Mystery

He tilted the lounger back, stretched out, and tried to read. Sunlight bounced off the page, obliterating the print. Tom raised the book to block out the sun. Heat soaked through his clothes and warmed his skin, and bright golden light poured down to pool all about him. He could not keep his mind on the book: in a short time, his eyelids drooped, and the book tilted toward his chest and became a small white bird he held in his hands, and he was asleep.

A bell insistent as an alarm awakened him, and for a second he thought he was back in Brooks-Lowood—his body felt heavy and slow, but he had to change classes, he had to stand up and move.… He sat up. Sunburn tingled on his forehead, and his face was wet with perspiration. The telephone kept ringing, and Tom moved automatically toward the back door to answer it. He stopped when he put his hand on the doorknob. The phone rang twice more. Tom opened the door and went to the desk.

It’s probably Grand-Dad, he thought.

He picked up the phone and said hello.

There was a brief moment of silence, and then a click and the dial tone.

Tom hung up, locked the back door, walked across the sitting room, went out and locked the front door with the key. He ran down the steps and crossed the track to drag the leafy branch away from the ruts made by Barbara Deane’s car, went around it, and dragged the branch back. He stepped into the undergrowth between himself and the track, pushed aside vines and small stiff branches, and hunkered down at the base of an oak. Through chinks in the leaves, he could see his front steps, half of the porch, and a little of the way down the track to the compound.

Jerry Hasek came walking up the track thirty seconds later. He was wearing his grey suit and the chauffeur’s cap, and his hands were balled into fists. He took the big steps two at a time, strode across the porch, and knocked on the screen door. Jerry spun on his heel and hit his fists together several times, rapidly. His face wore an expression of worried concentration that was familiar to Tom, and meant nothing: it was just the way Jerry looked. He spun back around and opened the screen door and pounded on the wooden door. Jerry’s body told much more than his face—his movements were quick and agitated, and his shoulders looked stiff and bunched, as if he had developed extra layers of muscle and skin, like armor. “Pasmore!” he yelled. He banged on the door again.

Jerry stepped back and glared at the door. “Come on, I know you’re there,” he yelled. “Come on out, Pasmore.” He put his hand on the knob and turned it, then rattled the door.

He moved to one of the windows and peered inside the way Tom had looked into the machine shop, with his hands cupping his face. He slapped the window with his palm, and the glass shivered. “Come on OUT!”

Jerry went backwards down the steps, looking upward as if he expected to see Tom climbing out of a window. He put his hands on his hips, and his shoulder muscles shifted underneath the fabric of the jacket. He looked from side to side, exhaled, and gazed back up at the lodge.

He bounded back up the steps, opened the screen door, and struck the door again several times. “You have to talk to me,” he said, speaking in the voice he would use to a person who was hard of hearing. “I can’t help you out if you don’t talk to me.”

He leaned his head against the door and said, “Come on.” Then he pushed himself away from the door and trotted down the steps. His whole thick body looked energetic, electrified, as if you would get a shock if you touched him. Jerry went to the side of the lodge and went down between the trees to get to the back.

After a couple of minutes in which he must have banged on the back door and tried to get in, Jerry reappeared, heading toward the track with the cap in his hands and—for once—more concentration than worry in his broad face. He came out from beneath the oaks and turned to face the lodge. “You fucking dope,” he said, and turned to walk back to the compound.

When he was out of sight, Tom came out of his hiding place and went up the steps. His feet resounded on the boards of the porch. He slid the key into the lock, and felt a hard, jittery presence in the air that was Jerry’s ghost. Tom let himself in and locked the door behind him.

In the study, he dialed the operator and asked for his grandfather’s number on Mill Walk.

The phone picked up on the first ring, and Kingsley’s voice told him that he had reached the Glendenning Upshaw residence.

“Kingsley, this is Tom,” he said. “Can I speak to my grandfather, please?”

“Master Tom, what a nice surprise! Are you enjoying yourself at the lake?”

“It’s a great place. Could you get him, please?”

“Just a moment,” Kingsley said, and put the phone down with a noisy clunk that suggested that he had dropped it.