Bonnie of Evidence - By Maddy Hunter Page 0,15
it. Ye wouldn’t believe the cost.”
“What about inner tubes?” asked Dolly Pinker. “They’re all the rage at indoor water parks. Floating down a concrete canal in a giant inner tube gives you such a wonderful sense of what the great outdoors can be like without insects flying up your nose.”
Isobel Kronk snorted her disdain. “Inner tubes are for sissies. I want horsepower between my legs.” She sidled a provocative look at Cameron. “Jet skis are the only way to go. Vroooom!”
“Pills Etcetera is having an End of Summer Clearance Sale on waterwings,” Margi added helpfully. “Aisle six, if anyone’s interested.”
“The boats weren’t the difficulty,” confessed the clerk. “It was the pier. There’s a drop-off so near the shore that a dock can’t be anchored without using deepwater equipment. Mrs. Dalrymple said if that be the case, they might as well drill fer oil, but of course, she wasn’t wanting ta do that.” She made eye contact with every guest before lowering her voice to a dramatic whisper. “As ye might imagine, she was leery of whit she might be disturbing at the bottom of the loch.”
A hush fell over the lobby. Hearing tales of the Loch Ness monster was one thing; standing near the creature’s legendary domain was something else entirely.
“How deep is that drop-off ?” Dick Teig inquired.
“Around seventy-six meters.”
“What’s that in English?” he asked.
“Approximately two hundred-fifty feet,” said Etienne.
Whistles. Gasps. Eye-widening.
Dick Teig was disbelieving as he glanced out the lobby windows toward the manicured lawn that swept toward the loch. “You’re telling me that a few feet from the end of the lawn down there, the water is two hundred-fifty feet deep?”
The clerk smiled enigmatically. “It’s one of the more shallow spots. Mrs. Dalrymple is fond of telling her guests that Loch Ness is so deep—eight hundred feet in some places—that the entire population of the world could fit into it three times over.”
More gasps. Collective jaw dropping.
Lucille waved her hand in the air. “Does that calculation take into account the population of the United States? It might not be all that obvious to you foreigners, but we Americans tend to be a bit … bigger boned than folks in the rest of the world.”
“She means we’re fatter,” said Bernice.
“It’s not important how many bodies fit into the lake,” Wally interrupted in his tour director’s voice, “as long as none of the bodies belong to any of you. I’ll caution you to heed the warning though. If you wander down to the loch to take pictures, be sure to watch your footing near the water’s edge. The grass can be slippery, and that first step is a doozey.”
As the desk clerk began dispensing room keys, I sauntered over to the lobby’s enormous picture windows for a better view of the infamous lake. A brick walkway zigzagged down the hill from the hotel’s patio to the shoreline, where umbrellaed tables and Adirondack chairs awaited guests hoping to catch that once-in-a-lifetime glimpse of Nessie. But I saw no cleverly disguised guardrails, no quaint fences, no neatly clipped hedges to prevent people from tripping over their shoelaces and stumbling headlong into the lake, with its two-hundred-and-fifty-foot plunge to the bottom.
Unh-oh. This wasn’t good.
I guess the hotel felt obliged to keep the view from the Adirondack chairs unobstructed for visiting tourists, just in case Nessie decided to rear her much celebrated head.
My stomach executed a slow roll as I considered the potential for disaster. My only saving grace was that the wind had picked up and the blue sky was being devoured by billowing, soot-gray clouds that threatened an evening of mist and unrelenting rain.
Hallelujah.
_____
I arrived at the library fifteen minutes early to find most of the group already there. Several optimists idled at the windows with binoculars pressed to their eyes, apparently trying to convince themselves that the loch was visible through the fog, while others staked out spots in front of the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, perusing titles whose leather spines looked to have been bound about the time Gutenberg invented the printing press. I didn’t see Mom, but Dad was here with his camcorder, capturing the heart-pounding action of people staring at fog and old books. Nana, George, and the rest of their geocaching team were gathered in a far corner, locked in heated discussion over something that was causing Bill Gordon’s already florid cheeks to grow even redder. Etienne and Wally were still in the lobby, kibitzing with the front desk clerk about where we should go tomorrow should our