No Stone Unturned by James W. Ziskin

Author:James W. Ziskin
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781616148843
Publisher: Prometheus Books
Published: 2014-05-11T16:00:00+00:00

Bernadette was about thirty-five, small and round. Her skin was porcelain white, and she wore her wavy auburn hair short. The line of her lower teeth twisted a bit behind her full lips, and her pale eyes and pug nose were rimmed with red from hours of crying.

I introduced myself, though she was expecting me, and she invited me in. The clapboard house’s cold gentility made an immediate impression on me, and I could see how an outsider like Bernadette, far from home, would feel lost and afraid when left alone inside its polite walls. She took my coat and led me past the parlor and dining room to the kitchen, where she offered me a cup of coffee. I looked around the room as she busied herself at the stove. Nothing out of place, everything polished and in perfect order. The house gave me the same unsettled feeling as had Judge Shaw’s perfect home.

Bernadette, or Bernie, as she liked to be called, had last seen Ginny the previous Friday evening, around ten. Bernie was washing up the dinner dishes when the phone rang. Ginny answered and took the call in her bedroom. Bernie didn’t know who had phoned.

I asked if Ginny had seemed nervous at all, but Bernie said she was the same as always: spirited, worried about her approaching exams, but happy. Ginny had lots of male admirers, but Bernie couldn’t give me any names. I asked her about Ginny’s roommate, but she had never met Jordan.

We pored over Ginny’s habits for two hours, from the most insignificant everyday routines to where she had vacationed in the past two years: Palm Beach, Los Angeles, and Bermuda, all with her parents. Ginny used Johnson & Johnson swabs and cotton balls, Gleem toothpaste, and Listerine mouthwash. She washed with Lux soap, shampooed with Breck, powdered with a variety of talcs, and wore Emeraude spray mist. She liked books, music, and horses, and she owned her own car: a red-and-white Buick Century, which she kept in the lot behind her Back Bay apartment. Ginny was studying English literature at Tufts.

I asked if the police had contacted Ginny’s parents in Florida, and Bernie said they were returning home on the first flight in the morning with Ginny’s eleven-year-old sister, Nora. Ginny hadn’t accompanied them this time because of a busy schedule at school, studying for upcoming finals, and working long hours in the library stacks.

I thought about Virginia White and Jordan Shaw. Two young women of privilege, coming of age in an atmosphere free of parental supervision, answering to no one but themselves: atypical of girls of their age and generation. Were they wrong to live the way they did? To invite grown men in until all hours for “intimate gatherings”? Who was I to judge them? I could give lessons.

Other questions consumed me. Why had they been murdered, both of them, a state apart? According to Doc Peruso, Jordan was killed late Friday night. I figured Ginny died sometime Saturday afternoon or evening upon her return from the Thanksgiving holiday.

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