Front Page Teaser

by Rosemary Herbert

  In addition, Erik let Liz know he phoned Nadia’s Jerusalem home twice a week, every week. Liz had been doing the same thing. There was no answering machine, so the phone just rang and rang each time either of them called. In February, while Veronica spent her school vacation with Olga, Erik made an unproductive trip to Nadia’s Jerusalem address, only to have neighbors tell him they had no idea when she would return. They insisted they had no information to share about relatives or friends of Nadia.

  Unwilling to trust Erik on this, Liz prevailed on the Banner’s travel editor, Susan Damon, to visit Nadia’s address while she was on assignment there in May. Susan, too, found Nadia’s neighbors less than helpful.

  Once a month, Liz penned a letter to Nadia, expressing her concern for Ellen and her hope that Nadia would contact her at the first opportunity. She also phoned Jan Van Wormer on the eighteenth of every month, the anniversary of Ellen’s disappearance. But there was never news of the man who called himself Al Hazard. Spring came and went as Liz, working with Erik, systematically contacted United Nations personnel who they thought might require the services of a translator with skills in English and Arabic. Not one of them knew a thing about Nadia.

  Still, the pen pal’s postcards kept coming. Most were sent from airports and bore messages indicating Nadia was about to leave for another destination. This had been true throughout the pen pals’ correspondence, Erik said, recalling how his wife had envied the international life her correspondent enjoyed.

  Veronica’s June 11 birthday came and went with no word from Ellen. However, that day there was a phone call made to the Johansson home from Ellen’s cell phone. The caller—was it Ellen?—said nothing. Investigation of the cell-phone records indicated no roaming charges for the call, which must have been placed from a location tantalizingly close to home. At the urging of the police, Erik continued to keep the cell phone in service, in case another call came through.

  For her birthday gift to Veronica, Olga had Veronica’s birthstone attached to Ellen’s wedding ring circlet to make a unique pendant. “I know people think Erik did something to drive Ellen away, but I’m sure he didn’t. That marriage was rock solid,” Olga told Liz, “so I’m celebrating it and Veronica’s birthday with that pendant.”

  On June 18—the six-month anniversary of Ellen’s disappearance—Liz wrote a recap of the mystery for the Banner and included Olga’s heartwarming vote of confidence in her son-in-law to balance the many unanswered questions that led many to think ill of him. Nevertheless, Erik was uncomfortable with the article and dropped his contact with Liz after it ran. The anniversary article also drew criticism from Lucy Gray, who phoned Liz in a pique when it was published.

  “I didn’t betray your trust . . . ” Liz began, in response to the librarian’s angry tone.

  “You couldn’t have!” Lucy said. “I never gave you access to the information.”

  “Well, not directly. But you did e-mail me the title of the list, if not the password.”

  “What e-mail? What password?”

  “You didn’t send all those e-mails with the word ‘Blister’?”

  “No, I didn’t! I debated about letting you know but I just couldn’t.”

  “Then, it must have been someone else. But who was it? I didn’t talk with anyone else at the library.”

  Liz explained how Olga had retrieved the information. Could it have been the most unlikely person the two could imagine: Monica Phillips? In any case, Lucy seemed to relax knowing someone else had done the deed she had debated about perpetrating.

  “So, you know about Ellen’s reading choices then?” Lucy asked.

  “How to Disappear Completely and Never Be Found,” Liz said, naming the memorable title.

  “Not that one! That’s a children’s book.”

  “With a title like that?”

  “Yes. You can tell by the call number indicating the juvenile category. She probably took it out to read to Veronica along with the other children’s title on the list. No, it was the title about child abuse that concerned me.”

  “I don’t remember anything about that on the list.”

  “The circulation list does not provide subtitles. Perhaps that’s why you didn’t see Silent Knights as significant.”

  “Is it a book about child abuse? Did Ellen ever let on to you any fears that Erik might abuse Veronica?”

