A Stone's Throw by James Ziskin (best story books to read .txt) 📗

again, and this time I heard a shuffling behind the door.

The door cracked open, and a young woman peered out at me. She’d been sleeping on her hair. Blonde hair. Her eyes were ringed with black mascara from the night before, and she’d neglected to wipe off her lipstick.

“What is it?” she asked.

“I’m a friend of Micheline’s,” I lied.

She rubbed her right eye with the heel of her palm and yawned, big and wide. “She’s not in.”

“Darn. I was hoping to catch her.”

The young woman let the door open fully. “How do you know Miche anyway?” She pronounced it Meesh.

“She lent me some money,” I said, sidestepping her question. “I wanted to return it. My name is Ellie.”

I extended a hand. She wiped hers on the robe she was wearing and placed it in mine. Dead fish handshake.

“I’m Joyce Stevens. Come on in. I think we have some iced tea if you’re thirsty.”

She led the way into the parlor. I could see the kitchen off to the right and a couple of bedrooms down a darkened hallway.

“No church today?” I asked once we’d reached the kitchen.

“Oh, no. I couldn’t show my face in church after last night.” She giggled, then, perhaps remembering that she didn’t know me, put on a serious face. “I mean I’m not very religious.”

She reached into the fridge and pulled out a pitcher. I watched her knit her brow and wrinkle her nose as she poured the tea into a glass. Measuring the proper amount was tasking all her faculties.

“Sorry for my appearance,” she said as she handed me the tea.

She pushed her hair out of her face, and I saw that she was quite pretty, if you didn’t mind bloodshot eyes and day-old makeup. I figured she was twenty-two or twenty-three.

“I met a couple of ROTC fellows from the university last night. Young, but a lot of fun.”

“No Micheline?”

“She’s in Canada visiting her mother. How do you know Miche, anyway?”

“From work.”

“At the Safeway?”

“That’s right,” I said. “I’m a cashier.”

She considered me for a long moment. “Miche never mentioned anyone named Ellie. You don’t look like you work at the Safeway.”

“Neither does Micheline,” I said, bluffing my way.

“Yeah. You’re right about that.”

“How long has she been away?”

“Since Friday. She’s always taking off to visit her mother. A real momma’s girl, our Miche.”

Micheline was someone else’s girl, I thought. And she certainly hadn’t been in Canada Friday evening. Either Joyce Stevens was unaware of her friend’s night job or she was lying to cover for her. I wasn’t convinced she was smart enough to tell a convincing lie.

“Have you known Micheline long?”

“A little more than a year. We were waiting tables at a diner near GE. For a while we got good tips from the guys from the plant. They’d come in just to talk to us.”

“So why’d you leave?” I asked.

“The men were all trying to make time with us. We wouldn’t have minded if they were single. Or rich.” She giggled again. “Then some of them got a little too familiar. All hands. We complained to the owner, and he fired us. My cousin Brenda said she had a couple of free rooms, so we moved down here with her.”

“Too bad about the job.”

She said it didn’t matter. “There’s more than one way for a girl to get by.”

A second young woman appeared in the kitchen doorway. Fully dressed and presentable at two on a Sunday afternoon, she was a big girl. A pretty brunette in the way Roller Derby queens are pretty. She eyed me with suspicion.

Joyce introduced her as Brenda Schuyler, the third roommate.

“You’re a friend of Miche’s?” she asked me.

Joyce volunteered that I worked at the Safeway as a cashier. Brenda scowled at her.

“And you believed her?”

“Why shouldn’t I?”

Brenda stared daggers at me as she answered her naï;ve friend. “Because she’s got a nice big car outside. And she’s a little too smooth around the edges to work at the Safeway, don’t you think?”

Joyce didn’t know what to say. I wanted to protest her characterization of my car but resisted the urge. Brenda couldn’t have known it had once been driven into the lake and had never been quite the same since.

“She can’t be a cop,” said Brenda. “But don’t say another word about Miche or yourself. I don’t trust her.”

I decided to come clean. “I’m not a cashier at the Safeway. I’m a newspaper reporter from New Holland.”

Brenda turned to Joyce and fired a wicked glare at her. “You see why you shouldn’t blab to strangers?”

Then she ordered me to leave.

“But wait,” said Joyce. “If she’s a newspaper reporter, shouldn’t we find out what she wants with Miche before we throw her out?”

I explained about the Saturday morning fire at Tempesta and that two bodies had been found in the rubble. Both women appeared spooked. Joyce asked if Micheline was one of the victims.

“I believe it was someone else,” I said. “But I can’t be sure yet.”

“It wasn’t Miche,” said Brenda. “She’s in Canada.”

“But there is the possibility it was your friend,” I continued, ignoring her pronouncement. “That’s why I need your help. When did you last see her?”

“Don’t answer her.”

Joyce wilted under Brenda’s stare. I begged them to tell me where I might find Micheline, but they stuck to the story that she was in Montreal visiting her mother.

“She spent Friday night with a man named Johnny Dornan,” I said. “He’s a jockey over at Saratoga. And he’s the man who was found dead in the barn.”

Joyce looked to Brenda, appealing to her for permission to speak openly with me. But Brenda held fast, insisting that Micheline had taken a Greyhound bus to Montreal Saturday morning. Ten minutes later, I’d still made no progress against their intransigence, and Brenda showed me the door with all the civility of a Roller Derby jammer.

CHAPTER SEVEN

I found a secluded phone booth where I could make my calls in peace. There was no time