Mystery. Part 24

"Mr. von Heilitz asked me to write to him, and said that I should give my letters to you personally. He didn't want anybody to see me doing it, but I don't think anybody's looking at us."

Truehart looked over his shoulder, and grinned another brilliant grin. "They're all still gaping at the accident that didn't happen. Mr. von Heilitz told me to look out for you. You got a letter already?"

Tom handed it to him, and Truehart folded the letter into his back pocket. "I thought you'd show up near the mailboxes. I generally get out to Eagle Lake a little past four."

Tom explained that he had come into town before that, and said he would wait near the mailboxes whenever he had letters in the future.

"Don't wait out in the open," the mailman said. "Stick yourself back in the woods until you hear my van. If we're going to do this, let's do it right."

They shook hands again, and Tom began to walk down Main Street toward the crowd of people watching the traffic disentangle itself.

Inside the post office, Joe Truehart shouted h.e.l.lo to the postmaster, who was sorting mail at a long table out of sight behind the wall of boxes. He removed Tom's letter from his hip pocket and reached up to slide it on top of the parcel shelves, where the postmaster, a peppery grey-haired woman named Corky Malleson who was four-foot eleven and a half, would be unable to see it. Then he carried his bag back to the table and began transferring its contents into other bags for the five-thirty pickup. He helped Corky sort the third-cla.s.s mail and put it into the boxes, and said good-bye to her when she went home to fix dinner for her husband.

Just before the truck arrived from the central district post office, he heard a knock at the side door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY EMPLOYEES ONLY which admitted himself and Corky into the back of the building. He jumped up from Corky's desk, where he had been adding up figures and filling out forms, and opened the door. He exchanged a few words with the man on the threshold. Joe Truehart reached up for the letter on top of the parcel shelves and pa.s.sed it to the man. He locked the door when the man left. Then he sat down again to wait for the arrival of the mail truck. which admitted himself and Corky into the back of the building. He jumped up from Corky's desk, where he had been adding up figures and filling out forms, and opened the door. He exchanged a few words with the man on the threshold. Joe Truehart reached up for the letter on top of the parcel shelves and pa.s.sed it to the man. He locked the door when the man left. Then he sat down again to wait for the arrival of the mail truck.

Grinding noises and the screech of metal against metal came up the street. Two blocks down from the post office, the back half of the powder blue Cadillac jutted out into the traffic. People in bright vacation clothes covered the plank sidewalks on both sides of the street, looking as if they were watching a parade.

Tom walked down the planks and saw that the Cadillac had ploughed into the back ends of several cars, crumpling in the first one so badly that it looked as if it had been hit by a truck. The driver had tried to get out of trouble by bulling through the obstructions, and when that had failed, had backed athwart the traffic halfway across the street, and killed his engine. Tom got to the edge of the growing crowd, and began working his way through. The man in the pink shirt got out of the Cadillac and looked around like a trapped bear. People began shouting. A policeman in a tight blue uniform ran down the middle of the street, yelling, "Break it up! Break it up!" He looked like a hero in a movie, with short blond hair and a square perfect jaw. A scrawny old party in a Hawaiian shirt popped out of the crowd around the wrecked cars and began yelling first at the drunk in the pink shirt, then at the policeman. The policeman strode toward him, put his hands on his hips, and spoke. The old man stopped yelling. The drunk drooped over the side of his car. "It's all over," the cop said in a loud voice that was not a shout. "Go back home."

The drunk in the pink shirt straightened up and tried to explain something to the cop. He pointed his finger at the cop's wide chest. The cop batted his hand away. He stepped to the side and pushed the drunk into the side of his car and grabbed his wrists and handcuffed him. He opened the Cadillac's rear door. Then he pulled the man backwards, put his right hand on the top of his head, and propelled him into the back of his car.

A few cheers and one or two scattered boos came from the sidewalks. The policeman straightened his hat, tugged on his Sam Browne belt, and swaggered around the car to get in behind the wheel. Gears ground, and the Cadillac drifted backwards. The cop spun the wheel and pulled forward. The battered Cadillac moved down the street at the head of a row of cars and turned left.

The crowd had turned cheerful and gossipy. It had no intention of leaving the scene. Tom stepped around a family of four that were chewing on sandwiches and staring at the cars beginning to pick up speed, and threaded his way between two couples who were arguing about whether to go into the Red Tomahawk for a beer or to buy a new shirt for someone named Teddy. He stepped into an empty s.p.a.ce at the edge of the sidewalk and considered moving across the street, where the crowd looked thinner.

