“One for papa bear, one for mama bear, and one for baby bear,” Celluci mused, shuffling around on the gently rocking platform until he faced the water. Not so far away, the far shore was an unbroken wall of trees. He didn’t know if there were bears in this part of the province but there were certainly bathroom facilities for any number of them. Letting the breeze push his hair back off his face, he took another swallow of rapidly cooling coffee and listened to the silence. It was unnerving.
The sudden roar of a motor boat came as a welcome relief. Watching it bounce its way up the lake, he considered how far the sound carried and made a mental note to close the window should Vicki spend any significant portion of the night with him.
The moment distance allowed, the boat’s driver waved over the edge of the cracked windshield and, in a great, banked turn that sprayed a huge fantail of water out behind him, headed toward the exact spot where Celluci stood. Celluci’s fingers tightened around the handle of the mug but he held his ground. Still turning, the driver cut his engines and drifted the last few meters to the dock. As empty bleach bottles slowly crumpled under the gentle impact, he jumped out and tied off his bowline.
“Frank Patton,” he said, straightening from the cleat and holding out a callused hand. “You must be the guy that developer’s brought in from the city to capture the spirit of the lake.”
“Detective Sergeant Mike Celluci.” His own age or a little younger, Frank Patton had a working man’s grip that was just a little too forceful. Celluci returned pressure for pressure. “And I’m just spending a long weekend in the woods.”
Patton’s dark brows drew down. “But I thought …”
“You thought I was some weirdo psychic you could impress by crushing his fingers.” The other man looked down at their joined hands and had the grace to flush. As he released his hold, so did Celluci. He’d played this game too often to lose at it. “I suggest, if you get the chance to meet the actual investigator, you don’t come on quite so strong. She’s liable to feed you your preconceptions.”
“She’s …”
“Asleep right now. We got in late and she’s likely to be up … investigating tonight.”
“Yeah. Right.” Flexing his fingers, Patton stared down at the toes of his work boots. “It’s just, you know, we heard that, well …” Sucking in a deep breath, he looked up and grinned. “Oh hell, talk about getting off on the wrong foot. Can I get you a beer, Detective?”
Celluci glanced over at the Styrofoam cooler in the back of the boat and was tempted for a moment. As sweat rolled painfully into the bug bites on the back of his neck, he remembered just how good a cold beer could taste. “No, thanks,” he sighed with a disgusted glare into his mug. “I’ve, uh, still got coffee.”
To his surprise, Patton nodded and asked, “How long’ve you been dry? My brother-in-law gets that exact same look when some damn fool offers him a drink on a hot almost-summer afternoon,” he explained as Celluci stared at him in astonishment. “Goes to AA meetings in Bigwood twice a week.”
Remembering all the bottles he’d climbed into during those long months Vicki had been gone, Celluci shrugged. “About two years now—give or take.”
“I got generic cola …”
Celluci dumped the dregs of cold bug-infested coffee into the lake. The Ministry of Natural Resources could kiss his ass. “Love one,” he said.
“So essentially everyone in town and everyone who owns property around the lake and everyone in a hundred-kilometer radius has reason to want Stuart Gordon gone.”
“Essentially,” Celluci agreed, tossing a gnawed chicken-bone aside and pulling another piece out of the bucket. He’d waited to eat until Vicki got up, maintaining the illusion that it was a ritual they continued to share. “According to Frank Patton, he hasn’t endeared himself to his new neighbors. This place used to belong to an Anne Kellough who … What?”
Vicki frowned and leaned toward him. “You’re covered in bites.”
“Tell me about it.” The reminder brought his hand up to scratch at the back of his neck. “You know what Nepeakea means? It’s an old Indian word that translates as ‘I’m fucking sick of being eaten alive by black flies; let’s get the hell out of here’.”
“Those old Indians could get a lot of mileage out of a word.”
Celluci snorted. “Tell me about it.”
“Anne Kellough?”
