“Are you saying there was no license plate on the car they arrived in?”
“That’s right. They drove up in a Crown Victoria with no plates. They looked pretty put out when nobody answered the door, I can tell you.”
“What do you mean by ‘put out’?”
“They were talking to each other a mile a minute. I couldn’t understand a word that they said. It must have been Arabic they were speaking. They were shaking their heads and talking away. Finally, they got in their car and drove off.”
“If you hadn’t heard about the apparent crime scene at the Johanssons’, do you think you would have thought their behavior was significant?”
“I think so. Like I said, they were out of place.”
Liz left the hairdresser and drove straight to the Johanssons’ street. She wasn’t keen on running herself but she knew enough joggers to be aware that exercise nuts are creatures of habit. Chances were good that one or more of the two o’clock joggers would pass by at the same time today.
It was 1:50 when Liz introduced herself to the first jogger on Fenwick Street.
“I would have been passing by then,” said a woman dressed in Olympic-quality running gear, “but I’d stopped to see the events on the City Hall Common. It was hilarious, I tell you! Until the little girl ran into the scene. Hey, haven’t I seen you somewhere before?”
Liz interviewed six more runners before a pair of women had information to add.
“No plates on the car? I didn’t notice that,” the taller of the two said.
“But it would make sense!” her running partner exclaimed. “They probably forgot to put dealer plates on the car when they took it out.”
“Dealer plates?”
“Yeah, it was Sam Maksoud and his son at the Johansson house. I know them because I bought my car from them.”
“‘We always go the extra mile,’” the two women said in unison.
“Not us as runners,” the tall gal laughed in response to the puzzled look on Liz’s face. “The Maksouds. That’s the dealership’s motto.”
“Is that the dealership on Needham Street?” Liz inquired.
After the joggers nodded confirmation, Liz drove her Tracer straight to it.
“Yeah, I remember the lady,” Sam Maksoud said, waving Liz into a chair in his glassed-in office with a view of the car showroom. “After the deal I gave to her, I’ll never forget her!”
“I’ve heard you’re doing some great price cutting for end of the season sales,” Liz said, remembering Tom Horton’s tip.
“That is true, but in Mrs. Johansson’s case it was a different story.”
“I’d love to hear it.”
“You have met the lady, yes?”
Liz nodded.
“An attractive lady, with the berry-blonde hair. I would never have imagined she would know the niceties of our language, our Arabic ways. Nor did I think such a polite lady had it in her to bargain like that. She so charmed me that I took some big dollars off the price of her car.”
“How did she do that?”
“She arrived here in her husband’s car, not the one she wished to trade in. When I asked her about the other vehicle, she said it needed a repair and she didn’t want to put any more money into it. When the customer says that, we know the car is rather iffy, but, of course, our mechanics can fix most anything. It’s often a different story if the vehicle is not running. So I asked the lady, ‘Does it run?’”
“What did she tell you?”
“That’s when she surprised me. ‘Hamdu-lillah,’ she said.”
“What does that mean?”
“Thanks to God. For those words, I took another two thousand dollars off the price of her car,” he grinned. “That’s not all the story. It turned out the trade-in was truly on its last legs. That delightfully devious lady had it towed up the steep hill of Walnut Street and then drove it the last few blocks to my dealership, on the level road! I know, because she hired my cousin to do the deed!”
“You’re smiling! Didn’t that make you angry?”
“Not at all! I have respect for such a woman. And I made up my losses by the end of the same day by bargaining hard with some customers who could afford it. Of course, she was much less comfortable when it came time to pick up her new car. So amusing it was! She hurried off without picking up the title. That piece of paper proves you own it, of course. I phoned her more than once about it. And when she was never in, I decided to deliver it myself. My son and I tried to drop it off at her house, it turns out, on the very day she disappeared. By the way, you need a new vehicle, you let old man Maksoud know, OK?” the car dealer said, pressing his business card into Liz’s hand.
That eliminates one of the ‘foreign’ phone callers, Liz thought to herself as she returned to her car. The guy who called about “some title” was not a library patron, after all. It was the car dealer. Placing the business card on her dashboard, Liz noticed the pair of boldfaced Ms. Could the two Ms on Ellen’s blackboard have referred to Maksoud Motors rather than the colorful candies that “melt in your mouth, not in your hand?”
Still, positive news was a hard sell at the Banner. Back in the newsroom, Liz’s satisfaction in tying up some loose ends was short-lived under the city editor’s scrutiny.
“OK, five inches,” he told her. And play up the mailman’s reaction.”
It turned out that Dermott McCann made an excellent, if reluctant, decision. When Maksoud and son were taken in for questioning an hour after Liz left them, the World was onto the story—their only source an oil delivery man and Gulf War veteran who had seen men he took to be “Iraqi thugs.”
Liz did mention the mailman’s take on things in her story’s lead, but only to make him look as suspicious of airmail letters as he was of insects. Fortunately for the Banner, Dermott McCann had other fish to fry that night, so he didn’t edit Liz’s piece. He was occupied overseeing coverage of a basketball player who was hauled in and then released by police for attempted rape of a nightclub “date.” While the papers that came off the Banner’s press splashed the headline “BOUNCER BOUNCED,” the World’s front page broke the news, “Father & Son Car Dealers Implicated in Missing Mother Case.”
