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

“Actually, I am.”

Damn. That had backfired.

“Reform?” I asked tentatively.

“No. Conservative.”

“Reform,” I said with woe, pointing a finger at myself.

CHAPTER TEN

I reclined on the sofa, drink sweating on the end table, and the hi-fi playing Bruch’s Scottish Fantasy, which somehow reminded me of the rolling hills of Tempesta Farm, especially in the cool August we’d been experiencing. But, in the end, I knew it was a delusion. A will-o’-the-wisp. This wasn’t Scotland, even if the town of Scotia was barely eight miles from the spot where two people had perished in a barn fire only two days before. Nevertheless, the music provided a suitable score for the whiskey I was enjoying. I sketched out my plans for the next morning, starting with a visit to the address Benny Arnold had given to Fadge. The one associated with Vivian Coleman’s license plate. Race Avenue in South Glens Falls. That would be a long drive, even farther than the trip I’d made to Halfmoon that morning. I unfolded a map and spread it out on the low table before the sofa to plan my itinerary. Not only would Route 9 take me to South Glens Falls, but it also passed through Saratoga Springs. To kill two birds, I decided that I could stop to pay an early visit to Sheriff Pryor on the way.

I was restless. I wanted to sleep, but my constitution didn’t allow for bedtime so soon after the closing credits of Pete and Gladys. And I was hungry. At half past ten, I feasted on a banquet of cocktail weenies and kosher pickles from the icebox. Meat and vegetables, I reasoned. There was nothing worth watching on television, so, to clear my head, I tore through the day’s crossword puzzle in a matter of minutes. That finished, I pored over the list of Robinsons from the local phone books that Norma had prepared for me. It was a daunting task. More than a hundred. I decided to concentrate on the Saratoga County Robinsons. There were twenty-nine private subscribers and five businesses. I ruled out the women, not sure I was doing the right thing. But I thought men tended to refer to women by their given, not family names. That reduced my number to seventeen men named Robinson in Saratoga County. My head was spinning, and I resolved to ask Norma to phone each of them in the morning. There was one place, Robinson’s High Life Tavern, that I wanted to see for myself.

Next I set my mind to thinking about Vivian McLaglen and her two husbands. Maybe she’d loved them both. Maybe she’d only loved one. But of all the men in the world whom she might have married, she’d chosen two brothers. That intrigued me.

TUESDAY, AUGUST 14, 1962

I rose early, dressed, and skipped down the stairs to my car. Normally, I would have stopped by Fiorello’s to say good morning to my pal, but it was six thirty, and he was still snoring like a tractor in his bed. Instead I stopped for a roll and a cup of coffee at Dean’s a few blocks away. If Fadge had ever found out, he’d have killed me. He had a funny way of demanding customer loyalty even when his store was closed.

It was a few minutes past seven when the deputy at the desk of the Saratoga sheriff’s office told me that Pryor was busy and couldn’t see me. I left my phone number again without much hope of a return call. On my way out of town, I drove down Union Avenue heading for Route 9. I turned onto East Avenue and noticed the Oklahoma Training Track on my right, directly across Union Avenue from the main racecourse. Thinking I might squeeze in a few minutes to take some photographs of the horses running through their morning paces, I pulled over and climbed out of my car. Admission was free, after all, and South Glens Falls wasn’t going anywhere.

There was a modest grandstand on one side and some racing fans milling about alongside the track admiring the Thoroughbreds. A man was selling newspapers and the Racing Form at the entrance. I picked up a copy of the Saratogian and handed him a dime. He dished out three cents’ change without even looking up at me. I wandered over to the track and leaned against the rail to check the headlines.

Riots in Berlin on the anniversary of the Red wall, two Soviets orbiting Earth, and the continuing saga of accused spy Dr. Robert Soblen. But I wasn’t interested in international news that morning. I turned to the local stories and found a short mention of the Tempesta fire on page three. There was no byline. I knew Sheriff Pryor had spoken to the Saratogian. What I couldn’t understand was why the paper wasn’t screaming bloody murder. The single-paragraph story only went as far as labeling the fire that had claimed two lives as “suspicious.”

The smell of freshly tilled dirt, made more pungent by the hints of horse sweat and manure hanging in the air, left little doubt that I was at a racetrack. A thundering of hooves rounded the home turn and grew louder as it approached, shaking the ground beneath my feet. Then three or four Thoroughbreds roared past, and the tremor moved on like a wave, receding into the distance. Squinting into the weak sun and reveling in the cool breeze, I watched them disappear into a slow mist rising from the turf of the infield to the east.

Having retrieved my Leica from my purse, I loaded some Kodachrome and began shooting the scene. Horses under riders off in the distance, galloping then cantering then walking through their workouts, their powerful lungs puffing billows of steam through their nostrils. Then there were the men with binoculars pacing along the rail, stopwatches pressed into the palms of their hands.