the rear of the lodge. She was surprised to see that all the glass was intact.
Leaning forward, she peered through one of the panes. She saw the shaded floor of a porch, a wooden railing at its far side, blue sky, tree tops in the distance, and not much else.
‘Over here,’ Finley said.
Abilene turned away from the window. Finley, off to her right, was standing in front of a door. Shifting the camera to her left hand, she knocked back a bolt. She twisted the knob and jerked. The door stayed put, and she stumbled toward it. Bracing her feet and crouching slightly, she gave the knob another sharp tug. With splintery crackles, it broke free of its jamb and swung at her. Its hinges squawked. Its edge only missed her face because the door’s sudden release had sent her staggering backward.
Regaining her balance, she stepped outside. ‘Hey, neat! ’ she called.
Abilene went after her. Surprise at finding the porch high above the ground was forgotten the moment she met the fresh air. She’d been vaguely aware of the kitchen’s stuffy heat and musty smells, but hadn’t realized just how bad it’d been until leaving it behind. Here, the air smelled rich with fragrances of the forest. The warm breeze felt cool. She untucked her blouse, lifted its front, and felt the breeze caress her belly while she wiped sweat off her face.
‘I don’t think I want to go back in there,’ she said.
‘Hey, guys!’ Finley called. ‘Get out here!’
Abilene unfastened a few lower buttons, then looked around as she raised her shirttails and tied them in a half-knot under her breasts.
The porch extended along the entire rear of the lodge. At both ends, stairways led down from the long, second story balcony. The stairways met the porch and descended from there to the ground. Directly in front of her, another set of stairs led downward.
‘This is something,’ Cora said.
‘Oh,’ Vivian said. ‘Great.’
Abilene heard the door from the kitchen grind shut.
‘Fantastic,’ Helen said.
Abilene didn’t know whether they were talking about the fresh air or the scenery.
Now that she had recovered from the stifling atmosphere of the kitchen, it was the view that amazed her.
The rear grounds of the lodge.
She stepped to the edge of the stairway for a better look. Finley was already there, camera to her face. Abilene halted beside her and muttered, ‘Weird.’
‘I’ll say. But neat.’
The lodge cast a heavy shadow halfway across the swath of level land. The far half was bathed in dusty golden light from the late afternoon sun. The end of the field and both its sides were walled by dense forest.
It looked like an oasis.
A picnic area.
A park that had seen better days.
Gazing at it, Abilene felt strange mixtures of excitement, nostalgia and apprehension.
A red brick barbecue stood in the shadow, its chimney almost as high as the porch. A lone picnic table remained near the edifice. There may have been many such tables, once, but only this one remained. It was weathered like driftwood (like the totem poles out front, Abilene thought), and littered with leaves. Weeds climbed its legs.
Off beyond the barbecue was a strip of concrete that resembled a miniature runway - the runway of an airport abandoned long ago. Dandelions grew in its web of cracks. Abilene could see enough of its faint markings, however, to know that it had once been a shuffleboard court.
A ruin, now.
In the days before it was a ruin, in the days before weeds overpowered the trim grass, people had probably played croquet on the part of the field behind the shuffleboard court. Abilene could almost hear the soft clack of colliding wooden balls.
And the ring of a horseshoe clanging into a steel stake.
If they played shuffleboard, she thought, they had to play croquet and horseshoes.
It must’ve been nice. Peaceful, idyllic.
She turned her eyes to the swimming pool. It was way off to her left, far enough from the lodge to be clear of the afternoon shadow, close to the line of woods at the northern side of the lawn. Several flagstone paths converged on it. The pool’s stone deck, like the forlorn shuffleboard court, was littered with forest debris and seamed with weeds. From here, the pool looked empty. At one end was a high dive, a low board, and a slide.
‘I wonder where the hot springs are,’ Helen said.
‘I’m sure that’s just a regular pool,’ Abilene said.
Lowering her camera, Finley started down the stairs. Abilene went with her and heard the others following.
Underneath the porch, she found another pool.
‘Oh, wow,’ Finley said.
‘Yeah.’ She walked toward it.
The pool, nestled close to the rear of the lodge and entirely sheltered by the porch, was only about six feet wide - seven or eight feet long. Its granite walls were filled to the brim with gently moving water - water that entered from an archway in the wall of the lodge and flowed slowly away down a shallow stone channel at the north side of the pool.
The water looked remarkably clean. Abilene supposed that its constant motion must sweep away leaves and such, and wash them down the channel.
‘Fantastic!’ Helen blurted when she saw the pool. ‘This must be it, huh?’ Rushing past Abilene, she knelt at the edge and dipped a hand into the water. ‘It’s hot!’
‘It comes from the lodge?’ Cora asked, sounding astonished.
She and Abilene both squatted down and peered through the archway. The opening was the width of a doorway. Above the waterline, it was less than a yard high. In the shadowed gloom beyond it, Abilene could see nothing except a softly undulating surface of water. ‘Looks like another pool in there,’ she said. ‘And a big one.’
‘They must’ve built the lodge right on top of the spring,’ Helen said.
‘Didn’t your guidebook tell you that?’ Vivian asked.
‘It wasn’t a guidebook. It was something called,
‘Should’ve known someone was murdered here,’ Vivian muttered.
‘That’s what makes it interesting.’
‘So what is a hot spring, anyway?’ Finley asked.
With a shrug, Helen said, ‘Water that’s hot and comes up out of the ground.’
Abilene laughed. ‘You’re a walking encyclopedia.’
‘I don’t know. I’m not a geologist.’
‘Are they something like those geysers at Yellowstone?’ Finley asked.
‘I don’t suppose they shoot up,’ Helen said. ‘Nobody’d build a lodge on top, if they did.’
‘Why don’t we go in through here?’ Cora suggested, scooting away from the edge of the pool and starting to pull off a shoe.
‘We’d get wet, that’s why not,’ Vivian said.
‘So?’
‘It’ll give you a chance to wash your hand,’ Abilene pointed out.
‘How do we know the water’s clean?’
‘It’s natural spring water,’ Helen said.
‘From deep in the bosom of Mother Earth,’ Abilene added. ‘How can it not be clean?’
Vivian tilted her head sideways as if thinking about it. Then she said, ‘Shouldn’t we explore the rest of the lodge first?’
‘I want to start by going right through there,’ Cora said, and pointed at the archway. Barefoot, she stood
