Russell Banks - The Reserve

“May I direct you to someone?”

“I need to see Mr. Kendall.”

“Sorry. He’s with a member.”

“I can wait.”

“As you wish.”

Hubert nodded hello to the other guide.

“Hubert.” LaCoy rubbed his knuckle across his nose and thumped the cork handles of the fishing rods on the floor in greeting. He was a thick-bodied man, built like a stump with green suspenders.

“They biting out there today?”

“Naw. They was only waiting till we left, I guess. We pretty much come up empty. You?”

“Never wet a line. Just lugging supplies for the Coles.”

“Figured. So them two ladies staying out there alone awhile.”

“Awhile, yes.”

Ambassador Smith and Russell Kendall emerged from the office together, both smiling, their transaction satisfactorily completed. They ignored the guides and kept walking in the direction of the greeting desk, where Smith suddenly stopped, as if remembering something he’d left behind. “Don’t mention who was inquiring, Russell. Not unless she shows genuine interest.”

“Not to worry, Ambassador,” the manager said. They shook hands and Smith moved on, his faithful guide following behind. The manager hoped Ambassador Smith was right, that if Mrs. Cole received a generous, timely, and discreet offer from an old-time reservist like Ambassador Thomas Smith, she would be willing to sell their camp at the Second Lake. It had to be done before the widow got over Dr. Cole’s death, but not while she was still in deep mourning, or she might feel she was being taken advantage of. It was shrewd of the ambassador to make his move quickly, however, while the place was still associated in the minds of Mrs. Cole and her daughter with the death of Dr. Cole. A year from now their memory of the event will be dimmed somewhat, and by then they would have made new associations with the place, social and otherwise, and Mrs. Cole might not want to sell Rangeview.

The ambassador and his family would be easier for Kendall to deal with than the Cole women, especially the daughter, Vanessa. He liked the ambassador. Everyone did. And there would be a sizable commission in it for Kendall if he helped facilitate the sale. The ambassador was an extremely wealthy man from very old money who preferred to let others do his business for him, even in trivial matters. He often had his secretary make his clubhouse dining room reservations for him by telephone from New York City, even though he and his wife were right here in residence in one of the Club cottages, she out on the golf course, he out on the Second Lake fishing.

“Hubert’s waiting to speak with you, Mr. Kendall,” the English girl said, surprising Hubert. He hadn’t thought she’d known his name.

Kendall turned to Hubert, eyebrows raised. “Yes?”

“In private, if that’s okay.”

Kendall nodded and went back into his office. Hubert followed him and stood facing the wide desk like a schoolboy, hat in his hands. Kendall leaned back in his chair and peered out the window behind him at the tennis courts. The window was open, and the soft tympani of the ball and racket and the ball and fine clay played in counterpoint in the background.

After a few seconds, Hubert cleared his throat and said, “There’s something you ought to know that happened today.”

“Really? What?” Kendall continued watching the tennis. A pair of tall, blond, long-jawed men in white flannel trousers and white short-sleeved shirts trotted back and forth on the near court like agitated storks.

“You mind if I sit down?” Hubert suddenly felt that if he didn’t put himself into a chair and trap himself there, he’d turn around and walk out the door.

Kendall waved him toward the dark green club chair recently vacated by Ambassador Smith and resumed gazing at the tennis. “What happened today that I should know about?”

“You know Mrs. Cole, Evelyn Cole? Dr. Cole’s wife. His widow, I mean.”

“Yes. Of course.”

“Well, this morning I was up to the Second Lake there, at their camp. And she got accidentally shot.”

Kendall wheeled around in his chair. “ Shot! By a gun? Oh, my!”

“Yes. By a gun. Shotgun. Over-and-under Belgian twenty-eight gauge that belonged to the doctor. I…I got it in my truck. My car. Outside.”

“Oh, my!” the manager said again. “Is she…is she all right?”

“Well, no. She’s dead. But it was an accident.”

“Dead!” Kendall left his chair and hurried across the room and closed the door. “Oh, my. Oh, my, this is terrible.”

Hubert looked down at his hands, one holding his old fedora by the brim, the other upturned in his lap, as if waiting for a coin from a passerby. What he was doing now did not feel any longer like the right thing. But it was too late to stop it, too late to go back to what he had been doing before. That had felt wrong, too. In little more than twenty-four hours — starting at the moment Vanessa Cole showed up at his cabin door — he had arrived at a place in his life where he could no longer choose between right and wrong. His life no longer felt like it belonged to him. It belonged to Vanessa Cole and Jordan Groves, and to Alicia Groves, and now it belonged to Russell Kendall, too.

“It was an accident. She…well, she dropped the gun, and it went off, I guess. It was hair triggered, and she had the safety off. I guess you could call it a freak accident. She didn’t have much experience with guns and such.”

“Oh, dear God, this is terrible! Where were you when this happened? She shouldn’t have been handling the gun! That’s supposed to be your job, for heaven’s sake!”

“I was right there. Actually, when it happened, I was trying to take the gun away from her,” Hubert said and instantly regretted it. He didn’t have to volunteer that. He wouldn’t lie, he couldn’t now, but he decided to offer no more information than was absolutely required, no matter how dumb he sounded.

“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.”