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by Rosemary Herbert

  Back at Gravesend Street, she found her refrigerator stocked with milk, orange juice, fresh eggs, and an unfamiliar bowl containing homemade fruit salad. On the kitchen counter, weighed down with six cans of cat food and a package of English muffins, she found a note from Tom.

  “See you tomorrow? I’ll be changing the billboard here,” it read.

  Liz gave him her answer by phone. “I’m planning to be in Plymouth County at sunrise,” she said, “so I don’t think I’ll be here. But thank you for all the goodies! Now, I’ve got to call the science teacher who discovered the remains, to see if he can meet me.”

  John Sobel was eager to meet Liz at dawn, but warned that he’d have to leave the recreational area by 7:45 in order to get to school. The science teacher knew just when the sun was slated to rise and set a time for them to meet.

  Hungry, Liz served some fruit salad into a bowl, sliced an English muffin in two, and placed the halves in her toaster. She pushed the toaster handle and the button on her phone answering machine down simultaneously. What she heard on the answering machine was somewhat surprising, since the caller had avoided her for some months.

  “Liz, it’s Erik. I’m sorry I haven’t been in touch. I hope you can help me. The police won’t tell me anything. Could it be Ellen and that cabdriver they’ve found out near Plymouth? Oh . . .” The call was cut off as Erik was distracted by something.

  Liz froze in the act of hanging up her receiver and stared at the telephone number on her machine’s caller-I.D. display. She had memorized it nine months ago. The call had been made from Ellen’s cell phone—a phone that had been unaccounted for since Ellen’s disappearance. What was Erik doing with that phone? Had he placed the calls that came through from that phone in June and in August? The only reason to do that would be to make it look as if his wife was in the vicinity—alive and well enough to phone on Veronica’s birthday and again in August. Up till now, the calls from Ellen’s cell phone had provided hope. But if Erik had been making them, then another conclusion seemed chillingly likely: Erik had reason to toss red herrings on the path of the investigation, leading police astray as they sought the truth about his wife.

  Liz knew she should inform the police immediately. Instead, she unplugged her answering machine, locked it in the car’s trunk, drove straight to Fenwick Street, and surprised Erik by knocking on his door. Finding that Veronica had a friend visiting, she convinced Erik to take a walk to the Newton City Hall Common. Noting that he carried a receiver for his portable phone with him as he left the house, she asked, “Do you also carry your cell phone with you at all times?”

  “Absolutely,” he said, taking his phone from his pocket. “If Ellen gets in touch, I want to be available.”

  “Do you know what time it is?” Liz asked. “I’m on tight deadline today,” she fibbed.

  Erik turned on the cell phone and showed its small screen to Liz. The time and date were shown there.

  “Thanks, Erik. What are your thoughts on the phone calls from Ellen’s cell?”

  “My thoughts? I can hardly separate them from my emotions on this. Intellectually, I know someone other than Ellen might be making these calls, just to suggest she is somewhere near us. If that’s the case, and Ellen is the victim of foul play, her victimizer has added cruel insult to injury.”

  Liz noted an odd formality in Erik’s speech. Was this his way of feeling some sense of sanity in a situation he could not control, or was it an indication of guilt?

  “I don’t really believe that the calls are from Ellen,” Erik went on, “but I can’t help hoping that they are, especially the attempt to reach me on August eighteenth. I haven’t pointed this out to anyone else, but Ellen and I first met eleven years ago on that date. In any case, the calls have been an unbearable tease, especially for Veronica.” Erik paused. “I’m surprised you’re asking me about the cell phone calls on this day of all days. I had hoped you might have something to tell me that would shed light on the bodies found near Plymouth. Tell me the bones can’t be hers,” he pleaded.

  “Observers say the bones seem too old. But there’s nothing conclusive. Erik, I have to ask you, why did you pick up Ellen’s cell phone today and call me? Was it because, in your distress about the discovery of the bones, you grabbed the wrong cell phone? Where have you hidden it all this time?”

