by Dick Cluster
Now the light went past him, downward, and he followed it down. He knew he was wearing a wetsuit because he grew hotter and hotter inside it. He saw his arms outstretched, rubbery and black. He wanted to get to the bottom, where he would be able to take the suit off. Above him he could hear noises— high-pitched noises, like whale calls. He knew they were the echoes of somebody walking on the ice. Now he wasn’t swimming in the pond anymore. He was running down the street where Meredith lived. All of a sudden he knew why she hadn’t answered her phone. He woke in a sweat and grabbed for the source of the high-pitched noise.
“Alex?”
It was her voice.
“Alex?” it said again. He must not have said anything yet. He sat up and pressed the receiver tighter to his ear.
“Oh. Oh. Yeah,” he said. “Hi. I was asleep.”
“I hope you were. It’s three A.M.”
“It is? Where are you?”
“Downstairs.”
“Downstairs where?”
“Downstairs here. I didn’t want to wake the whole place up banging on your door.” Pause. “I have to tell you something.”
“Meredith, I love you.”
“I know, warts and all.” Pause. “It’s about Natalie.” Pause. “I talked to Terry, as you asked. I didn’t look at his piano. I phoned him when I got home and got your message, tonight.”
“Yeah.” Alex’s head began to clear. Terry would have had a hard time answering Meredith’s questions with questions. Meredith was a teacher. She was a professional at the Zen/Socratic game.
“They are cousins, but he says he had barely spoken to her in years. Also, he never taught anything at the place where she works. But she rang him up Monday to ask him questions about you.”
Alex shook his head, remembering the beam of light that glided through the dark water of the pond. He wanted it back. He wanted to paint with it, to illuminate Natalie’s white lies, minor lies that didn’t make any sense. “By the way,” Meredith continued, “Sarah Greenwood confirms that they did write those papers. It was her impression they already knew each other, and chose together to write about the same thing. It was easier, and also they enjoyed the stir their family stories produced in the class.”
“Wait a minute.” Alex gripped the receiver, an awkward device, not like the smooth flippers or the narrow beam of light. “Did Terry remember when she called? Did she tell him why she wanted to know all about me?”
“I asked him that, of course.” Alex remembered Meredith had just driven up here in the middle of the night and must have canceled the classes she was due to teach a few hours from now. She was standing in the unfriendly lobby downstairs. “Alex,” she said, “why are we talking on the phone?”
“I don’t know.” He laughed. “You called me.”
He heard Meredith laugh, too, before she hung up. He was happy he could make her laugh, whatever the hell else was happening. He didn’t get dressed, just went to unlock the door.
* * *
In the morning they lingered over complimentary coffee and donuts. No one but the two of them and Dennis knew where Suzanne was. Any number of people, from Natalie to Paul Jakes to Trevisone, might try to reach Alex, and if they did they might leave him wiser than before. Also it was warm and cozy in here, while outside there was a gray, overcast sky and a wind that whipped the branches and made them look mean. Later, Alex was sorry to have lingered.
Meredith, though she had left in something of a hurry at midnight, had not forgotten to bring her skis from home. She had come up early, she explained, because she had gotten over being mad and she wanted to tell Alex in person what she had found out: on Monday, the day Scat Johnston died, Natalie had called her cousin Terry, out of the blue, to ask him to tell her everything he knew about Alex. She had not told her reason, only said it was an emergency, and a secret, and he was not to tell Alex, not yet. Family ties had prevailed, though Terry had felt uneasy. He had tried to remember, for Meredith, just what he told Natalie: that Alex was impetuous but logical, he thought. Well-enough coordinated, but more given to play in his mind than in his body.
“Play!” Alex interrupted.
“He began a long speech about discipline and play being two sides of the same coin. I asked whether Natalie hadn’t been searching for something more factual. Then he admitted to having recounted what little he knew about your disease, and some boasting you seem to have done about violent deaths and damsels in distress in your past.”
“I didn’t boast,” Alex said. “We were talking about control, being in control of a situation, an opponent, or yourself. I didn’t feel I had anything to boast about.”
