Lone Wolf by Linwood Barclay Read Free Book Online Page B

father’s place.”
    Henry’s face was screwed up like he was detecting a bad smell, but since I couldn’t smell anything, I figured that was his normal expression. “That doesn’t mean you can’t sign the petition,” he said. “It’s open to anyone.”
    “I’m sorry?” I said.
    He shoved the clipboard at me. “To keep the parade family-friendly,” he said. “Just sign down there. We’re getting a lot of names, but we need more if we’re going to be able to get the mayor to back down.”
    I smiled politely and waved my hands in front of me. “I don’t really know much about all that, but thanks, and good luck, okay?”
    As I tried to wheel the cart around him he said, “Don’t you believe in decency?”
    I honestly thought it was a bit overrated, but had a hunch this was the wrong time to say so. “Listen, really, good luck, but I’m really a bit pressed here,” I said, and got the cart around him, feeling his glare all the way down the aisle.
    When I returned to the pickup with the groceries, I knew Dad wanted to look in the bags, see whether I got the order right, so I put them right behind my seat where he couldn’t reach them. I saw him glance back there a couple of times, the anxiety plainly visible on his face, but with his ankle so sore, he couldn’t shift around very far.
    “Met Mr. Henry,” I said, turning the key and pulling the transmission down into drive.
    “Oh,” said Dad, still pissed over our earlier argument.
    “His face always look like that?”
    Dad didn’t respond, and we didn’t talk the rest of the way back.
    A small crowd gathered when we came down the hill and to a stop behind Dad’s cabin. At a glance, it looked like most everyone I’d seen earlier. The older couple, the well-dressed heavyset guy, and Bob Spooner.
    They gathered around Dad’s side, opened the door for him, helped him out. Spooner saw the crutches behind the seats, grabbed them, assisted Dad in getting them under his arms. “Come on, Arlen, let’s get you inside.”
    I got out the driver’s door, not rushing. Everyone else wanted to help. They seemed to have a genuine affection for Dad, particularly Bob and the older couple. This, I was learning, was not your typical fishing camp where the guests were strangers. This was some kind of family.
    I brought in the groceries and my new clothes and the bear repellent, glancing over my shoulder into the woods as I approached the cabin. It was dusk, and the trees were losing their distinctness and blending together into a single shadow against the darkening sky. I stopped a moment and listened, hearing nothing but a light breeze blowing through the pines. Now, with daylight fading, it was hard to tell where, exactly, the body had been. It was long gone now, taken away shortly after May Wickens fell into her father’s arms, and the entire incident, in many ways, seemed part of the distant past. Almost as if it had never happened.
    Dad was inviting everyone to come back in an hour. Bob Spooner said he did, indeed, have a stringerful of pickerel hanging off the dock that he could clean up before then, and the others were making offers of what they could bring. Before they could head back to their respective cabins and get ready, Dad wanted to introduce me formally to everyone, even if I’d already made their acquaintance.
    “Bob I know,” I said, shaking his hand again. Then Dad introduced me to Hank and Betty Wrigley, the older couple, who came from Pennsylvania every fall to rent cabin 4 for three weeks, and finally, the plump guy decked out in Eddie Bauer, who pressed his sweaty palm into mine and shook it for at least three seconds longer than he should have. Everything about him screamed “sales.”
    “I’m Leonard Colebert, and I’m in diapers!” He beamed.
    The others either shook their heads or rolled their eyes, or both. I guessed that they’d heard this one before.
    “No kidding?” I said.
    “That’s right. I own Colebert Enterprises,