  “What? I don’t know what you’re talking about! Are you suggesting I have Ellen’s cell? That’s madness!”

  “Her cell number came up on my caller I.D. when you called to ask about—”

  “That’s impossible! Look, here’s the number of my cell.” He pushed a button on his cell phone, revealing its telephone number. “It’s a digit off from Ellen’s. The last part of mine is 4441; hers is 4440.”

  “4440 came up on my caller I.D. And you were the speaker.”

  “That’s inexplicable! I tell you, I don’t have Ellen’s phone.” At the sound of sirens, Erik looked toward Commonwealth Avenue frantically. “Did you report this to the police?” he cried out.

  “Not yet, Erik. I wanted to see what you had to say first.”

  “Then why are they here?” he said, turning distraught eyes on the reporter as several officers arrived.

  “The line was bugged with your permission, sir,” an officer said. “Come along with us now.”

  “Stay with Veronica until my mother-in-law arrives, would you?” Erik pleaded. “She’s on her way with groceries for us.”

  “Of course, Erik,” Liz said.

  Turning towards Fenwick Street, Liz ran across the common. Fortunately, it seemed Veronica had not heard the commotion. Liz could see her through the window engrossed in a video cartoon on the television. Liz waited on the front steps, a quiet guardian for Veronica, until the grandmother arrived. Grateful it was not her report but rather the traced call that had summoned the police, she nevertheless ached for the child whose father was now under arrest.

  Liz called in her story to the city desk and then drove to Newton Police Headquarters, where she volunteered to answer questions and turned over her answering machine to authorities. Only after all this did she return home to get some food and rest.

  Chapter 27

  Too soon, Liz’s alarm announced it was 4:00 a.m. Time to swallow down some breakfast and get on the road to Plymouth. Coverage of 9/11–related stories still dominated television news. But on the radio, as Liz drove east, newscasters found time to vilify Erik as a jealous husband who most likely had known his wife was involved with a “Middle Eastern stranger.” They implied he must have done his wife and “her lover” in, and then placed calls from her phone to make it look like she was alive and well during the ensuing months.

  Stopping for coffee, Liz bought a copy of the Banner. Under the headline, “CELL TO CELL,” her own report outlined the facts of the phone call and Erik’s arrest, while Dick Manning’s piece, headed “MYSTERY MAILS,” used a quote from Newton mail carrier Len Fenster to suggest that Erik pursued strange passions: “Imagine those ladybugs crawling all over a nice lady like that? Wouldn’t that give anybody the creeps? And she was always getting letters from the Middle East. Coulda’ been from that Arab guy who bled in her kitchen.”

  Arriving at Forges Field just at sunrise, Liz found René DeZona already on the scene, strapped to the top section of a telephone pole and armed with a very long lens. Apparently the police who had been guarding the scene had not looked up: They seemed unaware the photographer was there. Following DeZona’s hand signals, Liz drew one police officer aside and loudly fired questions about the case at him, covering with her voice the sound of DeZona’s camera work. After a few minutes, DeZona pointed to a Porta-Potty nearby. As Liz approached the unit, she heard the sound of two small items dropping to the ground near her feet. Film cans. Stooping to tie a lace on her hiking boot, Liz pocketed the film. Minutes later, the police noticed the photographer and confiscated the film that was then in DeZona’s camera.

  Just then John Sobel and Cormac Kinnaird arrived in
separate vehicles. When Liz told them she needed to pass the film to René, Kinnaird surprised her by producing a pipe from his pocket. Taking the film, he approached the photographer and asked for a light. As the photographer fumbled for matches, Kinnaird passed the film to him. Film in hand, DeZona drove off, presumably headed for the newsroom.

  As expected, the police prevented the reporter, teacher, and forensics man from entering the area they’d surrounded with crime scene tape. The trio hiked into the woods and then circled toward the vicinity of the crime scene.

  “They’ve closed off a wide area around the remains,” the science teacher said.

