Page 78 of Pro Bono

Rose kept watch from the side of the trail while May reached into the backpack that Linda had left there. She pulled Linda’s phone out of the pocket and looked at the screen. “Oh crap,” she whispered. “The clock just started.”

“Tear a few checks from the back of the checkbook and take a phone shot of the credit cards before she comes back.”

After a few seconds May said, “Got them.” She stood up, sliding her flattened hand into her jeans to pocket her phone and the checks.

“Here she comes.”

May glanced up the hill and whispered, “We can get started on the transfers tonight.”

Linda reached them and bent over to pick up the backpack and put it on. “Thanks,” she said.

“No trouble,” said May. “It’s life in the great outdoors.”

They set off along the road to complete the loop around the lake. They walked a bit faster as they reached the part of the road that was fully paved again, and before long they were back at the house. Rose and Linda went inside and started preparing lunch. That gave May a chance to go into her room and hide the stolen checks and Linda’s phone.

As she slipped them into her purse, she smiled about the fact that she knew she was using the most secure hiding place in the house. An honest woman whose purse was robbed would never think of looking in another woman’s purse for her money. She also knew that the way the schedule was shaping up, it was possible that she did not have to do this. By evening, it was very likely there would be only two of them.

The women ate and washed the dishes, then went out to the boathouse to look at the kayaks, the double-bladed paddles that went with them, and the life vests that Paul the owner kept hanging on the inner wall of his boathouse. Then they went back into the house, changed into bathing suits, smeared sunscreen on themselves and one another, and then put on T-shirts and hats and went back out to the boathouse and put on the life vests. They pushed the kayaks from the dock into the water beneath the boathouse, then one by one, each climbed down the wooden ladder attached to the dock and stepped into a bright yellow kayak, holding tight to the ladder until her legs were inside the bow section and the paddle was in her hands.

Linda’s first impression came from a few drops of water that fell from one blade of her paddle onto her shoulder. It was how cold the water was for the summer. Back in the Hawaiian Islands, the ocean water was eighty degrees. Here in this lake that she could see across, the water felt about fifty. She silently reminded herself that she was no longer in the tropics, and that the lakes in this part of the Sierras were very deep. She had read on her phone last night that Tahoe was 1,644 feet deep. Blucher Lake was much smaller, but she’d just learned it was deep enough to be cold. She would say nothing about it, because it wasn’t a problem, but even more because she was determined not to utter anything that could possibly sound like a complaint.

She paddled a hundred feet onto the lake, looked back, and waited for the other two women to paddle and catch up with her. She found it interesting to see a house from the water side. They looked different, showing the eye hidden aspects of the house’s nature. It was partly because of the distance. The house and its relationship to the land around it could all be seen at once. This one was better than most, because she’d had a day to get used to a different impression. Linda began to paddle along the shore.

The next time Linda looked back, Wendy and Mary were out from under the boathouse roof and gliding along at a good speed, taking long, rhythmic strokes. Linda was surprised at their course. She had assumed they would skirt their way along the shore, so that was the direction that she had chosen. The kayaks had a very small draught and could glide along in shallow water. She had been planning to stay close to the shore and get a view of the wading birds that might become visible, and the rock formations, and possibly even fish in the shallows. She had gone quite a distance along the shore, but they were paddling steadily toward the middle of the lake. It didn’t take long before they were quite far from her.

She altered her course to intersect with theirs somewhere out there, but she made the angle small to give herself plenty of time to catch up. The way the two had operated so far, they often planned small surprises that would impress or amuse her, the new friend who had never been to this place and would appreciate it. She supposed that this time it might be a spot near the middle that was the best position to see some particular sight—maybe a break in the mountain range that allowed a view of a hidden valley beyond it, or another lake, or even a city. If it was Reno, there might even be lights. Which way was Reno from here? She had lost her sense of position during this period when directions beyond this circular forest road had stopped meaning much.

It took a while before the two other women stopped paddling. They didn’t move toward her, they just sat bobbing peacefully in their yellow kayaks. From this distance the kayaks looked so small they could have been exotic yellow waterfowl. Linda didn’t feel unhappy about any of this. Paddling around on a secluded lake was a pleasure, and the course didn’t matter to her.

She began to pay more attention to her technique, taking strong strokes that sent the kayak forward and kept the bow pointed directly between the two becalmed yellow spots ahead of her, then half turning the paddle in her hands to bring the blade down on the other side while the kayak coasted, and make her left arm pull the kayak through another surge and glide, and then half turn the paddle again and pull the right blade. The motion became more and more comfortable and automatic. She could tell that as her form improved, her speed improved too. Before long she would be gliding right between Wendy and Mary.

31

Charlie and Vesper were in their rental car driving on the broad, open interstate highway. Charlie had engaged the voiced directions to Blucher Lake on his phone while they were still in the hotel parking lot. He had listened carefully and followed the instructions that the female computer voice gave him until he had pulled onto the main highway, and then it said, “Continue straight for twenty-eight miles.” Since then, the voice had been silent. Every few minutes he would glance at his phone to see if anything new had appeared. The map showed a white arrow extending to the top of the screen and turning right. It looked the same, but the numbers changed, counting downward as the car approached the turn.

He said, “I’m sorry to drag you way out here into the middle of nowhere.”

“This is hardly the middle of nowhere,” she said. “We’re moving along a wide, clean, well-maintained highway within fifty miles of a couple fair-sized cities. If you don’t hit a bear or get a flat tire, we’re fine. Besides, I did volunteer for this.”

“Well, I’m feeling a little guilty.”

“As your mother pointed out, the mountains are pretty, the forests are pretty, and unless she’s lowered her standards, the lake will be pretty. I like pretty places.”

They kept going, and eventually the female voice woke up. “In two miles, turn right onto Blucher Lake Road.”

Vesper said, “There. See? We’re right on track.”

“I guess so.”

In about a minute the voice said, “In one mile, turn right onto Blucher Lake Road.” Soon they could see a street sign on a pole, and when they reached it, they turned. The voice said, “Stay on Blucher Lake Road for two point three miles.”

The road was paved and began as a two-lane asphalt surface. After about a half mile the stretches of asphalt began to be interrupted by an occasional spot where a sinkhole had been filled with gravel. The next half mile included some longer graveled spaces where the asphalt was marred by long ruts. Charlie tried to keep the tires on the paved parts and out of the ruts, but as they proceeded, the gravel spaces became more common and larger. The next stage was when the asphalt had disappeared, and there were only gravel stretches and strips of dirt road. Charlie raised the windows to keep the dust from getting into the car. He said, “I think this might be the middle of nowhere.”

“Don’t exaggerate,” Vesper said. “It’s not the middle.”

After another ten minutes the voice said, “In five hundred feet, your destination is on the right.”

It turned out to be true. After about five hundred feet, there was a gap in the solid wall of trees and they could see a large stretch of blue lake. “It looks nice,” she said.

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