Mystery. Part 26

The next morning Tom woke up in darkness, shocked out of sleep by a nightmare that blew apart into smoke as soon as he tried to remember it. He looked at his watch: six-thirty. He groaned and got out of bed. Millions of dots of water and a dozen trickling rivulets covered his window. The tree outside was a dark blur.

He brushed his teeth and splashed water on his face, and put on a bathing suit and a sweatshirt. Downstairs, he padded out on the deck.

For a moment only his shivers let him know that he was not still dreaming. Distinct, feathery curls of white-grey smoke rose up from every part of the lake and hung in place as if anch.o.r.ed to the hard blue surface of the water. A few of the curls of smoke moved very slightly, turned and leaned. Across the lake, a low fog hung in a gauzy white pane between the trunks of the trees, but this was not fog-the fog was not an endless series of frozen white dervishes held to the lake like balloons to the wrist of the balloon-man. The lake seemed to be smoldering deep within itself.

He pulled the sweatshirt over his head and tossed it on one of the chairs. Then he sat on the end of the dock and put his legs in silky, startlingly warm water. Tom lowered himself into the lake and pushed away from the dock. Instantly he was in another world. The ripple of his body cutting through the silken water was the loudest sound on earth.

White-grey feathers bent around him, slid through him, flattened against his eyes, swam through his skin and re-formed themselves when he was gone. He lifted his arm from the water, and saw the smoke drifting from his flesh. He swam into the shallow water near the dock and stood up. Curls of mist clung to his body like clouds. Dark air chilled his puckering skin. He climbed back up on the dock and the feathery little clouds dissipated against or into his body. A trace of red lay over the dark trees on the eastern horizon.

In jeans, a shirt, and a warm sweater, he got back to the deck in time to see the top of the red sun move up over the trees. The curls of mist on the lake vanished as the light touched them, and the surface of the water turned transparent, showing the dark blue beneath, like a second layer of skin. Separate rays of light struck the docks, and sparkled off the windows of the club and Sarah's lodge. At the north end of the lake, reeds glowed in the early sun. Tom moved down off the dock when the sun had cleared the tops of the trees on the horizon.

He walked around the side of the lodge and began moving north on the track, feeling as if he were seeing everything for the first time. The world looked impossibly clean, cleanly opened to reveal itself. Even the dust on the path sparkled with a secret freshness the day would gradually conceal. Past the compound, past the old cars against a whitewashed fence at the club; around the north end and the narrow marsh, where the reeds thrust up out of the ooze and a hundred silvery, nearly transparent fish the size of his little finger darted away in unison when his blunt shadow fell among them.

Tom walked through the trees to Lamont von Heilitz's lodge and looked for broken windows or scratches on the locks, any sign of actual or attempted break-in. The doors were locked, and every shutter was locked tight. The intruder must have heard him coming and fled up the path into the woods.

Tom walked past the shuttered lodges. Racc.o.o.ns had tipped over a garbage can outside the Langenheims' place. Cigarette b.u.t.ts, beer cans, and vodka bottles lay strewn over pale wild gra.s.s at the foot of a forty-foot oak.

He cut toward the Thielman lodge, thinking about Arthur Thielman walking his dogs down to see the Shadow the day after his wife had been killed. He wished that he could see see it- it-see what had happened on the dock in front of this lodge on that night. He went around to the front of the empty lodge, and saw the green s.p.a.ce Roddy Deepdale had created around his own lodge. In those days only untouched land had stood between his grandfather's place and the Thielmans'. He jumped up on the deck and scuffed at dry leaves and a layer of grit. Across the lake, a stooped white-haired man in a white jacket moved across a window at the front of the club, setting up a table for breakfast. what had happened on the dock in front of this lodge on that night. He went around to the front of the empty lodge, and saw the green s.p.a.ce Roddy Deepdale had created around his own lodge. In those days only untouched land had stood between his grandfather's place and the Thielmans'. He jumped up on the deck and scuffed at dry leaves and a layer of grit. Across the lake, a stooped white-haired man in a white jacket moved across a window at the front of the club, setting up a table for breakfast.

