In the Dark of the Night (9 page)

He stepped into the room, gazing at the furniture. He could tell that some of the pieces were old—there was a mahogany table with a deep patina that told him it was at least a hundred years old, but some, like a chest whose white paint was chipped and stained, didn’t appear all that old, and looked like it must have been junk even when it was new.

But what was it doing in here? Some of the furniture looked like it belonged in the house, but what about the rest? The stuff like the white chest?

Could it have been hauled down from upstairs, where the grooms used to live?

Moving slowly through the room, Eric let his hands brush over the pieces, his fingers almost tingling as they touched the surfaces. Most of them felt just like what they were—old wood. But some of them—

“Eric!” His dad’s voice jerked him out of his reverie, and even through the walls of the carriage house he could hear that his father was angry.

“Coming,” he yelled, his voice echoing oddly in the small room, though furniture and boxes crowded the floor. He quickly threaded his way out, closed the storeroom door behind him, and left the building, closing the outer door as well.

His father was standing in the driveway, a tackle box in one hand, two rods in the other. “Where have you been?” he demanded.

Eric cocked his head. “Looking for tackle,” he said.

His father snorted. “It was in the basement—I found it half an hour ago. And I’ve been yelling for you ever since! Have you suddenly gone deaf?”

“Half an hour?” Eric echoed, staring at his father in disbelief. “I just went in there a couple minutes ago—”

“It wasn’t a couple of minutes ago. It was—” He raised his wrist and looked pointedly at his watch. “—exactly thirty-two minutes ago. And Jeff Newell just called. They’re going to be here in less than an hour, so if we’re going to take that boat out, we’ve got to do it and get back so I can start the barbecue.”

“I’m sorry,” Eric said, his head suddenly swimming. “I can’t believe I was in there—”

“Daydreaming!” his father finished for him. “So if we’re going, let’s go. Come on.”

Eric took the poles from his father and followed him down to the boathouse.
Half an hour? He’d been in that storeroom for half an hour?
It didn’t seem possible.

Dan stepped into the boat, set the tackle box on the middle seat, laid the rods on the floor, then sat in the bow. A moment later Eric had settled in the stern.

The motor started on the first pull, and as Eric released the stern line from its cleat, his father untied the bow line. Putting the engine in gear, Eric nosed the little skiff out of the boathouse.

As his father opened the tackle box and began searching through the jumble of hooks, lures, and sinkers inside, Eric headed onto the lake, but found himself turning to look back at the old carriage house.

Half an hour? He’d been inside for half an hour?

Even now it seemed he hadn’t been in the place more than five minutes. Ten at the most. He’d taken a quick look in the garage and the workshop—it couldn’t have taken more than two minutes. Then he’d gone into the storeroom and—

—and suddenly he couldn’t quite remember what he’d been doing. Just looking at stuff.

And touching some of it.

The fingers of his right hand tingled slightly at the memory of it.

But that was all.

And it had been only a few minutes—he felt sure!

Except that now, as he gazed at the carriage house that was growing smaller as they motored out onto the lake, he wasn’t so sure.

A moment later the building disappeared behind a screen of trees, and his father’s voice once again pulled him out of his reverie.

“She’s running fine,” Dan said. “Why don’t we hook up a couple of lures?”

But even as he began fishing, Eric’s mind was still on the storeroom in the carriage house. Kent and Tad would be here soon, and maybe after dinner tonight he’d take them down there.

Suddenly, the idea of exploring the storeroom and finding out exactly what might be inside it was far more exciting than fishing.

With fishing, all he’d get was the occasional trout or bass or muskie.

But in that strange storeroom, there was no telling what he might find.

E
LLIS LANGSTROM DROPPED
the last weed in the bucket, rubbed his aching shoulders, and finally stood up to assess his afternoon’s work. The entire border of flowers around the Islers’ summer house was weed free, the soil dark with fertilizer, and the flowers—whatever they were, which Ellis neither knew nor cared to know—actually seemed to be a few shades brighter now that there were no weeds around them.

More to the point, Mrs. Henderson would be happy, and so would the Islers, when they arrived tomorrow.

The yard cleanup had been a bigger job than he’d thought, and now he tried to stretch the pain out of his back as he searched for anything he might have forgotten.

