Heart of Stone (30 page)

“I hoped I'd run into you here this evening,” he said. “Lucia and I were just saying how sorry we were not to see you again this summer.”

“Very sorry,” slurred Lucia.

“How lucky that we met here,” I said through my teeth.

“And who's your big, handsome friend?” asked Lucia, slipping off Isaac's shoulder and cozying up to Fadge, who looked terrified.

“Everybody, this is Ron,” I announced. “Fadge.”

The gang welcomed him. Lucia took his hand and asked him where he'd been all night. Poor thing. Despite his big talk, he was overwhelmed by the attention. Then Isaac took me by the arm and steered me away from the group.

“I'm so glad you came,” he said. “I've been thinking about what you said. You were so right. I've been a fool.”

“What's this about?” I asked.

He kissed me, right there in front of anyone who might have been watching. A long, passionate kiss. I kissed him back.

“I'm crazy about you,” he said.

“You're mad all right,” I said, giggling. “Control yourself. People will talk.”

“How can I make it up to you? How can I make it all up to you?”

I thought a moment. “You can start by apologizing for the Blanchards being here.”

“Sorry. This time it's my fault, not Miriam's,” said Isaac. “Nelson called me this afternoon and invited himself and his nymphomaniac wife to supper. Wouldn't take no for an answer.”

I wondered if his telephone call didn't have something to do with his meeting me at Philby's that morning. I wasn't flattering myself; I knew when a man was interested. And I knew even better when a man was rutting like a horny goat.

“So you'll stay with me tonight?” asked Isaac.

I shook my head. “I have my big friend.”

Isaac threw a glance back at the group we'd just left. “I'd say your big friend's doing just fine on his own.”

Lucia Blanchard was hanging on Fadge's every word, as well as on his sweater. Nelson Blanchard, too, seemed amenable to the match, if grinning ear to ear and licking one's lips meant what it used to.

“Poor Fadge,” I said. “I've got to rescue him. He looks miserable.”

“Let's slip away,” said Isaac, and damn me, I slipped.

We stepped outside the Great Lodge. Isaac led me through the trees to a secluded spot within earshot of the party going on inside. And there he took me on the ground, under the stars, atop the sticky pine needles. It was fast. Too quick for me even to get into the spirit of the proceedings. And then it was over. Isaac leaned against me, heaving for breath in the night air, holding my body tight. He was gentle and loving. Or was it gratitude? I stroked his temples, felt his heart beating against my side, and thought that this was surely the last time.

We brushed the pine needles off my backside and my skirt, out of my hair, and straightened our rumpled clothing. It's one of the inherent disadvantages of being female. We suffer the indignities of occupying the subjacent position in lovemaking. That means supporting the weight of the bucking male of the species as he satisfies his urges, suffering the scrapes and abrasions, the lumps and pinches, on the various surfaces we find ourselves up against. Something surely had bitten me, and I felt a bruise growing on the base of my back.

Before sneaking inside, we agreed that Isaac would go first, and I would follow a minute or two later. Isaac made his entrance with the practiced ease of one who'd done this before. As I waited outside, counting to two hundred in my head before risking it, I became aware of a malaise brewing inside me. I'd never felt that way before, but I was embarrassed. Actually embarrassed. I'd had unsatisfying encounters with men before, but this one bothered me, and I didn't quite know why. With difficulty I pushed the thought to one side. Then I realized I'd lost track of my count and had to start over.

When it was time, I took on the task of reentering the hall, striding straight for the door as if I'd been outside for nothing naughtier than a smoke. All was going according to plan until I crossed the threshold and ran headlong into Waldo Coons, who was wrestling a bin through the door on his way out to the garbage cans. We stood there face-to-face for several beats as I searched for something to say. He gulped, staring at me.

“Sorry,” I said, pushing past him.

“I saw you,” he said, and I froze in my tracks. I turned back to look at him. He shied away like a beaten dog.

“What did you say?” I asked.

“I saw you the other night,” he said in a strangled voice.

“What? Where?”

“It was raining,” he whispered. “You were running. In the woods.”

“That was you? You nearly scared me to death. Why were you following me?”

Waldo looked down at his muddy sneakers. He swallowed a couple of times, as if priming the pump in preparation to speak. But he couldn't get anything out of his throat.

“You've been following me all week, haven't you?” I said to accuse. “And that was you on the porch outside my cabin Tuesday night.”

Waldo sprang to life. “No, I never went to your cabin. Never.”

I wanted to ask for a more precise reckoning of his nocturnal activity, but did I really need to know how many insects he'd de-winged?

“Did you hear or see anyone wandering around in the woods that night?”

He shook his head and coughed over the trash cans. “Not then. Before. Last week there was a guy in the woods.”

“Who was it? Where?”

“He was in the shed,” he said. “The hunters' shed in the woods.”

“Will you show me where?” I asked.

