Ghostwriting IT LOOKED TO BE about ten miles away, on the northwestern shore of the Vineyard. Lambert’s Cove: that was it. There was something beguiling about the names of the locations all around it: Blackwater Brook, Uncle Seth’s Pond, Indian Hill, Old Herring Creek Road. It was like a map from a children’s adventure story, and in a strange way that was how I conceived of my plan, as a kind of amusing excursion. Dep suggested I borrow a bicycle—oh yes, Mr. Rhinehart, he keep many, many bicycles, for use of guests—and something about the idea of that appealed to me as well, even though I hadn’t ridden a bike for years, and even though I knew, at some deeper level, no good would come of it. More than three weeks had passed since the corpse had been recovered. What would there be to see? But curiosity is a powerful human impulse—some distance below sex and greed, I grant you, but far ahead of altruism—and I was simply curious. The biggest deterrent was the weather.
