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

to justify it. They hold dominion over their peers, parents, and innocent adult passersby—men and women alike—bullying and disarming all with sniggering ridicule. A well-placed sigh, histrionic yawn, or a roll of the eyes can inflict more damage, knock the wind out of one’s sails, better than any punch in the stomach. A group of adolescent girls rules without pity or challenge until a teenage boy appears. Kryptonite. The bravado melts into simpering and subservience. I knew this for sure about teenage girls, because I had been one not too long before. And they didn’t scare me.

I asked a couple of girls where I could find Susan Dobbs. They pointed to the back of the bus and a pink-faced girl in a faded red coat and green and-yellow rubber hunting boots—the kind that lace up to midcalf. The look was provincial, even for New Holland, but it was bitter cold outside. Still, I wouldn’t have been caught dead dressed like that, especially in front of boys.

“Are you Susan Dobbs?” I asked. She looked up at me, mouth agape, sniffled, and said yes. “Mind if I talk to you about Darleen Hicks while we ride?”

Susan looked to her friends for guidance, but they just chewed their gum and shrugged.

“You’re that lady who threw up at the basketball game,” she said finally, smirking as she did.

“That’s right,” I said, smiling back. “And you’re the girls who stole my bottle of whiskey, aren’t you?”

Susan’s smirk disappeared.

“And you two?” I asked the other girls. “Which one of you is Carol Liswenski, and which one is Linda Attanasio?”

They didn’t like that I knew their names and that they had stolen my liquor. They identified themselves reluctantly.

“Darleen’s the one who took your bottle, honest,” said Linda Attanasio. “We told her not to.”

“I don’t care about the whiskey, girls. I want to talk to you about Darleen. My name’s Ellie. I work for the paper.”

“Are you a secretary or something?” asked Susan.

“I’m a reporter, working on a story about Darleen’s disappearance. I’m trying to find out what happened to her.”

The girls exchanged glances, mugged surprise, and probably didn’t believe me. Then the bus door closed, and the tired engine groaned to life. The bus lurched forward.

“What do you want to know?” asked Susan.

“First, there’s some confusion over whether Darleen was on the bus the day she disappeared. Did she ride the bus with you that day?”

All three girls insisted that Darleen was not on the bus when it left the school, despite what Gus the driver had initially told the police. There was an awkward silence.

“What aren’t you telling me?” I asked. They remained silent. “Okay, you’ve said very carefully that Darleen was not on the bus when it left the school. Was she on the bus before it left?”

Carol blurted out yes. “She was on the bus with us, waiting for the driver to get in, but she saw someone outside she wanted to talk to.”

“And she got off the bus,” said Susan.

“Who was it she wanted to talk to?” I asked, and the three girls shrugged. “You didn’t see? She didn’t say?”

“She always had an eye on someone,” said Susan.

“Or someone had an eye on her,” added Linda.

“What about Joey Figlio? I thought he was her steady.”

Again the shrugs.

“Were they going steady or not?” I repeated.

Carol volunteered that they had been going out, but Darleen seemed to have grown tired of him.

“Why was that? I asked. I weighed my words carefully for the next question. “Did Darleen have any older boyfriends?”

The three girls exchanged looks yet again, tacitly searching for consensus on their answer. Susan finally spoke.

“Sure, there were older fellows who were interested, but Darleen wasn’t tired of Joey for that. He was just a weirdo.”

“These older fellows,” I began. “Any names you might know?”

“We wouldn’t want to get into trouble for saying,” said Susan.

“Wow, sounds like it’s someone important. Like the mayor.”

They laughed.

“No, nothing like that.”

“You can tell me, you know. I don’t reveal my sources. Besides, I can’t print someone’s name without corroboration.” They looked confused. “I won’t tell anyone that you told me.”

“Well, there was someone who kept calling her,” said Susan. “He used to call her up and pester her. Ask her to meet him.”

“Do you know who that was?”

She shook her head. I tried to get them to say Mr. Russell’s name, but they wouldn’t rise to the bait. I hinted and led them by the nose, but his name just wouldn’t fall. Finally I asked outright if they’d heard rumors about him and Darleen.

“There was some talk about three months ago,” said Susan. “But Darleen said that was all guff. Of course, we didn’t exactly believe her.”

“Yeah, we all thought she was lying to cover up,” added Linda. “I always thought she was sweet on Mr. Russell. And he seemed sweet on her, too. Always calling on her in class. Always kind of looking her way. But Darleen said no.”

The bus rumbled over the Mill Street Bridge and began to climb the big hill, fan belt squealing and exhaust belching as it went. Once we’d reached the top, Gus Arnold pointed us west on Route 5S, into the gray gloaming of the late afternoon. I watched the white landscape drift by for a couple of minutes.

“What do you think happened to Darleen?” I asked the girls finally, as we eased to a stop on the side of the road to disgorge a smallish kid in a red-checked hunter’s cap. He slipped on the ice as the bus pulled away, and the kids roared with laughter. The poor boy’s lunch box opened and spilled his thermos into the highway. I watched him scramble to retrieve it as a big Chrysler bore down on him. The kids on the bus groaned in disappointment as the boy dashed to the safety of the shoulder, only to slip and fall again just as the Chrysler blew past him, leaving a cloud of snow in its wake.

“That was rather mean,” I said to