There didn’t seem to be anything—the place looked great, and even Rita Henderson would have to admit it.

Ellis pulled off his gloves and tossed them into the bucket on top of the weeds just as Adam Mosler—stripped to the waist and streaked with sweat and dust—came around the corner of the house, using a filthy bandanna to wipe a smear of dirt from one cheek. The bandanna only made the smear worse.

“It’s raked,” Adam stated, sounding more resentful about having had to remove the mown grass from the front lawn than pleased to have finished the job. “Are you done?” He scanned the patio area disinterestedly. “’Cause even if you’re not, I am.”

“Thanks a lot,” Ellis said, then realized the sarcasm would be lost on Adam. “Yeah, I think it’s done.”

“Yeah, well, you owe me.”

“Hey, it’s not like no one’s paying you.”

“There’s still about ten million better things to do. I feel like a pig.”

“Look like one, too,” Ellis observed archly as he dropped down onto the cool grass and stretched out, feeling his aching muscles finally beginning to relax.

“Hey, check that out.”

Ellis sat up and followed Adam’s gaze, but saw nothing but two people fishing a few hundred yards offshore. “What?”

“That piece-of-crap tin boat? That’s the one from Pinecrest. And that’s the conehead from Pinecrest in it. What a prick.”

Ellis shook his head. “You think all the summer people are pricks. Just because you thought he wasn’t going to pick up his dog’s—”

“He wasn’t!” Adam flared. “And he was hitting on Cherie Stevens right in front of me.”

Ellis frowned. “Right in front of you? Okay, that’s not cool. Definitely not cool.”

Adam scowled, spat at the ground, then glowered out at the tiny boat in the middle of the lake. “His buddies arrive today. I remember them. They’re all pricks.”

“C’mon, Adam,” Ellis sighed. “Get real—they’re not all pricks. My mom says—”

“You watch,” Adam cut in. “Those three guys are going to hit on all the girls. And guess what? Just because they’re rich summer kids who live at The ritzy-titzy Pines, they’re going to get ’em!”

“Says you,” Ellis snorted.

“Yeah, says me!” Adam shot back. “You should have seen Cherie—she was climbing all over herself inviting that jerk to the pavilion dances.”

Ellis finally turned to face Adam, grinning. “Oh, really? I thought she was going with you.”

“I thought so, too,” Adam said, suddenly wishing he hadn’t told Ellis that Cherie had practically dumped him. His eyes shifted back to the boat that was bobbing gently on the water. “If it wasn’t for that prick—”

“Hey,” Ellis cut in, seeing Adam’s expression starting to darken into an ugly rage, which always wound up leading to some kind of trouble. “Come on. Let’s go get cleaned up.”

But Adam wasn’t listening to him, his eyes still fixed on the boat. “I’ll tell you one thing,” he said, his voice so low that Ellis wasn’t sure Adam was talking to him at all. “If I catch him alone somewhere, he’s as good as dead.” Finally, he turned and looked Ellis straight in the eye. “Think I’m kidding?” he asked. “Well, I’m not. I’m not kidding at all.”

E
RIC FED A
little bit more line off his reel, feeling the spoon he was trolling drop a few inches in the water. The sun was low in the sky, fish were feeding near the surface, and he could almost feel a strike coming. Slowly, he began to wind the reel, bringing the lure in, drawing it closer to the surface.

And then his neck began to crawl, almost as if something was about to touch him.

Or was staring at him.

He turned around, half expecting to see another boat a few yards away—or even closer—but there was nothing. Then he saw two people on one of the lawns a few houses down from Pinecrest.

One of them sat with his arms around his knees; the other one stood with his legs apart and his arms crossed over his chest.

And both of them were staring directly at the boat.

At
him.

But that was stupid—they were too far away for him even to tell exactly in what direction they were looking—they could have been looking at anything. Another boat, or a bird, or—

But there weren’t any other boats on the lake, and when he scanned the sky, there were no birds, either.

And he still had that crawly feeling.

He turned his attention back to his rod and reel, slowly drawing his lure closer to the boat, but the strange sensation on the back of his neck didn’t ease up.

He turned again, and this time he recognized the one who was standing.

Adam. Adam Mosler.

