Green Lake (2 page)

“I don't understand you,” said Manuel, shaking his head. “Jacqueline does not understand you, either. You have changed.”

“I know,” said Madeleine.

‘‘You know?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Well?”

“Well, what, Manuel?”

He threw up a hand. “You should fit in very well here I think, Madeleine.”

Madeleine flared her nostrils at the apparent insult, but she said nothing. There was nothing to say.

CHAPTER TWO

No one was more surprised than Eris Renard to find the small, blonde Madeleine Heron on his step at lunchtime that day. He put down his sandwich and went to push open the screen door. As the sunlight caught the side of her face he saw that she was older than he had at first believed. And prettier.

Her look once again fastened on the scars in his cheeks. Irritated, Eris removed his sunglasses and said, “May I help you?”

Her gaze shifted and she met his eyes. Eris lifted both black brows as she went on to stare at the gun on his hip. “Miss?”

“I've come to apologize for my earlier behavior with you,” she said. “I realize how it must have seemed, but it was nothing personal, believe me. We got off on a bad foot and I'd like to start over, since I'm going to be your neighbor for a while.”

Eris nodded. “No apology is necessary. Have a nice stay, Miss Heron.”

He had turned away when he heard her say, “I'm a bit old to be called 'miss.' Please call me Madeleine.”

“All right, Madeleine. If you'll excuse me, I just stopped in to grab a sandwich.”

She backed immediately away. “Of course. Forgive the intrusion.”

Eris closed the screen door and went back to the kitchen and his sandwich. He picked it up and took it out to the truck with him. Out of the corner of his eye he saw her walking back up to the log cabin, her spine stiff.

His mouth twitched as he thought of the way she had unabashedly stripped in front of the window the night before. Then he thought of her first glimpse of him, and the way her lip had curled.

He shoved the sandwich into his mouth and pushed his key into the ignition. Pretty girls had looked that way at him for as long as he could remember. It was nothing new.

He guided the truck out of his driveway and onto the road, turning when he reached the road that led to the dam. When he reached the bridge he slowed down to look around. He thought he had spied some oil on the road before, possibly spilled from a boat or some leaking old engine pulling a boat. He saw nothing now, so he guessed it had been his imagination. Oil patches were particularly dangerous on bridges, and would be nothing less than lethal on this one.

A horn tooted behind him and he looked in his rearview mirror to see Madeleine Heron behind the wheel of the old blue Chevy pickup that sat in the cabin's garage. The Ortiz couple was in the cab with her. Eris stuck an arm out the window and waved her around him. She ground the gears and jerked out past his truck. No power steering. Shift on the column. She was going to have her hands full.

Eris sat and watched the truck until it was out of sigh
t then he went over the dam and down the road to where men fished beneath the dam. Out of the dozen or so fishing there several would not have permits, or the permits they did have would be expired. Campers without permits, boaters without the proper equipment and/or permits, pyromaniacs shooting off fireworks, drunks on skis and off—all of these things he had to look forward to over the next few busy months. And much more.

It was the middle of his second year as a conservation officer. He had attended college and covered the areas of wildlife biology and fisheries scienc
e. He had completed certification as a law enforcement officer and learned how to speak in front of large groups of people. He knew how to operate every piece of required equipment and was expert at catching and trapping wild animals. His colleagues were envious of his marksmanship abilities, but few ever bothered to learn his name. He was always simply “the Indian.”

People at the lake were the same. It was never, “here comes the game warden” (which people persisted in calling conservation officers despite the title change), but always “here comes that Indian,” or “here comes trouble.”

Eris was used to instant animosity. Standing six feet four and having a face like his, people tended toward instant dislike. The uniform enhanced the effect rather than diminished it. Now people not only disliked him on sight, but most stepped back with a glimmer of anxiety and mistrust in their eyes.

Another man might have felt a certain amount of power under such circumstances, having such sway over people, but Eris felt nothing more than irritation. When he spoke to small civic groups or other interested parties he did his best to appear polite and civil and not at all menacing, but still he heard whispers, received numerous distasteful looks and was asked to answer very few questions. His frustration was evident to his superior, but communication with the public was a part of what he did, and Eris had to handle it. He solaced himself with the fact that public relations made up only
fifteen percent or so of his job requirements.

