Heart of Stone (22 page)

Tommy Grierson shook his head firmly and repeated his no. “I shall pray for that poor woman and for her son.” Then he turned away.

I'd missed lunch with Lena and Max. When I returned to Cedar Haven, I found poor Max grounded without his car, and I promised he could use mine to go paint in the morning if Terwilliger hadn't returned his by then. I also made a note to demand that the chief release the car immediately. He had no right to commandeer it.

I grabbed one of the two remaining sets of contact sheets I'd printed for Terwilliger, slipping it into an envelope and scribbling Esther Merkleson's name across the front. I drove over to Arcadia to deliver the prints to her as promised, but she was out when I arrived. I ran into Simon, who was nose-deep in a book outside the Great Lodge.
Der demokratische Weltmarkt
by someone named Kohlmey. Light reading for the beach. And in German to boot. Didn't this guy ever take a rest from the revolution?

“I'm looking for Mrs. Merkleson,” I said.

“Is that for her?” he asked, indicating the envelope. “I'll make sure she gets it.” And he extended a hand to take it. I hesitated, and he took note. “I'll give it to her, you know. I'm not a thief.”

“No,” I said. “I don't think you're a thief.”

We stared at each other for a long moment. “You're becoming quite the regular around here,” he said finally.

“I feel so welcome.”

Simon laid his book down next to his glass of lemonade on the nearby table. “Look. It's nothing personal, Ellie,” he said. “You're a fine girl. And I'm sure Isaac is having a nice summer fling. But Arcadia is a special place. We're a tightly knit group of old friends. You should understand why it's hard for an outsider to belong.”

“No one is trying to break up that old gang of yours,” I said, turning to leave. But he called after me.

“You see? That's one of the reasons you don't fit in here. We enjoy challenging each other. It's fun. You're just not up to it. The women we accept in our circle have to be remarkable or they're just adornments. Like a nice picture.”

“How enlightened. Is that the politburo's official stance?”

Simon shook his head slowly, smirking at me as though I deserved his pity. I wanted to slap him. I wanted to slap him hard enough to knock the smirk and the stringy little goatee beard right off his face.

“As long as Isaac and his father and David Levine welcome me here, you'll have to put up with my presence. You're not bully enough to scare me away, Simon.”

“It's okay, Ellie,” he said. “Isaac can have his fun with you. The summer's almost over.”

How I wanted to defend my honor, but I had to face facts. As much as his words wounded me, I couldn't deny them. I wanted to put him in his place somehow without stooping to name-calling or suggestions of his inability to satisfy his frigid wife. But I was boxed in. He must have noticed the defeat in my eyes, because the boor feigned contrition.

“I'm sorry, Ellie. Do you think I meant country matters?” he asked with a theatrical flair.

My spirits rose like a phoenix. He'd at least served up a fat lob for me to smash back at him without sacrificing my dignity.

“
Hamlet
?” I said. “Have you been waiting since freshman English class to spring that one on some unsuspecting girl?”

I took a moment to enjoy his open-mouthed gape then left him sitting there, hoisted on his own petard.

Back at Cedar Haven, contact sheets still in my custody, I was happy to see Max's Plymouth woody parked on the grass outside the main cabin. I was less than thrilled to find Chief Ralph Terwilliger testing the sturdiness of an old wicker chair in Aunt Lena's parlor. Oh, what did it matter? If the chair didn't collapse under his weight, we would have to toss it onto the fire anyway. He was sipping tea from a paper cup when I entered the room. Aunt Lena threw me a conspiratorial look.

“Just the girl I wanted to see,” said Terwilliger through a gray smile. “You're a popular one.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Just that everyone wants to talk to you. First that Merkleson woman. And now even the Kaufmans want to meet you.”

“And what do you want?” I asked, and with none of Aunt Lena's charm.

Terwilliger cleared his throat and said that his truck was back from the shop and he was there to return Max's car.

“Did you fill the tank?” I asked.

“I put thirty-five cents' worth of gas into it. That's all I could dig out of the seat cushions. And I appreciate your understanding. The shop didn't have a loaner, and I had police work to do.”

“Always happy to help the constabulary,” said Max.

“Let's talk,” I said to Terwilliger, motioning to him to follow me. Once outside I steered him over to my small cabin and told him about my late-night visitor.

“Look here,” I said, pointing to the ground outside the window where I'd seen the face peering in. “Do you see it?”

“Pine needles?” he asked.

“The scuff marks. Someone was standing outside my window last night looking in. I nearly died from fright.”

“It just looks like dirt,” he said. “Maybe you were imagining things again.”

I glared at him. “What do you mean
again
?”

He assumed the look of a trapped animal, held his hands up, and told me to take it easy. “You thought someone was chasing you through the woods the other night, didn't you?”

