“When’d you get in?” Calhoun said.
“Yesterday,” said Jack. “Curtis Swenson flew us in from Greenville.” He shook his head. “We liked Curtis. A real character.”
“That was a terrible thing,” said Harry. “What happened this morning.”
“So who else up here flies?” said Jack. “Seems to me this place is dependent on its float planes.”
Calhoun shook his head. “I don’t know. I’m sure Marty’s on top of the situation.” He pushed himself to his feet. “We’ll meet at the dock at eight thirty. That sound okay?”
“Sounds good,” said Jack.
“Bring your foul-weather gear. I’ll have everything else.”
“Are we expecting rain?” said Harry.
“When you go fishing,” said Calhoun, “it’s always best to expect rain.”
It was sometime in the middle of the night when Calhoun felt himself being dragged up from the depths of a black, dreamless sleep. It took him a moment to realize that Ralph was sitting on the floor beside him, growling softly in his chest. Calhoun put his hand on Ralph’s head, and the dog quieted down.
He slipped out of bed just as the latch rattled and the door cracked open. Calhoun moved on silent bare feet to the wall next to the woodstove, where he lost himself in a shadow.
A moment later, somebody slipped in through the door, then shut it silently. Calhoun got just a glimpse of the figure—medium height, slender, athletic. He guessed he had many pounds and a few inches on his intruder, but he didn’t know if the man had a weapon.
The shadow moved across the room to the bed.
Calhoun eased up behind him, and he was about to lever his forearm under the intruder’s throat and ram his knee into the small of his back when he heard him whisper, “Stoney? Hey. It’s me.”
It wasn’t a man.
It was Robin.
“Jesus H. Christ, woman,” he said.
She whirled around and said, “Oh. Oh, wow. You scared the pee out of me.”
“Ditto,” said Calhoun. He reached over and switched on the light. “What the hell are you doing? I could’ve killed you, you know.”
“I’m sorry.” Robin looked at him and smiled. “You’re pretty cute, you know that?”
Calhoun was wearing his usual bedtime attire, a T-shirt and a pair of boxer shorts. Robin had on a man-sized T-shirt and a pair of baggy sweatpants.
“Answer my question,” he said. “What the hell are you doing here? It’s the middle of the night. You should be asleep, not sneaking around in other people’s cabins.”
She looked at him with damp eyes. “I was scared,” she said. “I don’t know what’s going on around here. I don’t feel safe anymore. I tried to go to sleep, and I couldn’t. I kept thinking about Elaine getting shot in her bed and Curtis getting blown up, and you, you were supposed to be on that plane, and . . . and I needed not to be alone.” She gave him a little shrug. “I wanted to be with you.”
“Feel safe with me, do you?” he said.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, I surely do.”
“Some people think I’m the one causing all the problems around here.”
“Who thinks that?”
He shrugged. “Me, for one.”
“You saying you’re feeling guilty about the things that have happened?”
“Not guilty, exactly,” Calhoun said, “but you’ve got to admit, I’ve been here four days, and two people have died violent deaths in that time. I’d say that defies all odds, wouldn’t you?”
“Something’s going on, all right,” said Robin, “but I don’t see how you can say it’s your fault.”
He shrugged. “It’s how I feel. Look, let me walk you back to your room.”
“I don’t feel safe there,” she said. “I want to stay here with you.”
“That ain’t a good idea.” He remembered what June Dunlap had told him. That Robin had lost her father at sea. That she might have a crush on Calhoun. He took Robin’s hand. “Come on. I’ll take you back.”
“I’ll behave myself,” Robin said. “I promise. I can sleep on your sofa.”
“No,” he said. “It’s a bad idea.”
Robin narrowed her eyes at him. Then she nodded. “Fine. If that’s how you want it. I’ll go.” She turned and headed for the door.
“Wait,” said Calhoun. “I’ll go with you.”
“The hell with that,” she said. “I came here all by myself. I guess I can find my way back okay.” She opened the screen door, stepped out, and let it slam shut behind her.