He recalled the scene from his first night at Pinecrest, when Adam Mosler and Cherie Stevens had turned up at the dock. Adam had been pissed off, and now, as Adam kept staring at him, Eric knew that he hadn’t gotten over it.

And suddenly he had a bad feeling about Mosler—a really bad feeling. He began winding the reel faster, and a few seconds later the lure broke through the surface of the water and glittered in the afternoon sunlight. Just as Eric raised the rod higher to swing the lure over the boat, a trout leaped, snapped at one of the lure’s bare hooks, missed, and dropped back into the water.

“Fly fishing with a spoon,” his father said. “Don’t think I’ve seen that one before. Then, as Eric laid his rod on the floorboards of the boat, he began reeling in his own line. “Ready to go back?”

Eric nodded, took the handle of the outboard, and made a sweeping turn toward home.

He’d talk to Kent and Tad about this Adam guy—maybe they knew the story on him.

He gunned the engine, and as the bow lifted and the skiff struggled to reach the plane, he glanced once again at the lawn where the two boys had been.

It was empty.

But the hatred Eric had felt emanating from Adam Mosler still remained.

A
SHLEY SPARKS GAZED
dolefully at the enormous pile of cooked, peeled, and cubed potatoes that threatened to overflow onto the floor at any moment. “Merrill, do you have a bowl for the potato salad? Or can I just chuck it all in the trash and take everyone out for dinner?”

“In the lower cabinet to your left.” Merrill pointed with the knife she was using to chop celery. “And no, you can’t throw it out. The worst is over—all you have to do now is add the good stuff.”

“Oh, come on, Merrill,” Ellen Newell put in as she unwrapped the butcher paper from a dozen thick steaks and arranged them on a platter. “Ashley doesn’t cook—she shops.” Then, as Ashley tried to muster up a dirty look—and failed—Ellen gazed enviously around Pinecrest’s huge kitchen. “Too bad we aren’t all living in this place,” she said. “I can’t believe how huge it is.”

Merrill glanced out to the terrace, where her friends’ husbands were drinking beer while her own poked at smoldering coals in the barbecue. “Marci, would you take the meat out to your father?”

Marci finished drinking her lemonade, set the empty glass in the sink, then took the platter from Ellen.

As soon as she was out of the room, Merrill turned to Ellen. “So I hear this Dr. Darby used to do experiments on the criminally insane,” she said, her voice as accusing as her expression.

Ellen and Ashley exchanged a quick look, then faced Merrill, expressions of mock guilt on their faces, and promptly dissolved into laughter. “That’s the rumor, all right,” Ellen said. “Hand me the mayo. Is it fat-free?”

Merrill pushed the jar of mayonnaise across the kitchen island. “Don’t you think you could have told me?” Then, as both her friends looked as if they were about to start laughing again, she glowered at them. “Don’t laugh at me!”

“Oh, honey, we can’t help but laugh,” Ashley said, sliding chopped pickles and onions from the cutting board into the bowl with the potatoes. “Look at this fabulous house—there’s no way on earth you would have rented it if you’d known about all those silly rumors.”

“And that’s all they are,” Ellen said. “Rumors. Who did you hear that one from?”

“Carol something-or-other. In the antiques store.”

“Carol Langstrom,” Ashley said, testing the water for the corn on the cob, then setting the lid back on the steaming pot before turning to face Merrill. “Here’s the story on Carol, and a lot of other people in Phantom Lake. Imagine being up here all winter long with ten feet of snow at forty below zero and really short days with nothing to do except gossip, spread rumors, and turn molehills into mountains. It’s not just Carol Langstrom, but much as I love her, she
is
the biggest gossip in town.”

“So, I have a plan,” Ellen said, as she began mixing the salad with a big wooden spoon. “To keep all of us from the evil of dwelling on rumors, we shall keep ourselves active. Minds and bodies. There’s a lovely little par-three golf course on the north shore of the lake, and there are public tennis courts over by the pavilion in town, and Jeff has the ski boat all tuned up. If we keep you busy enough, you won’t have time to think about everything you’re going to hear about this house. In fact, if I keep you really, really busy, you won’t even have time to hear the stories, let alone worry about them.”

