Heart of Stone (34 page)

“Look, I know Eisenstadt, but we're not friends,” he began. “Nice-enough fellow, but I only know him because he spent a couple of nights here earlier in the month.”

“I'm confused,” I said, playing dumb. “Mr. Eisenstadt took a room here this month?” He nodded. “But he has a cabin of his own at Arcadia. Why would he need a room here?”

Tom Waller just stared at me. He wasn't going to answer that.

“But did you speak to him last Monday about Gayle Morton?”

He squeezed his lips into a sort of pout and shook his head. “Nope. Last time I saw him was about two weeks ago when he stayed here.”

My heart was pounding. “Has anyone else from Arcadia stayed here this summer?”

“Like who?”

“A young woman with black hair,” I said, choking up. “Someone named Mimi.”

“Nope. But I still don't get why you're asking questions about those people. What do they have to do with insurance?”

“I don't know,” I said, wiping a tear before it could fall. He noticed anyway. “I don't know,” I repeated. “Mr. Stephenson is a horrible boss.” And I ran out of the office.

I was reeling. I ran to my car and jumped in, starting the engine and switching on the radio as if by rote. The station was playing Chubby Checker. “The Twist.” Damn Simon. I punched another button and got “Puppy Love.” Paul Anka, for God's sake! I switched it off. My temples throbbed even as I regained control of my emotions. Isaac had lied to me, that much was sure. And it looked unlikely that Miriam had taken a room at the Lakeside Motel. It was possible, of course, that she'd taken Jerry Kaufman to a different motel, but I was too rattled in that moment to think or care where.

My face was burning, and my mouth had gone dry. Why would Isaac lie to me? What was he hiding? The answer occurred to me without much coaxing: he had met someone there. A lover. I was sure. But this had happened before my arrival on Prospector Lake. Had he lied to me because he thought I'd be jealous of his conquests? I didn't care what he'd done before he'd done it with me. I'd had flings of my own, after all. Plenty of flings. That wasn't what bothered me. It was the lie.

Sitting at the wheel of my car, I dived deeper into dark thoughts. Who was it he'd met at the motel? Three names came to mind immediately. And they made me feel sick to my stomach. Gayle Morton, Miriam Abramowitz, and Lucia Blanchard. I knew for certain that he'd already slept with two of them. He'd told me about his indiscretion with Gayle, and Miriam herself had confirmed her trespasses with Isaac. And now I had proof that he'd checked into the Lakeside Motel within two hours of the man-eater, Lucia Blanchard.

CHAPTER TWENTY

I followed Route 15 north through the village, past the police station, and didn't stop. The lake stretched out to my right, sparkling this late August day, beckoning me to jump in for a swim. I was in a skirt and blouse, my bathing suit back at the cabin. I drove a few miles north of the village, to the top of the lake, and the road began to turn east. Then south. By the time I'd reached Tennyson on the eastern shore of the lake, I was hungry and exhausted. It had been an eventful morning, and I'd missed my lunch again.

I pulled over to the shoulder and switched off the ignition. Prospector Lake was about three miles wide. Staring west into the afternoon sun, I thought I could see Aunt Lena's dock. And Baxter's Rock must have been the high ground a little to the south of it. I couldn't be sure without a map or binoculars. Funny. Even after so many vacations on the lake, I just wasn't sure where anything stood.

That was true of my investigation, as well. The two deaths no longer appeared to be unrelated, but that didn't mean there was any foul play. Karl and Jerry might still have fallen accidentally. Or had they struggled at the top of the cliff? I revisited that question again as I sat in my car, watching the lake. I wondered. What evidence might point to a struggle? Or, on the other hand, was there any evidence that indicated no struggle had taken place?

For starters, I reasoned, who strips down to his underwear to wrestle atop a cliff? It was absurd. It made no sense. How had these two men died side by side? The more I considered the unexplainable, the more I leaned toward a different time of death for each.

I climbed out of my car and strolled down to the shore. It was a quiet spot, sheltered by overgrowth. There was no beach, just some rocks. I unbuttoned my blouse and stripped it off. Then I shimmied out of my skirt. No sense putting dry clothes on over wet underthings, I thought, and removed those as well. I dived into the lake from a smooth rock and swam for at least a half hour. The cool water felt grand, and I wanted to swim forever.

A motorboat sped by about two hundred yards out into the lake. A water-skier trailed behind, bouncing over the waves. They surely couldn't see me; I was invisible at that distance. But I could see them. And, being downwind, I could hear the buzzing of the outboard and even the shouts of the skier. I watched as he let go of the towline and sank gradually into the lake. The pilot cut the engine, and the water served as a natural brake, slowing the boat as if it were on a long leash. Just a fraction of a second later, the motor's buzzing dropped in pitch to a low growl. It couldn't have been more than a half second's delay, but just enough to be later than what I'd seen. Science, I thought. How interesting.

