Mystery. Part 30

"This is Tom," he said.

"Are they still there?" his grandfather asked in a voice just below a bellow.

"He. There was one cop. He's gone."

"I told you to call me when they left!"

"Well, I had to do a few things," Tom said. "He just left a minute ago. He said what you said. It was a stray bullet."

"Of course it was. I told you that. Anyhow, thinking about it, I decided you were right to call the police. No question about it. Are you feeling better now?"

"Kind of."

"Go to bed early. Get some rest. In the morning, you'll see this in perspective. I won't tell your mother about this, and I forbid you to write anything to her that might upset her."

"Okay," Tom said. "Does that mean that you don't want me to come back right away?"

"Come back? Of course you shouldn't come back! You have some fence-mending to do, young man. I want you to stay up there until I tell you it's time to come back." Glendenning Upshaw went on to deliver a lengthy speech about respect and responsibility.

When he finished, Tom decided to see where one question would lead. "Grand-Dad, who was Anton Goetz? I've been hearing-"

"He was nothing. He did a bad thing once, and he was found out, and he killed himself. Committed a murder, if you want the specifics."

"On the plane up here, Mr. Spence wanted to tell me that you had done him some big favors-"

Upshaw grunted.

"-and he happened to mention this Anton Goetz, who he said was an accountant-"

"You want to know about him? I'll tell you about him, and then the subject is closed. You understand me?" Tom did not speak. "Anton Goetz was a little man with a bad leg who got in way over his head because he couldn't control his fantasies. He told everybody a lot of lies, me included, because he wanted social success. I tried to help him out because like a lot of con men, Anton Goetz had a lot of charm. I gave him a job, and I even helped him look more important than he was. It was the last time in my life I ever made a mistake like that. He got up to something with Arthur Thielman's first wife, and imagined it was much more than it was, and when she put him in his place he killed her. Then he killed himself, like the coward he really was. I held his properties for a long time because I wanted the stench of his memory to go away, and then I sold them to Bill Spence."

"So he really was an accountant," Tom said.

"Not a very good one. Come to think of it, Bill Spence wasn't brilliant either, which was why I let Ralph hire him away from me. And now Bill Spence is aiming for the same social success Anton Goetz wanted, but he's using his daughter to get it, not his p.r.i.c.k. I hope my language doesn't shock you."

Tom said that he was grateful for his frankness.

"These men want what you had handed to you on a plate," said his grandfather. "Now get some sleep and tomorrow try to act like you know how to behave. Let's get everything sorted out by the end of summer."

Tom asked about his mother, and his grandfather said that she was doing better-almost off medication. He promised to give her Tom's love, and Tom promised to write to her.

The light in Neil Langenheim's bedroom went out, and a thin yellow trace disappeared from the lake. The big lodges across the lake had retreated into the overhanging trees, and uncanny light from the black and silver sky touched the ends of the docks, the tops of railings, and sifting leaves.

Through the broken window, the smells of pine and fresh water came to him wrapped in cool air, along with some other, deeper odor from the marshy end of the lake and the pilings beneath the docks, from the soft earth and the wet reeds and the fish that moved or slept deep in the water.

Tom felt a tremor deep within him that was like a tremor in the silvery, sleeping world beyond the window. He got up and walked through the ground floor of the lodge, turning off the lights. He undressed, went to bed, and lay awake most of the night.

Someone knocked on the door soon after Tom got up the next morning, and when he peered around it, hoping that Sarah Spence had managed to slip away from her parents, he saw a police car and another blue uniform. A man in his early thirties with straight s.h.i.+ny black hair that seemed too long for a policeman looked at him through the screen and said, "Mr. Pasmore? Tom Pasmore?" He looked both friendly and slightly familiar. Tom let him in, and realized that he looked a great deal like the Eagle Lake mailman. He was at least ten years older than he had looked at first-close up, Tom saw deep crow's feet, and a little grey swept back beneath the hair that fell past his temples.

