A Stone's Throw

by James W. Ziskin

  “How does Micheline Charbonneau fit in?” I asked.

  “She was with Dornan the night he died, right? A witness to the murders on the farm. She had to go, too.”

  “Sounds logical,” said Frank. “But why is she here and they’re back there over the county line? Why not burn her with the others?”

  Pryor didn’t have an answer for that. But he explained it away. “There doesn’t have to be a reason.”

  “I offered you information several days ago,” I said, shifting gears. “You weren’t interested in the man Johnny Dornan was meeting at midnight last Friday. Robinson.”

  “No, I wasn’t. And I’ve got my man. Robertson.”

  “There was also the tip on the identity of the female victim in the barn. I tried to tell you, but you only listened when Sheriff Olney shared the name.”

  “There’s no use holding a grudge, miss,” he said. “Tell you what. How about I slip you some details? You know, stuff that will do nicely in your newspaper stories.”

  “I thought you saved your best tips for Scotty Freed at the Saratogian.”

  “Look, I have a job to do, and so do you. And so does Scotty. But I’m telling you I’m willing to share information with you now.”

  I had an idea. It would make for a fine feather in my cap if he agreed. And I had a tantalizing quid to offer in exchange for his quo. I put it to him.

  “If you let me talk to Bruce Robertson in the jailhouse, I’ll give you a piece of information that no one else besides me knows.”

  He studied me for a long moment. Frank Olney was keeping quiet during our back-and-forth. I would have given him my information for nothing, of course, but what I had to offer was on the Saratoga side of the county line. At length, Pryor came to a decision.

  “All right, Miss Stone. You got a deal. Tomorrow at ten a.m. I’ll let you interview Bruce Robertson. That is if he’s on board with it.” He paused. “And his lawyer.”

  Usually I like to receive cash on the barrelhead for my tips, but in this case, I agreed to deliver my goods in advance of my payment. Frank Olney would be my insurance if Pryor tried to weasel out of his promise. So I told him. I told them both that someone was haunting the caretaker’s house on Tempesta Farm.

  “What proof do you have of that?” asked Pryor.

  “I visited the house on Thursday afternoon. And I found a newspaper on the second floor.”

  “And?”

  “It was Wednesday’s edition of the Republic.”

  “Anything else you’ve been withholding?”

  I cleared my throat. “There’s also a pistol. A small-caliber Colt.”

  Pryor shook his head. “You should have told me right away. There might have been fingerprints.”

  “I phoned your office Thursday afternoon and left an urgent message. You didn’t return my call.”

  “Well, I’m sure whoever left that stuff there has had plenty of time to get rid of it by now.”

  “Time, yes. Stuff, no,” I said. “I have both the newspaper and the gun in a safe place.”

  “How did you manage that?” asked Frank. “That house has been boarded up since Chuck Lenoir died.”

  “The storm cellar door was unlocked.”

  “That might be construed as trespassing,” said Pryor.

  “Are you going to arrest her?” asked Frank. “She’s giving you a gift, here. Is that how you thank her?”

  Pryor removed his hat and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. He nodded at length and said we had a deal. I would be given access to Bruce Robertson in the morning, and he would investigate the caretaker’s house right away.

  “May I come with you?” I asked.

  “Dressed like that?”

  I prevailed upon the sheriff to wait until I’d had a chance to speak to Fred Peruso, the Montgomery County coroner, before driving all of six hundred yards to Tempesta Farm. I’d known Fred for several years, but he became one of my favorite guys during the Jordan Shaw murder case. Since then, the cigar- and pipe-smoking doctor and I were old chums. He agreed to call me Ellie as long as I called him Fred. For a sixty-year-old man, he was in good shape and remarkably vain. His head of closely cropped white hair gave him the look of a fallen angel. Or a defrocked priest.

  “Junior prom?” he asked when he spotted me.

  “No. Skydiving,” I said.

  He smirked and asked what I was doing on a lonely road at 2:00 a.m. in an evening gown.

  “Looking for a handsome doctor to tell me about Micheline Charbonneau.”

  “I’m your man. But we haven’t formally identified the body yet.”

