Stone Cold Dead (6 page)

It was seven fifteen, and I was furious and frightened at the same time. I really wanted a drink, and not a glass of milk. That fat rat Fadge hadn’t shown up yet, and it seemed Mr. Karl had ideas of fixing me up with his 4-H, Zorro pervert of a son. It had reached the point where the old man wouldn’t take no for an answer. He wanted me to come for supper the next evening (afternoon, really) and then attend some kind of backwoods dance with Junior at the Town of Florida volunteer firehouse Saturday night. Finally, I took the path of least resistance and told him that, being Jewish, I wasn’t allowed to drive or dance on Saturday, our Sabbath. He blanched, his wife choked, but Junior smiled his cretin’s grin. Either he didn’t understand or didn’t care. Or maybe he’d heard Jewish girls were easy.

“But supper tomorrow sounds swell!” I said brightly, unable to resist. “I’ll bring the Mogen David wine. What time shall I come?”

“Actually, miss,” said Mr. Karl with a rueful shake of his head, “we don’t partake.”

We sat in awkward silence for ten minutes more until the lights of a car flashed through the parlor window and across the wall behind me. I jumped up off the sofa as if it were electrified and thanked my hosts once again.

“I’ll send a wrecker tomorrow for my car,” I said to the stunned couple. I wriggled into my coat. “Shalom!” The door closed behind me.

“Where the hell have you been?” I asked, once I’d slid into Fadge’s Nash.

But it wasn’t Fadge at the wheel. It was his crony and old school chum, Tony Natale. Tony lived two doors down from me on Lincoln Avenue, and I often saw him at Fiorello’s. Once he’d asked me out, but I turned him down. I just couldn’t have accepted; it would have killed Fadge.

“What are you doing here, Tony? Where’s Fadge?”

“He couldn’t leave the store. Just be glad I wasn’t busy.”

“Right. What do you have to do? Address the UN?”

“You wanna walk home, Ellie?”

“Drive, Tony.”

CHAPTER FOUR

TUESDAY, JANUARY 3, 1961

I got an early start the next morning, phoned Dom Ornuti’s Garage to have my car towed in from the Karl farm, then met Fadge for coffee across the street. He was in a foul mood due to the persistent cold and slow business.

“I forgot to thank you for sending Mr. Charm to pick me up last night,” I said, sipping my coffee at the counter.

“That’s right,” he said. “You owe me, remember?”

“I took care of your pal Tony,” I said. “Get your payment from him.”

Fadge sulked. He was sitting a few stools away, flipping through some bills. He grunted then impaled the lot on a spindle in front of him.

“All paid?” I asked, trying to engage him.

He snorted with derision. “Yeah, they’ll get paid when I rob a bank.”

“Are things that bad?”

He shrugged. “I’ll be all right once spring comes. And besides, they know they can’t cut me off or they’ll never get their dough.”

“Speaking of owing,” I said, feeling guilty, “I think my tab for last week is a dollar eighty-seven.”

I placed a single on the counter, counted out some change, and slid it over to him. He didn’t bother to check it. Just stuffed it into his pocket. No wonder he had trouble making ends meet; I’d seen him use the cash register as his personal wallet. Whenever he needed money for pizza or beer or records, there was a drawerful of cash waiting for him.

“If nobody buys ice cream in the winter,” I said, “why don’t you just close the store and drive to Florida for a couple of months?”

“I can’t go south for the winter because I don’t want my regulars taking their business to Mack’s Confectionery while I’m gone.”

“But you told me yourself that these cheapskates only buy the newspaper and the occasional quart of milk. What do you make on a newspaper? A penny?”

“Some of them buy a cup of coffee, too,” he said, casting a sideways glance my way.

“Okay, I’ll take a dollar’s worth of penny candy, a pack of cigarettes, some gum, and two of your dirtiest magazines.”

“How sweet of you to finally buy one. But I don’t need your charity.”

To prove I was serious, I swiveled off my stool and examined the chewing-gum display opposite the counter: Wrigley’s Spearmint, Doublemint, and Juicy Fruit; Beech-Nut Peppermint and Pepsin; Life Savers of all colors and combinations; Adams Chiclets and, of course, Black Jack gum. I picked up a package of Black Jack and turned it over in my hand, examining the black-and-blue label, thinking of Darleen Hicks.

