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  “He’s a good dog,” Jonas told me as we wandered the church lawn. “Ever since he’s been with me he’s been so friendly and kind. I thought at first that he must belong to someone in town, because he was so obviously used to people. No one claimed him, though. Oh. Do ya suppose he went back to his owner?”

  “After a few months? I don’t think he would have stuck around with you that long if he was missing his family that much.” Not that I was any kind of dog whisperer. “Have you tried leaving food out for him at night?”

  “I thought of that, but I don’t want to attract any wild animals into town.”

  Which was a real concern. Unfortunately there was an obvious conclusion that stemmed from that thought, but we both avoided saying it. We were at the far end of civilization here, and miles of desert and forest and bush surrounded us. If we had to worry about wild animals coming into town, it wasn’t impossible that one or more of those wild animals took off with Arthur Phillip. Like a fox. Or a carpet python. Well. Maybe not the python. Maybe he’d been bitten by a red back spider. Anything could have happened to keep him from being at home.

  For now, we both wanted to believe the dog was still very much alive, and just waiting to be found. Somewhere.

  “You searched everywhere inside?” I asked.

  “Yes, I did. Not much to search through, mind you. My little apartment at the back, the church’s office, a couple of other rooms. Oh.”

  He stared at me blankly. Something had just occurred to him.

  “I completely forgot.” He looked sheepishly at the church. “We have a basement. I never use it, mind you. It’s for storage and things, but the stuff that ends up down there basically goes there to die, if ya take my meaning.”

  I did, but I wish he hadn’t put it that way. If Arthur Phillip was down there, and had been down there for three days without making a sound, that didn’t bode well for our search.

  That was another thing both of us left unsaid as I followed him inside, through the open area with its neat rows of pews for the service and the altar at the back. The inside of the church had always been given better upkeep than the outside. The dark wood paneling on the walls gleamed with furniture polish spray and a worn but colorful red carpet covered every inch of the floor.

  It was a warm, cozy space. Every time I’d been here I’d felt at home.

  At the other end of the room, at the front of the church, was the door that I knew led to a storage room and then to Jonas’s small apartment space. I’d only been back there once, during an ice cream social to get more plastic cups for the lemonade, but I remembered thinking how cramped it felt. Even more than my two room apartment.

  Which was why I was surprised when Jonas headed straight for that door.

  “You have a basement? Back there?”

  “Well,” he said, “the basement is under the church, but the entrance is in here. Yes.”

  I started to follow after him, but he was through the door before I got there, and the man sitting in the first row stopped me with a simple, “G’day.”

  He’d been sitting so still and quiet that I hadn’t noticed him, I guess. An older man with gray hair combed straight back from a high forehead, a smile on his gaunt face, wearing a long black overcoat that parted around the knees of his black suit pants. A hat with a flat top sat next to him. His hands were folded over the round top of a stout black cane braced against the floor where he sat. The very model of a perfect gentleman.

  “Oh,” I said, somewhat less than tactfully. “I remember you. Um. Heeral, right?”

  His eyes brightened, the color of them seeming to shift from a cloudy gray to almost blue. “Heeral Stone. So nice to be noticed.”

  I kept myself from frowning, but just barely. Such an odd thing to say. I’d only seen Heeral once before, here in the church as it happened, and it made me sad to think that he felt no one noticed him much. “Are you here visiting Pastor Albright?” I asked him.

  He worked his head from side to side, considering what I’d said. “I suppose, in a manner of speaking. He’s lost his dog.”

  “Yes, I heard. I feel bad for him. He loved that mutt, even if they hadn’t been together for long.”

  Heeral nodded. “A pastor’s life can be a lonely one, especially for someone like Jonas. He’s chosen to minister in a town without much faith.”

  “Well, having faith and attending church services aren’t the same thing.”

  He smiled at me again and lifted a finger off the head of his cane. “True enough. Still. There’s little faith here in Lakeshore. Been that way for a long time.”

