Stone Cold Dead

by James W. Ziskin

  “There was some talk about three months ago,” said Susan. “But Darleen said that was all guff. Of course, we didn’t exactly believe her.”

  “Yeah, we all thought she was lying to cover up,” added Linda. “I always thought she was sweet on Mr. Russell. And he seemed sweet on her, too. Always calling on her in class. Always kind of looking her way. But Darleen said no.”

  The bus rumbled over the Mill Street Bridge and began to climb the big hill, fan belt squealing and exhaust belching as it went. Once we’d reached the top, Gus Arnold pointed us west on Route 5S, into the gray gloaming of the late afternoon. I watched the white landscape drift by for a couple of minutes.

  “What do you think happened to Darleen?” I asked the girls finally, as we eased to a stop on the side of the road to disgorge a smallish kid in a red-checked hunter’s cap. He slipped on the ice as the bus pulled away, and the kids roared with laughter. The poor boy’s lunch box opened and spilled his thermos into the highway. I watched him scramble to retrieve it as a big Chrysler bore down on him. The kids on the bus groaned in disappointment as the boy dashed to the safety of the shoulder, only to slip and fall again just as the Chrysler blew past him, leaving a cloud of snow in its wake.

  “That was rather mean,” I said to the girls, referring to the laughter.

  They shrugged. “Yeah, but it was hilarious. You have to admit.”

  I thought about it. Had I grown too old to laugh at a harmless pratfall? The kid had looked pretty funny, twice landing on the seat of his snow pants. And he seemed unhurt, at least physically. Still, poor kid.

  “Now, about Darleen,” I said. “Do you girls live near her place?”

  “I get off two stops before Darleen,” said Susan. “About three miles away from her house. Linda and Carol get off at the stop before Darleen’s.”

  “It’s about a mile from my house,” said Linda.

  “Have you ever met her neighbor Bobby Karl?”

  “That creep next door?” asked Susan. “Such a weirdo.”

  “How so?”

  “We had a sleepover about two months ago, the four of us. Darleen’s stepdad was building a bonfire for Halloween. Darleen said he did it every year, and it was fun. A big hay bonfire. But Darleen said he did it to burn all the garbage he was saving up all year.”

  “And you saw Bobby Karl that night?”

  “He was hanging around, gawking at us. Well, Darleen, mostly. And talking nonsense about calving and tractors. Who cares?”

  “Was he weird in any other ways besides talking about livestock and farming machinery?”

  “Not really.”

  “Did he speak to Darleen that night?”

  “No he just was hanging around, scratching his scabby arms.”

  “And what about the other neighbor? Mr. Rasmussen? Did you ever see him at Darleen’s?”

  “The giant?” asked Susan.

  Carol laughed. “No, we decided to call him Gargantua, remember?”

  “Oh, yeah, that’s right,” said Susan. “Darleen came up with that one.”

  “Never mind that it’s not nice to call people names, did you ever see him while you were visiting Darleen?”

  “Darleen said you could see him from space,” said Susan, and the other two girls giggled.

  “Were you in space, or did you see him at Darleen’s?” I asked, a little less nicely the third time.

  “We saw him maybe once or twice when he was plowing his field,” said Linda. “He never spoke to us, except once to say stay off his land.”

  “Were you on his land?”

  “No.”

  “Okay, anything else you can tell me about your visits to Darleen’s place? Did she get along with her stepfather, Mr. Metzger?”

  Susan shrugged and said they got along okay. “He was pretty strict with her, though.”

  “How about you, Carol?” I asked. “What did you think of Mr. Metzger?”

  “He was kind of scary,” she said, wincing and showing her braces.

  Susan glared at her.

  “What?” asked Carol. “He was scary, wasn’t he? I mean, I couldn’t even sleep after that.”

  “Why don’t you shut it, Carol?” said Susan.

  Once Gus Arnold had dropped Linda and Carol at their stop at the mouth of County Highway 58, he threw the bus into reverse and began to back out onto Route 5S.

  “Wait a minute,” I called from the back. “Aren’t you going to drive your full route?”

