A Stone's Throw by James Ziskin (best sci fi novels of all time .TXT) 📕

as fine blackberry brandy. Crumpled at the bottom of one of the paper bags were a sales slip and some Green Stamps. There was no business name or address on the sales slip, but the total suggested a liquor store and maybe a couple of pints of cheap hooch. Folded into one of the girdles inside a suitcase was an old laundry ticket. I turned it over and over, searching for a clue to its provenance. But there was nothing beyond Lee’s Fancy Chinese Laundry with a Second Street address. That could have been anywhere from New York to Honolulu. Or even Manitoba. I checked the laundry marks in her garments, but those were secret codes that surely only spoke to Mr. Lee himself. The rest of Vivian’s effects provided little help in determining where she’d gone. I had my theories, of course. But all of them ended with her dead in a burned-down barn.

Daylight provided a reasonable sense of well-being. Of course, there may have been all manner of marauders haunting the property, but I felt safer knowing the sun was in the saddle. I parked my car in much the same spot as I had the night before, but this time I locked the doors before setting out on my mission. It was a warm day, with temperatures in the eighties. I tramped off toward the caretaker’s house, camera at the ready, hoping at the same time to find something and nothing.

Tempesta wasn’t quite so spooky by day. The rolling pastures and weathered outbuildings gave the impression of an Andrew Wyeth painting, and I found myself humming the Pastoral Symphony to steel my nerve. Still, I couldn’t shake the awareness that someone had pried open my glove compartment the last time I’d visited the farm. I wondered if that had been the act of an opportunistic thief, a murderer, or, as Fadge had maintained, the result of some inadvertent action on his part. It was too late to back out now. The caretaker’s house loomed ahead.

I reached the place and circled it, sizing it up, scanning all sides from roof to foundation, in search of anything I might have missed in the dark. It was a white clapboard house, as I’d noted the night before, crowned by a mansard roof of gray shingles. I figured it had been built seventy or eighty years earlier. It was unlikely that anyone had been inside since Lucky Chuck had died the previous Christmas, and I wanted to prove that to myself. For my own sense of well-being and security. I knew I’d have to break in, but I wasn’t sure which door to test. Something in the rear, of course, in case someone happened to be driving by on the highway and spied me smashing a window.

First, I tried the back door. It was locked, though I was sure the old wood would not hold up in the face of a couple of swift kicks—even from a smallish woman such as myself. But I didn’t want to leave a mess or reduce the door to splinters. I tried the eight windows in the back of the house, then the six on the eastern side, but none budged. I was about to check the windows facing the highway when I noticed a pair of storm-cellar doors on the western side of the house. An ancient padlock was threaded through the staple of a hasp, but its shackle had rusted through. It was open.

I grabbed the iron handle and pulled up on the heavy wooden door. It took all my strength to budge the thing, but in the end it yawned open, unleashing the cold, musty smell of decades of darkness and damp and fungus and even machine oil. I peered into the hole, asking myself if I really wanted to enter the house through the gates of hell. The answer was no, but I did it anyway. Cupping my skirt to the back of my knees, I stepped into the doorway and climbed down the steep stairs.

Except for the light streaming in from the storm doors, the cellar was pitch black, and I’d neglected to bring my flashlight. I retrieved my cigarette lighter, sparked it to life, and tried to remember the last time I’d filled it with fluid. I’d have hated for it to run out of gas before I’d reached daylight. One tentative step after another, I waded deeper into the darkness with only the faint glow thrown by my lighter to guide me. The basement was filled to the rafters with busted furniture; shelves, barrels, and boxes spilling their tools and farming equipment into an obstacle course on the floor. My path was hazardous, nails and screws scattered everywhere. I felt my way with one hand while holding my torch with the other. The detritus formed a sort of maze with corridors and walls of varying heights and widths. I could see no more than a few feet ahead of me, and my efforts to locate a staircase had so far proved fruitless. I bumped up against the old iron furnace, cold and oily and unyielding.

I changed course and walked straight into a cobweb, which caused me to shriek and drop the lighter. It took me the better part of a minute to brush the dusty web off my face and out of my hair, and still I couldn’t say if a spider might have crawled down my neck. My wayward lighter managed to evade my sweeping hands for another minute and a half as I crawled around on the filthy floor searching for it. Finally upright again with a weak light to show the way, I pushed on deeper into the cellar.

Another cobweb grazed my cheek, or so I thought. After jumping out of the way, I realized it was only a string attached to a bare light bulb above my head. I gave it a yank, certain it would be dead. It was. Surely the