Stone Cold Dead (42 page)

The time had gotten away from me. I would have to finish the timeline later, after I’d spoken to Jimmy Tedesco. Rushing to freshen up and change my clothes, I stepped into my finest underwear and a new pair of nylons. I selected a navy, wool suspender skirt and a pearl-colored blouse I hadn’t worn for a while, figuring the look was flattering and would keep me warm. Finally, I touched up my lips and eye makeup just before the doorbell rang. No more unannounced visitors letting themselves in downstairs; Mrs. Giannetti had replaced the entry door with a sturdy model and a dead bolt. She told me she’d had it installed more for her own sleep than my safety. Then, unable to resist, she added the dig I’d been expecting:

“The men climbing up your stairs are usually invited anyway, aren’t they, dear?”

I raked a comb through my hair and tamed it with a black hair band. Hopping into my shoes and coat, I grabbed my purse, with my stories folded carefully inside along with my camera, billfold, and various compacts and lipsticks. I made sure I had enough money for carfare in case Vic Mature turned out to be a louse. Then I headed down the stairs.

I opened the door to find Mike Palumbo standing as large as a house, a bunch of flowers in his hand. I smiled and took them from him, wondering where I was going to put them. In the end, I trudged back up the stairs and threw them into a vase of water.

Beneath his overcoat, Mike—as I now addressed Officer Palumbo—looked stylish and handsome in a checked blazer and open-collar shirt. He’d made sure to park facing east, passenger door lined up perfectly with the sidewalk for my convenience. He held the door for me.

Inside the car, which was spanking clean, I noticed the smell of his pomade and aftershave. A mite potent, I thought, but I’d been subjected to worse. His conversation was polite, and he talked about me, not himself. When he smiled, I noticed a row of perfect, bright, white teeth and big, twinkling, brown eyes.

It was eight. I hadn’t eaten since morning, so when we arrived at Tedesco’s my stomach was growling. I jiggled my purse to cover the noise, but I’m not sure I fooled anyone. As I waited for Mike to open my door, I caught sight of Lock 11 spanning the river in the dark, and a chill went up my spine. I thought of Darleen.

The light was low as usual inside Tedesco’s, which was slow—also as usual—on a Sunday night in winter. We had our pick of where to sit, and Mike suggested a quiet booth near the back. The growing emptiness in my stomach was giving me that low-blood-sugar feeling, and I began to sweat and shake with chills. The waitress—Amy, I believe her name was—took our order. Normally, I would have asked for something light, but I was starving. I ordered a hot-meatball sandwich with fries and gravy. I knew I would never finish them, but when your blood sugar’s low you can’t reason with yourself. Mike looked quizzical, but not so much to suggest that I’d lost him right out of the gate.

“Sorry,” I said, shrugging my shoulders. “I haven’t eaten since morning.” That sounded stupid. What was I doing, saving up to gorge myself on my date’s dime? “I had a busy day,” I elaborated. “No time to stop for anything.”

“That’s fine, Ellie,” he said and nodded from across the table.

“And your usual to drink?” asked the waitress.

I wasn’t aware she knew what I drank, but perhaps my sense of anonymity was exaggerated. I blushed and said yes. A double.

“That is your usual,” she said. “And for you, sir?” she asked Mike.

He ordered the veal Parmesan and a glass of Chianti. A few moments later, the waitress returned with a basket of bread and butter, and I fell on it like a lion on a wildebeest. That did the trick. Then our drinks arrived. After the first one I felt better. Soon, I could feel my heartbeat slowing, and my temperature stabilized. Control restored, I stopped shaking, patted the shine off my nose, and smiled at Mike. By the time I’d settled into my second drink, the crisis had passed, and I was my old self, though no longer hungry.

When a lady is invited to a first dinner date, she is acutely aware of the attention she will receive from her escort. He’s bound to observe, ask himself questions, and form judgments about her. Why is she drinking so much? Why isn’t she married? A steady boyfriend, at least? And look how she’s stuffing her face. Very unladylike. So whenever I’m out with a fellow, I’m careful to cut my food into small, delicate pieces that I lift to my mouth slowly and daintily. I chew in a leisurely manner, as if I could take or leave the dish before me, and I make certain to dab my lips with my napkin after each bite.

That evening, there was no need to pretend to eat like a bird; I was full from the bread and drinks. I toyed with my food, spreading it around the plate to give the appearance that I’d eaten more than I had, but there was so much of it. Mike noticed, I’m sure, but he kept it to himself. Good thing, too, as I have a horror of men who comment on how much or how little I eat.

“So, how’s your story coming along?” he asked between forkfuls of veal.

“You’d think with the discovery of the body and all the arrests, there would be more clarity in this case,” I said, just as the waitress arrived with my third drink. I blushed at Mike.

“The chief says it was the Figlio kid,” said Mike.

“I doubt the DA will go along with that. He’s got a letter from the victim to Joey Figlio, outlining their plans to run off together. It would seem that Joey and Darleen were in love.”

“But they’re just teenagers,” said Mike. “What do kids know about being in love?”

“Are you joking?” I asked. “Kids know better than anyone the passion, the frustration, the hopelessness of love. Weren’t you ever in love?”

Mike blushed but didn’t answer. Just then Jimmy Tedesco appeared at our table.

“You don’t like my food, Ellie?” he said to me, hands on hips.

“I’m afraid I had a big lunch,” I answered, immediately regretting the lie. What was Mike going to think of me now? “It’s delicious, Jimmy. Can you wrap it for me to take home?”

He smiled and said sure. “I can’t stay mad at you, Ellie. I can’t afford to lose a customer who drinks so much.”

