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

stood there a moment staring at the contents, blocking my view. Then he snatched a composition book from the shelf inside and flipped through it.

“You want to have a look?” he mumbled as he read.

“Not really,” I said. “I mean, what’s there to see? Just the messy leftovers of a girl who ran away.”

“That might sound good in your story. The human angle, you know.”

I stepped up to the locker and peered inside. There were school books, a pencil box, and a sweater dangling from a hook. A small vanity mirror hung on the inside of the door, alongside black-and-white pictures of Ricky Nelson, Bobby Rydell, and Fabian, clipped from teen magazines and pasted to the metal. Darleen had scrawled love notes to each of them.

“Ricky, my darling! Marry me!”

“Fabian, I’m yours forever!”

“Bobby, take me away!”

Lots of exclamation points.

Sticking out from behind Fabian was a small black-and-white snapshot. I plucked it from its perch and examined it. It was a blurred photograph of Joey Figlio standing next to an old car. I didn’t believe he had any connection to the car; it was just there. Joey looked witless and unimportant, common and unremarkable, even more so when compared to the practiced poses of the heartthrobs with whom he shared Darleen’s wall of fame. Scrawled across the back of the photo in a rough hand, Joey had written, “You’re mine forever. If I can’t have you, no one else will.”

I showed it to Frank, who gave me a knowing look.

“If I wasn’t sure she’d run off to Arizona,” he said, stuffing the photograph into the breast pocket of his shirt, “I’d arrest that kid on suspicion of murder.”

I turned back to my search. At the bottom of the locker, a pair of white sneakers and a crumpled, sweaty gym suit lay in a tangle on the floor. Black Jack gum wrappers, folded into long chains, hung from the shelf, stretching three-quarters of the way down to the floor of the locker. On the underside of the shelf, Darleen had left gobs of black gum stuck to the metal. Disgusting.

At the back of the locker, a light-weather jacket sagged from a hook. Going through the motions, I frisked it. There was something weighing down the right-side pocket. I reach inside and pulled out a pint bottle. It was Dewar’s White Label, not quite empty, and I was sure it was the one stolen from my purse the night of the basketball game. Darleen and her friends hadn’t yet acquired a taste for the stuff, it seemed, judging by the amount left in the bottle after three and a half weeks. But then I remembered that Darleen had disappeared on the twenty-first, just five days after the game. It looked as though she’d been sneaking slugs of whiskey between classes. I had done the same at Riverdale Country School. Janey Silverman was in the habit of pocketing the odd bottle of booze from her uncle’s shop on Fifteenth Street and Fifth Avenue, Paramount Liquors. Whatever was closest to the door, she told me years later. I had assumed she was taking it from her father. The selection was a bit of a grab bag; never the same liquor twice. But Janey didn’t particularly like drinking and hardly ever touched the stuff. She ended up giving it to me, and I put it away, one sip at a time between classes, just as Darleen Hicks had done.

“What’s that you got there?” asked Frank. I pushed aside the memory.

“Whiskey,” I said, handing him the bottle.

Frank harrumphed. “Wonder where she got that.”

“How should I know?” I said a mite too insistently.

I stood on my toes and reached deep inside the locker to retrieve a small cosmetics bag from the back of the shelf. Lipsticks, eyelashes, pimple cream, Midol, and blush. There was some talcum powder and a hairbrush as well. I dived in again, this time fishing out a canvas pouch, the kind banks and businesses used to carry money. I opened it up and dug inside. The first thing I found was a well-worn envelope with unused hall passes, unpunched lunch tickets, and excuse slips for a variety of absences, from influenza to menstrual cramps, all with Irene Metzger’s name and signature at the bottom. But there wasn’t a date on any of them. Darleen Hicks was a fair hand at forgery.

I found some simple jewelry: earrings, a couple of friendship rings, a pendant, and a charm bracelet. Then I pulled a large coin purse from the bottom of the pouch. It was heavy in my hand.

“Find anything?” asked Frank.

I uttered a short gasp.

“What is it?” he said, joining me to see.

I opened the purse for him to see. “It’s money, Frank. A lot of money.”

He glowered at the wad of bills in the purse; he knew as well as I what it meant.

“There’s no way a girl would run away and leave all this money behind, is there?” I asked, dreading the conclusion that was dawning on me.

“I don’t think so,” said Frank. “I’d better count it; this has to be official now.”

He pulled the wad of bills from the purse with his meaty fingers, clamped the money under his arm, and retrieved one last item from inside the bank pouch: a stamped envelope from Fort Huachuca, Arizona. It was addressed to Darleen Hicks, general delivery, New Holland, NY. Inside there was a short letter, a small blue square of paper, and a third sheet of thin paper.

“This is a New York State driver’s license,” said Frank, giving it close scrutiny. “Forged. Says she’s seventeen years old.” He handed the license and the purse back to me to hold while he dug into the wad of cash.

“These things look pretty easy to fake,” I said, referring to the driver’s license. “All you need is an eraser and a black pen.” I slipped it back into the envelope and pulled out the thin piece of paper instead.

Frank grunted agreement as he counted the money. “There’s