying to assure me that Brad (also known as Jerkface) wouldn’t tell anyone about what he’d seen—I mean, if he’d even seen anything. Plus, Eric explained, Brad had never been very nice to Eric’s aunt, so Eric’s mom never spoke with Brad anyway.

  “Okay,” I said finally. “We better get back to your place and inside the tent, just in case your mom wants to check on us.”

  “Yeah,” Eric said. “We might as well take a nap for six or seven hours.”

  “I don’t think it’s technically a nap when you sleep for seven hours.”

  Eric grinned. “When I sleep during the day, I always call it a nap.”

  We mounted our bikes and pedalled down the deserted streets to Eric’s house. As quietly as we could, we rolled our bikes—and the wagon—behind the shed and crawled into the tent. It was warm inside, so we both just collapsed on top of our sleeping bags and closed our eyes.

  But I couldn’t fall asleep for a long time. All I could think about was that stupid statue. It was so weird. Why would someone make a statue and then dump it into a lake where nobody could ever see it? Did the person who made it dislike it when it was finished? Where did it come from? Did someone steal it? But who would steal a statue, take it to a golf course, and then sink it in a lake? It didn’t make sense. That’s what kept me awake.

  I felt like the statue needed to be found—like it was a real person. I realize that sounds goofy, but it didn’t seem right to leave it down there forever. These kinds of thoughts tumbled around in my head as I listened to Eric sleeping beside me. Finally, I decided we had to get the statue out of the lake.

  After that, I fell into a deep sleep.

  “Psst.”

  I tried to open my eyes, then gave up.

  “Psst.”

  I felt a tug on my big toe.

  “Cody, wake up.” It was Rachel, Eric’s twin sister.

  I propped myself up on my elbows and squinted at the open tent flap. Rachel was on her knees, looking well rested and clean. I felt tired and sweaty.

  “Hey,” I croaked.

  Eric grabbed a pillow, rolled onto his side, and pressed the pillow against his ear.

  Rachel ignored her brother and said, “So . . . what happened last night? Did you find lots of golf balls? Was it scary snorkelling at night? Did anyone catch you?”

  “Yes, yes, and yes,” I said.

  Rachel’s face paled. “You got caught?”

  She already knew that we were denied permission to swim for golf balls during the day, so I didn’t have to tell her that part. But I did tell her everything else—how we snuck onto the country club pr
operty, how we snorkelled in the lake, and how we found the statue.

  “Why on earth would someone hide a statue there?” she asked when I finished. “On the bottom of a lake?”

  “It’s pretty odd, isn’t it?” I said, rubbing my eyes.

  Rachel twisted her mouth and squinted in thought. “I thought you said you got caught too?”

  “Sort of,” I said. “When we got back to Sultana, we stopped to get a drink from the vending machine outside the Rivercrest.”

  Rachel nodded.

  “Well,” I continued, “while we were there—minding our business in the picnic area—Brad Murphy snuck up on us. And he may have overheard us talking about the statue.”

  “Uh-oh,” Rachel moaned. “He’s nasty.”

  It was my turn to nod.

  “Do you think he saw the wagon, with all the golf balls?” she asked.

  I shrugged. “We don’t think so. But everything happened pretty fast.”

  Rachel slapped Eric’s leg. “Get up! I know you’re awake.”

  “I am not,” Eric mumbled.

  Rachel looked at me and said, “We have to hide those golf balls somewhere. You can’t just leave them behind the shed.”

  “They’re hidden,” Eric grumbled.

  “They’re not hidden at all,” Rachel said. “You guys just dragged the wagon behind the shed. I saw it there ten minutes ago. Anyone walking around the yard could see it too.”

  “She’s right,” I said. “We have to stash the golf balls somewhere else.”

  “Okay, okay,” Eric said. “Just let me have a quick cat nap.”

  I looked at my watch. It was 10:15. We’d already been sleeping for hours.

  “Come on,” Rachel said to me. “I’ll help you find room in the shed.”

  I crawled out of the tent and followed her to the aluminum garden shed. She unlatched the handle and wrestled it open. The doors screeched in protest as they slid along their rusty tracks. Inside, the shed was about as big as my bedroom, and except for a lawnmower and the usual garden tools, it was mostly empty.

  “This is perfect,” I said.

  “I know, right?” She rolled the mower into the corner, making even more room. “Mom and Dad used to do all the gardening together. But now, Mom. . . Mom doesn’t even come in here.”