“What, not even one ‘poor sweet baby’?”
Stretching out her leg under the table, she ran her foot up the inseam of his jeans. “Poor sweet baby.”
“That’d be a lot more effective if you weren’t wearing hiking boots.”
Her laugh was one of the things that hadn’t changed when she had. Her smile was too white and too sharp and it made too many new promises, but her laugh remained fully human.
He waited until she finished, chewing, swallowing, congratulating himself for evoking it, then said, “Anne Kellough ran this place as sort of a therapy camp. Last summer, after ignoring her for thirteen years, the Ministry of Health people came down on her kitchen. Renovations cost more than she thought, the bank foreclosed, and Stuart Gordon bought it twenty minutes later.”
“That explains why she wants him gone—what about everyone else?”
“Lifestyle.”
“They think he’s gay?”
“Not his, theirs. The people who live out here, down in the village and around the lake—while not adverse to taking the occasional tourist for everything they can get—like the quiet, they like the solitude and, god help them, they even like the woods. The boys who run the hunting and fishing camp at the west-end of the lake …”
“Boys?”
“I’m quoting here. The boys,” he repeated, with emphasis, “say Gordon’s development will kill the fish and scare off the game. He nearly got his ass kicked by one of them, Pete Wegler, down at the local gas station and then got tossed out on said ass by the owner when he called the place ‘quaint’.”
“In the sort of tone that adds, ‘and a Starbucks would be a big improvement’?” When Celluci raised a brow, she shrugged. “I’ve spoken to him, it’s not that much of an extrapolation.”
“Yeah, exactly that sort of tone. Frank also told me that people with kids are concerned about the increase in traffic right through the center of the village.”
“Afraid they’ll start losing children and pets under expensive sport utes?”
“That, and they’re worried about an increase in taxes to maintain the road with all the extra traffic.” Pushing away from the table, he started closing plastic containers and carrying them to the fridge. “Apparently, Stuart Gordon, ever so diplomatically, told one of the village women that this was no place to raise kids.”
“What happened?”
“Frank says they got them apart before it went much beyond name calling.”
Wondering how far “much beyond name calling” went, Vicki watched Mike clean up the remains of his meal. “Are you sure he’s pissed off more than just these few people? Even if this was already a resort and he didn’t have to rezone, local council must’ve agreed to his building permit.”
“Yeah, and local opinion would feed local council to the spirit right alongside Mr. Gordon. Rumor has it, they’ve been bought off.”
Tipping her chair back against the wall, she smiled up at him. “Can I assume from your busy day that you’ve come down on the mud hole/vandals side of the argument?”
“It does seem the most likely.” He turned and scratched at the back of his neck again. When his fingertips came away damp, he heard her quick intake of breath. When he looked up, she was crossing the kitchen. Cool fingers wrapped around the side of his face.
“You didn’t shave.”
It took him a moment to find his voice. “I’m on vacation.”
Her breath lapped against him, then her tongue.
The lines between likely and unlikely blurred.
Then the sound of an approaching engine jerked him out
of her embrace.
Vicki licked her lips and sighed. “Six cylinder, sport utility, four-wheel drive, all the extras, black with gold trim.”
Celluci tucked his shirt back in. “Stuart Gordon told you what he drives.”
“Unless you think I can tell all that from the sound of the engine.”
“Not likely.”
“A detective sergeant? I’m impressed.” Pale hands in the pockets of his tweed blazer, Stuart Gordon leaned conspiratorially in toward Celluci, too many teeth showing in too broad a grin. “I don’t suppose you could fix a few parking tickets.”
“No.”
Thin lips pursed in exaggerated reaction to the blunt monosyllable. “Then what do you do, Detective Sergeant?”
“Violent crimes.”
Thinking that sounded a little too much like a suggestion, Vicki intervened. “Detective Celluci has agreed to assist me this weekend. Between us, we’ll be able to keep a twenty-four-hour watch.”
