Foursome by Jeremiah Healy Read Free Book Online Page A

said.”
    “Three point four miles.”
    “Right. Now, think of the north end by the village as the base of a fiddle, with a lot of little islands kind of dotting the area around where the strings would cross the hole. Then the pond kind of tapers as it runs south toward us, with the far right or south over there the end of the fiddle’s handle.”
    “How long is it, total?”
    “Bit over three mile in length, north to south.”
    “Hell of a ‘pond.’ ”
    “Maine defines anything over ten acres a ‘Great Pond.’ Sometimes a body of water’ll be called a lake, but more often we just use ‘pond.’ ”
    “How wide is it?”
    “Maybe a mile and a half at the north end, tapering down to oh, half a mile right acrost here.”
    I looked to the opposite shore. It seemed closer than a half mile, but then water’s deceiving that way. “How deep?”
    “Need a map to be real accurate on that, but she goes from about five to six foot around the shoreline down to about fifty right smartly, and in some channels, down to two hundred.”
    “Two hundred feet deep?”
    “Marseilles’s not just a great pond, but a fine one, too.”
    She gave out a tempered haw-haw noise.
    I said, “Where’s Ma Judson’s house?”
    Willis swept her hand to the right. “The handle of that fiddle bends just a mite as it goes southward, but Ma’s place is only a little piece down from here.”
    A narrow, trodden path seemed to follow the lakefront toward the south.
    “How about Dag Gates?”
    Willis smiled. “Acrost from here.”
    I brought my head to the east shore. “Where?”
    “You’re looking right at his place.”
    “Across the pond?”
    “Now you’ve got it.”
    This time I studied the shoreline on the far side of the “handle.” “I can’t see anything but trees and rocks.”
    “Dag done well that way. Give you a hint. See those three rocks right at the water that kind of stand up together just south of the biggest birch?”
    “The birch is the white trunk.”
    “Right.”
    “Okay, I see the three rocks.”
    “No, you don’t.”
    “Sheriff—”
    “That middle rock, that’s Dag’s dock. Weathered spruce.”
    I studied it a little more. Once you knew it, you could see it. Maybe.
    Suddenly there was movement in the brush to our right. A little animal appeared, running steadily along the water’s edge, stopping once to chitter away at us before continuing into the brush on our left. It looked like an animated fur neckpiece.
    “Was that a mink, Sheriff?”
    “Fisher. She’ll circle the pond twice a day at about that speed, foraging for food along the shoreline.”
    “Looks like it burns more calories than it finds.”
    “Guess not, she’s still here.”
    I looked at Willis.
    She said, “What else you want to see?”
    “How about the boathouse?”
    “Fine.”
    We walked over to the stone structure, a little more imposing when you were right next to it. “We need a key?”
    Willis reached up to a wooden eave under the old roof and came up with one that opened the regular-sized door on the side. The interior had a stale smell, dank from dampness, pungent from oil and gas. A cigarette boat with more room devoted to engine than reserved for passengers was lolling in the water. The concrete parapet let me see its stern. FOURSOME.
    Willis said, “Ironic, eh?”
    The rest of the boathouse was crammed with conspicuous consumption. Water skis, water sleds, Jet Skis. Lounging rafts with drink-holder pockets. Two aluminum canoes, one painted yellow, the other orange. Other paraphernalia I could only guess at.
    Something made a clittering noise above my head.
    Willis said, “Just a bat. Dormant during the day.”
    I said, “Can we try the house, walk me through it?”
    “Sure can.”
    The climb back up the slope was a little tougher, but not much, a total of less than a hundred feet from the water’s edge. Rather than use one of the cutesy footbridges, Willis walked around the gully, and I did, too. The worst