No Stone Unturned (28 page)

As they jostled for advantage, an older male approached, slid into the booth next to the female, who was receptive to his advances, and he began his own confident mating dance. The adolescents made one attempt to rally and hold their ground, cracking some inane joke or other, but the older male was physically intimidating and soon grew tired of their irritation. At length, he chased them away with a grunt and a sneer.

I watched the girl and her champion. They were cozy in the booth, clearly well acquainted and probably going steady. At least three years out of school, he was probably five years older than she. He looked to be a goon, what Fadge called a greaser, unsuited to the girl-next-door with him. I thought of Pukey Boyle and Jordan Shaw just as Fadge appeared before them to take the young man’s order.

“What can I get you?” he asked.

“Nothin’,” answered the young man.

I braced myself. If there was one thing Fadge couldn’t abide, it was a greaser who didn’t buy anything.

“This ain’t a waiting room,” he said. “Out.”

The boy disengaged himself slowly from his seat as his girl sat frozen in fear and embarrassment. He sauntered across the store toward the door, trying to salvage a scrap of his honor by feigning indifference to the ejection and grinning at the onlookers. The girl made a dash after him, just as the jukebox started playing Paul Anka’s “Puppy Love.” Fadge looked sideways at the machine, bent over behind it, and pressed the reset button.

“I hate that song,” he said to me. No one protested, though I noticed one girl who seemed crushed that the song—probably her selection—had been scratched from the program.

About an hour later, the place had emptied out, and Fadge and I were alone. He joined me in the booth and slid a coffee mug of ice cream and hot fudge across the table to me. This was the hip way to have a sundae, reserved for after-hours habitués in good standing.

“Thanks,” I said. “I’m going to get fat.”

“Fat’s where it’s at,” he said. “Look at me.”

“You’re not going to throw me out for dawdling in the booth?”

He looked a little sheepish and didn’t have a witty comeback. Then he asked what I was working on.

“This is a datebook,” I said, motioning to the photographs in front of me. I’d pulled them out of my purse once the last of the kids had cleared out.

“Mind if I have a look?” he asked.

I hesitated. He noticed, assured me he was trustworthy and wouldn’t tell a soul, but if I didn’t want him to . . . Fadge had helped me through the darkest days after my father’s death, cheering me with his humor, flattering me with his attention, and plying me with alcohol in hopes of taking advantage of me. At least that’s what he used to say. We’d grown very close over the months, and, unless I was up to no good in the arms of some rogue, my days began and ended in his company. I loved that fat guy like a brother, so I let him see.

He shuffled the photos around for a minute, then asked for my help.

“Very simple,” I said. “These asterisks are her period.”

“How do you know that?” he asked.

“Look: June 18, asterisk; July 15, asterisk; August 12, asterisk . . . Twenty-eight days each time. I’d say Jordan Shaw was as regular as clockwork. And that explains these other entries: OK means she’s safe and won’t get pregnant, NO means behave.”

Fadge gaped at me. “You figured all that out, just like that?”

“You should see my datebook.” I mumbled. “This Jordan Shaw knew her rhythm. She was careful.”

“Wait a minute,” he said, taking up one of the photographs. “If the OKs and NOs refer to her rhythm, why is August of last year the last time she marked them down?”

I smiled knowingly. “She found a better method of birth control.”

A customer came in, and Fadge got up. As I sat in the booth, I focused on the evening of November 25. Jordan had arranged to meet D. J.—David Jerrold—at the Mohawk Motel at 9:00 p.m. I couldn’t be sure how she had convinced him, given the Dear Jordan letter he’d sent her about twelve days earlier, but I doubted any man could resist an invitation to love from such a pretty young thing. I figured Jean Trent was right; Jordan had slept with the first man—Jerrold—somewhere between 9:30 and 11:00 p.m. Julio had given me further details, and I consulted my notes to be sure: Jordan was alive when he stopped watching her through the window at 11:20. Jerrold had left shortly before then.

So much for the first act. That left me with the problem of finding the other two visitors. There was no shortage of prospects, from Pukey Boyle to Greg Hewert, and no one was fessing up to having seen anyone. Julio would have to open up to me, or I would remain stuck.

As things turned out, it wasn’t Julio who unblocked the impasse, but a midnight caller. Having left Fiorello’s around eleven thirty, I crossed the street and took up the three days of crossword puzzles I’d been neglecting and another glass of White Label. The distraction swept the cobwebs from my head and relaxed me besides. By the time I’d finished the first puzzle, I was nodding off. The last clue I remember was “Policeman in slang, six letters.” The surrounding boxes made
copper
the only possibility. The next thing I knew, the telephone was pealing.

“Butt out!” A hoarse, sluggish whisper, right out of a B movie.

“What? I beg your pardon?”

“Quit nosing around.”

“I think you have the wrong number.”

“Stone!” The voice called out to stop me from hanging up. “You heard me.”

My heart was pumping. I said nothing, hoping my silence would solicit more information from my caller. For several seconds, he said nothing, then he spoke in the same eerie, torpid whisper he had begun with.

“Remember those girls; you don’t want to end up like them,” and the phone clicked in my ear.

The voice bore no distinguishing characteristics, besides the whisper, and I knew I would never be able to recognize it in normal conversation. If there was an accent, I didn’t hear it. I tried to decide whether the call had been local or long distance, but there was no way to be certain. It didn’t matter anyway; I was easy enough to find.

