Mystery

As soon as he got back to the lodge, Tom went into the study and found the number of the Eagle Lake Police Department in the telephone book.

A male voice answered, and Tom asked to speak to Chief Truehart.

“The Chief’s out of the office until tonight,” said the voice, and Tom saw Spychalla leaning back in his boss’s chair, pumping his muscles to make his belt creak.

“Could you give me a time?”

“Who is this?” Spychalla asked.

“I want to give you some information,” Tom said. “The stereo equipment and everything else stolen in the burglaries this year is being stored in an old tool and die shop on Summers Street. There’s a Polish name over the door.”

“Who are you?” Spychalla asked.

“One of the guys is still there, so if you go to Summers Street you can get him.”

“I’m unable to respond to anything but emergencies, on account of being alone here, but if you’ll leave your name and tell me how you got this information.…”

Tom took the phone away from his ear and stared at it in frustration. He heard Spychalla’s voice saying, “This is that kid out at Eagle Lake, isn’t it? The one who thinks the Chief’s mother is a burglar.”

He put the phone to his mouth and said, “No, my name is Philip Marlowe.”

“Where are you, Mr. Marlowe?”

Tom hung up. He wanted to go upstairs and hide under the bed.

He locked the front door, then walked across the length of the lodge and locked the door to the deck. Then he walked nervously around the sitting room for a time, and when the house made its noises, looked out the front windows to see if Jerry had come up on the porch. He went back into the sitting room and called Lamont von Heilitz, who was not at home.

The telephone rang when he had just reached the bottom of the first page of a letter to von Heilitz, and the pen skittered across the paper, leaving dashes. Tom set down the pen and looked at the phone. He put his hand on the receiver, but did not pick it up. It went dead, and then started ringing as soon as he took his hand off the receiver, and rang ten times before it stopped again.

The directory listed two Redwings: Ralph at Gladstone Lodge, Eagle Trail, and Chester, Palmerston Lodge, Eagle Trail. Chester was Fritz’s father. Tom dialed the number and waited through three rings until a woman answered. He recognized the voice of Fritz’s mother, Eleanor Redwing, and asked to speak to Fritz.

“Is that you, Tom? You must be enjoying yourself tremendously.”

So Buddy’s parents had not spoken about the difficulty with Sarah; and Fritz had kept quiet about the machine shop.

“Oh, sure,” he said. “Tremendously.”

“Well, I know that Fritz has been looking forward to seeing you up here ever since you left. Of course the big news around here is about Buddy and Sarah. We all think it’s wonderful. She’ll be so good for him.”

“Wonderful,” Tom said. “Tremendous.”

“And of course she’s had a crush on him since ninth grade. And they’re so cute together, the way they keep sneaking off to be alone.”

“I guess they have a lot to talk about.”

“I don’t think they spend a lot of time talking,” she said. “Anyhow, here’s Fritzie. Tom, I hope we’ll be seeing you around the compound.”

“That would be very nice.”

A moment later Fritz took the phone. He did not say anything. Tom could hear him breathing into the receiver.

“What’s going on over there?” he asked.

“Nothing.”

“Nobody said anything about seeing us?”

“I told you, nothing.”

“Where is everybody? Did you see Jerry or anybody after we got back?”

“About five minutes ago, my aunt and uncle went to Hurley in the Cadillac with Robbie. They’re going to stay overnight with some friends.”

“Did you see Nappy?”

“He’s not around. Jerry’s still out with Buddy, I guess. They took Sarah to look at a new boat.”

Fritz breathed into the phone for a while and then said, “Maybe nothing’s going to happen.”

“Something has to happen, Fritz.”

“So—you called, ah, you called who you said you were going to?”

“I didn’t give any names,” Tom said. “I just told them to look in that machine shop.”

“You shouldn’t of.” Fritz breathed heavily into the phone for a few seconds. “What’d they say?”

“They didn’t seem too excited.”

