Once a Widow by Lee Roberts Page A

the open lake. Far ahead the taller buildings of Harbor City were like gray child’s blocks on the misty horizon. Lewis Sprang smoked and gazed back at the little island. “Lucky we could put in there,” he said.
    Still George Yundt did not speak. Ten in the morning, he thought. Ten o’clock…
    Suddenly he felt the lawyer’s hand clutching his arm. “Look over there!” Sprang cried, pointing at the island. “What’s that—on the beach, right at the edge of the water?”
    “What?” George said stupidly.
    “It’s a woman!” Sprang cried excitedly. “In a bathing suit. See her?”
    George’s gaze followed Sprang’s pointing finger. He saw the figure then, lying face down on the beach between two large rocks, the feet in the water. It’s a woman, he thought dully, in a white two-piece bathing suit. She’s drowned, he thought, dead, washed up by the lake. Ten o’clock tomorrow morning…
    Lewis Sprang turned and yelled into the cabin, “Turn her around, Mort! There’s a woman on the beach back there.”

 
CHAPTER SIX
     
    As the boat approached the island slowly, Lewis Sprang, perched in the bow, plumbed the depth of the water with a fishing rod. When they were thirty feet out from the shore he called to Watson, “Easy, Mort. I can feel bottom.”
    Watson cut the motor to idling speed and the boat drifted easily in the long, slow swells. Sprang called again. “Do you want an anchor out?”
    “Naw, I can hold her here.” Watson peered ahead at the figure on the beach. “How’re we gonna get her aboard?”
    Sprang looked at George Yundt. “Think you can get her, son?”
    George nodded silently.
    “What’s the matter?” Sprang asked curiously. “Don’t you feel well?”
    “I—I’m all right.” George nodded toward the figure on the beach. “Do you suppose she’s dead?”
    “I’m afraid so,” Sprang said grimly, “but the least we can do is take her to Harbor City.” He touched the young man’s arm. “If you don’t feel up to it, I’ll get her—if Mort can put in closer so I can wade. I don’t swim so well any more.”
    “No, no,” George said hastily. He began to remove his sodden slacks and shoes.
    “You’ll only have a little way to swim,” Sprang said. “I’ll help you get her aboard.” He peered at George intently, puffing on his cigar. “You sure you’re okay?”
    George nodded and slipped over the side, wearing nothing but blue shorts. Three strokes took him to shallow water and he waded to the beach, stepping carefully on the rock-strewn bottom. He reached the woman and knelt beside her. He had seen several drowned persons and knew instantly that this one had not been in the water long at all. She lay with her legs spread, one arm doubled beneath her, the other flung out on the sand. He could not see her face, because it was turned away from him and covered with short, tangled, yellow-brown hair. Her body was slender and smoothly browned, except for a cream-white ribbon above the top of the bathing shorts where they had slipped, exposing untanned skin just above her hips.
    It was a beautiful body, George thought vaguely. She must be fairly young, maybe thirty. He saw a blue bruised area on the inner side of one thigh and a thin red scratch across her back on the left side of her waist. She was covered with sand, some dried, some still wet, and it was in her tawny hair. He saw that the fingernails of the one exposed hand were painted red.
    He reached out a hand to brush the crusted sand from the woman’s body, and then paused. He had never touched a dead person before. She will be cold, he thought, maybe stiff by now, and a feeling of revulsion went over him. He hesitated, aware that Mr. Sprang and Mr. Watson were watching him from the boat. He touched the woman’s shoulder then. The skin was cool, but not cold, and very smooth. Gently, using both hands, he turned the woman over on her back. She was limp, not stiff at all, probably because she had not been dead