Heart of Stone (15 page)

I stepped off the porch of my cabin and noticed Cousin Max's woody station wagon parked across the compound. I must have missed it when I'd dashed to my room to change. Terwilliger was standing next to the car, scratching his backside.

“You've brought back Max's car,” I said. “He'll be so glad.”

Terwilliger looked confused. Then he got it. “Oh, actually I'm not quite finished with it yet. I'll need it for a couple of days more.”

“What for?”

He cleared his throat and mumbled that his truck was in the shop. “Finally getting it fixed. I hit a deer.”

“Poor thing,” I said.

He shrugged. “I'm okay.”

“What did you do with the carcass?”

Terwilliger looked confused. “What do you mean?”

“How do you dispose of such a large animal that gets killed on the road?”

“I eat it,” he said. “Well, not all of it yet, but . . .” He patted his belly. “Anyways, I only need the car for a day or two. I figured the old fellow won't mind too much.”

Gayle Morton met us at the door of her one-room cabin in a blue seersucker dress. She looked tired but well turned out, wearing her hair teased up in a bouffant. She was slim and pretty. Terwilliger performed the niceties and introduced us. He said I was a friend of his. Like fun I was. We all sat down on the small porch outside her cabin. The place was too small to accommodate us all inside; though, in honesty, Mrs. Morton and I could have managed by ourselves. But Ralph “Tiny” Terwilliger filled the room like a bad smell. And, in truth, with one.

“I asked Miss Stone to come along because she has something to tell you,” said the chief. Rather awkward, but that was my cue.

“Mrs. Morton, I'm afraid there's been an accident involving your husband,” I said.

She stiffened, and I gave her the news straight but gently, if that was possible. Her reaction was odd. She stood up and crossed the porch, gazing out at the rain. She didn't weep. She just shook her head slowly.

Terwilliger and I exchanged stumped glances. After about a minute, Mrs. Morton turned and asked if she could see her husband's body. The chief shrugged and said he'd arrange it with the hospital in Elizabethtown, where the body had been taken.

“And then I'll want to take him home to California as soon as possible,” she said.

“Sure,” said Terwilliger. “Whatever you say. We don't have any use for him anymore.” I threw him a disapproving frown. “I mean, there's no official reason to detain the body here.”

“I wanted to go to Reno,” she said with a sigh. There was no real emotion. Just resignation. “But he had to come to this wretched place. This never would have happened if he'd listened to me.”

“Why did he want to come to Prospector Lake?” I asked.

Gayle Morton shrugged. “He said he used to spend summers here. He wanted to see it again.”

“When did you get here?”

She stared at me. “Friday afternoon. We flew into Albany and rented a car.” She scratched her left forearm, which was pink with mosquito bites.

I'm a curious person, and I like to ask questions. As long as she was amenable, I intended to keep her talking. I asked what time her husband had gone out to swim on Saturday.

“I'm not sure,” she said. “I was still sleeping from the time difference. He was gone when I woke up around ten.”

“Do you know why he went out to swim without his trunks?”

She shook her head.

“Did he like to swim?”

Now Terwilliger was throwing me reproving looks. I ignored him.

Mrs. Morton said her husband swam whenever there was water handy. But he didn't make a habit of it.

“I apologize,” I said. “It's insensitive of me to ask all these questions just now. You must be in shock.”

She pursed her lips and drew a deep breath. “It's all right. But I'd like to be alone now, if you don't mind. I have some calls to make. My father. I want to let him know.”

Terwilliger and I left her in the cabin. We walked back to Max's car and paused to discuss how the meeting had gone.

“All things considered, she took it pretty well.” He smiled.

“Good job,” I said, though my sarcasm was lost on him. “Maybe they weren't close. Or maybe that's how she deals with grief in front of strangers.”

Terwilliger clicked his tongue and opened the driver's side door. “That's that.” Then noticing that I was distracted by a stray thought, he asked what was wrong.

“Nothing,” I said. “It's just . . . Did you notice that there was no telephone in her cabin?”

He hadn't. “Maybe she just wanted to be alone. Or maybe she's going to use the phone in the registration office.”

“I'm sure that's it,” I said, and we climbed into the car.

Isaac was lying in the hammock on Aunt Lena's porch when Terwilliger dropped me off. Max was snoozing in the chair next to him and woke up just as the chief drove away again.

“I had the most puzzling dream,” he said. “I dreamt that oaf of a policeman was driving my car. So real.”

