Stone Cold Dead (5 page)

“Sorry, I didn’t get your name,” said my host.

“Ellie Stone,” I answered. “I’m from the paper.”

“The paper? What happened to Lenny?” he asked.

“Who?”

“The paperboy,” he said.

“Oh, no. I’m not the papergirl. I’m a reporter for the paper, looking into Darleen Hicks’s disappearance.”

“A girl reporter?” he laughed. “No kidding?”

I blushed and nodded.

“I heard of her,” said the young man at the table. “She wrote all those stories about Judge Shaw’s daughter just a couple of weeks ago.”

The father, a stocky man with thick, yellowing-gray hair slicked back on his head, cackled to himself.

“Well I’ll be a monkey’s uncle,” he said, marveling at the wonders of the modern world. “A girl reporter . . . What’s next? A colored mayor?”

“Please have a seat, miss,” said the lady. “I’ll make you a plate.”

The father scrambled to pull out a chair for me, and I sat down.

“She skinned her knee falling on the ice,” he said to his wife. “Get her a bandage, Doris.”

The son leapt from his chair and circled around in front of me, gaping at my legs, which I clenched together to protect my modesty. He was as eager as a bird dog and not shy about showing his enthusiasm.

“I’m Bob Karl,” said the old man, as his wife dabbed my knee with some Mercurochrome. “That’s my son, Bob Junior, and my wife, Doris.”

The son and heir continued to drool over my legs, but his mother was blocking his line of sight. Once she’d patched my knee, I tucked my legs out of view under the table. The show over, Junior returned to his seat.

“That’s right, Bobby,” said Doris. “You sit next to our guest. You two youngsters will have plenty to talk about, I’m sure.”

I didn’t share my hostess’s confidence.

While the mother had been tending to me, a small calico cat had wandered into the kitchen and jumped onto the counter. She was interested in the stew, but it was too hot. Doris Karl shooed the cat away, but she didn’t seem too bothered by the prospect of sharing her supper with Puss.

“You ought to throw that cat out of here,” said Mr. Karl, dipping his head to see over the lenses of his reading glasses. “We got company, after all.”

“Let her be,” said his wife. “Edna caught a mouse this afternoon, right behind the breadbox. Didn’t you, Edna? Good girl,” and she gave the cat a pat on the head.

“She
is
a good mouser,” granted Mr. Karl. “Now how about some supper? Miss Stone, please join us.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, thinking of the mouse behind the breadbox and Edna, the cat who’d killed it. “I’ve got a dinner date this evening.” A complete lie. They offered me milk instead.

“I don’t understand how people can eat so late,” said Mr. Karl. “Girl reporters and supper at seven o’clock . . . I’m in bed reading the Good Book by that hour.”

Mrs. Karl ladled out steaming portions of mouse stew into three yellow bowls. She smoothed her apron, sat down, and reached out both hands, one to her husband and one to her son. Before I knew what was happening, Junior and his father had each grabbed one of my hands. I nearly gasped.

“Lord Jesus,” intoned Karl
père
, eyes clenched shut, “be our guest, and let thy gifts to us be blessed. Amen.”

The other Karls echoed the amen then looked at me.

“Amen,” I offered.

Mr. Karl smiled, tied his napkin around his neck, and dug in. After about two minutes of spoons clicking and lips slurping, he took a breath and regarded me queerly.

“Didn’t you say you come to ask about Darleen Hicks?”

“That’s right,” I said, grateful for the opening. “As you must know, she disappeared from school two weeks ago. I was hoping you could tell me something about her.”

“What for?” asked the father.

“Well, so I can help find her.”

He took another mouthful of stew and chewed, looking off into space. His wife frowned.

“But you’re just a girl,” she said.

“I’m a reporter for the paper,” I reminded her. “And Irene Metzger asked for my help.”

“I seen her articles in the paper,” repeated Junior. “She wrote all about Jordan Shaw’s murder.”

The mother shook her head and returned to her stew. “I don’t like talk of killing, especially at suppertime. Girls shouldn’t get caught up in things like that.”