  “Can you tell me more or less how long she’s been dead? I won’t quote you on it until you’re sure.”

  He produced his pipe and a pouch of tobacco from his vest pocket. He packed the bowl and lit up.

  “Come take a walk with me,” he said, and we set off toward a tree stump not far away.

  Once we were out of earshot of the lawmen he asked if I really wanted to hear this. “Not all corpses are going to be as beautiful and as well preserved as Marilyn Monroe.”

  “Are you forgetting Darleen Hicks?” I replied. “If I could stomach that, I can take what you have to say now.”

  He puffed on his pipe. “Fair enough. The body has already putrefied. Smells worse than anything you can imagine. Made even worse because it was shut inside a locked car. And the skin was black and blistering.”

  “So how long?”

  “And the maggots were having a feast and lots of them in the pupa stage,” he continued, ignoring my question. “The body is bloating, and excreting fluids from all the orifices and ruptures in the skin. No one’s going to want to buy that used car, I can tell you that.”

  I felt green. “Okay, so what does all that tell you about how long she’s been dead?”

  “Best guess is at least a week. Maybe seven or eight days. No flies yet. A lot depends on the temperature and moisture. But she’s been in that car more than five days and fewer than ten. Unless she was refrigerated before being dumped here.”

  “Cause of death?”

  “Neck appears to be broken. An x-ray will confirm that in an instant.”

  “Any other possible causes?”

  “When the decomposition of a body is so far along, it’s not easy to determine from a cursory physical examination. The skin’s so black you can’t see bruises or lacerations. Even stab wounds or bullet holes are hard to distinguish from the natural ruptures in the skin caused by the decomposition and the buildup of gases. Of course I’ll know a lot more after I finish the postmortem tomorrow morning.”

  “I’ll stop by to get the verdict, if that’s all right.”

  “Eight a.m. at City Hospital. I’ve got a tee time at ten. Don’t be late.”

  “Some of us want to get to bed before the sun comes up,” said Pryor when I told him I was ready. “Tell you the truth, I don’t know why I’m letting you come along. This is police business.”

  “I’m a witness,” I reminded him. “Plus, I know where to look inside the house. It’ll save time, and you’ll be able to get to bed before the sun comes up.”

  “Cool your jets. You can come along. Let’s go.”

  I led the sheriff and two of his deputies—Bell and Sinclair—to the window I’d tumbled through while making good my escape Thursday afternoon. It was shut now, and I must have turned white.

  “Did you close it?” Pryor asked.

  “No. I just ran for my life.”

  He motioned to one of the deputies to try the window. It took a couple of tugs, but it opened. Whoever had shut it hadn’t locked it again. Pryor thought it had fallen shut by itself.

  “The sash cord is probably rotted through,” he said.

  Convinced that my second tour of the Tempesta caretaker’s house would be less terrifying, given my armed escort, I learned nevertheless that the expected outcome isn’t always the true one. My protectors inspired little confidence, particularly when Pryor asked
me to lead the way.

  “After you.”

  “I’m not going in there first,” I huffed in a low voice. “It’s someone else’s turn. Send one of your boys in there with a flashlight.”

  “All right, we’re going to search the place in two teams,” said Pryor to his deputies once we had all climbed through the window. He coughed, frowned, and clarified. “Bell and Sinclair, you two check out the upstairs. Miss Stone and I will—” Another cough. “We’ll take the rooms down here.”

  “I think we should abort the mission,” I said in full voice.

  They all gawked at me as if I’d just yelled fire in a crowded theater.

  “Fire,” I said calmly. “This place is on fire.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  The caretaker’s house was indeed burning, and fast. Deputies Bell and Sinclair led the charge through the window, leaving me and the sheriff to fight over who would exit last. To his credit, Pryor ceded me the right of way, even if his chivalry was accompanied by a sharp shove of my rear end to grease the skids, as it were. Outside again, we raced from the building, me in heels and long evening gown, sparkling, too, I imagined, thanks to my jewelry. From our position thirty yards clear of the house, we watched the flames shoot through the slats of the third-floor shutters. Then, the fire slipped through the frame and crept up the face of the house, licking the eaves beneath the mansard roof. Inevitably, inexorably, they chewed through the rafters and, with a hissing rumble, escaped the attic and leapt into the night. Now with a whooshing supply of air feeding the fire from within—bottom to top, thanks in part to the window we’d left open—the old timbers didn’t stand a chance. The blaze swelled like a dragon’s roar.