"I'm Tim Truehart, the Chief of Police," he said, and shook Tom's hand. "I read the report about the shot that came in here last night, and I thought I'd better come out here and take a look for myself. Despite whatever impression you may have gotten from Officer Spychalla, we don't like it when people shoot at our summer residents."

"He was pretty casual about it," Tom said.

"My deputy has his good points, but investigations may not be one of them. He's very good at handling drunks and shoplifters, and he's h.e.l.l on speeders." Truehart was looking around the sitting room as he spoke, smiling easily, taking everything in. "I'd have come myself, but I was out of town for most of the night. They don't pay the Chief much money up here, and I fly a little on the side."

Then Tom remembered. "I saw you at the airport when I came in-you were sitting against the wall in the customs shed, and you were wearing a brown leather jacket."

"You'd make a good witness," Truehart said, and smiled at him. "Were you alone in the lodge when the shot entered?"

Tom said he was.

"It's a good thing Barbara Deane wasn't here-Barbara had an unpleasant experience a couple of weeks ago, and getting shot at wouldn't help her recovery. How do you feel?"

"I'm okay."

"You had my deputy to reckon with, as well as everything else. You must be made of tough stuff." He laughed. "Would you show me where it happened?"

Tom took him into the study, and Truehart looked carefully at the broken window, the lamp, and the hole in the wall where his deputy had dug out the bullet. He went outside and looked across the lake at the wooded hill above the empty Harbinger lodge. Then he came back inside.

"Show me where you were sitting."

Tom sat behind the desk.

"Tell me about it," Truehart said. "Were you writing something, or reading, or looking out at the lake, or what?"

Tom said that he had been talking on the telephone to his grandfather, and that the shot had come just after he bent over to look out to see the lake, so that he could describe it.

"You didn't move anything?"

"Just swept up some broken gla.s.s."

"Was the lamp the only light showing in the room?"

"It was probably the only light showing on the whole lake."

Truehart nodded, and walked to the side of the desk and again looked carefully at the window, the lamp, and the place where the bullet struck the wall. "Show me how you bent to look out of the window." He walked backwards away from the desk as Tom showed him what he had done, and sat down on the couch against the wall. He joined his fingers and leaned forward on his elbows. "And you did that right when it happened?"

"The lamp exploded as soon as I bent over."

"It's a good thing you leaned down like that." Tom's stomach felt as if he had swallowed soap. "I don't like this much." Truehart was looking at him somberly, almost meditatively, as if he were listening to something Tom could not hear. "I don't suppose you've seen any high-powered rifles around here in the past few days."

Tom shook his head.

"And I don't suppose you know of anybody who'd have a reason to try to kill you."

Startled, Tom said, "I thought hunters shot stray bullets toward the lodges once or twice a year."

"Well, maybe not quite that often, but it happens. Last year, someone shot out a window in the club from up on that hillside. And two years before that, a bullet hit the back of the Jacobs lodge in the middle of a nice June night. People around here got excited, and I don't blame them, but n.o.body even came close to getting hit. And here you are, framed in this window like a target. I don't want to make you nervous, but I can't say I like it, not a bit."

"Buddy Redwing is p.i.s.sed off at me because his girlfriend turns out to like me better," Tom said. "He was planning to get married to her. In fact, his family is p.i.s.sed off at me too, and so is hers. But I don't think any of them would try to kill me. Buddy tried to beat me up yesterday, and I hit him in the stomach, and that was the end of that. I don't think he'd climb a hillside with a rifle and try to shoot me through a window."

"You have to be sober to do that," Truehart said. "Which more or less lets Buddy out." He pursed his lips and looked down at his hands. "Spychalla is up in the woods now, looking for anything he can find, sh.e.l.l casings, cigarette b.u.t.ts, anything that would be around where the shooter had to be. But realistically, the most we can hope for is some idea about what kind of rifle he had. You don't find footprints up there, not with that kind of ground cover."

