Stone Cold Dead by James Ziskin (android e book reader txt) 📗

They shrugged. “Yeah, but it was hilarious. You have to admit.”

I thought about it. Had I grown too old to laugh at a harmless pratfall? The kid had looked pretty funny, twice landing on the seat of his snow pants. And he seemed unhurt, at least physically. Still, poor kid.

“Now, about Darleen,” I said. “Do you girls live near her place?”

“I get off two stops before Darleen,” said Susan. “About three miles away from her house. Linda and Carol get off at the stop before Darleen’s.”

“It’s about a mile from my house,” said Linda.

“Have you ever met her neighbor Bobby Karl?”

“That creep next door?” asked Susan. “Such a weirdo.”

“How so?”

“We had a sleepover about two months ago, the four of us. Darleen’s stepdad was building a bonfire for Halloween. Darleen said he did it every year, and it was fun. A big hay bonfire. But Darleen said he did it to burn all the garbage he was saving up all year.”

“And you saw Bobby Karl that night?”

“He was hanging around, gawking at us. Well, Darleen, mostly. And talking nonsense about calving and tractors. Who cares?”

“Was he weird in any other ways besides talking about livestock and farming machinery?”

“Not really.”

“Did he speak to Darleen that night?”

“No he just was hanging around, scratching his scabby arms.”

“And what about the other neighbor? Mr. Rasmussen? Did you ever see him at Darleen’s?”

“The giant?” asked Susan.

Carol laughed. “No, we decided to call him Gargantua, remember?”

“Oh, yeah, that’s right,” said Susan. “Darleen came up with that one.”

“Never mind that it’s not nice to call people names, did you ever see him while you were visiting Darleen?”

“Darleen said you could see him from space,” said Susan, and the other two girls giggled.

“Were you in space, or did you see him at Darleen’s?” I asked, a little less nicely the third time.

“We saw him maybe once or twice when he was plowing his field,” said Linda. “He never spoke to us, except once to say stay off his land.”

“Were you on his land?”

“No.”

“Okay, anything else you can tell me about your visits to Darleen’s place? Did she get along with her stepfather, Mr. Metzger?”

Susan shrugged and said they got along okay. “He was pretty strict with her, though.”

“How about you, Carol?” I asked. “What did you think of Mr. Metzger?”

“He was kind of scary,” she said, wincing and showing her braces.

Susan glared at her.

“What?” asked Carol. “He was scary, wasn’t he? I mean, I couldn’t even sleep after that.”

“Why don’t you shut it, Carol?” said Susan.

Once Gus Arnold had dropped Linda and Carol at their stop at the mouth of County Highway 58, he threw the bus into reverse and began to back out onto Route 5S.

“Wait a minute,” I called from the back. “Aren’t you going to drive your full route?”

I’d been timing the drive and didn’t want to guess at the total if he skipped Darleen’s stop.

“But there’s no more kids to drop,” he said, looking at me through a mirror above him. “I’m taking you back to the school to get your car.”

“No, I’d like to run the full route, please. It will only take a few minutes more.”

Gus Arnold scowled, I imagined, though all I could see were his eyes in the mirror. He made a big show of throwing the bus into first gear and wrestling the steering wheel back into place. We rolled through a large pothole, nearly knocking me out of my seat, then proceeded peaceably over a pack of mostly white snow toward Darleen Hicks’s house.

Five minutes later, the bus slowed to a stop in front of the rusting mailbox labeled “Metzger.” It looked frozen shut, the red flag bent down permanently or at least until spring and warmer temperatures would free it from the frost’s grip.

Gus Arnold slouched against the steering wheel, disinclined to face me as he awaited instructions. I joined him at the front of the bus and asked him how long he usually paused at Darleen’s house.

“What?”

“Do you wait here or do you drive away once she’s off the bus?”

“I drive away, what do you think?”

“Then let’s move.”

Gus Arnold shook his head in disgust. I don’t know what hold I had over him, but he was doing as I asked. He released the clutch, and we jerked into motion.

“You go straight from here?” I asked, leaning on the back of his seat as I looked out the windshield.

“No room to turn around here,” he said. “Metzger’s road is too narrow.”

“I saw a no-outlet sign back there. How do you get out of here?”

“There’s an opening about a mile ahead. It’s big enough to turn the bus around.”

We drove for about three minutes over the bumpy road, through an ever-narrowing alley of thick pines, until we reached a cul-de-sac. The trees had been cleared and the ground leveled about a hundred yards deep into the woods. But there was barely thirty yards available for the bus to turn around due to the mountains of snow dumped into the dead end by county plows. Like ridges of a true mountain chain in miniature, some of the snow banks rose as high as fifteen feet, their peaks rugged, speckled with dirt, salt, and gravel. The snow hills stretched nearly eighty yards deep and forty yards across. They looked like a paradise for little children to play in, ripe for adventure and filled with fantasy.

“Are these snow hills here every year?” I asked to make conversation.

Gus grunted as he twisted the big steering wheel around to complete his one-eighty. “County’s been dumping snow here for years,” he said, and the bus rumbled back onto 58.

“The sheriff says you took a nap here after finishing your route the day Darleen Hicks disappeared. Is that true?”

He seemed unnerved. “Well, not exactly here,” he said. “On the other side of the hills. That way,” and he pointed past the snow toward the woods beyond.

“How do you get to the other side? There’s no road.”

“You got to