  “Erik! No. The book Ellen was reading was more along the self-help lines. That book’s full title is, Silent Knights: Finding the Courage to Admit Aberrant Impulses. It addresses how to overcome the impulse to behave abusively. When I told you the reading list made me doubt how well I knew Ellen, this is what I was talking about. I have to wonder if Ellen herself had a problem.”

  “That’s why you were reluctant to share the information.”

  “That, and my profound belief in the right to readers’ privacy. Suppose Ellen was only trying to get further support on a problem she had thus far been able to control? If the reading list were known, she might be vilified despite doing a good job of maintaining self control.”

  “You have a point there.”

  “I have to wonder, Liz, if Ellen fled in order to prevent herself from hurting Veronica.”

  It was an avenue no one had explored thus far, but why would a New York taxi driver be traveling that route with Ellen? Was it just a fluke that he had entered her life at that moment? Or was he some kind of stalker? There seemed no way to find out.

  After Dick Manning outdid Liz by scooping a few early summer news items, Liz found herself back on the community news beat, for the most part. She was also asked to cover some home and garden items for vacationing columnists. While she sometimes ran into Cormac Kinnaird when covering breaking news, as her hard news assignments dropped off they did not cross paths. But she and Tom discovered a passion for picnicking, and when it was possible, she took Tom along on some of her garden-related assignments, where they spread out his Mexican blanket with the greatest of pleasure.

  In August, another call was made from Ellen’s cell phone, this time to the World’s Nancy Knight. The reporter made much of her scoop, even though the message was another blank one. A psychiatrist consulted by Knight told the reporter, “It’s evident this model mother cannot entirely separate from her child.” While Newton police duly discovered the phone call had been placed somewhere where roaming charges did not apply, the new contact seemed destined to underline Ellen’s absence as voluntary, even if it was uncertain who had made the call.

  Then in September 2001, everything changed. Everything.

  On the second of the month, Liz returned to Gravesend Street to find in her mailbox the long-awaited letter from Nadia. Tearing it open, she stood in her tiny driveway, oblivious to the sounds of passing traffic and of Prudence meowing inside a window. Posted from Jerusalem, the letter read:

  Dear Liz Higgins,

  Forgive me for my delay in contacting you, which is made all the more dreadful by the fact, which I have just learned from your letters, that my dear friend Ellen is missing. I’m afraid my work keeps me world hopping, and my stays in each destination are too short to make the forwarding of letters practicable.

  Ellen did share some confidences with me when we met in New York City. I swore I would hold them secret for all my life, and I find it difficult to reconcile this promise to her with the needs of this investigation into her whereabouts. This is, in part, because she may, as is suggested in the news clippings you sent me, have decided to leave her home by choice.

  Still, I remember Ellen spoke highly of you. Thus am I willing to meet with you and discuss the matter further. Unfortunately, I depart again tomorrow morning for more travels. Would it be impossible for you to meet with me in Singapore? It is a long way to go to meet a woman who might disappoint you once you get there. I make no promises about how much I will confide, and e
ven if I trust you wholly, the information I have to share is limited. Still, I must pass through Singapore three times during the next two months. The first time, I will be staying at the Fullerton hotel on the nights of 6–9 September. Please don’t send Erik in your place, or let him know we are communicating. I will explain why, if and when I see you.

  Yours sincerely,

  Nadia

  Without much hope of receiving an answer, Liz phoned Nadia’s Jerusalem number again. It rang and rang and rang, with the strange double-ring pattern that is common outside the United States.

  Certain the Banner would not pay for a speculative jaunt to Singapore, Liz went straight to the newsroom, looked up the Singapore Tourism Board on the Internet, and discovered there was a celebrated orchid garden in that city. If the Banner saw her as a garden writer, it might be to her advantage. Collaring the travel editor, Susan Damon, she pitched a story about the orchids and great ethnic shopping, while reminding Susan she had vacation time available to spend on the enterprise. Susan composed a letter to the tourism board, which Liz faxed immediately. A half-hour later, she followed up with a phone call.