Calhoun went out onto his screened-in porch. Already Robin had disappeared in the darkness. He waited there for as long as he guessed it would take for her to make it back to the lodge, and when he didn’t hear anything unusual, like a woman screaming, he went back inside.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
After breakfast the next morning, Calhoun picked up the cooler with the lunch fixin’s that he’d asked for from the kitchen, lugged it down to the boathouse, and stowed it in the Grand Lake canoe he’d be using. In the corner of the boathouse he found some of the other gear he’d need for cooking a shore lunch, and he packed that away in the canoe, too. He started up the motor to see how it sounded. It started on the first yank of the cord and burbled smoothly. He turned it off, checked the gas can, and found it full.
Then he went back to his cabin, selected three fly rods, and got them set up—two for trolling streamers and one for casting dry flies. He sorted the rest of the gear—fly boxes, spools of leader material, pliers, insect repellent, dry-fly floatant, and so forth—into a single bag and hauled all the stuff back down to the boathouse.
Ralph was tagging along at Calhoun’s heels with his ears perked up and his stubby tail wagging. Ralph knew a fishing trip when he saw one, and he’d be damned if he was going to be left behind.
Calhoun got all the fishing gear stowed neatly in the canoe where he could reach anything he needed from his seat in the stern. Then he smiled at Ralph, who was sitting on the dock inside the boathouse looking intently into the canoe.
“Okay,” Calhoun said. “Let’s go, then.”
Ralph leaped lightly into the middle of the canoe, moved down to the thwart directly in front of the stern seat, curled up into what he probably thought was an inconspicuous ball against a bag of fishing gear, closed his eyes, and went to sleep, on the theory, Calhoun guessed, that nobody would be so cruel as to wake up a peacefully sleeping dog and kick him out of a canoe.
Calhoun climbed into the stern seat and paddled out of the boathouse and around to the dock, where Jack and Harry Vandercamp, his clients for the day, were waiting.
“Mornin’,” he said.
“Good morning,” said the Vandercamp men practically in unison.
“We got a nice soft day for it.” Calhoun looked up at the sky, which was gray and still and smelled like rain. “Hope you remembered your foul-weather gear.”
Both of them nodded.
“Well,” said Calhoun, “climb in. There’s fish out there waitin’ to be caught.”
Jack knelt on the dock and held the canoe while Harry, bracing himself on his son’s shoulder, climbed into the bow seat. Then Jack got into the middle seat and pushed the canoe away from the dock.
Calhoun gave a couple of pulls with the paddle, then got the motor going. He steered them across the lake. The shoreline there was dark and fell off quickly into deep water. It was overhung with hemlock and alder and scattered with large boulders. He liked the looks of it. It looked fishy.
When they got there, he cut back the motor to trolling speed and handed rods to Jack and Harry. “Harry,” he said, “you let your line out on this side here,” indicating the side nearest the shoreline. “Jack, you fish the other side of the boat. You’ll both be dragging your flies over the drop-off. We’ll head downlake and see what might be inclined to take a bite out of those flies.”
As they chugged slowly toward the foot of the lake, a misty rain began to fall, and the water lay
as flat and glossy as a black mirror. They all pulled on rain gear, and pretty soon each of Calhoun’s sports caught a nice salmon.
At the foot of the lake, he shut off the motor, stood up, and poled them down through the narrows, which was little more than a curved pinching of the lake and a boulder-strewn quickening of the water where Loon emptied into Muddy.
There was a small cove on the left right there at the head of Muddy Pond, and through the mist Calhoun spotted a couple of rings on the glassy surface. He pointed with his push-pole. “Look,” he whispered, though there was no need to whisper. “See that?”
Harry and Jack shaded their eyes and looked where Calhoun was pointing at the widening rings.
“What are they?” said Harry.
“Maybe salmon,” said Calhoun, “but if I had to guess, I’d say big squaretails on the hunt for mayflies.”
“Squaretails,” said Jack. “You mean brook trout?”
“We call ’em squaretails here in Maine,” said Calhoun. “Lake trout are called togue, too, if anybody should mention it.” He picked up the spare fly rod, which he’d rigged with a bushy dry fly—an Adams, his all-round favorite—and handed it up to old Harry. “Stand up and get some line out,” he told Harry. “Let’s catch one of ’em so we can tell for sure what species it is.”
