Heart of Stone (4 page)

“Fine job, miss,” he said, red-faced with his customary drawl. “That will do for now.”

It was nearly five when Terwilliger pulled to a stop on the road next to the dock. I tried to give him the four rolls of film I'd shot, three of the bodies and one from the top of the cliff, but his attention was otherwise occupied. There was a state trooper's cruiser and a hearse waiting for him.

“I've got to get those bodies out of the cove,” he said, not even looking at me. “Why don't you develop the pictures like you said? I'll come get them later. Or maybe tomorrow. Those two fellows aren't in any rush.”

He pushed open the door and climbed down. I followed suit.

Terwilliger scooted over to the pair of troopers and the hearse driver and began gesturing toward the cove around the bend. The troopers regarded him queerly, their facial expressions betraying some kind of disgust or disdain, as if Tiny Terwilliger smelled (which he did) or they couldn't believe someone had made him chief of police of this, or any other, godforsaken end of the earth. The driver, a short young man in a dark suit, edged away from the lawmen and took up a position against the hearse, throwing occasional appalled glances at the chief.

I made my way to the dock, tucked my camera and lens into my bag, which I placed carefully on the slats. Then I kicked off my sandals and dived head first into the lake. I had to get the funk of his truck off my body and out of my hair.

I paddled around in the water for a few minutes—I'm an excellent swimmer—then climbed out of the lake onto the end of the dock: the place where I'd had the pleasure of making Chief Terwilliger's acquaintance. I spread out to dry in the late-afternoon sun, trying to shake the images of the dead men from my head. After a while, I sat up and considered the majestic view to the east. The Green Mountains dominated the eastern shore of the lake from the Vermont side. Bathed in the magic light of a sinking sun to the west, the peaks rolled gently, one into the next, with more in the distance beyond, fading gradually to blue then gray.

Prospector Lake had been carved out of the earth's crust by the retreating glaciers of the last ice age. Eleven miles long and three miles across at its widest, the crescent-shaped lake hung like a moon north to south between the shoulders of two ranges of mountains. A popular vacation spot in summer and a desolate sliver of ice in winter, Prospector Lake offered pristine water, stony beaches, and stunning sunsets. The village was a quaint, homey place, with souvenir shops, family eateries, boat rentals, and ice cream parlors. The sun stayed up until eight in August, and, as long as you didn't mind the mosquitoes, it was safe and pleasant to stroll through the village, even after dark. An idyllic spot, nestled in the Adirondack Mountains, about forty-five minutes north of Lake George.

For the sportier types, northern pike, rainbow trout, and walleye attracted anglers from far and wide. In the fall, grown men in red-checked jackets tramped through the local woods shooting deer, rabbits, ducks, and sometimes each other. They strapped their prizes onto the fenders of their station wagons and drove back to their homes, startling unsuspecting motorists along the way.

Each summer when I was a girl, my family spent three weeks on the lake with Aunt Lena. My father loved the fresh air and swimming. He also sketched landscapes in pencil and worked on his papers and books. My mother appreciated the calm of the lake and enjoyed preparing communal meals with her sister-in-law, Lena. They all were fond of drink: wine, gin, and whiskey. My brother, Elijah, and I used to look forward to our Prospector Lake holidays all year long. It was a magical place for us. We swam and baked in the sun, suffered the black flies, caught frogs and fish, and, of course, romped with the children from Arcadia Lodge.

My bathing suit was mostly dry. I stood to survey the view one more time, rotating to take in all 360 degrees of the lake's beauty, when I noticed three men watching the police operation unfold at the other end of the dock. I wrung out my long curls—no easy feat—and wrapped a towel around my waist before approaching them. They looked to be about thirty or thirty-five. One of them smiled and waved to me.

“Is that really you?” asked the curly-haired one with sunglasses, the youngest-looking of the three. “You are Ellie, aren't you? Ellie Stone?”

I surely blushed. “Yes, but I. . .”

He smiled a crooked grin and cocked his head to the right. I noticed the brown speck in his green eyes. He touched his right hand to his chest in a self-conscious gesture of identification. “It's Isaac. Isaac Eisenstadt. And you must remember Simon and David,” he said, pointing to his companions.

In an instant their faces came back to me, along with a flood of memories. During my family's summer visits to Prospector Lake, we had shared many meals and parties with them. I was the youngest of the children, but the other kids took me in, allowed me to join them in their games of badminton, tetherball, and water tag. The summer before we entered the war, when I was five years old, the older boys and my brother, Elijah, all decided to shave their heads for some obscure end. Wanting to belong, I demanded they shave mine as well, and they quite nearly did. My mother happened upon us just as they were tying the sheet around my neck to begin the shearing. Elijah, four years older than I, got cuffed on the back of his shorn head for his trouble (and his objectionable haircut), and I was dragged off by my arm back to Cedar Haven, my long, curly hair intact.

Now, seeing them again after so long, I broke into laughter and gave each of them a warm hug. They were all slim and tanned, relaxed and happy, from what looked like weeks of summer vacation. Simon had lost most of his hair, some weight, too, and grown a little goatee, reminiscent of Lenin's tapered beard. David's right leg still stood crooked and withered, just as I remembered it. He had borne the handicap from a young age with the insouciance and lack of awareness that only a child could manage. I remembered him running lopsided, a brace on his leg, playing harder than the rest, laughing louder, too. He defied pity.

Isaac was closer to my age than the others were, probably four or five years older than I. His hazel eyes sparkled in a way I didn't remember. He wasn't tall or particularly muscular, nor would you consider him classically handsome. But his smile and wavy hair called to mind Tony Curtis.