Two deer, one of them a buck with lacy antlers, moved on delicate legs out of the trees on the far side of the compound and picked their way across soft ground between the docks to the edge of the water. The doe leaned forward, bent her front legs at the knees, and knelt to drink. The stag walked into the water and saw Tom standing on the dock across the lake. Tom did not move. Ankle-deep in the water, the stag watched him. Finally he lowered his head and drank. The fuzz on the tips of his antlers glowed a soft pinkish-brown. Tom saw the old waiter leaning against the window, watching the deer lap at the water. When they had finished they moved out of the water and drifted back into the trees. Tom left the dock and walked back around the side of the lodge.

A little way past the Thielman lodge, the trees on the right side of the track separated around a narrow path that led straight between the oaks and maples for something like twenty or thirty feet, then slanted west into deep forest. Leaf mulch and brown dry needles covered the surface of the path. Tom looked back along the track curving behind the lodges, and stepped on the path.

The lake disappeared behind him.

He came to the curve in the path, and went deeper into the woods. Dense woodland stretched away on both sides. Pale, almost white light slanted down through the canopy and touched leaning trunks and brushy deadfalls. Here and there white fog still curled in the low places. The path led down a gorge, a basinlike valley in the forest, up through a stand of walnut trees with nuts like tough green baseb.a.l.l.s, and back to level ground.

Far off to his right, so deep in the woods that it seemed a part of them, a grey-green shack materialized between the trunks of oak trees and disappeared into the background as soon as Tom took another step. On the other side of the path, a shack made of black boards, with a small black chimney pipe jutting from its roof, was half-hidden behind the thick trunks of walnut trees.

Something moved in the woods to his right. Tom snapped his head sideways. Light diffused through ma.s.sive trunks, and trees felled by lightning or disease slanted grey through the brown and green. He moved forward, and again sensed movement on his right. This time he saw the head of a doe lifting toward him from beneath the diagonal line of a dead branch; then the rest of the doe came into focus, and she bounded off through a clear patch of sunlight. The doe disappeared behind a wall of fir trees. On the far side of the patch of sunlight, the white splash of a face appeared against a dark background of leaves, then disappeared like the doe.

Tom stopped moving.

The doe snapped branches as it ran deeper into the woods.

Tom stepped forward again, looked around, and saw only the patch of sunlight and the grey diagonal of the fallen branch.

The path widened before him. Pale morning light fell on the long gra.s.s of a clearing ahead and on the pine trees behind it. On the other side of the clearing, the path would wind through oaks and pines until it came to a road-maybe the highway between Grand Forks and Eagle Lake, maybe some deserted county trunk road. It was a long way to carry stolen goods, but n.o.body could say it wasn't secluded.

This theory collapsed halfway to the clearing, when the stone and gla.s.s side of a house appeared. He walked nearer. More of the house came into view. Additions of large mortared stone with windows in thick stone embrasures stood on either side of a small brown shack with a wooden stoop before its front door. A big stone chimney came out of the slanting roof of the right side. Bright pansies and geraniums grew around the front of the house.

Just as Tom decided to walk back to the lake, something stirred in the woods beside him. He looked over his shoulder. A burly, black-haired man in a red plaid shirt stood twenty yards away beside an oak. The oak was not larger around than the man. He crossed his arms over his chest and regarded Tom.

Tom's throat went dry.

A door slammed, and in an instant the man disappeared. He did not shift his body or move in any way, he just was not there anymore. A raspy voice screamed "Who are you?" Tom jumped. A little old man in jeans and an embroidered denim shirt stepped down on the gra.s.s in front of the wooden stoop. He had a hooked nose and a seamed face, and long white hair fell straight past his shoulders from a widow's peak. He was pointing a rifle at Tom. "What do you think you're doing around here?"

Tom moved backwards. "I went out for a walk, and the path took me here."

The old man moved nearer, holding the rifle on Tom's chest. "You get out of here, and don't come back." His eyes were flat and black. Tom stepped back and saw that the old man was a woman. "Too many thieving b.a.s.t.a.r.ds around here," she said in her raspy shrieking voice.

