Front Page Teaser

by Rosemary Herbert

  “Sometimes I wonder why these wives hire me,” Nesnarf said. “Forget the old evidence of lipstick on the collar. I had a case in which an errant husband came home from a rendezvous with custard on his cravat. Yes, a cravat! That’s how uncool this dude was. The problem was, he was one of those extreme vegans who won’t eat any animal products. And his wife was a food sciences professor at the culinary institute. A quick analysis in her lab proved this guy truly had egg on his cravat, if not his face.”

  The mention of cooking ingredients made Liz recall the bloody scene in Ellen’s kitchen, captured in DeZona’s photo. She found a pay phone and called the Banner’s photo department.

  “Photo. DeZona here.”

  “René! I’m glad you answered. It’s Liz. How long are you on tonight?”

  “Another few hours unless they send me out on assignment.”

  “Listen, could you do me a favor?”

  “Depends on what it is and on what The Powers That Be need me to do.”

  “Could you print the rest of your pictures from the Johansson kitchen?”

  “I only took two shots before the police kicked me out, but I have some I took outside and in the living room with you and the kid, too.”

  “Print as many as you can, please. I need them to show to a forensics guy tonight. And could you enlarge any sections that show blood or other forensic evidence?”

  “Yeah, sure. You know Dick has already been interviewing the medical examiner. What’s his name? Barney Williams. I know because I took a head-shot for the paper.”

  “Were you with Dick all day?”

  “Part of the time. Look, where are you calling from?”

  “Worcester.”

  “Well, why don’t you let me get on with this? We can talk when you get to the newsroom.”

  “Okay. One more thing, René.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’ve got a film Ellen Johansson took when she was out of town, I think. Could you print it on the sly for me?”

  “I’ll try,” DeZona said, hanging up.

  Liz made her way to the reference desk.

  “I have a Boston Public Library card,” she said. “Would I be able to use that card to take out books here?”

  “I’m afraid not,” the librarian said. “We’re in a different network. And you’d have to be a resident of greater Worcester in order to apply for a library card here. You can certainly use our books within the building, however.”

  “That won’t work for me. I really need to look at some books for an article I’m writing for the Beantown Banner. I’m working under a tight deadline and need to take the books home with me to examine later.”

  “There is something I can do to save you time at the Boston Public Library,” the librarian offered. “I can look online to see which branches of the BPL hold the books you need. I can even tell you if they are listed as checked out.”

  “That’s much better than nothing. Thank you.”

  “What titles are you looking for?”

  “Charles Lindbergh’s The Spirit of St. Louis and Susan Glaspell’s A Jury of Her Peers.”

  The librarian rapidly typed in the first title.

  “Lindbergh’s book is in at the BPL main branch and in Jamaica Plain. Now, let’s see about the Susan Glaspell. Hmm. Nothing under the title. Let me try the author’s name.”

  “What Glaspell work are you looking for?” said a man wearing a “WORCESTER READS!” T-shirt. Below that exclamation, his shirt was emblazoned with the words, “Friends of the Worcester Public Library.”

  “Oh, hello, John,” the librarian said. “I’m not seeing the title A Jury of Her Peers under the name Susan Glaspell.”

  “That’s because it’s a short story, not a novel,” John said. “It should show up in something like The Oxford Book of American Detective Stories. The story is based on a murder she covered when she was a reporter for some Midwest newspaper. She actually first wrote a play based on the incident, and titled it Trifles.”

  “You’re in luck,” the librarian told Liz. “John’s a book dealer and detective fiction buff.”

  “Would you have a copy of the play in your store?” Liz asked him.

  “I wish I did. It would be worth a pretty penny.”

  “Too bad. I want to get my hands on a copy of the book urgently.”

  “I’ve been looking for it in the BPL system,” the librarian said, “but it’s not there. Now I see it’s not in our catalogue, either. And I also don’t see it in the Minuteman Library Network.”

  “As you can see,” John said, “copies of the play are hard to come by. I could probably get you one through another book dealer, but that could take weeks or more. But if you’re just interested in knowing what the play is about, the short story will be adequate.”