Fadge noticed and asked how my investigation was going.

“Nothing much so far,” I said. “She’s got some pretty weird neighbors, though. Last night I met the folks who live on either side of her farm out in the Town of Florida. Say, why do they call it Florida anyway?”

“I forget why. We studied about it in the seventh grade. Has something to do with Ponce de Leon, but I don’t remember.”

“Anyway, the one neighbor was almost seven feet tall,” I said. “The others were that strange Karl family. I suppose I could picture the son as a homicidal psychopath. And the giant was juggling a bloody ax for my entertainment. He’s a scary one.”

“That must be Walt Rasmussen,” said Fadge. “He comes in here a couple of times a year. In the summer, of course. He always gets a double banana split in a booth as far back as he can.”

“Let’s not aggrandize, Fadge. You’ve only got four booths.”

“He likes the last booth if he can get it, El, okay?” he sneered. My heart jumped; my brother used to call me El. “You can sit at the counter with the pimple-faced boys from now on.”

“You’ll always make room for me,” I said, pushing Elijah’s memory to one side. “You’d kick six double sundaes out of a booth for me, wouldn’t you, Ron? Even if I just wanted a glass of ice water.”

“Sure,” he smiled. “Next time, you’ll have your ice water in that little room in the back. You know, the one with the porcelain chair.”

We had a good chuckle over that one. Fadge’s sense of humor hadn’t progressed beyond the bedroom and the bathroom, but I didn’t mind. He was my favorite guy in the world.

“So what were you saying about Walt Rasmussen?”

“Nothing. Just that when he comes in, he orders a banana split and likes the back booth. Then when he leaves, he gets a quart of hand-packed ice cream to go. Butter pecan if we have it. Otherwise, coffee.”

“Friend of yours?”

“No. That man is friendless in the world. But he won’t let anyone else wait on him but me. Once, Tommy Quint asked him what he’d have, and Walt almost made him cry. Poor Tom. For some reason Walt puts up with me waiting on him. Maybe because I own the place, and someone has to take his order. He’s a funny one. Parks that pickup truck of his at the curb, climbs down, and lumbers in here in his muddy boots. And he always shows up late at night, around eleven or eleven thirty. Just before closing.”

“Why’s that?” I asked. “A vampire?”

Fadge shook his head and seemed to be thinking hard about his answer. “The kids stare at him, you know? They can be so mean, the little bastards. They stare at him like he’s some kind of freak because he’s so huge. They peep around corners, laugh with each other, point at him. And Walt just sits there in the booth, as big as Goliath, looking straight ahead and ignoring them. But you can tell it’s burning him up. Like maybe he’d like to squash those kids like bugs and be rid of them.”

“Or maybe wring their necks and chop up the bodies in the barn?” I said.

Fadge shrugged. “Imagine what it must be like to go through life having people point at you like you’re a sideshow attraction.”

I’d met the guy. I wasn’t feeling too much sympathy for the man who’d waved an ax in my face.

A horn sounded outside. It was Vinnie Donati from Ornuti’s Garage at the wheel of my Royal Lancer, which he’d just towed back from the Karl farm. I abandoned Fadge and ran out to meet Vinnie as if he were a beau picking me up for a date.

“All set, Ellie,” he smiled, as I climbed into the passenger seat. “Drop me back at the garage, and she’s all yours.”

“Thanks, Vinnie,” I said, flashing my best smile at him. “What was the problem this time?”

He slipped away from the curb and took a left at the corner of Lincoln and Glenwood. “Dead battery,” he said. “And some wiring went bad. Same old thing. This was a good car until it was totaled.”

“What do you mean,
totaled
? I asked Charlie Reese about accidents, and he swore there was only minor body work done on this car.”

“I’ll let you in on a little secret if you swear you won’t tell,” said Vinnie, giggling like an idiot. “This car was pulled out of Winandauga Lake last summer.”

“What?”

“You know Fred Blaylock?” he asked.

“I should. He’s the associate publisher at the paper.”

