Fritz had spent the past three weeks in a remedial reading tutorial with Dennis Handley.
“Come on over,” Tom said. “Right away.”
“Next year we’re going to be seniors!” Fritz said. “This is going to be the best summer we ever had.”
“Don’t tell anybody where you’re going, just get over here,” Tom said.
In less than five minutes, Fritz was on the doorstep, wearing a polo shirt over bathing trunks and carrying a towel on his arm. “Good tan,” he said when Tom opened the door. “I was afraid you’d be all white—I was afraid you’d have book scars all over your face.
“Book scars?”
“You know, those little lines you get under your eyes from reading too much. With Mr. Handley, I had to read a whole book out loud, and every time I read a sentence wrong, he read it back to me, it was like watching a guy play with himself, I got those lines all over under my eyes, I had to squint so I wouldn’t have to see his face. So let’s go swimming right away, okay, I want to catch up with your tan, I want some rays—”
They had walked into the living room, and Fritz suddenly stopped talking and gazed in horror at the heavily written-upon sheets of yellow paper lying in rows and stacks on the floor by the couch and fanned across its cushions.
“What is THIS?” He turned to look up at Tom with pale blue eyes like pinwheels. “You’re doing next year’s homework!”
“I’m thinking about something, it has nothing to do with homework.”
“So?” Fritz said, meaning: so if it isn’t homework, what is it?
“It’s about a murder.” Fritz looked at him with deep puzzlement. “I’ll put on my swimsuit and be right down,” Tom said.
“All right,” Fritz said when Tom came back downstairs. He had been holding a sheaf of Tom’s notes in his hands, and he dropped them on the floor with evident relief. “Let’s get in the water. I don’t know what you’re doing here, but you have got to get away from it, fast.”
They walked through the study, and Fritz shook his head at the sight of yet more piles of paper. “It’s a good thing I got here in time. I don’t know how you got such a good tan, messing around with this crazy stuff. You even got Mrs. Thielman’s name wrong, you dope.”
“That was the first Mrs. Thielman,” Tom said. “Just out of curiosity, what was the name of the book you had to read out loud to Mr. Handley?”
“Are you kidding? You think I remember?”
“What was it about?”
“This guy.”
“What did he do?”
“We went after this fish. It didn’t make any sense. Mr. Handley let me skip the hard parts.”
“Mr. Handley made you read Moby Dick? Out loud?”
“It was terrible. It was lousy and terrible. What do you mean, the first Mrs. Thielman? There is only one Mrs. Thielman.”
“The first Mrs. Thielman was killed right up here by a man named Anton Goetz, and Lamont von Heilitz solved it.”
“The creep who owns that empty lodge?” They were now walking down Tom’s pier, and Fritz pointed diagonally across the lake. “That guy everybody hates? I wish you owned that lodge.”
“He’s not a creep,” Tom said. “He used to be incredibly famous, and he’s old now, but he’s an amazing man. I met him because he lives across the street from us, and he’s solved hundreds of murders, and he really knows how our island works.”
“Oh, everybody knows that,” Fritz said. He whooped and jumped off the edge of the dock, drew in his knees and wrapped his arms around them, and hit the water in a noisy cannonball.
Everybody knows that?
Tom dove in after him.
“God, this is great,” Fritz yelled, and for a time both he and Tom swam aimlessly and energetically in the wide part of the lake.
“Have you seen Buddy yet?” Tom asked.
“Buddy’s still in bed. I guess they had some kind of celebration at the club last night. Weren’t you there?”
“I left early. Buddy and I aren’t exactly friendly, Fritz.”
“Buddy’s friendly with everybody,” Fritz said. “Buddy’s friendly with Jerry. He and Jerry are going out shooting this afternoon. Maybe we could go too. That’d be pretty cool.”
“I don’t think they’d want me along, unless …” Unless they could use me as a target, Tom thought. “There are some things you have to know,” he said, and Fritz swam closer to him, his wide forehead wrinkled.
“Do you know what the celebration was about, last night?” Fritz shook his head. “Buddy is supposed to get married to Sarah Spence.”
“Well, sure. What’s the big deal?”
“He can’t marry her,” Tom said.
“How come?”
“She’s too young. She’s too smart. She doesn’t even like him.”
“Then how come she’s going to marry him?”
“Because her parents want her to, because your Uncle Ralph picked her out for him, and because she hasn’t been able to see me for a couple of weeks.”
Fritz stopped paddling around and stared at him. His mouth was underwater.
“I’ve sort of been seeing her. We got close, Fritz.”
Fritz lifted his mouth out of the water. “How close?”
“Pretty close,” Tom said. “Buddy tried to tell me to stay away from her, and when I wouldn’t agree, he tried to fight me, and I punched him in the gut. He went down.”
“Oh, shit,” Fritz said.
“Fritz, the truth is—”
Fritz clamped his eyes shut.
“Come on, Fritz. The truth is, Sarah was never going to marry him in the first place. She’s going to college in the fall, and she’ll write him a letter or something, and that’ll be that. They’re not even engaged, it’s just some kind of understanding.”
“Did you screw her?” Fritz asked.
“None of your business.”
“Oh, shit,” Fritz said. “How many times?”
“I have to see her,” Tom said, and Fritz dove underwater and began swimming back toward the dock. Tom swam after him. Fritz scrambled up on the dock and sat with his head on his knees. His hair glowed in the sun. When Tom pulled himself up on the dock, Fritz stood up and stepped away from him.
“Well?” Tom said.
Fritz glared at him. He looked almost ready to cry. He punched Tom in the shoulder. “Tell me you did,” he said. “Tell me you did, shithead.” He hit Tom in the chest, and knocked him backwards a step.
“I did,” Tom said.
Fritz whirled around, so that he faced Roddy Deepdale’s lodge. “I knew it,” he said.
“If you knew it, why did you hit me?”
“I knew this was going to happen.”
“What?”
Fritz turned around slowly. “I knew you were going to do something crazy like this.” There was a gleam of pure naughtiness in his eyes. He jumped forward and shoved Tom’s biceps with both of his hands. “Where’d you do it? In the woods? In your lodge? Inside or outside?”
Tom stepped backwards. “Never mind.”
Fritz shoved him again. “If you don’t tell me, I won’t do anything for you.” His eyes seemed to be all gleam now. “If you don’t tell me something, I won’t even ever talk to you again.” He backed Tom down the deck, pushing at him like a little blond bear playing with its trainer. “Where was the first time?”
“On your uncle’s airplane,” Tom said.
Fritz’s arms dropped. “On …” He blinked, three times, rapidly. He choked on a laugh, got the laugh out of his throat, and fell on his knees, bawling with laughter. “On … on … my uncle’s …” He fell on his back, still laughing too hard to speak.