Spider Lake (30 page)

“Ben, would you please call me when you have a chance to talk? I know you are busy now and it would be impolite for you to be on the phone when you are the guest in someone’s home. Just call me when you are free okay?”

“Sure Jill, tell the boys I love them and give them a hug for me.”

“Okay Ben, I will. One other thing Ben— be careful.”

“I will Jill. I love you. Bye.”

Carly Morton walked into the room with a pair of crystal champaign flutes. She placed one of them in front of Ben at the table.

“Was that your wife?”

“Yes.”

“Everything okay?”

“Yes, thank you.”

“I took the liberty of making you a Mimosa. I hope you don’t mind. I love the taste of a Mimosa. I don’t get the chance to have them very often.”

Ben took a sip of the champaign drink. It tasted perfect.

“This is delicious Carly. Thanks.”

“I have a little more preparing to do Ben. About ten minutes before we eat. Would you like to wait here, or join me in the kitchen?”

Ben had just now noticed the smell which was coming from the kitchen. It was a smell that he hadn’t sensed for many years. When he was a boy, his mother had prepared roast duck on special occasions. He had tried once or twice as an adult to cook the bird, but had failed to mimic his mother’s recipe.

“I guess I will join you in the kitchen, if that’s alright.”

He followed his host into the kitchen. She pulled the duck out of the oven and busied herself on a couple of side dishes atop the stove.

“Have you ever had roast duck Ben? I love duck. It takes a little tender-loving-care to prepare it. Just as soon as it is done resting, we can eat.”

Ben noticed that she had less to say than the previous times she had spoken with him. Before, he could hardly get a word in edgewise.

He helped her to carry the dishes into the dining room.

“Are you a believer Ben? Would you like to give thanks?”

Ben was always embarrassed to pray publicly. She somehow seemed to sense that so she added: “I’m sorry Ben. It is hard for you isn’t it? I shouldn’t have imposed.”

“It’s not that Carly. I give thanks, but I am not all that talkative most of the time and I get embarrassed in front of people.”

They both said their own silent prayers and then they ate. They talked little during the meal.

“Do you like the duck Ben?”

Ben was enjoying every bite of the bird. It tasted exactly the way his mother used to prepared it.

“Yes, it is delicious. I could never make it taste this way.”

“You gave up after only two tries. That isn’t like you Ben. You are not one to quit so easily.”

Aside from the fact that she seemed to know all about him, Ben was feeling out-classed in every way. The beautiful woman opposite him could talk expertly on any subject. He felt privileged just to be in the same room with her. When the main course was done, she surprised Ben with his favorite desert; banana-creme pie. The silver platter she presented it on was embellished all around the rim with silver peach-pit monkeys sucking on their tails.

She looked directly into Ben’s eyes and said nothing. She didn’t set the platter down, or move from where she was standing.

Ben was floored by the serving platter. He felt the hair on his head stand on end. His head began to spin. He wanted to cry and he didn’t know why. Carly finally continued to place the platter on the table and slice the pie. Ben finally asked, “Who are you?”

She answered Ben as she set a slice of pie in front of him.

“I know. Maybe the peach-pit monkeys rattled you a bit. Your grandfather spent so many long hours whittling them, and I so love them— let’s just say I am a friend.”

She waited for Ben to say something while she served herself a slice of the pie. She walked back over to her side of the table and sat down. She smiled again at Ben and then she said; “Your grandfather was a quiet man. He said more with the peach-pit monkeys than he ever did with his conversation. He died before you were born. You will see him someday.”

“Why are you here? Are you part of the dream? Why am I here?”

“There is always a way out Ben. Do you understand? When one door closes and things seem impossible, another one opens.”

Ben wanted very badly to hold his wife Jill, to kiss her on her cheeks, her forehead, her mouth. He wanted to tell her everything was going to be alright. He yearned to hold her and tell her how much he loved her.

“Why do I feel this way?”

“It is nothing new Ben, just love. There is no time to explain further. Ben, you have to do what you came here for. You have to face your fears head on. Do you remember the inscription on the back of Sam’s painting?”

“Sort of. It said something about looking within to find the answers. I thought is was hippy-dippy flower-child stuff.”

“Ben, many of the things we yearn for are right in front of us, and we don’t even know they are there. You have worked very hard all your life. You did everything asked of you and you were good at your job. But what has that gotten you? Your biggest fear was always the foreclosure of your home. Now that it is coming true you are realizing that your fears were exaggerated. You are still alive. You are still being fed. You are still housed. The mistake you made was relying on your home rather than your creator. You made your home your God. Do you understand?”

He did.

“One more thing Ben. Too much money is just as difficult as not enough. Many who have it, worship it. It becomes what your house once was to you. It becomes their God. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Carly, I think I do.”

“Ben, finish the pie and then get back to the business you came up here for.
 
If you hurry you will still have time.”

ohn and Allie didn’t sleep. All they could do was pray and wait for daylight. The night of thunderstorms finally gave way to clear skies with the morning. Many of the resort patrons were waiting at the two picnic tables just outside the screen porch when John walked out of the house. It was still forty-five minutes before sunrise, and John was touched by their honest concern and their willingness to help. They had two large coffee pots plugged in to an extension cord, and someone had already gone to town to buy three large boxes of donuts.

