Stone Cold Dead by James Ziskin (great novels of all time txt) 📕

“All set, Ellie,” he smiled, as I climbed into the passenger seat. “Drop me back at the garage, and she’s all yours.”

“Thanks, Vinnie,” I said, flashing my best smile at him. “What was the problem this time?”

He slipped away from the curb and took a left at the corner of Lincoln and Glenwood. “Dead battery,” he said. “And some wiring went bad. Same old thing. This was a good car until it was totaled.”

“What do you mean, totaled? I asked Charlie Reese about accidents, and he swore there was only minor body work done on this car.”

“I’ll let you in on a little secret if you swear you won’t tell,” said Vinnie, giggling like an idiot. “This car was pulled out of Winandauga Lake last summer.”

“What?”

“You know Fred Blaylock?” he asked.

“I should. He’s the associate publisher at the paper.”

“Well, he had dinner and some drinks one night last August at Maraschino’s in Mayfield after the races in Saratoga. I heard he lost a hundred and sixty-two bucks. Anyways, to drown his sorrows, he had a few too many Old Fashioneds with his steak dinner and mistook the boat launch for Route Twenty-Nine on his way home. Drove right into the lake.” He laughed and slapped the steering wheel. “Poor car ain’t been right since.”

I glared at him. “Not funny, Vinnie!”

He swallowed his grin, knitted his brow, and cleared his throat. “Electrical problems,” he pronounced soberly.

“And that must be where the mildew smell comes from.”

“Most likely,” said Vinnie. “Consider yourself lucky, though. We had the car in the shop for at least a month after Fred Blaylock drove it into the lake, trying to make it right again. When we dried her out, the horn used to blow when you made a left turn. People on the street would look. Every time I took her for a test drive, I waved and smiled back at them so I wouldn’t look like an idiot.”

I noticed Mrs. Pindaro shuffling along on the icy sidewalk with her pug, Leon, on a leash doing his business, and I reached past Vinnie and blasted the horn. The dog yelped and leapt into a snow bank.

“What’d you do that for, Ellie?” he asked as if I’d doused him with cold water.

“Wave, Vinnie,” I said sullenly, crossing my arms and turning away. “You look like an idiot.”

I fumed, thinking of my boss, Charlie Reese. He’d assured me the car was all right when he’d given it to me a month earlier. (Someone had cut the brakes of my Belvedere, resulting in a crash that could have killed me.)

“Gee, Ellie, I’m sorry,” said Vinnie finally.

“Why didn’t you tell me this a month ago?” I asked. “This car’s been nothing but trouble.”

He patted my shoulder and told me not to be upset. “Come on. You didn’t really think they’d give such a nice car to a girl, did you?”

Theodore Roosevelt Junior High School squatted stubbornly on the corner of Division and Wall Street, flanked by the Lutheran church to the east and Porter’s Funeral Home to the west. Located at the bottom of Wall Street’s steep hill, a few blocks from the river and the Mill Street Bridge, the junior high was a hulking, five-story mass of grayish bricks, long since discolored by grime and soot. It was joined at the hip to a second, newer building that easily surpassed its companion in both size and homeliness. Large rectangular banks of steel windows were tilted open, venting excess radiator heat into the frigid winter air. The school had a drab, industrial look, like a carpet mill or a prison. A small annex filled half of the empty lot adjacent to the communicating buildings. The remaining blacktop, scarred with faded parking stripes, was fenced in with two rusty, netless basketball hoops on either end.

It was just after eight a.m. Two school buses were idling along the curb of Division Street on the north side of the school, their tailpipes chugging exhaust into the cold air. I parked on the flats of Wall Street on the west side of the prison yard, just opposite the cigar store, and made a dash for the school and the warmth inside.

The corridors were deserted, as classes had begun a few minutes before. I made my way down the dull terrazzo floor, looking for someone to direct me to the principal’s office. A janitor told me I was on the right path.

“Good morning,” I said to the tall, middle-aged lady in a poodle cut with short bangs. Quite fashionable if your name was Mamie Eisenhower. Hers wasn’t. The Bakelite nameplate on her desk read “Mrs. Worth, Secretary.”

“I’d like to speak to a student,” I said.

“Is that so?” she asked, subjecting me to close scrutiny. “What about?”

“It’s a personal matter,” I answered.

“And who are you, if I may ask?”

“Of course,” I chirped. “My name is Ellie Stone. I represent the New Holland Republic.”

She rose and walked over to a desk to engage another middle-aged lady in a powwow. The second woman looked over her horn-rimmed glasses at me from a distance, shrugged, and said something to Mrs. Worth, who moved on to a frosted glass door marked “Ass’t. Principal” in black lettering. She knocked and, following a muffled grunt from the other side, let herself in. A few moments later, she reappeared and asked me again who I was and what I wanted.

“My editor wants me to do a feature on Teddy Jurczyk, the basketball star.”

The woman eyed me guardedly. “And who are you again?”

“My name is Ellie Stone. I’m a reporter for the Republic.”

She made her way back to the office with the frosted door and, after a minute, she returned and invited me to follow her. “Mr. Brossard will see you now,” she said.

I remembered that name immediately from the basketball game at the high school. He seemed like a decent enough man. I only hoped he hadn’t formed a