Stone Cold Dead (14 page)

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 locate 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.

“What do you think, Ellie?” Frank asked me. “Were there stories like this when you were in school? Or is Mr. Russell here a particularly attractive target.”

Ted Russell looked at me, probably wondering what I was doing there, and if that was good or bad for him.

“My teachers were mostly old maids,” I said with a smile.

“But she was a student of yours, along with this Joey Figlio, wasn’t she?” asked Frank, turning back to our host. “Did you notice anything about their relationship? Were they going steady?”

“I suppose they might have been,” said Russell. “I don’t normally pay attention to ninth graders’ love lives.”

“Not normally,” mocked Frank.

“No, sir.”

“When did you last see Darleen Hicks?” I asked.

“I’m not sure,” said Russell. “It must have been the week she disappeared.”

“Wasn’t she in your music class?”

“Yes.”

“Then surely you saw her the day before she disappeared: Tuesday. Unless you saw her the next day.”

He shook his head adamantly. “There was the field trip on that Wednesday, wasn’t there? I couldn’t have seen her Wednesday because she wasn’t at school.”

“You seem to be up to date on her whereabouts,” added Frank.

“I read about it in the papers,” said Russell.

“You might have seen her in the parking lot Wednesday,” I offered, catching him off guard. “Darleen returned to the school to catch the bus home after the field trip.”

Ted Russell looked uncomfortable, but why not? He was being grilled by the sheriff and the press at the same time without his lawyer present. He managed an apologetic grin and repeated that he hadn’t seen Darleen at all on that Wednesday.

“Where were you that afternoon?” asked Frank. “What time did you leave school and where did you go?”

Russell tried to recall but could not produce a convincing alibi. He said he’d left school at his normal time. Probably about three forty-five or four. He said he’d returned home but doubted anyone saw him or could corroborate his statement.

The sheriff’s men arrived at the door, having scoured the area, which they pronounced clear of Figlios. Frank asked Ted Russell if he felt confident of his safety. Russell shrugged and said he supposed so.

“I’ll leave a man here for the night,” said Frank, pulling his coat on. “I hope you appreciate it, ’cause it’s cold out there. Tomorrow you’ll be on your own if this kid doesn’t show.”

Ted Russell nodded his head, helped me into my coat, and saw us to the door.

“I appreciate your help, Sheriff,” he said then caught my hand. I looked up at him startled, and he smiled. “Come back later,” he whispered so Frank wouldn’t hear. “Good night, Sheriff. And thanks again.”

Outside, I asked Frank if he’d thought about searching Darleen’s locker.

“Sure. I’ll look into it,” he said, climbing into his car. I doubted he thought it was worthwhile.

I backed down the hill, knocking down a couple of trash cans as I went. No harm done, and it was too cold to stop to right them again. I turned west onto Route 5 and accelerated, intending to pour myself into a warm glass of Scotch as soon as I got home. The car responded, but there was a voice behind me.

“Stop the car now.” Joey Figlio.

Twice in one day! I felt ice-cold metal against my neck and took my foot off the gas.

“You’re not going to take my car again,” I warned as I continued down the middle of the road.

“Pull over,” he said. “We’re not going through this again, are we?”

“Come on, Joey, be reasonable,” I pleaded. “You can’t leave me out here. I’ll freeze.”

Then he nicked my neck with his blade, and I screamed.

“Pull over or we both die in the wreck,” he said. “Darleen’s gone. I don’t have much to live for except to avenge her.”

I pulled to the shoulder, wishing I had Stan Pulaski’s gun. I’d never fired one before, but I was sure I could put a bullet between Joey’s eyes at close range. I’m not normally a violent person, but for the first time in my life, I felt I could kill a man.

The car came to a rolling stop, crunching heavily over the snowpack. I sat at the wheel, seething, holding my gloved hand to my bleeding neck. It was just a scratch, really. The night was absolutely still, frozen, and deserted on Route 5. No cars coming or going. We were four miles from New Holland, and I was not keen on walking them. The wipers continued to rattle back and forth over the ice, and I waited.

“Move it,” he said, shoving me to the passenger side, as he climbed over the seat.

I slid over, hoping for some kind of opening to take the knife out of his hands, but in reality I doubted I could overcome him anyway.

“Now get out and start walking,” he said.

“Joey, I’m not getting out of this car,” I said. “Not again. It’s five degrees out there.”

He shoved me again with his right hand, which was clutching the knife. I flailed, slapped at his arm, and tried to hide my face. Then I remembered the door. The door that wouldn’t close. I leaned back and, risking knife wounds to my ankles, kicked him as hard as I could with both feet. I pushed and kicked and thrust, knowing that everything depended on it. He yelled in protest, recoiled, moved back against the driver’s door, which opened obediently, and Joey Figlio suddenly found himself on the frozen pavement. There was no time to lose. I scooted across the seat, threw the car into drive, and gunned the engine before I’d even squared myself behind the wheel. The tires spun, and the car jumped forward. Joey was on his feet again, but I was already out of reach. Soon I was roaring down the highway, driver’s door flapping open and shut in the icy wind, as I watched Joey Figlio recede into the black night of the rearview mirror. I hooted and hollered in victory. I’m not proud of it but, if I’m honest, I have to confess that I actually wished him frostbite and worse for the trouble he’d caused me that day.