Storm Lake Read online

Storm Lake

  Copyright 2014 Val Tobin

  This is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Table of Contents

  Acknowledgements

  Storm Lake

  About Val Tobin

  Other books by Val Tobin

  Connect with Val Tobin

  Acknowledgements

  Editing by Kelly Hartigan (XterraWeb) editing.xterraweb.com. Thank you, Kelly. Thanks also to Bob Tobin, Val Cseh, John Erwin, Dr. Alis Kennedy, Michelle Legere, Kathy Rinaldo, and Judy Flinn.

  Storm Lake

  Rachel Needham frowned when Jeff, her little brother, wiggled his feet out of his shoes, reached down, and tugged off his socks. She complained before his socks hit the floor.

  “Mom, Jeff took off his stinky shoes, and his stinky feet stink.”

  Mom kept her gaze on the road. “We’re almost at the cottage turnoff. Open your window if it bothers you so much.”

  Jeff gave Rachel an I-win-you-lose grin, and she scowled and opened her window, letting in a blast of warm, humid air. Mom switched off the air conditioning.

  Rachel put her ear buds back in her ears and turned her music up a fraction. A peek at Jeff showed him smirking at her. She sighed.

  How long had they been driving? It seemed as if they should be at the cottage already. Rachel refused to ask the inevitable are we there yet question. She’d leave that to Jeff. Mom would expect it and tolerate it from a seven-year-old, but Rachel was thirteen. Mom had less patience for childish behaviour from Rachel.

  She turned her face away from Jeff. If he caught her glancing at him, he’d natter at her, and she wanted to listen to her music and drift in her own thoughts. Gaze focused out the window, Rachel pictured herself running next to the car, in the woods, and beside the marshes along the side of the road. In her imagination, she jumped over rocks and boulders. The only antidote for forced sitting was pretending to run.

  Her thoughts wandered to the cottage. She hoped Wendy, her best summer friend, was up and wanted to go canoeing before it got too dark.

  As if reading her mind, Jeff said, “Mom, when we get to the cottage, can we take the canoe out?”

  Rachel turned down her music and listened.

  “We’ll see,” Mom replied.

  Mom’s non-answer won’t satisfy Jeff, Rachel thought, and it didn’t. He fidgeted in his booster seat and craned his neck towards the front of the car.

  “But I want to paddle out to the beaver dam.” Jeff looked over at his sister and hesitated for a few seconds. “Rachel can take me,” he added.

  Rachel shook her head at Jeff. “I want to go canoeing with Wendy.”

  “I can go with Rachel and Wendy,” Jeff said.

  “We’ll see,” Mom said again. “How’s Spike doing?”

  The distraction almost worked. Jeff reached his hand down to pat the black-and-white Border collie sitting next to him, and said, “Okay. Spike’s been sleeping all the way. Hey, Mom, can Spike come canoeing?”

  “Sweetie, if we go, Spike will have to stay back at the cottage. Canoes and large dogs don’t mix.”

  Jeff caught the all-inclusiveness of his mother’s statement. “What do you mean we? Rachel and me can go alone. I’m big enough. Rachel used to go out with her friends when she was my age.”

  “Rachel and I,” Mom corrected. “I’ll think about it.”

  “Don’t I have a say?” Rachel said. “What if I don’t want to take him out?”

  “We’ll talk about it later.” Mom’s voice hinted frustration. “Here’s the cottage road. Watch for animals. Maybe you’ll spot a deer or bear.”

  Jeff pressed his face to the window, peering into the brush, and Rachel looked on her side, hoping to spot a deer. Many trees were still naked and skeletal, or grew small buds, giving her a clear view into the forest.

  Mom slowed the car on the winding, dirt road, rutted from the winter snows and the vehicles that travelled it all year long. Traffic going out from the lake was light at the start of the weekend, but you still had to watch for oncoming traffic. Rachel fidgeted in her eagerness to get to the cottage. She suppressed an urge to complain.

  “Hey, the bum trees have exploded,” Jeff said.

  “What’s that, hon?” Mom asked.