But then I remembered something Terwilliger had told me about the eyewitnesses' account of the diver they'd seen at Baxter's Rock. If I recalled correctly, they'd said the sound of the impact on the rocks took a second or two to reach them out on the water. That didn't seem right. I remembered my seventh-grade science class and the speed of sound. Eleven hundred twenty-six feet per second. If the sound had taken even just a second to reach the witnesses, they would have had to be nearly four hundred yards away. What could they possibly see from that distance?

It was probably just Terwilliger exaggerating for effect. He seemed to enjoy making me green with his description of the splat. Nevertheless, I decided I had to ask him about what exactly the witnesses had seen and heard. I wondered if I should locate them and speak to them myself. But then I dipped my head back under the water and willed the whole mess away. I didn't care as much about the loose ends and the unexplained details now that I knew Isaac had broken my trust.

I swam to shore and lay on the flat rock to dry myself in the sun, still thinking of Isaac. I realized just how much I loved being with him, just how difficult it would be to say good-bye, how much I would miss his touch. But I knew the end was upon us. A short, torrid affair gone the way of all my other affairs.

I heard a cough. And given my recent musings on the speed of sound, I was sure its owner was not hundreds of yards away. I grabbed my blouse and tried to cover up, twisting around to see who was there. It was that slob, Tiny Terwilliger, standing on top of the embankment, not forty feet away.

“I've told you about nude bathing on the lake,” he said. He had to shout since he was downwind of me.

I, on the other hand, didn't need to shout to be heard, but I did. I called him the foulest names I could conjure, demanded that he back off and turn away so I could dress. He laughed as I yelled, but eventually he complied. I scrambled into my clothes, practically in tears. I would have strangled him if I'd thought my hands would fit around his sweaty neck. Now I would never look at my naked body the same way again. It was as if he'd ruined me for myself.

Once I'd dressed and climbed up to the road, Terwilliger lectured me again about swimming nude in the lake. I reminded him that we were not in his jurisdiction, and he could jolly well go to hell.

“Take it easy,” he said, grinning from ear to ear. “I'm just having some fun.”

“What do you want?” I demanded.

“Nothing. I just seen your car parked on the side of the road and got worried. Imagine my surprise to find you . . .” He coughed, his feeble attempt to appear circumspect. “Well, never mind.”

I pushed past him to get to my car, but he called after me. He apologized and said his vision wasn't good anyway. He hadn't seen anything but a shape on the rock.

“I need to speak to you later about some new information I got this morning,” I said, wiping my eyes. “But right now, I can't. I just want to be alone.”

Aunt Lena told me she'd been worried when I didn't turn up for lunch. Max had no such concerns.

“She's a big girl,” he said, turning the page of his newspaper. “She's twenty-five, after all. Not married, but these are modern times we live in.”

“Stop with the married talk,” said Aunt Lena.

“Perhaps she'll marry that Isaac fellow. I believe he would make a fine husband. Don't you agree, Ellie?”

“I've decided never to marry,” I said. “Like you, Max. I want to feel the sting of regret, as you say. It will remind me I'm alive.”

“Don't talk that way, Ellie,” said Aunt Lena.

“Oh, look,” said Max, referring to his paper. “Joe Palooka suspects Peligro has slipped some frog venom to Felipe. This doesn't look good.”

“And your weather forecast was off, too,” I said. “Look out the window. It's started to rain. It's pouring buckets. Good luck seeing the eclipse.”

Max shrugged. “No great loss, my dear. It's only a ninety-eight point six.”

Bags packed and readied for the next day's departure, Lena and Max finished off the last lime for their evening cocktails. We were dressed and ready to go to Arcadia, though I was hardly in the mood for it. My aunt suspected it was something Max had said about my getting married, but she was far off the mark. For his part, Max sensed I was not to be crossed, and he was quite solicitous, offering to pour my drink and passing me the tray of the scraps of cheese and crumbled crackers, which, like the lime, were among the last of the cupboard's stores.

“We haven't checked the Yarrow report, have we?” asked Max. “Would you like your aunt to switch on the radio, Ellie?”

I rolled my eyes. “Sure,” I said. “I was wondering what was missing from this wet evening. Escaped murderers.”

After the news of the impending eclipse and the Berlin crisis, the biggest story of the day was the frantic search for a missing woman from the campgrounds in Tennyson. She'd disappeared in the afternoon from her trailer. That must have been around the time I was swimming. Her husband reported her disappearance to the local sheriff, who contacted the state police.

The story unsettled me, especially given how vulnerable I had been; I'd left my car unlocked on the shoulder of the road and then jumped into the lake without a bathing suit. The news about Isaac's stay at the Lakeside Motel didn't help my mood either.

“What's the matter, Ellie?” asked Aunt Lena. “You look terrible.”

I gulped down my drink and rose from my seat. The whiskey burned my nose and the back of my throat, and I savored it. The rush hit me, and I smiled at my aged relatives.