Mystery

His room was not white, like his old room at Shady Mount, but painted in bright primary colors, lake water blue and sunlight yellow and maple leaf red. These colors were intended to induce cheerfulness and healthy high spirits. When Tom opened his eyes in the morning, he remembered sitting at a long table in Mrs. Whistler’s kindergarten class, awkwardly trying to cut something supposed to resemble an elephant out of stiff blue construction paper with a pair of scissors too big for him. His stomach, his throat, and his head all hurt, and a thick white bandage swaddled his right hand. A twelve-inch television set on a moveable clamp angled toward the head of his bed—the first time he had switched this off with the remote control device on his bed, a nurse had switched it back on as soon as she came into the room, saying, “You want to watch something, don’t you?” and the second time she had said, “I can’t imagine what’s wrong with this darn set.” He just let it run now, moving by itself from game shows to soap operas to news flashes as he slept.

When Lamont von Heilitz came into the room, Tom turned off the set again. Every part of his body felt abnormally heavy, as if weights had been sewn into his skin, and most of them hurt in ways that seemed brand new. A transparent grease that smelled like room deodorizer shone on his arms and legs.

“You can get out of here in a couple of hours,” von Heilitz said, even before he took the chair beside Tom’s bed. “That’s how hospitals do it now—no lollygagging. They just told me, so when we’re done I’ll pack and get some clothes for you, and then come back and pick you up. Tim will fly us to Minneapolis, and we’ll get a ten o’clock flight and land in Mill Walk about seven in the morning.”

“A nine-hour flight?”

“It’s not exactly direct,” von Heilitz said, smiling. “How do you like the Grand Forks hospital?”

“I won’t mind leaving.”

“What sort of treatment did you get?”

“In the morning, they gave me an oxygen mask for a little while. After that, I guess I got some antibiotics. Every couple of hours, a woman comes around and makes me drink orange juice. They rub this goo all over me.”

“Do you feel ready to leave?”

“I’d do anything to get out of here,” Tom said. “I feel like I’m living my whole life over again. I get pushed in front of a car, and a little while later, I wind up in the hospital. Pretty soon, I’m going to figure out a murder and a whole bunch of people will get killed.”

“Have you seen any of the news broadcasts?” the old man asked, and the edge in his voice made Tom slide up straighter on his pillows. He shook his head.

“I have to tell you a couple of things.” The old man leaned closer, and rested his arms on the bed. “Your grandfather’s lodge burned down, of course. So did the Spence lodge. There’s nobody left at the lake now—the Redwings flew everybody back on their jet this morning.”

“Sarah?”

“She was released around seven this morning—she was in better shape than you were, thanks to that blanket you wrapped around her. Ralph and Katinka dropped the Spences and the Langenheims on Mill Walk, and flew straight to Venezuela.”

“Venezuela?”

“They have a vacation house there too. They didn’t want to stick around Eagle Lake, with all the mess and stink. Not to mention the crime investigation.”

“Crime?” Tom said. “Oh, arson.”

“Not just arson. Around two o’clock this afternoon, when the ashes finally got cool enough to sift through, Spychalla and a part-time deputy found a body in what was left of your lodge. It was much too badly burned to be identified.”

“A body?” Tom said. “There couldn’t be—” Then he felt a wave of nausea and horror as he realized what had happened.

“It was your body,” von Heilitz said.

“No, it was—”

“Chet Hamilton was there when they found it, and all three men knew it had to be you. There wasn’t anybody around to tell them different, and they even had a beautiful motive. Which was that Jerry Hasek—well, you know. Hamilton wrote his story as soon as he got back to his office, and it will run in tomorrow’s paper. As far as anybody knows, you’re dead.”

“It was Barbara Deane!” Tom burst out. “I forgot—she told me she was going to come over late at night.… Oh, God. She died—she was killed.” He closed his eyes, and a tremor of shock and sorrow nearly lifted him off the bed. His body seemed to grow hot, then cold, and he tasted smoke deep in his throat. “I heard her screaming,” he said, and started to cry. “When I got out—when you were with me outside—I thought it was her horse. The horse heard the fire, and …” He panted, hearing the screams inside his head.

He put his hands over his ears; then he saw her, Barbara Deane opening the door to the lodge in her silk blouse and her pearls, worried about what he had heard about her; Barbara Deane saying, I’m not sure any woman could have been what people think of as a good wife to your grandfather; saying, I’ve always thought that your grandfather saved my life. He put his hands over his eyes.

“I agree with you,” the old man said. “Murder is an obscenity.”

He reached out and wrapped his fingers around the old man’s linked hands.

“Let me tell you about Jerry Hasek and Robbie Wintergreen.” Von Heilitz gripped Tom’s fingers in his gloved hands: it was a gesture of reassurance, but somehow of reassurance in spite of everything, and Tom felt an unhappy wariness awaken in him. “They stole a car on Main Street, and drove it into an embankment outside Grand Forks. A witness said he saw them shouting at each other in the car, and the driver took his hands off the wheel to hit the other man. The car hit the embankment, and both of them almost went through the windshield. They’re being held in the jail here in town.”

“That’s Jerry,” Tom said.

“All this happened about eight o’clock yesterday night.”

“No, it couldn’t have. It must have been today,” Tom said. “Otherwise, they couldn’t have …”

“They didn’t,” von Heilitz said, and squeezed Tom’s hand. “Jerry didn’t set the fire. I don’t think Jerry shot at you, either.”

He let go of Tom’s hand and stood up. “I’ll be back in under an hour. Remember, you’re posthumous now, for a day or two. Tim Truehart knows you’re alive, but I was able to persuade him not to tell anyone until the time is right.”

“But the hospital—”

“I gave your name as Thomas von Heilitz,” the old man said.

He left the room, and for a time Tom did nothing but stare at the wall. Remember, you’re posthumous now. The second shift nurse bustled into the room carrying a tray, smiled briskly at him, looked at his chart, and said, “I bet we’re happy to be going home, aren’t we?” She was a stout red-haired woman with orange eyebrows and two small protuberant growths on the right side of her face, and she gave him a comic frown when he did not respond. “Aren’t you going to give me a smile, honey?”

He would have spoken to her, but he could not find a single thing to say.

“Well, maybe we like it here,” she said. The nurse put down the chart and came up the side of the bed. A single long hypodermic needle, a cotton swab, and a brown bottle of alcohol lay on the tray. “Can you roll over for me? This is our last injection of antibiotics before we go home.”

“The parting shot,” Tom said. He rolled over, and the nurse separated the back of his robe. The alcohol chilled a stripe on his left buttock, as if a fresh layer of skin had been exposed to the air; the needle punched into him and lingered; another cold swipe of alcohol.

“Your grandfather looks so distinguished,” the nurse said. “Is he in the theater?”

Tom said nothing. The nurse switched on the television set before she left the room, not with the remote but by reaching up and twisting the ON button, almost brutally, as if it were a duty he had neglected.

As soon as she was out of the room, Tom pointed the remote at the blaring set and zapped it.