“Not all of us are Barbie dolls, Ellen,” Ashley Sparks observed dryly, patting her own ample rump. “Nor do all of us look good enough in swimsuits to actually put one on. So for me there will be nothing involving public displays of flesh, okay? I’ll golf with you, but that’s as far as it goes. And you’ll go antiquing with me. Deal?” She lifted the lid on the pot again, where the water was now boiling. “I’m going to start the corn.”

“Deal,” Ellen said. “But from what I’ve seen so far, you could do a year’s worth of antiquing right in this house.”

“Don’t I know it,” Ashley replied, turning back to Merrill. “And I need a full tour right after we eat. I’ve wanted to get inside this house for years!”

“Maybe we should trade houses, and
you
can ignore all the stories about this one,” Merrill suggested, then wished she could retract her words as she saw both her friends roll their eyes.

“For God’s sake, Merrill,” Ellen said. “Don’t you think it’s about time to give up the Queen Nervosa title? You’re already over forty, and someday you’re going to look back on your life and see how much you’ve missed just by being afraid that something might happen.”

Merrill sighed and nodded, and as her two friends began planning tomorrow, she looked out through the window at their three sons, who were throwing a football around on the big lawn while Moxie chased after them. Dan and the other two men were laughing around the smoking barbecue, and Marci had sprawled in the hammock with her cat.

All of it going on against the beautiful backdrop of the sparkling lake at the foot of the lawn.

Ellen and Ashley were right; it was, indeed, time to give up her title and stop worrying.

If every day turned out like this one, there would be nothing to worry about.

E
RIC PASSED THE
bag of marshmallows to Kent Newell, who expertly skewered three of them onto a single stick and held them just far enough over the glowing barbecue coals so they’d brown without bursting into flames the way his own marshmallows always did. The low murmur of their parents’ voices floated out from the house, and the soft background chorus of chirping crickets was the only other sound that broke the silence of the calm evening, except for the occasional croaking of a frog or the lonely call of a loon searching for its mate somewhere across the lake. As the daylight began to fade, he leaned back in one of the worn canvas camp chairs they’d found in the basement and decided that things couldn’t get much better. Kent and Tad were both here, and the summer stretched before them, an unexplored territory with a new adventure waiting every day.

“I’m going to look up Kayla Banks tomorrow,” Kent said, slowly rotating his marshmallows. He grinned at Eric and Tad over the barely flickering fire. “She’s had all winter to think about me.”

“Which could be good or bad,” Tad pointed out, “depending on how hard you tried to get in her panties last summer.”

“She loved it,” Kent bragged.

“And assuming she hasn’t already got a boyfriend,” Tad went on. “You don’t really think she’s been doing nothing but dream about you all year, do you?”

“If all the guys up here are like the ones I ran into, they’re all jerks,” Eric said before Kent had a chance to defend his desirability.

Kent’s gaze shifted from Tad to Eric. “Who?”

“Adam somebody.”

“Mosler.” Kent spat the name as if it tasted bad in his mouth. “Adam’s an asshole. He and two other creeps hassled us last year.” He grinned again, but this time there was a hint of maliciousness about it. “But this year it’s three of us against three of them. No problem.”

“Or maybe we ought to just steer clear of them,” Tad said. “In fact, maybe we should just stay away from all the townies.”

“No way,” Kent flared. “I have an investment in Kayla from last year, and this year it’s gonna pay off!”

“Jeez,” Tad groaned. “You sound like you think she owes you something.”

Kent’s grin broadened. “She does. She owes me a piece of—” He cut his own words short as first one, then the second, and finally the third of his marshmallows dropped off the skewer into the coals and burst into flames. “Crap!”

As Kent reloaded his skewer, the boys lapsed into silence, watching the embers. The brighter stars were just becoming visible in the evening sky, and the pine trees on the hills across the lake were silhouetted points against a rosy background.

Fireflies winked around the yard.

Suddenly, Eric remembered the other night, when a boat bearing not only Adam Mosler, but someone else as well, had shown up at the dock at just about this same time. “Do you guys know Cherie Stevens?” he asked.

“Sure,” Kent said. “She’s Kayla’s best friend.”

“I’m thinking maybe we should go to the pavilion dance next Friday,” Eric said. “She practically invited me.”

