A Stone's Throw

by James W. Ziskin

“I help my father with the family business. Manufacturing and some tobacco farms.”

  “That’s it?”

  “I dabble in the stock market.” He reconsidered. “I mostly just watch the share prices go up. Not much dabbling required, really.”

  That explained it. Idle rich.

  He crossed his right leg over his left and leaned in to consider me from close up. Squinting as he scanned my face, he informed me that I hadn’t mentioned my age.

  “And I’m not going to,” I said.

  “I have the right to know. I don’t want to end up in jail on a morals charge with a precocious high schooler.”

  “What makes you think you’re getting anywhere near a chance to rate a morals charge with me?”

  Okay, the repartee was fun, but I couldn’t keep up the gymnastics much longer. It was exhausting. I smiled and asked if he was from Saratoga.

  “Washington. Northern Virginia, actually. But I make the pilgrimage to Saratoga every August.”

  “So you like to play the horses?”

  “You could say that.” He lit a cigarette, which he held out for me. I begged off. Charming though Freddie Whitcomb may have been, I was not yet ready to share saliva with him. He continued unfazed and adopted the smoke for himself. “But I come more for the horses themselves. And the social scene. What about you, Eleonora?”

  He was trying to restart the flirting. “We had an agreement about names. I’m a reporter for a local daily not far from here.”

  “I knew that already. Press pass. Strange, though, I had you pegged for a New York girl. NYU. Or Boston? Maybe Brandeis?”

  My smile dimmed. I’d heard that song before. Were NYU and Brandeis code? A not-so-subtle attempt to establish if I was Jewish? Freddie continued on, though, chatting about something called Travers Day, which was coming up on Saturday, and I scolded myself for being too sensitive. I primed my smile again and interrupted his musings on an upcoming soirée at the casino in Congress Park.

  “Barnard,” I said.

  He was confused. “No. My name is Frederick. Freddie, remember?”

  “I studied at Barnard. History and journalism.”

  The penny dropped. “Then I was right. You are a New York girl. I studied linguistics at Pennsylvania. Let’s see if I can guess your address from your accent.” He rubbed his chin and squinted at me. “I’m getting a hint of Park Avenue. No, Madison and Eightieth,” he said deadpan. “Or maybe Hell’s Kitchen. West . . . Fifty-Fourth Street? Staten Island? Flushing?”

  “Lower Fifth Avenue,” I said with a chuckle. “Off Washington Square.”

  “Washington Square? Are you an heiress, Miss Stone?”

  Poor Freddie. He couldn’t have known that he’d stirred up a hornets’ nest of emotions in me. No, I wasn’t exactly an heiress, but my late parents had left me quite comfortable. I didn’t have to work if I didn’t want to, but of course I loved my job. Parts of it, at least. Not the garden parties and social page froth, but a double murder on a ghostly stud farm, yes.

  “Did I say something wrong?” he asked. My expression had surely betrayed my troubled memories of family. I waved off his concerns as breezily as I could manage. Then he invited me to dinner.

  “I was thinking that a couple of swells like us shouldn’t waste our time with the hoi polloi. Besides, we gotta eat.”

  There he was, the linguist, bending language and accent with his agile tongue, as if his high station afforded him such privilege. As if he knew the simple folks who actually spoke that way would indulge him for his charm.

  “I can’t,” I said. “Not tonight.”

  Freddie coughed, took a sip from his highball glass and a drag on his cigarette.

  “But I’ll check my agenda for Friday. If the offer’s still good.”

  “Make it Saturday. I’ll take you to a fancy gala at the Canfield Casino after the Travers Stakes.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The Saratoga Springs Friends of the Library Society gathered at the Gideon Putnam Hotel at 4:00 p.m. Tuesday to raise funds and awareness for underprivileged minority education. I appeared a few minutes late and seriously underdressed. The fifty or so ladies in attendance were decked out in floral dresses, pearls, sunglasses, and the occasional hat with ruffled bow. I was wearing a plaid skirt and white blouse. The nice woman who checked me in withheld her judgment, though, and pointed the way to the garden where the festivities were getting under way. I took a seat in a folding wooden chair on the lawn, near the back of the congregation. A woman in a violet dress and matching jacket—the society’s president as I later learned for my story—was delivering a welcome to members and friends. Then she introduced the event’s guest of honor, the fundraising drive chairwoman, Mrs. Georgina Carsten Whitcomb. I choked.

