Heart of Stone (14 page)

I laughed. “Come on. He's not so old.”

“A strutting ass,” said Isaac. “I told Miriam not to invite him. But she's friendly with his wife, Lucia. She's a nymphomaniac, by the way. The two are perfectly suited for each other. Wife-swappers. You'd better steer clear of him.”

“He was pretty creepy,” I said. “I'll just stick to you, if you don't mind.”

God, what a stupid thing to say. I must have come off sounding desperate. I lay there, wishing silently that I could take it back somehow. I racked my brain for a witty remark to cut the legs out from under the stupid comment. But there was nothing.

“I'm already stuck on you,” said Isaac, and I nearly jumped. What a stupid thing for him to say. A wonderfully stupid thing to say.

We lay there contentedly for some time, neither one making any more stupid pronouncements. Then the echo of a thought, having nothing to do with Isaac or me or the stickiness that bound us, crossed my mind. I sat up. He asked me what was wrong.

“It's just that boy who died next to Karl,” I said. “How could Karl have known a sixteen-year-old violinist from Albany? A kid who wanted to learn the zither.”

Isaac agreed that it was odd.

“And why was Karl diving off cliffs in his underwear? Didn't he own swimming trunks? And he was wearing an expensive watch on his wrist.”

Isaac shook his head. He didn't know.

At length we fell silent, and Isaac drifted off to sleep. Then the rain began, first with some booming thunder and lightning. Then, as the front coursed eastward overhead, sheets of rain fell from the sky in great torrents. It wasn't so much a drumming as it was a cascade on the tin roof. I took advantage of the noise and Isaac's deep slumber to rise from his bed and dress. I kissed his lips softly then slipped out the door into the driving rain. I almost looked forward to the protection the dark woods would offer from the downpour. But then, remembering the danger that lurked therein, I shuddered and reconsidered my decision to leave the dry safety of Isaac's cabin.

A bright flash of lightning lit up the sky like a carnival then blinked off, followed instantly by thunder overhead. I entered the woods and slithered through the rain, winding along a path that was becoming all too familiar. I wondered how wise it was to be so near tall trees in an electrical storm.

But I was moving deftly through the forest, much more quickly than on previous crossings. As I pushed deeper into the woods, my nerves loosened. I told myself there was no reason to fear. In all the years I'd visited Prospector Lake, I'd never once been set upon by beast or bogeyman. I smiled.

I stopped beneath a pine to catch my breath and wipe the rain out of my eyes. Then the sky cracked open again, and a bolt of lightning sliced a jagged path through the darkness. A deafening clap of thunder shook the earth. I unleashed a shriek, though not out of fear from the noise. There, not twenty feet in front of me, stood a man. And he was staring directly at me.

CHAPTER NINE

I took off on a run due east, I believe, praying that my eyes had deceived me. It might have been a tree stump or a large rock. But I knew in my thumping heart that it was neither of those things. I'd seen a man, gaunt and pallid, peering out of the rain in my direction. Close enough to catch me if he were a fast runner and inclined to pursue me. It was also possible, of course, that the man was in the woods for reasons other than murdering me; though, in that moment, as I ran, I could think of none. Maybe he was as frightened by our meeting as I. I didn't know, and I had no interest in finding out. I ran.

Why hadn't I turned straight around to head back south toward Arcadia? I knew I was more than halfway home, and, once I'd pointed myself east toward the lake, there was no question of changing course. Running as fast as I dared, given the thickness of the woods, I wanted to look back over my shoulder to see if he was following me. But it was too dark, and I would risk crashing into the trunk of a tree at full tilt. So I tore through the pines, not knowing how close the danger was.

The forest floor was uneven, with roots arching out of the muddy ground, threatening to trip me at every turn. And one did. I sprawled headfirst into the slop, skidding through the wet pine needles and colliding with the base of a tree. My side absorbed the collision, but at least I hadn't broken anything. I pushed myself up slowly, scanning the dense woods behind me, when another flash of lightning blazed across the sky. The thunder exploded, and I saw the man. Following me. Picking his way through the trees, searching for my trail. He seemed to have lost sight of me. I wiped my eyes again, unsure if the water streaking down my face was just rain or a mixture of rain and sweat and tears, brought about by fear. I pushed off north again, confident he hadn't seen me and hoping he would continue east toward the lake's edge.

Assuming that the man was now to my right, on a bearing approximately ninety degrees away from me, I pressed on. The rain muffled any sounds my footfalls might make, but I knew I had to be careful not to trip or crack a fallen branch. The sky lit up again. I crouched down and looked to my right. I thought I saw the figure receding into the distance, but the light had flashed for just a second, and the trees were thick, obscuring my view. Still unsure of my safety, I crept forward. The rain continued to pound the forest and soak me, but perhaps ten minutes later, I reached the edge of the woods. Hiding behind the boughs bordering the road, I peered out onto Jordan Street. I scanned the road through the downpour to my right then left. It seemed I was alone. I drew a deep breath, as if preparing to dive into cold water, then dashed out into the street and ran hard for the lane leading to Cedar Haven. With no trees to block its path, the rain pelted me furiously now. That was the least of my concerns. I was waterlogged anyhow, my fingers pruney and shoes soggy. I pulled them off and ran the last hundred yards barefoot, a shoe in each hand, as if carrying two batons toward a finish line.

I reached my cabin, yanked open the door, and darted inside. Dripping large puddles of water on the floor, I bolted the door and leaned against it, huffing for air. I left the lights out. At length I regained my breath and listened for noises outside. There was nothing but the driving rain.