"You don't think it was a stray shot from a hunter?" Tom asked.

"The odds are, that's what it was. But a lot of stuff has been happening on Eagle Lake lately." He let this sink in. "And you're not just an ordinary summer visitor."

These men wanted what you had handed to you on a plate, Tom remembered.

Truehart said, "I can't pretend to understand what's going on there, but something something sure as h.e.l.l is getting stirred up. And I have to consider that somebody might be getting at your grandfather through you." sure as h.e.l.l is getting stirred up. And I have to consider that somebody might be getting at your grandfather through you."

"My grandfather and I aren't very close."

"That might not make any difference. I can't offer you any extra protection, but I think you ought to be careful about staying away from windows. In fact, you ought to be careful in general-Spychalla told me that you claim to have been pushed into the traffic on Main Street last Friday. Maybe you shouldn't go too many places alone for the next couple of weeks. And maybe Barbara Deane ought to spend more nights here with you. Do you want me to talk to her about it?"

"I could do it," Tom said.

"She likes her privacy, but right now she might want some company."

"There is one other thing," Tom said. "It's connected to her. I know there have been break-ins around this area in the past few years. I don't know if you've thought about this or not, but Ralph Redwing's bodyguards have a lot of nights and evenings free, and before they started working for Ralph, they called themselves the Cornerboys and did a lot of stealing. I think they did some burglaries on Mill Walk, and I think-" He decided not to mention Wendell Hasek, and instead said, "I think Jerry Hasek, the one who's sort of the leader, enjoys killing animals. I know he killed a dog when he was a teenager, and Barbara Deane's dog was killed, and the other day I saw him go nuts in the Lincoln when Robbie Wintergreen, one of the bodyguards, said the word dog in front of me."

"Well, well," Truehart said. "Do these people live in the compound?"

"In a house by themselves."

"I can't go in there, of course, unless I'm invited or can persuade a judge to give me a search warrant. But do you think they'd take the risk of storing stolen goods in the compound, where they'd have to carry them in and out right under Ralph Redwing's nose? Unless you think Ralph Redwing is getting a cut."

"No," Tom said. "I think I know where they put the stuff."

"This is getting better and better. Where is it?"

Tom told him about seeing the light moving around von Heilitz's lodge, following it up the path in the woods, getting lost, and finding the path the next day. Tim Truehart leaned forward on his elbows and listened to Tom's story with a bemused expression on his face. And when Tom described the house in the clearing and the skinny old woman who had come out carrying a rifle, he put his hands over his face and leaned back against the couch.

"What's wrong?" Tom asked.

Truehart lowered his hands. "Well, I'll have to ask my mother if she's storing stolen goods for a guy named Jerry Hasek." He was grinning. "But she'd probably hit me over the head with a frying pan if I did."

"Your mother," Tom said. "Mrs. Truehart. Who used to clean the houses around here during the summers. Oh, my G.o.d."

"That's her. She probably thought you were checking out her house for a robbery."

"Oh, my G.o.d," Tom said again. "I apologize."

"No need." Truehart laughed out loud-he seemed vastly amused. "If it was me, I'd probably have done the same thing. I'll tell you one thing, though, I'm glad you didn't say anything about this to Spychalla. He'd be talking about it until his jaw wore out." He stood up. "Well, I guess we're through for now." He was still grinning. "If we find anything up in the woods, I'll tell you about it. And I do want you to be careful. That's serious."

They left the study, and walked across the sitting room to the front door.

"Give me a call if you see this Hasek character do anything out of the ordinary. He might be a live one. And try to spend as much time as possible with other people."

Truehart held out his hand, and Tom shook it. The policeman pulled a pair of wire-rimmed sungla.s.ses from his s.h.i.+rt pocket and put them on as he trotted down the steps. He got into his car and backed down the track toward the club the way Spychalla had done. Tom stood on the steps and watched him drive away; he was grinning until his face was only a dark blob behind the winds.h.i.+eld.

