An Old Faithful Murder Page 6

  “That’s very interesting,” Marnie said, smiling at him.

  “Of course, I don’t treat many people like that in my practice. I deal more with everyday neurotics—preferably rich ones who can afford my fees!” He chuckled, appearing to believe he had been clever. “I might be able to help you understand what happened here, though.”

  “That would be nice, but—”

  Susan assumed that Marnie was going to explain that there would, there could, be no investigation, but she never got the chance.

  “And what, exactly, do you think would cause someone to do this foolish thing?” George Ericksen growled. “I have a hard time coming up with an answer to that question. Except, of course, that it must have been done by someone with absolutely no respect for the environment.”

  “That’s an interesting question.” Irving answered the other man while looking at Marnie. “I believe it may be best explained to the layman as a classic case of projection. The person or persons imbued you with their own hostile feelings and then couldn’t face the reality of their emotions and had to deny them—by drowning them, as it were.”

  “It’s probably the mother,” Susan muttered under her breath.

  “It’s always the mother,” Marnie agreed quietly.

  “Or, of course, maybe the person that did this had an urge to cleanse away these horrible things that he had transferred to the dummy—maybe he thought of it as giving the dummy a bath.” Everyone looked up as Darcy Ericksen spoke.

  “Where the hell did you come from?” his father roared.

  “The stork, the cabbage patch, possibly, or impossibly, your hairy old loins.” The reply was sharp. “Mother—”

  “Is fussing around trying to gather everyone together for dinner,” George Ericksen finished impatiently.

  “No, she has gone up to her room to lie down. She has a headache. She asked me to come over here and tell you not to expect her for supper.”

  “So you’re going to be your mother’s errand boy now! I wonder what you would say if I asked you to do the smallest thing for me,” George said sarcastically.

  “But you don’t ask the smallest thing from me, Father.” Darcy smiled crookedly. “You ask me only to change my life completely for you.”

  “For your own good,” George Ericksen roared.

  “How did you manage to acquire all this wisdom about the lives of others? Exactly why do you presume to know what is right or wrong with me?” Darcy stuck out his chin angrily.

  “I know what is natural and what isn’t. I have spent my entire life studying what is natural. How could you presume to tell me anything about a world that I have lived in for forty-seven more years than you have? How could you possibly—”

  But Darcy had spun around and was gone, slamming the door behind him.

  “This is absolutely ridiculous. Have your boss call me—I’m in the main building at Snow Lodge. I’m on vacation, and I certainly don’t need all these distractions. It’s inexcusable,” George Ericksen bellowed, following his son.

  “Definitely in need of extensive family therapy. I would recommend sessions twice a week.” Irving Cockburn broke into the silence that followed.

  Marnie smiled at him weakly. “I better sit down and write my report about all this—before I forget the details.”

  “Will you be giving the talk again tonight?” the psychiatrist asked.

  “No.” Marnie moved to the desk. “But I’ll be there.”

  “Then I’ll see you. Maybe we could go out for a drink or something afterward.” Irving beamed at her, and spinning on a heel so hard that he almost lost his balance, he propelled himself from the room.

  “I get the feeling that he took his cousin to the senior prom,” Susan muttered to herself.

  “Only if his aunt paid the poor girl to go,” Marnie surprised her by answering. The two women were near the side of the desk, apart from the rest of the room. The gathering, in fact, was breaking up, with people milling around or leaving for their evening meal. “I shouldn’t have said that, but I couldn’t resist it,” Marnie added.

  “I thought you were amazingly polite to him,” Susan commented.

  “We’re trained to be polite. We have to answer the same question a million times a year with the same enthusiastic smile on our faces. That’s part of the ranger’s job.” She sighed. “And most of the time, it’s great. Most of the tourists are pleasant, polite, and wonderful to work with. But sometimes someone comes along like that Dr. What’s His Name, who is so irritating.… I’m not being fair. He’s not that bad, it’s just that so much has happened today.”

  “You mean dummies aren’t dropped into pools every day?”

  “Not even every year.” Marnie didn’t manage to answer Susan’s smile with one of her own. She seemed to feel that her mood needed an explanation. “One of my friends—a ranger that I trained with, in fact, was burned to death after falling into a pool like that one.”

  “My God.”

  “It was last summer. He was out by himself in the middle of the night. That’s not terribly unusual—a lot of us get up in the night and check out a favorite geyser, especially on nights when there’s a full moon. Anyway, he must have slipped on the edge of the pool somehow. He did manage to climb out, but not before his entire body was covered with third-degree burns. He walked back to the spot where a bunch of us were camping—it was about a quarter of a mile away.…”

  “How … ?”

  “Third-degree burns are fatal, but the victim feels no pain. We called for a doctor—but there was nothing anyone could do. He—my friend—was dead less than ten hours later.”

  “So for you, this hasn’t been just a childish prank.”

  “Not entirely. But, of course, this isn’t really very serious. Just a prank, like you said.”

  Susan had said it, but she didn’t really believe it.

  TEN

  Susan had expected to find her family gathered and waiting for her in the wood-paneled dining room but instead, Jed was sitting by the window at a candlelit table for two.