  “The bum trees—the trees that looked as if they had giant bums on them. Don’t you remember?”

  “I’m afraid I never noticed, sweetie.”

  How had her mother missed enormous bulges on the trees? Rachel had first spotted them when she was around Jeff’s age, though the growths were much smaller then.

  She’d asked her dad what caused the trees to grow that way, and he’d told her the lumps were “burls,” a disease affecting trees. She hadn’t asked about them again, but the bulges had grown larger over the years.

  Leave it to Jeff to name them bum trees.

  “You could have called them tummy trees,” Rachel said.

  Jeff sighed, as though she’d missed the obvious. “The lumps looked like bums, not tummies.”

  The drive turned out to be disappointing. They didn’t see a single animal, except for a few cows and an old dog on the Fergus family farm when they first turned off the highway.

  “What’s going on here?” Mom nodded at the front windshield when she pulled the car into the Storm Lake Marina parking lot.

  Rachel’s gaze followed Mom’s nod.

  Two police cars sat by the marina store. People milled about and a police officer wove through the crowd. Mom pulled into a parking space, and both kids unbuckled their seat belts. Rachel removed her ear buds and dropped them on the seat beside her.

  “Stay near me, please.” Mom turned in her seat and faced them. “I don’t want you wandering away.”

  Rachel opened her door and stepped from the car while Jeff let Spike out and attached a leash to the dog’s collar. The sight of the tall, muscular police officer, gun at his side, caused Jeff’s eyes to bug out. Rachel went around the car and stood next to Jeff.

  “It’s okay.” Rachel took his hand.

  Jeff snatched it away. “Don’t.”

  Rachel’s chest squeezed at the rejection. Hurt, she turned her back on him and walked towards her mother, Jeff and Spike trailing her.

  Mom called out to an older, grey-haired woman, attracting the woman’s attention as she hurried past them. Mrs. Miller, from the cottage across the lake, carried a grocery bag in each hand. She startled, even though she’d been staring right at them.

  “Heidi,” Mrs. Miller said, as she hurried over to Rachel’s mom. “Have you heard about the Wilson girl? The younger one—Kelly.”

  “What happened?” Mom replied.

  “She’s missing. The police are questioning everyone, scouring the whole area. They’re stopping anyone who comes to the marina.”

  “Isn’t she only six? Who was watching her?”

  “Both her parents. The Wilsons were working on their garden while Kelly was playing by the lake, wearing her life jacket. At some point, her parents realised she’d vanished. The Wilsons shouted and searched, but she’d disappeared. They insist she wouldn’t have wandered off and swear they heard nothing. That was hours ago. The Wilsons called the police right away. Two cars and four cops from the Ridley police station came out.”

  Rachel listened to the exchange between the two women, a lump growing in her throat. Her fingers went cold, and she clenched her hands into fists. She looked over at Jeff, whose eyes had bugged out again. Rachel resisted the urge to take his hand.

  “Mom, may I take Jeff into the store?”

  Mom looked down at Rachel and sucked in her br
eath. “Yes. Please. Stay together.”

  Rachel turned to Jeff, keeping her voice calm. “Let’s find a movie. Give Mom the leash, okay?”

  Jeff nodded, his face pale, and handed Spike’s leash to his mother. Rachel walked towards the store, Jeff trotting beside her.

  “Do you think something bad happened to Kelly?” Jeff said when they were out of Mom’s earshot.

  “I guess,” Rachel answered. “Kelly must have wandered away. You know you’re not supposed to go anywhere without telling Mom or Dad, right?”

  Jeff nodded. “Don’t talk to strangers. Don’t get in anybody’s car unless they know the password. Why would she have done that?”

  “Perhaps she fell in the water,” Rachel said, but she doubted it.

  The kids reached the entrance to the marina’s store. Storm Lake Marina Variety Store and Bait Shop perched between the lake and the owners’ house, next to a set of cedar stairs leading to the lake. Below the stairs, a series of docks stretched out into an inlet. Boats, mostly for fishing, floated, tied to the docks.

  Mr. Fergus huddled in the phone booth next to the door, his bulk preventing him from closing the