Mystery

Tom paced around the sitting room, fidgeted with pens and papers at the desk, stared out of every window on the ground floor of the lodge, reread Sarah’s letters, looked at his watch. Every minute that went by increased the likelihood that Fritz would not call him. Tom imagined Fritz in his family’s lodge, his suitcases opened on the bed, jeans and chinos and shorts strewn across the floor, interrupting a conversation between his parents and his aunt and uncle about the jet and Ted Mornay with the comment that he sort of thought, you know, that he’d see what good old Tom Pasmore was up to. Uncle Ralph would make sure that he didn’t see what good old Tom Pasmore was up to, and when Fritz saw Tom in the dining room he would shrug and shake his head and generally try to communicate that all conversation would have to wait until their senior year started, tough luck, and what did you do anyway, man?

When the telephone rang, Tom scrambled for it from the sitting room, and picked it up on the third ring.

Fritz’s first words told him that all his worry had been pointless. “Tom! We’re both here! Isn’t that great?”

It sure was, Tom said, genuinely happy to hear Fritz’s voice.

“Boy, I never thought this would really happen,” Fritz said. “We’re going to have such a great time. I guess Buddy had some real wild friends up here, I bet they got outrageous and outa sight, so tell me what you were doing—but please please don’t tell me you just moped around reading books and acting like Mr. Handley. I’m fed up with Mr. Handley, he never makes any sense!”

Fritz had spent the past three weeks in a remedial reading tutorial with Dennis Handley.

“Come on over,” Tom said. “Right away.”

“Next year we’re going to be seniors!” Fritz said. “This is going to be the best summer we ever had.”

“Don’t tell anybody where you’re going, just get over here,” Tom said.

In less than five minutes, Fritz was on the doorstep, wearing a polo shirt over bathing trunks and carrying a towel on his arm. “Good tan,” he said when Tom opened the door. “I was afraid you’d be all white—I was afraid you’d have book scars all over your face.

“Book scars?”

“You know, those little lines you get under your eyes from reading too much. With Mr. Handley, I had to read a whole book out loud, and every time I read a sentence wrong, he read it back to me, it was like watching a guy play with himself, I got those lines all over under my eyes, I had to squint so I wouldn’t have to see his face. So let’s go swimming right away, okay, I want to catch up with your tan, I want some rays—”

They had walked into the living room, and Fritz suddenly stopped talking and gazed in horror at the heavily written-upon sheets of yellow paper lying in rows and stacks on the floor by the couch and fanned across its cushions.

“What is THIS?” He turned to look up at Tom with pale blue eyes like pinwheels. “You’re doing next year’s homework!”

“I’m thinking about something, it has nothing to do with homework.”

“So?” Fritz said, meaning: so if it isn’t homework, what is it?

“It’s about a murder.” Fritz looked at him with deep puzzlement. “I’ll put on my swimsuit and be right down,” Tom said.

“All right,” Fritz said when Tom came back downstairs. He had been holding a sheaf of Tom’s notes in his hands, and he dropped them on the floor with evident relief. “Let’s get in the water. I don’t know what you’re doing here, but you have got to get away from it, fast.”

They walked through the study, and Fritz shook his head at the sight of yet more piles of paper. “It’s a good thing I got here in time. I don’t know how you got such a good tan, messing around with this crazy stuff. You even got Mrs. Thielman’s name wrong, you dope.”

“That was the first Mrs. Thielman,” Tom said. “Just out of curiosity, what was the name of the book you had to read out loud to Mr. Handley?”

“Are you kidding? You think I remember?”

“What was it about?”

“This guy.”

“What did he do?”

“We went after this fish. It didn’t make any sense. Mr. Handley let me skip the hard parts.”

“Mr. Handley made you read Moby Dick? Out loud?”

“It was terrible. It was lousy and terrible. What do you mean, the first Mrs. Thielman? There is only one Mrs. Thielman.”

“The first Mrs. Thielman was killed right up here by a man named Anton Goetz, and Lamont von Heilitz solved it.”

“The creep who owns that empty lodge?” They were now walking down Tom’s pier, and Fritz pointed diagonally across the lake. “That guy everybody hates? I wish you owned that lodge.”

“He’s not a creep,” Tom said. “He used to be incredibly famous, and he’s old now, but he’s an amazing man. I met him because he lives across the street from us, and he’s solved hundreds of murders, and he really knows how our island works.”

“Oh, everybody knows that,” Fritz said. He whooped and jumped off the edge of the dock, drew in his knees and wrapped his arms around them, and hit the water in a noisy cannonball.

Everybody knows that?

Tom dove in after him.

“God, this is great,” Fritz yelled, and for a time both he and Tom swam aimlessly and energetically in the wide part of the lake.

“Have you seen Buddy yet?” Tom asked.

“Buddy’s still in bed. I guess they had some kind of celebration at the club last night. Weren’t you there?”

“I left early. Buddy and I aren’t exactly friendly, Fritz.”

“Buddy’s friendly with everybody,” Fritz said. “Buddy’s friendly with Jerry. He and Jerry are going out shooting this afternoon. Maybe we could go too. That’d be pretty cool.”

“I don’t think they’d want me along, unless …” Unless they could use me as a target, Tom thought. “There are some things you have to know,” he said, and Fritz swam closer to him, his wide forehead wrinkled.

