Heart of Stone (37 page)

“Will do,” he said with a gray smile.

“And you'll check on Gayle Morton's airplane ticket as you promised?”

“I've been meaning to do that. Just keep forgetting. Tell me again why you're interested in her ticket?”

It was a loose end I'd wanted to sew up. But I'd be lying if I didn't admit that I still harbored suspicions about Isaac and Gayle Morton.

“Just to erase any doubt that she came to Prospector Lake earlier than she's been claiming,” I said. “Maybe she came here to meet someone. If she had, and her husband followed her here instead of the other way around, that might point to a murkier picture of what happened at Baxter's Rock.”

Terwilliger nodded. “Right. Makes sense to find out. And if she didn't come here earlier in the month to meet someone, that means she came here to save her marriage, not push her husband off a cliff.”

“Maybe,” I said. “There's such a thing as a crime of passion. But I'm not convinced there was any foul play. This still looks more like an accident than anything else.”

Tiny Terwilliger rose one last time from his seat and thanked me for my hospitality and whiskey. At the door he said he was going over to Arcadia to have a chat with Miriam. He asked if I wanted to go along.

“I know you like police work.”

I begged off, thinking of my worn-out welcome. It was late, it was still raining, and I'd drunk my fill for one day. I intended to go to bed. And, truth be told, even with my newfound
entente cordiale
with the chief, I didn't exactly relish the prospect of breathing the polluted air inside his truck.

“One thing I'd like from you, Ellie,” he said. “Can you give me the name of that little girlfriend of Jerry's? I might need to talk to her.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Feeling munificent toward my new friend, I actually scrubbed his glass clean with soap and hot water from the teakettle. I dried it and nearly replaced it in the cupboard with the others. But in the end, I decided to stash it under the sink with some chipped bowls earmarked for Aunt Lena's gardening projects next summer.

Aunt Lena drove up about ten minutes after my guest had left. I greeted my favorite relatives at the door. Max was pleasantly soused, but not so much that he refused an offer of the last port of the season. We had arrived at the end of the summer. Almost.

“You missed a lovely evening,” said Aunt Lena. “Even if the moon let us down. The younger people played standards, and we all sang our hearts out. The food was delicious, and Max flirted with a lovely young lady. Someone named Lucia. But your friend Isaac looked miserable. Sad boy. He sat off to one side by himself, drinking whiskey and sulking. Did something happen between you two?”

I thought I'd been smarter than that. But Aunt Lena was a clever old bird. She didn't let on, but she was always watching. I remembered how she'd used to know when Elijah and I were lying. Usually about nothing of consequence, but she knew.

“Don't you think stealing is wrong?” she'd asked us one summer when I was nine.

Elijah and I exchanged glances.

“I'll buy you cigarettes if you must have them,” she continued. “But poor Mrs. Edmonds is struggling to make a living. The war hasn't been kind to her business.”

“We didn't steal anything,” said Elijah.

“Didn't you, Elijah?” asked Aunt Lena, smiling at him. “I thought you might have palmed a package of Kools when Mrs. Edmonds wasn't looking.”

Elijah fidgeted. He glanced at me. I was no snitch. I just stared at him. At length he bowed his head and nodded.

“Doesn't it feel better to tell the truth?” she asked. Elijah nodded again. “By the way, Kools are revolting cigarettes. If you must smoke, I'll buy you some Chesterfields. That's what Joan Bennett smokes, you know.”

She marched us into the village to Mrs. Edmonds's market and watched as we made a full confession. Then she paid for the cigarettes we'd stolen. On our way back to Cedar Haven, Aunt Lena shared with us a Chesterfield that she'd bought. She never betrayed us to our parents. And we never stole again.

“Nothing happened,” I said coldly in answer to her question. “I had to meet Chief Terwilliger.”

“Don't tell me he used another teacup.”

I hesitated. “No, he didn't use a teacup,” I said finally.

Aunt Lena pursed her lips. “What, did he use a glass instead?” She still knew when I was lying to her.

“So what did that golem want?” she asked as she poured herself and Max one last port.

“I asked him to stop by. I had to fill him in on what I found this morning.”

“What was that?” she asked.

I didn't like the idea of gossip, but she and Max were family, and I trusted them. So I told them the entire story of Mimi, Miriam, Karl, and Jerry. They had known Mimi since she was a girl, of course, but not well.

“With a young boy?” she asked. “Are you sure?”

“I can't find another explanation,” I said. “The young man's girlfriend and his best friend at the camp both identified the older woman as Mimi.”

“
Mi chiamano Mimi
,” sang Max from his armchair, but that was all he could manage. “I confess that I only know the first line.” He sipped his port. “Ellie, my dear, surely you know the whole thing. What comes next?”

“I'm tired, Max,” I said. “I don't feel like singing Puccini right now.”

“Fair enough,” he said. “One must be in the mood for opera, after all. As a matter of fact, I can't stomach it in the main. The music is all right, but all that caterwauling gets under my skin. Disliked it since I was a boy. Since the first time I heard that soprano sing. What was her name? La Raimondo. That was it. Screeched like a barn owl and put me off opera forever.”

“I adore Puccini,” said Aunt Lena. “And La Raimondo was one of the great sopranos.”

I'd had my fill for one day. Perhaps for one vacation. I wished them good night and retired to my cabin, where I lit a mosquito coil. Lena always insisted that mosquitoes had never bitten her, but I was different, having donated many pints of blood to the little suckers over the years. I switched off the lamp and curled up under the covers as the rain cascaded on the roof and the wind howled outside.

