Which was typical of him. "Yes," I agreed, wondering
who I'd been in a past life to deserve him: St.
Teresa of Avila, apparently.
"And," he continued, "if Victor bugs me, I'll be the
one to take care of it. We all square on this?"
"Perfectly," I'd agreed, "square."
"Okay. C'mere," he'd said sleepily, and held his
arms out.
I slid into them. Like I say, Wade is not a particularly
verbal guy.
But when he wants to, he gets his message across.
No one answered the door of Heddlepenny House, but
I found Marcus out in the Winnebago, on the exercise
bicycle.
"Your father," I said, "was on that list."
His eyes narrowed. "What list? I don't know about
any list."
But it was the only thing that made sense.
"The list of gay men Reuben Tate got hold of,
somehow. He tried to blackmail them. And that sort of
story would have ruined your dad in this town, back
then."
He started to reply, but I got in ahead of him.
"You made it sound as if you left right away, but you
two stayed in town for years after your mother died. A
long time, if your motive for leaving was grief over her
death. But then Reuben went to jail for six months,
and when he came back ..."
He was staring at me. "When Reuben came back,"
I finished, "he did something that drove your father out
of Eastport."
The flywheel on the exercise bicycle spun down
with a low whine. "You're wrong. Without her, my
dad couldn't stand it here. He tried for a long time, but
everything reminded him; he had to get away finally."
"What did your father and Reuben talk about the
other night?"
He picked up a small freeweight from the rack of
them near the exercise apparatus and began hefting it
up and down nervously.
"I told you, I don't know. Dad took him into the
study, in the house. Half an hour later, I heard the door
close. When I went in, Reuben was gone."
"Your father didn't say what they'd discussed?"
Marcus shook his head. "Said it was pastoral. He's
serious about the confidentiality of that. It was one
reason the kids all went to him with their problems,
back in the old days. Although I can't imagine what
Reuben could talk about that would have to do with
solving any of his problems. Or about religion."
"Maybe they talked about how you two and Reuben
kept ending up in the same towns, time after time.
So which was it, Marcus--was he following you, or
were you following him?"
He went to the refrigerator in the galley kitchen,
came back with a bottle of water, and drank nervously
from it. "I don't know what you are talking about," he
repeated.
I felt like punching him. Maybe he was a good
musician, maybe not. But he was a lousy liar. "You
know, Marcus, I used to be a money manager, back in
the city. Investing, tax counseling. That sort of thing."
"How," he remarked uninterestedly, "interesting."
"Some of my clients were crooks," I went on.
He looked sharply at me.
"And liars. Skilled ones, not like you. Sometimes
they even lied to me. And since I didn't want my name
on anything that could be proven fraudulent--since it
was my job to make sure it couldn't be, in fact--I
would ask them questions. Know what I found out?"
"What?" he replied resentfully, picking up a towel,
wiping it across his face. He was starting to look even
more uncomfortable.
"Nobody ever says they don't know what you're
talking about when you ask them about what somebody
else did. They say it when you ask about what
they did. Or they don't say it at all."
Marcus frowned thwartedly. "I don't want to talk
to you anymore. All you want to do is stir up trouble."
"It's already stirred up. Two men are dead. Where
is your dad, anyway? Maybe he can manage to give me
a straight answer."
Anger flashed in his eyes. "You're not a police officer.
You can't just barge in here and ask me questions
like this."
"Sure I can. And you can refuse to answer. Of
course, if you do, I'll just go ask somebody else."
I got up, looked between the slats of the Venetian
blinds. "Do I look like a quitter to you, Marcus?" I
asked, and waited.
He sighed defeatedly. "Dad's at the lake. We had a
camp out there. Sold now, but he still likes to fool
around on the water."
Boyden Lake was a few miles west on the
mainland. It was big, and there were quite a few camps on
it. "Want to give me a hint? Or should I just go down
to Bay Books, ask around, maybe mention why I want
to find him, to ask him about that list and what he did
to get on it? I'll bet people would be fascinated."
He slammed down the water bottle. "Look, my
father is a good man. He did a lot of good for this
town, kids especially. He gave them somewhere to go,
something to do, he helped them with their problems.
And a lot of them, if they care about anything today--
if they go to church, or like music, or try to help people
--it's because of what they learned from him. And
the example he gave."
