Green Lake Read online

  Madeleine stopped chewing. Her face colored. “I'm sorry, Manuel. I was so tired last night I didn't realize what I was doing.”

  “Don't apologize,” said Manuel. “How did you sleep?”

  “Much better than I thought I would.”

  “Good. Jacqueline always sleeps well here at the cabin.”

  “Obviously,” said Madeleine. “Is she awake?”

  “Not yet. I'm going to look at the lake. Would you like to come?”

  Madeleine was already off her stool. “Let's go. Shall we leave a note?”

  “No need. Jacqueline will know where I am.”

  Madeleine followed him out to the Jeep and climbed inside the passenger seat. As he backed out of the drive she eyed the cabin closest to the log home. It was small and white, with a bed of colorful coleus in front. It reminded Madeleine of her grandmother's house.

  “That's Renard's place?” she asked.

  Manuel looked and nodded. “Yes.”

  They ambled down the road toward Briar's Cove, and Madeleine frowned as she spied a man in a yellow fishing hat standing in back of a cabin and digging furiously with a shovel.

  “What's he doing?” she asked, and Manuel laughed.

  “That's Sherman Tanner. We call him the earthworm. The man isn't happy unless he's digging and burying something. He'll plant a species of flower one week and rip them out the next. His wife is the same. They're always rearranging the mounds they make and shifting them from one side of the yard to the other. It's the funniest thing.”

  “Earthworm?” said Madeleine.

  “Yes. I should warn you,” said Manuel. “There are some strange people here. Quirky, if you like, with some very odd habits. Jacqueline and I have great fun observing them.”

  “Strange,” said Madeleine. She was familiar with strange.

  “You'll see,” said Manuel, and as they drove past the tiny band of mismatched cabins that made up Briar's Cove, Madeleine frowned.

  “Some of them collect junk,” she said.

  “Disgusting, isn't it?”

  “Others look very nice and well kept. Why do they put up with the junkers? Shouldn't there be some community covenant?”

  “There should be, but there is not. Jacqueline and I are lucky to live up the hill, away from the others. Like Renard, we keep to ourselves.”

  He stopped the vehicle at a point that overlooked the lake and smiled. “Look at that water, so beautiful and still. I love to come here in the morning, before the boaters and skiers arrive.”

  “It's pretty,” Madeleine agreed, looking at the glassy surface of the lake. “Where do you fish?”

  “I have my favorite little coves. You must always be careful, though. Some of these people are very private, and do not enjoy intrusion.”

  “For example?”

  Manuel shrugged. “One man has a private dock and frequently swims nude, as do his many guests. I think nothing of it, but Jacqueline says he is an orgy-meister.”

  Madeleine cleared her throat. “Is there a public swimming area?”

  “I will show you, although I will caution you about this also, as last summer a young woman reported an attack.”

  “On the swimming beach?”

  “One evening around dusk,” said Manuel as he guided the Jeep down to the designated area.

  When he stopped, Madeleine gazed around herself with dismay. There was no beach, only a small sandbar that appeared to be getting smaller with each lap of the lake's waves.

  “Do many people swim here?” she asked.

  “Oh yes. More of them later in the summer, as you can guess. The water is still cold in May.”

  Madeleine opened her door and stepped out onto the ground. Manuel got out, as well, but he stayed near the Jeep while Madeleine walked down onto the sandbar. She slipped off one sandal and dipped her toes into the water.

  It was ice cold.

  When she looked at Manuel, she saw another vehicle appear behind his, an official-looking truck with a logo of some kind on the side. She squinted as she saw the driver get out, and she knew immediately it was Eris Renard.

  He was tall, dressed in a khaki shirt and olive trousers. A long black ponytail hung beneath his hat.

  He spoke to Manuel and handed him something before looking at Madeleine from behind dark sunglasses. Madeleine's cheeks heated and her first impulse was to ignore Manuel's beckoning wave. Grudgingly she made her way up to them and stood biting the insides of her cheeks as Manuel introduced her.