  Mrs. Whitcomb addressed the gathering in a warm, engaging voice. I wouldn’t have been able to guess the exact provenance of her honey-flavored Southern accent, of course, had I not already met her son. Northern Virginia. She expounded on the need for those of means to help those without. Especially children. And that went double for Colored children whose circumstances were exacerbated by poverty, broken homes, and genetics. I caught myself wondering why her white-woman’s-burden rhetoric hadn’t sent me running for the exit. Despite myself, I had to admit that the sweetness with which she’d delivered the speech somehow tempted me to grant her some leeway. Or was I failing to condemn her because I’d allowed myself to be charmed by her son? Of course I found everything she’d said abhorrent and insulting, especially to Colored children and their parents.

  I put those thoughts to one side for the moment and scribbled notes into my pad. Then, sensing she was wrapping up her case for philanthropy, I unsnapped my Leica and shot a couple of frames of her at the dais. Once the assembled erupted into thunderous applause—no more than the gentle pat-pat-pat of gloved hands, really—I rose and swung around to the front for some photos of the attendees. Ten minutes later, I had a couple of rolls of Tri-X to document the historic step forward in education and race relations.

  I waited patiently as several ladies heaped their praise upon her as if with a shovel, and then I approached her for a photograph for the paper.

  “I don’t believe we’ve met,” she said. “I’m Georgina Whitcomb.”

  “Very pleased to meet you,” I said. “I know who you are. My editor sent me to interview you. My name is Eleonora Stone from the New Holland Republic.” There was an awkward pause as she undoubtedly searched her memory for that reference. “It’s a local newspaper about twenty-five miles from here,” I added, hoping to resolve the confusion.

  Why had I introduced myself as “Eleonora”? For one thing, I hated that name. And for another, did I think it made me sound better born? What was wrong with my birth anyway? Ladies like Georgina Carsten Whitcomb didn’t usually put me off my game, but I was on her turf. A Jewess from Manhattan among the Mayflower set. And I was underdressed.

  “Lovely to meet you, Eleonora,” she said, beaming with kindly eyes. “What a beautiful name. Yes, I was told you’d be joining us today.”

  She posed in a confident, practiced way for several photographs, producing one winning smile after another. I sensed there wasn’t a throwaway frame in the bunch. She’d done this kind of thing before.

  “If you have some time now, we could get the interview out of the way today,” I said once I’d finished. “Then I won’t need to bother you again.”

  “My dear Eleonora, you are a lamb. But I’m afraid these ladies have me tied up as tight as a drum today. Might we try tomorrow? You can reach me here at the hotel.”

  Rats. “Of course,” I said.

  “Then I’ll expect you for tea at four.”

  She grasped the tips of my fingers with her gloved hand and squeezed ever so gently. Then she shimmered off, surrounded by the society’s president and two other ladies with lavender-colored hair.

  I rewound my film and drew a sigh of relief. The speechifying hadn’t been so bad, and I had no intenti
ons of sticking around for the cucumber sandwiches. But then I noticed a woman staring at me from five feet away.

  “Good afternoon, Miss Stone,” she said.

  I was startled. The queer grin and penetrating, unblinking eyes unsettled me, even more so because I recognized her all too well. It was Audrey Shaw, wife of Judge Harrison Shaw, and mother of the murdered Jordan.

  “I didn’t expect to see you here,” she said.

  And I never would have wanted to cross her shadow at such an event. Or any other, for that matter. She made my skin crawl.

  “Mrs. Shaw. How lovely to see you again.”

  She regarded me for a long moment, her head tilted a touch to the right. She forgot herself for an instant, her eyes betraying the unspoken animosity she bore me. Then, presently, the façade went back up.

  “I’d like a drink,” she said in a conspiratorial stage whisper. “And I’m sure you’d prefer something stronger than tea after that performance. Let’s talk inside.”

