Mystery

next couple of weeks. And maybe Barbara Deane ought to spend more nights here with you. Do you want me to talk to her about it?”

“I could do it,” Tom said.

“She likes her privacy, but right now she might want some company.”

“There is one other thing,” Tom said. “It’s connected to her. I know there have been break-ins around this area in the past few years. I don’t know if you’ve thought about this or not, but Ralph Redwing’s bodyguards have a lot of nights and evenings free, and before they started working for Ralph, they called themselves the Cornerboys and did a lot of stealing. I think they did some burglaries on Mill Walk, and I think—” He decided not to mention Wendell Hasek, and instead said, “I think Jerry Hasek, the one who’s sort of the leader, enjoys killing animals. I know he killed a dog when he was a teenager, and Barbara Deane’s dog was killed, and the other day I saw him go nuts in the Lincoln when Robbie Wintergreen, one of the bodyguards, said the word dog in front of me.”

“Well, well,” Truehart said. “Do these people live in the compound?”

“In a house by themselves.”

“I can’t go in there, of course, unless I’m invited or can persuade a judge to give me a search warrant. But do you think they’d take the risk of storing stolen goods in the compound, where they’d have to carry them in and out right under Ralph Redwing’s nose? Unless you think Ralph Redwing is getting a cut.”

“No,” Tom said. “I think I know where they put the stuff.”

“This is getting better and better. Where is it?”

Tom told him about seeing the light moving around von Heilitz’s lodge, following it up the path in the woods, getting lost, and finding the path the next day. Tim Truehart leaned forward on his elbows and listened to Tom’s story with a bemused expression on his face. And when Tom described the house in the clearing and the skinny old woman who had come out carrying a rifle, he put his hands over his face and leaned back against the couch.

“What’s wrong?” Tom asked.

Truehart lowered his hands. “Well, I’ll have to ask my mother if she’s storing stolen goods for a guy named Jerry Hasek.” He was grinning. “But she’d probably hit me over the head with a frying pan if I did.”

“Your mother,” Tom said. “Mrs. Truehart. Who used to clean the houses around here during the summers. Oh, my God.”

“That’s her. She probably thought you were checking out her house for a robbery.”

“Oh, my God,” Tom said again. “I apologize.”

“No need.” Truehart laughed out loud—he seemed vastly amused. “If it was me, I’d probably have done the same thing. I’ll tell you one thing, though, I’m glad you didn’t say anything about this to Spychalla. He’d be talking about it until his jaw wore out.” He stood up. “Well, I guess we’re through for now.” He was still grinning. “If we find anything up in the woods, I’ll tell you about it. And I do want you to be careful. That’s serious.”

They left the study, and walked across the sitting room to the front door.

“Give me a call if you see this Hasek character do anything out of the ordinary. He might be a live one. And try to spend as much time as possible with other people.”

Truehart held out his hand, and Tom shook it. The policeman pulled a pair of wire-rimmed sunglasses from his shirt pocket and put them on as he trotted down the steps. He got into his car and backed down the track toward the club the way Spychalla had done. Tom stood on the steps and watched him drive away; he was grinning until his face was only a dark blob behind the windshield.

Roddy and Buzz unexpectedly decided to spend Buzz’s last week of vacation with friends in the south of France, and the dinner Tom ate with them on the night before their departure seemed to him like the last friendly encounter he would be likely to have at Eagle Lake. The Redwings came late to the club and left early, and acknowledged no one but Marcello, who was a pet of Katinka’s. The Spences occupied their table near the bar, and kept Sarah’s back to Tom as they talked to each other in the loudest voices in the room, demonstrating that they were having a good time, the summer had just begun, and everything would turn out for the best. Neil and Bitsy Langenheim stared at Tom as he walked in with Roddy and Buzz, and whispered to each other like conspirators.

“Everybody knows that the police paid a couple of social calls to your lodge,” Roddy said. “They’re all hoping you’ve landed yourself in desperate trouble, so they will have something to talk about the rest of the summer.”

“A hunter fired a stray shot through one of my windows,” Tom said, and caught the sharp, questioning look that passed between his two new friends.

“Is your whole life like this?” Roddy asked him, and Tom said he was beginning to wonder.

So they talked for a time about other times hunters had come too near the lodges around the lake, and from there went on to the tension that had always existed between the village and the summer people from Mill Walk, and finally got to the subject most in their minds, their impulsive trip to France; but another, unspoken subject seemed to underlie everything they said.

“Marc and Brigitte have a wonderful villa right on the Mediterranean near Antibes, and Paulo and Yves live only a few kilometers away, and some friends of ours from London are coming down because their children have suddenly decided to become followers of a guru at an ashram in Poona, so even though it’s a bit extravagant, we thought we should make a party of it for a week. Then I’ll fly back to Mill Walk with Buzz and take care of some business for another couple of weeks before I go to London to see Monserrat Caballe and Bergonzi in La Traviata at Covent Garden. I don’t think I’ll be able to get back here until August.”

Buzz would miss Caballe and Bergonzi at Covent Garden, but he would get to Paris in time for the Carmelites, and in October there was Hector and Will and Nina and Guy and Samantha in Cadaques, and in March there was a chance of Arthur and whoever it was now in Formentera, and after that …

After that there was, there would be, more. Roddy Deepdale and Buzz Laing (for that was Buzz’s name, he was Dr. Laing at St. Mary Nieves and to his patients, who knew nothing of his peripatetic, well-furnished life) had friends all over the world, they were always welcome, they were always informed, they had favorite seats at their favorite opera house, La Scala, from which they had seen every Verdi opera except Stiffelio and Aroldo, favorite meals in favorite restaurants in a dozen cities, they cherished the Vermeers and the Rembrandt self-portrait at the Frick, they knew a psychiatrist in London who was the second most intelligent person in the world and a poet in New York who was the third most intelligent person in the world, they loved and needed their friends and their friends loved and needed them. Tom felt provincial, narrow, raw, beside them: the whisper of judgment in the glance he had seen pass between Roddy and Buzz separated him from them as finally as he had been separated from the Redwings, who were pushing back their chairs and preparing to leave, encased in the bubble of their insular importance.

But Kate Redwing came over to say hello and goodbye in the same breath: she, too, was leaving tomorrow; her allotted two weeks were up and she was going back to Atlanta and her grandchildren. All three at the table hugged her, and when she heard of their plans she said they ought to take Tom with them, and Roddy and Buzz smiled politely and said they wished they could, but they would make sure to see plenty of him on Mill Walk. Tom tried to imagine what these two men would say about Victor Pasmore, and what Victor Pasmore would say about them. Kate Redwing embraced him again, and whispered, “Don’t give up! Be strong!” She turned away to follow her family down the stairs, moving away past the Spences’ empty table with hesitant, old- lady steps in her print dress and flat black shoes. A few minutes later, Roddy signed for their meal, and they left too.

They dropped Tom off at his lodge and promised to invite him for dinner when they were back on the island —“as soon as things settle down.”

Tom called Lamont von Heilitz later that night, but again was told that his party did not answer. He stayed up late reading, and went to bed feeling desolate.

The next morning curtains covered the big lakeside windows in the Deepdale lodge. A glazier came from the village to replace the broken pane in his grandfather’s study and said, “A kid like you must have a lot of fun in a place like this by himself.”