Stone Cold Dead (30 page)

“Hello, Miss Stone,” he said. “What can I do for you today?”

“I’m just watching the practice,” I said. “Research for the feature I’m doing on Teddy Jurczyk.

He fidgeted and scratched his neck. “I thought we had an agreement that you would leave Teddy alone.”

“I’m just finishing my feature on him.”

“I’m afraid that’s not possible. This practice session is closed. You’re going to have to leave.”

“But I’ve got an assignment from the paper. It’s all been approved by the principal’s office.”

“This principal’s office?” he asked.

“No, the junior high school’s,” I said. “Mr. Brossard.”

“Look,” he said, avoiding my eyes. “You’re a nice girl, and I know you don’t mean any harm. But you’re kind of a jinx to Teddy.”

“A jinx?”

“Yeah. He gets all tight when you’re around. You make him nervous. I just can’t have you upsetting him like that.”

I flushed. My mouth went dry, and I didn’t know what to say. I was being kicked out of the gym and off my story with one swing of Coach Mahoney’s leg.

“It’s not personal,” he said, but I was dumbstruck. A jinx? “Oh, there’s Mr. Brossard now,” said Mahoney. “Maybe you can talk to him.”

I made my way up the stairs, temples throbbing from the humiliation. Brossard waited for me atop the bleachers and extended a hand to shake mine. I offered it dumbly, and he asked me what was wrong.

“I’ve just been asked to leave the practice and to stay away from Teddy Jurczyk.”

“What? Why?”

“Coach says I’m a jinx. But it’s my job to do a story on him. How can I tell my editor that I can’t write it because I’m not welcome here?”

“That’s rough,” he said. “Listen, maybe I can help. I’ll have a word with the coach later on. For now, it might be better to do as he asks. Come on. I’ll buy you a cup of coffee.”

Dean’s Coffee House had served sodas and malteds to generations of New Holland high schoolers. Just a few blocks from Walter T. Finch High, Dean’s was a friendly spot, open only till about six, when Dean and his wife, Edith, punched out for the day. Out of loyalty to Fadge, I didn’t patronize the shop. To tell the truth, he’d threatened to ban me for life if he ever caught me in there. The same went for Mack’s Confectionery up the street. Under the present circumstances, I decided to risk the wrath of Ron Fiorello.

“I wanted to have a word with you,” said Brossard once we were seated at a table near the window. “It’s about Darleen Hicks.”

“What about her?” I asked. He had my interest piqued.

“I’ve been reading the articles in the paper, and I got to thinking. I’ve come to believe that girl simply ran away with someone. To Arizona.”

Wow. What powers of deduction.

“Why do you think that?” I asked.

“Well, there was the receipt they found in her bedroom. The one for the bus ticket. Clearly she used the ticket and motored off to the Southwest. Didn’t she have some boyfriend in the army?”

“What about the lunch box they found near her property? Doesn’t that point to foul play?”

“I’ve been thinking that over, too,” he said, blowing on his black coffee to cool it. He took a sip then resumed. “There’s really no evidence that the lunch box is hers, is there? Didn’t you write that the sheriff merely found an average lunch box like so many others? It could belong to anybody. Or, it’s possible that she threw it away herself. Young girls behave oddly at times.”

I squinted across the table at him. A gap between two houses on the other side of the street let a fierce beam of sunlight through, and it was directly behind Brossard, rendering him a near silhouette before me. I couldn’t quite make out his expression, but not for lack of trying.

“Is something wrong with your eyes, Miss Stone?” he asked.

“The sun,” I said. “You’ve given this business a lot of thought, I see.”

“Well, when one of my girls disappears, I want to know why.”

“Naturally,” I said. Then, wondering how often this kind of thing came up, I asked him if it had ever happened before.

“As a matter of fact, yes,” he said, shaking his head. “When I was in Hudson, a young girl disappeared. The police never found out what happened to her. It’s a sad thing, but it happens every day across the country. I’m afraid our society has lost its way. With filth like
Lolita
passing for literature . . .” He stopped himself and smiled sadly. “I’m a bit old fashioned, Miss Stone. I still believe in God, sin, and judgment. Just an old altar boy with very Catholic ideas. You probably think I’m very unhip.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Well, you’re a New York City girl, after all.”

Huh? I wasn’t sure if he was insulting me or admiring my cosmopolitan attitudes. And how did he know that, anyway? “Is that why you wanted to talk to me?” I asked. “To tell me Darleen probably ran away?”

“Yes,” he said. “I thought I could be of help to you. You know, get in on the whole investigation thing.” The sun shimmered out of sight behind the house across the street, and I could see him clearly again. He smiled awkwardly.

“Can you get me an interview with Teddy Jurczyk?” I asked, flashing my most fetching smile at him. He seemed unmoved.

“I’d like to see the story done, of course,” he said. “We’re very proud of our Teddy, as you know. And it would be great publicity for him, too. Maybe help get him into a fine college in four years. St. Bonaventure or Siena.” He paused, looking at me with indifferent eyes. “But if Coach is against it, I’m not sure I should interfere.”

“Just one more meeting, then I’ll leave him alone,” I said, trying to catch his eyes. But he was focusing on nothing in particular. Certainly not on me.

Brossard shrugged finally and agreed. I’d won the game without scoring any points, and I was ashamed of myself for the flirting. Then Brossard’s face lit up as he told me how excited he was to see the game Friday.

“Teddy will be in rare form,” he said, beaming.

