Mystery

“Oh, hell,” Jerry said. He flapped his hand at Nappy, and the two of them got Buddy up on his feet and helped him toward the door. Kip Carson set down the can of Coke and followed them outside. Tom wiped his face with his hands and tried to stop trembling. He went through the open wooden door and pushed aside the screen. Jerry Hasek stood on the top step with his hands on his hips, and Kip was floating uncertainly alongside the car. Buddy struggled to breathe as Robbie and Nappy opened the Lincoln’s passenger door and got him inside. Kip Carson climbed in the back and waited. “You talk too much,” Jerry said from the top step.

“So does he,” Tom said.

Tom spent the rest of the morning alone. He called Sarah, but no one answered in their lodge. He knocked on her door. No one responded, and he went down past the compound. The Lincoln and the Cadillac were both gone. He walked all the way around the lake, hearing nothing but birds and insects and an occasional fish slapping the water. Tom felt like the last person left on earth—the whole Redwing caravan had moved on. When he came back around Roddy Deepdale’s lodge to his own, he changed into his bathing suit and swam until his muscles felt tired and relaxed.

At the club, Marcello sat beneath a lamp on a pale couch, reading a comic book. He stood when Tom entered, yawned, and strolled through a bleached wooden door marked OFFICE. Tom went upstairs to the empty dining room. The elderly waiter he had seen that morning got up from a bar stool and led him to a table near the bandshell.

“Where is everybody?” Tom asked.

“They don’t tell me where they go,” the waiter said, and placed the enormous menu in his hands.

After lunch, he took a novel out on the deck, and had just sat down on one of the hard wooden chairs when he heard the telephone ringing in his grandfather’s study.

“So what happened?” Sarah asked him.

“Where were you?” he asked back. “I called your place, but nobody answered. There wasn’t even anybody at the club.”

“We all went to the White Bear. Ralph and Katinka were very disgruntled all through lunch, though they did their best not to show it, and Buddy told me that you said he was spoiled, lazy, and indifferent. Did you say that?”

“I couldn’t help it,” Tom said.

“You got two out of three. He’s certainly spoiled and lazy, but I wouldn’t call him indifferent.”

“Did he yell at you?”

“He sort of yelled in whispers. He didn’t want his parents to hear. I was at a table with him and Kip, and my parents were at another table with his parents and his aunt. Buddy usually watches himself around his parents, and I think he has to be on his good manners at the White Bear for a while.”

“What did you tell him the other night?”

“Just that I wanted him to stop assuming that we were going to get married. I said that I liked you, too, and I said I wasn’t sure I wanted to always live on Mill Walk. It was pretty uncomfortable.”

“You didn’t break off with him.”

“I have to spend the whole summer here, Tom. I thought I was pretty good, actually. I told him that being a Redwing is a career, and I wasn’t sure it was the one I wanted.”

“I told him he should decide that you’re not good enough for him.”

“I like that,” she said, meaning she did not. “Anyhow, will you please tell me what happened, please?”

He described as much as he could remember of the scene between himself and Buddy, except for the way it ended.

“Well, well. The compound is almost empty right now. So if you want to see where the bodyguards live, this is the time. The only person in the place should be Aunt Kate, and she takes a long nap every afternoon.”

Tom said he’d meet her in front of her lodge.

“I suppose I must be crazy,” she said, and hung up.

She stepped out from between the oaks as he walked toward her lodge. He went down the track to join her. She pulled him back between the big oaks and tilted her face toward his and gave him a long kiss. “I had to get out. My mother knows that something went wrong between Buddy and me, and I couldn’t stand the interrogation anymore. I called you when she went upstairs to wash her hair.”

They walked across the narrow parking area in front of the compound, and Sarah opened the door in the tall fence. “Here we go.”

Gravel paths led to three highly ornamented wooden houses with long porches, gables, and dormer windows on the third floor. The houses were so perfectly maintained they looked artificial. Banks of flowers and bright green grass grew between the gravel paths. The whole thing looked like a toyland, like Disneyland. “Well, here you are,” Sarah said. “This is it. The holy of holies. The one on Mill Walk looks just like it, except the houses are newer and they’re not all alike.”

Sarah led him up the steps of the lodge nearest the compound’s lakeside wall. “I’d better stay out here in case they come home early,” she said. “I’ll bang on the door, or something.”

“I won’t be long,” Tom said, and went inside.