Signaling the waitress, Liz paid her bill and made haste to Forges Field Recreational Area. By the time she arrived there, she had to phone in the press conference story to the city desk, cursing the fading afternoon light all the while. With the story filed, she strode over to DeZona’s telephone pole. Standing at the base of it, she realized she needed to climb the pole to get the correct angle on the scene. The pole must be climbable if DeZona had managed it. But Liz was not so skilled, nor did she have the telephone company–issue climbing belt that had helped DeZona clamber up the pole. Giving up on scaling the pole, she moved her car next to it and stood on its roof. She saw nothing out of place in the scene. That was not surprising, since the car’s roof was nowhere near as high as DeZona’s perch had been.
If she could not look down on the scene from above, there was one more option: walk into the scene and look up. But how would she ensure that she did not get lost as dusk fell completely while she was in the hollow? Returning to the car, Liz grabbed an extra reporter’s notebook and a flashlight. Then, she stepped into the woods. When her car was nearly out of sight, she attached a page from the notebook to the branch of a tree at eye level. She marked more trees and shrubs this way as she worked her way into the depression from which the police had so recently removed the remains.
Liz made it to the base of the hollow—the place where the deer had taken their rest so close to those human bones—without seeing anything out of the ordinary on the way down. In the heart of the hollow, she paused and shivered. It seemed only right to do something to honor the pair who’d met their ends here, whoever they were. But the light was fading and there was a hint of pink in the sky, signaling sunset. There was no time to linger. Very quietly humming the hymn “Amazing Grace,” Liz stood quite still as she regarded the reddening sky. She asked herself which way felt right for retracing her steps and pointed her arm in that direction. Dropping her eyes to look, she saw that, without her paper markers, she would have walked into the woods in a direction that was about thirty degrees off from the correct one.
Thanking herself for marking the path, Liz made her way up the slope again. It was an easier task to remove than to attach the papers to the trees, so Liz was able to concentrate better on examining the branches above her. When she came to the end of “Amazing Grace,” she hummed it again, a little more loudly. This time, she was humming it as much for reassurance as to honor the dead. She longed to share the intensely lonely scene with something living, even a chickadee. But there was no sign of the little birds, not even the sound of their distinctive call, chicka-dee-dee-dee.
But it soon became evident that Liz was not alone in the darkening hollow. Suddenly, the silent woods did produce a noise sounding, for all the world, like an old biddy shrieking, “Drink your tea!” There it was again, “Drink your tea!”
As a branch moved off to her left, Liz realized the noise had been a birdcall. She could not call to mind the name of the bird, which she now saw possessed an iridescent black body and a brown head. The bird dropped to the ground, poking its beak at the underbrush. Liz looked away from the bird, scanning the landscape.
And then she saw it. The same metallic red color she’d seen in the blurry foreground of DeZona’s photo. A synthetic strand of knitting material, worked into a bird’s nest on the ground. But it was the tree branches, not the ground, that must have formed the foreground to DeZona’s photos. Had the nest fallen from a tree? No, it looked as though it had been built where it lay, nestled into the twigs and leaves there. Liz shone her flashlight on the nest. It also contained some finer strands of strawberry-blonde human hair.
Grasping the sap-covered trunk of a young pitch pine for support, Liz heard a sound she recognized. The same kind of keening she’d heard from Veronica when the child flew across the Newton City Hall Common and threw herself into Liz’s arms. This time, however, the sound came from Liz’s own throat.
She turned her eyes to a sky that had turned the color of flame. And as she did, she saw the glint of another piece of synthetic yarn snagged on a tree branch, the kind of yarn that might well be knitted into the nose of a reindeer in a Christmas-patterned sweater.
Chapter 28
Although it was in easy reach, Liz did not remove the bird’s nest from its place. Instead, with delicate movements born of respect for the dead, she pinched a few strands of hair between her fingernails and pulled them gently from the nest. She also used the scissors on the small Swiss Army knife she carried on her key chain to snip off a tiny segment of the synthetic yarn. Carefully folding the evidence into another sheet of paper taken from her reporter’s notebook, she put the little packet into the pocket of her leather jacket.