“No,” Meredith relented. “My interpretation, withdrawn. In any case, Natalie already seemed to know something about it. I think maybe Maria had been boasting to Suzanne.”
“Do you know what time this happened, this phone call?”
“I asked when she had called him, exactly. He couldn’t remember, or wouldn’t. He was working on his jewelry, at home, and he was getting hungry, he remembers that. So it was before he ate dinner, but his dinner hour isn’t regular, I don’t suppose.”
“In other words, we don’t know whether it was before or after Suzanne called to invite you for that drink?”
“Before Natalie appeared in the restaurant, probably, at least. Before she came to your house to explain herself to— supposedly— me. All in all, I have to think it demonstrates that your interest— not mine— was what Natalie wanted. Do you know for a fact that the person who called your shop, and invited me for that drink, was truly Suzanne?”
“I hardly knew her voice. I assumed it was her. You think…”
“I think it would be a good idea to lay everything you know, including this, in front of Suzanne. And tell her you want her to tell you, again, everything that happened from last weekend until you found her on your porch.”
“Final exam,” Alex said. “Please put forward a theory that is consistent with and provides a context for the following unassailable facts. Come with me, Professor?”
“Yes,” Meredith answered. “That’s why I’m here. It may be that you were right after all— that you didn’t choose this job, it chose you.”
* * *
After breakfast, the first thing they needed to do was put Alex’s skis on Meredith’s car. That’s what they were doing when Graham Johnston’s roly-poly figure emerged from a sleek gray Porsche. The raw wind made his cheeks a chalky red and drew small tears from the ends of his eyes. His head bobbed angrily where it emerged from an overcoat with a deep fur collar.
“You brought a murderer up here,” Johnston said in a shaky voice. “Believe me, you’ll go to jail for that.” He tried to look around Alex, as if to assure himself Suzanne was not crouched somewhere on the floor of the car.
“You’ve been paying blackmail for years,” Alex parried. He wanted to kick in the door of the Porsche, but settled for paying back the verbal assault in kind. “Did you tell that to the police? Did you tell them everything they need to know to find out all about your son’s death?” As he spoke, he leaned a little to his left to block the man’s view.
“Who told you that?” Johnston demanded. He raised one chubby gloved hand, as if to threaten, and then thought better of it and instead balled both hands in the pockets of his woolen overcoat, waiting.
“I’m sick of your family,” Alex heard himself say. “I’m sick of all of you threatening and bullying and covering up. Tell Trevisone we’ll have Suzanne back by this afternoon. Tell him he can come get her then. And tell him we’ll give him the whole story, not just the part you wanted him to know.” He turned his back on Johnston and saw that Meredith had finished with the skis. He got in the passenger seat and slammed the door. As Meredith drove out of the lot, Alex could see in the rearview mirror that Johnston’s Porsche was following along behind. In fact, it tailgated them ostentatiously as far as the cross-country center.
“Don’t provoke him,” Meredith said. “Remember
, what we want is time to talk with Suzanne.”
Once they got out of the car again, Graham Johnston proved easy enough to leave behind. Alex and Meredith put on their skis, longer and sleeker than the Porsche. Meredith set out into the wind, taking long, regular glides the way a practiced swimmer cuts through the water with slow, efficient strokes. Alex watched her forge ahead, her dark red hair streaming from beneath a red knitted cap. He saw her stop and turn to look back, past him, and he turned to see Johnston repeat his earlier pose, hands jammed into overcoat pockets like a football coach stranded on the sidelines.
Was this the way he kept a watchful eye on contractors and construction workers, Alex wondered— with a baleful glance as they fought winter cold or summer heat to turn his drawings and his capital into monuments to commerce or playhouses for the commercial class? He had something in common with those ship captains facing the wind on the quarterdeck, after all. Don’t underestimate the man, Alex told himself. Wielding power is something he understands better than you.