I returned to the office in time to hand in two more stories for Saturday’s edition: one on pothole repairs on the East End, and the other on some complaints about pollution of the river. New HollandCo, a manufacturer of low-cost carpeting and flooring, was the largest employer left in the city. They had taken over one of the Shaw Knitting Mills’ larger buildings. Wastewater from the factory poured into the Great Cayunda Creek at the rate of five hundred gallons an hour. The Cayunda carried the polluted water down the hill and vomited it into the Mohawk, just underneath the Mill Street Bridge. A local woman had started making noise two years earlier, protesting outside New HollandCo’s offices about the pollution, but most people considered her a crackpot and ignored her. Then she somehow got the ear of a young assistant attorney general for the State of New York, and things began to change quickly. The State commissioned a study of the river in 1959 and pronounced the Mohawk so polluted it was “dead.” Public awareness about pollution grew. I had written several articles on the protests over the past two years. The pothole report was also a regular beat of mine.

Charlie didn’t seem to care about those stories. He called me into his office to discuss Teddy Jurczyk instead.

“I just spoke to Artie Short,” he said, and I recognized his I-hate-this-job frown. “He got a call from Principal Keith at the high school. He says they don’t want you hanging around basketball practice anymore. What did you do, Ellie?”

“Why do you assume I did something wrong, Charlie? Why don’t you ever assume I’m in the right and then ask questions?”

“Come on, Ellie,” he said. “You’re always getting under someone’s skin. It’s your specialty.”

“I think it’s my skirt,” I said. “Anyway, I didn’t do anything to Teddy. For some reason, he thinks I’m a jinx to him.”

“Well, the principal said you can cover the games, but not the practices.”

I smiled.

“What is it?” asked Charlie.

“Just that I don’t need access to the high-school gym to finish my story. Louis Brossard said he’d fix things up for me with young Teddy.”

“Who’s Brossard?”

“Assistant principal of the junior high. And now he fancies himself an amateur detective.”

“How do you mean?”

“He told me he’s figured out that Darleen Hicks ran off because there was a bus-ticket receipt in her bedroom.”

Charlie scoffed. “Hardly discovering penicillin. That bus receipt kind of makes it obvious doesn’t it? Now it would be another thing if she hadn’t actually used the ticket.”

My face must have turned red, because Charlie asked me what was wrong. I shook my head and made up a lie. I left Charlie’s office in a funk. That bus ticket needed to come out, but my hands were tied. I wanted to kick a dent into Frank Olney’s car door. Instead I wandered back to my desk and slumped into my chair. It was nearly six anyway, so I thought I’d head home to wash the taste of the day away with some whiskey and ice. I grabbed my purse and stood to go. Then Norma Geary appeared.

As the room was empty, we sat down to talk without fear of being overheard. She asked me what progress I’d made on my Teddy J. story, and I gave her the short version.

“Lucky that Mr. Brossard showed up,” she said. “He’s probably got eyes for you.”

I shook my head. “I know when a man is interested, or at least entertains ideas, but there’s nothing there. He’s strangely detached or bored or indifferent when he talks to me. I noticed it today.”

“Is he married?”

“He wasn’t wearing a wedding band,” I said. “But not all men wear them. He strikes me more as the priestly type anyway.”

“I’m sure you’re mistaken, Miss Stone,” said Norma. “I’ve seen how men look at you.”

Driven by turns sideways and vertical by strong winds, the rain drummed on the roof and ran down the windows in sheets. The snow was gone from the streets and sidewalks, and the slush washed into the gutters then disappeared, flushed away for good by the downpour. Mrs. Giannetti’s small rectangle of a lawn was exposed, brown and muddy grass, for the first time since Thanksgiving.

Thursday’s television lineup—mostly westerns—didn’t interest me. There was
Donna Reed,
but that just reminded me of what a mess my life was compared to hers. So I ignored the television and curled up with several whiskeys on the couch to read Lampedusa’s
The Leopard.
I liked history and far-flung places, and it was a bestseller. Sicily and the
Risorgimento
seemed like a tonic to take my mind off the unused bus ticket, and, at the same time, I conjured some peaceful memories of my father reading his beloved Italian literature and history. But alcohol and reading don’t mix, at least not for me. I couldn’t concentrate, kept losing the thread, and found myself pages ahead without remembering what I’d just read. It was getting late anyhow, and I was thinking about bed, when there was a knock at my kitchen door.

“Who is it?” I asked, a broom cocked behind my head like a baseball bat, in case it was a marauder on the other side of the door. I had received, after all, my share of unwanted visitors in recent days, and it was after eleven thirty. As I stood there, elbows bent, twitching the broom like Mickey Mantle waiting for a pitch, I realized that this attack position meant that the head of the broom, with its relatively soft bristles, would be employed to fend off any and all comers. Effective for chasing mice, perhaps, but against an attacker with nefarious intent, it was a poor choice of weapon.

“It’s Irene Metzger,” came the voice through the glass panel and sheer curtain.

I opened the door and let her in. She brought the same smell of wet wool as she had the first time I’d met her on New Year’s Eve. She was wearing the same transparent rain hat as well. And once she’d sat at my kitchen table, I served her the same whiskey we’d drunk that night.

“I haven’t seen you in a few days,” she said, settling in with a cigarette between her fingers.

“Your husband threw me out,” I said. “He threatened me.”

She waved her hand and drew a deep drag on her cigarette. “He’s sorry about that.”

“I didn’t get the flowers and chocolates.”

“He’s a good man, miss,” she said, ignoring my remark. “Give him a second chance. We just have to find out what happened to Darleen.”