Slowly, Tom turned around. Off to the side, the burly man in the plaid shirt emerged into visibility again.

"Get out!" shrieked the old woman.

Tom ran down the path.

Bitsy Langenheim was stooping over the ground near her garbage can in a tired grey sweatsuit, throwing the cans and bottles back in. She gave him a sour, hungover look. She tossed a vodka bottle at the can and missed. "What are you staring at?"

"Nothing."

"What were you doing back in those woods?"

"Taking a walk."

"Stay out of there. The Indians don't like it."

Tom wiped sweat off his forehead. "So I learned."

She grumbled at him and retrieved the bottle.

"Some men came to see you," Barbara Deane said. She stood up, gripping her purse in both hands. "About ten minutes ago. I told them I thought you were still in bed, but they wouldn't leave until I looked into your room. I hope you don't mind."

"Of course not," he said. "Who were they? Did you recognize them?"

"Ralph Redwing's bodyguards." She looked at the door, then back at him. "Is one of them named Hasek? He was the one who made me go up to your room."

"Did they say what they wanted?"

She took a step toward the door. "Only to see you. They didn't say any more." She looked back at him. "I don't have any idea what they wanted, but they looked awfully unpleasant."

"I think they want to warn me away from Buddy Redwing's girlfriend."

She surprised him with a smile. All at once, she looked less anxious and not at all autocratic. She relaxed her hold on the bag and tilted very slightly back to give him the full benefit of her smile. "Buddy Redwing, of course, being too important to do that by himself."

"I don't think Buddy does anything by himself," Tom said. "He likes to have at least one actual person around him."

"I think I know what you mean." She hesitated. "Did you have a decent sleep? The bed all right?"

"Fine," he said.

"I'm glad. I wanted things to be nice for you. You'll eat at the club tonight? I thought I might spend the night in my house."

He said he would eat at the club, and asked if she were going into town.

She raised her eyebrows.

"Would you mind giving me a lift?"

"Well, I guess it would be a pleasure," she said. "Yes, I don't see why it shouldn't be a pleasure."

They went outside together, and Tom followed her across the track to a rutted double path slanting into the trees. It had been deliberately obscured by a leafy branch she tugged out of the way. A little way down a dark green Volkswagen beetle stood beside a wild azalea bush. Barbara Deane asked him to wait while she moved the car, and he walked far enough down the path to see a weathered barn at the end of a small field bordered by forest. She turned to look at him through the rear window when she had pulled the car out, and he ran back and got into the seat beside her.

"I keep my horse in that barn," she said. "I ought to take him out and ride him every morning, but ever since the robbery, I get anxious whenever I'm away from home for too long. I guess I'll get up early tomorrow morning and take him out for a run." She pulled out on the track and moved slowly past the lodges.

Tom asked if she knew Jerry Hasek.

"I never actually met him until today." She drove past the club and onto the open stretch of land at the north end of the lake. "But he looks like his father."

"You knew Wendell Hasek?"

"I knew who he was." She turned up the hill. "He worked for Judge Backer, until the Judge fired him. I thought Wendell Hasek was a pretty unsavory character, but then I think his son seems unsavory too, and he works for the Redwings. So apparently I'm no judge."

"I think you're right on both counts," Tom said. "But why did Judge Backer hire this unsavory character? Was he unsavory too?"

She laughed. "Hardly. Wendell was really only a boy when he went to work for the Judge. In those days, there were some honest judges on Mill Walk. Some honest policemen too." She shook her head. "I shouldn't talk this way. I'm almost completely out of touch about what goes on on Mill Walk. And I suppose I'm a little bitter."

They did not speak again until she had turned off onto the highway. Then Tom said, "You must remember the summer of Jeanine Thielman's death very clearly."

"I certainly do!" She turned her head to look at him. "That was the summer after your grandmother died. You probably don't know anything about that."

"Why wouldn't I?"

"I know Glen Upshaw. He wouldn't even hear his wife's name after her death. Cut everything about her right out of his life. I guess he thought it would be better for Gloria that way."

"Do you think Magda was a good wife for him?"

She gave him a startled glance. "I don't think I can answer that. I'm not sure any woman could have been what people think of as a good wife to your grandfather."