In the early hours of the morning, after the first copies of the World reached the Banner’s newsroom, night editor Esther O’Faolin saw to it that in late editions, Liz’s story got a front-page teaser headed: “TITLED GENTS: Do-Good Dealers Slammed Unjustly.”
New York City, December 16, 2000
Ellen waited at the elevator bay to ascend to the Windows on the World restaurant. Excitement about meeting Nadia was foremost in her mind, but it did not prevent her from noticing that the small crowd with whom she stood waiting for elevators was also a melting pot of peoples. While many were well dressed businessmen and women sporting corporate duds, they possessed complexions and facial characteristics from every corner of the world. Others in the crowd were an international mix, too, whether they wore the camera gear and belly packs marking them as tourists, casual dress and envelopes that identified them as couriers, the uniforms and clipboards that announced them as UPS or FEDEX delivery staff, or the garb of other workers, including telephone, copy machine, and computer repairmen. Ellen scanned every face she could see in case she and Nadia were already keeping company, but she did not recognize her pen pal among the elevator crowd.
The experience made her call to mind an arrival at a large international airport, where, after fetching baggage and going through customs, you step through double doors into a huge lobby to find yourself suddenly surrounded by a crowd of expectant faces. If you’re looking for someone from whom you’ve been long separated, you feel pressured to recognize the person first, so you scrutinize the crowd in earnest haste. But if you know no one is among the crowd to greet you, you nevertheless feel the full weight of
the crowd’s attention and experience the urge to do something—a casual soft-shoe, perhaps, or quick juggling act—to merit it.
But Ellen was not the center of attention here. Except in the eyes of one Middle Easterner. And it was not Nadia.
Finally, the elevator doors opened. After some thirty people exited the single car, Ellen pushed forward to board it for its return trip. Then someone grabbed her shoulder firmly and spun her around.
“Ellen, Ellen!” Nadia cried out with delight. “I am giving thanks to Allah that it’s you. Only my pen friend could be wearing the scarf I sent to her twenty years ago.”
“You sent it to me for my fourteenth birthday, when you said I had become a woman. Oh Nadia, how wonderful to see you after all these years! And look, you are wearing the leather belt I tooled for you when I was thirteen!”
“Not, I am afraid, as easy to see as that scarf. I wonder, would you have recognized me if I hadn’t seen you first?”
Ellen paused. Then she said, “Ya sadiqati al habibah aa rifuki kull al-awqat.”
Nadia smiled and shook her head in pleased amazement, swinging her chicly bobbed brown hair from side to side. And then she pressed her cheek against Ellen’s and held it there for a good few seconds.
After opening their hearts to one another in letters for decades without laying eyes on anything but photographs of one another, the two women only had eyes for each other. Arm-in-arm, they joined the crowd entering an elevator.
Chapter 9
Boston, Massachusetts, December 21, 2000
When Erik Johansson discovered the title to his wife’s car in his mailbox the following day, he shared the information with Ramona Hobart, host of the nationally broadcast morning television program, Wake Up USA. Erik had consented to an interview in order to spread the word about his missing wife to millions of American households.
Liz arrived in the newsroom to find a message from editor-in-chief James Conrad glowing in green letters on her ATEX terminal. “SEE ME ASAP,” it read.
Liz hardly knew what to expect when she arrived at the editor’s office. Certainly, it wasn’t the instruction, “Smile pretty and show your smarts.” But that was the advice Conrad gave her.
She’d seen similar happenings in the newsroom before but had never been the focus of them. Now, as Wake Up USA’s production team arrived and set up lights in the newsroom, she knew those lights would shine on her. The idea was to show the journalist at work amid the sea of desks. Since Liz’s workstation was not near the city desk and large Beantown Banner sign, she was seated for the occasion at political columnist Fred Constanzo’s desk. When Constanzo walked away muttering, no one could be sure if he was voicing complaint about being bumped from his desk or mouthing lines from his latest column.
Liz was glad she’d chosen to dress in a reasonably respectable teal sweater and black skirt that day. She took off her snow boots and put on the pair of heels she kept under her desk. Then, wired with a microphone, and with no other preparation, she crossed her legs as the bright lights came on. Through an earphone hidden under her auburn curls, Liz heard the disembodied voice of Hobart herself.
“Now we turn to Liz Higgins, features reporter for the tabloid Beantown Banner,” Hobart announced. “Good morning, Liz,” Hobart said familiarly. “Would you say the police action in hauling in the car dealers was another case of racial profiling?”
Liz looked straight into the camera. “That’s a possibility, Ramona. Certainly everyone was ready to leap on the characterization of the men as Arabic or foreign. Our competing paper reported the police were contacted by an oil deliveryman. He told police he’d seen two men on the missing woman’s doorstep in the hour before the bloody scene in the kitchen was discovered. According to their report, the oilman called the men ‘foreign.’ My first sources, a mailman and a jogger in the neighborhood, called the car dealers ‘out of place’ in the neighborhood.”