We stood on the dock, chatting and laughing for nearly an hour. David Levine was a pediatrician, working as a staff physician at the Harlem Hospital Center. Simon Abramowitz wrote political pieces and art and music critiques for
Commentary
, the
New Republic
, and the
New Yorker
, among others. He always had his nose in a book. And Isaac taught math at Bronx Science and still played the piano and violin in various chamber groups.

“Why don't you join us at Arcadia tonight?” he said. “Miriam and Rachel and Ruth are here, too. We've got a quartet and the correct number of strings.” That made me giggle. “We're going to play some music we've been working on. There's always wine and food. It'll be great fun.”

“That sounds lovely,” I said. “I'd like to come, but I'm here with my aunt Lena and cousin Max.”

“The more the merrier,” he said. “Bring them along. My father's here. He'd love to have someone closer to his age to talk to about the old days.”

David Levine snorted a laugh through his nose. “You know Ellie's aunt is Mrs. Suskind, don't you?” he asked Isaac. “The object of your adolescent fantasies.” Then he turned to me. “Isaac spent a couple of summers watching your aunt swim nude in the lake.”

Isaac shoved him playfully, nearly knocking him into the water. David's stance was tenuous, after all, even when he wasn't on the receiving end of a push.

“Don't listen to him,” said Isaac.

“He had a huge crush on your aunt back then,” David said. Isaac was blushing crimson.

“Well, she was quite attractive, and I was a teenager,” he admitted, flashing his crooked, Tony Curtis smile. “And no one could convince her to wear a bathing suit. My mother tried for years.”

Nothing had changed.

“Your mother was against nudity?” I asked. “I seem to remember a lot of naked swimmers back then.”

Isaac shook his head. “She had nothing against people swimming nude in theory. Just your aunt. I think she objected to my dad's admiration of her, er, form.”

“It sounds as if you were an admirer as well,” I said and immediately regretted it. Why was I gossiping about my naked aunt with an attractive man who'd just invited me to dinner?

The moment grew stale, and everyone's smile dimmed as we looked for something to say. Finally Isaac cleared his throat and repeated the dinner invitation.

“Come 'round the Great Lodge at seven thirty. We'll have trout and sweet corn. Lots to drink. And pork chops, of course. We're good Jews, after all.”

Simon frowned. “Speak for yourself. I won't be eating pork.”

“That's right,” chided Isaac. “Simon keeps kosher these days.”

They joked back and forth for a bit, with Simon denying he kept kosher and Isaac insisting that he did.

“So you'll come?” asked Isaac once their bickering had run its course.

I felt a bit shy intruding on their celebrations, but I wanted so much to attend. I told him I'd check with Lena and Max. The three of them were cajoling me some more, insisting that I come, when Tiny Terwilliger and the troopers chugged around the bend in two boats, one of which bore two shrouded bodies. My mood soured.

“What happened anyway?” asked Isaac. “We heard someone was killed.”

“Two men,” I said. “A man and a teenage boy. They were diving from Baxter's Rock and missed the water.”

“Both of them?” asked Isaac. “Despite all the warnings and what everyone says, no one ever misses the water.”

“Do the police know who they are?” asked Simon.

“The boy seems to be a camper from Orpheus. They don't know who the man is yet.”

“Wasn't he carrying any identification?”

“Nothing in his trouser pockets.”

The driver loaded the bodies into the back of the hearse, while Terwilliger and the two troopers talked things over. The chief was droning on about something or other. The state cops kept nodding slowly, as if he was putting them to sleep. Finally they threw him a salute, in lieu of shaking the hand he'd offered, and climbed into their cruiser. Terwilliger stepped back and waved as they pulled away from the shoulder and followed the hearse north on Lake Road.

Isaac, David, Simon, and I watched in silence. Once the law had decamped, Terwilliger turned his gaze in our direction and waddled over to join us.

“Well, that's over with,” he said to me. Then he sized up my cohorts with a glance and a curt bob of the head as a greeting. I didn't think he was quite used to having Hebrews on his lake.

“Anything new on the identity of the man?” I asked. He shook his head. “What about the boy?”

“I'm going over to Camp Orpheus now to make inquiries.”

“What a sad story,” said Isaac. “Poor kid.”

Terwilliger shrugged. “Yeah, too bad,” he said, convincing no one. “That's why we don't want people jumping off cliffs.”

He turned to me, nodded, and set off for his truck.

CHAPTER THREE

I scolded myself for having lingered so long at the dock, not knowing if Max was safe or not. It was past six when I arrived at my cabin at Cedar Haven. After peeling off my bathing suit, I ducked into the outdoor shower and hosed off the last of the lake and Tiny Terwilliger's truck smell. Feeling human again, I stepped into a yellow-and-white cotton sundress and a pair of flats, then dragged a brush through my unruly hair. Disgraceful, but nothing to be done about it without a hairdryer. I found Aunt Lena in the kitchen in the main cabin, squeezing limes and preparing some canapés for cocktail hour.

“Tell me what happened out there,” she said. “Who was it who was killed?”

I explained that one was an unknown man, possibly a stranger to the area, and the other was a teenage boy from Camp Orpheus. Then I asked casually about Max, who was nowhere in sight.

“Not back from his ambulations,” she said. “I swear he's crazier every day. Like Jean-Jacques Rousseau.”

“Is it usual for him to stay out so long?” I asked.

She shook her head, sliced some pimento loaf, and placed it on a cracker. “He's usually back in time for a nap around three or three thirty. And he likes to go for a swim about five.” She reconsidered her words. “Well, he likes to sit in two feet of water around five.”

I peered out the window and chewed my lip. “We're invited to Arcadia this evening,” I said, scanning the path that led to Jordan Street in front of our camp, looking for signs of dear Max.

“I haven't seen them in a couple of years. Who invited us?”

“Isaac Eisenstadt. He's here with his father and some of the old gang. Simon Abramowitz and David Levine.”