Roddy and Buzz unexpectedly decided to spend Buzz's last week of vacation with friends in the south of France, and the dinner Tom ate with them on the night before their departure seemed to him like the last friendly encounter he would be likely to have at Eagle Lake. The Redwings came late to the club and left early, and acknowledged no one but Marcello, who was a pet of Katinka's. The Spences occupied their table near the bar, and kept Sarah's back to Tom as they talked to each other in the loudest voices in the room, demonstrating that they were having a good time, the summer had just begun, and everything would turn out for the best. Neil and Bitsy Langenheim stared at Tom as he walked in with Roddy and Buzz, and whispered to each other like conspirators.

"Everybody knows that the police paid a couple of social calls to your lodge," Roddy said. "They're all hoping you've landed yourself in desperate trouble, so they will have something to talk about the rest of the summer."

"A hunter fired a stray shot through one of my windows," Tom said, and caught the sharp, questioning look that pa.s.sed between his two new friends.

"Is your whole life like this?" Roddy asked him, and Tom said he was beginning to wonder.

So they talked for a time about other times hunters had come too near the lodges around the lake, and from there went on to the tension that had always existed between the village and the summer people from Mill Walk, and finally got to the subject most in their minds, their impulsive trip to France; but another, unspoken subject seemed to underlie everything they said.

"Marc and Brigitte have a wonderful villa right on the Mediterranean near Antibes, and Paulo and Yves live only a few kilometers away, and some friends of ours from London are coming down because their children have suddenly decided to become followers of a guru at an ashram in Poona, so even though it's a bit extravagant, we thought we should make a party of it for a week. Then I'll fly back to Mill Walk with Buzz and take care of some business for another couple of weeks before I go to London to see Monserrat Caballe and Bergonzi in La Traviata La Traviata at Covent Garden. I don't think I'll be able to get back here until August." at Covent Garden. I don't think I'll be able to get back here until August."

Buzz would miss Caballe and Bergonzi at Covent Garden, but he would get to Paris in time for the Carmelites Carmelites, and in October there was Hector and Will and Nina and Guy and Samantha in Cadaques, and in March there was a chance of Arthur and whoever it was now in Formentera, and after that...

After that there was, there would be, more. Roddy Deepdale and Buzz Laing (for that was Buzz's name, he was Dr. Laing at St. Mary Nieves and to his patients, who knew nothing of his peripatetic, well-furnished life) had friends all over the world, they were always welcome, they were always informed, they had favorite seats at their favorite opera house, La Scala, from which they had seen every Verdi opera except Stiffelio Stiffelio and and Aroldo Aroldo, favorite meals in favorite restaurants in a dozen cities, they cherished the Vermeers and the Rembrandt self-portrait at the Frick, they knew a psychiatrist in London who was the second most intelligent person in the world and a poet in New York who was the third most intelligent person in the world, they loved and needed their friends and their friends loved and needed them. Tom felt provincial, narrow, raw, beside them: the whisper of judgment in the glance he had seen pa.s.s between Roddy and Buzz separated him from them as finally as he had been separated from the Redwings, who were pus.h.i.+ng back their chairs and preparing to leave, encased in the bubble of their insular importance.

But Kate Redwing came over to say h.e.l.lo and goodbye in the same breath: she, too, was leaving tomorrow; her allotted two weeks were up and she was going back to Atlanta and her grandchildren. All three at the table hugged her, and when she heard of their plans she said they ought to take Tom with them, and Roddy and Buzz smiled politely and said they wished they could, but they would make sure to see plenty of him on Mill Walk. Tom tried to imagine what these two men would say about Victor Pasmore, and what Victor Pasmore would say about them. Kate Redwing embraced him again, and whispered, "Don't give up! Be strong!" "Don't give up! Be strong!" She turned away to follow her family down the stairs, moving away past the Spences' empty table with hesitant, old-lady steps in her print dress and flat black shoes. A few minutes later, Roddy signed for their meal, and they left too. She turned away to follow her family down the stairs, moving away past the Spences' empty table with hesitant, old-lady steps in her print dress and flat black shoes. A few minutes later, Roddy signed for their meal, and they left too.

