A Stone's Throw

by James W. Ziskin

  “Eleonora,” he said to tease me.

  “Federico,” I answered in kind, stubbing out my cigarette in the aluminum ashtray. “So what’s the verdict?”

  “Broken neck. Dead before the car was abandoned.”

  “And can you confirm it’s Micheline Charbonneau?”

  “You’ll have to ask Frank. He’s on his way down here now.”

  “Estimated time of death?”

  “Impossible to fix it exactly. But like I said last night, it’s been at least a week.”

  Fred and I went over the condition of the body, height and weight, and details of the injury to her neck. I took notes for my story, which I would review with Charlie Reese and deliver to the typesetter before 10:00 p.m.

  About fifteen minutes later, the big sheriff sauntered in, turned a chair around backward, and took a seat.

  He greeted Fred then nodded to me. “Ellie, I see you’ve turned back into Cinderella.”

  I smiled. “What about you? Get any sleep?”

  He shook his head. “No, but I just got off the horn with Schenectady police. I had a hunch maybe Micheline was arrested once or twice. They confirmed she got picked up a year and a half ago for shoplifting at Breslaw’s on State Street. I’m driving over there in a few minutes. We got one decent print off the body and hope to match it to the ones they have in their files.”

  I wrote down the information. “Can I call you later today for the results?”

  “I should know one way or the other within two hours.”

  “Anything in the car you can tell me about?”

  “Besides the awful smell? Registered to Vivian Coleman like we expected.”

  “Good morning, Ellie,” said Henry Pryor.

  So we’d moved on to first names? That was fine with me. I liked to cultivate friendly relations with law enforcement. Till now, the Saratoga sheriff had been standoffish at best, so I was sure I could turn the warming trend to my advantage.

  “You’re looking chipper today, Henry,” I answered, flashing my brightest smile for good measure.

  In truth, he was drooping and wearing the same wrinkled suit of clothes he’d had on the night before. The chitchat concluded, he told me his men were still searching the farm for evidence of the arsonist. So far no luck.

  I explained that the pistol and newspaper were safe but unavailable until later in the day. He didn’t appear concerned, saying that he’d send a deputy to pick them up as soon as he could.

  “Tell you the truth, I don’t think your squatter is involved in this. Why would he stick around the farm, for one thing? Too dangerous.”

  “Perhaps. But shouldn’t you look into it?”

  “Of course. We’ll get to your gun, Ellie. Don’t worry.”

  “What about Bruce Robertson?” I asked. “May I see him now?”

  “He wasn’t too keen on it at first, but then he got to thinking he’d like to get his side of the story out there. And when I told him you were a pretty young thing, he was all for it.”

  “Not sure how I feel about that.”

  “Don’t worry. You’ll be safe. He’s barely as tall as you. And as skinny as a rail.”

  “His lawyer doesn’t object?”

  “He fired him yesterday. Supposed to get a new one. But he signed a paper waiving his right to have his lawyer present for this chat. Says he’s innocent and has nothing to hide. Not too bright, but there you go. Shall we?” He feigned a bow to invite me to go first.

  Bruce Robertson was a weaselly little man of about forty. At first glance, one would be hard-pressed to believe he was capable of any crime more violent than stealing candy from a baby. But his steel-gray eyes told another story. There was a hard coldness in his persistent stare. More than just a creep picturing me naked in his mind, he gave the impression that nothing mattered to him beyond his own wants. He didn’t smile. Didn’t engage on any human level I could discern. He watched. I was uncomfortable, frightened even. Even with the sheriff at my side and a roomful of armed deputies on the other side of the door. And I wanted a shower. I wondered how Jimmy Burgh could have said this reptile was incapable of murder.

  Pryor took a seat off to the side of the table while I faced the prisoner directly, not three feet away. The sheriff reached for the phone on the wall and told whoever answered at the other end that we were ready, please send in Mrs. Blaine. A few moments later, there was a knock at the door, and a deputy pushed his way inside. He held the door for a middle-aged woman in a dark dress. Her hair was short and styled with marcel waving held down by bobby pins. She wheeled in a small portable desk bearing a stenograph, and the deputy fetched a chair for her. Within seconds, she was smoothing the fabric of her dress over her thighs and past her knees. She adjusted her eyeglasses, placed her hands on the keyboard, and nodded to the sheriff.

