Escape Artist

iron gaze, was stupefied, homebody that she certainly was. Julia Ferber, daughter of fatalistic East European sensibility, always expected disaster, rainy days on her already-dark parade, flooding her beleaguered soul. Me, the younger daughter, already had defied her, becoming the subject of wagging town tongues. Fannie, pretty as a daisy, a fluttering girl, susceptible to flattery, well, that girl needed watching. My mother was a worried mother hen.

Esther then joined the noisy chorus and our four voices were at counterpoint: “Imagine…her poor family… didn’t you just…I knew something like this would happen…just too pretty…traveling salesmen, you know how…not trusted…roving eyes…a girl too man crazy…an actress, you say?…glory be to God…because she had a part in some high school production?. too pretty…I always say a young girl…not safe any more…You’d think…I think…I think…I really think…think…”

In the swelling babble of squawking, overlapping voices my father spoke, and, like a factory siren blast, there was sudden silence on the porch. We turned to him.

“What?” My mother was peevish. I realized it was the first word she’d spoken to him since the afternoon visit from Dr. Cooper.

“She’s just a little girl.” His voice was filled with sadness.

Chapter Seven

Esther and I wanted to rush downtown. Ignoring my mother (“Ed, this is not your business”), we headed toward the high school where we spotted Amos Moss, the deputy chief, huffing along in huge strides, headed up the stairs. We caught up with him as he opened the front door.

Amos Moss was the number-two man in a town that sustained two full-time law officers and a receptionist, an old widow named Tessa Monger. Three part-time constables filled the ranks. Occasionally, I stopped at the police station, though Byron Beveridge regularly covered that beat. I never cared for such visits. No one there took me seriously. Tessa was the least offensive, a shaky, twitchy woman always on the verge of crying, though she wore a constant smile. She thanked everyone for stopping in, as if it were a church social, but she rarely provided information. Deputy Amos Moss was an hour away from being the town idiot-a tobacco-chomping bungler in his forties, overflowing in a stained shirt and pants, his badge always lopsided. He spent his days going in the wrong direction.

Chief of Police Caleb Stone, however, was a different cut of cloth, a man as stringy as a long bean, with a prominent jaw, a volatile temper, and a persistent belief in fair play. I considered him an enigma, largely because he was so notoriously close-mouthed. He might be a clever man, this taciturn sheriff, but with his stony reserve he was hard to read. An elder in the First Congregational Church, he was respectability itself.

Appleton was so lazy and peaceful a town that the chief and deputy spent their days wrestling with trespassing, wandering cows and sheep, barroom brawls, neighborhood spats. The horse-drawn patrol wagon hauled drunken souls to the city lockup, baby-faced Horace Grove at the reins. At times, staring into the wagon, I saw grimy, stone-faced Oneida Indians, drunk on corn mash illegally sold to them, deadened men headed for lockup where, according to Byron Beveridge’s report in the Crescent, they spent the night playing euchre.

No, the truth of the matter was that the police had little to do in town, most days. How many times could a vagrant goat trespass in Mrs. Meeson’s flowerbed? Read the Crescent or the Post. Nothing but baseball statistics and at-home socials.

Which probably explained why both Chief Caleb Stone and Deputy Amos Moss were at the high school now, two hours after Frana Lempke’s disappearance.

Amos Moss stopped short and I nearly collided with him. “Going somewheres, ladies?”

“I’m a reporter for the Crescent, as you know, Mr. Moss.”

“This ain’t news.”

Esther leaned into Amos, her eyes flashing. “We’re good friends of Frana, Mr. Moss. We were with her…”

He nodded. I sighed. Why hadn’t I thought of that? Girl reporters seemed to have meager currency in this town. Esther’s fluttery eyelids and pretty face had more authority with the simpleton law.

Chief Caleb Stone had been summoned by Principal Jones, who, frustrated by the bizarre disappearance and verbally assailed by Christ Lempke, had asked teachers to remain behind. Some returned to the school from their homes. I’d not known what to expect, but surely not this gathering. Sitting in rows in the auditorium, the fifteen or so teachers and staff looked at one another, stupefied.

The chief had been talking to the principal down in front and glanced up at me. “Newsworthy?” A trace of sardonic smile. Once or twice as I passed by him on College Avenue, he’d greeted me with similar wry amusement. Even this-this situation, whatever it was-seemed to bring his sarcasm.

“So,” he began, “we have a young lady who stepped out of class and into thin air.”

Esther and I slipped into seats at the back of the auditorium.

I heard grunting. Frana’s uncle, Christ Lempke, was sitting apart, not in an auditorium chair but on a bench, his back against the wall, hunched over.

“Is time I went home.” He attempted to stand.

“Not yet.” Caleb Stone eyed him. From the way he spoke, I sensed he’d been using those words over and over with the impatient man.

“I need get home.” A thick German accent, almost impossible.

Chief Stone ignored him.

Scratching the back of his neck, Amos Moss glanced at Lempke, using one of his two practiced stares: accusation and vacuity.

Caleb Stone cleared his throat. “I asked to meet now to review some facts. I know some of you teachers had arrived home and had to travel back here. I’m sorry to inconvenience you. Now we’ve been hearing around town that Frana was seen getting on the 3:01 with”-he looked down at his notes-“a chubby drummer, but I ain’t got no idea where that rumor started.”

Kathe Schmidt, that’s where, I was certain of it. The spiteful Kathe bustling over town with accounts of Frana eloping to New York and to Broadway footlights. Odds are, Kathe created that rumor. But why? Frana and Kathe, two sparring friends, often together but often at war with each other. Kathe was the problem here. She had to be connected to this ugly scene. If Frana did run off, perhaps Kathe was part of the story.

Caleb Stone was going on. “Far as I’m concerned, frankly, the last time Frana was seen was in the hallways of this school.” Suddenly, peering over the heads of the faculty, he addressed Esther and me. “I gather you two were friends of the young lady?” He waited.

Well, I never liked her, fatuous beauty that she was, but…“Yes.” I sounded lame. “Somewhat.”

“Somewhat?”

“From our high-school days, last year,” Esther offered in a hurry. “Sometimes she would visit with me and, well, Kathe Schmidt…and…and sometimes Edna here.”

Caleb Stone raised his eyebrows. Edna here. Frana, the local beauty; Kathe, the pretty; Esther, the stunning Semite. Edna-here. Girl reporter. Here.

“So what do you two know?”

Once begun, Esther chattered about the rumor she’d heard of Frana seeing an older man-“I heard really older, I mean, twenty-five or even thirty”-to which one of the younger male teachers twittered, then gulped, apologetic. Esther talked of Frana’s family’s horrid wardenship, her being locked up in her room at night, and she glanced nervously at the scowling Christ Lempke. Dramatically, she ended with an account of Frana’s desire to be an actress in New York and marriage and…

Caleb Stone cut her off. “I suspect it’s Kathe telling the stories of the train departure. You ain’t the first to tell me that.” Nearby Amos grunted, and I fully expected and welcomed the sight of Kathe being led away in leg irons.

“You don’t believe she left with a drummer?” I asked him, surprising myself.