Calhoun put down the pole, picked up a paddle, and eased the canoe into the cove. Ralph, apparently sensing something was afoot, sat up to watch. Harry, up in the bow, was false casting, getting a good length of fly line in the air. He appeared to be a decent caster. A bit wristy, Calhoun thought, but certainly competent enough to get the job done.
“Okay,” he said softly. “Strip it in, blow on your fly, and be ready. These fish are cruising, so when you see one boil on the surface, try to figure what direction he’s heading and cast ahead of him. Don’t put it in the middle of his ring. That’s the one place we know he ain’t gonna be.”
Calhoun let the canoe drift on the flat surface, and a minute later a fish swirled ahead of them. He didn’t need to say anything. Harry had his line in the air, and he laid his fly down about fifteen feet to the left of where the fish had come up.
“Yeah, good shot,” Calhoun said softly. “Now just leave her set there. Don’t twitch it or anything. If he’s headed in that direction, he’ll see it, and if he likes what he sees, he’ll eat it.”
Instead, the fish came up on the other side of the boat. This time Calhoun had a good look at the swirl it made. “Quick,” he said. “That fish is heading left and a little toward us. About eight o’clock.”
Harry dropped the Adams right where Calhoun hoped he would, and a moment later a large fish-shaped shadow cruised up to it, lifted its head, opened its mouth, and casually slurped in the fly. Harry raised his rod and set the hook.
“Oh, beautiful,” said Jack. “Way to go, Dad.”
The fish did not jump, leading Calhoun to conclude that it was a squaretail, not a salmon. Harry played it expertly, and after a good fight of a bit more than five minutes, Calhoun netted a gorgeous Maine brook trout. “A conservative four pounds,” he said.
He extended the net down to Harry, who lifted out the fish, gently unhooked it, and held it up for Jack to photograph.
“You want to keep it?” said Calhoun. “Marty says they’ve got a great taxidermist in Pittsburgh who’ll mount that fish for you.”
Harry shook his head. “We got the photo. Anyway, that fish is mounted here.” He tapped the side of his head with his forefinger. “I don’t need to kill it to remember it.”
Calhoun smiled. “Nice to know it’ll keep swimming, isn’t it?”
Harry nodded. He leaned over the side of the canoe and cradled the big fish in the water for a moment, letting it catch its breath, until it flicked its tail and was gone.
“That right there was worth the whole trip,” said Jack. “Thanks, Stoney. Nice guidin’.”
“Nice fishin’, I’d say,” said Calhoun. “Harry, you’re a helluva man.”
Harry grinned and jerked a thumb into the air.
They drifted there in the cove for another ten or fifteen minutes, but no more fish broke the surface, so Calhoun started up the motor and they resumed trolling along the drop-offs.
They were just approaching the point of land where Calhoun intended to stop for lunch when he noticed a flash of color on one of the bushes against the shore where it drooped down to touch the water. It was a shade of neon orange not usually found along a Maine shoreline. Perhaps it was some kind of wildflower, but Calhoun didn’t think so.
“Reel up, men,” he said. “We’re gonna have lunch now.”
After Harry and Jack got their lines in, Calhoun shut off the motor, picked up his paddle, and steered the canoe over to the bush. “Harry, grab that orange thing for me, would you?” he said.
Harry reached over and plucked the orange scrap from the bush. “Oh, shit,” he muttered. “Do you know what this is?”
“I got a suspicion,” Calhoun said.
Harry handed the orange scrap back to Jack, who looked at it for a moment, then passed it on to Calhoun.
It was a ragged strip of lightweight cloth—silk, maybe—and it was decorated with orange and yellow hibiscus flowers intertwined with pale green and blue vines. One edge of the cloth was black, apparently singed by flame.
“What do you think?” said Jack.
“I remember this design,” said Calhoun. “It’s a piece of Curtis’s shirt, all right. I don’t think the sheriff’s divers got this far down Muddy yesterday.”