  Pryor began. “As you agreed in writing, Mr. Robertson, Miss Stone is here to interview you for a story for her newspaper. She’s going to ask you some questions. I’m present to make sure everything is on the up and up. That’s why I’ve asked for a stenographer. I don’t want you claiming later on that I tricked you. Are you still in agreement?”

  Bruce Robertson nodded. Mrs. Blaine waited.

  “You’ve got to actually say the words,” the sheriff informed him. “Are you still in agreement?”

  “Sure,” said the prisoner, and the stenographer tapped silently to record his statement.

  “I’ll get right to the point, Mr. Robertson,” I said. “Did you kill Johnny Dornan or Vivian McLaglen or Micheline Charbonneau?”

  “You’re a pretty little thing,” he said in a soft, hoarse voice that emanated from somewhere in the back of his throat. Mrs. Blaine finished her typing a beat or two after Robertson had shut his trap.

  I shook a tremor off my shoulders and forged ahead, ignoring his comment. “Did you kill Johnny Dornan or Vivian McLaglen or Micheline Charbonneau? Or do you know who did?”

  His gaze ranged from my face, over my bust, and back again. He cocked his head as if admiring a mystical vision. “Your hair is unusual. Don’t see many girls with such curls. And I don’t mean like grandma’s over there.” He threw his head in the direction of the stenographer.

  “Johnny Dornan and Vivian McLaglen,” I prompted.

  “You ain’t some kind of mix, are you?”

  I said nothing.

  “Is your daddy a coon? Maybe your momma?”

  “That’s enough of that,” said the sheriff. “Answer her questions. This isn’t some kind of entertainment for you.”

  “Tell me about Johnny Dornan,” I repeated.

  Using the coarsest language imaginable, he proceeded to explain that he wasn’t necessarily against congress between the races, at least not a white man with a Negro woman. That was understandable from both ends of the equation, he said. But he drew the line at Colored men spoiling white women.

  “That ain’t right.”

  “Okay,” said Pryor. “Get up. You’re going back to your cell.”

  I pushed myself out of my chair and stood to leave. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Robertson,” I announced. “Look for my article in the paper tomorrow.”

  “Wait a minute,” he called after me as I reached the door. “Where you off to so fast? We were having a nice conversation.”

  “Me? I have a date with my black lover. Good-bye.”

  Mrs. Blaine choked, and her fingers fell suspiciously silent. She looked to the sheriff as if to ask “Should I record that?” He shook his head.

  “Wait! What?” asked Robertson.

  “If you have nothing to tell me about Johnny Dornan, Vivian McLaglen, or Micheline Charbonneau, I’m leaving, and you can go back to your cell, as Sheriff Pryor says.”

  “You can’t go like that. I know stuff.”

  I turned the doorknob. “I’m not interested in hearing what you know about fornicating with Colored women.”

  Mrs. Blaine gasped.

  “No, I mean stuff about Johnny Dornan. You have no
idea what I know.”

  I yanked open the door. “I’m sure it will all come out in your trial. Not in my newspaper.”

  “Johnny Dornan threw a race nine years ago in Maryland,” he blurted out. Mrs. Blaine resumed her typing.

  I paused in the threshold and peered back at him. “Can you tell me about that?”

  “Sure. Come back in and sit down. I’ll tell you. They’re not gonna pin this on me.”

  Bruce Robertson behaved after that. In fact, I suspected that his bravado and profanity was all an act, one that he’d practiced for years to compensate for his unimpressive physical stature. In his business, he surely ran up against tough guys every day. A paperweight like him needed to project confidence and ooze malice or he’d be flattened by some other Caspar Milquetoast of a gangster. And I thought Jimmy Burgh deserved more credit than I’d originally given him. I, too, was doubtful that Bruce Robertson had it in him to kill a man.

  “Tell me about the race,” I said.