  “Miss Heron,” Renard said and touched his hat.

  Madeleine said nothing to him. Up close she saw the pits in his cheeks and her lip began to curl as she was reminded of another pitted face. Renard's face wasn't as bad as Alpha's, being brown in color, but the distaste had already set in Madeleine's mouth, and she was helpless to disguise her reaction.

  Manuel cleared his throat in embarrassment, but Renard had already turned and walked back to his truck.

  When he was gone, Madeleine turned to her angry brother-in-law. “I apologize, Manuel. I'm sorry if I was rude.”

  Manuel refused to look at her. He climbed behind the wheel and waited for her to get in the passenger seat. Madeleine got in and placed her hands in her lap.

  “It was not as if he intentionally ogled you last night,” said Manuel in a tight voice.

  “That wasn't—” Madeleine began, but then she stopped. She wouldn't tell him she had been rude not because the man had seen her nearly naked, but because his face was pitted and he was an Indian and she'd had her fill of pitted faces and had her own face literally shoved in the dirt by more than one white-hating Indian.

  “Madeleine, the man is going to be your neighbor. You cannot practice such rudeness.”

  “Yes, Manuel, I know. I've said I'm sorry. I will apologize to Mr. Renard at the first opportunity. Please don't tell Jacqueline.”

  “I don't understand you,” said Manuel, shaking his head. “Jacqueline does not understand you, either. You have changed.”

  “I know,” said Madeleine.

  ‘‘You know?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Well?”

  “Well, what, Manuel?”

  He threw up a hand. “You should fit in very well here I think, Madeleine.”

  Madeleine flared her nostrils at the apparent insult, but she said nothing. There was nothing to say.

  CHAPTER TWO

  No one was more surprised than Eris Renard to find the small, blonde Madeleine Heron on his step at lunchtime that day. He put down his sandwich and went to push open the screen door. As the sunlight caught the side of her face he saw that she was older than he had at first believed. And prettier.

  Her look once again fastened on the scars in his cheeks. Irritated, Eris removed his sunglasses and said, “May I help you?”

  Her gaze shifted and she met his eyes. Eris lifted both black brows as she went on to stare at the gun on his hip. “Miss?”

  “I've come to apologize for my earlier behavior with you,” she said. “I realize how it must have seemed, but it was nothing personal, believe me. We got off on a bad foot and I'd like to start over, since I'm going to be your neighbor for a while.”

  Eris nodded. “No apology is necessary. Have a nice stay, Miss Heron.”

  He had turned away when he heard her say, “I'm a bit old to be called 'miss.' Please call me Madeleine.”

  “All right, Madeleine. If you'll excuse me, I just stopped in to grab a sandwich.”

  She backed immediately away. “Of course. Forgive the intrusion.”

  Eris closed the screen door and went back to the kitchen and his sandwich. He picked it up and took it out to the truck with him. Out of the corner of his eye he saw her walking back up to the log cabin, her spine stiff.

  His mouth twitched as he thought of the way she had unabashedly stripped in front of the window the night before. Then he thought of her first glimpse of him, and the way her lip had curled.

  He shoved the sandwich i
nto his mouth and pushed his key into the ignition. Pretty girls had looked that way at him for as long as he could remember. It was nothing new.

  He guided the truck out of his driveway and onto the road, turning when he reached the road that led to the dam. When he reached the bridge he slowed down to look around. He thought he had spied some oil on the road before, possibly spilled from a boat or some leaking old engine pulling a boat. He saw nothing now, so he guessed it had been his imagination. Oil patches were particularly dangerous on bridges, and would be nothing less than lethal on this one.

  A horn tooted behind him and he looked in his rearview mirror to see Madeleine Heron behind the wheel of the old blue Chevy pickup that sat in the cabin's garage. The Ortiz couple was in the cab with her. Eris stuck an arm out the window and waved her around him. She ground the gears and jerked out past his truck. No power steering. Shift on the column. She was going to have her hands full.

