Mystery

“Don’t you love that it looks so secluded?” asked Mrs. Spence. The question was addressed to no one in particular, and no one answered it. “I love it, that it looks so secluded.”

On either side of the car, the gaps between the pines and leafy oaks showed endless ranks of trees stretching upward and extending into endless, random, overgrown forest; sunlight slanted down to strike the trunks and make shimmering pools on the soft ground. Squirrels darted along branches and birds swooped beneath the canopy of green. The car went into shadow around a slight bend in the road, past a clearing with a long wooden bench strewn with dry grey leaves; then past a long row of mailboxes on a metal pipe. Tom glimpsed familiar names on the mailboxes: Thielman, R. Redwing, G. Redwing, D. Redwing, Spence, R. Deepdale, Jacobs, Langenheim, von Heilitz.

A crow cawed off in the woods, and leaves pattered down on the top of the car. Golden light flashed into the windshield, and the trees before them suddenly seemed spindly; then the trees parted and Tom saw a long expanse of deep blue beneath him, and a wake spreading out behind a motorboat just entering the path of the sun on the water. Tall solid buildings stood at wide intervals around the lake, each with a wide wooden dock protruding into the smooth glimmering water. On the broad terrace of a large multileveled structure with rows of high windows and several smaller terraces a waiter in a white coat carried a tray past a towel-sized pool toward a gentleman, a tiny pink pear supine on the bright yellow pad of a lounger. Next to that building, tall pilings like those around a stockade walled off the Redwing compound. A slim figure on a horse came into view from behind one of the lodges and passed out of sight behind a stand of fir trees.

“Buddy’s out in his boat,” Sarah said.

“And Neil Langenheim’s getting pickled at the club,” said her mother.

“Who’s that with Buddy?” Sarah asked.

“His friend Kip,” Jerry said. “Kip Carson. From Arizona. He’s the one that stayed, when I took the other kids to Grand Forks.”

“I wonder if Fritz is here,” Tom said.

“Fritz Redwing?” Jerry shook his head. “He ain’t here yet—him and his family come up in about two weeks. This is early. Lots of people ain’t here yet. A bunch of the lodges are still empty. Even the compound’s kinda empty.”

The slim rider on the chestnut horse appeared between tall oaks on a trail extending past the rear of the lodges on the far side of the lake, then disappeared again behind a narrow lodge. Jerry steered the Lincoln slowly downhill toward the lake.

“Who is that on the horse?” Tom asked.

“Samantha Jacobs,” said Mrs. Spence.

“Looked like Cissy Harbinger to me,” said Mr. Spence.

“The Jacobses went to France. They won’t be here at all this summer, the way I hear it. And Cissy Harbinger got married to some mechanic or something,” Jerry said. “Her parents took her to Europe. They won’t be here until maybe September.”

“So who was that on the horse, since you know everything?” asked Mrs. Spence.

“Barbara Deane,” Jerry said. “See, she’d come out now because almost nobody’s around.”

“Oh, Barbara Deane,” said Mrs. Spence, sounding a bit doubtful as to this name.

Tom had straightened up to look for her next appearance, but the straight slim figure on the chestnut horse did not show herself again.

Jerry drove the Lincoln down to the bottom of the track and came out into the open at a place where the road divided at the narrow, marshy north end of the lake. The car rolled to a stop facing the water. The Spences lowered their power windows, and the buzzing of the motorboat, executing a wide, sweeping turn down at the wide end of the kidney-shaped lake, came to them across half a mile of water like the racket of a motorcycle on a quiet night. “Where d’you want to go first?” Jerry asked.

“I want to get out of this car before we go another inch,” said Mrs. Spence. “I’m sure this seat is still wet.” She opened her door and climbed out and began twisting around to try to look at the seat of her miniskirt.

Tom got out on the loose mossy soil that led down to the marshy ground at the narrow end of the lake. The air smelled of pine needles and fresh water. For several yards, lathery green scum broken by reeds covered the lake’s surface. He walked nearer the water, and the ground squelched beneath his feet. He could just see the tops of green-and-white striped umbrellas on the wide terrace of the clubhouse. The rest of the buildings stood around the long lake, their weathered grey wooden façades almost invisible behind the thick trees that surrounded them. A redwood lodge with clean modern lines at the far end of the lake perched on a treeless lawn like a green scoop out of the forest.

“So that’s the club,” Tom said, pointing across twenty yards of reedy water to the structure with all the windows. “And that’s the Redwing compound.” Over the tops of the tall stakes that enclosed the compound, the upper stories of several large wooden buildings could be seen.