Mystery

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 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 button-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, wineglasses, and flowers. A small bandshell 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 glass 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 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.”