The majority of his activities involved enforcing laws and regulations by patrolling his assigned area, which included all of
Greenwood County. Help would arrive during the summer, when another CO came to take over the task of patrolling the area lakes. Dale Russell had been hired at the same time as Eris, but Russell spent half of his time performing the duties of an administrative assistant and lobbying in Topeka trying to convince lawmakers to give conservation officers more police power.

Eris had made no less than four drug arrests the summer before, and he had testified in all the cases and s
aw all the defendants convicted, but if a person was speeding through the park, doing thirty miles over the speed limit, Eris was virtually powerless to do anything other than stop the driver—if possible— and issue a warning.

He saw a Mustang speed by on the bridge above just as he left the truck and approached the men fishing below the dam. Eris shook his head and continued walking. The owner of the Mustang was a spoiled, rich little miss whose parents owned a large pontoon boat used mainly for fishing and parties. He had stopped the girl twice last year to ask her to slow down while in the park area and she'd shaken and trembled and pretended penitence, looking under her lashes at her friends the whole while and garnering giggles for her performance. The last time he stopped her she had winked and licked her lips suggestively, still smiling at her friends. Eris wanted to shake her.

The men fishing below the dam were ready for him when he approached, and Eris spent the next half-hour checking licenses and making small talk. When he left the area he passed the old blue pickup on its way back to the cabin and lifted a finger in acknowledgment of Manuel Ortiz's wave.

Manuel Ortiz was cordial and respectful, and when he asked Eris for the latest boating guide summary the evening before, Eris had been only too happy to comply. He chalked up Ortiz's manners to being foreign born and gave him another five years before learning to demand rather than ask, like most Americans. One of the worst was Sherman Tanner, a year-round denizen who liked to stop Eris every chance he got and demand that an end be put to this and a stop be put to that and why didn't he do something since he was supposed to be some sort of law who carried a gun and everything.

Eris tried to tell him he wasn't that kind of law, not a community constable or a personal security officer placed on the hill for the protection of Sherman and Gudrun Tanner from loud kids and obnoxious boaters. If he didn't like dealing with lakeside activity, then he shouldn't live by a lake, the digging fool.

The remainder of Eris's day was spent in patrolling, putting miles on the truck and making occasional stops to talk to people. A new farm
er had a problem with his pond, all the fish he had stocked the year before were now dead and floating on the surface. Eris took samples of the water for analysis and told him to keep the cows out. By the time he made it back to the reservoir it was nine-thirty and he was hungry and tired.

He put the truck in his own detached garage and stepped up to his back door to insert his key in the lock. He paused when he heard music. Not the music that frequently came from Briar's Cove or the bay area, but soft classical music.

Manuel Ortiz, he thought, and he opened his back door and let himself in the house. In the kitchen he opened a window so he could still hear the music while he fixed himself something to eat. He glanced up toward the cabin while he made himself another sandwich and through the open curtains in the cabin's living room saw Manuel and his wife, Jacqueline, slow dancing across the floor. Madeleine Heron sat on the front porch of the cabin, and in the light from the living room Eris saw her head in her hands.

Desolation came from her in waves, and Eris stood motionless while he watched, wondering why the impulse to go up there was so strong when he knew he would face nothing but rejection. Some kind of human response mechanism, he guessed.

He had to wonder about her. She obviously possessed no desire to be here, and yet she was here for the summer, Ortiz had said.

A broken marriage? He wondered. A tragic loss?

It was somewhat unusual, he figured, for a woman like her to be sequestered away in a cabin alone for the summer.

He wondered if she had any children.

Her head came up as he watched and she looked directly at his cabin. Eris knew she saw him standing in his kitchen in the dim glow of his fluorescent bulb. He made no move to turn away or to do anything but finish eating his sandwich over the sink, where he usually did his eating.

She watched h
im steadily for several minutes then she surprised him by stepping off the porch and walking down the path toward his cabin.

Eris's first impulse was to turn off the light and refuse to open the door.

When no knock came, he was both relieved and curious. He walked into his darkened living room to look out the window and see where she had gone. When his eyes adjusted he saw her walking down the path to Briar's Cove and Vista Bay.

She was foolish to be out walking alone. The water was nearly a half-mile away
, anything could happen during a nocturnal stroll in these parts. He would have to speak to Ortiz again and ask him to warn her about the strange people in the area.

Eris sat by the window for over an hour, waiting and watching for her to come back again. When he finally saw her top the hill, he sighed and began to unbutton his shirt. He had to get to bed.