  I followed her—reluctantly—into the hotel bar. Audrey Shaw was an alcoholic, that much I knew from experience. She and I had shared a bottle of the judge’s finest Scotch one chilly afternoon in December nearly two years earlier. On that occasion, she’d taken a particularly savage joy in twisting the dagger of my father’s murder into my heart. It made her feel better about her own loss, I figured. But I still hated her for it.

  As she led us to an out-of-the-way table, I scolded myself for having avoided my necessary interview with her husband about the murders on Tempesta Farm. Not that such a meeting with Judge Shaw would have spared me from this calvary, but at least I would have felt like less a coward. Now, at a table in the elegant Gideon Putnam Hotel, I sat face-to-face with Audrey Shaw. She was exquisite in a pencil skirt and mother-of-pearl blouse, that is if you didn’t mind the perfectly horrid pink toque and its faux-silk flowers perched on her head like a bathing cap. Her nails drummed on the tabletop as I scanned the room, desperate for a waiter. A busboy would have sufficed. She smiled at me.

  “What brings you to this garden party?” she asked at length. “Are you interested in helping little Colored children?”

  How was I supposed to answer that without sounding wretched? I ignored the second half of her question and told her I was there in my capacity as a reporter.

  She chuckled in a most condescending manner. “Really? This is going into the Republic? Does anyone in New Holland care about educating Negro children?” She paused for maximum effect.

  “I care,” I said, though I doubted she’d been expecting an answer to her gem of cynicism. “It’s a good cause.”

  “Perhaps you’ll donate five dollars to soothe your conscience.”

  I stared daggers at her.

  “Please, Miss Stone. I’m only having some fun with you. The judge and I are donating two hundred dollars today, so I believe I have the right to kibitz, as your people would say.”

  “You wanted to speak with me?” I said, no longer trying to conceal my pique.

  “Is it wrong to want to catch up with an old friend?”

  “We’re not friends, Mrs. Shaw.”

  She pursed her lips and signaled to a waiter, who arrived at a trot. “Two whiskeys, please,” she said. Then to me, “You still enjoy your Scotch, don’t you, Miss Stone?”

  “I do.”

  The waiter withdrew.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t mean to make you uncomfortable. We have a history, you and I.”

  “Why did you want to talk to me?” I asked again.

  “The truth? I was bored. I thought we might have a chat. Maybe start over.”

  “You want to be my friend? That’s not necessary.”

  “I went through hell two years ago, as I’m sure you can imagine. I was hard on you.”

  “I’m a big girl. No apologies necessary. But I would like to ask you something.”

  “About Jordan? About your father?”

  “No,” I said. “About Tempesta Farm.”

  “Tempesta? What about it?”

  “You know there was a fire out there early Saturday morning. Two people died.”

  She nodded.

  “I was wondering if your husband still owns the property.”

  Audrey Shaw shifted in her seat, clearly uncomfortable with the direction our conversation was taking. The waiter returned with our drinks just in time to give her a few seconds to regroup, and she blinked the briefest smile at him as thanks. She retrieved a cigarette from her purse and lit it.

  “I assume the family trust owns it. It’s not as if Harrison spends his weekends out there shoeing horses and mucking out stables.”

  “Did the Saratoga sheriff contact him about the fire?”

  She took a long sip of her drink, professed her ignorance on the subject, and suggested I ask her husband. We sat in silence for a long moment. I was glad for the respite. For once I was dictating terms with Audrey Shaw. At length, however, she softened, perhaps as the whiskey worked its magic.

  “Do you remember that afternoon we spent together?” she asked. “You impressed me, did you know that?”

  “As a matter of fact, I understood exactly the opposite. I thought you despised me.”

  “For what you wrote about Jordan? No, I know you only reported your story as you saw fit. It was what the great unwashed masses wanted.”

  “I was very forthcoming with your husband about what I was going to write.”

  “Enough, Miss Stone. That’s all in the past. You and I have suffered terrible tragedies.”

  A few sips later, we’d achieved little to solidify a friendship, understanding, or even a truce. All I knew was that I disliked that woman, all the while pitying her and wishing I could decipher her intentions. I sensed she was trying to establish some connection with me, though I couldn’t quite figure what she wanted. She certainly didn’t consider me a surrogate daughter, which I didn’t want to be anyway. She’d made that clear to me two years before when she told me I couldn’t hold a candle to her Jordan. But now, in a relaxed state, she loosened up and even touched my hand.

