Front Page Teaser

by Rosemary Herbert

  “Is she living with you?”

  “Just for a few weeks. She’s a student at BU, lives in the dorms. She’s with me while the dorm’s closed for Christmas vacation.”

  Liz bit into the pastry and smiled. “Delicious,” she said.

  But Tom was quiet, looking at the ice bucket full of flowers.

  “I guess there’s a lot we don’t know about each other,” he said.

  “That’s for sure. But, oh my God, I’ve got to run! I’m supposed to be in Wellesley in under a half-hour,” Liz said pulling on her boots and grabbing her reporter’s notebook. She was glad the car keys were stowed in her jacket pocket, for once.

  “That’s cutting it close,” Tom said, wrapping up her Eccles cake in a napkin and carrying it and the coffee containers to the door. Following Liz to her car, he handed a coffee and pastry to her before she slammed the door shut. Rolling down the window, Liz leaned out and said, “Thank you, Tom, for the treats. Merry Christmas!”

  As she drove away, Liz took a sip from the coffee container and grimaced. It was loaded with sugar. Tom had handed her the wrong one.

  By the time she reached the Wellesley College faculty club parking lot, it was almost twenty minutes later than the appointment time. And there was no sign of Olga Swenson. Cursing the cold and sickeningly sweet coffee, Liz got out of her car and scanned the scene. With the snow washed away by the rain, it was pointless to look for footprints. And, she reasoned, if she walked around the faculty club building to look for Mrs. Swenson and Hershey coming or going along the campus path to the lakeshore, she might miss their approach on foot—or by car if Mrs. Swenson was also late and had chosen to drive to the meeting place.

  Deciding it was worth a quick look at the campus path in any case, Liz ran as fast as she could in her heavy boots and rounded the building. Olga Swenson could be seen, back bowed, returning along the path towards the lake. When Liz called out, Hershey bounded in her direction.

  “I’m so sorry to be late, Mrs. Swenson,” Liz shouted.

  Turning to face Liz, Ellen Johansson’s mother lifted her shoulders and straightened her posture, but her facial expression remained crestfallen.

  “Still no word,” Liz spoke for her.

  “And it’s Christmas,” the older woman said.

  She didn’t have to say more. Both women shared the same thought. If Ellen Johansson were alive and well, she would not fail to be in touch on the holiday. The two women walked in step, side-by-side, along the campus path.

  “It’s not much, but I think I’ve got a piece of somewhat heartening news for you,” Liz said, taking DeZona’s photograph of the living room from her handbag.

  The older woman scrutinized it, perplexed.

  “Do you see the teacup there?” Liz asked.

  “Of course.”

  “Look at the china pattern, please, Mrs. Swenson. Am I correct in concluding the pattern is called ‘Forget-me-not?’”

  “Yes. It is. Of course! ‘Forget-me-not!’”

  “When I first met your daughter and Veronica, Ellen served us tea. Veronica dropped her teacup. I think the cup must have cracked or chipped and Ellen wrote herself a blackboard memo noting the china pattern.”

  Olga Swenson’s eyes brimmed with tears as, without a word, she embraced Liz. Then the two walked in tandem, with the older woman holding her companion’s elbow. Perhaps, once again, the pair shared the same thought: At least Ellen did not choose to desert her family.

  But if this was not a case of suicide, what was the truth of the matter?

  Olga Swenson seemed to collect herself. Noticing another dog walker approaching, she called Hershey to her side and attached his leash. But as he pulled in excitement at seeing the other dog, she grimaced.

  “Blister,” she said. “It’s nothing, just from the dog pulling.”

  “No, perhaps it’s not nothing,” Liz said, recalling the repeated e-mail messages.

  “Hmm?” Olga Swenson said, pulling on her gloves.

  “Do you have any idea what your daughter has been reading recently?” Liz asked.

  “Why should I?”

  “I must tell you this in strictest confidence.”

  “It seems I owe you that, at least.”

  “One of Ellen’s library colleagues seemed to be worried about your daughter’s choice of reading matter, which, I gather, she could see listed in the library’s circulation records.”

  “It wouldn’t surprise me if she refused to say what those records contain. Ellen’s talked to me about it. She and her colleagues regard themselves as a kind of last bastion protecting readers’ privacy. That seems reasonable to me when it’s a question of one scholar repeating or getting a hop on another’s research, but what could there be to hide in a housewife’s reading list?”

  “Apparently enough to worry your daughter’s friend, Lucy Gray.”

  “I’ll give Lucy a call right away.”

  “That would make it clear I’d betrayed her confidence.”

  “Well, we have to do something!” Olga Swenson said exasperatedly.

  “I think there is something you can do, Mrs. Swenson. I have been repeatedly receiving a one-word e-mail message that might just be significant. It didn’t occur to me until just now, but the word in the message, ‘Blister,’ contains the word ‘list.’”

  “And a B at the start of the word! That’s precisely the kind of shorthand Ellen and her colleagues often use. ‘Blown’ for ‘book on interlibrary loan’ and that sort of thing. Ellen has said they try to select words starting with b—for ‘book’ or ‘biblio’—that mean something in themselves.”

  “I hope we’re onto something. Do you think you could get access to your daughter’s computer terminal and personal items at the library?”

  “I think I’d find it easier to collect her knickknacks than log onto her computer. Why do you ask?”

  “I’d like you to try that word on the library system and see if it’s a password to the circulation record. If it isn’t, perhaps you could look around and see if she kept a list of passwords to be used at work.”

  “How would I guarantee that I’d have any privacy? I’m not very computer savvy, either, you know. Wouldn’t it be better for you to get Erik to do this?”

  “I don’t think so. First of all, he hardly trusts me after he was misquoted in that article.”

  “I could convince him that you’re working with us.”

  “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 f
rom 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 Fa-ud’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 person 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.