  I didn’t remember everything Heeral had said to me last time we were here, but I did recall him saying he was from Lakeshore, that he’d lived here a long time ago. “I’m sure Pastor Albright does everything he can for us,” I said. I meant it, but I was trying to defend Jonas, too. I suddenly didn’t like the way this man was talking about our pastor.

  Smiling still, Heeral shook his head. “I meant no offense. I’ve known Jonas for, oh, years. He’s a good man. I’m just worried he might not be up to the task here in Lakeshore. Come now, Dell. You’ve felt it yourself. Evil men doing evil things. There’s been murder here on the shores of the three lakes for the first time in decades. Not just one, but several. As bad omens go that one pretty much tops the list, don’t ya think?”

  When I opened my mouth to argue the words just evaporated. He wasn’t wrong, I realized. Bad things were happening in this sleepy little town. I suppose, from a certain point of view, it would be easy to believe that bad times were coming. Worse than what we’d experienced so far. My best friend being murdered. The mafia-like ‘Ndrangheta and their various criminal activities. Half of our police force fired—or in jail—for being corrupt.

  Suddenly my optimistic mood from this morning seemed like so much empty wishing. I looked down at Heeral again, focusing my eyes on that smile of his that hadn’t changed one bit. It was like he knew something I didn’t, and he didn’t want to share.

  I scowled at him. Old man or not, friend of Pastor Albright’s or not, I’d had enough of this conversation. “You like to bring the mood down, don’t you?”

  He spread his hands wide, holding the cane in his right, and then levered himself up from the pew. He grabbed up his hat as he did. “I speak the truth as I see it, Dell. I think, perhaps, that you’re one to see more than most people here, as well.”

  My mouth went dry. Was he… did he…? No. He couldn’t know about me and my ghosts. Nobody knew about that. Not even my boyfriend, and that man had seen me naked!

  At my age that’s much more significant than it sounds.

  “Well.” Heeral said to me as I stood there with my thoughts wandering. “I’ll be off, then. I suppose Jonas needs your help, anyway. Not just him, either.”

  He turned away, making his way up the aisle between the pews with a confident step, and the rhythmic thump of that cane that he leaned on. I watched him go, too stunned to speak. What was he talking about?

  A few steps later he waved the hand holding the hat in the air. “Arthur Phillip isn’t down there, just so you know. Poor dog. Might have to search to the ends of the Earth to find him again.”

  My jaw clamped shut. What a mean thing to say. Search to the ends of the Earth indeed. As if I wouldn’t do that for a friend anyway.

  I spun on my heel, not wanting to devote any more time to Heeral and the black cloud he carried on his shoulder. Who was he anyway? I racked my brain, but couldn’t remember seeing him round town at all. He certainly didn’t live here in the church so he had to hang his hat somewhere. Someone must know him. I made a mental note to ask Rosie about Heeral when I got back to the Inn. Rosie seemed to know everyone in town. And their business.

  For now, as much as I didn’t want to, I had to admit he was right. I needed to get back to helping Pastor Albright search for Arthur Phillip. Whether Heeral had already searched the basement for the dog or not I was going to feel a lot better if Jonas and I
looked for ourselves.

  Through the door to the right of the altar was the small storage room I remembered. Shelves were stacked with boxes of paper and folded tablecloths and stacks of loose candles, and other things a church needs. There were several jars of pickles, too. I’m guessing those were more for the pastor’s cravings than for his parishioners.

  The door ahead of me led to Jonas’s apartment. The door to my left was open, and under the glare of bare bulbs set along the ceiling I saw a set of stairs, leading down to the basement.

  “Huh,” I couldn’t help commenting out loud, pushing the door wider. “I thought this was a closet.”

  I heard Jonas down there, calling for Arthur Phillip and pushing things around. Before I’d made it three steps down, he was coming back up, slapping his hands together to brush off the dust. “There ya are,” he said. “I was beginning to wonder.”

  “I was talking with someone out in the church. Sorry.”