Next, Liz looked around at the increasingly dim scene. The only outstanding landscape feature was a boulder, looking like a ghostly white mound in the falling light. She would have loved to measure the nest’s distance from the boulder but had nothing except her feet or her notebook to use as a ruler. She was reluctant to pace the distance without having another landmark to find it by in the future. In her mind’s eye, she drew a line from the boulder through the bird’s nest to the first tree beyond the nest. It was the same pitch pine she grasped for support earlier. But, amongst so many other pines, how would she recognize this one later? She could tag the tree with paper but paper is not weatherproof and she did not want to call anyone else’s attention to the spot. Looking fruitlessly for something to mark it with—even a pile of pebbles to place by its trunk—she realized she could bend and break some branches on the tree to mark it. Only after breaking three of them did she pace out the distance to the boulder. Then she used her flashlight to help her find and remove one piece of paper after another until she left the hollow behind her.
As she approached her car, which stood alone in the parking lot, she reproached herself for failing to comb the scene for any dark hairs the police might have left behind. Kinnaird would wish to compare them with the paler strands, she was certain.
In her car, she placed a call to her answering machine in the newsroom, hoping she would find a message on it from Cormac. There was no word from him. Instead, a message from Jan Van Wormer prompted her to phone him immediately.
“Al told me he returned to the topiary garden in Wellesley today,” the piano builder said. “He said it was the first time, since that long-ago incident, that he could bring himself to visit a place he had once loved. When he was there, he saw an older woman tossing things to her dog. She didn’t look particularly familiar, he said, but when he heard the sound of her voice he took another look. It was Ellen’s mother, Olga Swenson.”
“Yes, I know she was there today. I saw her there myself. But I didn’t see Ali. What time of day was this?”
“Around one-thirty.”
“That’s when I was there.”
“You wouldn’t have seen my apprentice anyway. You see, after he looked into the little hidey-hole, he hid.”
“What hidey-hole?”
“The place where he and Ellen—they were friends, you know—used to hide little toys and treasures. It’s in the summerhouse, under a loose board in the floor.”
“What did he find in the hidey-hole?”
“A toy horn I think. He said he blew it, but then, after spitting this much out, he went all tongue-tied on me.”
“Perhaps I can get him to tell me more.”
“I’m afraid that’s impossible. The poor fellow has run off again.”
Overtired from her day and confused in the darkness, Liz made a wrong turn as she attempted to drive back home. The mistake cost her almost an hour, as she found herself winding through sand-edged roads and past several small ponds in Myles Standish State Forest. But the long drive also gave her time to think. Teased by the fact that she and Ali had both been on the edges of the topiary garden at the same time but had not seen one another, she recalled René DeZona’s remark, “My lens often sees things the eyes don’t.”
She recalled how, earlier that day, two s
tudents had posed on the hillside leading up to the summerhouse. Liz remembered framing them in the larger scene. Did her photo include the summerhouse, too? Perhaps. It was a long shot, but what if the photo revealed Ali holding the object that had upset him?
Pulling off the road, she dialed the operator and asked for the telephone number for Wellesley College information and then dialed it. She was in luck. The person on information line duty at Wellesley College was a student. Although at first the student told Liz she was not supposed to give out telephone numbers unless the caller knew both first and last names, she relaxed when Liz said, “You know that hot prof Florrie’s nuts about? Well, I’m his TA. He asked me to get in touch with her for him.”
“Oh, well, if you’re his teaching assistant. . .” She supplied the number.
Fortunately, Florrie was thrilled to be contacted by a news reporter. Although the camera was not hers, she knew it was a digital model. She said she’d get in touch with her friend Ellen and ask her to e-mail the image to Liz as soon as possible.