  “It was a small track. Nothing like Pimlico. Or Saratoga. A dirt oval with a crappy grandstand. Horses maybe a step or two faster than an army mule. But they had pari-mutuel betting, so folks didn’t care if the horses weren’t Ridan or Jaipur, ready for the Kentucky Derby. They still came out thinking they could handicap the nags and win.”

  “Not a big-time racecourse,” I said. “I get it. Now, about Johnny Dornan.”

  “Whatever happened to painting a picture?” he asked. “Geez, some folks don’t appreciate a raconteur.”

  “Johnny Dornan.”

  “Okay, okay. So, Johnny was a morning rider back then. Went by the name Johnny Sprague. Only about twenty or twenty-one. He had promise, to be sure. But he was a kid. Rough around the edges, but not afraid to push his mounts and take chances. He arrived from somewhere in Canada one fine day in the company of a lady. Well, lady might be giving her too much credit.”

  “Vivian McLaglen?”

  “That’s her. Only she was going by Coleman at that time. Hiding from her past, I think, because she wasn’t some daisy-fresh maiden, if you’ll pardon my language.”

  “I’ve heard that kind of thing happens. What’s next?”

  “So Vivian Coleman brought the green kid down from north of the border and introduced him to her boyfriend, a fellow named Dan Ledoux.”

  “She was playing with both Johnny and Dan Ledoux?”

  “She was the town bicycle. Everyone had a ride.” That prompted yet another snort from Mrs. Blaine. Robertson continued unfazed. “But Johnny was a project of hers. Ledoux worked for a guy named Mack Hodges, a local crook trying his hand at horse racing. The two of them baked up this idea to throw a race, but they needed a patsy.”

  “Enter young Johnny Sprague.”

  “Bingo. And Vivian Coleman was the bait to lure him.”

  “So how did it work? The fix, I mean?”

  Bruce Robertson was in his glory now. A born storyteller, he reveled in the spotlight and enjoyed the sound of his own voice. Even his cold eyes had warmed as he unfurled his tale like a mainsail.

  “The horseflesh wasn’t exactly the best in the country, but there were some decent runners. Someone’s gotta win, after all. Unfortunately for Mack Hodges, none of his horses were gonna do better than the occasional show. Not much money in that. So he got the idea that, with a little help—on the perfect day—maybe his best horse could eke out a win over a big favorite. The purse, plus some heavy betting, would make for a handsome payday.”

  “But how was he going to beat the favorite?” I asked.

  “That’s where Johnny came in.”

  “He rode the favorite?”

  “Exactly.”

  I reflected on that bit of information for a moment. Something didn’t make sense. How could Mack Hodges control who would be riding the competition? And an apprentice rider at that.

  “Wait,” I said, holding up a hand. “If Vivian McLaglen lured Johnny Sprague to Maryland for her boyfriend, Dan Ledoux, and this Mack Hodges, how did he end up riding someone else’s horse?”

  “That’s what I don’t know. I got my sources, but they didn’t know everything. Or they weren’t telling.”

  “Who was your source on this information?”

  “I’m not telling you that.”

  “Was it Ledoux?” asked the sheriff, breaking his silence.

  Bruce frowned. “I can’t reveal my sources. But if it was Dan, I sure as hell wouldn’t tell you.”

  “Without a source, you look more and more guilty,” said Pryor.

  “I can’t help that. If I told I’d be risking my own neck when I get out of here.”

  The sheriff laughed. “That’s a good one. What makes you think you’re ever getting out?”

  “I swear I didn’t kill them people,” he shouted. “I had no reason. Why would I do it?”

  “I heard you were selling the information on Johnny Dornan to other gamblers,” I said.

  Robertson scoffed. “Why would I sell the dirt on Johnny? I just told it to you for free.”

  “Only because you can’t sell it now that Johnny Dornan’s dead. You can’t blackmail a dead man.”

  “Doesn’t matter. I’m not admitting to selling no information. And I still didn’t kill no one.”

  I shifted gears and tried to rile him. “You met Johnny Dornan at midnight the night he disappeared, didn’t you?”