“Just because we got a piece of his shirt doesn’t mean his body’s down here,” said Harry.
“No, you’re right,” said Calhoun, “though I do think we’ve got to check it out. We’ll have lunch first, but then I think we need to explore the rest of Muddy Pond all the way down to the outlet. We can fish for salmon and look for dead bodies all at the same time. Not many anglers get to do that.”
“A unique experience indeed,” said Harry, without any trace of cynicism that Calhoun could detect.
Calhoun had brought a bag of charcoal to speed up the preparation of the shore lunch. Quicker than building a fire from dead hardwood and waiting for it to burn down to coals. He scooped out a shallow bowl in the sandy ground, filled it with some birch bark and pine shavings and twigs, and got the kindling lit. Then he dumped in the hunks of charcoal. When they were glowing, he surrounded the firebowl with rocks, covered it with a grill, and put on the cast-iron pot of chili and the coffeepot. He waited for the chili to begin bubbling, then got out the skillet and flopped down the three thick rib eyes.
Four minutes on each side and he figured the steaks would be pinkish red inside. He put each slab of meat on a plate and set them out, along with knives, forks, coffee mugs, the chili pot, and a basket of corn muffins, on a big flat rock.
The rain had stopped, and the sun was threatening to break through the clouds. Ralph was lying on the ground, keeping an eye on the food. Harry and Jack were sitting on boulders by the water’s edge talking and gazing out at the water and sipping from cans of Coke. “Come and get it,” Calhoun called to them.
They came, and they got it, and they proclaimed it delicious, and all three of them tossed their meat scraps to Ralph, who seemed to find it delicious, too.
After the food was gone, they sat around sipping mugs of camp coffee, which Harry and Jack proclaimed the best coffee they’d ever had.
Jack was sprawled on the ground with his head resting on a log and his eyes closed against the glare of the sky. He might’ve been sleeping.
Harry reached over and tapped Calhoun on the leg. “He thinks this will be our last trip together,” he said softly, jerking his head at his son. “I’ve got this kidney problem. Jack doesn’t think I’m gonna make it till next summer.”
Calhoun looked at him. “I’m damn sorry to hear that.”
“I’m not going along with that thinking,” Harry said. “I got plenty more fishing in me.”
“I h
ope you’re right,” said Calhoun. “Next summer you and Jack have to come to Portland. I’ll take you out for bluefish and stripers.”
Harry smiled. “We’d like that.”
______
After they got their campsite cleaned up, they loaded the canoe and climbed back in. By now the clouds had blown away, and the sun was blazing from a clear blue sky, and the surface of Muddy Pond was corrugated with chop in the stiff afternoon breeze.
They trolled the entire eastern shoreline all the way to the foot of the pond without a single strike.
“These ain’t very good conditions, I’m afraid,” said Calhoun. “Bright sun puts down the fish. On the other hand, the salmon do like the riffled water. Maybe we’ll do better along the other shoreline.”
The west shore wasn’t much better, though. At one point Harry’s rod bounced, and its tip dipped, and a short length of line was yanked off his reel, but the fish failed to hook itself.
They didn’t talk about it, but Calhoun could tell that both Harry and Jack were scanning the surface of the water, alert for something that might turn out to be Curtis Swenson’s dead body.
They found the same number of dead bodies as the number of fish they caught from Muddy Pond that afternoon, which was zero.
Calhoun had just finished poling them up through the narrows into Loon Lake when he heard the drone of an airplane engine. He recognized the voice of the lodge’s Twin Otter, and a moment later the big plane with the triple-L logo on its side cleared the treetops, circled around to the head of the lake, and dropped down until it was out of sight from their canoe. Then the pitch of the engine changed, indicating that it had begun to make its descent.
“That’s the lodge’s plane,” said Jack Vandercamp. “I wonder who’s flying her.”
“One of the guides, I imagine,” said Harry. “The tall young one. Forget his name.”
“That’d be Ben,” said Calhoun.
Harry nodded. “That’s right. Ben. I heard him and Marty talking this morning. Ben’s got his license. He was in Iraq, did you know that? I guess he flew planes or helicopters or something over there.”
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