  “I can tell you loads about these ladies for your article,” she said with a wicked smile. “Most of them are from Kentucky or Virginia. Do you really think they care two whits about Negro children? Or anything beyond their own comfort and public image? Plus I know who’s sleeping with whom.”

  “Perhaps they’re no different from us.”

  “From me. Not you, Eleonora.”

  I started at having heard her use my given name.

  “Ellie,” she corrected herself. “Let’s have another drink, and I’ll tell you a story about Tempesta Farm.”

  The light stretched across the lawn outside, its temperature cooling with the sinking sun, and Audrey Shaw told me of her first visit to New Holland.

  She was barely twenty, recently engaged to Harrison, the future Judge Shaw. Their families knew each other, but not well, so naturally his parents wanted to spend some time with her before the wedding. Audrey Jeffers hailed from Baltimore, where her father had served on the state racing commission. He’d known Harrison’s uncle, Joshua, the famous horseman, and greatly respected his grandfather, Sanford Shaw, the man who’d built Tempesta Farm. Audrey confessed that her parents’ only hesitation at the prospective match was Harrison’s uncle Joshua, whose reputation as a playboy was known up and down the Eastern Seaboard and as far afield as Europe.

  “To tell you the truth,” said Audrey Shaw, sipping her drink, “Uncle Joshua was the most interesting Shaw of them all, and I include my husband in that beauty pageant.”

  The chaperoned visit in late August and early September of 1937 went off well, despite concerns over Uncle Joshua’s profligacies, and both families were amenable to the match.

  Audrey Shaw corrected herself. “Actually, my visit was going well until the fire destroyed the Race Barn and took twelve of the Shaws’ finest Thoroughbreds with it.”

  “You were there?” I asked.

&n
bsp; “The August meet had just wrapped up, and I stayed on a little longer to be with Harrison.”

  “How did it happen?”

  She shrugged. “They never established for certain how the fire got started, though there were rumors a stableboy was to blame. Or maybe it was one of the farmhands. I don’t recall. But Harrison once told me that the fire was an accident. No one could have done that on purpose.”

  She continued her tale. Audrey Jeffers had spent her days at the track, or riding at Tempesta, and split her evenings between soirées in Saratoga and quiet dinners at the Shaw family mansion on Market Hill. The fire erupted in the Race Barn after midnight on September 3, 1937. Nathan Shaw was roused from his sleep by his brother, Joshua, and together with Harrison they raced out to the farm in the dead of the night to take stock of the situation. By the time they’d arrived, the barn was gone, and so were twelve cherished horses.

  “I was packed off back to Baltimore the next day while they dealt with the aftermath,” said Audrey Shaw. “Shall we have another?” She signaled to the waiter.

  In for a penny . . . I nodded. “What happened next?”

  “My father wasn’t sure the wedding would come off after the tragedy. As if perhaps the Shaws would associate the fire with my presence. But soon enough we discovered I was expecting, so not only was the wedding on but rushed forward.”

  So much for the chaperoned visit. I must have looked shocked because she explained further.

  “I miscarried, so the wedding was moved back to June of the next year as originally planned.” She offered a sad smile. “It was the event of the season.”

  Back at the office, I dropped off my film at the lab then tapped out the skeleton of my garden party story. I still needed to interview the guest of honor, who was the chairwoman of the charity drive. Unlike Audrey Shaw, I believed subscribers would be interested in reading about Saratoga high society. The Spa City occupied a special place in the hearts of New Holland citizens. Each August, the racing season, and the glamour it epitomized, provided an escape for readers: the fancy garden party would break the routine of their humdrum lives. So even if Audrey Shaw was right that few would care about lending a helping hand to minority children, they would still enjoy the photos and stories of the rich and glamorous. My article, however, promised, at best, to be a two-paragraph snoozer. Fifty rich ladies decked out in their finery doing their part to help the underprivileged, each trying to out-donate the last, but within reason, mind you. I imagined they’d met beforehand to establish a pecking order of generosity and how much each would give. A bit of charitable collusion. Okay, some of Audrey Shaw’s cynicism may have rubbed off on me.