  “What? No. I didn’t meet him then or any other time.”

  “He had an appointment with someone named Robertson.”

  “Must’ve been some other Robertson.”

  “Maybe someone named Robinson?” I asked.

  “Robinson who? Crusoe?”

  I was getting nowhere fast. Bruce Robertson was sticking to his story, which seemed reasonable to me anyway. He didn’t know crucial bits of the tale of Johnny Dornan’s race-fixing scandal nine years earlier. And without the complete picture, I was hardly better off.

  “Where were you the night of Friday, August tenth?” I asked.

  He smirked. “I already told the sheriff. I was in the company of a lady.”

  Pryor snorted a laugh.

  “Okay, not exactly a lady,” said Bruce. “But she had all the right parts; I can tell you that ’cause I inspected ’em all myself.” He paused to look me in the eye. “Three times.”

  Mrs. Blaine took a moment—and her fingers off the keys—to wipe her brow with a handkerchief before transcribing the last statement.

  “Yeah, you’re a real ladies’ man, Bruce,” said the sheriff to mock. “But we still haven’t located this make-believe hooker of yours. And until we do, your alibi is nothing more than a fairy tale.”

  I jumped in again and asked the prisoner where I could find Dan Ledoux. He shrugged and said he didn’t know.

  “He usually shows up at the track during the meet, but I ain’t seen him this year.”

  “What’s he look like?”

  “I don’t know. I’m not in the habit of ogling men.”

  “Tall? Short? Medium? Dark? Fair? Old? Young? Surely you can tell me the color of his hair.”

  “He’s got brown eyes, I think. Black hair. Maybe he’s forty, like me. And about my size, too.”

  “If he’s anything like you, he must be a prize,” said the sheriff with a chuckle.

  Robertson scowled at him. I thought Pryor’s comment was unnecessary. For all his odious qualities—and he had them in spades—Bruce Robertson couldn’t really do much to improve on the irregular parts God had given him to work with.

  “I do okay, thanks, Sheriff,” he said bitterly, but I could tell he didn’t believe it himself. “And why shouldn’t I get girls? Johnny Dornan did just fine with the ladies, and he was no taller than me.”

  I’d squeezed about all I was going to get out of Bruce Robertson, but I had one last question. I steered the conversation back to the mystery of the thrown race and asked about Mack Hodges.

  “What can you tell me about him?”

  “Not much. Except
he’s dead.”

  “When did he die?”

  “Last January or February, I think. Died in his sleep.”

  “Old age? Heart attack?”

  “His house burned down with him in it.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Frank Olney confirmed positively the identity of the body in the car. It was twenty-four-year-old Micheline Bernadette Charbonneau of Terrebonne, Quebec, a suburb of Montreal. I felt a pang of regret as he pronounced the name, even if I’d already known it was she. The finality of an official identification smothers the last gasp of hope. Of course if it hadn’t been Micheline in the driver’s seat of Vivian McLaglen’s Chrysler, it would have been some other poor girl, murdered for some unknown reason. Why shouldn’t I have mourned her as well? Perhaps I should have simply been happy that an anonymous girl had survived the cruelty of the world for another day. I found no comfort in my rationalizations.

  I sat at my kitchen table until the sun went down, typing out my story for Monday afternoon’s edition of the Republic. My photographs of the scene, shot the night before in my evening gown on the side of Route 67, would provide dramatic evidence of the tragedy. I hadn’t yet seen the developed film, but I recalled having captured fine images of Sheriff Frank Olney looking resolute and in charge of the scene, the wrecker pulling Vivian McLaglen’s ghostly black Chrysler out of the field and back onto the highway, and the ambulance—rear doors closed and windows dark—that carted away the body. I presented the news in straightforward fashion. The body of a woman linked to the double murder on Tempesta Farm a week before had been discovered in an advanced state of decomposition on the Montgomery side of the county line. The sheriff’s office had confirmed the identity of the woman, and the coroner had determined that the cause of death was a severed spinal cord between the third and fourth cervical vertebrae. The car had been registered to one of the victims of the Tempesta murders, Vivian McLaglen, née Coleman.