“Do you know what the celebration was about, last night?” Fritz shook his head. “Buddy is supposed to get married to Sarah Spence.”

“Well, sure. What’s the big deal?”

“He can’t marry her,” Tom said.

“How come?”

“She’s too young. She’s too smart. She doesn’t even like him.”

“Then how come she’s going to marry him?”

“Because her parents want her to, because your Uncle Ralph picked her out for him, and because she hasn’t been able to see me for a couple of weeks.”

Fritz stopped paddling around and stared at him. His mouth was underwater.

“I’ve sort of been seeing her. We got close, Fritz.”

Fritz lifted his mouth out of the water. “How close?”

“Pretty close,” Tom said. “Buddy tried to tell me to stay away from her, and when I wouldn’t agree, he tried to fight me, and I punched him in the gut. He went down.”

“Oh, shit,” Fritz said.

“Fritz, the truth is—”

Fritz clamped his eyes shut.

“Come on, Fritz. The truth is, Sarah was never going to marry him in the first place. She’s going to college in the fall, and she’ll write him a letter or something, and that’ll be that. They’re not even engaged, it’s just some kind of understanding.”

“Did you screw her?” Fritz asked.

“None of your business.”

“Oh, shit,” Fritz said. “How many times?”

“I have to see her,” Tom said, and Fritz dove underwater and began swimming back toward the dock. Tom swam after him. Fritz scrambled up on the dock and sat with his head on his knees. His hair glowed in the sun. When Tom pulled himself up on the dock, Fritz stood up and stepped away from him.

“Well?” Tom said.

Fritz glared at him. He looked almost ready to cry. He punched Tom in the shoulder. “Tell me you did,” he said. “Tell me you did, shithead.” He hit Tom in the chest, and knocked him backwards a step.

“I did,” Tom said.

Fritz whirled around, so that he faced Roddy Deepdale’s lodge. “I knew it,” he said.

“If you knew it, why did you hit me?”

“I knew this was going to happen.”

“What?”

Fritz turned around slowly. “I knew you were going to do something crazy like this.” There was a gleam of pure naughtiness in his eyes. He jumped forward and shoved Tom’s biceps with both of his hands. “Where’d you do it? In the woods? In your lodge? Inside or outside?”

Tom stepped backwards. “Never mind.”

Fritz shoved him again. “If you don’t tell me, I won’t do anything for you.” His eyes seemed to be all gleam now. “If you don’t tell me something, I won’t even ever talk to you again.” He backed Tom down the deck, pushing at him like a little blond bear playing with its trainer. “Where was the first time?”

“On your uncle’s airplane,” Tom said.

Fritz’s arms dropped. “On …” He blinked, three times, rapidly. He choked on a laugh, got the laugh out of his throat, and fell on his knees, bawling with laughter. “On … on … my uncle’s …” He fell on his back, still laughing too hard to speak.

“Are you going to help me?” Tom said.

Fritz’s laughter gradually subsided into a series of sighs. “Sure. You’re my friend, aren’t you?” He looked up, eyes gleaming again, from the deck. “Moby Dick,” he said, and sputtered with laughter again. Then his face turned serious, and he squinted into the sun. “Is there a real old guy in Moby Dick?”

“Sure,” Tom said.

“And does the fish get all eaten up?”

“Eaten up?”

“You fart, you got the wrong book. Even I know Ernest whatzisname didn’t write Moby Dick. Her parents were on that plane, right? They were right there, right?”

“There aren’t any hard parts in The Old Man and the Sea,” Tom said.

“Don’t change the subject,” Fritz said, and began giggling. “Oh, God. Oh, God. How can this be happening to me?”

“It isn’t happening to you,” Tom said. “It’s happening to me.”

“Well, what does Sarah Spence have to do with Lamont von Heilitz?”

“Nothing.”

Fritz sat up and jiggled a finger in his ear. He cocked his head and looked at Tom. “But I heard my uncle and Jerry talking about him—right after I changed. They were on my uncle’s porch. I told you.”

“When was this?”

“When you said this old guy who used to be famous lived across the street from you, and I said, everybody knows that, that’s when. Because I heard my Uncle Ralph on the porch with Jerry, and my uncle said, da da da da da dum, Lamont von Heilitz, or whatever his name is, and Jerry said, he lives across the street from the Pasmores.”

“I wonder what that was about?”

“I’ll ask him,” Fritz said.

“No, don’t ask him about it. Did your uncle say anything after that?”

“He said, have a nice time, Fritzie. Which is what I thought I was going to do.” He picked himself up. “I suppose you want me to go get her and bring her here, and then go walk around the lake or something.”

“Maybe you could call her up this afternoon, or talk to her at lunch,” Tom said. “Say you’d like to go for a walk with her or something while Buddy’s out shooting with Jerry, and go around the lake so her parents won’t see you bringing her here. I just want to talk to her—I have to talk to her.”

After a second Fritz boffed his chest again, and said, “Let’s swim some more, huh? I’ll take care of things. If you’re in love with Sarah Spence, Buddy can always get married to Posy Tuttle. Buddy doesn’t care who he gets married to.”

They swam until Fritz’s mother came outside the compound to the middle Redwing dock and began calling, “Fritzie! Fritzie!”