It took almost an hour for Liz to reach the newsroom, where she accessed her e-mail. Sure enough, the Wellesley student had come through. There was the image of the two attractive young women in the topiary garden. Unfortunately, though, the camera angle did not take in the summerhouse. Liz should have remembered this, because when she stood in the shade at the edge of the Pinetum to take a backlit shot, she would have had to point the camera westward, not northward, up the slope. The wider scene Liz had framed included Lake Waban and the balustrade that defined the shore. Exhausted, Liz printed out the image on ordinary paper, folded it into her pocket, and drove home.
Too tired to fuss with the window shades, Liz left them open and went straight to bed. That meant she had a great view of Tom’s legs through her kitchen window when she awoke in the morning. She invited him in and, ruefully, he agreed to give Cormac Kinnaird the packet of evidence Liz had prepared, if the doctor came by to collect it while Tom was still there. Standing at her kitchen counter and gazing at the photo she’d taken in the topiary garden, she left a telephone message for Cormac, telling him about the bird’s nest find and adding, “I’m off to inform Olga about what I’ve discovered. I’d tell Erik in person, too—it seems the civilized thing to do to inform the family personally—but he’s in police custody. Perhaps we can do that together, later,” she added, as Tom’s expression darkened.
Chapter 29
Liz drove to Wellesley and parked on the college campus. She wanted to make her way to Olga’s through the Pinetum and topiary garden. The walk would give her time to consider how to break the news.
Liz’s beautiful legs felt leaden as she left the topiary garden behind and rounded the lake to Olga’s house. And yet she strode on purposefully. Approaching the house from the lakeshore, she walked directly toward the door of the mudroom. Standing slightly ajar, the door was caught by a gust of wind as she neared it, affording her the chance to look inside while remaining unobserved. Olga could be seen standing with her back to the door. For the first time, Liz thought how odd it was for Olga to work with her back to that view. Then, she thought, perhaps it was explicable after all, since the woman’s husband had died in those waters.
On Olga’s potting bench stood not one but three flower arrangements. On the floor to the left and right of Olga stood still more. As Liz ran her eyes over the arrangements, she realized Olga had executed eight different designs representing as many schools of flower-design technique. There was a formal French arrangement, strong on big, blowsy blooms, in a gilt pedestal-style container. It would have looked at home in a French château. At the opposite extreme was a minimalist Ikebana design. Dependent on one bamboo stalk, one striking bloom of Heliconia, and a spear-like leaf Liz could not name, this was a study in proportion and balance. Olga’s technically perfect but disparate arrangements looked unlikely to be useful in any single venue.
Olga turned. She seemed unsurprised to see Liz standing there.
“I’m missing Ellen,” was all she said. She waved an arm towards the arrangements. In her hand was a pair of florist’s scissors designed for rose cutting.
Entering the mudroom, Liz removed a coat from one of the hooks near the door and held it, her arms extended, displaying to Olga the manufacturer’s label, marred with the word “Ritz” stamped on it in hot pink ink.
“I see we shop in the same place,” Liz said. “Puttin’ on the Ritz. Excellent bargains there, don’t you think? Even during the week before Christmas, one can buy a new coat, even a complete new outfit, on sale.”
Olga said nothing.
“You didn’t care about the price, though, did you, when you purchased this coat in that shop last December? It was more the convenience that attracted you. Money would have been no object in covering up what you did. No, it was the convenience that attracted you, wasn’t it, Olga? The shop is right around the corner from your hairdresser.”
Olga shifted the scissors from one hand to the other. She said nothing.
“The neighborhood around your hairdresser is one you know well, isn’t it? You could almost call it a ‘haunt.’ You’ve had the same hairdresser for years, even decades, haven’t you? You usually park your car under the Prudential Center, where Lord & Taylor is. Or, on occasion, you park it in Newton and travel into town on the Green Line with your daughter—the wife of an environmentalist, after all.
