Crow Lake Read Free Page A

pebbles, and Bo was picking the pebbles out and poking them in again in the wrong places.
    “Don’t, Bo,” I said. “I’m making a pattern.”
    “Peas,” Bo said.
    “No they’re not. They’re pebbles. They’re not to eat.” She put one in her mouth.
    “Don’t!” I said. “Spit it out!”
    “Idiot,” Matt said. He leaned over and squeezed Bo’s cheeks until her mouth popped open and then fished out the pebble. She snickered at him and stuck her thumb in her mouth and then took it out and looked at it. It was gooey with saliva and sand. “Beans,” she said, and stuck it in again.
    “Now she’s got sand in her mouth,” I said.
    “It won’t hurt her.”
    He was watching Luke and Sally. Luke was still skipping stones but more carefully now, taking a long time to choose the flattest ones. Sally kept reaching up and smoothing back her hair. It was long and thick and a bright copper red, and the breeze off the lake kept lifting little strands of it and blowing them across her face. I thought the two of them were pretty boring, but Matt was watching them with the same thoughtful interest with which he studied the inhabitants of the ponds.
    His interest interested me. I said, “Why’s she here? Where’s she going?”
    He didn’t answer for a minute, and then he said, “Well, I suspect it has something to do with Luke.”
    “What? What to do with Luke?”
    He looked at me and narrowed his eyes. “I don’t actually know. Do you want me to guess?”
    “Yes.”
    “Okay. It’s only a guess, but everywhere Luke goes, there’s Sally. So I’m guessing she’s in love with him.”
    “In love with Luke?”
    “Hard to believe, isn’t it? But females are very strange, Katie.”
    “Is Luke in love with her?”
    “Dunno. I guess it’s possible.”
    After a while Sally left and Luke wandered up from the shore, frowning deeply at the sand, and Matt raised his eyebrows at me in a warning way which meant that I would be wise to keep quiet on the subject of Sally McLean.
    We unearthed Bo from her burial mound and brushed the sand off her and took her back to the house to get dressed. Then I took my bathing suit outside to hang it on the line, so I was the one to see the police car come down the drive.
    You didn’t often see police cars in Crow Lake, and I was curious. I ran down to the driveway to look at it, and the policeman got out, and to my surprise so did Reverend Mitchell and Dr. Christopherson. Reverend Mitchell was our minister and his daughter Janie was my best friend. Dr. Christopherson lived in Struan, but he was our doctor—in fact the only doctor for about a hundred miles. I liked both of them. Dr. Christopherson had an Irish setter called Molly who could pick blueberries with her teeth and who came with him on his rounds. I skipped up to them and said, “Mum and Dad aren’t here right now. They went shopping. They went to get a suitcase for Luke, because he’s going to be a teacher.”
    The policeman was standing by his car, looking intently at a small scratch on the fender. Reverend Mitchell looked at Dr. Christopherson and then back at me and said, “Is Luke here, Katherine? Or Matt?”
    “They’re both here,” I said. “They’re getting changed. We’ve been for a swim.”
    “We’d like a word with them. Could you tell them we’re here?”
    “Okay,” I said, and then, remembering my manners, “Do you want to come in? Mum and Dad will be back about half past six.” I had a happy thought. “I could make you a cup of tea.”
    “Thank you,” Reverend Mitchell said. “We’ll come in, but I don’t think … tea, thank you. Not right at the moment.”
    I led them into the house and excused the noise Bo was making—she’d got all the pots and pans out of the bottom cupboard and was bashing about with them on the kitchen floor. They said it didn’t matter so I left them in the dining room while I went to get Luke and Matt. I brought them both back and they looked curiously at