  “Our copy of The Oxford Book of American Detective Stories is out,” the librarian said. “Let me look in the short story index to see where else it might be anthologized.”

  “Don’t bother,” said John. “I’ve got a copy of the Oxford Book in my store. It’s pretty dog-eared, so it’ll go cheap.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t have time to travel far,” Liz said.

  “My shop is just across the street.”

  “Fantastic!” Liz said, putting on her coat and following the book dealer to his shop.

  Except for a single high-school student holding the fort, the Worcester Hills Book Shop was completely deserted. Apparently the bibliophiles who usually frequented it were all clustered at the feet of Maurice E. Bouvard, who was holding forth at the Worcester library at the moment.

  John found the Oxford Book without much ado, and then made his way to a section of bookshelves labeled “Aviation History.” He returned to Liz with a wide smile on his face.

  “Yup, just as I hoped,” he said. “Here’s the Oxford Book with the Glaspell story in it. And here’s an anthology that excerpts Lucky Lindy’s The Spirit of St. Louis. I realize it’s not Lindbergh’s full account, but it may be adequate if you’re working under a deadline. That’s an odd combination of topics. Do you mind if I ask you what the connection is?”

  Liz was usually loath to reveal what she was working on, but the man had been so helpful that she told him, “A missing woman loved both of these books, and some others, too.”

  “The combination is a bit suggestive, but I wonder if I think so only because you’ve told me the reader’s circumstances. If she had treasured those two books but never went missing, would the same thought come to mind?” the book dealer mused aloud.

  “What thought?”

  “This woman flies from home but knows any loose ends she leaves will be seen as significant—if a woman gets the chance to look things over. That’ll be eleven dollars for the two books.”

  “They’re worth much more than that to me,” Liz said, waving away change from a twenty-dollar bill. “Thank you.”

  Chapter 5

  It was mid-afternoon when Liz left the bookshop. She’d lost count of how many times she wished the Banner supplied her with a cell phone. Now, without one, it was a question of taking time to return to the library’s phone booth or waiting until she was in the newsroom to contact Laura Winters, Veronica’s aftercare program teacher. Looking at her watch, Liz figured the aftercare provider would presently be welcoming her charges. She’d wait to phone her and get on the road immediately.

  Seated in the Tracer, Liz wished she’d returned to the library after all, since it would have been the source of brownies and coffee served by the library’s friends. Having eaten neither breakfast nor lunch, Liz was ravenous. Once she was moving steadily along Route 290, en route to the Mass Pike, she took a granola bar from her glove compartment and turned on the radio.

  The former was inadequate to appease her hung
er. The latter only whetted her appetite for finding out what happened to Ellen Johansson.

  “Turning to local news,” the announcer intoned, “Erik Johansson has been detained by police for questioning again today, in the case of the missing Newton wife and mother. Johansson’s remarks, reported this morning in the Beantown Banner, indicate he wished he had a better alibi for the hours during which his wife, Ellen Johansson, seems likely to have disappeared.”

  Newton Police Chief Anthony Warner’s voice came on the air. “More troubling than that is the guy’s apparent belief that his wife is dead,” he said. “You can see in the Banner, the guy’s talking about his wife in the past tense.”

  Hearing this, Liz stepped a little harder on the accelerator and made her way to the Mass Pike. This took her straight past her house and the billboard above it. The latter formed an amusing tableau, since half of the billboard still showed a rain-splashed scene and the words “DON’T BE CAUGHT,” while the other half showed a flashy red sports car zooming down a snaking road straight for the vodka bottle.

  “At least the dealership name is not on that half of the billboard,” Liz thought. “Old Man Maksoud would be fit to be tied if he saw this combination of ads.”

  The next few billboards along the pike advertised the Museum of Science—“IT’S ALIVE!”—and the Boston World—“The sun never sets on our coverage.”

  “They don’t even give their own ad uppercase type,” Liz laughed to herself.

