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

had, but there was so much of it. Mike noticed, I’m sure, but he kept it to himself. Good thing, too, as I have a horror of men who comment on how much or how little I eat.

“So, how’s your story coming along?” he asked between forkfuls of veal.

“You’d think with the discovery of the body and all the arrests, there would be more clarity in this case,” I said, just as the waitress arrived with my third drink. I blushed at Mike.

“The chief says it was the Figlio kid,” said Mike.

“I doubt the DA will go along with that. He’s got a letter from the victim to Joey Figlio, outlining their plans to run off together. It would seem that Joey and Darleen were in love.”

“But they’re just teenagers,” said Mike. “What do kids know about being in love?”

“Are you joking?” I asked. “Kids know better than anyone the passion, the frustration, the hopelessness of love. Weren’t you ever in love?”

Mike blushed but didn’t answer. Just then Jimmy Tedesco appeared at our table.

“You don’t like my food, Ellie?” he said to me, hands on hips.

“I’m afraid I had a big lunch,” I answered, immediately regretting the lie. What was Mike going to think of me now? “It’s delicious, Jimmy. Can you wrap it for me to take home?”

He smiled and said sure. “I can’t stay mad at you, Ellie. I can’t afford to lose a customer who drinks so much.”

Now I blushed, but Mike was still wearing his poker face.

“Hey, Mikey,” said Jimmy, slapping my date on the shoulder. “How’s your old man doing?”

“A little better,” said Mikey. “He has difficulty speaking since the stroke, but he’s moving around now.”

“Give him my best,” said Jimmy and he started back for the bar.

I called him back to ask a question. “I need to know if the river out there by the lock was frozen on December twenty-first. Any chance you remember?”

“Why do you need to know that?”

“It’s a bet I have with my editor,” I said.

“Well, the river was definitely frozen at some point in December. I know who’ll remember,” and he went to the bar and returned moments later with Billy Valicki, one of the pickled regulars who kept Tedesco’s in business.

“Billy, what day did you and Tony have that bet about the river?”

“Which one?” asked Billy.

“You know, the one where he bet you couldn’t walk across to the other side.”

“Oh, yeah, that one. That was about a week before Christmas. I remember because I got my wife a present with the two dollars I won.”

“It was a Saturday, right?” asked Jimmy. “I made book on whether you’d make it or not. The house never loses.”

Billy glared at Jimmy. “You were taking bets against me? What were you going to do if I fell through the ice?”

“The important thing is that you made it.” Jimmy shoved Billy back toward the bar, then turned to me. “So the river was frozen on the seventeenth, and the temperature didn’t rise above twenty for a couple of weeks after that. Does that help you?”

“Yeah, thanks,” I said, my theory sunk. Darleen’s body could not have been thrown into the river at Lock 11. If it had been, it would have lain in plain sight on the ice for three weeks.

“Something wrong, Ellie?” asked Mike.

“It’s just this one sticking point in my story,” I said. “I think Darleen Hicks was murdered near her home in those snow hills. But if so, how did her body get to Lock 10 in Cranesville?”

“Someone dumped her in the river, of course,” said Mike.

“Yes, but where? The closest lock to her farm is that one right outside. Number 11. But the river was frozen over on December twenty-first.”

“I see,” he said. “I’ll tell you where the river wasn’t frozen on December twenty-first.”

I squinted at him in the dark. “Where?”

“The Mill Street Bridge. The water was still flowing underneath.”

The Mill Street Bridge? Right in the center of town. Who would be so bold, or stupid enough, to toss a body into the river there? I really hadn’t considered it, perhaps because it was so obvious and risky. But Mike said the river had been flowing on the 21st of December.

“How much water was flowing?” I asked.

Mike took a moment to recollect properly. Then he said it was a steady stream, at least twenty feet wide, down the middle channel of the river. Right down the middle.

“How can you be so sure it was December twenty-first?” I asked.

“That’s easy,” he said. “I remember because I made a traffic stop on the bridge after one a.m. that day.”

“Was it the twenty-first or the twenty-second?” I asked, my skin beginning to tingle, the sensation traveling from my shoulders up through my neck to the top of my head.

“The twenty-second morning,” he said.

“And who did you stop on the bridge?”

“I didn’t actually stop him. He was already stopped on the bridge. Right there half way between the South Side and downtown.” He shook his head. “The guy was so drunk, he was crying and pleading with me not to arrest him. He said he’d lose his job.”

“Mike, who was it?” I demanded.

“It was the assistant principal,” he said, taken aback by my tone. “What’s his name? Brossard.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

I grilled Mike for the next half hour about the night of December 21. He said that he’d been cruising the South Side, trying to stay warm by keeping the squad car moving. It was nearly time for his shift to end, so he was heading back to the station on the north side of the river. That’s when he came across a sedan idling in the northbound lane of the bridge. Just sitting there chugging exhaust into the frigid night air. Grabbing his flashlight, Mike approached the car on foot and tapped on the driver’s window. After a second tap, the driver rolled down the window, releasing a draft of warm air along with the strong odor of alcohol. Mike invited the driver to