Spider Lake (21 page)

 
He pressed the touch-screen button once, but didn’t hear a bell.
 
He waited for a minute, and was about ready to press it again, when a voice called out from somewhere behind him in the clearing.

“Can I help you?”

Ben’s nerves were already on edge from the previous night’s dream and the morning’s run-in with the law, so he jumped at the sound of the voice behind him. He was standing on two separate treads of the small wooden stairway, and turning his head too quickly, he lost his balance and had to hop off the steps and into the grass to avoid doing a pratfall. He wondered why he was so unsteady lately. He had never been clumsy or accident-prone before. Now it seemed that every time he was turning around he was falling over or getting dizzy or throwing up. He looked to see who the owner of the voice was, and to his chagrin, a beautiful young woman was walking towards him across the clearing from the direction of the cabins.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.” she said with a smile.

The woman walking toward Ben looked to be in her late twenties or early thirties. She had honey brown hair, put up in a bun with a scarf tied in the front. She was wearing a button-down shirt whose tails were also tied above her waist in the same fashion as the scarf, and casual jeans hemmed at mid calf. She had a bucket in one green rubber-gloved hand, and a scrub brush in the other. Ben thought as she came nearer that she was too beautiful to be cleaning cabins, and would be much better suited as a New York or Paris fashion model. Her appearance took him completely by surprise.

“Are you okay? You look a bit wobbly to me. The button at the door is connected wirelessly to my computer, which alerts my smart-phone. That way, I can be anywhere on the premises and know when someone is at the door. All the cabins are on the same network. Are you Mister Daley?”

Ben was finally coming back to his senses. The woman standing before him was just as remarkable up close. Her eyes were large and amber-colored and matched the hue of her hair.
 

“Hi, No, my name is Ben. Ben Fisher. Would it be possible for me to talk to the owners of the resort?”

“You are looking at the owner Mister Fisher. My name is Charlotte Morton. How can I help you?”

Oddly enough, he hadn’t thought until now about how he would handle his association with the resort of his boyhood. Should he divulge his identity as a former resident of the resort? Or should he play it cool for now and only ask for a cabin? The young woman looked friendly enough. He decided that he should withhold any extra information for now.

“I was wondering if you have any cabins available?”

Ben was half expecting Ms. Morton to key in a couple of touch screens and tell him “No vacancy, see you later old man.” but instead, she invited him into the office.

She unlocked the screen door with her smart-phone, waving it across the engraved pad which also held the button. Ben couldn’t help himself looking at every square inch of the porch, doing a mental inventory of the place and cross-referencing it with his memory. They crossed into the mud room which opened the way to the kitchen straight ahead, and the office to the left. Ben grabbed a quick peek at the kitchen as he followed Ms. Morton to the office.

She was a chatterbox, talking all the way non-stop until they reached the office. “I had this system installed as soon as I bought the place. I can’t stand using old-school keys all the time. With this, I just have to wave my phone and voila, the lock is open. I have to use the key to lock up when I am gone of course, but I only go to town now and then when I need a change of scenery. The key overrides the electronic system so when you use the key, it switches off the electronic key. I have had this place since I was twenty-eight. I was in on some early dot-com IPO’s and I got out before oh eight. I grew up in Marinette, and I thought about moving to New York, or Los Angeles, but most of my family are in this area so I decided to move back here after getting my masters. I thought about going the bohemian way and taking the art classes, but my parents encouraged me to take communication. They said I would be good at it.”

Ben only heard bits and pieces of what Ms. Morton had said on the short walk from the steps to the office. He was distracted by the flood of memories he was experiencing, walking through his boyhood home. The young woman was still prattling on about her efforts to achieve a second masters degree over the winter months but she was taking them on-line so she could take a beach vacation. He was scanning the many framed pictures and documents in her office.

“— Where are my manners. Can I get you a cup of coffee or tea mister Finster? There was a break in the talking. She was looking at him in such a way that she expected an answer. Ben was in another world. A world that took place forty-five or six years ago. His eyes had stopped on a ten by twelve black and white photo hanging on the office wall. In the photo there were twenty or so adults sitting and standing at an obvious picnic. There were three or four picnic tables laden with food and beer bottles. One table had a cake on it which suggested a birthday party. The main house was visible in the background, placing the image here at the resort. One man, Ben’s dad, was smiling and flipping hamburgers on a charcoal grill. All of the people in the photo were laughing hysterically— in the foreground was a running Labrador retriever with a monkey riding on its back. Ben assumed correctly that his mother was behind the camera.

“Mister Finster, can I get you something to drink?

Ben was slowly coming back to reality. He wrenched his gaze off the image and gave an answer as if his words were first stuck in the mud, then accelerating to normal speed.

“Fisher. My name is Ben Fisher. I’m sorry what did you say? I was looking at this picture. How about that. A monkey riding a dog.”

“Yes, I guess the resort had a monkey at one time. The photo was still on the office wall when I closed on the place, and I thought what the heck I will leave it up. What a hoot. I should post this image on Flickr. Are you thirsty mister Fisher? I am jones-ing for a cup of coffee. Can I offer you one?”

Before he could answer, she was on her feet, heading for the kitchen. Ben got up as well. He walked back towards the kitchen where she was already busy at an espresso machine. “What a firecracker.” he thought to himself. “What is she like with caffeine in her system?”

She stopped what she was doing and took a close look at Ben. She gave him a thoughtful expression and then she said, “You have been here before haven’t you Mister Fisher.”

Ben wondered how he had given himself away. “What gives you that idea Ms. Morton?”