  “Where … ?”

  “Right behind you, next to the door. You passed them as you came in,” he answered her unspoken question.

  Susan turned and saw her children and the Ericksen children sharing a table of their own. Chrissy and Heather sat on one side, heads close together, whispering. Chad and C.J. were across from them, apparently sharing a joke, their faces flushed with laughter.

  “I spoke with Joyce, and we agreed that everyone could stand a vacation—the adults from the kids, and the kids from the adults. Their waiter knows who to bill.”

  “Where are Kathleen and Jerry?”

  “They just got in from a trail. They left a message taped to the door of our room. They’ll join us in the bar later.” He looked closely at his wife. “Is anything wrong? I thought you’d be happy to get some extra privacy.”

  “I’m a little worried about what’s going on in the Ericksen family, Jed.”

  “According to Chrissy, so is Heather.”

  “She talked to you about it!”

  “Not in so many words. You know how the kids are about their friends’ confidences. But she did say that Heather’s family was having a pretty miserable vacation—something about her grandfather not liking one of her uncle’s friends, and her grandmother being terribly upset by it all. I guess he’s not the type of person to keep his feelings to himself.”

  “I’ll say.” Susan related the scene she had witnessed between George Ericksen and Darcy.

  “Well, that explains a lot.”

  “You know, there’s something else worrying me. There seem to be a lot of people who think that making the effigy and throwing it into the pool was the work of some kids—kids connected with the Ericksen family.”

  “You mean C.J.”

  “Yes, and that might connect Chad with this whole thing.”

  “So when was it dumped?” Jed asked.

  “Well, I asked Marnie about that,
and she thought possibly late this morning. The pool isn’t very popular, so she doubts if anyone visited it between the ranger walk yesterday and the one this afternoon—except for whoever threw it in. She says there was just one set of ski tracks there before the tour arrived. She insists that it’s something she noticed.”

  “Chad and C.J. were skiing on a different trail when that thing was dumped.”

  “You’re sure? It’s not that I don’t trust Chad, but we don’t really know C.J. at all and—”

  “Yes, I’m sure.” He accepted a beer from the waiter and took a sip before continuing. “Chad and C.J. took the trail up to Fern Cascade. Beth told me about it—I ran into her buying ski wax at the ski shack this afternoon. She and Jon passed them up there. It’s evidently not a long trail, but you have to herringbone up for almost a mile. She said that she and Jon passed them early on the trail—what she said exactly is that it took the two of them about half an hour to do the three miles and that it was going to take the boys all afternoon.”

  “So they couldn’t have had anything to do with the effigy.” Susan was surprised at how relieved she was.

  “Not unless they were in two places at once. That pool must be at least three miles from Fern Cascade—as the crow flies. And it must be more like seven or eight on ski trails.”

  Susan gulped down some wine and looked around the room. “They all appear to be pretty relaxed now.”

  “The kids?” Jed looked over at his offspring.

  “The Ericksens. Even Phyllis seems to be feeling well enough to eat.”

  The staff had joined three tables along one side of the room, and the entire family was sitting together. George Ericksen was seated as far as possible from Darcy. Randy was missing. If Susan hadn’t been present this afternoon, she wouldn’t have suspected there was any conflict in the family. As she watched, glasses were raised and the entire group joined in a toast.

  “Maybe whoever put that thing in the pool this afternoon got all of his or her hostilities out of his system, and now things have settled down.”

  “You sound like Dr. Cockburn,” Susan told her husband.

  Jed didn’t appear flattered by the comparison. “He’s a piece of work, isn’t he? But maybe he’s right.”

  “Well, I hope so, for all our sakes. This is supposed to be a vacation, after all. I don’t particularly want to spend it in the middle of a family explosion.”

  “And you think one is coming?” Jed asked.

  “There are an awful lot of exposed nerves around here. I really don’t know what to think. I suppose that as long as the kids are safely kept away from the tensions, we may as well relax and enjoy the vacation.”

  “Good idea.” Jed cut into his steak. “The kids are both planning on going to the talk tonight.”

  “Weren’t you?”

  “Well, I’m pretty tired and my legs ache.…”

  “But the topic is the exploration of Yellowstone. You said that was something that interested you. And I would like to see what sort of reaction Marnie gets when she makes her announcement about what happened today.”

  “You just said that you were going to concentrate on the vacation!”

  “I can do that and wonder exactly what happened this morning at the same time,” Susan insisted.

  “I wonder how many people know about it,” Jed said, frowning.

  “Good question. There were around twenty people on the tour today, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Probably.”

  “And others must have seen the rangers pull the thing out and bring it back here.…”

  “They carted it back in a snowmobile. They’re all over the place in those things. I don’t think anyone pays much attention to them.”

  “Well, they didn’t exactly hide the clothing and stuff over at the Visitor’s Center. Probably half the guests here know, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Possibly. I did hear some conversation about it at the front desk. And Beth mentioned it to me also.”

  “When you were at the ski shack?”

  “Yes. I was asking the boy who runs it which trail to take tomorrow, and she came up to me and asked me about the effigy. I didn’t notice her standing in the corner when I came in, but she overheard me talking about it.”

