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by Rosemary Herbert

  “Even if you could, he’s under some suspicion in this case. I think the librarians would be much less likely to leave him alone in Ellen’s workspace than they would you.”

  “But Ellen shares an office with Monica Phillips. If she’s not lording it over the library patrons, she’s at her desk impressing everyone with her efficiency.”

  “That could be an advantage, since it would be quicker and easier to input a potential password on an active machine than to start up Ellen’s PC. And we have another advantage in predicting when Ms. Phillips would have to cover the reference desk. I happen to know when Lucy Gray’s coffee breaks occur.”

  By the time the two had parted at the gate to the Pinetum, their scheme was complete, and scheduled for the next morning. As Olga Swenson walked off towards her home, she raised her blistered hand in a little salute to Liz. Both of the women held themselves taller as they strode purposefully in opposite directions.

  New York City, December 16, 2000

  “Of course it was a mistake,” Ellen said to the man in the closet, whose coffee-stained pants identified him as the fellow who had accidentally started the fire. “Anyone could see you didn’t set the fire intentionally,” Ellen added.

  The poor fellow looked petrified.

  Ellen was alarmed, too, to have been pushed into the closet by the stranger. But she saw his agitation as stemming from fear that he would be in deep trouble for the accident. After all, he appeared to be of Middle Eastern extraction, and wasn’t it common knowledge that crimes were punished harshly there?

  “I would vouch for you, sir, and I’m sure my friend would, too,” Ellen said, hoping that he would relax enough to let her exit the closet without much ado. “Please don’t worry yourself so much.”

  Samir Hasan was overwhelmed. One after the other, this woman had destroyed every assumption he had ever held about her. First, she looked like a spoiled American out-of-towner who knew nothing about New York traffic and less about his language. Then she seemed to know taxi routes and understand the radio communication she should never have heard. Now, it was clear that this assumption was a mistake, too. And last, the woman he had put into grievous danger turned out to be a person who would help him—Samir Hasan, a total stranger and an Arab, too—when he was in trouble. This was a good person, a kind woman.

  Standing there, in the closet he’d thrust her into, this shaqra was a living and breathing contradiction to the kind of rhetoric that had won his cooperation in the code-passing operation. Large-eyed and clearly afraid, this woman who was putting his worries before her own proved all Americans are not cold-hearted infidels.

  “Do you have children?” she asked him next, surprising Hasan with the question.

  “A son, at home with his mother in Baghdad,” he found himself replying.

  “You must miss him terribly,” the woman said. “I have a daughter at home. She’s just eight years old. How old is your son?”

  Hasan’s head was spinning. Why in Allah’s name was this woman making small talk? He had to get this shaqra out of here. But how? And where to? “He’s the same,” he said. “The same age.”

  And then, the closet door was flung open by a firefighter. Before the fireman could finish demanding, “Is everything all right in here?” Ellen flew past him and across the lobby, into the embrace of her pen pal.

  “I thought I would protect the lady,” Hasan explained before brushing past the incredulous fireman. Inspired, Hasan added, “I see she has found my sister.”

  Hasan hastened across the lobby as the women exited, arm-in-arm, crushed in one compartment of a revolving door. While Hasan followed, the pair crossed the plaza to the globe-shaped sculpture and asked a passerby to take their photo in front of it. While his head spun in the effort to find a way to warn her about her plight—or to somehow to be man enough to carry out his horrific order—he nevertheless found himself marveling, again, at the woman’s faith in other people. He would never hand his camera over to a total stranger and leave, as she did, valuables such as a purse and briefcase lying on a bench while the photo was being taken. In fact, the woman never picked up her things. Instead, rapt in animated conversation with her friend, she simply walked away from them.

  Now I am a thief, as well, Hasan told himself as he picked them up. Or, maybe not, he thought, more happily. Here was the excuse to approach the woman again as a Good Samaritan.

  Waving the purse and calling out, “Lady, lady! I have found your handbags!” Hasan attempted to get Ellen’s attention. But he was too late.

  The women were already too far away to hear him, and before he could break into a run to catch them, they had entered an idling cab. To make things worse, Hasan’s cab was nowhere to be seen.