  “But that doesn’t mean they’ll find everything,” Cormac said. “That ME is green. And he’s rushing. I wonder if he’ll realize skeletal remains that have been there over time may have been disarticulated.”

  “You mean taken apart?”

  “That’s right, Liz. Scattered or even carried away into burrows by animals back when there was meat on those bones.”

  Liz grimaced.

  “It concerns me for another reason that this Stu Simmons seems in such haste to remove the bones. If they are kept in their position and context, it will be easier to evaluate the shower of organic material to which they have been exposed. In an area like this, we can tell quite a bit about the time of death—or at least the time when the bodies were placed here—by cataloging that organic material. Pollen found on the bones will tell us during which seasons they were exposed to the elements. Working back from that, and using insect evidence, we can make a remarkably accurate guess as to how long the body lay here before it was stripped of tissue by maggots and animals. These bones have been here for quite some time. Simmons is a fool if he thinks one more rainstorm will destroy the evidence they hold.”

  Liz recalled the doctor’s scolding her about withholding the cigarette butt evidence months ago. “Even if we found a disarticulated bone or two, Cormac,” she asked, “wouldn’t you insist on turning it in to the police? What kind of advantage would that give us?”

  “As much as I’m eager to see you get a scoop, we have to keep in mind that the search for the truth takes precedence.”

  “But it sounds as if you’re better qualified to handle this scene, this evidence anyway. Doesn’t it look like the police will bungle this?”

  “I’m not saying I wouldn’t take a good look at anything we turn up before handing it over, but I would absolutely hand the evidence over. Even to a bungler. That’s the law.”

  “Look here, Liz,” the science teacher said. “Here’s the opening to a fox den. No, I don’t see any human bones conveniently sticking out of it. But you should take a look anyway to help you find more animal abodes in the landscape. Do you see how the fox has taken advantage of the protection afforded by the tree stump? From the other side, the opening to its den is invisible.”

  “That’s not very encouraging. Does this mean we’ll have to walk in circles around every tree stump?”

  “It wouldn’t be a bad idea.”

  “We shouldn’t overestimate the likelihood of finding bones this far from the bodies, in any case,” Cormac cautioned.

  The trio combed the woods for some forty minutes in silence. Then, the science teacher announced he would have to head for his classroom. Liz looked up to watch him as he trod reluctantly up the hill, leaving behind the most exciting nature scene he was likely to see in his lifetime.

  “Yesterday, you said you expected to see chickadees in the hollow,” Liz called out to him. “Why there and not right here, for instance?”

  The bird-lover turned his head and looked at her over his shoulder. “The hollow is the site of an ephemeral pond or vernal pool. Dry now, of course, but a few feet deep after the snow melts in springtime.”

  Cormac Kinnaird stood stock still. “That changes everything,” he said. “If your photographer has been able to zoom in on that scene, or if I can get into that scene soon, we’ve got an advantage, Liz,” he said. “A big one.” With that, he took Liz’s hand and led her up the hill to their parked cars, whistling an Irish reel all the way.

  Since the police on the crime scene would not offer comments, Liz drove to Plymouth Police Headquarters to see if she could get an official statement on the case. It was early in the day and things might change before her afternoon deadline, but it didn’t hurt to be thorough. Plymouth Police Chief Martin Oliver curtailed repeated inquiries by promising a midafternoon press conference. Returning to Forges Field, Liz found police personnel adamant that nothing would be revealed until the press conference, so she drove to the newsroom to find DeZona.

  “Your friend the forensics guy said he’d appreciate having copies of these,” the photographer said. “Not that they show much of anything.” The eight-by-ten photos taken from the telephone pole perch showed the bent backs of police officers gathered around what looked like some dark sticks. Presumably, they were pieces of the discolored skeleton. Much was obscured by branches of trees located between the photographer and his quarry.

  DeZona slipped the photos into a manila envelope and handed them to Liz. “See you in Plymouth later?” he asked. “I hear we’re to cover the press conference.”