  There was no billboard in sight for her newspaper. The Banner made up for that with huge advertisements for itself on the sides of their newspaper delivery trucks. With circulation done for the day, these vehicles were packed into the parking lot, making it harder for Liz to find a space for the Tracer. Backed by an image of the American flag unfurling in a wind, the ads on the trucks proclaimed the Banner’s well-known slogan—“STAR-SPANGLED REPORTING!”—in uppercase type.

  Under icy gray clouds that looked loaded with snow, Liz hurried from her car to the Banner’s brick edifice. Liz rushed down the ink-stained hall that led past the huge room filled with printing presses, only stopping to grab a can of orange juice from the vending machine before heading to the photo department. She flung open the door to see René working on the Mac on photos of a fire.

  In a rare move, Dermott entered the photo department at that moment. Usually, the photographers came to him.

  “How you doin’ on those fire shots?” he demanded.

  “They’re coming along. What’s the hurry?”

  “We’ve got a goner, now, so the story may go front page. Especially if you’ve got a wham-o shot. Hey, is that a figure behind the flames there?” he asked, scrutinizing the photo now displayed on the computer screen.

  “Could be. I think it is.”

  “That does it! Print that one pronto. I want it in time for the news meeting.”

  “Sure, Dermott. I’ll have it for you ASAP.”

  “Have it sooner!” Dermot said, rushing out of the room.

  “Yeah, I did get a chance to print the photos—not all of them but enough to get you started, I hope,” René said, anticipating Liz’s question. “As you can see, they sent me to a fire scene. Your prints are in my cubbyhole there, in a manila envelope. You won’t find any enlargements of details. There just wasn’t time. I’ll get to the rest as soon as I can.”

  “Thanks, René. I owe you,” Liz said, and handed him Ellen Johansson’s film.

  “That’s true enough!”

  “Looks like a woman in the flames there. That’s a great shot, René. Upsetting, though.”

  “Another case of the camera seeing more than the eye. I just kept shooting. It was only when it came up on the machine that I knew what I had.”

  “I’ll let you get to it,” Liz said, collecting the manila envelope from DeZona’s cubby.

  “Just so you know, Manning’s hounding the hubby in your Newton case. And the medical examiner thinks the mom may have manipulated the scene.”

  “You mean in the kitchen?”

  “That’s right.”

  “What makes him think that?”

  “Manning will explain in tomorrow’s Banner,” Dermott said, standing in the door. “For Chrissake, let DeZona get on with his work! Now what have you got for me on the mystery mavens? Whatever it is, you’d better be able to spell it out in six inches. Between the freakin’ fire and the missing mom case, there’s a squeeze on for space.”

  “Six it is!” Liz said. For once, she was relieved to have little space. It would allow her to file her story and head out again. “I’ve got Mary Higgins Clark and a private eye telling mystery fans how they go about their work. You could head it, ‘HOWDUNIT?’”

  “We’ll see about that,” the city editor said.

  At her desk, Liz took out another granola bar and opened her orange juice. Then she scanned her contact list on ATEX and dialed the Children’s Enrichment Aftercare Program.

  “Laura left for the day,” a receptionist informed her. “May I take a message?”

  “Isn’t it early for her to leave?”

  “It is, actually. But she’s helping out with a child who’s been traumatized.”

  “Veronica Johansson?”

  “How did you know? And whose mom are you?”

  Liz hung up without answering. Then she wrote an unremarkable, six-inch story about the mystery conference. While she was writing, the message “File and fly rule in effect’’ flashed at the top of her screen. She looked out the window. Heavy snow. Marvelous! This meant she could send the story into the system and split. Liz pulled a file photo of Mary Higgins Clark from the Banner’s photo library, turned it in at the city desk, and returned to her desk.

  She looked in the West Suburban Boston phone book for Laura Winters in Newton. No Laura there, so she turned to the Boston book. A “Winters, L.” was listed at a Brighton address. Liz noted the address on Summit Street, took down the phone number, then dialed the latter. A perky voice on the phone answering machine invited her to leave a message. It sounded like the daycare provider. Again cursing her lack of a cell phone, Liz left a message with her work and home phone numbers. On impulse, she said she’d be at the Green Briar around 7:00 p.m., and invited Laura to call her there. Then she phoned Veronica’s home. If she didn’t catch Laura Winters there, perhaps Erik Johansson would pick up.