* * *
“Let me talk to Pamela,” Meredith said. They were skiing side by side on the straight section of trail going up the second creek. The lunch cabin was in sight, smoke curling from its stovepipe, Pamela Parker obviously at work. They had decided to stop, briefly, to gather a few more unassailable facts. “I think she’ll hear it more easily from me.”
“What? You’re going to tell her you think she was in love with Caroline?”
“I’m going to ask her to consider whether that’s why she’s tried to shut the book on Caroline so soon.”
That did make sense, Alex agreed. He also thought that, sooner or later, Pam and Dennis ought to share with each other the feelings about Caroline that neither of them seemed to have shared with anybody else. Right now it wouldn’t do for any conversation to go on too long. It had been stupid and childish, he now saw, to tell Graham Johnston they were going off to collect Suzanne. If Johnston was here already, would Trevisone be far behind? It wouldn’t help for Suzanne to get busted before he and Meredith were done.
Gliding to a stop in front of the cabin, Alex felt sweat dripping down his back. The skiing had kept him not just warm but overheated. Lucky to be stopping and resting inside, he thought, rather than letting the sweat turn chilly in the cold wind.
In the cabin it was steamy and a bit dank. There were no customers yet. Pam looked up from a magazine laid flat on the plywood counter. Alex loitered while Meredith took her by the hand and sat her at one of the picnic tables— like mother to daughter, certainly woman to woman. Alex could see only Pamela’s broad back and her long thick braid of hair, but he tried to probe through this to Caroline’s friend, to an individual with a history, whatever it was. The first time here he’d seen only the brick wall she’d put up, and the Swedish-travel-poster farm girl whom she’d somehow adopted, or fallen into, as a disguise.
Over Pam’s shoulder, Meredith’s gaze was level, her cheeks and mouth relaxed, easy, not rushing to hammer home a point. She was not impatient to talk when listening was the necessary thing. That was what made her a good teacher, Alex thought. Of course, she was considerably less patient when off duty— which was fine with Alex, because he did not like to be handled. He preferred sparks to lubrication as a way to make the world go round.
Soon Meredith beckoned him over. He sat next to her, facing Pam.
“I’ve explained,” Meredith said, “that you think Caroline may have been into sex for pay, and that she certainly had friends who were. Pam says Caroline told her about the friends, but she doesn’t think what Caroline herself did is anybody’s business unless it’s crucial to understanding her death.”
“I respect that,” Alex said. “What I want to know is, did Caroline ever tell you she was concerned about the disappearance of a woman named Nilda or Nell?”
“She didn’t disappear. She went on vacation. Caroline even got a letter from her, from Spain. It said she was going to Paris next.” Pam laughed, softly, the corners of her mouth turning down in a self-deprecating way. “She made money a lot faster than I do tending this kingdom here. Caroline— you have to understand, Caroline could be so obtuse, but she had a very active mind. Caroline said Nell had a kid, but she didn’t have custody. Most people around here didn’t know that. She said Nell was saving her money so she could get the kid back. She wouldn’t go off to Europe like that.”
“What did you think?”
“Caroline’s logic seemed pretty farfetched to me. Maybe she gave up, decided to live for herself, I said. I mean, first, she had all these men living through her, through her body, like she herself wasn’t even there. Then she was trying to live through this kid, who wasn’t really there either. Anyway, Caroline found Nell so interesting I thought maybe she was just pining after her, coming up with reasons Nell wouldn’t have abandoned her the way she did. Then Caroline started getting really crazy ideas.” She looked at Meredith, who nodded. “Or that’s what I thought, anyway. She decided Nell had been killed.”
“Did she have any proof, any evidence?”
“I’m not sure. She told me she did, but just circumstantial. She said there wouldn’t be any proof until spring.”
“Spring— what did she mean?”
“She didn’t say. Caroline could be very private, very secretive, and she set very high standards for herself. If I didn’t believe her, she wasn’t going to share any half-baked theories with me.”
“And did she say who she suspected of doing this?”
“Uh-uh.”