“Well, he had dinner and some drinks one night last August at Maraschino’s in Mayfield after the races in Saratoga. I heard he lost a hundred and sixty-two bucks. Anyways, to drown his sorrows, he had a few too many Old Fashioneds with his steak dinner and mistook the boat launch for Route Twenty-Nine on his way home. Drove right into the lake.” He laughed and slapped the steering wheel. “Poor car ain’t been right since.”

I glared at him. “Not funny, Vinnie!”

He swallowed his grin, knitted his brow, and cleared his throat. “Electrical problems,” he pronounced soberly.

“And that must be where the mildew smell comes from.”

“Most likely,” said Vinnie. “Consider yourself lucky, though. We had the car in the shop for at least a month after Fred Blaylock drove it into the lake, trying to make it right again. When we dried her out, the horn used to blow when you made a left turn. People on the street would look. Every time I took her for a test drive, I waved and smiled back at them so I wouldn’t look like an idiot.”

I noticed Mrs. Pindaro shuffling along on the icy sidewalk with her pug, Leon, on a leash doing his business, and I reached past Vinnie and blasted the horn. The dog yelped and leapt into a snow bank.

“What’d you do that for, Ellie?” he asked as if I’d doused him with cold water.

“Wave, Vinnie,” I said sullenly, crossing my arms and turning away. “You look like an idiot.”

I fumed, thinking of my boss, Charlie Reese. He’d assured me the car was all right when he’d given it to me a month earlier. (Someone had cut the brakes of my Belvedere, resulting in a crash that could have killed me.)

“Gee, Ellie, I’m sorry,” said Vinnie finally.

“Why didn’t you tell me this a month ago?” I asked. “This car’s been nothing but trouble.”

He patted my shoulder and told me not to be upset. “Come on. You didn’t really think they’d give such a nice car to a girl, did you?”

Theodore Roosevelt Junior High School squatted stubbornly on the corner of Division and Wall Street, flanked by the Lutheran church to the east and Porter’s Funeral Home to the west. Located at the bottom of Wall Street’s steep hill, a few blocks from the river and the Mill Street Bridge, the junior high was a hulking, five-story mass of grayish bricks, long since discolored by grime and soot. It was joined at the hip to a second, newer building that easily surpassed its companion in both size and homeliness. Large rectangular banks of steel windows were tilted open, venting excess radiator heat into the frigid winter air. The school had a drab, industrial look, like a carpet mill or a prison. A small annex filled half of the empty lot adjacent to the communicating buildings. The remaining blacktop, scarred with faded parking stripes, was fenced in with two rusty, netless basketball hoops on either end.

It was just after eight a.m. Two school buses were idling along the curb of Division Street on the north side of the school, their tailpipes chugging exhaust into the cold air. I parked on the flats of Wall Street on the west side of the prison yard, just opposite the cigar store, and made a dash for the school and the warmth inside.

The corridors were deserted, as classes had begun a few minutes before. I made my way down the dull terrazzo floor, looking for someone to direct me to the principal’s office. A janitor told me I was on the right path.

“Good morning,” I said to the tall, middle-aged lady in a poodle cut with short bangs. Quite fashionable if your name was Mamie Eisenhower. Hers wasn’t. The Bakelite nameplate on her desk read “Mrs. Worth, Secretary.”

“I’d like to speak to a student,” I said.

“Is that so?” she asked, subjecting me to close scrutiny. “What about?”

“It’s a personal matter,” I answered.

“And who are you, if I may ask?”

“Of course,” I chirped. “My name is Ellie Stone. I represent the
New Holland Republic
.”

She rose and walked over to a desk to engage another middle-aged lady in a powwow. The second woman looked over her horn-rimmed glasses at me from a distance, shrugged, and said something to Mrs. Worth, who moved on to a frosted glass door marked “Ass’t. Principal” in black lettering. She knocked and, following a muffled grunt from the other side, let herself in. A few moments later, she reappeared and asked me again who I was and what I wanted.

“My editor wants me to do a feature on Teddy Jurczyk, the basketball star.”

The woman eyed me guardedly. “And who are you again?”

“My name is Ellie Stone. I’m a reporter for the
Republic
.”