  I’d been timing the drive and didn’t want to guess at the total if he skipped Darleen’s stop.

  “But there’s no more kids to drop,” he said, looking at me through a mirror above him. “I’m taking you back to the school to get your car.”

  “No, I’d like to run the full route, please. It will only take a few minutes more.”

  Gus Arnold scowled, I imagined, though all I could see were his eyes in the mirror. He made a big show of throwing the bus into first gear and wrestling the steering wheel back into place. We rolled through a large pothole, nearly knocking me out of my seat, then proceeded peaceably over a pack of mostly white snow toward Darleen Hicks’s house.

  Five minutes later, the bus slowed to a stop in front of the rusting mailbox labeled “Metzger.” It looked frozen shut, the red flag bent down permanently or at least until spring and warmer temperatures would free it from the frost’s grip.

  Gus Arnold slouched against the steering wheel, disinclined to face me as he awaited instructions. I joined him at the front of the bus and asked him how long he usually paused at Darleen’s house.

  “What?”

  “Do you wait here or do you drive away once she’s off the bus?”

  “I drive away, what do you think?”

  “Then let’s move.”

  Gus Arnold shook his head in disgust. I don’t know what hold I had over him, but he was doing as I asked. He released the clutch, and we jerked into motion.

  “You go straight from here?” I asked, leaning on the back of his seat as I looked out the windshield.

  “No room to turn around here,” he said. “Metzger’s road is too narrow.”

  “I saw a no-outlet sign back there. How do you get out of here?”

  “There’s an opening about a mile ahead. It’s big enough to turn the bus around.”

  We drove for about three minutes over the bumpy road, through an ever-narrowing alley of thick pines, until we reached a cul-de-sac. The trees had been cleared and the ground leveled about a hundred yards deep into the woods. But there was barely thirty yards available for the bus to turn around due to the mountains of snow dumped into the dead end by county plows. Like ridges of a true mountain chain in miniature, some of the snow banks rose as high as fifteen feet, their peaks rugged, speckled with dirt, salt, and gravel. The snow hills stretched nearly eighty yards deep and forty yards across. They looked like a paradise for little children to play in, ripe for adventure and filled with fantasy.

  “Are these snow hills here every year?” I asked to make conversation.

  Gus grunted as he twisted the big steering wheel around to complete his one-eighty. “County’s been dumping snow here for years,” he said, and the bus rumbled back onto 58.

  “The sheriff says you took a nap here after finishing your route the day Darleen Hicks disappeared. Is that true?”

  He seemed unnerved. “Well, not exactly here,” he said. “On the other side of the hills. That way,” and he pointed past the snow toward the woods beyond.

  “How do you get to the other side? There’s no road.”

  “You got to drive back to the highway and turn west. There’s a turnoff about a quarter mile past here.”

  “Do you take naps there often?” I asked.

  He drove on, shoulders hunched as he leaned over the steering wheel. “I like the quiet. No one there to bother me.”

  We passed Darleen’s house again, and I watched it melt into the dark behind us. I turned forward to take in the view through the wind
shield, looking past the driver. Ahead, on the side of the road, a giant figure stooped to grab the post from his mailbox. We rolled past him just as he righted himself. Walt Rasmussen glared through the bus’s windows; he was almost tall enough to look me in the eye and give me a fright. It was as if he’d recognized me in the dark.

  I sat quietly for the ride back into town. The giant had spooked me. Gus Arnold dropped me off at the junior high school at 4:47. The bus depot was perhaps ten minutes farther. That made for about thirty-five minutes from the end of his route back to the depot. I knew he hadn’t changed a flat tire that day. And if he’d finished his route at four twenty, then snoozed for thirty minutes, he should have been back at the depot by five thirty. That left nearly an hour of his time unaccounted for.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  I put my feet up on the ottoman and hoisted a stack of newspapers onto my lap: the ones that Norma had collected for me. My feet were stinging from the exposure to the cold that morning. I wriggled my toes, trying to urge some warm blood into my feet. I squirmed in my seat, searching for a comfortable position for my sore bottom. It felt as if I’d been kicked by a mule. I cursed Joey Figlio again then reached for my drink on the end table.

