Jason's Tangled Web
Lew Moll

 Chapter 1.

There ought to be a law against parents dragging their kids half way across the country right after school is out and wrecking all their summer fun. Maybe then they’d think twice before cheating a guy out of life, liberty, and the pursuit of young love.  

Of all the rotten luck! I’d just started hitting it off good with Charlotte McIver, the most gorgeous blond that ever swiveled her hips down a school hallway. Why, I’ll bet half the boys in school were major candidates for open mouth surgery the way they drooled over her. Including me. Then, two days after she broke up with Steve Turner, a.k.a. Super Brain, she practically begged me to take her to a movie. Naturally, I swore right then and there that nothing could keep me away from her and those luscious lips.

Bummer. I found out I wasn’t any tougher than gummy worms when it comes to bucking Parent Power.

To tick me off even more, I was missing out on Youth Baseball. Coach Harris had been counting on me to play shortstop and hit clean-up for the Tigers. But try pleading with your parents and what do you get? Just a short pat on the head and a long ride across the Plains, the Rocky Mountains, and the Nevada desert to Lake Tahoe in California..

The trip out West was endless boredom. I kept wondering if Charlotte would stay true blue to me and fight off all the other guys dying to take her off my hands. And it didn’t help matters one bit either when Mom put on her teacher hat and kept saying to  my sister and me in the back seat, “Now that we’ve left Minneapolis, pay attention. This trip should provide you with a lot of good geography lessons.”

Duh. The only geography lesson I learned was that every last inch of four states was standing between me and the girl who was making my hormones go bonkers.

By the time we arrived at the Sierra Paradise Resort on Lake Tahoe, I’d had it up to my armpits. Riding fifteen hundred miles in the back seat of a station wagon with your sister and feeling like you’re a prisoner on a Third-Grade field trip can only be described as cruel and inhuman punishment. Even Spike, my dog, gave a yelp of joy when we finally rolled to a stop.  

Our two-story vacation condo in the resort was about a mile from King’s Beach, one of several small towns on the California side of Lake Tahoe. It was pretty fancy, I’ll admit, but it still looked like a poor step-kid compared to the luxurious mansion hogging the rugged shore of the lake two hundred yards to the north.  

I’m mentioning this because that mansion was about to become a crime scene.  What’s more, a really cool girl living there would find herself caught right smack in the middle of it. And before I could blink twice, she’d turn my life upside down, inside out, and any other direction you can think of.

You’re probably wondering why my parents decided to vacation so far away from Minnesota. Well, the condo is actually leased by the corporation my dad slaves for. It’s available for their burned out employees. R & R they call it, meaning Rest and Recreation.

Mom had started nagging Dad way back last January to reserve the company condo for a summer vacation. But I suspected all along that something more was blowing in the wind. For one thing, she’d counted on Aunt Ellen staying with us while she and dad vacationed alone—which was more than okay with me. The thought of being in Charlotte McIver’s breath-taking space all summer was enough to flood my brain with a thousand pool party fantasies.  

Double bummer. At the last minute, Aunt Ellen underwent an emergency gall bladder operation and couldn’t come to police us. Why didn’t she have the darn thing yanked out sooner?  Naturally, Mark, my older brother got to stay home because he’d just landed a summer job. Lucky dog.

Then, two days after we arrived at our vacation condo, the Company Executive Officer called Dad and ordered him to get his tail over to Reno to take care of a massive computer failure in some ritzy new casino—all because Dad happened to be closest to slot machine heaven.

“You don’t argue with the Top Brass,” he told Mom defensively as he threw a suitcase in the station wagon and kissed her good-bye.  

But the kiss and his promise to return soon failed to erase the red temples of doom on Mom’s face. She was ready to spit nails.

“The story of my life,” she snapped as the station wagon pulled out of the driveway. “We can’t even enjoy a family vacation without your father being summoned off to work somewhere.”

I felt like saying, “It figures, Mom. I could have told you this vacation would turn out to be a bummer.” But I decided I wanted to live long enough to get back to Charlotte McIver and baseball.

After Dad left, I got so bored that I couldn’t even watch re-runs on TV. To show you how low I sank, I even missed fighting with my sister. The day after we arrived, Mom read a brochure that bragged: Camp Whispering Waters is for adventurous girls to learn cooperation and independence through hiking, swimming, boating, and wilderness camping.

Before she could throw a tantrum, Tina found herself in a camp two miles down the road.  

I figured her banishment to camp was further proof that Mom had something more than family fun in mind when she planned this vacation. She’d wanted to be alone with Dad for some reason. And I had a funny feeling it wasn’t a second honeymoon she had in mind. I’d stumbled into some deep conversations they’d been having lately, and every time they suddenly fell silent or started talking about the dumb weather.  

With Dad gone, it was all too easy to get on my mother’s nerves. I felt like I was tiptoeing on eggs. So I wasn’t one bit surprised the next morning when she yelled at me in the kitchen, “Put those cherries back this instant, Jason Miller!”

“I’m hungry, Mom,” I said. “Since when is eating cherries a crime?”

Mom has this habit of biting down on her lower lip when she’s upset. “How many times have I told you not to snack before meals?”

I didn’t feel like putting up a fight. Not because she’s a bean sprouts and tofu type of Mom. Far from it. It was just that she’d gotten up on the wrong side of the bed.  No doubt because Dad wasn’t in it.

Faking a sigh, I fished half the cherries from my back pocket and dropped them one by one into the fruit bowl on the kitchen table.

“Honestly, Jason, I don’t know what to do with you. It’s only our third day on this beautiful mountain lake and already you’re acting bored.”

“There’s nothing to do.”

“Nothing to do!” Mom said, mimicking me like she always does when she’s steamed. “How about swimming, biking, tennis, and fishing for starters? What more could you want?”

Unknown to her, Charlotte McIver was at the absolute top of my list of wants.  But I played it safe and tossed her my other love: “Baseball.”

She heaved a sigh. “So that’s it. I wondered why you were moping around so much. You just turned sixteen and you still haven’t learned there’s more to life than baseball.”

I clenched my teeth and growled, “Maybe I’m a slow learner!”

“Only when you want to be. If you’d forget about sports for two minutes, you’d find a wonderful world out there. And guess what? You might even learn to enjoy it.”

The teacher in Mom was sounding loud and clear. But I wasn’t about to tell her that Charlotte McIver was the biggest reason I felt down in the dumps. My batting average with her would have zoomed off the charts if this stupid vacation hadn’t fouled up my summer game plan.

I decided to do my moping outside before Mom got other ideas—like suggesting I  unload the dishwasher or scrub the kitchen floor.  

Once out the door, I checked the mailbox for the tenth time. Still no letter from Charlotte. So much for her teary-eyed promise to write me every single day.