I tried to sleep, but the haunting whisper kept me awake, taunting me to guess its identity. It seemed logical to assume that the caller was part of the Boston crowd, since he had alluded to
girls
, plural. But then again, by now everyone in New Holland knew of the Boston murder, thanks to my article, and I had given up assuming things I could not prove. I stared at the ceiling for hours, sitting up every now and then to jot down a note or an idea on the pad next to my bed. Alone in the dark, I thought with horror that I didn’t want to end up like Jordan Shaw, neck broken, body desecrated. And poor Ginny, like my father, clubbed to death in her own home. I tried to distract myself, think of something else, but, like a magnet, my thoughts were drawn to the events I least wanted to recall. My father had been murdered ten months earlier, but I still turned the bloody details over and over in my head.

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 3, 1960

When I awoke at half past six, I couldn’t remember having fallen asleep. I glanced down at the newspapers and the crossword on the floor, and the idea came to me like a bolt.

“Copper,” I said with a knowing smile, thinking back to Jordan’s datebook.

Of course I had known since the autopsy about the IUD, but this was Jordan herself telling me something in her own words. I wasn’t any closer to solving the murder, but the minor revelation yielded my first glimmer of understanding. I felt triumphant. I could trust her for the truth where others had lied, exaggerated, or just plain misunderstood.

Ron Fiorello opened the store at eight, collected the odd change left for newspapers on his stoop, and set the day’s first pot of coffee to brew. I climbed onto a stool and laid the envelope with prints of Jordan’s datebook on the counter.

“How’s it going?” asked Fadge, tying a chocolate-spattered apron around his waist.

Indeed, how? The late-night phone call hadn’t told me much—just that somebody somewhere didn’t appreciate my snooping and considered killing me for it.

“A little progress, but no breakthrough,” I said, fiddling with the envelope. “One moment, I feel completely lost; then Glenda Whalen knocks me cold at Tedesco’s. I think the trail’s gone cold, and I get a threatening phone call last night. And then there’s Pukey Boyle, who’s been shadowing me all over town . . . I can’t figure why so many people want to stop me from poking around. Where’s my coffee?”

“A threatening call?” He stared with his bulging eyes. “Jesus, Ellie, what are you getting yourself into?”

Fadge glared at me for a long moment, then snatched a cup, filled it, and set it down before me. “Be careful, will you?”

“I’ll be okay,” I said and sipped my coffee. “I’m sure it was one of the three men who visited Jordan’s motel room last Friday night, but I only know who one of them was. A professor, David Jerrold. Married and unwilling to cooperate for fear of scandal.”

“You think it was him?”

“Could be. But according to Julio, Jerrold left Jordan alive and well in the room a little past eleven Friday night. At least I’m convinced it was Jerrold. Julio didn’t see him. I’ve been trying to plot out what happened after that.”

I pulled the prints from the envelope and spread them on the counter. Then I flipped open my notepad for reference.

“Listen to this, Fadge: My only two sources so far are Julio and Jean Trent, and each has filled in different holes. Jean told me Jordan arrived at eight thirty, and that matches what Jordan wrote in her datebook, right here,” and I pointed to November 25: “M. M. 9:00 p.m.—OK!!!”

“What’s that mean?” he asked, cranking his head to see.

“Mohawk Motel, 9:00 p.m.,” I said. “Her rendezvous with Jerrold.”

Fadge studied the photographs with me.

“Remember last night I said she had found a new form of birth control?” I asked.

“Yeah, so what was it?”

“Jordan went to India last summer, where she visited a private health clinic in Delhi. In a postcard to her roommate, she described the procedure as treatment for dysentery. But she added some cryptic hints about the care she’d received. She wrote something to the effect that she came out of the clinic feeling like a bright, new penny.”

“Yeah, so what’s that got to do with dysentery?” asked Fadge, still leaning over the photos of Jordan’s datebook on the counter.

“Nothing. Jordan didn’t have dysentery; she wasn’t even sick. She had arranged an appointment at that clinic before she left for India.”

“I know,” said Fadge, lifting his weight off the counter. “She was pregnant and had it taken care of.”

“Wrong. Now, what I’m about to tell you stays right here,” I said. Fadge nodded. “When Doc Peruso performed the autopsy on Jordan, he found an IUD.”

“What’s that?” he asked.

“The IUD is the latest in birth control. It’s a small metallic coil that is implanted in the girl’s uterus, and it prevents pregnancy. Kind of tricks the body into thinking it’s already pregnant.”

“Get outta here,” said Fadge, doubtful.

“It’s true. The device is safe and very effective. Anyway, I’m sure now that Jordan had one implanted on August 14th, right there.” And I pointed to the datebook: “Varma Medical Clinic 10:00 a.m.—D. J.”

“What makes you so sure she got this thing over there? If you drink the water in India, your shit flows like the Ganges.”

I was startled by the imagery.

“Sorry,” he said, “but maybe she did have dysentery and got the coil thing in Boston.”

“No. They’ve been testing them in the Third World for a few years, and they’re not common here. Besides, the postcard clinched it. Jordan said she felt like a bright, new penny. Pennies are made of copper, just like her IUD.”

“Good work,” he said. “But it all sounds like science fiction to me. If I’m lucky enough to get lucky, I still use a rubber.”

“Let’s put that to one side for now,” I smiled.

“What about these three exclamation points after the OK on November 25th?” he asked. “If she had the PUD, she wouldn’t need to write OK, would she?”

“IUD,” I corrected. “Jerrold had given her the brush a week or two before. I’d say she missed her man and was excited to get him back. She obviously still had the IUD; it was found in the autopsy. So she had no worries that night.”