November Lake: Teenage Detective (The November Lake Mysteries) Book 1 Read Online Free PDF

to see
where he disappeared to.”
    “ Don’t you?” I said, following him back to his car.
    “ Not really,” Kale said. “I just want to get to my parents’
house before the storm sets in.”
    I
glanced up into the night sky and looked at the thick swirl of
cloud threatening to burst above us. I pulled open the passenger
door and climbed in, the door snagging in the gusting wind. “The
guy was a weirdo,” I said.
    “ That isn’t a crime.” Kale opened the packet of mints, tilted
his head back, and shook some into his mouth. Chewing them, he
offered me the packet. “Want some?”
    I opened
my hand and he dropped several of the white, round mints into my
palm. I popped one into my mouth and placed the others in my
pocket.
    Kale
started the car.
    “ I wished I’d got his car registration now,” I said.
    “ Why?” Kale sighed, steering the car off the forecourt and back
onto the narrow country road. “Look, November, this is our weekend
off from police training school. We’ve got a big exam to cram for,
let’s not go getting ourselves caught up in anything else – for the
next few days at least. Wasn’t what happened to Constable Short
enough excitement for the time being?”
    I sat
back in my seat and stared out of the window. Perhaps Kale was
right? There probably wasn’t anything suspicious about the guy at
the petrol station. I pushed thoughts of his staring eyes from my
mind. Kale had invited me to stay at his parents’ for the weekend
to cram for our police exam. If we failed, we were back coursed
another five weeks and I didn’t want that. I was itching to get
through the next fifteen weeks as quickly as possible and start
pounding the streets. I suspected Kale felt the same. But the
recent mystery of Constable Short at training school had set my
desire to investigate ablaze. I’d always turned things upside down
and over and over. I enjoyed looking at stuff from a different
point of view from everyone else. My father had been the same and I
hoped that one day I would be a brilliant detective like he had
been. It was for this reason I had joined the police force, so I
could investigate his murder. He had been killed on duty, but the
identity of his killer had never been discovered. As far as I knew
the case had gone cold and his murder remained unsolved. But now I
had joined there police force, there was one cop who would never
stop searching for his killer. My mother had died of cancer when I
was very young, so it was just me now.
    “ What you thinking about?” I heard Kale ask.
    “ It doesn’t matter,” I sighed, turning away from the window and
looking at him in the gloom of the car.
    “ Just forget that guy,” Kale said.
    “ I already have.” I smiled.
    I knew
very little about Kale Creed. He was a police probationer, just
like me. He was nineteen, so a year older than I. In my first five
weeks at training school, I had kept myself to myself. I had
preferred to study alone. I wasn’t drawn to the police bar for
recreation like my fellow recruits. I had spent much of my time
alone in my room or the library studying the mountain of law we had
to learn. The police training manuals were thick and covered such
topics as evidence and procedure, crime, traffic, and general
police duties. There seemed to be a law or a piece of legislation
for everything, and sometimes my head spun with it all. So when
Kale and I had been thrown together as unwitting investigators into
the death of Constable Short, we had become friends. Kale described
his parents’ house as being remote – cut off from the rest of the
world – deep within the peak district. The perfect place to cram
for an exam, there was little or no distraction. Kale had said he
could barely get a mobile phone or Internet connection while
staying with his parents. So I had been persuaded by him to go.
What else did I have to do? Return to my rented room in Bleakfield
and paw over old newspaper reports regarding my father’s murder