Someone whispered, "Watch it, kid," and before he could look around someone kicked him hard in his left ankle and someone else banged him in the back and shoved him into the traffic.

His arms flew out before him, and he staggered a few steps before his ankle began to melt. Screams and shouts came from the sidewalk. Horns blew. His heart stopped beating. A man and a woman with wide eyes and open mouths appeared behind the smeared windshield of a station wagon piled with suitcases lashed to its roof with bright green netting. Tom took in the expressions on their faces and the color of the netting with great clarity, and then saw only the ma.s.sive hood and the bugspattered grille of the station wagon. His ankle bent like a green twig. He struck the ground, and the air turned black and cacophonous.

A roaring noise filled his ears, and then a dim music replaced it, and the memory of a piercing harmony encased him, and his ten-year-old self bent toward him and said: Music does explain everything Music does explain everything. Then dust and gravel sprang up in front of his eyes, and each speck of gravel threw a speck-sized shadow.

A high-pitched voice, the voice of a cartoon goose, called, "That boy's drunk!"

He pushed himself up. His ankle sang. In front of him, a startled man in a baseball cap stared out through the windshield of a Karmann Ghia. Tom looked over his shoulder and saw the rear end of a station wagon piled high with bags and cardboard boxes. Then a man with a crew cut and trembling arms was helping him stand. "That car just went right over you," he said. "You're one G.o.dd.a.m.ned lucky son of a gun." The man's arms were trembling.

"Somebody pushed me," Tom said.

He heard the crowd repeating his words like an echo with different voices.

The man and woman got shakily out of the station wagon. Each of them took a step forward. The woman asked if he were all right.

"Somebody pushed me," Tom said.

The couple took another step forward, and Tom said, "I'm all right." They got back into the station wagon. The man in the crew cut helped Tom back to the sidewalk. The traffic began to whoosh past.

"Do you want to see a cop?" the man asked. "Do you want to sit down?"

"No, I'm okay," Tom said. "Did you see who pushed me?"

"All I saw was you, flyin' out into the street," said the man. He released Tom and stepped backwards. "If somebody pushed you, you oughta see a cop." He looked around as if trying to find one.

"Maybe it was an accident," Tom said, and the man nodded vigorously.

"You got dust all over your face," the man said.

Tom wiped his face and began brushing off his clothes, and when he looked up again the man was gone. The other people on the sidewalk stared at him, but did not come near. His head felt as light as a balloon, his body as weightless as a thistle-a breeze could have knocked him over. Tom slapped the worst of the dust off his knees and limped down the sidewalk toward the highway.

Sarah Spence jumped up from the cast-iron bench near the mailboxes when Tom came limping down the track between the great pines and oaks. She had showered and changed into a sleeveless blue linen dress, and her hair glowed. "Where did you go?" And, a second later, after she had a better look at him: "What happened to you?"

"It's nothing serious. I went to Eagle Lake, and I fell down." He limped toward her.

"You fell down? Mr. Langenheim said you went into the town, but I thought he might have heard wrong.... Where did you fall down?"

She had come right up to him, and for a moment put her hands on his arms and looked up at him with her serious, wide-set eyes.

"Main Street," he said. "I was quite a spectacle."

"Are you okay?" She had not taken her eyes off his face, and her pupils darted crazily from side to side. He nodded, and she wrapped her arms around him and pushed her head against his chest like a cat. "How did you happen to fall down in the middle of Main Street?"

"Just lucky." He stroked her head, and felt something like ordinary feelings return to him. "I'll tell you about it later."

"Didn't you see me asking you to meet me at the club?"

"I wanted to mail a letter." She tilted her head and looked questioningly at him. "And I wanted to look up some old articles in the local paper."

They began moving down between the trees, their arms around each other. Tom forced himself not to limp.

"I've had at least three lifetimes today," she said. "The best one was on the plane. In our little compartment."

After a few more steps, she said, "Buddy's angry with me. I'm not so enchanted with him this summer. It's against the rules, not to be enchanted with Buddy Redwing."

"How angry is he?"

She looked up at him. "Why? Are you afraid of him?"

"Not exactly. But somebody pushed me off the sidewalk, right into the traffic. I fell down, and a car pa.s.sed right over me."

