Mystery

“Don’t you love that it looks so secluded?” asked Mrs. Spence. The question was addressed to no one in particular, and no one answered it. “I love it, that it looks so secluded.”

On either side of the car, the gaps between the pines and leafy oaks showed endless ranks of trees stretching upward and extending into endless, random, overgrown forest; sunlight slanted down to strike the trunks and make shimmering pools on the soft ground. Squirrels darted along branches and birds swooped beneath the canopy of green. The car went into shadow around a slight bend in the road, past a clearing with a long wooden bench strewn with dry grey leaves; then past a long row of mailboxes on a metal pipe. Tom glimpsed familiar names on the mailboxes: Thielman, R. Redwing, G. Redwing, D. Redwing, Spence, R. Deepdale, Jacobs, Langenheim, von Heilitz.

A crow cawed off in the woods, and leaves pattered down on the top of the car. Golden light flashed into the windshield, and the trees before them suddenly seemed spindly; then the trees parted and Tom saw a long expanse of deep blue beneath him, and a wake spreading out behind a motorboat just entering the path of the sun on the water. Tall solid buildings stood at wide intervals around the lake, each with a wide wooden dock protruding into the smooth glimmering water. On the broad terrace of a large multileveled structure with rows of high windows and several smaller terraces a waiter in a white coat carried a tray past a towel-sized pool toward a gentleman, a tiny pink pear supine on the bright yellow pad of a lounger. Next to that building, tall pilings like those around a stockade walled off the Redwing compound. A slim figure on a horse came into view from behind one of the lodges and passed out of sight behind a stand of fir trees.

“Buddy’s out in his boat,” Sarah said.

“And Neil Langenheim’s getting pickled at the club,” said her mother.

“Who’s that with Buddy?” Sarah asked.

“His friend Kip,” Jerry said. “Kip Carson. From Arizona. He’s the one that stayed, when I took the other kids to Grand Forks.”

“I wonder if Fritz is here,” Tom said.

“Fritz Redwing?” Jerry shook his head. “He ain’t here yet—him and his family come up in about two weeks. This is early. Lots of people ain’t here yet. A bunch of the lodges are still empty. Even the compound’s kinda empty.”

The slim rider on the chestnut horse appeared between tall oaks on a trail extending past the rear of the lodges on the far side of the lake, then disappeared again behind a narrow lodge. Jerry steered the Lincoln slowly downhill toward the lake.

“Who is that on the horse?” Tom asked.

“Samantha Jacobs,” said Mrs. Spence.

“Looked like Cissy Harbinger to me,” said Mr. Spence.

“The Jacobses went to France. They won’t be here at all this summer, the way I hear it. And Cissy Harbinger got married to some mechanic or something,” Jerry said. “Her parents took her to Europe. They won’t be here until maybe September.”

“So who was that on the horse, since you know everything?” asked Mrs. Spence.

“Barbara Deane,” Jerry said. “See, she’d come out now because almost nobody’s around.”

“Oh, Barbara Deane,” said Mrs. Spence, sounding a bit doubtful as to this name.

Tom had straightened up to look for her next appearance, but the straight slim figure on the chestnut horse did not show herself again.

Jerry drove the Lincoln down to the bottom of the track and came out into the open at a place where the road divided at the narrow, marshy north end of the lake. The car rolled to a stop facing the water. The Spences lowered their power windows, and the buzzing of the motorboat, executing a wide, sweeping turn down at the wide end of the kidney-shaped lake, came to them across half a mile of water like the racket of a motorcycle on a quiet night. “Where d’you want to go first?” Jerry asked.

“I want to get out of this car before we go another inch,” said Mrs. Spence. “I’m sure this seat is still wet.” She opened her door and climbed out and began twisting around to try to look at the seat of her miniskirt.

Tom got out on the loose mossy soil that led down to the marshy ground at the narrow end of the lake. The air smelled of pine needles and fresh water. For several yards, lathery green scum broken by reeds covered the lake’s surface. He walked nearer the water, and the ground squelched beneath his feet. He could just see the tops of green-and-white striped umbrellas on the wide terrace of the clubhouse. The rest of the buildings stood around the long lake, their weathered grey wooden façades almost invisible behind the thick trees that surrounded them. A redwood lodge with clean modern lines at the far end of the lake perched on a treeless lawn like a green scoop out of the forest.

“So that’s the club,” Tom said, pointing across twenty yards of reedy water to the structure with all the windows. “And that’s the Redwing compound.” Over the tops of the tall stakes that enclosed the compound, the upper stories of several large wooden buildings could be seen.

“Next is our place,” Sarah said.

Smaller than the others, Anton Goetz’s old lodge was dwarfed by the large oaks and firs that surrounded it. A weathered veranda faced the lake on its second floor. “Then comes Glen Upshaw’s, where you’ll be,” said Mrs. Spence. His grandfather’s lodge was nearly twice the size of the Spences’, and seemed to loom—like his grandfather—out of the surrounding trees while being concealed by them. Two bay windows and a massive dock protruded from the lake side of the lodge. Otherwise, only its grey roof was visible through the trees.