“I’m in,” Kent said. “We’ll all go, and maybe we’ll all get lucky.”

“We didn’t get lucky last year,” Tad reminded him.

“But that was last year,” Kent countered. “I’ve got a good feeling about this year.”

The kitchen lights went out and the dining room lights went on in the house, and Eric watched as all their parents settled in for a card game, which meant none of them would move for at least an hour. “You guys want to see what I found today?” he asked in a tone that caught both Kent’s and Tad’s attention. Setting down his marshmallow skewer, Eric rose from his chair, and a moment later the three boys moved soundlessly away from the terrace, across the lawn, and into the shadows of the old carriage house.

Eric opened the door and led the way down the darkened hallway.

“What is this place?” Tad asked, unconsciously dropping his voice to a whisper.

“It’s the garage now,” Eric said. “But there’s an apartment upstairs, and lots of other rooms from when it was a stable and carriage house.”

He opened a door and turned on a solitary lightbulb.

Kent and Tad edged past him and they all crowded inside the cramped room Eric had discovered only a few hours earlier.

“Wow,” Tad said, peering at the jumble of furniture. “Look at this stuff! My mom would go nuts if she saw all this.”

As Tad ran his hands over the polished wood of one of the old dressers, Kent opened one of the boxes, peered inside, then carefully lifted a leather photo album out of the box, setting it on a desk.

He opened the cover.

“Look,” he said. “It’s old pictures of Pinecrest.”

Eric and Tad moved closer and peered down at the page covered with deckle-edged photographs of the house. In one of them a young man in an old-fashioned suit was standing in front of the front door. “Suppose that’s Dr. Darby?” Tad asked.

Kent turned a few more pages. There were more photographs of people at Pinecrest—people posing on the front porch, relaxing on the back terrace, standing on the dock with a stringer of fish.

Some of the pictures showed people standing next to old cars; others depicted the interior of the house but with different furniture than it now contained.

Nowhere were there captions for the pictures.

Nowhere were there identifications of the people in them.

“Look at that,” Tad said, pointing at a photograph of a man wearing wire-rim glasses, his hair slicked back, sitting in front of a small oak secretary. “That’s a picture of this desk.” It was clearly the same slanted-front secretary they had the photograph album resting on.

Eric and Tad leaned in closer as Kent turned the pages one by one….

E
LLEN NEWELL PEERED
dolefully at the pair of sevens that had first been dealt her, and made one last attempt to find the possibility of a winning hand in the five additional cards that had come her way. Finding nothing, she tossed the hand in. “Okay,” she sighed as Dan Brewster raked in the pot, adding the last of her chips to the enormous pile in front of him. “I’m broke, and I’m tired, and I want to go to bed.” She glanced out the window, but all she could see was blackness—the last of the fire’s embers had long since died away. “How about you go call your son?” she asked Jeff, who’d lost the last of his stake in a game to Dan two hands earlier.

“How come he’s suddenly just my son?” Jeff asked as he stood up and moved to the French doors.

“Because I’m too tired to call him myself,” Ellen replied, watching her husband step out onto the terrace to call Kent.

When there was no answer, Jeff called again, then crossed the terrace and moved down the steps onto the lawn. “Kent!” he called again. “We’re leaving!”

When there was still no answer, he moved down the lawn to the fire pit, where a half-empty bag of marshmallows lay by one of the canvas chairs and three skewers—still sticky—were propped against the metal ring that contained the fire, which was no longer even smoldering.

But no sign of the boys.

Jeff felt his blood pressure rise as he walked down to the boathouse. If they’d taken the boat out after dark and not even bothered to tell anyone what they were up to, all three of them would find themselves grounded for a week.

But the boathouse was dark; Pinecrest’s little aluminum skiff lay quietly tethered to the dock.

“Kent!”

But the lake and the woods were silent.

He stood on the dock and peered across the dark water. The moon was about to rise, and the eastern sky was taking on a faint silvery glow. But the lake was quiet, the shore deserted as far as he could see; there were no boys here.

Jeff looked back up the lawn toward the house, and for the first time saw a faint yellow light in a back window behind the garage.

The old carriage house? What were they doing in there? But of course he knew what they were doing.

Messing around.

Seeing what they could find.

And, of course, getting into mischief.