  The television was humming quietly; the second act of Hong Kong was just beginning after a commercial. I didn’t know much about the show, but I kind of had a thing for Rod Taylor, and I liked the exotic setting. Better than Wagon Train, which aired opposite it. From the top of the pile of papers on my lap, I unfolded the Canajoharie Courier Standard from Wednesday, December 21. The front page proclaimed, “First Day of Winter” and “Christmas Decorations Pageant Lights up City.” There was a dark photo of Main Street with garlands and festooned streetlights. And there was a second photo accompanying the “First Day of Winter” story: a view of the Mohawk River, completely frozen over, from Lock 12 in Tribes Hill.

  I picked up the December 22, edition of the Republic and scanned the local news. Nothing noteworthy had happened in the city the day before, if you didn’t count the mayor’s toy drive for the poor. But then I noticed a group photo of the school superintendent’s annual Christmas banquet at Isobel’s Restaurant on Division Street. The administrative staff of the entire district was assembled, from grammar-school, junior-high, and high-school principals and assistants to secretarial staff. I recognized Principals Keith from the high school and Endicott from the junior high. At a table near the middle of the room, I could make out Mrs. Worth, the secretary from the junior high, sitting with Louis Brossard.

  “A Merry Christmas to All” read the caption. “Superintendent Mitchell Plays St. Nick.” The article said the dinner had broken up at ten p.m.

  Then the phone rang. It was the sheriff.

  “We just got a tip someone saw a kid prowling around near Ted Russell’s place,” he said. “I’m heading there now. You want to come along?”

  “Do I?” I said, sitting up and dumping the papers on the floor.

  “You can’t ride with me. I’ve got to run up to Fonda afterwards, so you’ll have to follow in your own car. Two minutes, Ellie. Be ready. I won’t wait.”

  Two minutes was plenty of time to grab my camera and four rolls of film, and wrap myself in my overcoat. Then I downed my drink in one go: antifreeze for the cold evening ahead.

  Once in the car, I rubbed my cold gloves together, started the engine, and cranked up the heat. The driver’s side door was still frozen and wouldn’t close properly, but the lock held it in place. Mrs. Giannetti emerged from her door in an overcoat and boots, yoo-hooing to me as I waited in the car for Frank Olney.

  She inched across the icy porch and down the steps, steadying herself on the rail, then scurried up to my car and tapped on the window. “Going out, dear?” she called through the glass.

  “Yes, Mrs. Giannetti,” I said, leaning across the seat to roll down the passenger window.

  “A date? On a night like this?” Her breath froze as it left her mouth.

  I looked at her pointedly. “A date?”

  She shrugged. “I just thought that since you have so many dates . . .”

  She stood there for a few moments before she spoke again, and I let her, wondering how long she could brave the cold. Finally, realizing I wasn’t cooperating, she shivered and caved in.

  “You’re always running off somewhere and staying out late.”

  “I spend most evenings at home watching the television,” I corrected her.

  “And enjoying a nice drink of something,” she added. “That’s fine, of course. I’m all for it, but the delivery boy from Corky’s has a loose tongue. He tattles to Mrs. DiCaprio about my one little bottle of crème de menthe. I sometimes like a cordial after supper. Just a sip,” she said, indicating a small measure with two fingers of her gloved hand. “If he gossips about me, I can’t imagine what he must say about you.”

  My ears were burning in the cold. I craned my neck to see down the street, wondering how Frank’s two minutes had stretched to four.

  “Has the delivery boy said anything to you, Mrs. Giannetti?” I asked.

  “Oh, no, nothing. It’s just that, well . . . A girl wants to be careful with her reputation, dear.”

  “I’ve heard that.”

  Finally, the sheriff’s county car rounded the corner onto Lincoln and accelerated toward my salvation. When he pulled to a stop at the curb next to me, I cranked down the driver’s side window.

  “Follow me, Ellie,” he said.