“Yes,” I said. “Surely the same person who was peeping into my window last night. And since you're doing nothing to find him, I'm sure he'll be back again tonight.”

Terwilliger looked skeptical. “Can't that boyfriend of yours protect you?”

“Why would he be here?” I asked, again aware of the precarious state of my reputation.

He didn't answer, and I had a fleeting doubt that he might have been the face in the window. That was paranoia. But how else would he have known that Isaac had been there the night before?

“When you get a real glimpse of this mysterious guy, let me know,” he said. “But until then, there's not much I can do for you.”

I fumed, wishing I could stick a couple of the pine needles into Terwilliger's eyes. And then there was the iron poker I'd grabbed for protection the night before. I had some fresh ideas of where the pointy end might be most effective. One was at the base of Tiny Terwilliger's thick skull. The other was farther south. But I needed the oaf for another few minutes before I could impale him, so I resisted the urge to act.

“I had a thought earlier today,” I said through my teeth. “Do you think it's possible that the boy and the man fell off the cliff at different times?”

Terwilliger's face screwed into a mocking grin. “No. What gave you a crazy idea like that?”

“I was trying to figure what Jerry Kaufman could have been doing for the five and a half hours before he died. He met his girlfriend before seven that morning. And he didn't fall off the cliff until half past twelve.”

Terwilliger dismissed my concerns. “So he took a nap in the woods. Or went into the village for ice cream. Maybe he went for a swim. Who knows?”

“It's a detail that doesn't make sense. At the least it demands an explanation.”

“Look,” he said, summoning no small measure of condescension. “Two guys ignored the No Diving sign up on Baxter's Rock and belly flopped onto the rocks. It's simple. Why do you have to make things complicated?”

“I don't buy it,” I said. “There's surely a good explanation, but until I find one, it doesn't add up. Help me understand what that kid did to occupy himself for six hours on a Saturday morning, and I'll accept your law-of-gravity theory. Otherwise, I'm starting to think he must have died shortly after seven.”

“That's crazy,” he said. “Just because he didn't go back to his camp right away?”

“He told his girlfriend he was in a hurry to get back. Why didn't he go? I think it's because he fell off the cliff shortly after he left her.”

The chief chuckled. “I happened to be on Route Fifteen that morning, from five to eight, hoping to catch the kids who've been drag racing through the village. And I didn't hear or see anything.”

“Where were you?” I asked.

“Just about a quarter mile from that road that turns up to Baxter's Rock. I already told you that last Saturday. We never did catch those kids.”

“Still,” I said. “You might have been there and still not heard anything.”

He laughed. “But they fell off the cliff hours later. I got two witnesses who saw that.”

“To be precise,” I began, “they only saw one person fall.”

Terwilliger dismissed my concerns.

I supposed he was right. What evidence was there that one of the two had fallen earlier? It was just the question of Jerry Kaufman's six hours away from camp.

I asked the nose-picker what he thought had occurred atop Baxter's Rock. He mulled it over for a minute then said he had no idea what young Jerry had been doing with the Jew writer.

“Might you try saying ‘Jewish' instead of ‘Jew'? It's offensive,” I said.

“Very sorry, miss,” he said. “I'm still learning the right things to say. I should know better, of course, since Jesus himself was a Jewish. I'm trying not to offend your kind, no matter how hard that is.”

Before oozing away and leaving a slimy trail, Chief Terwilliger heaped one more misery upon me. He needed a lift to town to retrieve his pickup truck from the shop that had removed the chunks of venison from his dented front fender.

I agreed, if only to rid myself more quickly of his broad-minded discourse. He stuffed himself into my car, taxing the struts, shock absorbers, and tires all at once. His great behind spread across the bench seat like a pandemic in search of victims.

“Nice car,” he said, admiring the dashboard. “Much better than your uncle's.”

“Cousin's,” I corrected, and we drove in silence to Tucker's Body Shop located on a side street on the far southern end of the village.

As I pulled to a stop to drop him off, he turned and informed me that the Kaufmans were intending to call on me that afternoon.

“You don't mind?” I asked. “No objections to a girl interfering in your investigation?”

“What investigation?” he said and popped open the door.

It was past four when I returned yet again to Cedar Haven, and, having skipped lunch, I was looking forward to a sandwich or some cheese. I noticed an unfamiliar Buick sedan sitting outside Aunt Lena's cabin. A man and a woman were sitting inside with the windows rolled down.

“Excuse me,” I said, startling them both. “May I help you?”

The man, who looked to be about forty, climbed out and asked if I was Miss Stone. I nodded. He introduced himself as Harold Kaufman, Jerry's father.

“That's my wife, Rose, in the car,” he said. “There was no one at home, so we thought we'd wait for you here.”