  “Certainly, we’d love to host you at the Fullerton hotel. It’s just been renovated and the management is looking for coverage,” the public relations manager said. “As long as it is midweek, we can make the arrangements.”

  The airfare was another story. It cost the earth. But Liz decided to go for it. She smiled to think a garden- and travel-writing assignment might provide her ticket to the front page again. Even more important, it might help her keep her promise to Veronica.

  Chapter 23

  Singapore, September 9, 2001

  While she tried to recline in the cramped economy-class seat of a Singapore Airlines jet, Liz experienced the longest sleepless night of her life, as she traveled westward over the international dateline, and into the next day in the process. In Singapore, a city that savvy travelers dubbed “Asia Lite,” Liz was whizzed from the airport to her hotel in air-conditioned ease. After leaving a message for Nadia announcing her arrival, she fell into a deep sleep.

  Seven hours later, a room service meal she had not ordered was delivered to her door, along with a ticket for the cable-car ride that overlooked the city and its harbor. A small vase of orchids on the tray bore a card that read, “Let me show you Singapore! Let’s meet at the cable-car station at 4:00 p.m.—Nadia”

  Liz ate a leisurely meal of tropical fruits, an egg-white omelet, and coffee, then showered and dressed for tropical heat and humidity. After riding the elevator downstairs to the hotel’s expansive, marble-floored lobby, she took a taxi to the cable-car station. With a picture of Nadia and Ellen in hand, Liz had no trouble recognizing Nadia. Before much could be said, the two were seated in their own cable car, which lifted off on a trip across Singapore Harbor to Sentosa Island.

  Distracted by the vista of the huge Merlion statue—a half-mermaid, half-lion mythological beast that is said to guard the port of Singapore—Liz nonetheless managed to fill Nadia in on her efforts to find Ellen, and she made sure to let on that she had paid for this trip out of her own funds. “Beyond that, I’m not certain how to convince you that I care about her well-being,” Liz added. “I know it appears she left of her own volition, but if that is so, I would like to know why. Yes, solving this case would be a boon to my career. But more important is my promise to Veronica. I told her I would find her mother.”

  “Your traveling this far is proof enough that you care, Liz. Ah, here we are on the landing station. You’ve come so far. Let me make your trip memorable.”

  Although Liz was itching to learn more about Nadia’s insights into Ellen, it was clear the Palestinian woman would not talk about this in public. So Liz dutifully—and with increasing pleasure—accompanied Nadia through the interactive Singapore History Museum, then climbed the Merlion statue to get a view from the observation window that was also its mouth, and strolled through the tropical gardens on the island. As she answered many questions from her companion, Liz realized Nadia was trying to learn as much as she could about the reporter. Liz was glad to cooperate in hopes of winning the woman’s trust. In return, however, the Palestinian woman revealed little about herself.

  Back in the cable car, Liz mentioned how she had tried without success to reach Nadia through the United Nations and said she guessed Nadia was an international consultant with a mission other than translation.

  Nadia looked her straight in the eyes and said, “Let’s just say my translation skills are necessary to my work and leave it at that. There is much static these days that must be sorted out, for the good of us all.”

  “You mean international misunderstanding?”

  “Worse than that.” Nadia turned her attention to the panoramic view until the cable car reached its station. “Now, let me take you along to the Raffles Hotel. The bar there is quite famous, you know.” Nadia waved a cab away and signaled for a rickshaw instead. “I always promised Ellen I’d take her on a rickshaw ride here when Veronica is grown up and Ellen has the time to travel.”

  The British-built, white colonial edifice that was the Raffles Hotel screamed “Raj,” and there was no denying it was elegant. Fronted by a circular drive lined with traveler’s palms—so-named, Nadia explained, because they held water cupped in the base of their fan-like display of leaves—the hotel looked like an imperialist’s dream come true. At sunset, the long bar was mostly populated by Japanese tourists, the men in white suits and Panama hats and the women well coiffed and dressed in long, sleeveless frocks.

