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

mine dropped off my girl and run away with a long-haul trucker named Len. Some shirker with a 4-F classification.”

“How terrible. How old was your daughter?”

“Sixteen at the time. She was born in twenty-six.”

“It must have been hard on a young girl, losing her mother like that.”

“Well, they were cut from the same cloth, mother and daughter. So no great loss, like I said.”

“What’s your daughter’s name?”

He squeezed the cigarette between his lips and sucked the life out of it. “Vivian. After my sainted mother.” He frowned and stared at the smoldering end of his smoke. “She didn’t do honor to the name.”

Everett Coleman told the sad tale of an undisciplined, wayward daughter. A wild child through her early teens, and a lying, smoking, drinking, car-stealing dropout by the age of sixteen. At seventeen, she married a boy five years her senior and moved away.

“Good riddance to bad garbage,” he said.

He gave me her married name—McLaglen—and said the last time he’d heard from her was in October of 1943, when she dropped by with her baby-faced husband, Ernie, to ask for money. He didn’t give her any.

“I was flat on my back, just back from the convalescent hospital downstate. Recuperating from my wounds. I didn’t have enough money for myself, so I wasn’t about to fork anything over to her and that good-for-nothing husband of hers.”

Ernie McLaglen died in Korea seven years later, according to Coleman. He’d seen a notice in the paper. But that day in 1943 was the last time he’d seen his daughter. Vivian hadn’t even shown up when his “no-good tramp of an ex-wife, Betty,” died from cirrhosis of the liver in 1954. Betty had come back to die in South Glens Falls, where she’d come from, after years of jumping from one loser’s bed to another’s.

I asked Everett Coleman if he had a photograph of his daughter. Finally, after nearly twenty minutes and three cigarettes, the penny dropped, and he asked me what my business was anyway.

“As I mentioned before, there was a fire Saturday morning. On a horse farm over by the Montgomery County line. A man and a woman were killed.”

He nodded slowly, his tired lips sagging a bit into something almost resembling a frown. “And you think it was Vivian?”

“It’s a possibility.”

“Well, it don’t make no difference to me. Not now. She’s been dead to me for years.”

“Would you have a photograph of her?” I repeated.

CHAPTER NINE

Everett Coleman didn’t know anyone named Robinson, but at least I had a couple of names to go after. Vivian Coleman and Vivian McLaglen. How Manitoba figured in the story, I had no idea. It might well have been a random choice on Vivian’s part. I would worry about that later.

I phoned Sheriff Pryor from a gas station on Route 9, hoping he’d be interested in trading information now that I had something to offer in return. A deputy informed me the sheriff was out and took my contact information with an unconvincing promise that he’d call me back.

Knowing I could always count on my pal Frank Olney to help, I dialed the operator and asked for the Montgomery County sheriff. Within thirty seconds, he was on the line. I explained the situation, that I was in possession of two new names to track down, and the Saratoga sheriff’s office wasn’t available to help. He said he could check with the state police in Albany to see if they had any information on Vivian McLaglen or Vivian Coleman.

“I’ll stop by to see you later,” I said, ready to hang up.

“I’ve got a court appointment. I’ll find you this evening. Fiorello’s at six?”

“I’ll buy you a cherry Coke.”

I spent a few hours at the paper, making calls and writing copy for Tuesday’s edition. Between meetings with Charlie Reese and dodging the publisher, Artie Short, I managed to reach Sheriff Pryor by phone. Since I didn’t want to give away any of my information for nothing, I had to play it cool, testing the waters as it were. In no time, however, Pryor made it clear that he wasn’t interested in anything I might have stumbled across.

“I think I can run this investigation better if I keep the press out of my hair,” he said after I’d cast my lure.

“But are there any developments?” I asked. “Has anyone been reported missing in Saratoga?”

“No one yet.” I could tell he was itching to hang up.

“Do you have plans to make any statements to the press about the case?”

“Not at this time.”

“Will you put out an alert to the local papers before you do?”

“I’ll let you know,” he said, and ended the call.

Norma Geary appeared at my side, holding a few folders to her chest. She reached around my right shoulder and placed one of them on the desk before me.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“Photograph of Johnny Dornan.”

I opened the folder and examined the picture, a tight, five-and-a-half-by-eight-inch shot of a young man’s face. He was beaming from beneath a racing helmet, and I was sure it had been taken in the winner’s circle and that Johnny was still perched on the saddle of his mount. His jaw was strong, chin cleanly shaven, teeth straight and white, and his fair eyes twinkled against his tanned skin. I couldn’t tell the color in the black-and-white photo. Studying the young jockey with care, though, I fancied I saw a fierce competitive streak in him, bubbling up from deep inside.

“Kind of handsome, wouldn’t you say?” I asked Norma.

“Not bad. Funny, he doesn’t look short enough to be a jockey.”

“I should hope not. All you can see is his head.” I slipped the photo into my purse. “What else do you have for me?”

“A list of Robinsons in the Albany-Schenectady-Troy area,” she said, placing another folder before me. “And Saratoga County, too. Plenty of names to go through.”

“What about Everett Coleman? Nothing in the papers?”

“Not yet. It’s like searching for a needle in a haystack.