“Twenty-four hours?” The developer’s brows drew in. “I’m not paying more for that.”
“I’m not asking you to.”
“Good.” Stepping up onto the raised hearth as though it were a stage, he smiled with all the sincerity of a television infomercial. “Then I’m glad to have you aboard Detective, Mike—can I call you Mike?” He continued without waiting for an answer. “Call me Stuart. Together we’ll make this a safe place for the weary masses able to pay a premium price for a premium week in the woods.” A heartbeat later, his smile grew strained. “Don’t you two have detecting to do?”
“Call me Stuart?” Shaking his head, Celluci followed Vicki’s dark on dark silhouette out to the parking lot. “Why is he here?”
“He’s bait.”
“Bait? The man’s a certified asshole, sure, but we are not using him to attract an angry lake spirit.”
She turned and walked backward so she could study his face. Sometimes he forgot how well she could see in the dark and forgot to mask his expressions. “Mike, you don’t believe that call-me-Stuart has actually pissed off some kind of vengeful spirit protecting Lake Nepeakea?”
“You’re the one who said ‘bait’ …”
“Because we’re not going to catch the person, or persons, who threw acid on his car unless we catch them in the act. He understands that.”
“Oh. Right.”
Feeling the bulk of the van behind her, she stopped. “You didn’t answer my question.”
He sighed and folded his arms, wishing he could see her as well as she could see him. “Vicki, in the last four years I have been attacked by demons, mummies, zombies, werewolves …”
“That wasn’t an attack, that was a misunderstanding.”
“He went for my throat, I count it as an attack. I’ve offered my blood to the bastard son of Henry VIIII, and I’ve spent two years watching you hide from the day. There isn’t anything much I don’t believe in anymore.”
“But …”
“I believe in you,” he interrupted, “and from there, it’s not that big a step to just about anywhere. Are you going to speak with Mary Joseph tonight?”
His tone suggested the discussion was over.
“No, I was going to check means and opportunity on that list of names you gave me.” She glanced down toward the lake then up at him, not entirely certain what she was looking for in either instance. “Are you going to be all right out here on your own?”
“Why the hell wouldn’t I be?”
“No reason.” She kissed him, got into the van, and leaned out the open window to add, “Try and remember, Sigmund, that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”
Celluci watched Vicki drive away and then turned on his flashlight and played the beam over the side of Stuart’s car. Although it would have been more helpful to have seen the damage, he had to admit that the body shop had done a good job. And to give the man credit, however reluctantly, developing a wilderness property did provide more of an excuse than most of his kind had for the four-wheel drive.
Making his way over to an outcropping of rock where he could see both the parking lot and the lake but not be seen, Celluci sat down and turned off his light. According to Frank Patton, the black flies only fed during the day and the water was still too cold for mosquitoes. He wasn’t entirely convinced, but since nothing had bitten him so far the information seemed accurate. “I wonder if Stuart knows his little paradise is crawling with blood-suckers.” Right thumb stroking the puncture wound on his left wrist, he turned toward the lodge.
His eyes widened.
Behind the evergreens, the lodge blazed with light. Inside lights. Outside lights. Every light in the place. The harsh yellow-white illumination washed out the stars up above and threw everything below into such sharp relief that even the lush, spring growth seemed manufactured. The shadows under the distant trees were now solid, impenetrable sheets of darkness.
“Well at least Ontario Hydro’s glad he’s here.” Shaking his head in disbelief, Celluci returned to his surveillance.
Too far away for the light to reach it, the lake threw up shimmering reflections of the stars and lapped gently against the shore.
Finally back on the paved road, Vicki unclenched her teeth and followed the southern edge of the lake toward the village. With nothing between the passenger side of the van and the water but a whitewashed guardrail and a few tumbled rocks, it was easy enough to look out the window and pretend she was driving on the lake itself. When the shoulder widened into a small parking area and a boat ramp, she pulled over and shut off the van.