“When you walked in you didn’t hesitate in the mud room. You headed in the direction of the office while I stopped to remove my rubber gloves. You were studying every inch of the place as you walked. You knew who it was in the photo. Your face gave you away.”

“You seen all of that in a couple of minutes time? Am I that obvious?”

“Yes, you did. And not only that, I am guessing that you lived here in this house. Your parent’s owned this resort.”

“Now how in the world could you know that, Ms. Morton?”

“Please call me Carly. My friends all call me Carly. When you call me Ms. Morton, it makes me think you are talking to my mom. You call me Carly and I will call you Ben. So Ben, would you like cream or sugar in your coffee?”

“Cream please. So— Carly, are you going to tell me how it is you know I once lived here?”

“Let’s go back to my office Ben.”

Ben wondered how in the world anyone could keep up with this woman. She was back in the office in half the time it took him to get there. He thought that she reminded him of the human equivalent of Sonic the hedgehog, or Speedy Gonzales. When he caught up to her, she was already sitting behind the desk in her Herman Miller office chair. She had the black and white photo of the picnic in her hands. She was reading something on the back.

“Ben’s eleventh birthday. Nineteen sixty eight. Signed by Allie Fisher. How come you aren’t in the picture Ben?”

Ben thought, “Nothing gets by this woman. I will have to be careful.”

“Okay. You caught me. Are you sure you wouldn’t have been better suited to a career in crime investigation? You have taken a whole ten minutes to figure out I used to live here. What else do you know?”

“I know that you are either fifty-five or fifty-six depending on which summer month you were born. I know that the man flipping the burgers is probably your dad. What puzzles me is there are no kids in the photo.”

“It’s a long story. I was there with my friends, but we were all in the screen porch. We stayed inside a lot.”

“Okay Ben, you can tell me all about it during your stay. I have one cabin available. Number two. I was cleaning it when you arrived. All the others are full with the exception of number—”

“Four.” Ben interrupted. “You have number four opening up when— tomorrow?”

She smiled at him. It wasn’t often that someone could catch her off her guard. He guessed the correct number of the opening cabin, and she knew he was going to wait for it. She liked the game they were playing.

“I guess you will be waiting till tomorrow for number four then Ben.”

“Yes, I will Carly. Pen me in for tomorrow.”

He returned her smile.

erriweather “Sunny” Rule had picked a bad day for sending the staff away. He had to get rid of them on occasion so he could take a gander at his cache of gold, half of which was still right here on the premises. All by his lonesome was the only way he could move about without anyone getting wise to him. A few months back, he had orchestrated the plan to move half of the gold into several banks in both Minneapolis and Chicago. With his staff abroad, he hired an armored car service which specialized in transporting the precious metal, and in one weekend, he had acquired a whole new key chain full of safe deposit keys.

He didn’t trust the banks. He never would. But he had no other choice than to move it as a hedge and a ruse to bluff his untrustworthy staff. He had caught some of them snooping around the place when they thought he was asleep or wasn’t paying attention. He might be older than dirt, but he wasn’t a feeb. His once-trusted right-hand man McCann had even been seen by him poking around suspiciously.

And McCann had just married the new nurse Rosa. He trusted her about as far as he could throw her. He had no idea what Butch saw in the woman. She was only average in appearance, not what you would call ugly, but not pretty either; and judging from Sunny’s conversations with her, she wasn’t the brightest bulb in the chandelier. Sure, she was a decent nurse; she knew her way around a bedpan, but she was far too stupid to know when he was feigning sleep.

He would watch her with one squinted eye as she pretended to put things away or straighten out his dresser or his closet, none of which was in her job description. But he knew what she was really after. One time he caught her lifting his bowling bag and shaking it as if it were a gift-wrapped Christmas present from Santa Claus himself. He had to bite his lower lip to keep from laughing when she discovered that the bag actually contained a bowling ball. And there were the times when he heard McCann and her whispering outside his room in the hallway. What did McCann think? He was too old to hear them? No, he was positive they were in cahoots to find his cache.

 
Alright, he couldn’t trust them. But what else could he do? Hire a new staff? A new staff would be every bit as untrustworthy, if not more. It is better to have your enemy close so you know what they are up to.

It hadn’t always been this way. McCann had been loyal to him for many years and that counted for something. He would have inherited it all if he had remained that way. Now that he had become Judas, he was worth only his thirty pieces of silver. Nothing more.

Sunny wished he would have mentioned his plans for Butch when he still had complete confidence and trust in him, before the change. He had once thought of him as a son, and would have given him it all. He had confided in Butch things that he would never tell another living soul. All that confidence must have indicated to Butch that he was a trusted friend. What had gone wrong? Was it just because Sunny was getting old? Had Butch changed over time, or was he always just pretending?

When he first had his shyster lawyer draw up the living will a few years back, he might have been smart to show it to Butch. He wanted to tell his friend that he would be richly rewarded for his loyalty after his passing, but he didn’t want the money to come in-between them. Money changes a person. The whole dynamic of friendship changes for the worse when there is money involved. The person who has it never knows who his friends are, and the person doesn’t have it becomes jealous and covets it. How could he know if Butch was really his friend if Butch knew that he was going to be the sole beneficiary of a fortune in gold?

The only other family he had was his kid brother, and who knows where the hell that chump was or even if he was alive? He never liked the kid growing up, and after his dad died the brother was constantly pissing and moaning about one thing or another; pointing his accusing finger and laying on all his holier than thou phony morality. By now his brother might be an orange-robed, head-shaved Hare Krishna at some airport; or maybe he was the priest in charge of doing the spit-shine on the Pope’s ruby slippers before the blessing every Sunday at the Vatican.