  Exasperated and frantic, Hasan was confused as to where he had left his cab. Nevertheless, he retained the presence of mind to repeat to himself the medallion number and cab company name emblazoned on the women’s cab as it drove away, headed uptown. He could plant it in his memory.

  At least in the eyes of one man, he didn’t look suspicious carrying the woman’s things.

  “Nice try, buddy,” a businessman said to him. “You’re a rare bird.”

  Whatever that meant, it was said in friendly manner. Still, Hasan was uneasy to be seen with the bags. He wished he still had his Gap bag containing his old clothes. But that had been left behind in the restaurant. Taking off his blazer, he wrapped the purse and slim briefcase in it and hailed a cab himself, asking the driver to follow the woman’s cab. But such chases are far more difficult in real life than they are in films, and the cabbie soon lost sight of the vehicle. Hasan ordered him to return to the World Trade Center and make a circuit of the building. Allah be praised, Hasan’s cab had not been towed away, although it was parked in a tow zone. Perhaps the police had been too preoccupied with the fire emergency to take heed of it.

  Hasan’s relief was short-lived. The two-way radio crackled to life as Faud’s voice commanded, “You know what you have to do. The teena must go missing. For always.”

  “Hamdu-lillah,” Hasan said, hoping his cohort would take it as assent, while in fact it was his prayer to Allah to help him have the manhood to do what he must.

  Chapter 16

  Newton, Massachusetts, December 26, 2000

  If Olga Swenson felt edgy as she entered the Newton Free Library, no one took notice at first. The day after Christmas, the place was little used by patrons, leaving the library staff free to take extended coffee breaks and tell one another about their holiday celebrations. It was also a day for Monica Phillips to shine by overseeing a “Boxing Day Cookie Fest” that she had made a tradition for several years. Apparently, the librarian had some English background and felt eager to acknowledge, with a little celebration of her own, the December 26 holiday that was celebrated with a day off from work in the British Isles. The event required librarians scheduled to work that day to bring leftover cookies from their family celebrations for all of the colleagues to share.

  Although Olga Swenson had forgotten all about the occasion until she arrived at the library, she did have a tin of leftover cookies with her to present to the librarians. Little did she know how useful this icebreaker would become.

  “Mrs. Swenson, how lovely to see you,” Monica Phillips said, as Olga approached the reference desk. “And how kind of you to remember our Boxing Day Cookie Fest!”

  “How could I forget it?” Olga fibbed. “It is one of Ellen’s favorite library occasions. So lovely of you to have established the tradition.”

  “Perhaps you’d like to join us,” the librarian said, looking at the clock. “We begin in about fifteen minutes in the conference room.”

  “It’s kind of you to include me, but I fear I couldn’t face all of Ellen’s colleagues just now. It’s all so very upsetting, as I’m sure you may appreciate, Miss Phillips.”

  “Of course, of course,” Monica Phillips said with a small reassuring smile that masked her great pleasure in being the only p
erson privy to a conversation with Ellen’s mother. It would mean she would have gossip—or at least an impression of the woman’s demeanor—to share at the cookie fest. “May I offer you a cup of tea in my office, at least?” she inquired, stepping away from the reference desk in the rare act of leaving it unattended.

  Monica Phillips led the way to the modest office Olga knew the librarian shared with her daughter. Shrewdly, Olga decided to give the librarian something to talk about in the cookie party.

  “That would be just wonderful,” Olga said. “I find I need to stop and collect myself, off and on, all day. Ellen’s absence has a kind of physical effect on me, you know. Mentally, I feel distracted, and profoundly worried, of course. But physically, I feel quite drained—exhausted without being sleepy.”

  “How strange that must be,” Monica said. “How difficult for you! And Veronica? How is she bearing up?”

  Olga bristled. It was awful enough to have to emote about herself to this woman, but she felt the others in her family—especially her granddaughter—were completely off limits. Still, it was important to feed Miss Phillips something more to talk about.