They dropped Tom off at his lodge and promised to invite him for dinner when they were back on the island-"as soon as things settle down."

Tom called Lamont von Heilitz later that night, but again was told that his party did not answer. He stayed up late reading, and went to bed feeling desolate.

The next morning curtains covered the big lakeside windows in the Deepdale lodge. A glazier came from the village to replace the broken pane in his grandfather's study and said, "A kid like you must have a lot of fun in a place like this by himself."

Tom swam in the mornings, walked around and around the lake, finished The ABC Murders The ABC Murders and read Iris Murdoch's and read Iris Murdoch's Under The Net Under The Net and and Flight from the Enchanter Flight from the Enchanter. He ate alone. Sarah's parents did not join the Redwings at the bar before dinners, and Sarah did no more than give him a regretful, chastened glance before her mother snapped her back with a sharp word. He swam for hours every afternoon, and twice Buddy Redwing took out his motorboat and wheeled back and forth in figure eights up at the north end while Tom breast-stroked and sidestroked between the docks on the south end. Kip Carson sat open-mouthed beside Buddy the first time, Kip and Sarah Spence together on one of the rear seats the second. Tom walked to the village and found a rack of paperbacks beside the I Pine Fir Yew Pine Fir Yew ashtrays in the Indian Trading Post. He carried home a stack of books and called his mother, who said she wasn't getting out much, but Dr. Milton was taking care of her. Victor had been offered a job with the Redwings-she wasn't too sure what the job involved, but he would have to travel a lot, and he was very excited. She hoped Tom was meeting people and enjoying himself, and he said yes, he was. ashtrays in the Indian Trading Post. He carried home a stack of books and called his mother, who said she wasn't getting out much, but Dr. Milton was taking care of her. Victor had been offered a job with the Redwings-she wasn't too sure what the job involved, but he would have to travel a lot, and he was very excited. She hoped Tom was meeting people and enjoying himself, and he said yes, he was.

Certain rules governed his conversations with his mother-he suddenly saw this. The truth could never be spoken: kindly, murderous hypocrisy was the law of life. It was a cage.

The days went by. Lamont von Heilitz never answered his telephone. Barbara Deane came and went, in too much of a hurry and too self-absorbed to talk to him. Tom could not get Sarah Spence out of his mind, and some of the things Buddy had said came back to torture him. He swam so much that night he dropped instantly into dreamless sleep, forgetting even the ache in his muscles.

On the fifth day after the bullet had exploded through the window, he was sitting on a rock at the edge of the woods where the private road to the lake came out to the highway and saw Kip Carson walking toward him, strapped into a backpack and dragging a duffel bag behind him. "Hey, man," Kip Carson said. "I'm on my way, man, it was really fun and everything, but I'm gone."

"Where?"

"Airport. I have to hitch. Ralph wouldn't let me get a ride, and Buddy didn't give a s.h.i.+t. Buddy's an a.s.shole, man."

Tom asked him if he were going back to Tucson.

"Tucson? No way, no f.u.c.kin' f.u.c.kin' way. Schenectady-my old lady mailed me a ticket. Do you think there's a barbershop at the airport? I gotta get a haircut before I get back home." way. Schenectady-my old lady mailed me a ticket. Do you think there's a barbershop at the airport? I gotta get a haircut before I get back home."

"I didn't see one," Tom said.

"Well, it's been grins." Kip flashed him a V with two fingers, hoisted his duffel, and went out to stand by the side of the highway. The second car that pa.s.sed picked him up.