Heart of Stone (3 page)

“When did you find them?” I asked Terwilliger, rewinding my third roll of film.

“It wasn't me. A vacationer and his son were in a boat, fishing out there,” he said, pointing to the water beyond the cove. “They heard a yell and looked over here just in time to see one of them dive off the cliff. That was about two hours ago now.”

“Who put the tarps over the bodies?”

“You sure ask a lot of questions,” he said. “I did. The guy and his son showed up at the station to report what they saw, and I came out here right away to have a look.”

“So they saw him hit the ground?”

Terwilliger shook his head. “The rocks block the view.”

“Then how did they know he missed the water?” I asked.

He curled his lip. “No splash. And they heard the splat on the rocks.” He paused, seemingly picturing something in his head. “Probably took a second or two for the sound to reach them out on the water.”

I felt green.

“Any other questions?” he asked with a smirk.

“As a matter of fact, yes,” I said, considering the man in boxer shorts. “Do you suppose he left his clothes at the top of the cliff ?”

Terwilliger frowned at me. “What do you want to know that for? This isn't any of your business.”

“Things like this interest me. I'm a reporter for a newspaper in New Holland. About an hour and a half south of here.”

“You don't say.”

His sarcasm stung. I blushed, realizing that I should have expected it. This was, after all, the same enlightened soul who'd referred to a collective of artists and intellectuals as “that Hebrew kee-boots.” Still, I was curious about what was at the top of the hill. I waited a couple of beats then asked as nicely as I knew how if I could go along with him for a look at the top of Baxter's Rock.

“I don't need your help. Don't want it either,” said the charmer. His tone wasn't exactly rude, but more matter-of-fact, as if he were answering a question about the weather. “I can manage my own investigation. If you're finished, I'll take the film, and you can go.”

“Who's going to develop the pictures?” I asked, not quite ready to throw in the towel. “I'll process the film for you, if you like. My cousin has some equipment here that I can use.”

“No thanks,” he said, holding out his calloused hand with lopped-off finger for the film. “I'll take it to Philby's in Prospector Lake and get the pictures developed myself.”

“Have it your way,” I said. “If you want it, you've got to buy it. Three rolls of Kodak Tri-X, twenty-four exposures each. That'll be nine dollars and sixty cents. Plus my time. That's another ten dollars. I don't come cheap.”

Terwilliger glared at me. I'd just kicked the hornets' nest. He took a step toward me and tried to grab the Leica from my hand. I pulled my precious camera back out of reach, shielding it with my body and a straight-arm. Terwilliger renounced his claim to my property, if temporarily.

“Suit yourself,” he said with a sigh. “I'll just arrest you for withholding evidence in a police investigation. We'll see how you like our jail. Let's go.” And he started for the boat.

His mulishness was galling me, and I realized I needed to take a different tack or wind up spending a few nights in stir. And he'd still get my film.

“What if we compromise?” I said. “Don't you need photographs from the top of the cliff anyway?”

Terwilliger stopped and turned to squint at me as he chewed on that for a few moments. He shuffled his feet and scratched his cheek. At length he admitted that he did indeed need some photos from the top of the high dive.

“Okay,” he mumbled. “But no more compromises. You take the pictures and then scram. I don't want a girl getting in the way.”

He watched me climb into the boat, tilting his head to see better as he did; then he pushed off and hopped in.

The blue paint on the beaten-up Ford truck had faded to a grayish patina, bleached by the sun and cracked by the ice and snow of at least twenty years. Dented and scraped, the door panels were a different color altogether. The passenger's side headlamp was smashed and the fender crumpled. But as bad as the truck looked on the outside, the interior presented new horrors. The foul smell inside Ralph “Tiny” Terwilliger's truck was a mélange of sweat and dirt and spilled beer, but I couldn't quite identify the musky odor lingering underneath the general effluvium. If forced to guess, I'd say rotting moose entrails and old socks. I was sure I would never get the odor out of my bathing suit and resigned myself to burning it in the fireplace later that evening.

Terwilliger drove his bucket of bolts up Lake Road for about a quarter mile then turned onto a bumpy asphalt road that petered out some two hundred yards farther along. From there we turned right into a winding dirt-and-grass trail. The truck scraped through the encroaching overgrowth on both sides of the road, heaving and bouncing over the dips and ruts until we arrived at a small clearing five minutes later. I slung my camera over my shoulder and climbed down from the cab. Terwilliger was already halfway through the grassy field and nearing the edge of the cliff. I set out after him, but a flash of metal to my right caught my eye. I stopped in my tracks and turned to see. There, partially obscured in the weeds, sat a brown, rusted 1949 Plymouth station wagon. A woody in dismal condition. I knew it was a 1949 model because it belonged to my cousin Max. A quick glance through the open window confirmed my suspicions. The keys dangled from the ignition. Despite repeated admonitions from Lena and me, Max insisted on leaving his keys in the car. An easel, tripod, box of oil paints, and a fishing rod were stashed in the way-back. There were a couple of fresh canvases and some brushes on the backseat. These were the items I'd helped him pack into the car that very morning before I set off for the dock to photograph the sunrise.

Max loved to spend long hours in the woods, painting forest scenes in oil or watercolors, depending on his mood. I noticed now that his watercolor kit was missing from the front seat of the car, where I'd placed it that morning, but his lunch basket and thermos of wine were still there. A pair of black trousers was folded neatly on the seat, a leather belt coiled tightly on top, like a snake. Two shoes lay on the floor.

“Are you coming or not?” called Terwilliger from twenty yards away. Then he noticed the car and scurried back to join me.

He rubbed his chin, a little out of breath, as he studied the Plymouth. Then he shook his head and wondered out loud what it was doing there.

“Must belong to one of those two men,” he offered.