I followed Waldo into the deep woods behind Arcadia Lodge, wondering if I would ever come back out alive. Was I mad? This was a man, after all, who I suspected bit off the heads of live chickens. And not at some sideshow, but for dinner. Yet I sensed he was harmless, just as Isaac and his father had said. And at 10:35 p.m. on a dark August night, we were going to explore an empty hunters' shed in the woods.

Waldo led the way in silence. He moved quickly and efficiently through the branches, and I labored to keep up. We reached the lean-to in less than five minutes. It was the same one I'd spotted off in the distance the previous night.

“He was staying in there,” whispered Waldo. “I seen him come and go.”

“What did he look like?” I asked.

Waldo shrugged. “Just a guy.”

Our hushed conversation only made the woods seem more menacing in the dark. I wanted to knock on the shelter's door and interview whoever might be inside, but my nerve didn't go that far. I asked Waldo to do the honors.

“There's no one in there,” he said. “Not anymore.”

I wondered how could he be so sure, but he didn't hesitate even for a moment. He stepped up to the door and yanked the latch. The door stuck, so he pulled harder, and it opened. No bogeyman leapt out. No one screamed. The night remained as silent as it had been before Waldo rattled the latch. I could hear faint voices from down the hill. It was the party at Arcadia, going strong in my absence. I took a cautious step closer to the open doorway. It was dark inside, but it appeared to be empty of marauders at the moment. A bolt of light fired across my nose into the doorway. I jumped.

“Flashlight,” said Waldo, holding it out for me.

I came down to earth and took it from him. Why the hell hadn't he used it on our climb up the hill? Drawing a calming breath, I put my fright to one side and entered the small shack.

Inside, a narrow wooden bed of sorts filled half the room. It was just a bench, really, about five and a half feet long. A dark wool blanket was folded neatly at one end. There were shelves on the wall at the other end of the bed with a box of matches, three cans of Sterno, a couple of half-burned honeycomb candles, and some empty quart bottles. A cast-iron skillet hung from the wall next to an antique double burner. Beside the door was a small mirror and lopsided stool with an old, chipped, enamel bedpan on top. And hanging from a nail on the back of the door was a leather Dopp kit.

“The man stayed here three nights,” said Waldo as I opened the kit. “Then he didn't come back.”

“How did you discover him here?” I asked. “Did he make noise? Start a fire?”

“No. But I notice things.”

I rooted through the Dopp kit, retrieving a comb, a safety razor, shaving soap, a styptic pencil, and aftershave. A toothbrush and toothpaste. I placed them on the wooden bed. There was also shampoo, a nail file, clippers, and two handkerchiefs. A pair of scissors and some hair tonic. With the bag now empty, I opened it wide and examined the inside. Nothing but the tag. Swank. Fine leather. On the outside was a monogram.
KMM
.

“Where the hell have you been?” asked Fadge when I walked into the Great Lodge at eleven fifteen.

“I thought I'd left you in good company. Didn't you want to meet new people?”

He threw a look over his shoulder then turned back to me. “That Lucia is sick. She told me her husband likes ‘big fellows' like me.”

“Then we must make time for a dinner with them before we leave.”

“Not funny, El,” he said.

Fadge was the only person who called me that. The only person since my brother, Elijah. I was finally getting used to it. It no longer caused me pangs of sorrow.

“There you are,” said Isaac, interrupting our tête-à-tête. “What happened to you?”

Fadge regarded us queerly, and Isaac volunteered that we'd gone outside for a smoke and I hadn't returned. I'm sure I blushed.

“Relax,” I told both of them. “I'm fine. Waldo and I made a discovery. Let me tell you about it. I found this.” I held up the Dopp kit.

“Whose is that?” asked Isaac.

“I can't say for sure. But it's monogrammed. KMM.”

Chief Terwilliger showed up at Arcadia Lodge yet again, smelling strongly of beer, as usual. I had called him to let him know about the Dopp kit. There was little doubt in my mind whose toiletries were inside, but procedures demanded the police.

“Can anyone actually confirm that this stuff belonged to Charles Morton?” Terwilliger asked the assembled in the Great Lodge.

No one could say with certainty since they hadn't seen Karl in years. Still, the initials were compelling, said Isaac. Everyone agreed.

“Okay,” said Terwilliger, stuffing the kit into a paper bag and downing the rest of his beer. “I'll add this to the evidence. Maybe we'll get a fingerprint expert from the state police to have a look at it. But don't hold your breath.”

“Just a moment, Chief,” I said. “I believe everyone is overlooking one important detail pertaining to the kit.”

“What's that?” he asked.

“It looks brand-new, wouldn't you say?”

“Looks new to me,” he agreed. “So maybe he bought it recently. It looks like he had money for this kind of thing.”

“Of course,” I said. “But if he bought it recently, why are the initials wrong?”

Terwilliger pulled the kit back out of the bag, surely slathering his own fingerprints all over it. He turned it over until he had the monogram under his nose.