  “Are you in trouble, dear?” called Mrs. Giannetti as Frank gunned the engine. I rolled up the windows and shifted into gear to follow him. The air was bitter cold as we cruised along Route 5 at sixty-five miles an hour. Blasts of dry, needle-sharp snow streaked past the windshield, and the defroster struggled to keep the glass clear. The frozen rubber of the wipers rattled back and forth, skittering over the ice, occasionally dislodging a small chunk and sending it hurtling over the roof into the frozen darkness behind me.

  Route 5 runs east to west along the north side of the Mohawk, from Albany past Buffalo to the Pennsylvania state line. We were heading east toward Schenectady, but we weren’t going that far.

  About four miles past the city limits, an old inn sat on a hill just above the highway. Recently restored by an ambitious transplant from Florida, the Kasbah was a fanciful interpretation of a North African souk, complete with turrets with onion-shaped domes, like an old Russian church. Somehow, somewhere along the way, the new owner had decided that Russian was exotic enough to pass for North African, and the Kasbah was born. I’d had drinks there twice with a handsome engineer from General Electric.

  Just below the Kasbah, perpendicular to Route 5, the tiny village of Cranesville climbed Cranes Hollow Road into the hills above the Mohawk. Consisting of perhaps two dozen homes, Cranesville was a sleepy hamlet where nothing ever happened. Until now.

  Sheriff Frank Olney pulled off to the side of Cranes Hollow Road, turned right, and crawled up a narrow lane that snaked through the trees above Eva’s Kill, a trickle of a stream that ran down from the hills into the river. Three of his men were already there, sitting quietly in the warmth of their darkened cruisers. When Frank arrived, they popped their doors and climbed out. I saw Vinnie Brunello, Stan Pulaski, and Pat Halvey.

  I left my car twenty yards farther down the hill, as the width of the road prevented me from finding a spot closer to the sheriff’s. Narrow enough in summer, now the little road barely allowed one car to pass in either direction due to the mounds of snow and ice encroaching onto the pavement.

  I grabbed my camera from the backseat, slung it over my shoulder, and climbed out of the car. Having forgotten about the frozen door, I slammed it shut only to see it bounce back open with a metallic thunk. I sighed, thinking some wicked thoughts for Charlie Reese, and pushed the door gently closed. It held.

  Frank was dispensing instructions to his deputies when I arrived, ordering them to fan out around the house at the end of the lane. He wanted them to beat the bushes and lo
cate Joey Figlio.

  “Ellie and I are going to talk to Ted Russell,” he said. “You boys come find me there once you’ve finished.”

  The modest clapboard house was a one-story dwelling, painted red, with a plume of smoke rising from its single chimney pipe. Frank knocked at the door. A hand pulled back the shirred curtain in the sidelight, and I could see Ted Russell’s eyes peering out. He opened the door and invited us in.

  “Thank you for coming, Sheriff,” he said, taking our coats. “And what a nice surprise to see you again, Miss Stone.”

  “So, a neighbor said she saw someone prowling around outside,” said Frank once we were seated in the parlor around the Franklin stove, opposite an upright piano draped with multicolored Christmas lights. “What about you? You see anything?”

  Ted Russell glanced my way, blushed a bit, then cleared his throat and nodded. “I was having my supper and heard something out by the garage. I looked out the kitchen window and saw someone dart into the woods. I can’t be sure, but I think it was Joey Figlio.”

  “When was this?” asked Frank.

  “About an hour ago. A little past seven.”

  Frank looked at his wristwatch. “Do you always eat so late?”

  I had to smile to myself. Coming from New York City, I was not accustomed to the early dinnertimes in New Holland. Seven was indeed a late supper for these parts, where most folks ate around five or five thirty.

  Frank questioned Ted Russell for thirty minutes more, leaning back in the chair he’d been offered, lazy and patient, but calculated. Without his host’s noticing, he brought the subject around to Darleen.

  “Funny, though, that Joey Figlio would think you were interested in Darleen Hicks,” he said from his seat.

  Ted Russell cleared his throat again and dismissed the idea. “Just idle gossip, Sheriff,” he said. “A single teacher is vulnerable to such accusations. Kids say terrible things about teachers.”

  “So no fire with all that smoke?” asked Frank, then he glared at Russell a good while, making him squirm in his chair.