  He waved the apology away. “No need. Nothing down there but junk and spiders. Have to get the place fumigated soon, I’m afraid. Hate to kill any of God’s creatures but I’d rather not wake up one night with white-tailed spider bites, if I can help it.”

  Hard to argue with that. “So, we’re back to square one,” I said, not meaning it to sound so completely hopeless as it had.

  “Cheer up,” Jonas told me. “At least you’ve helped me figure out one more place that Arthur Phillip most definitely is not. Perhaps young Barnaby Thorne knows something more. He was here to do his weekly probation chores this month. Hmm. I’ll have to make sure to ask him. Who was it you were talking to in the church?”

  “Oh, um.” I’d been thinking about his dog, and the question took me off guard. “A friend of yours. What was his last name? Heeral… something. Stone. That’s it. Heeral Stone.”

  For a moment I was sure Jonas hadn’t heard what I said. He stood there, staring through me, until he began blinking profusely. Then he swallowed, and I watched the color drain from his face.

  Then he swallowed again, and ran past me.

  As Jonas threw open the door to his little apartment I called after him, asking if he was all right, and what was wrong, and did he need my help?

  He rushed between his narrow bed and an even narrower chest of drawers to a tiny cubicle of a bathroom where he promptly fell on his knees and threw up into the toilet.

  Which was my cue to back away and give the man some privacy.

  I waited patiently out in the main room of the church, sitting on a pew and listening for Jonas to be done. It took a few minutes. As I waited, my mind began wandering back to the problem of little Arthur Phillip. Basically I wanted to think about anything else except middle-aged men throwing up.

  Arthur Phillip. It was a strange name for a dog, even when you knew Jonas took the name from the Captain of the First Fleet of convicts sent to Australia. I’m all for remembering our history, but sometimes the people in this town take it too far. Like whitewashing all of our houses and shops to remember a bushranger raid. That’s why I’d fought so hard for permission to paint the Pine Lake Inn a nice sunflower yellow.

  So the dog with the heavy historical name was missing. Had been missing for a few days now. Well. If this is the most serious mystery I have to solve before winter sets in then I’m definitely not going to complain.

  There’s some famous last words if ever I heard them. I really need to learn not to say things like that. Even in my head.

  Do wish we had a lead, though. What was it Jonas said, before he went to evacuate his stomach? Barnaby Thorne might know something. Young Barnaby Thorne, ordered to work at the church as part of his probation. I’d heard that name before. Everyone knew the Thorne family. None of them had amounted to much, thanks to an alcoholic grandfather and other circumstances beyond their control. I didn’t know Barnaby, though. Well, if he’d been working here when Arthur Phillip disappeared, then he might be a witness we could talk to…

  Or a suspect.

  Now there was a thought. Jonas was a good man, but he could be slow to distrust people. It wasn’t in his nature. What if the young man working off his mandatory probation was actually the one who had stolen the pastor’s dog?

  Something to consider.

  I could ask Rosie, I knew. My partner at the Inn knew everyone in Lakeshore. Knew them, their families, and their business. She’d be able to tell me more. Then later today I could go and talk to young Barnaby Thorne myself.

  The sounds from the bathroom had stopped. Wiping his mouth with a washcloth, Jonas came out from the doorway to his apartment. There were beads of sweat on his forehead. “Well. Wasn’t that embarrassing.”

  “Are you all right?” I asked him. “Can I get you anything?”

  “No, no. I’m sure I’m fine. Just… just a touch of the flu, maybe.”

  Somehow, I felt there was a lot more to it than that. Jonas had been fine until I mentioned Heeral Stone. That was an odd name, an old name, but I doubt anyone would have that violent a reaction to a name without there being some reason for it.

  I was just about to ask what that reason might be when my mobile’s ringtone went off.

  Standing up from the pew, I took the smartphone out of my back pocket and checked the display. It was Rosie calling, and I just knew that would mean trouble back at the Inn. Rosie never calls me just to chat. She’s in charge when I’m gone because we’re equal partners in the Inn. She runs the kitchens and the menus and I do the paperwork and the advertising and the bookings. We work good together as a team.