The water moved inside its narrow channel like liquid darkness, opaque and mysterious. The part of the night that belonged to her, ended at the water’s edge.
“Not the way it’s supposed to work,” she muttered, getting out of the van and walking down the boat ramp. Up close, she could see through four or five inches of liquid to a stony bottom and the broken shells of freshwater clams but beyond that, it was hard not to believe she couldn’t just walk across to the other side.
The ubiquitous spring chorus of frogs suddenly fell silent, drawing Vicki’s attention around to a marshy cove off to her right. The silence was so complete she thought she could hear half a hundred tiny amphibian hearts beating. One. Two …
“Hey, there.”
She’d spun around and taken a step out into the lake before her brain caught up with her reaction. The feel of cold water filling her hiking boots brought her back to herself and she damped the hunter in her eyes before the man in the canoe had time to realize his danger.
Paddle in the water, holding the canoe in place, he nodded down at Vicki’s feet. “You don’t want to be doing that.”
“Doing what?”
“Wading at night. You’re going to want to see where you’re going, old Nepeakea drops off fast.” He jerked his head back toward the silvered darkness. “Even the ministry boys couldn’t tell you how deep she is in the middle. She’s got so much loose mud on the bottom it kept throwing back their sonar readings.”
“Then what are you doing here?”
“Well, I’m not wading, that’s for sure.”
“Or answering my question,” Vicki muttered stepping back out on the shore. Wet feet making her less than happy, she half-hoped for another smart-ass comment.
“I often canoe at night. I like the quiet.” He grinned at her, clearly believing he was too far away and there was too little light for her to see the appraisal that went with it. “You must be that investigator from Toronto. I saw your van when I was up at the lodge today.”
“You must be Frank Patton. You’ve changed your boat.”
“Can’t be quiet in a fifty-horsepower Evinrude, can I? You going in to see Mary Joseph?”
“No. I was going in to see Anne Kellough.”
“Second house past the stop sign on the right. Little yellow bungalow with a carport.” He slid backward so quietly even Vicki wouldn’t have known he was moving had she not been watching him. He handled the big a
luminum canoe with practiced ease. “I’d offer you a lift but I’m sure you’re in a hurry.”
Vicki smiled. “Thanks anyway.” Her eyes silvered. “Maybe another time.”
She was still smiling as she got into the van. Out on the lake, Frank Patton splashed about trying to retrieve the canoe paddle that had dropped from nerveless fingers.
“Frankly, I hate the little bastard, but there’s no law against that.” Anne Kellough pulled her sweater tighter and leaned back against the porch railing. “He’s the one who set the health department on me, you know.”
“I didn’t.”
“Oh yeah. He came up here about three months before it happened looking for land and he wanted mine. I wouldn’t sell it to him so he figured out a way to take it.” Anger quickened her breathing and flared her nostrils. “He as much as told me, after it was all over, with that big shit-eating grin and his, ‘Rough luck, Ms. Kellough, too bad the banks can’t be more forgiving.’ The patronizing asshole.” Eyes narrowed, she glared at Vicki. “And you know what really pisses me off? I used to rent the lodge out to people who needed a little silence in their lives; you know, so they could maybe hear what was going on inside their heads. If Stuart Gordon has his way, there won’t be any silence and the place’ll be awash in brand names and expensive dental work.”
“If Stuart Gordon has his way?” Vicki repeated, brows rising.
“Well, it’s not built yet, is it?”
“He has all the paperwork filed; what’s going to stop him?”
The other woman picked at a flake of paint, her whole attention focused on lifting it from the railing. Just when Vicki felt she’d have to ask again, Anne looked up and out toward the dark waters of the lake. “That’s the question, isn’t it,” she said softly, brushing her hair back off her face.
The lake seemed no different to Vicki than it ever had. About to suggest that the question acquire an answer, she suddenly frowned. “What happened to your hand? That looks like an acid burn.”
The Mammoth Book of Vampire Stories by Women Page 7