“Next is that abortion of Roddy Deepdale’s,” said Mrs. Spence. This was the redwood-and-glass building on the treeless expanse of lake front beside his grandfather’s property. It looked even more aggressively contemporary from water level than from the hillside. “I don’t know why he was allowed to put that up. He can do what he likes in Deepdale Estates, but here … well, you can certainly tell he was never a part of old Eagle Lake. Or old Mill Walk, either.”

“Neither were we, Mother,” Sarah said.

“On the other side of that eyesore, coming back this way on the south side of the lake, are the Thielmans, the Langenheims, the Harbingers, and the Jacobses.” Ranging in size between the massiveness of his grandfather’s lodge and the relative petiteness of Sarah’s but of the same weathered wood, with proportionate docks and balconies on the lake, all but the Langenheim lodge were shuttered and empty.

On that side of the lake, just before the north end began to narrow and turn marshy, sited roughly opposite the wooded space between the clubhouse and the Redwing compound, stood a tall narrow building with a long front porch facing the hillside and a short, businesslike dock and stubby veranda barely wide enough for a couple of chairs and a round table. All of it seemed in need of fresh paint. This building, too, had been shuttered.

Tom asked about this lodge. “Oh, our other eyesore,” said Mrs. Spence. “Really, I’d rather see that one torn down than Roddy’s monstrosity.”

“Who owns it?” Sarah said. “I’ve never seen anyone there.”

Mr. Spence said, “I tried to buy that place, but the owner wouldn’t even return my calls. Guy named—”

“Von Heilitz,” Tom said, suddenly realizing. “Lamont von Heilitz. He lives across the street from us.”

“Oh, look, Buddy sees us.” Mrs. Spence jumped up and down and waved. The motorboat was noisily tearing up the length of the lake and, standing up behind the wheel, squat, black-haired Buddy Redwing made violent, meaningless gestures with his arms. He sounded a klaxon, and birds fled the trees. He gave a Nazi salute, sounded the klaxon again, then cut the wheel sharply and heeled the boat over, nearly shipping water, and pointed at the walls of the compound. His companion, whose shoulder-length blond hair streamed out behind him, did not move or respond to Buddy’s antics in any way.

“Why, that’s a girl in that boat with Buddy.” Mrs. Spence put her hands on her hips, having undergone another sudden mood swing.

“Nah, that’s Kip,” Jerry said. “Good old Kip Carson, Buddy’s buddy.”

Buddy drew the speedboat up to the central Redwing dock, and Mrs. Spence avidly watched him jump out of the boat and lash a rope around a post. Buddy’s soft belly hung out over his baggy black bathing trunks. His legs were short, thick, and bowed. Buddy leaned out over the rocking boat, extended a thick arm, and pulled his friend up on the dock. Kip Carson was naked and sunburned a bright red on his narrow shoulders. He tossed back his hair and reeled up the dock toward a stockade door. Buddy made drinking motions with his right hand, then trotted after his friend.

“Kip is a hippie, I guess they call it,” Jerry said.

Mrs. Spence announced that Buddy had invited Sarah for a drink at the compound, so they would drop her off first. Jerry could leave the rest of them at the Spences’ lodge, and Tom could carry his bags to his grandfather’s place. She got back in the car, and pulled the short skirt firmly down as far as it would go. “I’m sure it doesn’t matter what high-spirited boys do when they’re alone together,” Mrs. Spence said. “Buddy and his friend are practically stranded up here. That young man must be the only company the Redwings have in that big compound.”

“Nah, there’s an old lady,” Jerry said. “But Buddy and Kip pretty much run by themselves. They shot a hole in the bar mirror at the White Bear two nights ago.” He drove onto the road circling around the west side of the lake, and soon they were passing the empty parking lot of the clubhouse.

“I wonder who their other guest could be. We must know her.”

“Ralph and Mrs. Redwing call her Aunt Kate,” Jerry said. “She’s a Redwing, but she lives in Atlanta.”

“Oh, of course,” said Mrs. Spence. “We know her, dear.”

“I don’t,” said Mr. Spence.

The Lincoln drew up beside the front gates of the Redwing compound, and Mr. Spence labored out of the car to let Sarah out. “Come back to our place when you and Buddy have said your hellos,” Sarah’s mother called. “We’ll all have dinner with Ralph and Katinka tonight, I’m sure.”

“Tom, too,” Sarah said.

“Tom has things to do. We won’t impose invitations on him.”

Jerry pulled away as Sarah waved, and the car wound through the trees to the Spences’ lodge.

“Of course we know Aunt Kate,” Mrs. Spence said to her husband. “She’s the one who was married to Jonathan. They lived in Atlanta. She’s—she’d be—somewhere in her seventies now, and her maiden name—see, I even know that—her maiden name was—it was—”

“Duffield,” Tom said.

“See!” she cried. “Even he knows it was Duffield!”

Jerry dropped them in front of the porch of the Spence lodge and turned around on the seat to back down the narrow lake road to the compound. The Spences fumbled with bags and keys and moved up on their dusty porch with perfunctory good-byes to Tom, and he carried his two cases down through the trees to his grandfather’s lodge.