"The next time you go on another excursion, I want you to bring me with you."

"You seemed pretty busy with Buddy and his friend."

"Oh sure, the great Kip Carson-you know what he does? You know why Buddy keeps him around? He carries this sack of pills around with him, and he gives them away like candy. Talking to him is like having a conversation with a druggist. Buddy loves these things called Baby Dollies. That's another reason he got mad at me. I wouldn't take any of them."

On the peak that descended to the lake, they looked down at the still blue water and the quiet lodges.

"I don't think Buddy is ever going to be a captain of industry, or whatever his father is," Sarah said. "But he he couldn't have pushed you into the street. Around four he took two of those pills, and then he just sat on the dock with Kip and said Wow. Wow." couldn't have pushed you into the street. Around four he took two of those pills, and then he just sat on the dock with Kip and said Wow. Wow."

"How about Jerry Hasek?"

"The driver? Buddy made him get into the lake and push our boat out. Kip tried, but Kip basically can't do anything but dole out pills."

"What about afterwards? Did you see Jerry or his two friends around the compound?"

The lodges looked deserted, and on a terrace of the clubhouse, a waiter in an unb.u.t.toned white shirt leaned against a poolside bar and combed his hair with wide sweeping gestures.

"I guess they were in and out. Do you think it might just have been an accident?"

"Maybe. The whole town was a zoo."

Orange late afternoon light bounced off the water.

They walked down the hill in a silence that was loud with unspoken sentences. When they reached the marshy end of the lake, she dropped his hand.

"I thought you'd be safe up here," she said. "n.o.body does anything around here but eat, drink, and gossip. But you're here one day, and somebody pushes you in front of a car!"

"It was probably an accident."

She smiled almost shyly at him. "You can eat dinner with us tonight, if you want. Just don't point your finger at somebody and accuse him of murder, like in the last chapter of a detective novel."

"I'll be good," Tom said.

Sarah put her arms around him. "Buddy and Kip invited me to come to the White Bear with them after dinner, but I said I wanted to stay home. So if you're you're going to stay home..." going to stay home..."

Tom took a shower in the bathroom beside his mother's old room, wrapped a towel around himself, and went out into the hall. Barbara Deane slid something heavy off a shelf and put it down on a wooden surface. He hurried back into his room. He pulled back the soft old Indian blanket and stretched out beneath it. Beneath the odor of freshly laundered sheets, the bed smelled musty. Tom was asleep in seconds.

He awoke an hour and a half later. Nothing around him looked familiar. For a moment he was not even himself, merely a stranger in a bare but pleasant room. He sat up, saw the towel hanging over a chair, and remembered where he was. The entire fantastic day came back to him. He went to the closet and dressed in chinos, a wash-and-wear white b.u.t.ton-down shirt, a tie, and the lightweight blue blazer his mother had made him pack. He pushed his feet into loafers and went downstairs. The house was empty.

Tom let himself out and walked quickly down the avenue of trees to the clubhouse.

A deeply tanned young man in a tight white dress shirt with ruffles, tight black trousers with a satin stripe, and highly polished black shoes but no black tie or jacket, appeared beside him on the ground floor of the club. "Yes?" He had a headful of oily-looking black curls tight enough to stretch his forehead. On both sides of the floating staircase which rose from the middle of the room to the second floor were padded wicker chairs and blond tables that shone with wax. Tiffany lamps stood by each circle of chairs, and though light still came in the long side windows, every lamp had been turned on. The room was completely empty except for Tom and the suntanned young man, and the young man looked as though he wanted to keep it that way.

Tom gave his name, and the young man lowered his chin a millimeter or two. "Oh, Mr. Pasmore. Mr. Upshaw informed us that you are to have full use of his membership and signing privileges for the length of your stay. Would you be dining alone tonight, and would you prefer to relax at the Mezzanine Bar before dining, or would you like to be shown directly to your table?" He looked straight at the middle of Tom's forehead as he spoke.

"Is Sarah Spence here yet?"

The man closed his eyes and opened them again. The movement was too calculated to be a blink. "Miss Spence is upstairs with her parents, sir. The Spences will be dining with a large party at the Redwing table this evening."

"I'll just go up," Tom said, and moved toward the low, gleaming first step of the staircase.

