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

“You want to get something to eat?” asked Fadge. “Whitey’s is still open.”

“You want to eat again? You inhaled a pizza an hour and a half ago.”

“Yeah, and heaved it all back out fifteen minutes ago.”

I glanced at my watch as we reached my car. It was ten past two. I told Fadge that I couldn’t stomach the idea of a trilby sandwich and fries and gravy at Whitey’s.

“It’s like everything in life, El,” he said, popping open the passenger door and climbing in. “If you want to be good at something, you’ve got to work at it, even when the mood doesn’t strike you.”

I sat down beside him in the driver’s seat. “Are you saying I need to train to be an eating machine like you?”

“Precisely.”

I noticed the glove compartment was open. “Close that for me, will you?” I asked, and he obliged. “Wait. Open it and see if anything’s missing.”

“There’s nothing in here but your press pass, registration, and a couple of rolls of film. Is that everything?”

I pursed my lips and shifted into drive. “Yes. Still, it’s strange.”

We drove off down Route 67 toward New Holland. The road was empty at that hour.

“Mind if I put on the radio?” Fadge asked.

“Wait a minute. How do you suppose the glove compartment came to be hanging open like that?”

Fadge said he didn’t know. Maybe it had fallen open when we left the car to explore the farm.

I glanced at the box in front of Fadge, then back to the road. “It’s never done that before. Jiggle it a little to see if it opens.”

Fadge gave it a try, but the latch held fast.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “You’re thinking someone opened it.”

“I should have locked the car.”

“This is New Holland. No one locks their doors.”

“Don’t you remember two years ago? That juvenile delinquent Joey Figlio stole my car twice because I didn’t lock the doors.”

“Maybe it was him.”

“Not funny.”

“Don’t be paranoid. I must have knocked it open when I got out of the car.”

I drove on in silence, hardly buoyed by Fadge’s reassurances. I resolved to go back to the farm in the light of day and have a serious look around. And this time, I would lock my doors.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

THURSDAY, AUGUST 16, 1962

With barely three hours’ sleep, I opted for an early start after my late-night adventure. I phoned Norma Geary at home to see if she’d made any progress on the Robinson list. No bites, and she only had nine names left. Same on her Johnny Dornan search. Nothing yet, she said, but she was running through old wire-service stories searching for Johnny Dornan’s name in the racing results. I asked her to call Bell Canada to see if there were any John Dornans in Manitoba. That would keep her busy for a while.

I drove past Tempesta a little after seven, visor flipped down to block the low sun to the east. But even if the dark had been chased away by the morning light, I wasn’t yet ready to explore the ghostly stud farm on my own. First I wanted to have a look at the cars parked at a dozen or so motels in Saratoga County before they’d all been packed off for the racecourse later in the morning or early afternoon.

My list of motels included the Adirondack, Gateway, and Grand Union. And Scherer’s, Top Hill, and Turf and Spa. Then there was Design’s, Lewiston Motor Courts, Circular, and Tom’s Lodge. And that was a partial list. I hadn’t even included the hotels and boarding houses. There were too many to cover alone in one morning. But in the end, I managed to visit twenty-two motels and motor lodges in the general vicinity of the racetrack. I was looking for a black Chrysler with the license plate BYW 66. Vivian McLaglen’s car. It was a futile game of bingo. I even stopped at the Friar Tuck and introduced myself to Margaret, the helpful busybody who’d provided me with the make and model of Vivian’s car in the first place. She told me the car hadn’t returned since the previous Friday night when she’d last seen it.

“And I’m out the eighteen dollars she owes me,” she said.

“Do you still have her belongings?” I asked.

“Yes, but not much there.”

“Would you let me have a look?”

She pinched her face and shook her head. “No. I’m not giving away nothing for free.”

I sighed. “Can I buy it?”

Margaret sold me Vivian McLaglen’s things for twenty dollars. That was what the missing woman owed on her room at the motel plus a little extra to cover the “irregularity” of the transaction. I confess that I really hadn’t wanted to part with any money, let alone so much, for an unknown quantity. But, in the end, my curiosity won out. It was like a wager, I told myself. Fadge plunked hundreds of dollars on unreliable horses, expecting a return on his investment. And one couldn’t reason with horses. So why shouldn’t I risk a small sum—okay, not so small—on Vivian McLaglen?

I lugged two suitcases and a couple of bags of miscellany from the Friar Tuck registration office to my car and drove off west on Route 50. A few miles down the road, I pulled over at a gas station. The attendant filled my tank with high test and checked my oil. I rummaged through the trove I’d bought from Margaret. As she’d described several days earlier, there were clothes—nothing unusual there—except that there was only two or three days’ worth of things to wear. I wondered where the rest of her clothing might be.

I found some other items among her belongings as well. A couple of newspapers, cosmetics, and an almost empty pint of blackberry brandy. Really cheap stuff, I thought, recalling that a pint of the same swill was found in the rubble of the Tempesta barn. Then I asked myself if there was such a thing