  “At a time like this, the presence of a pet in the household is wonderful, don’t you think?” she said, as the pair entered the small office. Pinned up all over Miss Phillips’s bulletin board were photos of her three cats.

  “I wasn’t aware Veronica had a pet.”

  “Not in her home. But Veronica has grown up—during visits to my home in Wellesley—with Hershey. That’s our chocolate Lab. In fact, Veronica is the one who named him.”

  “So, Veronica is staying with you then?”

  “Oh, yes. But although the circumstances this time are—unusual—it’s quite ordinary for her to stay with us on Boxing Day. Unless it fell on a weekend, Ellen always had to work then—and enjoy your cookie party—so it’s become an annual treat for me to have Veronica overnight on Christmas and for the day on December 26th. Erik is looking after her and Hershey this morning so I could deliver the cookies.”

  Monica Phillips tore herself away from the conversation to fetch the tea. During the seven or so minutes she was gone, Olga noticed her daughter’s PC was gone from her desk while the screen on the PC belonging to Monica Phillips was entirely black. It had not been turned on.

  “Sorry about the delay, but I had to get someone to cover at the reference desk before I could fetch the tea.”

  “I’m sorry for the inconvenience.”

  “Not at all. I would have needed a substitute at the desk in a few minutes anyway.”

  “I suppose I will have to consult your reference desk colleague about my question before I leave.”

  “What question is that?”

  “I wanted to see if I could borrow a copy of Gone With the Wind today. It’s the book Ellen was reading, in paperback, when she—well, before she left. She must have taken her copy with her. I’d like to read the novel, too, if there’s a copy here in the library. I think it would make me feel closer to my daughter at this time.”

  “Please, allow me to help you,” the librarian said, turning on her PC and typing in her password with one finger, spelling out the word MEOW as Olga looked on.

  In a minute, Monica had the call number and the information that the book was available on the second floor. She wrote the call number on a scrap of recycled paper and handed it to Olga. “I see you’ve noticed your daughter’s PC is gone. The police removed it. But have no fear, Mrs. Swenson, she never overused the Internet for personal searches or anything like that. Her reputation is secure.”

  “Would it be all right if I took a look at the contents of her drawers? Perhaps there’s a little something I can take home to Veronica to cheer her.”

  “I don’t see why not. The police have already taken what they want.”

  When Olga Swenson looked shaken by this last remark, the librarian took the occasion to look pointedly at the clock and make her exit for the conference room. After a minute, Olga opened one of her daughter’s drawers, pulled it out thoroughly, and allowed it to drop to the floor.

  Stepping around the mess, she sat down at Miss Phillips’s PC and moved the mouse. The screen saver photo of three cats seemed to melt away, revealing a screen cluttered with icons. One of them was labeled “Blister.” Apparently, the word was not a password. It was the list itself. Olga’s edginess turned to jubilation, until she moved the mouse to click on the icon. A box appeared on the screen demanding a password.

  Congratulating herself on her powers of observation, she typed in the letters M, E, O, and W. But the blasted machine rejected the password. Suppressing a moan, she stood up to survey the room. Would there be a password list on hand somewhere?

  Just then, Monica Phillips opened the door.

  “You see, I am a butterfingers, too, in my current state of mind. I managed to dump the whole drawer!” Olga said.

  “Perhaps it was because I startled you,” the librarian said. “My colleagues always accuse me of creeping up on little cat feet,” she said, slowly arranging her lips into a large smile. The action recalled the Cheshire cat in Alice in Wonderland. “I just came for the cake server. Ellen always kept it in her desk. Oh, I see it’s on the floor.”

  “Allow me,” Olga said, picking up the implement and handing it to the librarian. Fortunately, the PC screen did not face the door. “I’ve been noticing your photos of three lovely cats. What are their names?”

  “They are dears, aren’t they? The black-and-white “tuxedo” cat is Fred. The ginger cat is, of course, Ginger,” the librarian smiled proudly.

  “Of course! For Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers! How clever!” Olga enthused. “And what about that handsome fellow? What’s his name?”

  “Actually, that’s a female. I named her Judy, after Judy Garland.”

  It seemed a strange name choice for a Siamese cat.

