Cat's Claw (A Pecan Springs Mystery)

the cove. Wonder if they caught any fish.”
    Sheila picked up the binoculars and went outside to look out at the small red-painted fishing boat. Blackie was at the tiller, Rambo beside him, tongue hanging out, looking deliriously happy. McQuaid sat in the bow, holding up a string of good-size fish for them to see.
    “Looks like they’ve caught enough for supper—and then some,” she said, and put the binoculars down on the wooden rail. “We won’t have to resort to hot dogs from the freezer.”
    China picked up the glasses and looked through them. “Yum,” she said. “Must be some pretty big fish in that lake.”
    “Oh, you bet. Blackie caught an eleven-pound largemouth not long ago. Just missed the record.” Sheila smiled. “Me, I don’t have the magic touch. I go out there with him and never catch a single fish. But that really doesn’t matter. It’s lovely out there.”
    The eighty-two-hundred-acre reservoir had been built on the Guadalupe River west of Pecan Springs in the late 1950s, after decades of serious downstream flooding. The lake supplied water to local communities and a small amount of hydroelectric power to the grid, as well as swimming, boating, and fishing to people and habitat to fish and wildlife. But it was still no guarantee of protection from floods. A couple of years before, after a week of heavy rains, the lake had overtopped the spillway and gouged a remarkable mile-long, fifty-feet-deep gorge out of the limestone rock below the dam, exposing rock strata a hundred million years old and revealing ancient fossils and dinosaur tracks. Sadly, a number of people had been killed in the flash flood.
    But the lake and the river were threatened, both by region-wide drought and upstream pollutants and by increasing demands for water by thirsty communities in the rapidly developing counties north andeast of San Antonio. A national conservation group had named the Guadalupe River as one of the ten most endangered rivers in the United States, in part because of plans to divert water from the lake and river for industrial and residential use. Every time Sheila looked across the blue lake cupped serenely in the folds of green hills, she thought about the fierce competition for the life-supporting resource it provided and wondered what lay ahead.
    Beside her, China was chuckling. “Please tell me that the guys are going to clean all those fish—and not in the kitchen. Right?”
    “They’re not allowed to bring a single fish up those stairs unless it’s cleaned,” Sheila said, pointing down to the wooden steps that led from the cabin to the dock. “That’s the rule.
My
rule. It’s hard enough to keep things shipshape around here without having to scrub fish guts out of the sink or sweep fish scales off the floor.”
    China laughed. “Good rule, Smart Cookie. You’re a woman after my own heart.” She leaned her elbows on the railing, her chin propped in one hand. “It’s beautiful out here,” she said, musing, “even though it’s beginning to feel like winter’s on the way. Thanksgiving will be here before we know it.”
    Sheila knew that the live oaks on the slope below would stay green all winter, until their new crop of leaves appeared in the spring. But there had already been a couple of light frosts and the hackberry and cedar elms had lost most of their leaves. When she looked down, Sheila could see the dock through the leafless branches. In the summer, it was screened by a small forest of green trees. Since the cabin was also set back from the twisting gravel road, out of sight of the neighbors, it still seemed very isolated. Not true, of course. Residential development almost completely encircled the lake.
    “I love this place,” she replied. “I just wish Blackie and I could get outhere more often. Nice that you and Mike can be here with us, too,” she added, thinking that now that their husbands were working together, she and China might see more of each other.
    But then again, maybe not. China’s business kept her busy, and now that she had two children, her life was crowded with family activities. And Sheila often felt that she didn’t have a spare minute for herself—or Blackie.
    That was her biggest challenge, now that they were married. Making time for the two of them, together. Making time for their marriage. Making the marriage work. She smiled to herself, thinking of what Maude Porterfield had said to her and Blackie before their wedding ceremony.