Mystery

“He was protecting stolen money,” Tom said.

“The payroll money.” And here again was the flavor of the unspoken subject. The old man lowered his head and seemed to examine his gloved hands, which rested on the curved back of the chair. “One thing you told me is very sinister, and another puts several crucial pieces into the whole puzzle of Eagle Lake. And do you know what I realized tonight? What only my vanity kept me from seeing before this?”

Too agitated to remain seated, von Heilitz had jumped to his feet in the middle of this surprising announcement, and was now pacing behind the chair again.

“What?” Tom said, alarmed.

“That I need you more than you need me!” He stopped, whirled to face Tom, and threw out his arms. His handsome old face blazed with so many contradictory feelings—astonishment, outrage, self-conscious despair, also a sort of goofy pleasure—that Tom smiled at this display. “It’s true! It’s absolutely true!” He lowered his arms theatrically. “All of this—this immense case, absolutely depends on you, Tom. It’s probably the last, and certainly the most important, thing like it that I’ll ever work on, it’s the culmination of my life, and here it is the first real thing you’ve ever done, and without you I’d still be pasting clippings in my journals, wondering when I’d get what I needed to show my hand. I’m upstaged at my own final bow!” He laughed, and turned to the room, asking it to witness his comeuppance. He laughed again, with real happiness.

Von Heilitz put his hands in the small of his back and arched himself backwards. He sighed, and his hair dripped over his collar. “Ah, what’s to become of us?”

He moved slowly around the chair and the table and sat beside Tom on the couch. He patted him on the back, twice. “Well, if we knew that, there’d be no sense in going on, would there?”

Von Heilitz propped his feet on the edge of the table, and Tom did the same. For a moment they sat in the identical posture, as relaxed as a pair of twins.

“Can I ask you something?” Tom finally said.

“Anything at all.”

“What did I tell you that put another piece of the puzzle in place?”

“That your grandfather took your mother to a house owned by Barbara Deane for a few days, immediately after Jeanine Thielman’s death. And that your mother saw a man running into the woods.”

“She didn’t recognize him.”

“No. Or she did, but didn’t want to, and told herself she didn’t. There would have been few men up there that your mother didn’t know.”

“And what was the sinister thing I told you?”

“That Ralph Redwing paid a flattering call on your father.” Von Heilitz lowered his legs and sat up straight. “I find that distressing, all things considered.” He stood up decisively, and Tom did the same, wondering what was coming next. Von Heilitz looked at him in a way that was brimming with unspoken speech: but unlike Victor Pasmore, he did not utter the words that had come to him.

“You’d better be off,” von Heilitz said instead. “It’s getting late, and we don’t want you to have to answer any awkward questions.”

They began to move through the files and other clutter to the door. For a moment, two months seemed almost dangerously long, and Tom wondered if he would ever see this room again.

“What should I look for, up north?” he asked. “What should I do?”

“Ask around about Jeanine Thielman. See if anyone else saw that man running into the woods.” Von Heilitz opened the door. “I want you to stir things up a little. See if you can make things happen, without actually putting yourself in danger. Be careful, Tom. Please.”

Tom held out his hand, but von Heilitz surprised him again, and hugged him.

PART SEVEN

EAGLE LAKE

At seven-thirty in the morning, two days later, an unshaven Victor Pasmore set down one of Tom’s suitcases just outside the main entrance of David Redwing Field. Victor’s rumpled clothes smelled of perspiration, tobacco, and bourbon. Even his eyebrows were rumpled.

“Thanks for getting up to drive me here.” Tom wished that he could hug his father, or say something affectionate to him, but Victor was irritated and hung over.

His father took a step away, and glanced anxiously at his car, parked across the sidewalk in a no-parking zone. Beyond the airport’s access road, the nearly empty lot already radiated heat in the morning sun.

“You got everything you need? Everything okay?”

“Sure,” Tom said.

“I, ah, I better get my car outa here. They move you along, at airports.” Victor squinted at him. His eyes looked rumpled too. “Better not say anything to anybody about, you know, what I told you. It’s still top secret. Details and that.”

“Okay.”

Victor nodded. A sour odor washed toward Tom. “So. Take it easy.”

“Okay.”

Victor got into his car and closed the door. He waved at Tom through the passenger window. Tom waved back, and his father jerked the car forward into the access road. Tom saw him peering from side to side, looking for other drivers to get angry with. When the car was out of sight, he picked up his bags and went into the terminal.