Heart of Stone
Authors: James W. Ziskin
ALSO BY JAMES W. ZISKIN
Styx & Stone
No Stone Unturned
Stone Cold Dead
Published 2016 by Seventh Street Books®, an imprint of Prometheus Books
Heart of Stone
. Copyright © 2016 by James W. Ziskin. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or conveyed via the Internet or a website without prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Characters, organizations, products, locales, and events porÂÂtrayed in this novel either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.
Cover images © iStock.com/YinYang; Kristy Pargeter/Media Bakery (radio)
Cover design by Jacqueline Nasso Cooke
Cover design © Prometheus Books
Inquiries should be addressed to
Seventh Street Books
59 John Glenn Drive
Amherst, New York 14228
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Ziskin, James W., 1960- author.
Title: Heart of stone : an Ellie Stone mystery / James W. Ziskin.
Description: Amherst, NY : Seventh Street Books, 2016.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016006974 (print) | LCCN 2016011563 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781633881839 (softcover) | ISBN 9781633881846 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Women journalistsâFiction. | MurderâInvestigationâFiction | Nineteen sixtiesâFiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Mystery & Detective / Women Sleuths. | FICTION / Mystery & Detective / Historical. | GSAFD: Mystery fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3626.I83 H43 2016 (print) | LCC PS3626.I83 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6âdc23
LC record available at
http://lccn.loc.gov/2016006974
Printed in the United States of America
To Kunda, for support and encouragement beyond compare.
I remember the cool breath of the night woods on my neck. I see the glow of moonlight on the highest boughs, filtering down in a pale cast, weak and washed-out, fading into darkness. I smell the moss and the decay of the forest floor, heady, damp, musky. And I can taste the earthy mushrooms and bitter berries on my tongue. But most of all, I hear the pines whisper and sigh, their needles, like millions of tiny blades, carving voices into the breeze.
Contents
CHAPTER ONE
FRIDAY, AUGUST 18, 1961
That night I was at the wheel of my car, nosing my way through ever-narrowing Adirondack back roads, in search of a dirt-and-grass lane leading to my aunt Lena's cabin, Cedar Haven. It was past midnight, and the woods were deserted. At least I hoped they were. When I was a girl, the deep north woods had filled me with alternating sensations of awe and fright. Even in daylight, the forest hid mysteries, always just out of sight, but never out of earshot. If ever I was caught out after dark, I would sprint back to our cabin
à toute vapeur
, as my polyglot father was wont to say. Other dads would have simply said “at full speed.”
I must have missed a turnoff, perhaps two or three miles back, so I pulled to a stop to consult a map. The night was still and pitch dark, with the moon either below the horizon or obscured by clouds. Silence all around me. I switched on the radio. Nothing but static. I was out of range of the Albany stations, so I fiddled with the knob and found a crackling voice barely audible at 800 on the dial, but the man was speaking French. Montreal. I hunted some more, finally locating a faint bit of music that might have been Del Shannon. Then an announcer broke in and issued a bulletin. I missed the first half, due to the low volume.
“. . . escaped this morning from the maximum security Great Meadow Correctional Facility in Comstock. It is not known if Yarrow is armed, but Washington County Sheriff T. T. Buckley advises the public to exercise extreme caution if confronted by the escaped prisoner. Donald Yarrow, a convicted double murderer . . .”
The radio reception faded out, and I didn't wait for it to come back. I floored it, shooting forward into the nightâ
à toute vapeur
âtires spinning on the gravel shoulder in search of a firm foothold.
SATURDAY, AUGUST 19, 1961
I lay reclined on the wooden slats of the dock that stretched some fifty feet from shore into the lake. The water rolled gently in the breeze, and I closed my eyes, letting the warmth of the afternoon sun spread over my cheeks and my bare limbs. I imagined the world slipping away. Nothing to disturb the calm but the buzz of an outboard motor passing close by as it headed to shore. I ignored it, concentrating instead on the sound of water lapping against the wood. A shadow crossed my face, and I opened my eyes. A bird hovered on the wind above me for a brief moment before alighting on the edge of the dock a few feet from my toes. He folded away his wings. A seagull. Or rather a ring-billed gull, to be precise. My late father's cousin Max, bird-watcher and amateur water-colorist, was a font of knowledge in such matters. I was, in fact, spending a week on the western shore of Prospector Lake in the Adirondacks with him and my aunt Lena, my father's younger sister.
The gray-and-white gull regarded me with one eye, then ducked his head to view me with the other. I drew a lazy breath and made the most momentous decision of the day: ignore the bird and soak in the sun. Time for a nap.
But just then my friend leapt into the air, taking flight, frightened away by a gentle splashing nearby: Aunt Lena. I shielded my brow from the sun with my right hand to see as she reached the ladder and climbed aboard. A low gasp caught in my throat. Of course I had known of her preference to swim au naturel, but the actual witnessing of it gave me a jolt.
“We've discussed this, Ellie,” she said in all her naked glory, towering over me, obscuring the sun as she dripped cool lake water on me.
I squinted up at her, my face surely betraying feelings of discomfort and embarrassment. She stood there wearing nothing but a white rubber swimming cap festooned with multicolored flowers atop her silvering head. She was fifty-five, nearly ten years younger than my late father, and well preserved. Which only made the experience even more troubling.
“I've been swimming nude here since I was a young bride,” she said. “It's healthy, and I'm not putting on a suit for you. Since when did you become such a prude?”
For my part, I was tastefully decked out in a navy maillot with white piping. Two years out of date, perhaps, but hardly prudish. It did, however, provide some measure of modesty, which appeared not to concern my aunt. At least not until she noticed the thump of advancing footsteps on the wooden boards beneath us. She turned to see a man approaching from the shore. While perfectly happy to parade about in the altogether in front of her late husband, me, and even her cousin Max, Aunt Lena seemed determined to maintain the veil of mystery between her nudity and the eyes of strangers. She grabbed my beach towel and yanked it out from under me, nearly flipping me over the side of the dock and into the lake.
“Is this pervert one of your friends, Ellie?” she asked, wrapping herself in the towel.
I sat up cross-legged and squinted at our visitor. A large man in dungarees and a sleeveless undershirt was lumbering toward us like a bear emerging from his cave after a long winter. About forty, unshaven, and unwashed, he'd been beached somewhere between portly and flabby on the physical continuum. And he could have used a little sun. His oily, graying hair flapped stiffly in the breeze, like a loose shingle on a roof, while his boots tramped over the planks, trailing wet laces behind him. As he drew nearer, I noticed the stock of a handgun squashed between his considerable belly and the waistband of his trousers, as if it had been trapped and suffocated trying to squeeze its way out.
“You know that nude bathing is prohibited here on Prospector Lake,” he said as he came to a stop and stared us down from ten feet away. He spoke with a slow upstate twang. I thought perhaps he'd suffered an aphasia of some kind. Then I realized he'd been drinking.
“And what about voyeurism?” asked Aunt Lena in her unthreatening way. She wielded a stinging wit, but her delivery was so sweet you hardly realized she was cutting you down to size. “I don't believe I've had the pleasure. Who are you?”
The man squinted at her, then glanced down at me, allowing his eyes to linger a second or two over my bust before running down my legs. His lips spread into a contemplative grin, and he blinked slowly before turning his gaze away.