“Not available? What does that mean?”
“Mr. Upshaw has gone out unexpectedly, Master Tom. I cannot tell you when he is expected to be back.”
“Is his carriage gone?”
Kingsley paused a second, and said, “I believe it is, yes.”
“Maybe he’s visiting my mother,” Tom said.
“He always informs us when he does not plan to dine at home,” Kingsley said, and both his voice and his language sounded even stiffer than usual.
Neither Tom nor the old butler said anything for a moment.
“Is he really not there, Kingsley,” Tom said, “or is he just unavailable?”
There was another brimming pause until the butler said, “It’s as I told you, Master Tom.”
“Okay, tell him I have to talk to him,” Tom said, and they both hung up.
The endless afternoon passed into an endless evening. Tom realized that he was starving, and could not remember if he had eaten lunch—he could not remember eating anything all day. He went into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator—most of the food Barbara Deane had bought for him was still on the shelves, preserved in the supermarket wrappings. I ate her food once before, he thought, and it didn’t kill me.
He scrambled two eggs in a bowl, buttered two slices of whole wheat bread, cut slices off a garlic sausage and dropped them in the sizzling pan with the eggs. He turned the edges of the solidifying egg over the sausage, and after a few seconds, turned the whole thing out onto a plate. He ate in the kitchen and put the pan, bowl, plate, and his utensils into the sink and ran hot water over them.
Outside, sunlight still fell on the lake, but the shadow of the lodge darkened the deck nearly all the way to the pier. Tom pulled the living room curtains shut, and went to the desk and called the police department.
“Is Chief Truehart back in the office yet?” he asked.
“Is this Mr. Marlowe?” Spychalla asked. “Where are you calling from, Mr. Marlowe?”
Tom hung up and called his mother. No, her father had not been over that afternoon; no, she did not know where he might be. He was very busy with new plans for the Founders Club, and she had not seen him for days. Victor was out of town, doing something in Alabama for the Redwings. “Are you seeing all your friends?”
“I’m pretty busy,” he told her.
Tom sat at the desk with the telephone before him, watching the shadow of the lodge slide across the deck and begin to darken the pier. Fish jumped silently in the lake. The air went grey. Inside, it looked like night.
When the sky began to darken, he put on a sweater and went out on the deck and locked the door behind him. Lights shone in the Langenheims’ windows and reflected in narrow yellow lines on the water. Tom walked fast around the bottom end of the lake under a rising sliver of moon, passing the empty lodges—hurrying past the Langenheims’—until he came to Lamont von Heilitz’s place, where he wound through trees and came out on the sandy shore of the lake. The old lodge looked like a haunted house in a movie—like Norman Bates’ house, in Psycho. He jumped up on the stubby dock and walked out to the end and sat down on cool wood to look at the windows of the club.
The Redwings and their guests sat at the long table just inside the terrace. Tom could see the backs of the people on the window side of the table, Sarah Spence, Buddy, Fritz, and Eleanor Redwing. Across from them, Tom could see only the heads of Sarah’s mother, Fritz’s father, and Katinka Redwing. Ralph Redwing and Bill Spence sat at either end of the table. Marcello, his tuxedo shirt unbuttoned to his sternum, was passing out the giant leaves of the menus. When he came to Katinka Redwing, he bent down and whispered in her ear, and Katinka made a cat face. Buddy Redwing put his hand on Sarah’s back and caressed her from the nape of the neck to her waist.
Marcello brought two champagne bottles in a silver bucket, and Ralph Redwing and Bill Spence each made toasts. Fritz’s father made a toast, and Buddy’s hand, fat as a starfish, slowly circled on Sarah’s back. Fritz made a toast, which Tom wished he could hear. Buddy pushed back his chair, stood up, and made a speech. Marcello circled the table, filling glasses. Everybody was watching Buddy—they laughed, looked solemn, laughed again. Mrs. Spence waggled her glass in the air for more champagne. When Buddy sat down, Sarah kissed him and everyone applauded. She put her arms around his neck. Fritz’s father said something, and everybody laughed again.
They ordered. Two more champagne bottles came. The fat brown starfish prowled across Sarah’s back. Whenever Sarah turned to look at Buddy, her face glowed.
This was how it worked, Tom thought. The Redwings gobbled up food, drink, real estate, other people—they devoured morality, honesty, scruples, and everybody admired them. Sarah Spence could not resist them because nobody could.
Buddy was waving a fork, talking, and Fritz stared at him as adoringly as a little dog. A greedier, more adult version of the same expression came into Mrs. Spence’s face whenever she turned to Ralph Redwing. Sarah’s right hand, a slimmer, whiter starfish, rested between Buddy’s shoulder blades.
Tom sat on the deck and watched them finish their dinner. There were two more bottles of champagne, coffee, desserts. At last they all stood up and drifted away from the window. A few minutes later, Tom saw them moving slowly on the track between the clubhouse and the compound, calling out good-byes loud enough to be heard across the water.
Lights came on in the upper windows of the lodges in the compound. A light switched on in the second floor of the Spence lodge. Birds called to each other, and a frog splashed in the reeds at the narrow end of the lake.
A car started up behind the compound, then another. The beams of headlights swept across the track between the compound and the club, and then shone upon the trees on the club’s far side. A long black car came around the clubhouse, its headlights angled down the narrow road. It circled the top of the lake, and as it swung to go up the hill, Tom saw two heads side by side on the front seat, one dark, one blond. Another long car followed, this, too, with a dark and a blond head in the front seat.
The lights in the club dining room went out, and long blocks of yellow vanished from the surface of the lake. Tom walked the long way back to his lodge.
He cut across Roddy Deepdale’s lawn and came up to his dock along the shoreline. He sat on the wood and swung his legs up, then took off his shoes. The shoes in his hand, he moved up to the deck, knelt in the darkness before the back door, found the lock with his fingertips, and slid in the key. He turned the knob and opened the door as softly as possible. Inside, he closed the door and turned the lock. Cold moonlight lay across the desk and washed the colors from the hooked rug.
Tom moved to the open door into the sitting room, and crouched over. Holding his breath, he slid into the big room, and stood, crouched and motionless, listening for any movement. The sitting room was dark as an underground cave. Tom waited until he was sure he was alone, and then he straightened up and took another step into the room.
The beam of a flashlight struck his eyes and blinded him.
“If I were you, I’d be careful too,” a man said. “Just stay there.”
The flashlight went off, and Tom instantly went into a crouch and began to rush into the office. A floor lamp snapped on. “Not too bad,” the man said.
Tom slowly straightened up and turned around to face him. All the breath left his body at once. His hand still on the chain of the floor lamp, wearing a dark blue suit and gloves that matched his grey double-breasted vest, Lamont von Heilitz smiled at him from a couch.