He came up on a wooden floor that extended fifty or sixty feet toward an open deck with three round white tables beneath green-and-white-striped sun umbrellas. Inside the dining room ten larger tables, one per lodge, stood on the gleaming floor. Three of these had been set with white tablecloths, candles, winegla.s.ses, and flowers. A small bandsh.e.l.l and stage with a baby grand piano jutted out from the far left wall of the dining room. Neil Langenheim, seated opposite his wife at the only occupied table, looked up and waggled his gla.s.s at Tom. Tom smiled back.

Sarah's eyes flashed at him from the middle of a crowd of older people in sports clothes at the long bar on the right side of the room. She met him halfway between the stairs and the bar. "Why are you wearing that tie? Oh, never mind, I'm just glad you're here. Come and meet everybody."

She took him to the bar and introduced him to Ralph and Katinka Redwing. The head of the Redwing family smiled at Tom, showing the gap between his front teeth, and gave him a grinding, painful handshake. His small black eyes looked too lively for his pale, lacquered face. His wife, far more tanned and half a foot taller than he, flicked nearly colorless eyes at Tom. Her long blond hair had been frozen into place. "So you're Gloria's son," she said.

"Glen Upshaw's grandson," said her husband. "Your first time up here, isn't it? You'll love it. It's a great place. Sometimes I think about retiring here, just being alone with these wonderful woods, all that hunting and fishing. Peace and quiet. You'll love it."

Tom thanked him for letting him come up in the plane.

"Glad to do anything I can for old Glen-one of the old island characters, you know. Solid man, solid solid man. You like the plane? They treat you all right?" man. You like the plane? They treat you all right?"

"I never had an experience like that before," Tom said.

Mrs. Spence edged up beside Ralph Redwing. She had changed out of the miniskirt, and wore a knee-length belted pink dress cut low in front. She looked like a big candy cane. "I think I'd rather be on your plane than Frank Sinatra's, really I would."

Redwing put a white, hairy arm around her waist. "There's no telling what Frank would do, if you showed up on his jet in that dress. Hah! Isn't that right!" He kept his arm around Mrs. Spence's waist another couple of beats, and his wife tilted a gla.s.s filled with transparent liquid and ice into her mouth.

"Have a good first day?" asked Mr. Spence. "Have any fun?"

"I didn't do much," Tom said. "I went to the village and met Chet Hamilton."

Redwing's face stopped moving, and his wife stepped back to the bar.

"Tom had a little excitement," Sarah said. "He thinks somebody pushed him off the sidewalk into the traffic. A car went right over him."

The lively black eyes had turned depthless. "Should have happened to Chet Hamilton. We don't talk about the Hamiltons, around here." He forced a smile. "We leave them alone, and they leave us alone. Word to the wise."

"What happened? What was that?" This came from a man on the outside of the Redwing group, who had been talking with two other people while glancing occasionally at Tom and had overheard Sarah's remark. He was about Redwing's age, and had crisp dark hair and a lightly suntanned, handsome face. In a striped shirt, with the arms of a blue cotton sweater loosely tied around his neck, he looked like every actor who had ever starred in a romantic comedy with Doris Day agreeably mixed together. "Somebody pushed you off the sidewalk into traffic? Were you injured at all?"

"Not really," Tom said.

Sarah said, "Tom, this is Roddy Deepdale. And Buzz."

A blond man in his mid-thirties with a blue scarf around his neck had moved up beside Roddy Deepdale to look at Tom with the same mixture of concern and fascination as the older man. He, too, was remarkably handsome. His bright yellow cotton sweater had been tied about his waist. Both men seemed more alarmed by what had happened to Tom than anyone in the Redwing party.

"Well, what happened, exactly?" Roddy said, and sipped a drink while Tom told the story. An old woman with a chinless, toadlike face peered at him between the broad, well-set-up figures of the two men. Except for Sarah, the others had turned back to the bar.

"My G.o.d, you could have been killed," Roddy Deepdale said. "You nearly were!"

Buzz asked if he had seen who pushed him.

"Well, that's just it. There were so many people on the sidewalk that it must have been an accident."

"Did you go to the police?"

"I didn't really have anything to tell them."

"You were probably right. Last summer, a week or two before we got here, someone broke every window in our lodge. Stole half of our things, even a double portrait by Don Bachardy which is sorely missed, let me tell you, but the physical damage was almost as bad. The squirrels got in, and a lot of birds, and the police couldn't do a thing."

"Everybody felt so bad about it, Roddy," Sarah said.