“Have you ever seen Darleen with any men or boys?” I asked the group, braving Mrs. Karl’s disapproval. “Do you know anything about her that might help me locate her?”

Mr. Karl said he’d seen her from time to time on the road and doing chores. And she’d delivered a pie to him in September, compliments of her mother.

“Real nice of Mrs. Metzger to think of us,” he said, eyes beaming. “She’s a fine-looking woman, too.”

Mrs. Karl bristled in silence.

“What about Darleen?” I asked. “Did any of you see her leave home the morning she disappeared?”

“Not me,” said the father. “But, Bobby, didn’t you say you seen her getting on the bus that day?”

Bobby had his chin in his bowl, spooning the last of the stew into his mouth. He looked up, startled.

“I was spreading some hay for the horse over by the fence,” he said. “She was walking to the bus stop on Fifty-Eight. The girl, not the horse.”

“You can see her property from here?” I asked.

“Not from here,” said the father. “But the horse pen is over that way. Still kind of far, though. How’d you see her from there?”

Bobby wiped his mouth with his napkin and said the horse had wandered over to the boundary. “Likes to scratch himself against the fence. I went after him and seen the girl walking down her drive.”

“Did you speak to her?” I asked. He shook his head. “Isn’t it dark at that hour? How could you have seen her?”

“Maybe I just heard her. She walked down the drive like always and got on the bus five minutes later.”

“Like always? Are you always up and chasing horses at that hour?”

“Well, yeah,” he said, stumped by my question. “We rise early around here.”

“So you did or didn’t speak to her?” I asked.

He looked at his mother then his father. They offered no advice.

“I didn’t talk to her, no. I never spoke to her much. She was just a kid, you know.”

The Karls finished their supper quietly after that, topped it off with coffee and some Minute Tapioca pudding. (The empty box was standing on the counter, between the stove and the mouse’s breadbox.) I sat there fidgeting, waiting for an opportunity to bolt out the door. When they finally pushed back from the table, patted their stomachs, and began picking their teeth, I seized my chance.

“Well, thank you for your time and hospitality,” I said, rising from my chair. “And the milk.”

The mother and father glared at me as if I’d drunk from the finger bowl. Mr. Karl and Junior reached out their hands and took mine before I could make good my escape. All three shut their eyes again and squeezed hands. I was yanked back into my seat.

“Give thanks to the Lord,” wailed Mr. Karl, “for he is good. His mercy endures forever. Amen.”

“Amen!” That was me. “Well, I’ll just go now. Don’t get up. I know the way out.”

They did get up—all three of them—and waved goodbye from the porch as I climbed into my car. They stood there watching as I turned the key, pumped the gas, and turned the key again.

“Please, start!” I begged. I tried again. “Start, you no-good . . .”

I pumped and turned three more times, until the engine groaned like a dying swan and fell silent. She was dead. I banged my head on the steering wheel. Exhausted though the battery may have been, it had the strength to bleat one last whimpering cry from the horn. That summoned Mr. Karl to the car. I cranked down the window, and the frigid air rushed in.

“Sounds like a dead battery,” he said. “Come back inside, and Doris will get you something to eat. You’re going to miss your dinner date.”

Like fun I was.

“Can’t you give me a jump?” I asked.

“Sorry. Lost my truck three months ago to the bank. I got a tractor in the barn, but the fan belt’s busted. Battery’s dead besides. Just like yours.” He smiled.

I remembered something about a horse but thought better of it.

“Do you have a phone, Mr. Karl?”

“That we got,” he said and stood aside for me to open the car door. “Of course it’s a party line, and Mrs. Norquist usually does her telephoning after supper. We can visit while we wait for her to finish.”

Back inside, I declined all offers of nourishment, planting myself next to the plain, black phone, which sat atop a lace doily on an end table. Mrs. Norquist was indeed monopolizing the line. I checked in from time to time, lifting the receiver hoping for an operator, but getting an earful about Mrs. Norquist’s late husband instead. Finally, when my hosts left the room, I grabbed the phone and interrupted the call.

“I beg your pardon,” she said. “Who’s that?”