CHAPTER THREE

An odd sense of panic set in Sunday night as Madeleine watched her sister and brother-in-law haul their suitcases out to the Jeep.

Don't leave me!
She wanted to shout.
I've seen the Earthworm and last night just after dark I stumbled across a fat, middle-aged couple having sex on an air mattress in their front yard while two dogs sat wagging their tails and watching.

She clamped her lips shut and said nothing. She would seem ungrateful beyond words if she opened her mouth now.

The moment they were gone she would take out her portable word processor and begin a series of letters begging every university in the Mississippi Valley for a grant. She was open and accessible, interested in other areas of anthropology, and she was still relatively young. There were many aspects of Native-American culture she could research without actually living among them again, though in truth she longed to do just that. It was courage she lacked. Her last experience was still fresh in her mind, and though Madeleine knew the only way to conquer her fears was to face them, she still felt she was not quite ready.

The unsightly Eris Renard made her feel even less ready. He reminded her of the worst of everything she had faced in her life, with the possible exception of her husband's suicide, and it didn't help that his black eyes were so still and watchful or that his mouth hardly moved even when he spoke. Madeleine lumped him in with the other people she had been exposed to thus far, and she found she preferred her hip, snotty college students to the population of
Green Lake.

When Jacqueline and Manuel were ready to depart, they asked Madeleine for the hundredth time if there was anything she needed before they left. For the hundredth time, she told them she would be fine. There was gas in the old truck and groceries in the cabin. She was all set. She gave them what she hoped was a supremely confident smile and then went into the cabin and banged her head against the door when they left. Before the sound of their engine died away, she had her laptop out on the kitchen bar and was composing her first letter. She wrote three and had stuffed them in envelopes when she realized she had no stamps.

Muttering under her breath, she placed the envelopes in her purse. She had seen a tiny post office in the town of Green Lake. She would go there in the morning to post the letters and buy some stamps. The mailboxes for the cabins were all out on the road, built into a frame that held at least ten mailboxes. Madeleine's and Renard's mailboxes were separate from the others, but on a similar frame and hunched close together so that they resembled some odd squirrel feeder more than a pair of mailboxes.

Thinking of squirrels made Madeleine walk out to the porch to look at the tomato plants she had purchased that day from a woman at
Diamond Bay. She enjoyed fresh tomatoes and knew she had to get the plants into the ground soon. She left the porch and walked around the cabin, finding plenty of good sun on the south side. The earth looked all right—not wonderful, but the plants would grow. Madeleine walked back to the garage to look for a spade or a hoe. Minutes later she came out again, shaking her head.

What on earth made her expect to find something as simple as a garden implement in the garage of a cabin by a lake?

Calling on her years of living with people who had to do without, she searched all around the cabin until she found a long, sharp rock suitable for digging. She carried the rock to the south side of the cabin and got down on her hands and knees to start.

She had been digging and turning earth for maybe ten minutes when she felt a pair of eyes on her. Her head came up and jerked toward the road, where she saw Sherman Tanner, the Earthworm, watching her with an expression of incredulity while holding onto the leash of a small multi-breed dog.

“Is that a rock?” he asked from the road.

“Yes,” said Madeleine.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m making a bed for my tomato plants. I have no spade.”

Tanner's thin eyebrows disappeared beneath his yellow fishing hat. “Why don't you just borrow one? What are you, one of these survivalist nuts?”

Madeleine rose to her feet. “No, I'm not. But I am new here, and people usually aren't willing to loan something to a stranger.”

“Well, Renard has one, I'm sure. You should have asked him. You really can't dig in this muck without a good spade or a shovel. Limestone here, clay there, it's a mess.”

“Would you have a spade I could borrow?” asked Madeleine. “Or a shovel?”

“I really wouldn't feel good about that,” said Tanner. “Ask Renard when he gets home.”

Madeleine snorted and put her hands on her hips. “Did I miss something here? Weren't you the one who just suggested I borrow a spade?”

“From Renard, not me. My tools are my babies. I use them every day and don't ever let them out of my sight.”

“So I've heard,” muttered Madeleine.

“What?”

“You dig a lot,” she said louder.

“Who told you that?”

“No one. I saw you myself yesterday.”

“Oh, well. I was burying a hand I found in the water, but Renard made me dig it up again this morning and turn it over to him.”

Madeleine stopped cold. ”A hand? A human hand?”

