Stone Cold Dead, James Ziskin [best ebook reader android .txt] 📗

leaning porch was stacked on one side with fragments of old, busted furniture—wooden chairs, a dilapidated table, a disemboweled sofa, and a couple of galvanized steel tubs, dented and filled with rags—and at least two cords of firewood, neatly stacked, on the other. A Town & Country cover photo.

I pulled the handbrake and switched off the engine. A biting wind whipped over the landscape, carrying waves of fine, fallen snow to new destinations. I popped open the door and felt the cold rush under my overcoat. Climbing out of the car, I pulled my coat tight and hurried toward the porch. I slipped and skinned my knee.

“Are you lost?” a voice called through the raw wind. I looked up from my bleeding knee to see a man standing in the warmly lit doorway of the house, between the woodpile and the broken furniture. Dressed in a red waffle-knit thermal undershirt and overalls, bib and brace unhitched and hanging from his waist, he studied me deliberately. He looked to be about sixty.

I shook my head, pushed up off the ground, and brushed my knee clean. The stocking was ripped clear through.

“Sorry for the intrusion,” I said. “I wanted to ask you some questions about Darleen Hicks.”

The man frowned, rubbed his stubbled chin, then waved me toward him. “Come on in,” he said, “before you catch your death. We’ll clean up that knee, too.”

The house was warm, almost steaming. A potbellied stove blazed in the sitting room, and the oven was belching heat in the kitchen where he led me. There, a thick, gray-haired woman of about fifty or fifty-five was stirring some meat stew and boiled potatoes on the stove. She looked surprised to see me. A man in his mid-twenties gazed up at me from the table. His greasy hair, cut down almost to the scalp on the sides of his head, had been chopped coarsely, as if by hedge sheers on the top. He smiled a crooked-toothed grin at me but didn’t get off his duff to say hello.

“Sorry, I didn’t get your name,” said my host.

“Ellie Stone,” I answered. “I’m from the paper.”

“The paper? What happened to Lenny?” he asked.

“Who?”

“The paperboy,” he said.

“Oh, no. I’m not the papergirl. I’m a reporter for the paper, looking into Darleen Hicks’s disappearance.”

“A girl reporter?” he laughed. “No kidding?”

I blushed and nodded.

“I heard of her,” said the young man at the table. “She wrote all those stories about Judge Shaw’s daughter just a couple of weeks ago.”

The father, a stocky man with thick, yellowing-gray hair slicked back on his head, cackled to himself.

“Well I’ll be a monkey’s uncle,” he said, marveling at the wonders of the modern world. “A girl reporter . . . What’s next? A colored mayor?”

“Please have a seat, miss,” said the lady. “I’ll make you a plate.”

The father scrambled to pull out a chair for me, and I sat down.

“She skinned her knee falling on the ice,” he said to his wife. “Get her a bandage, Doris.”

The son leapt from his chair and circled around in front of me, gaping at my legs, which I clenched together to protect my modesty. He was as eager as a bird dog and not shy about showing his enthusiasm.

“I’m Bob Karl,” said the old man, as his wife dabbed my knee with some Mercurochrome. “That’s my son, Bob Junior, and my wife, Doris.”

The son and heir continued to drool over my legs, but his mother was blocking his line of sight. Once she’d patched my knee, I tucked my legs out of view under the table. The show over, Junior returned to his seat.

“That’s right, Bobby,” said Doris. “You sit next to our guest. You two youngsters will have plenty to talk about, I’m sure.”

I didn’t share my hostess’s confidence.

While the mother had been tending to me, a small calico cat had wandered into the kitchen and jumped onto the counter. She was interested in the stew, but it was too hot. Doris Karl shooed the cat away, but she didn’t seem too bothered by the prospect of sharing her supper with Puss.

“You ought to throw that cat out of here,” said Mr. Karl, dipping his head to see over the lenses of his reading glasses. “We got company, after all.”

“Let her be,” said his wife. “Edna caught a mouse this afternoon, right behind the breadbox. Didn’t you, Edna? Good girl,” and she gave the cat a pat on the head.

“She is a good mouser,” granted Mr. Karl. “Now how about some supper? Miss Stone, please join us.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, thinking of the mouse behind the breadbox and Edna, the cat who’d killed it. “I’ve got a dinner date this evening.” A complete lie. They offered me milk instead.

“I don’t understand how people can eat so late,” said Mr. Karl. “Girl reporters and supper at seven o’clock . . . I’m in bed reading the Good Book by that hour.”

Mrs. Karl ladled out steaming portions of mouse stew into three yellow bowls. She smoothed her apron, sat down, and reached out both hands, one to her husband and one to her son. Before I knew what was happening, Junior and his father had each grabbed one of my hands. I nearly gasped.

“Lord Jesus,” intoned Karl père, eyes clenched shut, “be our guest, and let thy gifts to us be blessed. Amen.”

The other Karls echoed the amen then looked at me.

“Amen,” I offered.

Mr. Karl smiled, tied his napkin around his neck, and dug in. After about two minutes of spoons clicking and lips slurping, he took a breath and regarded me queerly.

“Didn’t you say you come to ask about Darleen Hicks?”

“That’s right,” I said, grateful for the opening. “As you must know, she disappeared from school two weeks ago. I was hoping you could tell me something about her.”

“What for?” asked the father.

“Well, so I can help find her.”

He took another mouthful of stew and chewed, looking off into space. His wife frowned.

“But you’re just a girl,” she said.

“I’m a reporter for the paper,” I