  “Shouldn’t we call the fire department?” asked Deputy Bell at length.

  Pryor threw him a glare that screamed “idiot” loud and clear. A few minutes later, the building crumbled and collapsed upon itself. We retreated another ten yards for protection from the flying sparks and billowing heat. The fight was over. A knockout.

  I turned to Sheriff Pryor. “Can I still interview Bruce Robertson in the morning?”

  It was nearly 4:00 a.m. by the time the fire trucks left and Pryor took me back to where I’d parked my car. The Montgomery County deputies were still at it, securing the crime scene. A wrecker was emerging from behind the trees with Vivian McLaglen’s car in tow. Frank Olney asked what the big fire was all about. He’d seen the clouds light up as the house burned. I gave him the short version and said good night.

  Whoever had torched the caretaker’s house must have slipped away while we were watching the place burn. Pryor ordered a search of the property, but he didn’t have the manpower to cover eight hundred acres. The property was dark, with hills and overgrowth and outbuildings enough for a shadow to melt into the night without anyone the wiser.

  This was, of course, arson, most certainly set to prevent the law from finding evidence that someone had been hiding there since the murders a week before. Or perhaps the intention was to kill all of us. Pryor agreed, but he would have to follow procedure and ask the fire department to establish the cause of the blaze. I had no such formalities to observe, so I mapped out my plans for later that morning as I drove home along the lonely stretch of Route 67.

  I pulled up to the curb outside my place on Lincoln Avenue and checked my watch—4:22. Lugging my suitcase up the stairs might well wake Mrs. Giannetti, if she weren’t already peering out the window to catch me sneaking in with another in a series of disreputable escorts. I decided to leave the bag in the car and crept up the stairs. The phone was ringing when I let myself in. I hadn’t even had time to remove my heels, which were caked with mud from the firemen’s hoses and dirt of the farm.

  “It’s Jimmy Burgh,” came the voice down the line.

  “Why are you calling at this hour?”

  “I’m across the street in the phone booth. I gotta talk to you.”

  I didn’t like the idea at all. In fact, it gave me chills to think of him lurking downstairs waiting for me.

  “Jimmy, it’s late. I have to be up early tomorrow. Today, as a matter of fact.”

  “Then you won’t need your beauty sleep. Look, I’m no danger to you. I just want to ask you something. I won’t stay long.”

  I don’t know what whim or caprice shanghaied my better judgment, but I heard myself saying yes and then letting the ruffian into my home at four thirty in the morning. I cautioned him to keep quiet, lest my landlady catch me with him. Not that my reputation would have suffered much in her eyes at that point, but I thought Jimmy Burgh represented a new low in my own mind, even if his visit was business instead of pleasure.

  “Can I offer you something?” I asked, once we were seated at my kitchen table.

  “I wouldn’t say no. You got something strong?”

  I fetched a fresh bottle of White Label from the hutch in my parlor and poured us each a couple of fingers. After the night I’d had, from my crushing humiliation at the hands of Freddie Whitcomb’s mother to the discovery of Micheline’s body and the fire at Tempesta, I too wanted something strong.

  “You look real nice, by the way,” said Jimmy, raising his tumbler to me. “What are you all dressed up for?”

  “An evening in high society.” My tone dripped with irony.

  “You got soot all over your face, though. Not bad, but I figured it ain’t supposed to be part of your getup.”

  I brushed my cheek in a lazy attempt to wipe away the black but gave up just as quickly. I didn’t really care. On the bright side, however, something in Jimmy’s demeanor told me straight off that I had nothing to fear from him that night.

  “I heard they found a body out on Route Sixty-Seven,” he began. “A woman in a car.”

  “Yes, I was there. I’m afraid it’s Micheline.”

  Jimmy frowned, his bushy black eyebrows knitting themselves together in gathering anger. Or was it sorrow? His jaw tightened, lips curled, and his eyes burned. He drained his glass, and I poured him another.