  “It’s because of her voice,” Miss Phillips went on. “Siamese cats often vocalize, you know. They actually speak—in their own language of course—as they go about their business. My Judy, though, does more than that. She seems to sing. I’ve got to admit, she’s my favorite.”

  When Monica left the room with the cake server, Olga reseated herself at the PC; input the letters J, U, D, and Y, and was given instant access to the records under “Blister.” Then she met another roadblock, apparently put there to make the records somewhat more secure. Another box appeared on the screen asking for a library card number. It was not possible to see records listed by name. Confidently, she typed in the numbers 1, 9, 9, and 2. Veronica’s birth year.

  A document headed with the name “Johansson, Ellen Swenson,” and filled with dates and book titles spread itself out before her eyes. It was too much to take down—or to take in. Recalling Liz’s instructions, Olga turned on the printer and used the PC’s mouse to click on the print icon. After the page printed out, she followed more instructions from Liz and closed the document until the desktop of icons appeared. Slipping the printed page into her purse, she turned to tidy up the spilled drawer. Along with a few pens and some pads of Post-it Notes, she found a twelve-inch ruler, decorated by Veronica with a hand-painted crown and letters spelling out the statement, “MY MOM RULES!!!” Placing the ruler in her purse, she made a quick survey of the rest of her daughter’s drawers. They contained some drawings by Veronica; a mug sporting a portrait of Virginia Woolf; some feminine supplies; a much-used, folded-up tote bag imprinted with the words, “So many books, so little time”; and a packet of Reese’s Pieces.

  The items were predictable, mundane. But the emotions they stirred were not.

  Olga Swenson sat down heavily in her daughter’s chair and sobbed.

  When, at last, she made her way out of the office, she could hear one voice sounding from the conference room. “Ellen’s mother is a wreck. She’s so jittery, the poor woman can’t open a drawer without pulling it out completely and spilling it all over the floor. She’s so bereft, she’s even going to read Gone With the
Wind because it’s the last book she thinks Ellen read. Pretty sad title in the circumstances, don’t you think?”

  “Really, Monica,” another voice said. Olga recognized it as Lucy Gray’s. “Surely it’s too soon to speak of Ellen as if we’ll never see her again. And as for Gone With the Wind, I hardly think that’s Ellen’s reading taste.”

  “Well, I have that from Mrs. Swenson herself,” Monica said, rising to the conversational challenge. “And she told me Veronica is hopeless unless she’s with her grandmother’s dog, constantly eating chocolate. It’s a wonder Mrs. Swenson had the presence of mind to bring us these cookies!”

  Fed up with the whole charade, despite its success, Olga Swenson left the library without going to the trouble of finding and signing out a copy of Gone With the Wind. Only when she reached her car did she remember she’d forgotten to turn off Miss Phillips’s printer. Unable to face hearing another word of gossip about her loved ones, she settled into her car. Turning her key in the ignition, she drove a short distance and parked her car on Fenwick Street. Then, using her key, she let herself into her daughter’s house.

  Taking off her coat, she made her first uncharacteristic move. Instead of carefully hanging the garment on a hanger in the hall closet, she draped it over the back of an armchair. Then, she did something else that was highly unusual for her. After taking a teacup and saucer into the kitchen with the intention of making tea, she filled the cup halfway with bourbon instead.

  Whispering the words “Forget me not,” she then settled into Ellen’s favorite chair in the living room and unfolded the list of books that revealed her daughter’s recent library borrowing habits. Studying the titles, she was glad her cup held bourbon.

  Meanwhile, in the Banner’s newsroom, Liz began trying to locate Dr. Douglas Mayhew, former headmaster of the Wharton Alternative School. Using old clips provided by the Banner’s ever-helpful librarian, Conan Forbes, Liz found Mayhew’s name mentioned in connection with the opening of the school in 1960, in several stories about fundraising and about the philosophy of teaching troubled teens, and regarding the school’s closing in 1975. Apparently, after his stint as headmaster, Mayhew was not a newsmaker since his name appeared neither in more Boston-area newspaper clips nor in Internet citations.