  Susan thought everything over for a while. “Which trail did he suggest?”

  “Well, I told him we were looking for a short trip, and he suggested the trails around Old Faithful Geyser. He said they’re well marked and popular. And if the storm that’s predicted comes in early, we can hurry back to the lodge.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “He suggested that we order box lunches tonight. The restaurant will have them made up and waiting for us in the morning. Then we won’t have to come back unless we want to.” He pulled a small booklet from the parka hanging over the back of his chair. “I’ll show you.…”

  Surprisingly enough, his quiet words echoed from across the room, but in the echo, they were angry and abrasive.

  “I’ll show you. I’ll show you!”

  And Darcy Ericksen ran by their table, toward the doorway. He turned before leaving and repeated it, looking straight into his father’s face. “I’ll show you! I will!”

  With that, he was gone.

  ELEVEN

  “Is that pack too heavy? You know Chad offered to wear it.”

  “I’ll let him carry it for the second half of the trail,” Jed answered, nearly running into his wife. “It would help if you would let me know when you’re going to stop.”

  “When we’re halfway there?” she squealed, ignoring his suggestion. “Are you telling me that we’re not halfway yet?”

  “Not at all. If I’m right—and I’ve been following the trail pretty closely on the map—we’ll be halfway when we get to the bridge right here.” He pointed to a tiny line on the sheet of paper he had pulled from his pocket. “Well, almost halfway.” He looked at his wife. “You’re not tired, are you?”

  “No. I’m exhausted.” She pulled her ski cap down over her ears. “I thought today would be easier than yesterday, but I was wrong. I can’t believe how much my legs and shoulders hurt this morning. Don’t yours?”

  “Mine ached last night. When I stood up after that talk, I felt my knees start to buckle.”

  “It was a little strange last night, wasn’t it?” Susan added, skiing slowly enough to talk as she went.

  “To say the least,” he agreed. “The tension in the Ericksen family was extraordinary. There’s an awful lot of pain there.”

  “I was a little surprised to see Darcy back with the rest of the clan. After that exit from the restaurant …”

  “You’re right. It couldn’t have been more than forty-five minutes later that they were all chortling together like nothing odd had occurred—except that their humor seemed a little strained.”

  “Strange,” Susan mused, turning her skis to the side to climb a short hill. “This is going to be easier on the way back. It has to be faster to go down than up.”

  “Maybe.” Jed wondered if his wife realized she had yet to ski down an incline without falling.

  “Did you see that look on their faces when Marnie made the announcement about throwing things in thermal features? They looked as though it had nothing to do with them.”

  “Well, maybe it didn’t. Maybe the fact that the dummy looked like George Ericksen was a coincidence. Maybe it was supposed to be Santa Claus with the beard and all—or maybe Paul Bunyan. Who knows?”

  Susan thought she did know. She didn’t doubt that George Ericksen was the person represented by the dummy. But she couldn’t help wondering whether it was a joke or a threat. She was feeling nervous about the whole thing. She had had terrible nightmares last night, inspired, she assumed, by the story Marnie had told about her friend’s death. In the middle of the night Susan had sat up in bed, upset and confused by images of a burned body lying at the foot of her skis. She couldn’t seem to shake the feeling that image had produced. Not th
at the same appeared to be true for the Ericksen family. As she had told Jed, the Ericksens were acting as if nothing were wrong, in public at least.

  Last night’s talk was a good example. Heather and C.J. had left her children after dinner, saying, so Chrissy reported, that they had promised to spend the evening with their family. The Henshaws had gone to the Visitor’s Center early—mainly because Susan had discovered, rising from dinner, that she wouldn’t be comfortable until she was seated again. Her family sat in the middle of the third row and waited for the talk to begin. Other tourists came in, filling the chairs at the rear of the room. Marnie and two other rangers entered and were immediately accosted by Dr. Cockburn, who managed to involve them in conversation. Susan tuned out the hum around her and concentrated on her aching muscles. The rangers spent a few minutes convincing Dr. Cockburn to sit down; they were gathered at the front of the room, preparing to start the program, when the Ericksens made their entrance.

  And it was some entrance. George Ericksen marched (yes, that was the word, Susan thought, remembering the scene) into the room, followed by his entire family. They were all smiling. And not talking.

  The entire first row was open, and George Ericksen led his group there and dropped down in the middle. Phyllis sat on his right, and surprisingly, Darcy placed himself on his father’s other side. The rest of the family joined them, with Heather and C.J. on either end. When Marnie came up to speak, they didn’t blink an eye or even appear interested. The lack of response struck her as unusual, to say the least. Very unusual.

  Marnie’s announcement was intentionally matter-of-fact. She explained that a large and, she implied, rather funny object had been found in one of the thermal pools in the park, that it was the job of the National Park Service to see that things like this didn’t happen, and that, while no one was anxious to upset anyone’s vacation, they would be very interested in any information about this event. She added that, certainly, any and all information and the identity of the informant would be completely confidential. As with Marnie’s handling of Irving Cockburn, Susan was impressed. And as far as she could tell, none of the Ericksens even blinked.