  Eris sat and watched the truck until it was out of sight then he went over the dam and down the road to where men fished beneath the dam. Out of the dozen or so fishing there several would not have permits, or the permits they did have would be expired. Campers without permits, boaters without the proper equipment and/or permits, pyromaniacs shooting off fireworks, drunks on skis and off—all of these things he had to look forward to over the next few busy months. And much more.

  It was the middle of his second year as a conservation officer. He had attended college and covered the areas of wildlife biology and fisheries science. He had completed certification as a law enforcement officer and learned how to speak in front of large groups of people. He knew how to operate every piece of required equipment and was expert at catching and trapping wild animals. His colleagues were envious of his marksmanship abilities, but few ever bothered to learn his name. He was always simply “the Indian.”

  People at the lake were the same. It was never, “here comes the game warden” (which people persisted in calling conservation officers despite the title change), but always “here comes that Indian,” or “here comes trouble.”

  Eris was used to instant animosity. Standing six feet four and having a face like his, people tended toward instant dislike. The uniform enhanced the effect rather than diminished it. Now people not only disliked him on sight, but most stepped back with a glimmer of anxiety and mistrust in their eyes.

  Another man might have felt a certain amount of power under such circumstances, having such sway over people, but Eris felt nothing more than irritation. When he spoke to small civic groups or other interested parties he did his best to appear polite and civil and not at all menacing, but still he heard whispers, received numerous distasteful looks and was asked to answer very few questions. His frustration was evident to his superior, but communication with the public was a part of what he did, and Eris had to handle it. He solaced himself with the fact that public relations made up only fifteen percent or so of his job requirements.

  The majority of his activities involved enforcing laws and regulations by patrolling his assigned area, which included all of Greenwood County. Help would arrive during the summer, when another CO came to take over the task of patrolling the area lakes. Dale Russell had been hired at the same time as Eris, but Russell spent half of his time performing the duties of an administrative assistant and lobbying in Topeka trying to convince lawmakers to give conservation officers more police power.

  Eris had made no less than four drug arrests the summer before, and he had testified in all the cases and saw all the defendants convicted, but if a person was speeding through the park, doing thirty miles over the speed limit, Eris was virtually powerless to do anything other than stop the driver—if possible— and issue a warning.

  He saw a Mustang speed by on the bridge above just as he left the truck and approached the men fishing below the dam. Eris shook his head and continued walking. The owner of the Mustang was a spoiled, rich little miss whose parents owned a large pontoon boat used mainly for fishing and parties. He had stopped the girl twice last year to ask her to slow down while in the park area and she'd shaken and trembled and pretended penitence, looking under her lashes at her friends the whole while and garnering giggles for her performance. The last time he stopped her she had winked and licked her lips suggestively, still smiling at her friends. Eris wanted to shake her.

  The men fishing below the dam were ready for him when he approached, and Eris spent the next half-hour checking licenses and making small talk. When he left the area he passed the old blue pickup on its way back to the cabin and lifted a finger in acknowledgment of Manuel Ortiz's wave.

  Manuel Ortiz was cordial and respectful, and when he asked Eris for the latest boating guide summary the evening before, Eris had been only too happy to comply. He chalked up Ortiz's manners to being foreign born and gave him another five years before learning to demand rather than ask, like most Americans. One of the worst was Sherman Tanner, a year-round denizen who liked to stop Eris every chance he got and demand that an end be put to this and a stop be put to that and why didn't he do something since he was supposed to be some sort of law who carried a gun and everything.

  Eris tried to tell him he wasn't that kind of law, not a community constable or a personal security officer placed on the hill for the protection of Sherman and Gudrun Tanner from loud kids and obnoxious boaters. If he didn't like dealing with lakeside activity, then he shouldn't live by a lake, the digging fool.

  The remainder of Eris's day was spent in patrolling, putting miles on the truck and making occasional stops to talk to people. A new farmer had a problem with his pond, all the fish he had stocked the year before were now dead and floating on the surface. Eris took samples of the water for analysis and told him to keep the cows out. By the time he made it back to the reservoir it was nine-thirty and he was hungry and tired.