“The neighborhood seems to have been full of people.”
“Certainly there were several. In addition to the father-and-son car dealers, there were the oilman, the mailman, and some joggers. While all of these people were in the vicinity around the time of the disappearance, police did not take the non-Arabs in for questioning.”
“Why didn’t you fall for the assumptions made by your first sources?”
“I try to look at facts, not skin color or accent. When I learned the car had no plates, I went back to the neighborhood and interviewed joggers until I found two who guessed the truth. When they pointed me to Maksoud Motors, I learned the nature of the car dealers’ errand. The men just wanted to do a favor for their customer.”
Now Hobart changed her friendly tone to one that was much more challenging. “And you believed them, just like that? Isn’t it true, proof of their good deed didn’t surface until this morning, after your article went to press? Couldn’t that have been just dumb luck?”
Liz saw James Conrad and Dick Manning through the bright lights. They were watching the interview on the technician’s monitor. The editor looked worried. The reporter looked pleased.
“I believed Sam Maksoud because he told me an anecdote about the car deal that jibed with information I had from Ellen Johansson’s neighbor. He also admitted he phoned Mrs. Johansson about the car’s title. I knew from another household insider that he’d done that. I filed that report because I knew—not just believed—it was true.”
Liz blinked as the lights went off and the commotion of packing the equipment away ensued.
“Nice job, Higgins,” Conrad said, as if he hadn’t doubted her for a moment.
Manning was nowhere to be seen.
Thanks to the television spot—and to ongoing problems for the basketball star—Liz was granted another day to work on the missing mom case while Dick set his sights on the hoop star’s lawyer. Although she had not succeeded in having anyone else smooth the way toward an interview with Ellen’s mother, she made a call to the Wellesley telephone number Laura Winters had provided to her. A male voice answered and repeated her name aloud. Was it a police officer or male relative screening calls for Mrs. Swenson?
Apparently, Veronica was within ear range. “Liz! Liz! I want to talk to her. She said she would find Mommy. I want to know if she found her! I want to talk to Liz!”
Olga Swenson came on the line.
“What do you want with us?” she asked. “I’m not talking to the press.”
“It’s my hope you will consider talking with me, off the record if you insist. The more I know about your daughter, the more I can do to find her.”
“My son-in-law talked to your paper and they made him appear to be a man looking for an alibi. In fact, wasn’t your name on that piece?”
“My colleague wrote that piece, using some quotes I supplied. But he cut short your son’s remark about wishing he had stayed home. I know that made Erik look suspicious. I apologize.”
“It’s bad enough that they always think the husband did it, without the newspapers adding fuel to the fire. But I saw in the paper today that you got the whole story about those car salesmen. You were more thorough than the World’s reporter.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Swenson. I have an advantage: I know Ellen and Veronica enough to care about finding the whole truth.”
Olga Swenson said nothing.
Liz waited out the silence.
“Please, Grandma!” Veronica said at a distance.
“Let’s go find Hershey,” a voice in the background said, apparently succeeding in leading Veronica away.
“I always walk my dog along the shores of Lake Waban at around one-thirty p.m. If you park at the Wellesley College Faculty Club and walk west around the lakeshore, you’ll see me. If you bring anyone else, I won’t talk. No notebook. No recorder, either. I caution you, my dog can be protective.”
Liz wanted
desperately to ask Olga Swenson to bring a hairbrush or personal item of Ellen’s to their rendezvous. But, fearing the request for a source of DNA would turn off the woman altogether, she said only, “Thank you, Mrs. Swenson. You can count on me.”
Next, Liz dialed up her voice mail. It was full of messages from public relations people trying to get attention for authors coming to town, community group events, and the like. Nothing useful. Liz’s ATEX machine held only internal messages. Nonetheless, she looked them over. Again, nothing germane to the Johansson case.
It was a thorn in the side of most Banner staffers that they did not have PCs at their desks. Consequently, they also did not have e-mail access unless they worked on a PC in the Banner’s photo library. It was a place filled with battered filing cabinets—topped with brave and dusty philodendrons and filled with photos—arranged in a backward, right-to-left alphabetical order around the room. Some of the file drawers were made more noticeable by cutouts of notables—ranging from dead presidents to Miss Piggy—pasted or taped on them.
Since the PC was in demand more often than not, staffers had to take turns using it. Such was the case this time, too, as an editorial assistant from the sports department was using the machine to call up statistics—and perhaps look for former faux pas—regarding the troubled basketball star. Probably, he was compiling the information for Manning. Liz stormed out of the library and headed for the photo department. There she picked up the manila envelope DeZona had left for her in his cubbyhole.
Liz retraced her steps to the library, where the PC was unoccupied at last. She put in her password and called up a long list of e-mail messages. Like her voice mail, most of the messages were from PR people. She ignored all but a few. Beginning with addresses she did not recognize, she opened a message that turned out to be an ad for printer cartridges, then one from a self-proclaimed expert on astrology, and finally a one-word message from an e-mail address she did not recognize. “Blister,” it read.
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