“Okay,” Fritz said. “Maybe they got everything out. I’m gonna say we were just driving around. Nobody saw anything.”

“Did you try to call me a little while ago?”

“Are you kidding? Look, I can’t talk anymore.”

“You want to come over for a swim later?”

“I can’t talk now,” Fritz said, and hung up.

Tom paced around the lodge for another twenty minutes, then picked up a book, unlocked the back door, and went out on the deck.

He tilted the lounger back, stretched out, and tried to read. Sunlight bounced off the page, obliterating the print. Tom raised the book to block out the sun. Heat soaked through his clothes and warmed his skin, and bright golden light poured down to pool all about him. He could not keep his mind on the book: in a short time, his eyelids drooped, and the book tilted toward his chest and became a small white bird he held in his hands, and he was asleep.

A bell insistent as an alarm awakened him, and for a second he thought he was back in Brooks-Lowood—his body felt heavy and slow, but he had to change classes, he had to stand up and move.… He sat up. Sunburn tingled on his forehead, and his face was wet with perspiration. The telephone kept ringing, and Tom moved automatically toward the back door to answer it. He stopped when he put his hand on the doorknob. The phone rang twice more. Tom opened the door and went to the desk.

It’s probably Grand-Dad, he thought.

He picked up the phone and said hello.

There was a brief moment of silence, and then a click and the dial tone.

Tom hung up, locked the back door, walked across the sitting room, went out and locked the front door with the key. He ran down the steps and crossed the track to drag the leafy branch away from the ruts made by Barbara Deane’s car, went around it, and dragged the branch back. He stepped into the undergrowth between himself and the track, pushed aside vines and small stiff branches, and hunkered down at the base of an oak. Through chinks in the leaves, he could see his front steps, half of the porch, and a little of the way down the track to the compound.

Jerry Hasek came walking up the track thirty seconds later. He was wearing his grey suit and the chauffeur’s cap, and his hands were balled into fists. He took the big steps two at a time, strode across the porch, and knocked on the screen door. Jerry spun on his heel and hit his fists together several times, rapidly. His face wore an expression of worried concentration that was familiar to Tom, and meant nothing: it was just the way Jerry looked. He spun back around and opened the screen door and pounded on the wooden door. Jerry’s body told much more than his face—his movements were quick and agitated, and his shoulders looked stiff and bunched, as if he had developed extra layers of muscle and skin, like armor. “Pasmore!” he yelled. He banged on the door again.

Jerry stepped back and glared at the door. “Come on, I know you’re there,” he yelled. “Come on out, Pasmore.” He put his hand on the knob and turned it, then rattled the door.

He moved to one of the windows and peered inside the way Tom had looked into the machine shop, with his hands cupping his face. He slapped the window with his palm, and the glass shivered. “Come on OUT!”

Jerry went backwards down the steps, looking upward as if he expected to see Tom climbing out of a window. He put his hands on his hips, and his shoulder muscles shifted underneath the fabric of the jacket. He looked from side to side, exhaled, and gazed back up at the lodge.

He bounded back up the steps, opened the screen door, and struck the door again several times. “You have to talk to me,” he said, speaking in the voice he would use to a person who was hard of hearing. “I can’t help you out if you don’t talk to me.”

He leaned his head against the door and said, “Come on.” Then he pushed himself away from the door and trotted down the steps. His whole thick body looked energetic, electrified, as if you would get a shock if you touched him. Jerry went to the side of the lodge and went down between the trees to get to the back.

After a couple of minutes in which he must have banged on the back door and tried to get in, Jerry reappeared, heading toward the track with the cap in his hands and—for once—more concentration than worry in his broad face. He came out from beneath the oaks and turned to face the lodge. “You fucking dope,” he said, and turned to walk back to the compound.

