“You were there? You saw it? And you brought the gun in and put it in your car, for reasons I won’t ask into just yet. What about the body, Mrs. Cole’s body? Did you bring that in, too?”
“No.”
“No? Where is she? Her body, I mean. At Rangeview?”
“Well, it’s…it’s back up in the woods a ways.”
“And Vanessa Cole, where is she? Did she come in from the lake with you?”
“No.”
“This is terrible news. Just terrible. The timing couldn’t be worse. When it gets out, it’ll be in all the papers. A thing like this, it’s not the sort of thing the members want the Reserve associated with, you know.”
“Yes.”
“Who knows about this? Other than you, of course. And Vanessa Cole.”
Hubert hesitated a moment. “I seen Ambassador Smith and Sam LaCoy out fishing when I come in. But I didn’t tell them nothing about it. I just said Mrs. Cole and the daughter didn’t want no company just yet.” Hubert hated the way he was talking. He sounded like a country bumpkin, and he knew it, but couldn’t stop himself. He was glad that Alicia couldn’t see or hear him.
“So only you and I and Vanessa know about this accident. That’s good. How’s she taking it?”
“Okay, I guess.”
Kendall sat back down and clasped his hands behind his head and stared at the ceiling a moment. “I’m tempted to do something indiscreet,” he said. “Possibly illegal. But I’ll need your cooperation, Hubert.”
“How’s that?”
“It’s still possible to keep this whole thing just between us. You know, bring the body of Mrs. Cole out from the lake after dark tonight, and then you and Vanessa drive it someplace else. Someplace downstate, in the Catskills, maybe, and take the gun with you, and say the accident happened there.”
“I don’t know, Mr. Kendall. The body’s not—”
The manager interrupted him. “You would be handsomely paid for the service, believe me. I have a discretionary fund available for…discretion. Do you think Miss Cole would agree to that?”
“Well, to tell the truth—”
“There are favors I could grant in exchange. She wanted her father’s ashes placed in the Reserve. I could allow it. There might be other favors.”
Hubert shook his head. “She doesn’t want anybody to know what happened, all right. Just like you.”
Kendall brightened. “Really?”
“For different reasons she doesn’t want anybody to know what happened. But she doesn’t want her mother’s body brought out, neither.”
“Why not, for heaven’s sake? We can’t leave it there. She’s dead, Hubert. It’s a human body.” He started to say that Ambassador Thomas Smith was thinking of buying Rangeview and might change his mind if a scandal were associated with the place, but thought better of it. Kendall didn’t want anyone getting between him and the ambassador in this transaction, and who knows whom Hubert might tell? If word got out, one of the other members might cut into line without relying on the manager to act as broker. There was a premium on camps in the Reserve.
“Well, for one thing, she’s scared,” Hubert said.
“Scared! Why? She didn’t do it, did she? Shoot her mother. I thought it was an accident. Mrs. Cole dropped the gun, and it went off accidentally, you told me.”
“Well, that’s more or less how it happened.”
“More or less?”
“Yes.”
Kendall narrowed his eyes. “What aren’t you telling me?”
“Nothing important.”
“Whatever happens in the Reserve has to be reported to me. Especially when it’s something…untoward. As this certainly appears to be.”
“I know.”
“Hubert, I could make it so you’d never work in the Reserve again.”
“I know.”
“You’d starve without the Reserve. You and half the people in this town,” he added.
“I know,” Hubert said, and sighed. He leaned forward in the chair and looked at the floor and without raising his eyes proceeded to tell the manager the rest. Or most of the rest. He did not tell him about Jordan Groves’s being at the Second Lake, and he did not tell him that Vanessa Cole had kidnapped her mother and kept her a prisoner in the camp for days.
The manager heard him out in silence. When Hubert had finished, Kendall sat up straight in his chair and brushed invisible crumbs from his shirt and straightened papers and pencils on his desk for a few seconds. The thunk of the tennis ball and an occasional hearty male laugh drifted through the open window.
The manager inhaled sharply through his nose. “You are a fucking idiot,” he declared. “You’re a fucking idiot twice over! First, for going along with the Cole girl and burying the mother on the Reserve, when you should have simply come here immediately and told me about the accident. We could have handled the matter discreetly, with no one the wiser. So you’re an idiot for having gone along with her, and God only knows why you did that, and second, you’re an idiot for coming here now and telling me what you’ve done with the woman’s body. And God only knows why you did that!”
“What should I have done, then?” Hubert asked. He genuinely wanted to know. “I’m not an idiot, Mr. Kendall.” He sat back in the chair and gave the manager a hard look.
“Really?” The manager laughed without smiling and shook his head. “What you should have done is refuse to cooperate with that girl and instead come to me right away so I could do the thinking for both of us. Now I’ve got no choice but to play it by the book. The Reserve rule book. I’ll have to call in the sheriff and tomorrow send a crew out there to dig up Mrs. Cole’s body and bring it in. The county will probably want an autopsy before issuing a proper death certificate. It’ll be in all the papers. Oh, they’ll love it. And not just the local papers, either. Kaltenborn will have it on the radio. It’ll make the newsreels. And the Cole estate, that’ll be tied up for years. Or else in the hands of that crazy girl. And who knows what she’ll do with the property.”
“The property?”
“Yes. Rangeview. Certain parties have expressed an interest in purchasing Rangeview from Mrs. Cole. It could have been a quiet, private transaction, handled by me. These are socially prominent people, Hubert. They don’t like their names or activities or their financial affairs in the newspapers or associated with people like Vanessa Cole, who does want her name in the newspapers and her pretty face up on the ‘March of Time’ screen. I don’t expect you to understand that. But I do expect you to act rationally. Or at least I did. And to leave the business of being discreet to me. That’s supposed to be my business, Hubert. That’s my special skill. It’s why I have this job. Your business, your skill, is to guide and protect your clients here on the Reserve and take care of their property for them. Your employer, don’t forget, is the Reserve. Your clients pay the Reserve for your services, and the Reserve pays you. Your allegiance, therefore, is first and foremost to the Reserve and only indirectly to your clients. The rules we follow here, all of us, you as well as I, are the Reserve’s rules, written into law years ago, generations ago, by men like Dr. Cole’s father, when they first created the Reserve as a private sanctuary for themselves and their families and friends. Remember that. And when you obeyed Vanessa Cole and helped her bury her mother on the Reserve, which is practically sacred ground to these people, especially those members like Ambassador Smith whose parents and grandparents created it, when you did that, Hubert, you broke the Reserve’s rules. There shall be no grave sites anywhere in the Reserve. None. That’s the rule that applies here, Hubert. While I might have bent that rule a little for Vanessa Cole regarding Dr. Cole’s ashes, in exchange for her agreeing to move the site of her mother’s unfortunate accident to someplace else, now, thanks to you, it’s too late for that. We’ll have to go up there tomorrow with a crew and dig up the body in daylight. How deep did you bury her?”