“Afraid not,” I said. “This car belongs to my cousin Max. Those are his paints and brushes inside.”

“What's his car doing here?”

“I don't know. But there are some clothes on the front seat, and they're not his.”

Terwilliger peered inside and shrugged. “You sure?”

“My cousin is a corpulent man. Heavyset, you might say. Um, fat. And he's sloppy. He wouldn't fold his clothes so neatly.”

“Then maybe the clothes belong to one of the dead men,” he said. “The older one, I'd say. Those aren't kids' things.”

“It would appear so,” I said. Perhaps Terwilliger wasn't as dim as he looked. “But what are they doing in Max's car?”

“Maybe he gave them a ride up here. You say he paints? He's probably off in the woods somewhere nearby, painting another useless picture of a bunch of trees.”

I thought that was likely, since Max had set out in the morning to do just that.

“Aren't you going to check the trousers?” I asked. “There might be a wallet or some kind of identification inside.”

Terwilliger hesitated a moment, probably debating whether it was advisable to listen to a woman, then yanked open the front passenger's door. He bent over and ducked inside, giving me a long, unwanted view of his posterior. When he righted himself again, he was holding the pair of men's trousers, which showed wrinkles and patches of dirt. He dug into the pockets one by one, elbow deep, like a magician reaching into a silk hat. There was no rabbit inside. The trousers were empty.

“Why do you suppose there's no shirt or jacket or wallet among his clothes?” I asked.

He stuck his head back into Max's car and rooted around, rear end in the air again, prompting me to turn away and admire the view of the lake until he'd finished.

“Nothing else in there,” he said, scratching his neck. “I wonder what he did with the rest of his clothes.”

I said nothing, waiting for a pearl of wisdom from the oracle. At length he shrugged and offered that maybe the older man had taken off his shirt near the cliff, and it had been blown away by the wind. Terwilliger seemed satisfied with this explanation and put it to bed with a bob of his head followed by a deep, protracted dig into his left nostril with his shortened forefinger. He examined the fruits of his mining effort then flicked his find into the gentle breeze.

“I suppose it will show up eventually,” I said. “It can't have gone far. Not much wind today.”

Terwilliger waved his nose-picking hand at me. “Doesn't really matter anyways. Whether we find his shirt or not, he shouldn't have been diving off cliffs. There are signs posted everywhere. Diving is prohibited here.”

“Like nude bathing?” I asked.

“You're funny,” he said. “But I don't get what the draw of this place is. The kids just can't help jumping off no matter the danger.”

“Of course, only one of the two down there was a kid. I wonder what a grown man was doing diving off a cliff with a local teenage camper.”

At this point, Terwilliger had decided to ignore my musings. Surely he wanted a pat conclusion. No niggling questions or missing shirts.

“So where's this cousin of yours staying on the lake?” he asked. “I'm going to want to talk to him about the car.”

“With my aunt and me,” I said. “At Cedar Haven, just to the north of the dock where you found me.”

“Yeah, I know it,” he said. He looked around at nothing in particular then asked if Max was married to Aunt Lena.

“No. He's her first cousin.”

“I see,” he said, nodding. “She's a nice-looking lady.”

Oh, God, I thought, wondering just how sharp Terwilliger's eyesight was and how much of Aunt Lena he'd seen.

“But don't forget she's Jewish,” I said, hoping to discourage any interest from him.

“Yeah, no danger of that happening,” he said. “Now can I expect to find your cousin clothed when I talk to him, or is he a nudist, too?”

“Clothed,” I said, expressing a silent thanks in my head.

“All right,” said Terwilliger. “Let's go get those pictures of the cliff.”

For the moment, I pushed the puzzling presence of Max's Plymouth to one side and trudged through the high grass to the edge of the precipice. But I felt a knot in my stomach that would not unravel until I knew for sure that Max was safe and sound.

I approached the lip of the cliff with care, while Terwilliger stayed a safe distance back. The grass tapered off to dirt near the edge, just where a worn sign warned of danger and promised a fine for illegal diving. I focused my camera on the sign and squeezed off a couple of shots. Force of habit. Establish the scene first. Then the nose-digger inched up behind me and coughed, nearly propelling me over the edge with fright.

“Careful,” he said. “I don't want to clean up your mess too.”

I drew a deep breath then, standing atop Baxter's Rock, peeked over the edge to see the deep pool of water seventy-five feet below. But I couldn't see the rock beach, at least not without leaning past the tipping point and falling into the void. I don't suffer from acrophobia, but I don't have a head for heights either. All things being equal, I'd rather not dangle off cliffs without a harness and perhaps a parachute. Terwilliger, on the other hand, had retreated again to his safe distance from the edge. He tried to joke about it (deliberate humor was not his long suit) and waved me on to take the necessary photos of the scene without his help.

Using my best guess, I screwed a 90mm lens onto my Leica and estimated a focal length of about seventy feet. Next I identified a well-anchored rock near the lip of the precipice and, holding on for dear life with my left hand, stretched as far forward as I could, the toes of my right foot actually peeking over the edge. I extended my camera beyond the cliff with my right hand and aimed it down at the rock beach. I fired off a shot, pulled back, and wound the film. I repeated the exercise about ten times, hoping at least one frame would capture the bodies below in clear focus. Without looking through the viewfinder, I had no idea if I'd shot the pool of water, the eastern side of the lake, or my painted toenails. But that was enough; I had no intention of risking a fall. Terwilliger would have to wait to see the developed photos to know how I'd done. Of course he hadn't had to wait to watch me performing photographic gymnastics in my bathing suit. As I pulled back from the edge, I found him ogling me, head cocked to the right, with a dumb, open-mouthed stare on his face. I cleared my throat, wanting to spit my disgust at him, and he snapped back to the present.