“How much money did she want?” I asked, feeling the impasse had been broken.
“Oh, she wanted a bundle,” he said, chuckling nervously. “She asked me for a hundred dollars. I don’t have that kind of money. I’m just a high-school music teacher.”
“But you relented and gave it to her?” I asked, thinking of the ninety-seven dollars the sheriff and I had found in Darleen’s locker.
“Not a hundred dollars, I didn’t,” he said with as much indignation as he could summon. “I gave her twenty dollars, and that was all I could spare.”
“What did she say the money was for?”
“She didn’t.”
Again the look in his eye. I waited and gazed.
“Okay, she told me.”
“So what did she say the money was for?”
Ted looked down at his hands, turning them over, buying time or steeling his nerve. He couldn’t look at me when he said it. And I shook when he did.
“She said she needed the money for an abortion,” he said softly.
I wrestled with that word. Probably harder than Ted Russell had struggled just to say it. A rush of memories buried deep and far almost took my breath away. I didn’t want Ted to see my reaction, but I was too stunned to do anything to conceal it. Enough surprises from this girl, I thought. Our meeting in the high-school girls’ room during a basketball game; my bottle of whiskey in her locker; the risks chanced; and now this. Darleen Hicks had crawled under my skin or at least wormed her way into my mind. There was something obsessive and compelling in her behavior, and too much of it dovetailed with my own life. This was nothing akin to my reaction to Jordan Shaw’s murder. I had felt sympathy for her, a connection of sorts, too. But it was cursory, perhaps even wished for by me. Darleen Hicks was different. Of course I felt sadness for Darleen, who had treated me kindly even while stealing my bottle of Scotch. But I felt more for her mother. And somewhere deep inside me, I felt remorse and bitterness and sorrow for myself. I couldn’t explain it without an overly simplistic solipsism that Darleen was me. The dead me.
I chased away the thoughts of my own abortion at the age of sixteen, the event that battered and choked my relationship with my father until the last breath of his life. Enough, I thought. That rotten corner of my memory had festered too long. It was over, and I wanted to get over it. I was going to get over it, put it behind me once and for all. Just as soon as I finished with Darleen Hicks. Just one more reason to solve the case and feel sorrow for a murdered girl, instead of for myself.
“Why would she ask you for money?” I resumed. Ted Russell was still looking at his hands. “It makes me suspicious that she went to you, almost as if you had a stake in the situation.”
“It’s not true, Ellie. I never laid a hand on that girl, never even smiled at her. And I wasn’t the only one she asked.”
“Then why did you agree to give her anything at all, even if it was only twenty dollars.”
“Because she threatened to say the baby was mine. I’d be ruined, don’t you see?”
Ted Russell stood up from his chair and paced the room, wringing his shackled hands as he went. I watched him carefully. He was frightened and desperate.
“Let’s change course,” I said. “You know Darleen’s body was found a quarter mile from your house. That looks very bad to the sheriff and the district attorney. They think you might have dumped her body in the river when the thaw started, or maybe even before, when the river was frozen.”
“That’s baloney,” he said, stopping his pacing to point his two hands at me in an attempt to emphasize his point. “There are signs posted along the river to the west of the locks. Do you know what they say? ‘Danger. Thin ice.’ The river was running down the middle of the channel even at the height of the freeze. I couldn’t have walked out there and thrown her body in. I would have broken through the ice.”
I raised an eyebrow and nodded. He had a good point. “But you could have climbed up on the concrete pier at the river’s edge and tossed her in.”
He thought for a second, tried to rearrange some facts in his head, then gave up in frustration.
Now it was my turn to rearrange some facts. If Ted Russell had dragged the dead girl up onto the pier to dispose of her body, why would he throw her in on the west side? Even with the gates up, she would still have to pass through the lock and risk getting snagged on some piece of metal. Why not just dump her on the opposite side, past the lock altogether, and send her floating off toward Scotia to the east?
I didn’t mention this defense to Ted Russell.