“It’s CONELRAD, ma’am. We’ve issued a warning. Please go to your bomb shelter or root cellar. Whatever you’ve got.”

“I thought CONELRAD was a radio warning,” she said.

The old bird was sharper than I had expected.

“We’ve recently added telephone warnings as a new service in the event of nuclear Armageddon.”

“Oh, my!” she gasped. “Lillian, this could be it,” she said to the woman on the other end of the line. “If this is it, Godspeed. If not, I’ll see you at bingo on Thursday.”

I tapped furiously on the cradle until the operator came on. I gave her Fadge’s number and waited for him to pick up. It was a Monday evening in January, not his high season. When he answered, I told him I needed a ride, no excuses.

“I’m working,” he said in his defense. “Can’t you call a cab?”

“I’m stuck out here with Ma and Pa Kettle and their halfwit son,” I whispered frantically. “Get your fat ass out here and rescue me now!”

“How can I resist such a polite request? Where is this place?”

I gave him the directions, and he said he thought he could find it.

“But you’re going to be beholden to me,” he said. “And I’m not talking a peck on the cheek, either.”

“Let’s see how fast you get out here, then we’ll negotiate the payback.”

My hosts reentered the room just as I hung up. Mrs. Karl was carrying a plate of powdered-sugar cookies and a steaming pot of tea. Mr. Karl was beaming at me. Junior was nowhere to be seen.

“Thank you so much for letting me use your phone and wait in the warmth,” I said.

“Our pleasure, miss,” said Mrs. Karl.

“Parcheesi?” asked the father.

“Oh, my! Parcheesi!” I smiled. “May I use the powder room?”

“We don’t have fancy facilities,” Mrs. Karl explained as she led me back behind the kitchen. “There’s just the one john,” she said. “It’s back here behind Bobby’s bedroom.”

We passed through the kitchen, past Edna, who, tail twitching, looked ready to pounce on something in the corner. Mrs. Karl showed me into a cold, dark bedroom.

“Just through there, dear,” she said, switching on the light and pointing to a crooked door.

She left me alone. The small room, colder than the rest of the house, was fitted with a single bed, heaped with heavy blankets, rumpled and poorly made; a dim lamp on a small wooden table; an old braided rug, whose dark colors were difficult to identify in the low light; and an eerie collage, which hung on the wall behind the bed. The upper right-hand side of the three-by-four-foot work of art was decorated with 4-H clovers in felt, construction paper, and metal buttons. Intermingled with these, three pairs of shoelaces dangled from thumbtacks. I couldn’t fathom a guess. Below the laces, there was a yellowed school certificate of some kind and several black-and-white snapshots of a forsaken farm, most likely the Karl Ranch, though the photos were so dark and small it would be nearly impossible to tell. Locks of brown hair—God knows whose—were held together with a faded ribbon and taped to the collage. And there was a filthy, crumpled neckerchief, knotted and stapled to the background. A Zorro mask, a red paper poppy flower, and a tin sheriff’s badge. Several varicolored, shiny stars dotted the canvas here and there, self-awarded praise by the artist, perhaps, or a constellation as dim and odd as its maker. But the dominant feature of the collection was a hundred or so pictures of ladies in girdles, brassieres, and underwear, cut lovingly from the pages of the Sears catalog. Wrinkled from the globs of paste used to hold them captive forever, the models were arranged at different angles, with great care taken to mix sizes and shapes, presumably to lend artistic panache to the creepiness.

A shiver ran up my spine, and I was pretty sure it was the collage not the temperature of the room. I crept to the bathroom, peered inside, and thought better of it. I was going to have to wait until I reached home. But that didn’t mean I wouldn’t milk my time away from the Karls for all it was worth. I stalled, staring at myself in the mottled mirror, examining my manicure, and touching up my lipstick.

When I finally opened the bathroom door, Junior was standing there, not two feet away. I quite nearly fainted. Only the certainty that he would perform unspeakable, hill-folk perversions on my person if I were to black out kept me conscious.

“Excuse me, miss,” he said, grinning as he pushed past me. “Nature calls.”