  “They’re sure it’s Miche?” he asked.

  “The sheriff found identification in her purse.”

  “Who the hell would do that?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

  “I heard they picked up Bruce Robertson.”

  “The Saratoga sheriff thinks he’s got his man. He’s going to let me talk to him at ten o’clock this morning. Do you think Bruce Robertson could have killed Johnny Dornan? And Vivian McLaglen and Micheline Charbonneau?”

  Jimmy stared at me, his blue eyes shot red and tired. He blinked. “He’s capable of it, I suppose. But I’ve never known him to be a killer.”

  “Tell me something, Jimmy. What is it about Micheline that’s hitting you so hard?”

  He nudged his glass an inch to the left, then back to the right. “She was a good kid. I hate to see this happen.”

  “Anything else?”

  “What do you want me to say? That I blame myself?”

  “Do you?”

  “I don’t think all fancy about things the way you do. Bad stuff happens sometimes. Even to nice kids like Miche.”

  “Then you’re in the clear, Jimmy.”

  He fixed me with a hard stare. I wondered if I’d pushed him too far. “Yeah, I blame myself,” he said at length. “Maybe I’m going soft, but I wish I’d a never sent her out with that Johnny Dornan. And I want to get the guy who did this to her. I want that so bad. So I guess even I’ve started thinking all fancy now, because I feel I gotta do something to avenge her. To win back some of my own self-respect or I don’t know how I’ll live with myself.”

  “What do you want to do, Jimmy?”

  “I want to strangle the son of a bitch with my bare hands. I want to crush his windpipe with my thumbs and squeeze so hard his eyes pop out of their sockets.”

  I recoiled in my seat. The violence of his words swelled as his face grew redder. But he wasn’t finished. “I want to choke the life out of him and kick him in the he
ad about fifty times when I’m done. Till he’s a goddamn bloody mess. I want him to take back the guilt I got burning in my chest since Miche disappeared. And then, when I’m all out of breath from kicking his head off his shoulders, then—just for poetical justice—I’m gonna set him on fire and watch the bastard burn to a crisp, black piece of shit.”

  Jimmy poured his drink down his gullet and grabbed the bottle standing between us on the table, startling me with the speed and wrath of his action. He sloshed more Scotch into his glass and swallowed it straightaway. Then he slouched in his chair, breathing hard and staring at nothing in particular. His fury cooled over time. I didn’t dare say a word.

  “You’re going to find him for me,” he said. “And I’m going to kill him.”

  Whereas I hadn’t feared him earlier, I was now frozen in place, sure he’d strangle me, just for practice, if I said the wrong thing. But as the minutes passed, I realized he was thinking. Planning, perhaps. Then he finally spoke. Squinting as if trying to recall some distant memory, he asked me if I’d said I was going to speak to Bruce Robertson later that day.

  “At ten,” I answered in a rough voice. I cleared my throat and repeated yes.

  “Ask him about Mack Hodges,” he said. “And Ledoux. Dan Ledoux.”

  “I’ve heard of them. What do they have to do with all this?”

  He shrugged at me. “I don’t know exactly. But they were right in the middle of the shenanigans nine years ago at Hagerstown. This whole thing goes back to Johnny Dornan throwing that race. And Bruce Robertson knows what happened.”

  “Do you know where I might find this Mack Hodges? Is he still in Maryland somewhere?”

  “Yeah. Not far from Pimlico. Six feet under.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  SUNDAY, AUGUST 19, 1962

  Eight a.m. sharp. I commandeered the last stale piece of Danish, which, I was sure, had been left out the day before. Or maybe Friday. Still, I was feeling hollow and needed to get something inside me. Seated at the long table in the doctors’ lounge, sipping cold coffee and puffing on a stale cigarette, I scratched out the beginnings of a story on the thrown race at Hagerstown nine years earlier. It was mostly notes to myself, reminders to research this and that. Too many holes—dates, horses, accomplices—but it helped organize my thoughts. Then Fred Peruso burst through the door, cigar fuming between his teeth, trailing a swirling cloud of blue smoke.