  Nadia steered Liz to a pair of plush-cushioned rattan chairs with high backs that curved over their heads. Then she ordered two Singapore Slings, sweet alcoholic drinks that arrived in martini glasses. Only after the waiter stepped away did Nadia lean forward and say, “I have debated at length about this, and I hope I am making the right decision. I do not break confidences easily and I hope you won’t break mine without serious cause, either.”

  “Are you saying I cannot report what you tell me?”

  “Yes, Liz, I am saying that. Unless it will help to save Ellen’s life.”

  “You have my word.”

  “Good. Then I will tell you. While we were in New York, Ellen confided that she had been experiencing some frightening flashbacks to an incident from her girlhood.”

  “When a boy exposed himself to her? Yes, I know about that.”

  “It was not a boy.”

  “Perhaps it was a different incident then.”

  “Perhaps. She said the flashbacks began after she received a phone call, a year ago just before Christmas, and the speaker hummed some unknown but oddly familiar gibberish to her. ‘A tuneless hum,’ she called it. The caller never phoned again until just before she met me in Manhattan, but the flashbacks kept coming nevertheless. They always began the same way, with the tuneless hum and a visual image of a topiary garden she loved, a place with trees pruned into marvelous shapes. But although she loved that place, the hum made her extremely uneasy. She told me that when she remembered it, she said she broke out into a cold sweat.

  “The flashbacks seemed to have something to do with tea, she said, because after Veronica broke a teacup, she started to experience them more frequently and at greater length. Each time they overtook her, more was revealed.

  “First there was the hum and the sculpted trees and the uneasiness. Then the hum and the trees and the uneasiness and a kind of umbrella of pine needles. Then, she said, there was the humming and the sculpted trees and a shadowed figure under an umbrella of pine needles. Then there was all of this and the dark figure was revealed to be a man. Then there was the humming and the shaped trees and the needles and the man in the shadows stroking himself. He was forming a word, Ellen said, the ‘f-word.’”

  “‘Fuck.’”

  “These flashbacks were disturbing enough in the
mselves, but what worried Ellen most was a certainty that the identity of the man would inevitably be revealed to her. She did not want to know who it was. And yet she did. To protect her daughter. After she received the phone call, she felt the man was targeting her home. She was afraid for Veronica. You see now why I must consider that Ellen might have had good reason to flee from her home? She was protecting her child by drawing the perverted man’s attention to herself.”

  “Why didn’t she tell her husband about this?”

  “She planned to do that. Just as soon as the man’s face was revealed to her. Until then, she thought it sounded mad, crazy.”

  “The tuneless hum, did she repeat it for you?”

  “No, but she told me that something in her cab ride in New York City called it to mind. The driver was an Arab, as you discovered. He made her uneasy, she said, talking on his short-wave radio in salacious tones about a girl named Tina. I told her, in Arabic teena is a word for fig, as well as a rather improper euphemism for a female. Ellen had good instincts. She knew the driver was talking about her in, let us say, over-familiar terms.”

  “Then it makes sense that he followed her home? She walked straight into the path of a classic stalker.”

  “That seems likely, but then what about the phone call she received a year ago and then again before she met me in New York, before she met the taxi driver? Doesn’t it seem extremely unlikely that two men were stalking our friend?”

  “Yes, but it’s slightly more believable than the notion that the taxi driver and the man who called are one and the same. How could a taxi driver plant himself in the position to pick up a particular woman at Penn Station? It’s just too impossible to engineer. But the caller could well have been Ali, the tongue-tied boy from her past who, I learned, exposed himself to her in the incident she is calling to mind in her flashbacks. Olga told me someone mumbling a tuneless hum phoned her at the same time every year until last year. She feared he’d turned his attentions to Ellen instead. I discovered where Ali lives and works, but he went missing two days after Ellen did. Now there’s a coincidence I know is real.”