I patted him on the shoulder. “Just a dream, Max.” Then, giving Isaac a playful poke, I said, “Hello, you.”

“Hello,” he said back. “The rain's stopped. Can I take you for a spin on the lake?”

It was a windy afternoon, overcast but drying out. Isaac took me to a small dock on the far side of Baxter's Rock and its diving pool. He said that it belonged to Arcadia Lodge, thanks to an easement deeded to the property dating back almost eighty years. Two rowboats, a canoe, and one aluminum launch with an ancient Mercury outboard sat listing on the stony beach, as if marooned by a violent storm. Isaac piped me aboard the launch, squeezed the hand-primer a couple of times, and wound the starter rope around the flywheel. It took three healthy pulls, but it finally coughed to life.

“I just love sailors,” I said as he took his seat at the tiller.

“The fleet's in town.” He smiled.

We motored out to the middle of the lake, where Isaac cut the engine and let us drift. I lay back on some dusty life vests and gazed up at the clouds. Just grayness with blotches of darker gray sliding across the sky. I drew a relaxing sigh and closed my eyes. A pleasant, cool afternoon of dolce far niente.

Before too long, I realized that my afternoon was about to get quite busy. Isaac suggested we take a dip in the lake. I pointed out that we hadn't brought our bathing suits, but he had an answer ready.

“So we'll swim au naturel.”

“I'm not stripping down to the altogether to swim in the lake,” I said. “Terwilliger has already warned me about that. And besides, what makes you think I'd take off my clothes in front of you?”

He grinned a naughty grin at me, and before I knew what was happening, I had pulled my shirt over my head and peeled off my Capris. Isaac was already naked, standing before me.

“For God's sake,” I said, giggling. “Jump in the water before someone sees you.”

He did, and I followed a moment later.

I was dozing, curled up against Isaac on top of the life jackets, feeling safe and wicked at the same time. He stroked my hair absently. I wanted to spend the entire day there in the dented old boat. I wanted to spend the entire week there.

A fluttering to my left roused me from my reverie. I opened my eyes to see a ring-billed gull settling on the prow of the boat. He ducked his head to watch us with one eye, and I thought it was surely the same bird I'd met two days before on Aunt Lena's dock.

“He's staring at you,” I told Isaac, who lifted his head to see.

“I don't think he likes me,” he said. “He looks jealous.”

Isaac kicked a leg halfheartedly in the direction of the gull to shoo him away. But the bird stood his ground. He watched us for another minute, perhaps waiting for some food, until Isaac stood up to grab his clothes. The gull sprang into the air and, wings beating, flew off toward the shore.

“Aren't you wondering why I brought you out here?” asked Isaac, pulling his trousers back on.

“I thought it was to ravish me. Mission accomplished.”

“Yes, but I wanted to ask you about something.” He hesitated, seemingly searching for the right way to put it. “I wanted to ask you about Gayle.”

I sat up on the dirty life jackets and covered myself. With the discussion now turned to less intimate topics, I became aware of my nudity and felt suddenly shy. “How do you know about Gayle?” I asked.

“Prospector Lake is a small place,” he said. “I went into the village this morning, and Tom Waller told me Karl's wife was staying at his motel.”

“Terwilliger roped me into breaking the bad news to her,” I explained, pulling my shirt back on. I quickly slipped into my pants. “I told her, and then we left. What did you want to know?”

“Just what she's doing here. I thought maybe she wanted to stir up trouble.”

“Why would you think that?”

“Gayle never wanted to come here,” he said. “She wasn't interested in Karl's past.” He paused. “His Jewish past. At least that's what Karl told me when we spoke a couple of years ago. It was like a confession. He told me how horrible his marriage was. His wife made demands on him that he didn't like.”

“Such as?”

“Such as she didn't want his mother to visit them. She felt she was too Jewish. Then the last time we spoke, I told him he should leave her. I said she was making him miserable. But he insisted everything was better, that I didn't know her. He got angry and said it would be better if we just didn't speak again.”

“Ouch,” I said.

Isaac nodded. “I was heartbroken for him and for me. For all of us here, actually. We missed him very much.”

“Even Simon?”

“Well, perhaps not Simon, but that's because they had been like brothers. It was easier for me to talk to Karl, because we were just friends. We weren't so close. Also I have a knack for talking. People open up to me. My father says I should have been a diplomat.”

“Or a headshrinker.”