“You said Darleen asked someone else for money, too. Can you tell me who?”
He looked terrified and shook his head violently. “No. Besides, it wasn’t his fault she asked him. He was a victim just like me.”
“Do you know if he gave her any money?”
“No. At least, I don’t believe so.”
I stood up and approached him on the other side of the table. “Who was it, Ted?”
He shook his head.
“I can’t help you, Ted,” I said. “You just keep lying. I can’t be sure anything you’ve told me is true.”
“I’ve told you the truth,” he said.
I was inclined to believe his story. He was convincing in his denials and, let’s face it, for my own selfish reasons, I was hoping against hope that he hadn’t bedded or murdered Darleen Hicks. I had, after all, spent an ill-advised evening with him. Well, a small fraction of an evening to be precise, but that somehow made the shame worse.
“I just can’t tell you his name, Ellie,” he said. “Don’t ask me to do that. He’s a friend.”
I gathered my things and told him it could mean that he’d rot in jail. That hit home. He actually started to cry.
“Is there anything you can tell me, Ted? Anything that might prove your innocence?”
He sobbed then composed himself. “Louis Brossard.”
“What’s that?” I asked, startled and not sure I’d heard correctly.
“Brossard,” he repeated. “Darleen asked him for money, too.”
When I returned to Frank’s office upstairs, he and the DA were poring over some papers they’d retrieved from Ted Russell’s car. They compared several to a scrap of crumpled paper that looked like the one Frank had read out to me that afternoon in the snow hills, the day the kids discovered Darleen’s lunch box in the melting snow.
“Well, what’s the verdict?” I asked.
Frank shook his head, and the DA took a seat. “Different hand,” said the sheriff. “Ted Russell didn’t write those notes to Darleen.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
I left the county jail at nine forty-five, convinced that Ted Russell was probably innocent of Darleen Hicks’s murder. He clearly hadn’t written any love notes to her. At least not any that had been found. And by my own logic, he wouldn’t have been so foolish to dump the body into the river on the wrong side of the lock.
And what about the Louis Brossard revelation? Did that make him a suspect? More of a suspect than Ted Russell, who’d actually been accused of improper behavior with the underage girl? Brossard certainly knew the victim; he’d carried out the investigation, interviewed both subjects, and delivered the verdict. But other than that, I knew of no other contact with Darleen Hicks. He seemed to have an alibi for part of the evening of the murder. He’d been at the superintendent’s Christmas banquet at Isobel’s Restaurant on Division Street on the West End from seven till after ten. Still, he couldn’t account for a large block of time, and I would have to ask him about that.
Sorting out these details in my head cleared room for more ideas. When I spotted a telephone booth on the side of Route 40, near the shopping center north of town, I hit the brakes, slowed to a stop, and climbed out to make a call.
I thumbed through the weathered phone directory chained to the shelf inside the booth, finding Brossard, L. at VIctor 2-1650 at the Northampton Court Apartments. I dropped a dime into the slot and dialed the n
umber. Brossard answered after two rings.
“Mr. Brossard, this is Ellie Stone from the newspaper. I’m sorry to interrupt your evening, but I need to ask you a few questions.”
“Questions? What about?”
“Darleen Hicks.”
“Can’t this wait until Monday? It’s nearly ten on a Saturday night.”
“I know, and I apologize, sir. It’s urgent and will only take a few minutes.”
He grumbled some more before finally agreeing.
“You may have heard that Darleen’s body was found in the river this afternoon,” I began.
“My God, no,” he said. “She’s dead? Where?”
“Her body was found at the Cranesville lock. She was caught in the dam gate.”
Silence down the line. I waited for him to compose himself and find something to say or ask.
“I’m shocked,” he said finally. “I was convinced that she’d run away. This is terrible, terrible news.”
“Have you been following the story in the paper?” I asked.
“Of course. That’s why I was sure she was alive.”
“Then I guess you didn’t see the front page of the Republic this morning. There was a big story about Darleen’s bus ticket.”