"I learned some things about my grandmother not long ago. She seemed like a surprising woman for him to have married."

Her mouth twitched.

"Do you want to know what I really think?" She looked sideways at him, and he saw that this had been an important matter for her. "I don't know what you know about Magda, but she was like a child. She had no more independence than a kitten. When Glen met her, Magda was working as a waitress in her parents' restaurant-a pretty little blond thing who looked about nineteen even though she was in her thirties, and she was as quiet as a mouse. I think that's what Glen liked, having absolute control over her life. He told her what to wear, he told her what to say-he ran her life. He was like a G.o.d, as far as she was concerned."

"Did she have any friends?"

"Glen didn't encourage her to have a separate social life. After Gloria was born, she stopped going out. Glen fired their servants-in the days when all their friends had maids and laundresses and cooks and gardeners and G.o.d knows what else-and Magda did everything, and took care of the baby too. Like a shy little girl who wanted to please her father."

"So he had two children," Tom said.

"He had what he wanted. Most Most of what he wanted." She drove slowly down the empty highway. of what he wanted." She drove slowly down the empty highway.

"Why would Magda have killed herself? It seems to me that she must have had everything she wanted too. She was finally alone with her husband and her baby."

"Glen left her alone a good deal of the time. He'd take Gloria out with him when he went places, and leave Magda at home. And after Gloria's birth, Magda began to look her age. And that didn't do for Glen. Not at all. I suppose he just lost interest in her."

"So you don't think there was anything to the rumors about her death."

"You couldn't have heard about all this from Glen," she said.

"I read some old newspapers."

"Old Eagle Lake papers?" Tom said nothing, and after a moment, "Well, that editor was crazy. He was so against Mill Walk people that when one of them drowned, he saw stab wounds where there were none. Glen probably did pay off the coroner and arrange for Magda's cremation, but he wanted to hush up her suicide, not conceal a murder."

Tom nodded.

"Even people who disliked Glen didn't think he murdered Magda. That ridiculous editor should have been put out of business."

"You're very loyal to him," Tom said.

"I used to be loyal to him, I guess. I cleaned up after his messes, and I took in your mother when he asked me to. He stuck up for me once, when I was in trouble. Now I just work for him. I watch out for his property and I take his money for doing it. I don't talk about things he doesn't want me to talk about, so if that's what you-" She stopped talking and stared straight ahead. Her hands gripped the steering wheel, and she looked old and angry and confused.

"I'm sorry," she said. She swerved to the side of the road, put the car into the parking gear, and flattened her hands on her thighs. Her hands looked as though they belonged to someone else, rough and knotted with veins.

"He didn't ask me to check up on you," Tom said.

"I know." She slumped back in the seat.

"I don't suppose he even thought we'd ever talk, or get to know each other at all. That's not the way he thinks."

"No," she said. "It sure isn't." She looked over at him at last. "You're not very much like him, are you?"

"I don't know enough about him to know if I am or not," he said.

"Well, you're a lot more sympathetic. I suppose he just sent you up here the way he sent me up here."

"The way he sent my mother to your place after Jeanine Thielman disappeared."

"No, Gloria had formed some kind of attachment to Jeanine; Glen didn't want his daughter to know she'd suffered another terrible loss. I think he was trying to spare her some pain, and he did it in his usual way, by trying to wipe out the cause of the pain."

She was looking at him now, not angrily but as if waiting for him to challenge the picture of Glendenning Upshaw as a concerned father.

"My mother didn't say anything to you about seeing a man running through the woods on the night Mrs. Thielman disappeared?"

"No, but if she did, it's all the more reason for Glen to want to get her away from everybody. Don't you see? Gloria was a very disturbed little girl that summer. He certainly wouldn't have wanted to involve her with the police."

Gloria was a very disturbed little girl long before that summer, Tom thought, but said nothing.

"You're very interested in what happened back then, aren't you?" She put the car into gear again, and rolled back on the highway.

"It seems to me that what happened back then has a lot to do with what's still going on."

"But that was such a terrible time. There are things it might be better not to know."