  “Hello there! You’ve reached the Johanssons’ voice-mail box. If you’d like to leave a message for Erik, Ellen, or Veronica, go right ahead after the beep,” announced Ellen Johnasson’s recorded voice. Just as though nothing had happened to her.

  The cheerful ordinariness of the message stopped Liz cold. She had sipped tea with this woman, even held Ellen’s traumatized child in her arms. But in her quest to grab the front page, she’d offered only cold comfort. Now, miles from their home, she did the best she could to embrace Ellen’s shattered family more warmly.

  “I’ll find you, Ellen,” she said after the beep. “I’ll bring you home.”

  As she pulled on her coat, she saw a copy of the front page that had been prepared earlier. “A PINCH OF BLOOD,” its headline read. It would never run, since the story had been bumped off Page One by the fire fatality. On an inside page there’d be smaller type and less hype.

  And because it would never run, the rejected page was fair game. Liz snatched it up and made a swift exit into a driving snowstorm.

  The Banner’s parking lot was normally a litter-strewn expanse of concrete, old-model cars, and newspaper delivery trucks. But now the fast-falling snow softened every angle, transferring this urban eyesore into a winter wonderland. If there had not been a missing mom or fire fatality, Banner headline writers might have been playing with words like “GUARANTEED WHITE,” since this snow would surely stay on the ground until Christmas. Unless Ellen Johansson showed up in the
six days remaining before the holiday, the little girl who started out the season finding the area’s best Santa would not find her Christmas to be merry and bright.

  Shivering, Liz approached the snow-covered Tracer, unlocked it, and took out her combination windshield scraper and brush. As she pushed snow off the spoiler designed to improve the aerodynamics of her car, she shook her head at the silliness of it. The accessory only made the vehicle look like a clunker that aimed—and failed—at looking sporty.

  “Not unlike this reporter,” she thought. “I’d like to be the Banner’s hottest writer, but . . .”

  Still, the car made up for its uncool appearance with compact size and reliability. In a city where parking spaces were at a premium, Liz could park the car on a dime. Now, it started up immediately when she turned it on. On the snowbound city streets, it performed just as well as the much more expensive, four-wheel-drive vehicles that shared the roads with her. But, in this snow, would it make it up the hills in Brighton? And when she arrived at the Green Briar, would Kinnaird be there after all? Would the good doctor be so keen on Irish music that he’d brave a blizzard for a chance to play his banjo?

  The weather dictated Liz’s next decisions. Traffic was too slow to allow time for a quick stop at home before her Green Briar meeting. So she steered the Tracer to Brighton. The Beatles belted out “You’re Going To Lose That Girl” on her radio as Liz passed Saint Elizabeth’s Hospital. It made a welcome change from the Christmas carols jamming the airwaves. Until Liz thought about the song’s title, that is. Feeling sure Veronica’s mother would not voluntarily abandon her daughter, Liz looked up at the hundreds of illuminated windows and large electrified cross that glowed through the falling snow on the massive hospital complex set high on a hilltop.

  Below, traffic was snarled in the complicated intersections of Brighton Center. A Christmas tree lit with multicolored bulbs shared a small traffic island with an antique clock topping a pole like a lollipop. Liz passed the Green Briar, traveling about a half-mile farther west to the base of Summit Street. Finding the road ran one way in the wrong direction, she drove around in the intensifying storm until she found a road that wound around the hill to what she thought was the other end of the one-way street. But it was the wrong road after all, Liz realized, as she pulled out of a skid in time to read “Tip Top Street” on a snowy street sign. Liz recognized the street name but, distracted by the storm, couldn’t recall why. It turned out the well-named street went up one side and down the other of a hill cluttered with quirky houses. With many of the houses lit up in Christmas lights, the effect was like an illustration in a child’s picture book. Descending the hill, and ascending another, Liz at last found Summit Street.