I slept fitfully. I dreamt of Isaac. Not logical dreams. But not nightmares either. He had invaded my subconscious and was gamboling through my slumber like a puckish satyr. I wanted to call to him. I wanted him beside me in my bed. All the anger and disappointment had evaporated. But then my attitude changed, and I was shooing him away as if he were a gnat. I awoke, stared at the ceiling, tried to sleep, tried to edit the dream into a version of my liking. But that was doomed to fail. I was simply conflicted and confused, angry and sad at the same time.

The rain had stopped. I lay there in the dark, immobile. Just staring and blinking and breathing. I lit a cigarette and glanced at my watch on the bedside table. It glowed three thirty. The cigarette was a foul idea, but I saw it through to the end. Then I switched on the lamp, rose from the bed, and crossed the room to stub out the cigarette in the ashtray on the table. Just inches from my hand, the bottle stood tall and defiant. There was still another drink or two at the bottom. I snatched it by the neck and made my way back over to the bed.

Sitting naked on the mattress, propped up by pillows and the headboard, I drained what liquid was left in my nighttime water glass and refilled it with whiskey. I knew where I was headed, and despite my best efforts to manage it, I could not. I conjured Isaac, and he appeared in my mind's eye. His crooked smile and flecked irises. His soft voice and gentle touch. His scent. My eyes welled with tears, and I punched the pillow in frustration. Then a tear fell, then another and another, rolling down my cheeks, heavy and warm, collecting under my chin. I let them run, refusing to dry them in a ridiculous attempt at self-flagellation through the most minor discomfort I could imagine: damp cheeks. I supposed it was the whiskey and cigarettes on an empty stomach that had contributed to my collapse. My breath caught in my throat, and I sobbed pathetic little gasps.

I could hear the Fauré that Isaac and company had played. It spun 'round and 'round in my head like the theme to a bad melodrama. The power of the piece swelled with the association with my late father. The memory of him smoking in his study blurred with the image of Isaac bowing his violin as his gaze ranged over the sheet music.

Now I had the conflation of Isaac with my father to look forward to every time that music went through my head. Damn it. This man had stolen something precious to me and somehow enriched it at the same time. Turned it into a haunting rondo that would always remind me of how I had fallen for him, and how the affair had ended unhappily ever after.

And I found more creative ways to punish and torture myself. A memory long forgotten: Elijah and Isaac as children, blowing bubbles off their tongues, one after the other. Tiny little bubbles of saliva, one at a time, that, using their tongues, they lifted gently off the floor of their mouths, just behind the incisors. Then with just the softest puff, a bare whisper, the bubble took flight and floated on air, drifting slowly to its rendezvous with the ground and its tiny explosive splat. Each burst provoked a new staccato of giggles. I never managed to do it, though Elijah tried to teach me for years. I would just stand there, eyes crossed to focus on my tongue, surely looking as if I'd suffered some kind of stroke. But I never achieved bubbles. Only drool.

Isaac and Elijah had been chums for a couple of weeks for a few childhood summers. There was something about this man who'd known my dear brother as a child—known me as well. We'd played together. He'd spat bubbles off his dexterous tongue with Elijah. There was indeed something powerfully complex and emotional about my meeting Isaac again after so long. The confluence of history, distance, passion, and now rupture, opened the wound that I'd sealed the day after my brother died four years earlier. The same disbelief that I'd felt when I'd first heard the news of his death crushed the air out of my lungs again. I sat there on my bed, weeping, drink in hand, cheeks still streaked with tears.

And there was a thump.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

I jumped, spilling what was left of my drink in the bed, and in a single motion, I threw away the pillow I'd been punching and flew to the fireplace. I grabbed the iron poker and screamed, “Who's there?” Silence. Weapon raised and at the ready, I crept naked to the window near the door where the bang had sounded. (I was going to have to start wearing pajamas of some kind if these late-night intrusions continued.) I drew back the curtain slowly, trying to see into the black night. But the only light outside was coming from the dim lamp inside my cabin shining through the window. I couldn't be sure if someone or something had tripped and fallen into the door or if a branch had broken and landed on the wooden porch. Maybe it was a bear. Or that fat raccoon I'd nearly run over. Or was it a man? A murderer? Waldo Coons? Or Isaac again? God, how I wanted it to be Isaac. I dropped the curtain and hissed his name through the door. No one answered. I tested the bolt and congratulated myself for having had the good sense to lock it before turning in hours earlier. Then there was a shuffling on the porch, and heavy footsteps. Then they stopped.

“Who's there?” I repeated. “I have a gun, and I know how to use it.”

Still no answer. The night had become a blanket, trapping me, smothering me and all my fears and sorrows beneath its heavy fabric. I thought the prowler may have run off, but I couldn't be sure. I didn't dare open the door to investigate, and the views from the windows showed nothing. All was silent now. Even the wind held its breath, waiting for the other shoe to drop. I prayed it wouldn't drop on my porch.

SATURDAY, AUGUST 26, 1961

I waited until six thirty, until the sun had peeked over the mountains to the east, before finally finding the courage to unbolt my door and venture outside. The ground was sodden from the storms that had raged the night before, ruining everyone's view of the lunar spectacle. Fallen branches and pine needles lay strewn across the compound, the detritus of the high winds that had blown through the area along with the rain. If someone had been prowling about in the night, I couldn't tell from the ground. The rain had smeared everything. I saw marks that might have been human tracks. Or a moose. It was anyone's guess.