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shinier, and there was part of the incised outline of an animal.
    “Looks like a loon,” she said. She looked at the two men.
    Cardinal leaned over her shoulder to get a better view. “I think I know exactly what that is.”

4
    T HE NORTHERN SHORE OF L AKE N IPISSING is one of the prettiest places in Ontario, but Lakeshore Drive, which runs along the top of the inlet that gives Algonquin Bay its name, could have been designed for the sole purpose of keeping this fact from the public. It has been a magnet for eyesores for as long as anybody can remember. On the lake side there are fast-food joints, gas stations and quaintly named but charm-free motels; across from these, car dealerships and shopping malls.
    Loon Lodge was at the western edge of this ugliness. It was not actually a lodge but a dozen miniature white cabins with green shutters and country-style curtains, having been built in the fifties before the log-cabin look became the fashion. Many people in Algonquin Bay imagine such businesses are closed in winter, but in fact they have two sources of winter income. One is from ice fishermen, the dentists and insurance salesmen who take a few days off to come up north with their buddies and drink themselves into oblivion. The other is from people who want a dirt-cheap place to live, and nothing is cheaper, offseason, than a cabin on Lakeshore Drive.
    Cardinal had been to Loon Lodge a few times. Every so often one of the winter residents would knock his wife’s teeth out. Or the wife would tire of her husband’s drinking and insert a steak knife neatly into his ribs. Occasionally there were drug dealers. Then in summer it was all sunburnt Americans, families on a tight budget, taking advantage of the reliably frail Canadian dollar.
    Cardinal and Delorme were in the first of Loon Lodge’s white clapboard cabins, the one marked Office . It was four times bigger than the rental units, and the proprietor lived in it with his wife and kids. He was an egg-shaped man named Wallace. His face was puffy, with a wounded expression, as if he suffered from toothache. An equally egg-shaped and disconsolate four-year-old boy was watching cartoons in the next room. Smells of supper hung in the air, and Cardinal suddenly realized he was hungry.
    Wallace pulled out a guest register, found the name and turned the book around on the counter.
    “Howard Matlock,” Delorme read aloud, “312 East Ninety-first Street, New York City.”
    “I wish I’d never set eyes on the guy, now,” Wallace said. “Was a really slow week last week, so I was glad as hell to see him, even though he only wanted to stay a few days.”
    “Ford Escort,” Delorme read, and copied down the licence number.
    “Yeah,” Wallace said. “Bright red one. Not that I’ve seen it for a couple of days.”
    “What day did he arrive?” Cardinal asked.
    “Thursday, I think. Yeah, Thursday. I’d just turned away a couple of Indians who wanted to rent a place. Sorry, but I don’t care how many vacancies I’ve got, I won’t rent to those people. I just got tired of cleaning up the blood and the puke. I have a reputation to maintain.”
    “You better hope none of them lays a discrimination complaint on you,” Delorme said.
    “People don’t understand about Indians. Put two or three of them together with a bottle of Four Aces and you got a unit that’s unrentable.”
    “And what have you got now?”
    “You say you took this key ring off a dead body?” He pointed to the melted mass in the Baggie that Cardinal had put on the counter.
    “More or less.”
    “Then I guess I got a bill that’s not paid and a tenant that’s not alive.” Wallace shook his head and cursed under his breath. “Do you have any idea how long it takes to build a reputation like Loon Lodge? It doesn’t happen overnight.”
    “I’m sure it doesn’t,” Cardinal said. “Did Mr. Matlock say why he was in Algonquin Bay?”
    “I’m telling you, something like this comes along and