Heart of Stone (25 page)

Isaac spelled David, who was dispatched to get his medical bag. He returned two minutes later and prepared a hypodermic. While we held Simon still, David tugged his stricken friend's trousers down, dabbed his buttocks with some rubbing alcohol, then jabbed him with the needle.

It took about five minutes for the drug to take effect. Either that or Simon wore himself out. He was still, heaving for breath, eyes shut, lying in a heap on the floor. Soon, though, his expression normalized, and he looked completely lucid if embarrassed.

“What was that you gave him?” I asked David as he repacked his medical bag.

“Something called chlorpromazine,” he said. “It's a fairly new anti-­psychotic treatment for violent behavior.”

“Is Simon psychotic?”

“No, but he occasionally has fits like this.”

I was horrified. “How lucky that you had some of that . . . Chloroma . . .”

“Chlorpromazine,” he repeated. “Not lucky. Miriam asked me to bring some with me from New York. This is the first time I've had to use it.”

The John Birchers had decamped. Only Chief Terwilliger remained, sucking the life out of one glass of beer after another. Miriam lifted Simon and, arm around his waist for support, led him out of the Great Lodge. She returned about a half hour later and said that he was sleeping comfortably.

“What's wrong with that man anyway?” asked Terwilliger. “He's gonna hurt someone someday. He's gonna hurt himself.”

“He's got some problems, but he's not dangerous,” said Isaac. “We take care of him.”

“See that you do,” said the chief, taking another gulp of beer.

“What are you still doing here?” I asked him, and just as rudely as it sounds.

He laughed and lit a cigarette but didn't answer. Then he started, as if remembering something important. He excused himself and left the lodge only to return a minute later.

“I almost forgot,” he said, placing a large paper bag down on the bar. It was a little moist. He opened it and pulled out a muddy white short-sleeved shirt.

“Is that Karl's?” asked Isaac.

Terwilliger nodded. “We believe the shirt is his.” Then he reached back into the bag and produced a waterlogged leather wallet. “This, we're sure, is his,” he said, referring to the wallet. “Well, Charles Morton's, to be exact. That's what the driver's license says. A vacationer found these washed up on the shore.”

Everyone gathered around the table to examine the effects. Sobered by the evidence of their old friend's death, they stared at his wadded-up shirt. Ruth wiped her eyes and turned away.

Assuming the show was over, Terwilliger dropped the wallet back into the bag and reached for the shirt. But I stopped him.

“May I see that?” I asked.

He hesitated but, after a moment, held it out for me. I spread the shirt out on the table. Still a little wet, it was a size-fifteen neck, wash-and-wear, made of polyester. Sears. It was impossible to tell if it was new or old. I stared at it.

“What's wrong, Ellie?” asked Isaac.

“I'm not sure,” I said. “It's just odd.”

“How so?”

“This is an inexpensive shirt. He had pricey tastes. This doesn't seem like the kind of thing he would wear.”

Isaac shrugged. “It looks like he made this trip at the spur of the moment. Maybe he didn't have time to pack and bought this somewhere around here or in Albany.”

“Probably,” I said, wondering what clothing Karl might have left behind at the Sans Souci. I made a mental note to ask Gayle Morton.

“If you're done playing detective, I'll take that,” said Terwilliger. “It's evidence.” He wadded up the shirt and stuffed it back into the paper bag.

“Evidence?” asked David. “I thought this was an accident.”

“Maybe,” said the chief. “Or maybe not. There are a couple of loose ends I'd like to tie up with the state police.”

That was new. Terwilliger had never seemed particularly interested in the unexplained details of the case. He struck me as a lazy investigator, happy to file his final one-paragraph report and sneak off to a bar for breakfast. I kept telling myself that my doubts were simply that: doubts and nothing more. Isaac's reasoning about the shirt made sense. And the motel roulette could be explained away, too, I supposed. I still didn't know where Karl Merkleson had been sleeping or why he'd chosen to stay away from the Sans Souci. Why not just check out? Yes, I had these doubts, but I like clean lines and sharp corners. Tiny Terwilliger didn't share my obsession for order. So what had made him change his mind?

“Anyways, I'll keep you folks informed if anything else turns up,” he said, clamping the bag under his arm. He turned to look behind him. “Come on, Waldo. Time to go.”

I had assumed that Waldo Coons had crawled away with his pals, but he was still there, sweeping up in a darkened corner of the room. He moved the broom across the floor absently, barely grazing the surface. His haunted eyes, peering out of the penumbra like a ghoul's, were fixed firmly on me.

The party broke up after one. I reflected on the direction the evening had taken. After the arguments that had characterized the early part of the soirée, the general mood rose, mine along with it. But Miriam had taken it upon herself to poison the well by drawing my attention to Isaac and Audrey, who had been chatting nose to nose across the room. I didn't care that Isaac had slept with Miriam. And I didn't care that Isaac might have been sleeping with that vapid little French-speaking Anglo Audrey Silber. The girl who thought Paul Anka belonged in the same conversation as Richard Strauss, the greatest composer of the first half of the twentieth century, according to my father. I didn't care. And yet I did. I cared a lot. Then Simon's breakdown had scared everyone out of their wits.