When he was out of sight, Tom came out of his hiding place and went up the steps. His feet resounded on the boards of the porch. He slid the key into the lock, and felt a hard, jittery presence in the air that was Jerry’s ghost. Tom let himself in and locked the door behind him.

In the study, he dialed the operator and asked for his grandfather’s number on Mill Walk.

The phone picked up on the first ring, and Kingsley’s voice told him that he had reached the Glendenning Upshaw residence.

“Kingsley, this is Tom,” he said. “Can I speak to my grandfather, please?”

“Master Tom, what a nice surprise! Are you enjoying yourself at the lake?”

“It’s a great place. Could you get him, please?”

“Just a moment,” Kingsley said, and put the phone down with a noisy clunk that suggested that he had dropped it.

He was gone much longer than a moment: Tom heard voices, footfalls, a door closing. Seconds ticked by, followed by more seconds. At last the butler returned. “I’m afraid your grandfather is not available.”

“Not available? What does that mean?”

“Mr. Upshaw has gone out unexpectedly, Master Tom. I cannot tell you when he is expected to be back.”

“Is his carriage gone?”

Kingsley paused a second, and said, “I believe it is, yes.”

“Maybe he’s visiting my mother,” Tom said.

“He always informs us when he does not plan to dine at home,” Kingsley said, and both his voice and his language sounded even stiffer than usual.

Neither Tom nor the old butler said anything for a moment.

“Is he really not there, Kingsley,” Tom said, “or is he just unavailable?”

There was another brimming pause until the butler said, “It’s as I told you, Master Tom.”

“Okay, tell him I have to talk to him,” Tom said, and they both hung up.

The endless afternoon passed into an endless evening. Tom realized that he was starving, and could not remember if he had eaten lunch—he could not remember eating anything all day. He went into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator—most of the food Barbara Deane had bought for him was still on the shelves, preserved in the supermarket wrappings. I ate her food once before, he thought, and it didn’t kill me.

He scrambled two eggs in a bowl, buttered two slices of whole wheat bread, cut slices off a garlic sausage and dropped them in the sizzling pan with the eggs. He turned the edges of the solidifying egg over the sausage, and after a few seconds, turned the whole thing out onto a plate. He ate in the kitchen and put the pan, bowl, plate, and his utensils into the sink and ran hot water over them.

Outside, sunlight still fell on the lake, but the shadow of the lodge darkened the deck nearly all the way to the pier. Tom pulled the living room curtains shut, and went to the desk and called the police department.

“Is Chief Truehart back in the office yet?” he asked.

“Is this Mr. Marlowe?” Spychalla asked. “Where are you calling from, Mr. Marlowe?”

Tom hung up and called his mother. No, her father had not been over that afternoon; no, she did not know where he might be. He was very busy with new plans for the Founders Club, and she had not seen him for days. Victor was out of town, doing something in Alabama for the Redwings. “Are you seeing all your friends?”

“I’m pretty busy,” he told her.

Tom sat at the desk with the telephone before him, watching the shadow of the lodge slide across the deck and begin to darken the pier. Fish jumped silently in the lake. The air went grey. Inside, it looked like night.

When the sky began to darken, he put on a sweater and went out on the deck and locked the door behind him. Lights shone in the Langenheims’ windows and reflected in narrow yellow lines on the water. Tom walked fast around the bottom end of the lake under a rising sliver of moon, passing the empty lodges—hurrying past the Langenheims’—until he came to Lamont von Heilitz’s place, where he wound through trees and came out on the sandy shore of the lake. The old lodge looked like a haunted house in a movie—like Norman Bates’ house, in Psycho. He jumped up on the stubby dock and walked out to the end and sat down on cool wood to look at the windows of the club.