I could think of at least one kid whose problems
Reverend Sondergard hadn't helped with at all. "He
doesn't deserve to have his name blackened now,"
Marcus went on furiously. "To have you digging up
old dirt."
Boxy Thorogood would have raced down Washington
Street right outside the Sondergards' house, the
night Reuben ambushed him. And according to Wade,
he'd been a member of that youth group: the youngest
member, more helpless than most against a guy like
Reuben. But I didn't say this, or anything. I just let
Marcus rant, noticing that the mark on his right hand
was again covered skillfully with makeup.
And when he had finished, and saw that I still
hadn't given up, he scribbled me a little map.
Traffic along rural Route 190 was busy, lots
of motor homes and vans piling into town
for the festival. At the airfield small planes
crowded the usually quiet tarmac, and the
tourist cabins at Harris Point sported barbecue grills,
bicycles leaning against the porch rails, and badminton
nets strung up in the side yards.
It all looked like someone's happy dream of an
island autumn in Maine, and I can't tell you how uneasy
it all made me feel, as if the other shoe were just
hanging there waiting to drop. Marcus Sondergard was
hiding something, and I had little confidence that his
father would tell me what it was.
But I had to try, because something very bad was
happening in Eastport and it wasn't over: as if Reuben,
for all the sick, purposeful display someone had made
of him, wasn't quite dead.
The unusual number of vehicles didn't slow me
much, since they were all heading into town; outbound,
the only obstacle was a slow eighteen-wheeler,
just ahead of me, hauling a massive crane and apparently
having some kind of engine trouble. Its wide load
sign barely described adequately the size of the vehicle,
but finally it found a bit of shoulder and pulled to the
side.
And then it was smooth sailing. After the causeway
came a short jog onto the Golding Road: rolling pastures,
dark granite outcroppings, crosshatchings of
orchard trees studded with red and yellow apples.
Scrub pine closed in on the roadside until a dirt cut
opened to the left.
I put the car on the shoulder, its tires in the sand
that had accumulated over years of icy winters, and
hiked into the brush. Hundred-year-old spruce trees,
originally planted as windbreaks, towered in rows. I
passed an old well hole, its cover rotted in and its
throat choked with stones. There was a cellar hole, too,
now a shallow depression edged with arm-thick rose
canes. A barn foundation humped under mats of thick
grass behind the collapse of a rail fence. A hundred
yards ahead, water glittered in a gap between two
small structures: the camps.
In Maine your camp is your summer place,
whether primitive or elaborate. These were little old
clapboard houses, each situated pleasantly on its ledge
in the sunshine overlooking the water. A dirt path between
them led down to a short dock.
"Hello?" Marcus Sondergard was sliding a dark
green kayak into the shallows. Two paddles lay on the
dock.
"I'd hoped someone might be out here," he
said cheerfully, "to take a ride with me. But no such
luck."
Until you showed up, his expression communicated
hopefully. The kayak was a two-seater. Hey
wood wore dark canvas slacks with the same leather
belt I'd seen before, the cross-and-rose buckle glittering
in the sun, plus a gray sweatshirt and old sneakers. His
hair, as thick and youthfully luxuriant as his son Marcus's,
shone nearly as silver as the belt buckle. "Care
for a spin?"
The problem with a kayak, as I understood it, is
that it could roll upside down, so your head would
poke straight down into the water like the stick on a
popsicle. But I did want to talk to him. And the water
there was quite shallow. Maybe I would only break my
neck on the lake bottom, instead of drowning.
"This isn't a social visit," I temporized.
"I know," Heywood said calmly, his blue eyes perceptive.
"I know exactly why you're here. And"--his
eyes twinkled--"two-person kayaks don't roll. Come
on, we'll talk on the water."
Ten minutes later, with his help I'd maneuvered
myself into the kayak's aft cockpit, and I wasn't even
completely drenched. "Don't worry," he said, "I'll do
all the work. If we do tip, just cross your arms and
tuck." He demonstrated.
Sure, I thought; in my dreams. But I took a paddle,
held it as he instructed, and did nothing with it, also as
Heywood instructed.
And then we skimmed.
The water's surface was bright as a pearl and
seemed to offer no resistance; under Heywood's power