Mystery

Tom went downstairs, imagining that Barbara Deane listened to every footfall and creak of the stairs. He walked through the big room, passed under the arch, and went into the kitchen. This was like Lamont von Heilitz’s kitchen, with open shelves, broad counters, and a long black stove. The walls were of the same narrow board as his mother’s old bedroom, once a pale brown and now a dim grey flaking with old varnish. Grey dust and ancient dirt had packed the gaps between the wide floorboards. The only modern appliance was a small white Kenmore refrigerator. A wrapped loaf of brown bread sat on the counter beside the refrigerator. Tom turned on the taps over the square brass sink and washed his hands and face with an old yellow bar of coal tar soap. He dried himself on a threadbare dishtowel. Barbara Deane had stocked the refrigerator with milk, eggs, cheese, bacon, bread, ground beef, and sandwich meat. He blew into a dusty glass and filled it with milk. Then he carried the glass through the other room and opened a handmade wooden door and let himself into the study.

Dim bookshelves filled with unjacketed books faced a long desk with a black Bakelite telephone and a green felt pad with a leather border and an empty penholder. An oval pink and green hooked rug lay on the floor, and a hooked rug in two shades of brown lay folded on a tan sofa with unfinished arms and metal-wrapped joints. An old standard lamp stood at the far end of the sofa, and another stood beside the desk. The room was almost hot. It evoked his grandfather more than any other part of the lodge: Tom understood instinctively that this little room overlooking the lake had been his grandfather’s favorite part of the house. Streaky sunlight from two big windows partitioned into panes fell halfway into the room. The barking growl of the speedboat grew louder. Tom drank some of the milk and sat down behind the desk. He pulled open the drawers and found a few old paperclips, a stack of thick paper headed Glendenning Upshaw, Eagle Lake, Wisconsin, and a slim telephone book for the towns of Eagle Lake and Grand Forks. Tom turned to the pages for Eagle Lake and found the names beginning with D. Barbara Deane’s telephone number was unlisted. He finished the milk, put the glass on top of the telephone book, and went outside.

Buddy Redwing was turning the boat in tight, repetitive figure eights in front of the compound and the clubhouse, at the top of the 8 ripping through the reeds. Two blond heads the size of ping-pong balls tilted from side to side as the boat heeled over. Kip Carson’s hair was longer than Sarah’s. Tom sat down at a scarred redwood picnic table on the broad deck and watched them go around and around. When the boat heeled over at the bottom of the 8, the two blond people threw up their hands like passengers on a roller coaster, and Buddy cawed. Sarah waved at him, and he waved back. Buddy bawled out something hoarse and unintelligible. Tom stood up, and Buddy wheeled the boat back up toward the reeds. Sarah raised her arms to him again. Buddy cut the boat deeper into the marshy water, and the motor growled and whined and abruptly cut out, leaving a great silence spreading over the lake. A bird cried out, and another answered it. Buddy moved heavily to the back end of the boat and began yanking on the cord. Sarah pointed toward the clubhouse.

Tom stood up and walked out on the massive dock. A hundred feet away on their own dock, Mr. and Mrs. Spence took the air in new resort clothes. Mr. Spence’s back was to Tom, and his hands rested on his fat hips. He was shaking his head over Buddy’s mishandling of the boat. Mrs. Spence leaned self-consciously against a mooring, saw Tom, and turned away.

In the middle of the lake a fish broke the water and flashed blue-grey above the darker blue water before splashing back down. Ripples spread and melted back into the glassy surface.

To Tom’s right, the Deepdale dock left the treeless shore and protruded into the water. Beyond it lay the Thielman dock. Tom walked out to the end of his own dock to be able to see the Thielman lodge, and found himself looking at a shoreline thickly covered with trees through which only a grey door, a shuttered window, and a scattered backdrop of grey wall was visible. The motor coughed twice, and fell silent. Tom turned to look past the Spences, and saw Kip Carson pushing on the front of the boat in waist-high water. His chest and arms were pale and skinny, and he looked weary. Buddy shouted “Jerry! Jerry!” again and again in the flat, demanding tone of a spoiled child. Finally Jerry Hasek appeared through the door in the compound fence. He had changed from his jeans and sweatshirt into a shiny grey suit. He looked at the boat and then disappeared back through the door into the compound.