“No, I didn’t see the paper today,” he said. “The paperboy must have missed my house. What did it say?”
“That the bus ticket was found unused,” I told him. “Actually, it was found a while ago in Darleen’s locker. Last Monday.”
Now the silence was electric. Perhaps he was doing the math in his head. Or maybe he was simply trying to make sense of the discovery.
“Are you still there?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said. “Last Monday? Wasn’t Monday the day you and the sheriff searched the girl’s locker?” I said that it was. “Then why didn’t you or the sheriff mention it? You’ve known about it for nearly a week, and only now you report it?”
“The sheriff asked me to hold off on the story. He thought Darleen’s killer might benefit from knowing what he knew.”
“So, does the sheriff have any suspects?”
“Just one. Ted Russell. He’s under arrest for suspicion of murder.”
“Ted? Oh, God, no. This is even worse. Why does he suspect him?”
“Well, there was that mess about improprieties with Darleen Hicks,” I said. “That didn’t look good for him.”
“But he was completely innocent of that. Even the girl said so.”
“Perhaps,” I said. “And, of course, the body turned up right in front of his house.”
“That must be a coincidence,” insisted Brossard. “Ted is a good man. I can’t believe he’s capable of such an abomination. I must pray for him.”
“It might be a coincidence, but there’s one more thing.”
“What’s that?”
“He admitted that he gave Darleen money.”
A short pause from Brossard. “Well, that doesn’t prove anything. Maybe she needed lunch money.”
“She asked him for a hundred dollars.”
“He gave her a hundred dollars?” asked Brossard, alarmed.
“No, but he did give her money. More than lunch money.” I paused. “It seems Darleen was trying to accumulate a certain sum. Do you know if she asked anyone else for money?”
“Of course not,” he huffed. “What did she want the money for anyway?”
“She told Ted Russell that it was for an abortion,” I said.
“My God,” groaned Brossard. “I can’t believe it. Abortion is a sin, Miss Stone. A cardinal sin. Are you telling me that a fourteen-year-old girl was pregnant and considering an abortion?”
“Fifteen,” I said. “And, yes.”
He seemed genuinely distressed. I could almost hear the rosary beads clicking in his hand as he recited one Ave Maria after another. My interview wasn’t going anywhere fast. He’d missed his chance to admit that Darleen had asked him for money.
“Mr. Brossard,” I said at length. “Did Darleen Hicks ever ask you for money?”
“Of course not,” he said. “Do you think I would have anything to do with a wretched abortion? Do you think I would risk my soul for a girl in braces? For anything in the world?”
“I really don’t know,” I said.
“That’s enough for one night,” he said curtly. “Good night, Miss Stone.”
I replaced the receiver and fished for some more change in my purse. In my time in New Holland, I had built up a fair list of contacts and phone numbers. Fred Peruso, county coroner, was one of them. I slipped another dime into the slot and dialed his number, reading it from my address book in the pale light of the phone booth.
“Sorry to bother you at this hour, Fred,” I said once I’d identified myself. “I know it’s late.”
“It’s only ten,” he said. “I was just having a drink and a cigar. What do you take me for? Your grandmother?”
“Okay, sorry to interrupt your post-prandial indulgences,” I said. “Listen, I need you to check for something in the autopsy tomorrow.”
There was a pause down the line. “Really? Like what?”
“I think Darleen Hicks was pregnant. Can you check for that?”
Fred laughed. “That’s pretty routine,” he said. “I thought you were going to ask me to look for something I might miss, like a bullet hole in her head or a knife wound in her chest.”
I blushed. Was a pregnancy obvious to see in a postmortem? But I didn’t have time to be embarrassed about my ignorance. I just thanked him and made a date to meet him at the hospital the following morning at eleven.
“Say, what makes you think a fifteen-year-old girl was pregnant?” he asked before I could hang up.
“Just covering the bases,” I said.