“Yes, you know the area well, in every season. Not far from Lord & Taylor are the Boston Public Library and the Copley Square T stop for the Green Line. A quick taxi ride would deliver you to Back Bay Station and the commuter rail that runs all the way out to Wellesley: a convenient route to Wellesley if you go into the city by train—let’s say, to rent a car after an accident. There’s a car rental place on Boylston Street, just doors away from Puttin’ on the Ritz.
“You also know that, in the winter when there is a snowstorm, snow gets thrown up on cars so that they are entirely covered with the stuff. Sometimes vehicles sit there for days or weeks before the city digs them out and tows them away.”
Olga set down her scissors and picked up a rose from the potting bench. Peering at Liz over its tightly closed bud she tore off a blood-red petal and cast it on the floor at her feet.
Still, she said nothing.
“You knew if you rented a car in Ellen’s name some days after she disappeared, it would suggest she was still living, that she had exited her kitchen, if not voluntarily, at least alive. And covered with snow, the car might take some time to be found. You had your daughter’s purse, Olga, didn’t you? Her credit card, her driver’s license, even her fountain pen. You must have been bundled up when you rented the car, wearing a hood, perhaps. It was an awful risk to take but you were in luck, with a clerk who was more interested in painting her nails than in taking a good look at you. Perhaps she was lax, too, in providing you with a pen. You didn’t want her to look up from her manicure so you used Ellen’s fountain pen to sign the car rental agreement. The pen Erik gave Ellen to celebrate their anniversary. Not the anniversary of their wedding, but the anniversary of their meeting: August eighteenth.”
Olga tore another petal off the rose and dropped it to the floor. And another. Then another.
“The earlier phone call, on Veronica’s birthday, in June: Anyone could have made that call. Even a cabbie might draw that date out of a passenger while making small talk. Erik hardly dared hope it was Ellen who made the birthday phone call. But a call on August 18? Well, that was different. It had to be significant that a call arrived from Ellen’s cell phone on that date!
“But Erik and Ellen are not the only people who know that date’s import. You know it, too, Olga, don’t you?”
Olga raised the rose before her eyes and scrutinized it. Without a word, she tore off two more petals, dropping each to the floor.
“Then panic set in and you became sloppy. After you guessed I’d spoken to Ali and after you accidentally revealed that you knew his Middle Eastern background, y
ou had to suggest Ellen was still living, didn’t you, Olga? And after you saw me looking at your coat collar, with its label stamped by a cheap discount store, you had to throw the suspicion on someone else, didn’t you?
“How convenient for you that Ellen’s husband had a cell phone that was identical in appearance to your daughter’s. One that doesn’t even reveal the phone’s own number when you consult it to find out the time. If you substituted it briefly for Erik’s, he’d never realize it was not his. And then, with your entrée to his house, you could easily retrieve the phone after you knew he’d made a call on it.”
Olga peeled another petal from the rose. She held the petal out before her on the palm of her hand and blew it off. It fell to the floor slowly, without a sound.
“You couldn’t know the bodies would be found while he had the phone in hand, though, could you? If you’d known they would be found then, you’d have made another wordless call yourself, wouldn’t you? The idea was to suggest she was alive, after all.
“And you couldn’t know he would phone me, of all people, could you? He might have called anyone, even perhaps the police. How bizarre that would have been! The most likely suspect in the murder of his wife phones the police on his wife’s cell phone—the very phone that has been used for months to suggest she is alive—to request information about the scene of the crime.
“But, in any event, he did not phone the police from Ellen’s phone. It was the trace on his line that led the police directly to the most likely suspect: the missing woman’s husband.
“You had to know the press would have a heyday with this, the perfect target. How could anyone help but think Erik had sought out the man with whom his wife presumably disappeared, and done him in? And after September eleventh, it is so easy to vilify anyone of Middle Eastern extraction. The public would support Erik’s wrath even as he was condemned for it legally.”
Front Page Teaser lhm-1 Page 30