Now, at half past one, I was too drunk and too tired to make the dash back to Cedar Haven. And there was the rumor that Donald Yarrow had been spotted on the eastern shore of the lake that very morning. I didn't want any part of the woods in the dark. But neither did I want to spend the night in Isaac's bed, so I made a pact with Miriam of all people. I asked if I might sleep on the floor in her cabin. She smiled and said sure. She had a cot I could use if I didn't mind Simon's snoring.

“Is Simon okay?” I asked.

“I gave him some pills,” she said. “He'll sleep through the night.”

Isaac couldn't understand my refusal to come to his cabin. He asked me what was wrong, and I said I was tired. He still wouldn't accept it. I begged him to leave it, and he asked me if it was my little friend.

“Little friend?” I repeated.

“You know. That time of the month. Why else wouldn't you come?” he asked.

“That's it,” I said, searching for the path of least resistance. “My little friend is visiting. Maybe Audrey has no friends. You should find out.”

I walked with Miriam to her cabin. There was no snoring when we arrived, but Miriam assured me that the show would not disappoint.

She pulled out a canvas cot and gave me a lumpy pillow and wool blanket.

“Do you want a glass of water, Ellie?” she asked before retiring.

“I'd rather some whiskey.”

“You're funny,” she said.

No, really. I wanted one last drink before I had to face my self-­recrimination. I had doubts and I had fears. What had I done? Why had I rushed headlong into a love affair with a man I barely knew? I wanted that drink all right. But I left it.

Miriam turned to leave. I stopped her.

“Is Simon well?” I asked.

“I told you. He's sleeping.”

“I mean is he sick?”

Miriam stood there staring at me. Just stared. Finally she blinked.

“Simon has a brain tumor,” she said. “He's dying.”

She turned away again and disappeared into the dark.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

THURSDAY, AUGUST 24, 1961

I slipped out of Miriam and Simon's cabin as the sun came up. I opted for the coward's way back to Cedar Haven, sticking to the roads and circumventing the woods altogether. It took me twenty minutes, but I felt safer. The previous night had exhausted me. Haunted by Miriam's good-night news about Simon's prognosis, I had barely closed an eye, at turns regretting my open hostility toward him, then wondering if Isaac knew that Simon was dying. He couldn't possibly have known, or he wouldn't have baited him so mercilessly. A friend would never do that. But he had told Terwilliger that Simon had problems. And as I walked along Lake Road at 6:30 a.m., I reasoned that a friend would never sleep with a friend's wife. Two friends' wives. Who was this Isaac Eisenstadt, and what the hell was I doing in his bed?

By the time I turned off Jordan Street into Aunt Lena's lane, the eastern sky was awash in a spreading pink corona. Thirty minutes earlier, in the dark, I might have missed the car parked on the grass under the old iron tree. A beaten-up, blue Nash Ambassador. I approached and peeked through the driver's side window. There, sprawled across the front seat, shoes up against the passenger's door, slept my dearest friend in the world, Fadge Fiorello.

I tapped on the window. That did nothing. Fadge slept like a bear. Looked like one, too. And, as a matter of fact, sometimes displayed the personality of a bear emerging from hibernation, sluggish and surly.

I didn't bother trying the door; it had been dented shut for more than a year. So I rapped on the window again. Fadge rolled over but didn't open his eyes. Finally I roused him by kicking the driver's door. A couple of more dings wouldn't matter. Once he'd found his bearings, he crawled out of the car on the passenger's side.

“Good morning, sunshine,” I said, giving the huge man a peck on the cheek. He was six feet two inches and tipped the scales at over three hundred pounds. “Now tell me what you're doing here.”

“I was in the neighborhood, so I thought I'd drop by,” he mumbled.

I laughed. “You're a hundred and ten miles from home. What's going on?”

He confessed that he'd been monitoring the reports of the Donald Yarrow sightings and was worried.

“That guy's getting close. The radio said he was seen in Tennyson yesterday. That's right across the lake from here.”

I took him by the arm and led him to my cabin.

“Where are we going?” he asked, rubbing his eyes. “It's not even seven.”

“I want to show you something,” I said. “But first, you're going to shower and change.”

Lake Road was deserted at seven thirty on a Thursday morning. I parked on the shoulder a few yards from Aunt Lena's dock.

“I'm not seeing a diner or restaurant,” remarked Fadge. “This can't be the right place.”

“Come with me,” I said, popping open the door and slinging my camera over my shoulder.

A few minutes later, with Fadge loaded into the little boat, we slipped into Baxter's Cove.
Slipped
may be overstating the case, as the bottom of the boat scraped over the submerged rocks of the cove's entrance. I didn't recall touching any rocks when I'd run the same route the day before, so I figured Fadge's weight was the variable in the equation.

The sun was up in the east, and it was burning bright. The forecast called for a hot, sunny August day, and the temperature had already galloped past eighty degrees at 8:00 a.m. We disembarked onto the shale beach, somehow managing to avoid falling into the water.

“So this is what you wanted to show me,” he said and whistled through his teeth as he considered the painted outline.

“There's another just behind those rocks.” I pointed the way.

The rocks were only three to four feet high, so Fadge was able to see the lines by standing on his toes.

He turned around and got a blast of sun in his eyes for his trouble. His face was effulgent orange. He squinted into the light as he watched me take several photos of the painted outline that belonged to the person who'd once answered to the name Karl Merkleson. Fadge stepped around me and turned his back to the sun's rays.