Now I blushed, but Mike was still wearing his poker face.

“Hey, Mikey,” said Jimmy, slapping my date on the shoulder. “How’s your old man doing?”

“A little better,” said
Mikey
. “He has difficulty speaking since the stroke, but he’s moving around now.”

“Give him my best,” said Jimmy and he started back for the bar.

I called him back to ask a question. “I need to know if the river out there by the lock was frozen on December twenty-first. Any chance you remember?”

“Why do you need to know that?”

“It’s a bet I have with my editor,” I said.

“Well, the river was definitely frozen at some point in December. I know who’ll remember,” and he went to the bar and returned moments later with Billy Valicki, one of the pickled regulars who kept Tedesco’s in business.

“Billy, what day did you and Tony have that bet about the river?”

“Which one?” asked Billy.

“You know, the one where he bet you couldn’t walk across to the other side.”

“Oh, yeah, that one. That was about a week before Christmas. I remember because I got my wife a present with the two dollars I won.”

“It was a Saturday, right?” asked Jimmy. “I made book on whether you’d make it or not. The house never loses.”

Billy glared at Jimmy. “You were taking bets against me? What were you going to do if I fell through the ice?”

“The important thing is that you made it.” Jimmy shoved Billy back toward the bar, then turned to me. “So the river was frozen on the seventeenth, and the temperature didn’t rise above twenty for a couple of weeks after that. Does that help you?”

“Yeah, thanks,” I said, my theory sunk. Darleen’s body could not have been thrown into the river at Lock 11. If it had been, it would have lain in plain sight on the ice for three weeks.

“Something wrong, Ellie?” asked Mike.

“It’s just this one sticking point in my story,” I said. “I think Darleen Hicks was murdered near her home in those snow hills. But if so, how did her body get to Lock 10 in Cranesville?”

“Someone dumped her in the river, of course,” said Mike.

“Yes, but where? The closest lock to her farm is that one right outside. Number 11. But the river was frozen over on December twenty-first.”

“I see,” he said. “I’ll tell you where the river wasn’t frozen on December twenty-first.”

I squinted at him in the dark. “Where?”

“The Mill Street Bridge. The water was still flowing underneath.”

The Mill Street Bridge? Right in the center of town. Who would be so bold, or stupid enough, to toss a body into the river there? I really hadn’t considered it, perhaps because it was so obvious and risky. But Mike said the river had been flowing on the 21st of December.

“How much water was flowing?” I asked.

Mike took a moment to recollect properly. Then he said it was a steady stream, at least twenty feet wide, down the middle channel of the river. Right down the middle.

“How can you be so sure it was December twenty-first?” I asked.

“That’s easy,” he said. “I remember because I made a traffic stop on the bridge after one a.m. that day.”

“Was it the twenty-first or the twenty-second?” I asked, my skin beginning to tingle, the sensation traveling from my shoulders up through my neck to the top of my head.

“The twenty-second morning,” he said.

“And who did you stop on the bridge?”

“I didn’t actually
stop
him. He was already stopped on the bridge. Right there half way between the South Side and downtown.” He shook his head. “The guy was so drunk, he was crying and pleading with me not to arrest him. He said he’d lose his job.”

“Mike, who was it?” I demanded.

“It was the assistant principal,” he said, taken aback by my tone. “What’s his name? Brossard.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

I grilled Mike for the next half hour about the night of December 21. He said that he’d been cruising the South Side, trying to stay warm by keeping the squad car moving. It was nearly time for his shift to end, so he was heading back to the station on the north side of the river. That’s when he came across a sedan idling in the northbound lane of the bridge. Just sitting there chugging exhaust into the frigid night air. Grabbing his flashlight, Mike approached the car on foot and tapped on the driver’s window. After a second tap, the driver rolled down the window, releasing a draft of warm air along with the strong odor of alcohol. Mike invited the driver to get out of the car and walk a straight line. But the driver confessed straightaway that he’d drunk too much at the superintendent’s Christmas banquet. He broke down and wept, begged the officer not to arrest him, even offered a bribe. And, in the end, Mike Palumbo gave him a stern lecture and a warning. He followed the driver home, just to be sure he made it without incident.

“But why didn’t you arrest him?” I asked.

Mike shrugged, by now uncomfortable with my interrogation. “I felt sorry for the guy,” he said. “And he was the assistant principal, so I didn’t want to see him in hot water.”

“And you say he was heading north over the bridge? Where was he coming from? Where was he going?”

“I don’t know, Ellie,” he said.

“Sorry, Mike,” I said, realizing I had come on a little strong.

“Sure,” he said. “Maybe it’s time to call it a night. Tomorrow’s Monday, after all.”

When Mike dropped me off, he followed me up onto the porch. Nothing to get excited about. If my oddball behavior, heavy drinking, wasted food, and lying hadn’t driven him off, the third-degree questioning surely had. He was just being polite or just being a cop.

“I want to make sure your place is safe,” he said. “You’ve had quite a few unwanted visitors lately.”

We climbed the stairs quietly, and I turned the key in the kitchen door. Mike entered first, switched on the lights, and checked each room, one by one, for intruders. The last room was my bedroom. I thought he’d played it quite cool and still managed to make it into my bedroom. But then he walked back out and pronounced the place clear. My heart sank.

I accompanied him to the door, resigned to writing the evening off as a bust. But before he left, he asked if I was free Friday.

“I’ve got a high-school basketball game to cover,” I said.

“What about Saturday?”

“I’ll check my calendar,” I said. “I might have to fend off a pack of juvenile delinquents and murderers.”

“I’ll pick you up at seven,” he said. “And eat something this time. You don’t want to fill up on bread.”