  He put the truck in his own detached garage and stepped up to his back door to insert his key in the lock. He paused when he heard music. Not the music that frequently came from Briar's Cove or the bay area, but soft classical music.

  Manuel Ortiz, he thought, and he opened his back door and let himself in the house. In the kitchen he opened a window so he could still hear the music while he fixed himself something to eat. He glanced up toward the cabin while he made himself another sandwich and through the open curtains in the cabin's living room saw Manuel and his wife, Jacqueline, slow dancing across the floor. Madeleine Heron sat on the front porch of the cabin, and in the light from the living room Eris saw her head in her hands.

  Desolation came from her in waves, and Eris stood motionless while he watched, wondering why the impulse to go up there was so strong when he knew he would face nothing but rejection. Some kind of human response mechanism, he guessed.

  He had to wonder about her. She obviously possessed no desire to be here, and yet she was here for the summer, Ortiz had said.

  A broken marriage? He wondered. A tragic loss?

  It was somewhat unusual, he figured, for a woman like her to be sequestered away in a cabin alone for the summer.

  He wondered if she had any children.

  Her head came up as he watched and she looked directly at his cabin. Eris knew she saw him standing in his kitchen in the dim glow of his fluorescent bulb. He made no move to turn away or to do anything but finish eating his sandwich over the sink, where he usually did his eating.

  She watched him steadily for several minutes then she surprised him by stepping off the porch and walking down the path toward his cabin.

  Eris's first impulse was to turn off the light and refuse to open the door.

  When no knock came, he was both relieved and curious. He walked into his darkened living room to look out the window and see where she had gone. When his eyes adjusted he saw her walking down the path to Briar's Cove and Vista Bay.

  She was foolish to be out walking alone. The water was nearly a half-mile away, anything could happen during a nocturnal stroll in these parts. He would have to sp
eak to Ortiz again and ask him to warn her about the strange people in the area.

  Eris sat by the window for over an hour, waiting and watching for her to come back again. When he finally saw her top the hill, he sighed and began to unbutton his shirt. He had to get to bed.

  CHAPTER THREE

  An odd sense of panic set in Sunday night as Madeleine watched her sister and brother-in-law haul their suitcases out to the Jeep.

  Don't leave me! She wanted to shout. I've seen the Earthworm and last night just after dark I stumbled across a fat, middle-aged couple having sex on an air mattress in their front yard while two dogs sat wagging their tails and watching.

  She clamped her lips shut and said nothing. She would seem ungrateful beyond words if she opened her mouth now.

  The moment they were gone she would take out her portable word processor and begin a series of letters begging every university in the Mississippi Valley for a grant. She was open and accessible, interested in other areas of anthropology, and she was still relatively young. There were many aspects of Native-American culture she could research without actually living among them again, though in truth she longed to do just that. It was courage she lacked. Her last experience was still fresh in her mind, and though Madeleine knew the only way to conquer her fears was to face them, she still felt she was not quite ready.

  The unsightly Eris Renard made her feel even less ready. He reminded her of the worst of everything she had faced in her life, with the possible exception of her husband's suicide, and it didn't help that his black eyes were so still and watchful or that his mouth hardly moved even when he spoke. Madeleine lumped him in with the other people she had been exposed to thus far, and she found she preferred her hip, snotty college students to the population of Green Lake.

  When Jacqueline and Manuel were ready to depart, they asked Madeleine for the hundredth time if there was anything she needed before they left. For the hundredth time, she told them she would be fine. There was gas in the old truck and groceries in the cabin. She was all set. She gave them what she hoped was a supremely confident smile and then went into the cabin and banged her head against the door when they left. Before the sound of their engine died away, she had her laptop out on the kitchen bar and was composing her first letter. She wrote three and had stuffed them in envelopes when she realized she had no stamps.