Murder at Rabbit Lake

Okay, so there wasn't really a murder at Rabbit Lake. At least not to my knowledge. But there was a brief period of time when my father and I thought there may have been.

Every once in a while my dad and I would take a weekend and go up to the lake just the two of us. It was on one of these weekends that we uncovered a mystery. Sort of. Very soon after arriving we hopped in the boat and made our way around the lake. Not too far into our cruise we noticed a boat floating in the weeds. We watched it for a minute. There may have been a "if this boats a-rocking..." joke made. We went on our way.

The next day we took our boat out again. Sure enough, the other boat was still there. Our interest was piqued. It was quite far into the reeds so we couldn't get close enough to get a good look. We started coming up with many scenarios, but the one that seemed the most plausible, or the most intriguing, was that a murder had been committed.

We started coming up with the details. I'm not going to give anything away (we may write a book someday!), but we certainly got into it. We went into town one morning for lunch and a moment after the server walked away my dad said, "She's definitely a suspect." Later my dad had to take the lawn mower in to be fixed. He came back and described the place he'd gone. It had old parts hanging on the wall and several mowers, snow blowers and other things scattered about the yard. "It's a perfect location for the initial argument," he declared. We'd be sitting around the fire and one of us would suddenly blurt out a new idea or a plan for what had happened next. We took the boat out one more time just to see if the abandoned boat was still there. It was.

Pretty soon our weekend was coming to an end. We had a lot of speculation, but we didn't have any answers. We had to know. My dad convinced me to go with him in the canoe. I hate riding in a canoe, but this was our weekend and I wanted to be a good sport. Plus, I was just as curious as he was.

We paddled out of our bay. The boat was in our sights. We were slowly making our way over, when a man came walking down his dock. My dad is a friendly guy and my parent's had just build their lakehouse, so he whispered that we should stop so he could introduce himself. "And he could be a suspect," my dad added.

We pulled up next to the dock and my dad reached out his hand as he said his name and explained that he had just built out on the point. The man leaned down to shake my dad's hand. It was early and the lake was still very quiet. I think by way of explanation the man said, "I'm just out here waiting for a friend of mine to come around from the public access." We were about to share with him why we were out on the lake so early when he added, "He's going to pull my boat out of the reeds." He pointed to the boat, our boat. "It blew off the lift a few days ago."

So, mystery solved. And no murder, to boot. But my dad and I will always remember that weekend. And every once in a while one of us will see another potential suspect.