“It floated right up to me while I was standing near the boat ramp at Vista Bay. I just knew it came from that skier who had a terrible accident last weekend. More than his hand was torn off, you know.”

“How…did it happen?” Madeleine asked.

“Two boaters didn't see each other, or were too drunk to care. It happens occasionally. Once, Gudrun and I found an entire arm in the water. They wouldn't let us keep that either.”

“Why did you want to bury it?” asked Madeleine, almost afraid to hear the answer.

Tanner shrugged. “Kind of symbolic, don't you think? A hand or an arm buried in your yard, always pointing.”

Madeleine forced herself into a nod. “Well,” she said, “I'd better get back to work here, before I lose my light.”

Sherman Tanner looked at the fading sun and gave a tug on his dog's leash. “Craziest thing I've ever seen, digging in the ground with a rock.”

“No crazier than you,” Madeleine murmured as she sank back to the ground.

“What's that?”

“I said have a good day.”

Tanner eyed her then said, “Not much of this one left. Do I take it you'll be staying awhile?”

“For a while,” Madeleine answered.

“All right, then.”

Tanner said nothing further, merely continued walking his dog up to the turnoff where the old cemetery lay. Madeleine felt as if she had just been given permission to exist by the wiry, suspicious-eyed Tanner.

Who did he think he was? She wondered. Keeper of the hill?

By the time he returned with his dog, Madeleine was carrying her tomato plants back to the three holes she had made. She felt Tanner's eyes on her as she placed the plants in the holes and began to fill in around them. When she could take it no more she paused in what she was doing and turned to stare at him. He quickly averted his gaze and pretended to be looking at the other side of the road. Madeleine sniffed and went on filling in with dirt. What a nutty old bird, burying human hands and arms. What was wrong with him?

She had tamped the earth down and was watering each plant when she heard the sound of a pickup truck skid to a halt right in front of the cabin.

Madeleine hurried around the side of the cabin in time to see a door of the truck's cab open and somebody toss something into her yard.

“Hey!” Madeleine yelled, and the driver of the truck threw rocks and gravel as he floored the accelerator.

Madeleine squinted in the growing dusk and just barely made out the license plate. Then she walked to see what in the name of Adolph Coors had been thrown in her yard.

She heard them before she saw them. No beer cans these, but three tiny kittens, each one round-eyed and mewling in terror, making their way across the lawn.

“Dammit,” said Madeleine as she stared at the small felines. Two were gray-striped and one was black.

Disgusted with the people in the truck, Madeleine gathered the kittens against her shirt and took them up to the porch. There was a large box in the garage that had once held Manuel's small satellite dish, and Madeleine placed the kittens in the box with two towels and a big bowl of milk. Then she went into the kitchen to write down the tag number and pen a note to Eris Renard.

He came home while she was slipping the note inside his screen door, and he looked inquiringly at her as he got out of the truck. He appeared tired, which made him look even more forbidding to Madeleine. She backed away and held up the note.

“Two people in a pickup came and dumped some kittens in my yard. I got the tag number.”

“Good,” said Renard, and he approached her to take the note. Madeleine had to steel herself not to jump away.

Renard sensed her stiffening. He stopped and held out his hand, palm up. Madeleine dropped the note in his hand and he turned to open his door. She shifted behind him.

“The kittens are on my porch in a box.”

He glanced over his shoulder at her but said nothing.

“You can pick them up anytime,” said Madeleine.

He looked at her again, and one brow lifted. “Would tomorrow morning suit you, Miss Heron?”

Madeleine noted his irritation and responded coolly, “Tomorrow morning will do just fine, Mr. Renard.”

He nodded and pushed open his door. Madeleine ambled up to the cabin and heard the scratching and scrabbling of three tiny pairs of claws trying to climb their way out of the box. She went inside and made herself some supper, and by the time she was ready for bed, the cries of the kittens were driving her crazy. She went out to the porch and scooped them up to bring them inside with her. She used a shoebox and some gravel from Jacqueline's terrarium as a litter box and issued a stern warning to the kittens before she climbed into bed. Their bellies plump with canned tuna, the kittens sat down on the end of the queen-sized bed to clean themselves. The feel of one rough little tongue on her big toe made Madeleine sigh, and for the last time that day she asked herself just what the hell she had gotten into. Dirt diggers, dumped kittens, mean-mouthed neighbors and buried hands always pointing. Pointing at what?