The Redwings and their guests sat at the long table just inside the terrace. Tom could see the backs of the people on the window side of the table, Sarah Spence, Buddy, Fritz, and Eleanor Redwing. Across from them, Tom could see only the heads of Sarah’s mother, Fritz’s father, and Katinka Redwing. Ralph Redwing and Bill Spence sat at either end of the table. Marcello, his tuxedo shirt unbuttoned to his sternum, was passing out the giant leaves of the menus. When he came to Katinka Redwing, he bent down and whispered in her ear, and Katinka made a cat face. Buddy Redwing put his hand on Sarah’s back and caressed her from the nape of the neck to her waist.

Marcello brought two champagne bottles in a silver bucket, and Ralph Redwing and Bill Spence each made toasts. Fritz’s father made a toast, and Buddy’s hand, fat as a starfish, slowly circled on Sarah’s back. Fritz made a toast, which Tom wished he could hear. Buddy pushed back his chair, stood up, and made a speech. Marcello circled the table, filling glasses. Everybody was watching Buddy—they laughed, looked solemn, laughed again. Mrs. Spence waggled her glass in the air for more champagne. When Buddy sat down, Sarah kissed him and everyone applauded. She put her arms around his neck. Fritz’s father said something, and everybody laughed again.

They ordered. Two more champagne bottles came. The fat brown starfish prowled across Sarah’s back. Whenever Sarah turned to look at Buddy, her face glowed.

This was how it worked, Tom thought. The Redwings gobbled up food, drink, real estate, other people—they devoured morality, honesty, scruples, and everybody admired them. Sarah Spence could not resist them because nobody could.

Buddy was waving a fork, talking, and Fritz stared at him as adoringly as a little dog. A greedier, more adult version of the same expression came into Mrs. Spence’s face whenever she turned to Ralph Redwing. Sarah’s right hand, a slimmer, whiter starfish, rested between Buddy’s shoulder blades.

Tom sat on the deck and watched them finish their dinner. There were two more bottles of champagne, coffee, desserts. At last they all stood up and drifted away from the window. A few minutes later, Tom saw them moving slowly on the track between the clubhouse and the compound, calling out good-byes loud enough to be heard across the water.

Lights came on in the upper windows of the lodges in the compound. A light switched on in the second floor of the Spence lodge. Birds called to each other, and a frog splashed in the reeds at the narrow end of the lake.

A car started up behind the compound, then another. The beams of headlights swept across the track between the compound and the club, and then shone upon the trees on the club’s far side. A long black car came around the clubhouse, its headlights angled down the narrow road. It circled the top of the lake, and as it swung to go up the hill, Tom saw two heads side by side on the front seat, one dark, one blond. Another long car followed, this, too, with a dark and a blond head in the front seat.

The lights in the club dining room went out, and long blocks of yellow vanished from the surface of the lake. Tom walked the long way back to his lodge.

He cut across Roddy Deepdale’s lawn and came up to his dock along the shoreline. He sat on the wood and swung his legs up, then took off his shoes. The shoes in his hand, he moved up to the deck, knelt in the darkness before the back door, found the lock with his fingertips, and slid in the key. He turned the knob and opened the door as softly as possible. Inside, he closed the door and turned the lock. Cold moonlight lay across the desk and washed the colors from the hooked rug.

Tom moved to the open door into the sitting room, and crouched over. Holding his breath, he slid into the big room, and stood, crouched and motionless, listening for any movement. The sitting room was dark as an underground cave. Tom waited until he was sure he was alone, and then he straightened up and took another step into the room.

The beam of a flashlight struck his eyes and blinded him.

“If I were you, I’d be careful too,” a man said. “Just stay there.”

The flashlight went off, and Tom instantly went into a crouch and began to rush into the office. A floor lamp snapped on. “Not too bad,” the man said.

Tom slowly straightened up and turned around to face him. All the breath left his body at once. His hand still on the chain of the floor lamp, wearing a dark blue suit and gloves that matched his grey double-breasted vest, Lamont von Heilitz smiled at him from a couch.

“You’re here!” Tom said.

The Shadow pulled the lamp chain, and the room went dark again. “It’s time we had another talk,” he said.