  “You bet,” Liz said. Then, she returned to her desk, called a courier, and arranged for the photos to be delivered to Dr. Kinnaird’s university office.

  With hours to kill before the press conference, Liz gave Tom a call, leaving a message on his answering machine. Then, she decided to drive out to the Wellesley College campus, which seemed an ideal place to think things through. Parking her car at the Faculty Club, she took a leisurely walk along Lake Waban in the direction of the Pinetum. This time, she was not alone. About twenty yards ahead of her, two young women walked along, lost in animated conversation about a “hot” professor. As she followed them through the Pinetum and the students emerged into the more open area of the topiary garden, one of the young women turned around to face Liz.

  “Would you take a photo of Florrie and I, please?”

  Can these be the nation’s best and brightest? Liz asked herself, cringing at the grammar. “‘Of Florrie and me,’ ” she said, realizing even as she said it how schoolmarmish she must sound to them.

  But Florrie and her friend were not annoyed.

  “My English Comp prof is always telling me the same thing,” the poor grammarian said.

  Liz cringed again when the girls arranged themselves on the grass between two topiary trees.

  “Don’t you see the sign?” she asked. “It says to stay off the grass.”

  “It’s only for a photo,” Florrie said as Liz stepped back into the shade at the edge of the Pinetum to shoot a backlit picture without having direct sunlight on the lens.

  Liz heard one of the young women exclaim delightedly, “Look, Ellen! A chocolate Lab, just like my dog at home.”

  Liz followed Florrie’s gaze. At the far end of the topiary garden, Olga Swenson froze in the act of throwing a toy to her dog, Hershey. At the sound of her daughter’s name on another’s lips, her face collapsed into an expression of excruciating pain. Deciding that Olga did not need the intrusion of a reporter at that moment, Liz handed back the camera, turned around in the shade of the conifer collection, and walked back to her car.

  At Plymouth Police Headquarters later that afternoon, the press conference offered little new information. Police Chief Martin Oliver reiterated how the remains had been found and declared that the skeletons appeared to be those of a male and a female whose bones had lain in the hollow for some years. Although no flesh remained on the bones, strands of hair found there indicated both victims were dark-haired. Pressed by Liz and her colleagues, he said there was dentition under examination, but it did not match any dental records for unsolved crimes currently in the database. Asked specifically if the remains could be those of the missing Newton mom, he said the apparent age of the bones, the hair color, and the lack of a dental match made it look extremely unlikely.

  After the press c
onference, Liz decided to heed her hunger pangs, but not before purchasing a postcard for Nadia. Fortunately, in this vacation haven “gifte shoppes” were located cheek-by-jowl with restaurants. After buying a postcard picturing a cranberry bog in a shop called “Plymouth Rocks!”, she took a window seat in a waterfront eatery called the Mayflower Café. There, she ordered a special called Pilgrim’s Progress: a turkey and cranberry sauce sandwich followed by a bowl of Indian pudding à la mode. While looking out the window at the tourist-magnet Mayflower II sailing ship, she took out the postcard.

  “Dear Nadia,” she wrote on it. “Here I am in Plymouth, Massachusetts, covering a crime in cranberry bog country. There are two victims, but the age of the remains seems to eliminate Ellen.”

  What a strange thing to write on a postcard! Liz shook her head.

  She changed the period at the end of the second sentence to a comma and added, “fortunately, your pen pal remains much on my mind.” She turned over the card and examined it, then turned it over again. “On this card,” she continued, “you can see the bright red cranberries, as well as the colored leaves typical of an autumn landscape in eastern Massachu— ”

  Abruptly, Liz stopped writing. She wished she had not sent DeZona’s photos to Cormac Kinnaird before studying them better, for suddenly she called to mind something in the wrong color family that appeared in the foreground of a couple of the photographs. Now she realized that when she had scrutinized the pictures to get a glimpse of the remains, she had not looked carefully at the out-of-focus elements in the photos’ foregrounds.