The First Hidden Lake Case

Every town has one weird kid who insists there’s a monster in the storm drain. Heritage Hollow has three kids who insist there’s a hidden lake behind the water wheel, and wouldn’t you know it, they were right. I’m still recovering. Muffin isn’t recovering, Muffin is thriving, because Muffin loves being right more than she loves naps, and Muffin loves naps more than most living creatures love oxygen.

Here’s the thing nobody tells you about guarding a small town from behind the scenes: you spend ninety percent of your time waiting for something interesting to happen, and ten percent of your time absolutely losing your mind because three ten-year-olds just found a hidden lake using nothing but a rusty compass, a library card, and pure unearned confidence.

The Hidden Lake Detective Agency Doesn’t Do Background Checks

If Amelia, Payton, and Chelsea want to start a detective agency out of a treehouse, who am I to stop them? I tried to stop them. It did not work. They now have business cards. The business cards say ‘No Case Too Small, No Mystery Too Wet,’ which honestly is still false advertising because that lake was extremely hidden. I walked past it for six years. I water my petunias forty feet from that lake. I thought that patch of extra-green grass was just superior soil.

A Hidden Lake Should Not Be Easier to Find Than My Car Keys

I want to be professionally offended about this, but I can’t, because I lost my car keys inside my own boot last Tuesday, and three kids found an entire body of water behind a water wheel using deductive reasoning and a snack budget of four dollars. There is no version of this where I come out looking competent. Muffin says competence was never really my brand, and I’d argue with her, except she’s currently sitting on the evidence I need to argue with her, and she’s not moving.

What gets me is the water wheel. A water wheel is not subtle. A water wheel makes noise. A water wheel has been creaking away behind town for what I can only assume is several decades, just turning and turning, basically screaming ‘SECRET ROOM NEARBY,’ and it took three fourth graders and a Saturday afternoon to finally go check. Meanwhile the adults of Heritage Hollow walked past that water wheel every single day assuming it was, and I quote, ‘probably just decorative.’

Nothing Says Small Town Charm Like a Surprise Hidden Lake

You’d think finding a secret lake would shut down the whole town for a week. Parades. Ribbon cuttings. A guy in a fish costume. Instead everyone in Heritage Hollow reacted like we’d found a slightly larger puddle. ‘Oh neat, a lake,’ said Mr. Abernathy, before going back to complaining about his mailbox. This town has seen everything. I once watched a raccoon steal an entire pie off a windowsill in broad daylight and nobody blinked. A brand new body of water barely registers on the local excitement scale, which honestly should tell you everything you need to know about how many secrets this town is actually sitting on.

Muffin’s theory is that Heritage Hollow has so many buried mysteries that this lake was basically a starter mystery, the tutorial level, the thing you find before you find the actual weird stuff. I don’t love that theory because it implies more of my quiet Tuesdays are about to get interrupted by children with magnifying glasses, but I also can’t argue with results. The girls found the water wheel. They found the lake. Somewhere out there is a bigger secret, and I already know I’m going to be the last one to figure it out, sitting there insisting it’s ‘probably just decorative’ right up until it definitely, definitely is not.

If you want the whole story of how a rolled-up map turned into the beginning of everything Muffin and I do around here, go read it for yourself. The Map of Heritage Hollow — available now on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HGM5SXN6. Just don’t blame me when you start eyeing your own backyard for suspicious extra-green patches of grass.