MONDAY, AUGUST 21, 1961

The thunderstorms passed, but the downpour continued off and on all through the morning and afternoon. Barely confident of my safety, I had slept fitfully until eight when I rose and joined Lena and Max in the big cabin. There was a chill in the air, so, at Max's behest, I piled some logs into the fireplace and lit a fire. He sat in the armchair, wrapped in a knitted sweater over an ascot over a scarf and two layers of shirt, topped off by an afghan. Once the fire began to roar, he doffed the afghan then the sweater and finally the top shirt. He refused to remove the ascot, I knew, because he fancied himself quite dapper in it. Then, about a quarter of an hour after I'd lit the fire, Max was so hot that he dispatched me unceremoniously to open all the windows wide.

The three of us enjoyed a lunch of fried fish and boiled potatoes with salad. There was wine as well. We were relaxing in the sitting room, reading as we listened to Mahler's
Titan Symphony
on the record player. The third movement, with its distinctly Jewish themes, made me think of all of us: Aunt Lena, Cousin Max, my parents, Elijah, Isaac, and the Arcadians. All of us Jews. All of us connected. I didn't consider myself a very good Jew, of course. Indeed I was as secular and assimilated as they came. But I recalled my father telling Elijah and me about the Haskalah when we were young. We dismissed his talk as the dry ramblings of someone who'd never read a comic book. But he persisted, explaining how important it was for us to appreciate the contributions of the Jewish Enlightenment of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the importance of the Maskilim, who strove to educate Jews, to convince them that integration into European society and culture was the path to follow. Ours was not a religious family, but we maintained our Jewish identity with careful attention to and respect for tradition and ritual. From the time of my great grandparents, the Stones had integrated into society as well as any Jews. Our family's place, my father said, was at the forefront of society's culture, not just Jewish culture. At the time, Elijah and I merely shrugged, waiting for
Amos 'n' Andy
to come on the radio.

There was a knock at the door. Aunt Lena was in the kitchen, mixing up the beginnings of afternoon tea slash cocktail hour, and Max was too firmly ensconced in his chair to get up to answer, so it fell to me.

“Chief Terwilliger,” I said, surprised to see him standing there on the porch. “Please come in.”

He shuffled in, looking uncomfortable, but accepted my offer for a cup of tea on that rainy afternoon. Aunt Lena threw me a nasty look when we entered the kitchen, and I shrugged an apology her way. I saw her count the cups and shake her head in woe. Another would need to be sacrificed.

“I've come to tell you some news,” he said once we were all seated around the kitchen table with steaming tea before us. “That Merkleson fellow. His wife is here on the lake; she showed up at the station this morning.”

“From California?” I asked.

“That's right,” he said. “It seems she was staying with him here at the Sans Souci Cabins, not far from here on Route Fifteen. Near the village.”

“Yes, we know it,” said Aunt Lena.

“She said he disappeared Saturday morning without a word and never came back,” continued Terwilliger. “She thought maybe I could help her find him.”

“How awkward for you,” I said. “What did you tell her?”

Terwilliger sniffed. “I told her I'd look into it.”

“You said what?” asked Aunt Lena, who stopped stirring the milk into her tea to express her surprise.

Terwilliger fidgeted in his seat. “Well, I couldn't exactly break the bad news to her all at once like that, could I? I figured I'd let her know slowly, but she ran off before I had the chance.”

“That's awful,” I said. “The poor woman. She's here, three thousand miles from home, wondering what's happened to her husband, and you just let her go on wondering?”

“Look,” he said, folding his hands before him. “I'm not proud of it, but I didn't know what to do. I was kind of hoping you'd help me out on this.”

I stared him down. “How, exactly, might I be able to help you?”

He smirked, a little too shamelessly. “I thought you could come along with me over to the Sans Souci and explain to her what happened to her husband.”

My jaw nearly fell off its hinges. Terwilliger squirmed as he tried to make the best of the situation.

“We don't get many cases like this up here,” he said. “Women are good at this kind of sensitive business. I thought you might not mind helping me out on this one.”

I shook the disbelief from my head. It was flattering to have the local chief of police soliciting my help, but I was struggling nevertheless to understand the propriety of my doing his job for him. I couldn't believe he'd actually left her with the impression that her husband was alive, fully two days after he'd missed the pool from the high dive and died in his skivvies on the rocks. But at the same time, I was curious. Perhaps it was the reporter in me, but I wanted to know the details of the sad case. Why was Karl Merkleson—or rather Charles Morton—diving off Baxter's Rock with a sixteen-year-old boy from the local music camp? What had happened to his shirt and his wallet? Had they been scattered to the four winds? And why were his trousers and shoes in my cousin Max's station wagon? I sat there across the table from the nose-picking chief of police, wondering if a short meeting with Karl Merkleson's widow might not be something I'd like to pursue. I knew it would never lead to a story in the
Republic
, but the draw was strong nonetheless. I wanted to know her side of the story, including her version of the chance meeting with Miriam in a Los Angeles restaurant four years before. And I wanted to know what she thought of her late husband's decision to change his name and turn his back on his lifelong friends.

“I'm only asking because I'm no good at breaking bad news,” said Terwilliger, rousing me from my deliberations. “People around here all say I'm a good-news kind of fellow. I just have one of those happy-go-lucky personalities.”

I knew that some people deluded themselves, but this was rich.

“Anyways,” he concluded, “I'd really appreciate it if you'd do me this favor.”

“Okay,” I said. “Give me a few minutes to change.”