“Well,” Alex said, “you remember the picture I showed you. It suggests to me that either she was trying to understand what went on inside Nilda’s mind, or else she was trying to get some information out of Scat.’’
Pam hung her head. Alex didn’t like that. He watched her, trying to figure her out. How old was she, anyway? She seemed in suspended animation, anywhere between eighteen and twenty-five. She didn’t seem to have done the growing up that Natalie and Suzanne and apparently Caroline had done. Because she was in the closet, even to herself perhaps? Or because something about the Parkers made it unnecessary to grow up? Were the Parkers in the same league as the Johnstons and the Pepperells? Alex saw Maria, at her desk in school, safe now, and safe when Laura would pick her up, and pick up Carl, and leave town for Cape Cod. What would be the thing that would make Maria grow up? And where would she get stuck, and who would unstick her, or would she find that she could do it herself? Finally Meredith said, “Since Caroline died, have you given any more thought to her theory?”
“Some.” Pam looked up at last, looked toward the door as if a customer might come in.
“And?”
“I’m sorry I didn’t listen. I’m sorry I didn’t ask what proof she thought she would have in the spring. Where to look. She must have meant that something… was buried under the snow.”
“I think we’re a little closer than that,” Meredith said. “Apparently Caroline spoke with someone who saw Scat and Paul Jakes cutting or standing by a hole in lake ice. They claimed to be ice fishing, or the observer leaped to that assumption on his or her own. Caroline doubted it. Do you have any kind of map that will show us how to get to the hikers’ cabin on Contocasset Brook?”
23. ACCIDENTS DO HAPPEN
As Dennis MacDonald had warned, there was no longer a bridge across the brook. Only the uprights high on the banks marked the site of the old bridge swept away by floodwaters. In the streambed the snow hung in irregular drifts, each hollow betraying rushing water beneath, each hump a rock or protruding root. Alex searched upstream for a crossing place while Meredith searched the other way. Alex found a spot where enough sun had penetrated to melt the snow dampened by moist air rising from the brook. He carried his skis in one hand. With the other he held both poles as a kind of walking staff, picking his way carefully from rock to rock above the flow. On a day like this, a soaked foot would soon become frozen and numb.
He found Meredith waiting, because she had discovere
d a route that allowed her to cross on skis. On this side of the brook the trail widened. The treads of one or many snowmobiles had churned and then packed the snow. From here, according to the map, an old wagon road paralleled the brook as far as the cabin, about a mile upstream. Then the wagon track veered off to the west and descended to a maintained Forest Service road. That would be the way Dennis MacDonald had brought Suzanne in.
Alex climbed awkwardly up the bank, sinking to his knees in snow. Slowed down, he was able to see the beauty here— the cold and small beauty of the Northeast. The woods might be scrubby, cut down and regrown and cut down and regrown. But there was a timeless, formal wonder in the sight and sound of the snow and ice and brook. Only gradually, as he knelt to refasten his bindings, did Alex become aware of the erosion of this cold calm. Buzz saw, he thought first, but the whine seemed to grow steadily louder. Snowmobile.
“Coming closer?” Meredith asked. Alex listened. He thought it was. Then the noise died. Meredith set off, and Alex followed. After a few minutes the whine recurred. It seemed to get much louder, steadied, and then died away again.
Someone at the cabin, Alex thought. By chance, maybe, but probably not. He speeded up to catch Meredith, and the two of them rushed ahead in a race with each other because they couldn’t race what they couldn’t see. Leg and arm, leg and arm, Alex concentrated on this, though it wasn’t enough to banish the speculations, few of them hopeful, about who the visitor could be, and why. He stopped suddenly, lungs heaving for breath, when he came to an unexpected fork in the road. Meredith caught up quickly. The smaller pathway, to the left, did not appear on the map. That meant this fork was not a trail that anyone kept blazed or cleared, but in winter, with the underbrush covered, it was apparently serviceable enough. Since Wednesday’s snowfall, snowmobilers had already used both forks. It was impossible to tell, however, whether a vehicle had come by twenty-four hours or ten minutes ago.
