A Stone's Throw

by James W. Ziskin

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

  “Not yet. It’s like searching for a needle in a haystack. But I’ll keep trying.”

  “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 that it brought in business.

  Yeah, for the post office, I’d thought.

  The bench creaked under Frank’s considerable weight as we sat down. For his part, Fadge ducked into the post office cage and stashed his winnings in the United States government safe. I could hear him spinning the dial and twisting the latch. I wondered how many federal statutes he was breaking by doing so. And with a law enforcement officer not five feet away.

  “Any luck on Vivian Coleman?” I asked Frank, putting Fadge’s felonies to one side.

  “Quite a bit, actually,” he said, tenting his fingers on the table between us. “She’s got an arrest record as long as your arm. Dating back to her teens. Car theft, writing rubber checks, and wire fraud.”

  “Oh, my,” I said, thinking her father may have had a point about how rotten she was after all.

  “And there was a morals charge in Albany back in fifty-two. Busted in a man’s hotel room.”

  “Did any of it stick?”

  “The morals charge did. She did five months in county jail.”

  “Sounds like trouble.”

  Frank nodded. “And you think she might be the lady in the barn?”

  “It seems more and more likely. I’ve seen a couple of photographs of her when she was younger. Hard to tell hair color in black-and-white, but she could have been a redhead.” I drew a sigh. “Her father told me she was always dyeing her hair a different color, so who knows?”

  “Are you two going to order anything?” That was Fadge, who’d appeared above us.

  “I�
��m trying to watch my weight, Ron,” said the sheriff, who wasn’t there to patronize the store.

  Fadge stared at him. “We’ve got No-Cal Soda.”

  “Isn’t that for housewives on a diet?” asked Frank.

  “Works for sheriffs, too.”

  Looking horribly embarrassed, Frank nodded and said sure. I ordered a Coke.

  “Did you tell Sheriff Pryor your suspicions about the two women?” he asked once Fadge had shuffled back to the counter. “Might help him narrow down the options on an ID.”

  “He’s not playing nice, so I didn’t tell him. I thought maybe you could let him know and get him to tell you something more.”

  “Okay. I’ll say I got an anonymous tip.”

  “Thanks.”

  “What about the man inside the barn? You still think it’s that jockey?”

  “Yes, I’m sure. The woman who checked into the Friar Tuck Motel over in Saratoga was with a man who answers Johnny Dornan’s description.”

  “What exactly was the description?”

  “A shrimp. The clerk said she was with a very short fellow in a cap of some kind. That’s all she saw.”

  Frank frowned. “Sounds about right. So what’s your next step?”

  “Actually,” I said as Fadge arrived with a Coke for me and a bottle of No-Cal ginger ale for Frank, “I was waiting for Ron, here, to tell me how his conversation with Benny Arnold from the DMV went today.”

  I patted the bench next to me, signaling for my big friend to join us. He glanced back at the door, and, finding no one clamoring for a sundae, he slipped in next to me. Slipped may be overstating the case. I wondered silently which of the two men weighed more, Fadge or Frank. They called to mind a wrestling tag team. The only thing missing was the tights.

  “What are you smiling about?” asked Fadge, glaring in my direction. I wiped the grin off my lips and prompted him again about Benny.

  “I talked to him this morning. Before I left for the track.”

  “Did he have a name and address for the car?”

  “He said he’d drop by here after work to let me know what he found.”

  That was my signal to hightail it out of there. I didn’t want to be cornered by him again. But, as luck would have it, Benny was just climbing the stoop. Fadge squeezed out of the booth when he heard the bell above the door.

  “How are you doing, Benny?” he asked.

  Hoping to remain hidden in the booth, I tried to shrink into the wall. Frank caught on and maintained silence over his bottle of No-Cal, but I feared Fadge would like nothing better than to make a little sport of my discomfort.

  After ten minutes of small talk at the counter, Fadge finally asked Benny if he’d followed up on his query of that morning. The DMV clerk said something I couldn’t make out from my hiding spot, but Fadge seemed to appreciate his answer.

  “This is great,” he said. “Thanks.”

  “Say, Ron. What do you want with this information anyway?” asked Benny.

  Fadge didn’t miss a beat. He explained that the car in question had backed into his outside the track. The woman driver never even turned around. She roared off but not before Fadge had memorized the plate number.

  “I can see why you’re sore about it,” said Benny. “Your Nash is a wreck.”

  Fadge said nothing, but I knew he was stewing. Despite the car’s dents and backfiring, he was attached to his Ambassador as only a torturer could love his victim. You always hurt the one you love.

  Benny excused himself, saying he had to get home to watch To Tell the Truth and Pete and Gladys with his mother before turning in. I mouthed, “Pete and Gladys?” to Frank across the table, but all he had to offer in return was an indifferent shrug.

  “Pete and Gladys finishes at eight,” I whispered. “His mother puts him to bed at eight.”

  But just when I thought I’d escaped an awkward meeting with the DMV clerk, that fat rat Fadge stabbed me in the back.

  “Hey, Benny, do me a favor, will you?” he asked from his position behind the counter. “Before you go, would you mind handing me that glass I left in the booth over there?”

  I was trapped. The interview that ensued was painful enough. But watching Fadge make faces at me from behind Benny was more than a girl should have to endure. I silently vowed revenge on my so-called friend as Benny asked me—again—why I wouldn’t go on a date with him.

  “Am I too unattractive?”

  “No, not because of that, Benny,” I said, realizing it had come out all wrong. “It’s just, well, you’re not Jewish.”

  “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 climbe
d 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. I snapped a few frames of one of them, a well-dressed gentleman who was all business, as he scribbled—I can only presume—the dates, time of day, furlongs, and splits for the horses he was tracking. Fadge had taught me the word “split.”