  Which is another reason I know something must be wrong. We understand each other that way.

  Probably she’s caught fire to the stoves again, or else the lettuce exploded, or some such thing. Don’t laugh. With Rosie, that’s a serious possibility. I thumbed the answer button, smiling an apology to Jonas. “Hi, Rosie. What’s—?”

  “Dell!” my friend blurted out before I could even finish a sentence. “You have to come back to the Inn, right now!”

  “What blew up?”

  “Pardon? No. It’s not… well, there was a batch of pikelets that sort of splattered across the ceiling but that’s—”

  “Rosie, calm down. I don’t understand. What’s the emergency?”

  I heard her taking a deep breath. A long, deep breath. This was the longest breath in the history of the world and I was just about to hang up and walk back to the Inn because it would be quicker than waiting for Rosie to gather her wits and just tell me already, when she said something that made me drop back down into my seat in the pew.

  “Dell, the chimney’s falling down.”

  I let that sink in. The Pine Lake Inn has a fireplace in the middle of the foyer, the main room on the first floor. I jokingly refer to it as a “little” fireplace but it can hold logs nearly as long as my own leg, and its chimney is wide enough for a man to climb up, Santa Claus style. It makes up a good portion of that one wall, both inside and out, and if the brickwork is starting to come apart, then we were looking at thousands of dollars for repairs. Worse, we might have to shut down the Inn.

  When I came back to myself, Rosie was still babbling in my ear. Something about our handyman George Davies trying to fix a big, gaping hole.

  As quickly as I could I told her to stop George from doing anything else. I’d be right there. I like George, he’s done wonders round the Inn fixing everything from broken radiators to bullet holes, but the last thing I needed was him thinking he was suddenly a mason.

  I hung up the phone, and got to my feet, and started to run out of the church. Then I remembered Pastor Albright, and slid to a stop to turn back around. “Jonas, I’m sorry, I really need to get back to my Inn. Something’s wrong and, well, I’d like to be there before the place falls in on itself.”

  “Oh, my,” was his response. He mopped at his forehead again. Some of the color had come back into his face but he was still white as a ghost.

  And I should know.

  “Will you be all
right?” I asked him. “I’m sorry about your dog. I promise I’ll come back as soon as I can to help you look for him again. In the meantime, um, maybe put up some flyers?”

  “A grand suggestion. Go on with ya, Dell. We each have our own worries to take care of.”

  I was already out the front door before I realized how ominous that sounded. I wonder if he meant those words for me… or him?

  Chapter 2

  Fenlong Street is a very short bit of road that leads down to the edge of Pine Lake. It’s a sloping hill with a wooden barricade at the end just in case anyone tries to take the hill too fast and forgets that there’s a big, unforgiving body of water down there.

  There’s just the one building on Fenlong Street. My Inn.

  It took me a few minutes to rush back home on foot but it would’ve taken even longer for Pastor Albright to get his antique Toyota out of the storage building down the street from the church and drive me there. I hoofed it just as fast as I could, until I came in sight of the yellow three-story building set in among the Monterey Pines.

  The three front steps led up to the double front doors and the foyer, and then a large common room area to the left. I was more concerned with the part of the building on the right. That was where the chimney for the fireplace stood, rising up above the rooftop. It had always seemed so sturdy. Now, I wasn’t so sure.

  As I entered the foyer with its dark wood paneling and framed photographs of local landmarks, and saw the concerned looks on the faces of all the people standing around, I nearly burst into tears.

  This place was my life. I wouldn’t know what to do with myself if something serious happened to it.

  The foyer is a wide room but it felt cramped just now. Our handyman George lay on his back inside the fireplace, one leg crooked up, a torch with a powerfully bright beam in his hands. I had the feeling I wasn’t going to like whatever he was inspecting so closely. Rosie stood nearby with four of our staff, kitchen workers and housekeeping both, all of them nervously shifting back and forth and whispering. When Rosie saw me, she rushed over, fisting her hands into her apron over and over.