During the night, state and local police canvassed all the cabins at the girl scout camp with the hopes of finding Ben or Matt taking shelter there. The phone and power lines were out, so the police made a door-to-door search on foot. The girl scout camp missed a direct hit from the twisters, and was mostly spared, sustaining moderate damage from downed trees and falling debris. A thorough search of the burned mansion was made, and there were no bodies other than the two that were known to be inside.

The fire department had already launched their search and rescue boat in the early morning hours so they would be ready at first light to search the lake for the two missing boys. They also had a team of divers ready to search beneath the surface where John had last seen the boat. The girl scouts were mounting their own organized search effort, coordinating with the fire department to begin at first light. Each of the twelve camp counselors would supervise a team of the scouts, and they would search the entire perimeter of the lake. They didn’t want to add to the trouble by losing one of their own, so the girls were each given a searching partner.

John bailed the sunken runabout with a submersible pump which was given him by the fire marshal he met the previous night. Being busy at something helped John to keep his sanity. He was doing all he could to stay positive, to stay hopeful. Allie wanted to ride along with him in the boat to help search for her boy, but the fire marshal had discouraged her from doing so, making the argument that she would not be of much help on the water and that she would be more effective leading a squad of searchers comprised of her resort patrons.

The fire marshal had been on plenty of water searches, and he had learned the hard way about having a mother along when a drowning victim was recovered from the water. It was always better to have a body cleaned up before allowing a mother to identify it. A clean body was infinitely better than one covered in seaweed, or one that was damaged by a feeding turtle.

John pulled the runabout out at first light. He drove past the place where he had rescued the couple the day before. The yellow boat they had been in was submerged, still hanging up on the underwater deadfall. He sped the boat up to half-throttle and headed for the Rule estate.

The mansion grounds became the impromptu headquarters for the search effort. When John pulled up, there were still a score of firemen hosing the smoldering structure, and another half dozen at the lake preparing diving gear and loading the department boat. The girl scout boat was already backing out with three other men aboard. A tent had been set up and when John looked over at it, he noticed Matt’s mother sitting with a blanket wrapped around her. Her red eyes and nose revealed that she had been crying. A police woman had an arm around her, trying to comfort her. The fire Marshal stopped talking with the dive team and came over to meet John.

“Morning Mister Fisher.”

John didn’t answer.

“Mister Fisher, I would like to update you on what we have been doing since we talked last night, and what we know so far.”

John still kept quiet. He was concentrating on the divers.

“Mister Fisher, during the night-time hours we canvassed all the nearby residents with an emphasis on the girl scout camp, hoping to find the boys taking shelter. Although we had no good fortune of finding the boys, we have enlisted the camp in the search effort.”

John was still watching the dive team, and he couldn’t believe what was happening.

“The two preservers have been found—”

“Where were they!?”

“One preserver was found in the forest just east of the grounds, and the other has been found a half a mile to the east of here. A resident who was driving from town seen it about a hundred yards from the road hanging from a tree.”

John sat down in the grass and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He was stressed to his limits and thought he might throw up.

“Mister Fisher, the finding of the preservers could be a blessing. You said that you thought you seen the orange preservers on the boys, am I right?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then, that would mean that the boys took them off. Your boy and the Andersen child would not have taken the flotation gear off until they were safe on shore right? Are you positive they were wearing them when you last seen them?”

John put his head even lower between his legs because he was feeling sick. He ran one hand through his hair and said: “I’m not sure. The waves made it hard to see.”

A fire department diver walked up and interrupted the conversation, pulling the fire Marshal aside. The two men spoke in hushed tones and then the man left, pushing the department boat out from the shore.

“Mister Fisher, you haven’t slept. Why don’t you go over and sit in the tent with Mrs. Anderson? We will keep you apprised of the effort whenever we— find anything. Better yet, why don’t you let one of my men bring you home. You and the missus would do yourself a lot of good by getting some rest. There are hundreds of searchers. We will find your boy.”

Rosa McCann drove the Lincoln up from Chicago. She followed Butch’s instructions to a tee, and parked at the airport as planned. She waited for an hour there. Butch was nowhere to be seen. She was getting antsy, thinking that Butch might have double-crossed her. Maybe Butch took the gold for himself.

She put the Lincoln in drive and floored the machine, hoping to catch the no-good weasel at their rented house. When she got to the house there was still no Butch. Finally she took a chance and drove by the mansion.

When she arrived at the scene, there were volunteer firemen hosing down the smoldering embers of the ruined mansion. The gravel road had cars parked on both sides for a quarter of a mile in each direction. There were three huge fire-engines parked on the mansion lawn. She looked at the circus of activity in wide-eyed disbelief, her jaw going slack, and when she rolled down the car window, an official looking man walked up to the car.

“Can I help you Ma’am?”

Rosa had a lump in her throat. She swallowed hard. Her voice came out in a squeak. She answered, “Yes. Was— anybody in there?”

“Yes, Ma’am— we have a pretty good idea that the owner and his caretaker perished in the fire. Of course we will have to wait for the dental records to establish—

Rosa fainted in the front seat of the Lincoln. Two months later she would find out that she was carrying her late husband’s baby.

Ben and Matt tried to talk to one another. The yelling at the top of their lungs might have helped had they waited until daylight. They couldn’t comprehend the possibility that they both could lose their voice at the same time. Ben remembered his father telling a story about an encounter with a black bear while camping in Canada. The same thing happened to him after yelling at the top of his lungs to scare the poor creature off. Now it had happened again; only this time both he and Matt were silenced.