Mystery

“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.”

“I don’t believe that,” he said.

She turned into Main Street. At eight o’clock in the morning, most of the shops were closed and only a few people were on the sidewalks. None of them looked like tourists. Barbara Deane pulled up to the sidewalk at the first intersection. A black and white sign said OAK STREET. “My house is right up the street. Is it all right if I drop you off here?”

She suddenly looked shy and uncertain. “I know you’re busy, but would you think about coming to my house for dinner some night? It would be nice to cook for someone else, and I enjoy your company, Tom.”

“I’d like that very much,” he said.

“I might be able to tell you some things about the summer Jeanine died without being disloyal to your grandfather. After all, the important thing to remember is that whatever he did, he did it to protect your mother.”

“Just name the day,” Tom said.

She touched his arm to say one more thing.

“Your mother told you that she saw a man running through the woods on that night?”

“It must have been Anton Goetz. It couldn’t have been anyone else.”

“Well, it couldn’t have been Anton Goetz, either. Goetz walked with a cane, and he limped. It was a very romantic limp. Anton Goetz couldn’t move faster than a slow walk. Gloria might not have seen anything at all—she had a very active imagination, and she couldn’t always tell the difference between it and reality.”

“I know that,” he said, and got out of the car.

As he walked back along the highway an hour later, the black Lincoln coasted past him, drew ahead, and pulled onto the shoulder of the road. The Lincoln’s back doors opened, and two men in grey suits and sunglasses got out of the car. One of them was too fat to button his suit, and the other was as skinny as a hound. Both of them had long sideburns and swept-back Elvis hair. They looked at him with bored indifferent faces. The lean one put his hands in his pockets. Jerry Hasek, also in a grey suit but without the sunglasses, opened the driver’s door and got out and looked unhappily at Tom across the top of the car. “We’re going to give you a ride,” he said. “Come on, get in the car.”

“I’d rather walk.” Tom looked sideways into the woods.

“Oh, don’t do that,” Jerry said. “What good is that? Just get in the car.”

The other two began coming toward him.

“Nappy and Robbie,” Tom said. “The Cornerboys.”

Robbie took his hands out of his pockets and glanced at his fat companion, who scowled at Tom. Nappy’s sideburns almost reached his jaw.

“I remember you,” Nappy said.

“Just get him in the car,” Jerry said. “We already took too long doing this. Tom, get sensible. We don’t want to hurt you, we’re just supposed to bring you back.”

“Why?”

“Somebody wants to talk to you.”

“So get in the car,” Nappy said in a thick, constricted voice that sounded as if someone had once stepped on his throat.

Tom walked past Nappy and Robbie and opened the front passenger door. All three bodyguards watched him get in, and then got in themselves.

“Okay,” Nappy sighed. He looked like a bullfrog, seated in the back of the car.

“Okay,” said Robbie. “Okay, okay, okay.”

Jerry started the car and drove down the highway back toward the lake.