It was a little past ten when I arrived home. The street was filled with loitering teens, and Fiorello’s was jammed as usual on a Saturday night. I headed straight upstairs to jot down some notes that had occurred to me in the car. After that, I made a sandwich under the broiler: baked beans from a half-empty can with a slice of cheese on top. I burned it a little black, but I like it that way. I added a pickle and a couple of gin-soaked olives that I kept in a jar in the icebox. I liked the taste of olives and gin, but didn’t trust myself drinking Martinis anymore; one too many mornings with no recollection of the night before. My gentlemanly Dewar’s has never taken advantage of me that way.
I carried my dinner into the parlor, kicked off my heels, and sank into the sofa. I switched on the television in time to see the sign-off of the fights, and bowling was up next. Not interested in that. No wonder I hadn’t been able to snow Paulie Iavarone earlier in the day.
I switched off the set and put on some music instead. I was in the mood for Brahms and put on his second piano concerto, enjoyed my burnt remains and olives, and rinsed it all down with a glass of whiskey.
I got up to pour a second drink then remembered I needed to wash some underthings in the bathroom sink if I wanted to dress fully come morning. Five minutes later, I retrieved my drink from the kitchen table, uttered a brief scream, and dropped my glass, which bounced and pitched its contents across the room, but somehow didn’t shatter. There before me, looking cold, miserable, and starving, stood Joey Figlio. He was breathing hard, staring daggers into my eyes, and holding one in his hand. Or quite nearly. While I was otherwise occupied in the bathroom washing my unmentionables, he had broken in and armed himself with one of my longer carving knives.
“What are you doing here?” I demanded. “Get out now.”
“I can’t go,” he said, and wiped his nose with the back of his hand. “The cops are looking for me. Almost caught me this afternoon.”
“Too bad they didn’t shoot you.”
“I need a place to sleep tonight. I’ll stay here.”
“You will not stay here,” I said.
“Can you make me something to eat? I smell something good.”
“You’re not staying here. Get out.”
“Is that liquor good? I want to try some,” he said, pointing with the carving knife to the bottle of Dewar’s on the table.
“It’s very mild,” I said, changing my tune. Was I too obvious? “Let me make you a drink.”
I grabbed a tumbler and a couple of ice cubes from the freezer. Then I filled the glass to the brim with whiskey.
“I’m real hungry,” he said, taking the glass from me. “Cook me something quick, will you?”
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll give you something to eat, and then you’ll leave, right?”
Joey didn’t answer. Still holding on to the knife, he pulled one of the chairs away from the table and positioned it for an optimal view of the stove. Clearly he didn’t trust me. I pulled bacon and eggs and butter from the icebox, and Joey sat down. He took a sip of the whiskey and grimaced. Then noticing that I was watching him, he steeled himself and took a large gulp that nearly made him vomit. He coughed a bit but held it down. I lit the stove.
A few minutes later, the bacon was sizzling in the skillet, and Joey looked ready to nod off. He hadn’t finished his drink, and I was afraid he had no intention of doing so. I asked if he minded if I poured myself a new one.
“I don’t know how you can drink this stuff, but go ahead,” he said. “And you should mop up the one you spilled, too.”
I muttered under my breath, but ended up on my hands and knees with a sponge and rag, wiping up the whiskey. Once I’d finished, I poured myself a drink and cheered my guest.
“Bottoms up,” I said, raising my glass and taking a long pull. Would he take the bait? He did, but only sipped this time.
“Tastes a little better now,” he said. “The melting ice helps.”
I put the eggs on to fry, thinking he would only last a couple more minutes. But somehow he was resisting the effects of fatigue and alcohol. A few minutes later, he was wide awake and coherent as he wolfed down the eggs and bacon I served him. Then he patted his stomach, yawned, and downed the rest of his drink. He didn’t need to ask me for a refill.
“Let’s sit in there,” he said, grabbing his glass, and teetering a bit as he rose from the chair. “The couch looks comfortable.”
Stone Cold Dead Page 26
