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

“Anything else?”

“There’s this,” she said, producing a third folder from her collection. “Vivian McLaglen’s wedding announcement.”

I gave a start. “From nineteen forty-three?”

“No,” she said, flipping open the file and pointing to the notice in question in a yellowing newspaper clipping. “This is from fifty-one.”

“That’s odd,” I said. “Her father didn’t mention that she’d remarried. Of course they aren’t close, but still.”

The article appeared to be one of a thousand social announcements from any small-town newspaper anywhere in the country. There was the grainy photograph of the bride sitting in a plain dress with a bouquet in her lap. No gown, no pomp. Pretty much what you’d expect for a second wedding, especially for a war widow. She was quite pretty despite the lack of zeal in her expression. I calculated in my head. She was still shy of her twenty-fifth birthday on what was her second wedding day. Nothing extraordinary there. But then I noticed the folio at the top of the page.

“This is from the Republic,” I said. “‘Dateline Rensselaer, NY.’ And it’s not the social page. This is a wire story on page three.”

“That’s not all, Miss Stone. Did you notice the headline?”

I hadn’t. And when I did I was even more confused.

“But this says she married someone named Tommy McLaglen. That can’t be.”

I read further. And I realized why the wire service had picked up the story. Vivian McLaglen had married her own brother-in-law. What on the surface appeared to be a heartwarming human-interest story was really a not-so-subtle lampoon of the inbred hillbillies who kept things in the family: “War Widow Finds Love Close to Home,” was the subhead. I found it mean-spirited and humorous at the same time.

“How on earth did you find this?” I asked Norma.

“A gal has to have some secrets,” she said, and I stared at her. “Okay, I confess that I was getting nowhere until I asked Mr. Reese how I might find a name from an old news story. He said to ask Mr. Rayburn.”

“Rayburn the Linotype operator?”

“The very same. He remembered this story, and I dug it out of an old box in the basement. Remarkable memory he has.”

Barney Rayburn was a little gray man who wandered around the plant wearing oversized eyeglasses that resembled welding goggles. They were constantly slipping down his nose, which only drew attention to the perpetual expression of befuddlement on his face. For the first year I was at the paper, I thought he was trying to remember whether he’d left his car’s headlights on. So to produce a name from a ten-year-old wire story about a quasi-incestuous wedding in Rensselaer qualified as remarkable indeed.

“So what does it mean?” asked Norma.

“The fact that she married her brother-in-law? I have no idea.”

Fadge was tying on a freshly laundered apron when I strolled in at quarter to six. He was wearing that half-frightened, half-gleeful look I’d seen on his face before. As if perhaps he’d just caught the mayor stealing cigarettes, had thrown him into the gutter by the seat of his pants, and couldn’t wait to tell someone. The place was deserted.

“What’s wrong with you?” I asked.

He motioned for me to follow him to the back room. There among the cases of soda and ice-cream freezers, he wiped his perspired face with the skirt of his new apron.

“What is it?” I repeated.

“El, you can’t tell anyone.”

“Tell them what?”

“I just got back from the races.”

“The races? Who was minding the store?”

“No one. I closed up today. But that’s not the point. Listen to me.”

“Fadge, you’re going to go broke if you close in August. Come January you’ll be bellyaching that no one’s buying ice cream.”

He was nearly shaking now, glancing through the open door to the empty store outside. “El, will you shut up and listen? I closed the store and went to the track.”

“And?”

“And?” He licked his lips. “I won three thousand dollars.”

I stumbled back against the ice-cream freezer. “You won how much?”

“I was on fire. Couldn’t miss. Everything I picked came in.”

“But three thousand dollars?”

He shushed me and threw another glance outside. Still no one there.

“I was so hot that I started cashing in my tickets at different windows so no one would know how much I was winning. And I left after the seventh to avoid suspicion.”

“You won three grand in seven races?”

He gulped and nodded. “It was unreal. I started with the daily double. It paid two hundred and twenty-two bucks. And I had it three times. I was up more than six fifty before I knew it. The long shots were coming up winners today. And I’ve been playing Johnny Sellers since the start of the meet. He’s the jockey leading the way for the racing title this year, and he didn’t let me down today.”

I still couldn’t quite believe it. Three thousand dollars in four hours. It didn’t seem possible.

“What are you going to do with the money?” I asked, breathless.

His eyes twitched back and forth a couple of times, then focused somewhere in the distance. “I’m going to reinvest it,” he said at length.

“In the store?”

“Hell, no. The meet’s barely started. With this bankroll, I’ve got a chance to make a big score.”

“You can’t be serious. You’ll lose it. Spend it on something. Enjoy it. You’ll never have another windfall like this again.”

The bell above the door out front jingled, and Fadge jumped.

“Jesus. It’s Frank Olney,” he said. “Do you suppose he heard about the money?”

“Relax. You didn’t do anything illegal. Besides, he’s here to meet me.”

I warned Fadge that we weren’t through discussing his dangerous gambling habit, then went out to meet Frank. For our comfort, he indicated the booth that butted up against the post office cage opposite the soda fountain. Fiorello’s housed a small annex of the city post office. Fadge was authorized to sell stamps, make out money orders, and weigh packages like a normal postal employee. I’d never understood why he would want the extra hassle, but he maintained